AIX 5L for IA-64

Project Monterey was an umbrella project intending on bringing UNIX as a single operating system that could run on multiple architectures (not too dissimilar to IBM's Workplace OS project); however in this instance multiple vendors were involved most notably Intel, HP and SCO. The only product that ever became of Project Monterey was AIX 5.1 for Itanium IA-64 (AIX 5.1 was also branded as AIX 5L for both POWER and Itanium, with the "L" being emphasis on Linux packages). Sun Microsystems also had developed their version of Solaris for IA-64 but after they got it booting it was binned due to the obvious failure of Itanium. It could be said that Sun Microsystems, IBM, SGI and others who had their own microarchitectures were not all that seriously interested in it as publicly proclaimed since they had already had been making money on their own chips. Only Intel and HP had much to gain (and lose!) from it versus everyone else.

A few of the other projects from other parties were Project UDI and Project Modesto.

Downloads

The Product consists of: (1) Pseudo SCSI Adapter Device Driver Sample Code, SCSI CD ROM Device Driver Sample Code, Pseudo Device Driver Sample Code, TTY Device Driver Sample Code, Ethernet Device Driver Sample Code, Fibre Channel Device Driver Sample Code, UDI headers and tools, installp sample code, and sample code contained in the Documentation (collectively, "IBM Code"), and (2) documentation contained on the media ("Documentation").

— IBM Installation Notes

Note: refer to the "DDK Beta Release Notes" PDFs for installing the DDK packages into AIX 5L IA-64. There are variances between the documents due to the fact the product was in beta, and also no notices of the NFB X or IDE CD-ROM device drivers even though they were externally present.

UDI Update Readme

Instructions for applying UDI updates to AIX 5L for Itanium version 5.1:

- Become root(superuser) on system which is to be updated
- Download (ftp) udiupdate.tar.Z file to "/" directory
- Change directory to "/" (cd /)
- Make sure the udiupdate.tar.Z file is resident here (1479930 bytes)
- Execute "compress -dc udiupdate.tar.Z | tar -xvf-"
- Reboot the system

Your system now has the latest UDI updates which addressed the following defects:
338264
334641
335880
338411
333070
339728
337420
336608
336394
337605
338523
336016
338413
339728

— IBM UDI Update Notes

Hardware Support

While there hadn't been much Itanium hardware released (and the majority if not all based on the reference designs given to each hardware partner), it can be assumed AIX 5L IA-64 might have ran on either an IBM xSeries 455 (8855), or an IntelliStation Z Pro 6894. However Intel did have much larger and earier SDK workstations and servers so it's possible the 2001 IBM Itanium machines may have not. Various documentation states that IBM didn't guarantee all device drivers would be fully functioning due to the hardware variances and the fact AIX being released on a third party platform wouldn't adhere to the out of box treatment PPC64 AIX had; furthermore it seems to have required a B2 revision of Itanium chipset. Update: it has been confirmed IA-64 AIX 5L runs on the IntelliStation Z Pro 6894 (I'm not certain why some people insisted it wouldn't). Unfortunately I've not been able to locate any of these machines, and when the opportunity was potentially possible, there was not yet viability for obtaining a second-hand copy of Itanium AIX.

The IBM IntelliStation Z Pro 6894 was the only Itanium machine in the IntelliStation lineup, and was in fact based on the reference design that HP, SGI and others also used. The only differences are the grey uniform plastic and the little IBM logos silkscreened on the front. It's fairly interesting none of the OEMs put any attention on actually developing bespoke machines, which really set the tone for how disinterested the market was for Itanium.

AIX 5L for IA-64 (Project Monterey) - Overview