fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (01/25/88)
I caught up on a month's worth of UNIX-Wizards today, and saw this
comment in the "Pournelle on UNIX vs. OS/2" debate:
In the referenced article, al@gtx.UUCP (Al Filipski) writes:
"UNIX? Nosireebob, I'm waiting for it to come out on an
S-100 machine with 8-1/2 inch floppies."
and then I looked in vain for the rejoinder...
Doesn't ANYONE remember the Dual System 83? It was the first 68000
based UNIX (a V7 kernel with 2.8 BSD utilities, introduced in
November 1981), and it did indeed use the S-100 (IEEE-696) bus,
and 8-1/2 inch floppy drives.
MMU? Uh, well, Motorola hadn't done one yet, so the first Dual
didn't have one either. Unfortunately, what Motorola eventually
came up with was the 68451. Ugh.
Dual Systems also holds the dubious distinction of having launched
UniSoft Systems, by virtue of having been Jeff Schriebman's first
customer.
Dual never did get reviewed by Pournelle. On the other hand, he
never tried to run UNIX with CompuPro's S-100 hardware. If he had
(like Dual did - they used CompuPro's disk controllers and serial
cards for a while), he probably would have ended up with a different
opinion about them...
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.educjc@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[rs]) (01/26/88)
In article <22726@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP writes: > In the referenced article, al@gtx.UUCP (Al Filipski) writes: > > "UNIX? Nosireebob, I'm waiting for it to come out on an > S-100 machine with 8-1/2 inch floppies." > > and then I looked in vain for the rejoinder... > > Doesn't ANYONE remember the Dual System 83? It was the first 68000 > based UNIX (a V7 kernel with 2.8 BSD utilities, introduced in > November 1981), and it did indeed use the S-100 (IEEE-696) bus, > and 8-1/2 inch floppy drives. Yes, we use a Dual System 83/86 (a modified version of the orig. 83 (i.e. more memory, faster drives, and memory managment)) at Bennington College. It's a bit slow, but not too bad for a fossil. Christopher Calabrese AT&T Bell Labs and Bennington College ulysses!cjc
rpw3@amdcad.AMD.COM (Rob Warnock) (01/28/88)
+--------------- | Doesn't ANYONE remember the Dual System 83? It was the first 68000 | based UNIX (a V7 kernel with 2.8 BSD utilities, introduced in | November 1981), and it did indeed use the S-100 (IEEE-696) bus, | and 8-1/2 inch floppy drives. +--------------- Uh... Eric, let's compare dates. The Fortune System 32:16 was also introduced in November 1981, at COMDEX, so which was "first"? (The 32:16 was a 68000-based Unix, with a V7 + 4.1bsd kernel, with 4.1 + System-III utilities. Came with an 800k 5-1/4" floppy and a 5 meg 5-1/4" wini. The MMU was a proprietary base+limit segmentation type [4 segments: text/data/extra/stack], since no Motorola chips were available... for several years!) Granted, we weren't S-100... ;-} Rob Warnock Systems Architecture Consultant UUCP: {amdcad,fortune,sun,attmail}!redwood!rpw3 ATTmail: !rpw3 DDD: (415)572-2607 USPS: 627 26th Ave, San Mateo, CA 94403