fylstra.tsca@sri-unix@sri-unix.UUCP (06/04/83)
Jerry -- here's an idea for your friends at Godbout... I wish one of the S-100 manufacturers of a 68K cpu board for the S-100 bus (Godbout, Dual, Cromemco, ERG, ...) would package Unix with their 68K board. I'd love to throw away my Z80 cpu and roll my own Unix system with the remaining S-100 parts (chassis, memory, peripherals) rather than junking it and buying into the UnixBox market at $8-20K. What you'd need would be a relocatable version of the Unix kernel into which you'd bind your own home-made device drivers and real-time clock; you'd have to create a file system on your hard disk and install a customized version of the booter. This may be beyond the ability of most S-100 users, but then... we figured out how to use SYSGEN and MOVCPM and how to customize our BIOS, didn't we? Dave Fylstra
GRUPP%mit-mc@sri-unix.UUCP (06/04/83)
From: Paul R. Grupp <GRUPP@mit-mc> DUAL does have UNIX (V7) for their 68000 system. They also have UNIX System-III for their 68010. Godbout (and MANY others) feel that the 68K is "treading water" with this type of application and that it is better left to CPUs like the 16032 and the iAPX286, which thay claim that they will supply a "FULL UNIX development package" for when thay start marketing these boards. --Paul P.S. This info came from Bill Godbout at the NCC last month..
BYTE%mit-mc@sri-unix.UUCP (06/04/83)
From: Roger L. Long <BYTE@mit-mc> DUAL does offer UNIX on their stuff. From what I hear of GODBOUT, they decided the cost of putting UNIX in their system was way too much and since CP/M-68K came out about that time, decided that would be enough to support their 68000 board. They also have some OS written in Forth. Cromemco has something called "CROMIX" which is a UNIX-lookalike, I believe.
SJOBRG.ANDY%MIT-OZ%mit-mc@sri-unix.UUCP (06/04/83)
Because it hasn't been done yet, there are a number of considerations: 1) The 68k isn't the ultimate 16bitter on the market. If you want to have >real< unix* (Berkeley unix), then you need to have a good virtual memory scheme. For this, if you want to stick with the 68000 family, you would need to go with a 68010 and a number of 68451 (memory management) chips - about 16 or so to be useful. As you see, this implementation can take up a lot of board space, so... 2) Drop the 68k and go with National's 16032. It is more orthogonal in its instruction set, and it handles virtual memory in the proper way, with >fast< context switching (which happens a lot in multi-user operating systems like unix). The chip is also about as fast as a vax (according to National's literature, using the prime number program that was in (I think) Sept 81 Byte), and the benchmark that they used can be optimised for even more speed (so, according to my guesses and testing it out on our 68ks at work, it would end up being as fast as a vax). Long live unix! -andy ------------ *Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories -------
SEAN%MIT-OZ@mit-mc@sri-unix.UUCP (06/06/83)
I believe that VenturCom (Cambridge) is shipping Vnix for the PC. Vnix is V7 u*nix.