20 Apr
2017
20 Apr
'17
10:34 a.m.
Yes, Cromemco was the company, Cromix their unix like OS.
IIRC, in 1981-83 timeframe someone I worked with had mentioned
he used to work at Cromemco and that they had a unix like OS
called Cromix. Cromemco were in Mountain View so likely they
were at the WCCF.
Even though z80 could only address 64k, their system had a
bank select under s/w control & upto 512K of RAM could be
added. Z80 didn't have a supervisor mode but still, the bank
select must have afforded enouh protection from bad pointers
crashing random processes.
On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 23:40:30 EDT Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello!
That was also a board vendor. FYI: The first GASP [GetAway Special
Program] a Space Shuttle payload made use of such a board.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8(a)gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 11:09 PM, Bakul Shah <bakul(a)bitblocks.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 18:42:42 PDT "Erik E. Fair"
<fair-tuhs(a)netbsd.org> wrote:
>> I have a memory of having seen a Zilog Z-80 (not Z8002 like the Onyx) based
>> Unix, possibly v6, at a vendor show or conference - perhaps the West Coast
>> Computer Faire (WCCF) in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
>>
>> I recall asking the people in the booth how they managed without an MMU, and
>> don't recall their answer. I do remember thinking that since Unix had
"grown
>> up" with MMUs to stomp on obvious pointer mistakes, the software ought to
be
>> relatively well-behaved ... you know: not trying to play "core war"
with
>> itself?
>>
>> I searched the TUHS archives cursorily with Google to see if this has been
>> previously mentioned, but pretty much all Z80 CPU references have for its use
>> in "smart" I/O devices back in the day.
>>
>> Does anyone else remember this Z80 Unix and who did it? Or maybe that it was
>> a clone of some kind ... ?
>>
>> looking for a little history,
>>
>> Erik Fair
>
> You may be thinking of Cromemco.