22 Jan
2020
22 Jan
'20
11 p.m.
Absolutely. When I was an impoverished grad student at Berkeley, Zilog
hired me as a consultant to port vi and the other Berkeley tools to
their Z8000 UNIX system. It was a treasured paying gig.
As I recall, it was a 16 bit system (with some addressing enhancements
ala the 11/70). By then, the VAX was popular and everybody wanted 32 bit
systems. People were pinning their micro-UNIX hopes on the Motorola 68K.
Even before Zilog's ZEUS, Onyx came out with a microwave oven-sized box
based on the Z8000. They loaned one to Berkeley, and it was my first
home computer when I took it home to port the tools. Everything had to
be copied over by serial port.
Mary Ann
On 1/21/20 9:52 AM, Jon Forrest wrote:
There's been a lot of discussion about early Unix
on Intel, National
Semi, Motorola, and Sparc processors. I don't recall if Unix ran on
the Z8000, and if not, why not.
As I remember the Z8000 was going to be the great white hope that
would continue Zilog's success with the Z80 into modern times.
But, it obviously didn't happen.
Why?
Jon