29 Nov
2020
29 Nov
'20
5:12 a.m.
On Fri, 27 Nov 2020, Noel Chiappa wrote:
Yeah, that's why I suggested it; I did play with it on one those PDT
thingies some decades ago (just to see if I could; the thing was on loan).
I would start
with something like Mini-Unix
MINI-UNIX would be a good place to start if one wanted to bring up a
system on a machine without memory management; there's nothing in the
kernel which is PDP-11 dependent that I can think of (unlike V6, which
had a fairly heavy dependency on the PDP-11 memory management hardware -
although one could of course rip that all out, as MINI-UNIX did). However, one's still looking at a fair amount of
work, both to get rid
of any traces of PDP-11isms (e.g. stack growth direction), and translate
the assembler part (startup, and access to non-C operations). Something
like FUZIX might be an easier option.
Hadn't heard of FUZIX, but after looking at the web page then I concur;
I'll keep it in mind should I ever get a tiny machine :-) I did have a
fine collections of Microbees (Aussie Z-80 box) once, but they're long
gone, along with enough bits to make an Applix 1616 (Aussie 68000 box).
-- Dave