3 May
2025
3 May
'25
1:49 p.m.
On 5/2/25 11:15 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
Thank you, Tom, for the definitive answers to much of
this. I
remembered that the Z8000 was mixed up in that mess, but it was
missing from Al's Trix tape. Do you know if a Z8000 back end or set
of support tools was ever built, and if so, does anyone know if they
survived? It does look like Al has 8086 [Terman compiler]. 68K (of a
few flavors) and an NS16032 (author's unknown). One of the tools you
mentioned from MIT seems to have survived, although Dennis and I saved
the official UNIX Circuit Design System release in the
mid-1990s. Warren has had that TUHS archives ever since, but I'm not I
ever saw you tools other than things like you 68K assembler, and I
guess is was our fiiend Wayne that wrote the linker (which until this
thread I did not now).
BTW: Again, it proves how interwoven the people and tech (i.e., open
source culture) were in the 1970s; i.e., it's not a new thing. The
PDPs were running the Stanford Circuit Design System (SUDS) and the
11's often at USCD. The people came and went. For instance,the
former Wayne was a year ahead of me at CMU before he headed to MIT for
a Master's and PhD,
ᐧ
I'm pretty sure a Z8000 back end was produced because I remember that we
built at least one Z8000 board. One of the LCS progress reports mentions
that Zenith had committed to build some Z8000 systems, back when "office
automation" was a thing. However, I have no idea what happened to the tools.
I don't remember anyone but Chris producing back ends, but it's possible
someone else did the NS16032. But I don't remember anything else about
the NS16000 systems.
The tools Chris and others produced in support of the Mead/Conway LSI
course were also widely distributed, but I'm not sure what the
mechanism. Since those were completely unencumbered by Unix, there was
probably less formality, but I expect the MIT license was included.