ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre) (10/29/85)
I've collected five pieces of information in the past few months that seem to indicate this is so. I've read on the net that some people in Hamburg are working on a 'eurocard' TNC, and that another company in the US makes a 'eurocard' 6809 system that can run OS-9. I've also heard that the TAPR TNC-1 is 6809 based, and that a amateur radio operator in the Pittsburgh area is doing packet on his Color Computer (another 6809 based machine) by hooking up FSK chips to I/O channels. Why would the 6809 be better than, say a z-80? Would the fact that good implementations of multasking OSes (like OS-9) are available for it? (This would seem to make software which supports multiple connections easier to write.) Or is the Z-80 the preferred processor for packet, simply because of cost? -- - Ralph Internet: ralphw@c.cs.cmu.edu (cmu-cs-c.arpa) Usenet: ralphw@mit-eddie.uucp Fidonet: Ralph Hyre at Fido #385 Pitt-Bull (or maybe Net 129, node 0) Snail Mail: don't bother -- - Ralph Internet: ralphw@c.cs.cmu.edu (cmu-cs-c.arpa) Usenet: ralphw@mit-eddie.uucp Fidonet: Ralph Hyre at Fido #385 Pitt-Bull (or maybe Net 129, node 0) Snail Mail: don't bother
wb6rqn@yojna1.UUCP (Brian Lloyd) (11/04/85)
> I've read on the net that some people in Hamburg are working on a 'eurocard' > TNC, and that another company in the US makes a 'eurocard' 6809 system that > can run OS-9. I've also heard that the TAPR TNC-1 is 6809 based, and > that a amateur radio operator in the Pittsburgh area is doing packet on > his Color Computer (another 6809 based machine) by hooking up FSK chips > to I/O channels. You have the cart before the horse. The development environment and available tools should help you decided which processor to use. OS-9 runs on the 6809 and the 68000 (68010, 68020). The tools seem to be reasonable and the OS is real-time and multitasking, certainly points in its favor. > Why would the 6809 be better than, say a z-80? Would the fact that good > implementations of multasking OSes (like OS-9) are available for it? > (This would seem to make software which supports multiple connections > easier to write.) Or is the Z-80 the preferred processor for packet, > simply because of cost? The 6809 is not intrinsicly better than the Z-80, nor is the Z-80 better than the 6809. The choice to switch to the Z-80 was driven by the fact that many people already have systems that allow development of software for the Z-80. All future development will probably occur in 'C' allowing transportability of software. Since this is happening, all you will need is a 'C' compiler on the target machine and you will then have the ability to run the desired software. Since we need to operate in a multitasking environment for the implementation of networks and servers, it would be nice if we could settle on an operating system. It should be multitask, it should be cheap, it should be generally available, and it should run on a variety of hardware. OS-9 is certainly a candidate since it has been ported to the 68000 family. 73 de Brian, WB6RQN