Ok, you really want to get a serious Helios buff. Good!
First, download the Helios archive. I strongly recommend to go for the most recent version, which is 1.3.1. The Archive is a huge 12MB (erm, in 1990-terms) but that’s mainly because it also includes an X11 server. Don’t get too exited about X11 though. It will only work if you have a Transputer driven graphics card!
So, download this archive, save it into a path you can easily access within DOS -8 char limit!- and un-tar/zip it there. I’d suggest something like c:\trans\helios13 (=Helios root).
| I assume you’re installing all this on your DOS/Windoze box. DOS! This is vintage stuff – from days when a i486 was insanely fast and expensive. Do not expect that any of the programs described here are running on your 64bit, 4GHz, 16GB, Windows 10 box… you will need [MS|PC|Open|Free]DOS, running on a PC preferably clocked below 200MHz. An ISA bus is mandatory for having a Transputer interface card installed (well, there were some MCA/PCI cards).If you’re a happy owner of a Sun SPARCStation or similar UNIX box, you might be able to skip this chapter. |
Because this archive was created from a running install on a SunOS machine (I think), you will end up with some file names crippled to the DOS 8.3 file-naming scheme. So we have to do some renaming work in /ETC (c:\trans\helios13\etc in DOS terms) now:
host.equiv -> HOST.EQU
inetd.conf -> INETD.CON
protocols -> PROTOCOL
socket.conf -> SOCKET.CON
Next, change into /users (c:\trans\helios13\users) and remove the dots from the filenames in each folder (root/guest/shutdown) in there:
.cshrc -> CSHRC
.login -> LOGIN
Finally, we need to replace the SunOS binary, which is used to boot Helios, called ‘server’. You will find the MSDOS equivalent (SERVER.EXE) here. Put it into your Helios root folder.
Next up, configuration…