23 Apr
2017
23 Apr
'17
11:14 a.m.
FWIW, I've got a copy of "A Book on C" by RE Berry, BAE Meekings and MD
Soren, which presents an
extension of Small C called RatC, and with example translations from RatC to 8080 and
VAX.
Did anyone use RatC for any major project?
Wesley Parish
Quoting Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com>:
Leor Zolman had a little firm her in NE called Brain
Damaged Software
(BDS)
and he wrote and marketed a full C compiler called BDS C -
http://www.bdsoft.com/resources/bdsc.html [ which is now freely
available -
including the sources]. For years Leor's compiler was the de facto
standard K&R style C compiler for the 8080/z80 systems for CP/M and
such
systems. [What was important, is that until Leor, the CP/M community
was
using something called "Small C" which was a sub-set of the language.
Leor
managed to get V7/K&R into a 8080].
A couple of other folks (which I thought included Leor) had a UNIX-like
system running on/with it that we showed to Dennis at first Boston
USENIX
in late the 1970s/early 1980s - that IIRC could take CP/M programs -
[although they may have to been relinked]. My memory is that the system
got sold/licensed to a firm on the west coast and marketed independently
of
BDS C, [you might ask Leor or maybe some like Phil Karn - i.e. any one
that
was doing both UNIX and CP/M in those days].
If forgotten the details, I do remember Dennis saying that it reminded
him
very much of early UNIX and was very impressed with job that had been
done. The basic tools were there: sh, ed, grep, ls and it was quite
usable
modulo floppy disk speeds.
Clem
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 9:42 PM, Erik E. Fair <fair-tuhs(a)netbsd.org>
wrote:
"I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor,
Method for Guitar
"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel
Goldwyn
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