For no reason other than my own personal satisfaction and to scratch a retro itch (and maybe an excuse to buy a dumb terminal). I’m interested in spinning up a Dynix Library card catalog system from the 90’s. Anyone know if this is abandonware or where I can get a hold of it? Or if anyone has done something similar?

  • PAPPP@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    1. Neat, I never knew what that system was called. I have fond memories of my local libraries DEC terminals.

    2. Ooh, it looks like that ran on Pick, which is a neat early database/operating system/programming environment …thing named for one of its primary authors (I shit you not) Dick Pick. Later typically the UniVerse hosted variant, which is proprietary up to it’s eyeballs, and still sold by Rocket Software as U2. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a copy of native Pick or UniVerse for a 90s Unix or NT in a vintage software archive, but it has been widely used essentially forever, and it is virtually search proof, so it might be out there.

    3. Dynix itself is pretty search proof since it was also the name of an influential multiprocessor Unix from Sequent, which, like Pick, was at some point bought by IBM.

    4. Holy shit they’re still a thing https://www.sirsidynix.com/

  • grysbok@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I don’t know the answer to any of your questions but thank you so much for posting this! My city library back when I was in middle school used this system and I’ve been pining for it a bit, but didn’t know what it was called.

  • thac0@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Takes me back! Dialed into our library’s system-- Dynix based-- all the time to hold books!