I was browsing YouTube not so long ago and I came across a video made by an Ubuntu developer, NCommander, about Internet Explorer 5 for UNIX. I was surprised that IE ran on other platforms than Windows and Mac OS, but the fact that old Solaris was so easy to install and run was more interesting for me. Since I was bored, I thought I could try both(even though I don't like Internet Explorer). So I started looking for copies of Solaris and IE and began my journey. In this post, I'm going to provide instructions on the harder parts of the installation I had to look up myself -- under QEMU, not everything is next-next-finish.

QEMU and HDD geometry

Solaris 7 doesn't recognize the type of the hard drive automatically, so when creating a hard drive image, you should calculate the number of cylinders, heads and sectors, because the installation of the system will fail if you enter wrong data. The formula is simple(result in bytes):

So if we want to create an approximately 5 GB image, we need 16 heads, 63 sectors per track(I recommend to consider these as constants) and 10240 cylinders, because 16 * 63 * 10240 * 512 = 5284823040 bytes, which is around 5 gigabytes. I chose QEMU as emulator for this experiment, because it has SPARC emulation and the default settings work. The hard drive image could be created like this:

After creation of the disk image, the installation can be started by issuing:

Install

We are soon greeted with this screen:The disk needs to be labeled, so we need to press the right mouse button on the desktop, select Utilities while holding the left mouse button and select Command Tool. We need to issue a few commands:

We are prompted to select a disk, but we have only one, so it's not a hard choice. After that, we label the disk. We need to enter the geometry of the disk, accepting the default settings where possible. Enter a smaller cylinder count than calculated, otherwise the labelling process will fail.

Back to the wizard. Now we could continue the installation. I won't describe the entire process, just the steps that aren't so simple.

If we want networking in QEMU, the configuration is not that easy. The installer will ask for an IP address, we should enter 10.0.2.15.Then it asks for the type of the name service. We should select DNS. Then we should enter a domain name: it doesn't matter, this will fail anyway. We should enter the nameserver address, which is: 10.0.2.3. Then we should answer no to the next two questions. The installation continues with easy questions. We could accept the default options. After the installation finishes, the virtual machine should be powered off. If we want to start the installed system, we should omit the CD-ROM options(-cdrom, -boot) from the QEMU parameters. It will ask for a few things like root password on first boot.To gain network access, login as root, open a terminal(right click->Tools->Terminal on CDE), enter:

After reboot, there should be internet access.

Look and feel

The default desktop environment is CDE, which was pretty standard in commercial UNIX operating systems in this time period. It uses a floating window manager. The experience is unique, although it reminds me of Windows 3.x in some places(window operations in a top-left corner menu, minimizing to icons on the desktop).You could set different wallpapers for workspaces, which nice and could be useful. You can set your own color scheme or choose from the presets. You could set the fonts, too. This reminds me of Windows 9x theming, even though I'm too young to have used Windows 9x when it was new. Anyway, CDE is a lot more cutomizable than modern GNOME:PThe bottom panel is an application launcher and workspace switcher essentially. If you click on an icon, it launches an application, if you click on the arrow above the icon, it shows application in that category. You can customize it to your liking. You can launch applications by right clicking on the desktop, and that menu is customizable, too, but if you launch executables, there's always a terminal window, which I find annoying.

Installing IE and finding system patches

The default browser is HotJava, which is VERY SLOW, even displaying local HTML files. I didn't expect it to display modern websites, but it could start up faster and render local help files at least with tolerable speed. But I've heard about IE for UNIX before installing Solaris, so let's try it! Installing it was straightforward: run the installer script, follow the instructions and you are done. Beware that the installer doesn't create an app icon in CDE, you have to launch the browser by manually launching the executable on this path: /usr/local/microsoft/bin/iexplorer. When I tried this first, it complained about missing patches. After that, I was looking for the necessary patches for days, when I've finally found them here. If you want to run Internet Explorer on the November 1999 Solaris 7 release(older releases may require more patches), you'll need these patches: 106327-23, 106950-24, 108376-46. To unzip those patches, run:

If the patch directory is present, install it(as root of course):

If you've installed all three patches, Internet Explorer should run.

Using IE

Since this old browser cannot handle modern cryptography, I had to visit unencrypted sites, but finding those is a hard task in 2021, since almost every website redirects to HTTPS. Fortunately, I know a few pages I could visit with this old piece of software. The speed and usability is okay, I could have used this in 1999. It is supposed to work on IE-only sites, but they are extinct now so I cannot confirm nor deny this. In case you want to know more in depth about this, check out the video linked above.

Conclusion

I had fun installing and trying Solaris, but I don't have an idea what to do with this system, since it was barely used at home and I don't know of any application I could try and play with on this. I know I haven't even scratched the surface, this was only supposed to document my experiences and the pitfalls I've encountered. This is not a review.

I would like to use a real SPARCStation, but they are too expensive for me(I would collect old computers otherwise). Emulation is not a full experience and there are some limitations, for example you cannot set the keyboard layout, since it worked with physical switches on real hardware. It was still great to try an old UNIX, though.