[TUHS] Unisoft V7 68k sources (reviving a Codata machine)

[Warren Toomey]

I just received a new TUHS subscription request along with
an interesting query. Can anybody help Michael with his problem?

Cheers, Warren

----- Forwarded message from "Engel, Michael" -----
Dear Warren,

Could you please subscribe me to the TUHS mailing list?

I haven't worked with old Unix systems for quite some time, but I was appointed as a 
Senior Lecturer at Leeds Beckett University (UK) two months ago and - to my big 
surprise - I found an old Unix machine collecting dust in a corner..

The machine is a Codata 300, a Multibus-based system using a licensed clone of the
original Sun 100U CPU board and a number of additional Multibus controllers. The
machine seems to be complete, including two 8" SMD disks and a Cipher 9-track
tape drive, we also seem to have a set of replacement boards and the CPU board
manual (including schematics and code snippets explaining how to access the onboard
devices - some Codata documentation can also be found on bitkeeper).

We haven't tried to power up the machine yet (and, built around 1983, it certainly needs 
a close examination of the power supply and capacitors). From information on the net,
this machine runs a Unisoft port of 7th Edition Unix - similar to the Sun 1 machines and 
probably a Whitesmiths C compiler (there's a Whitesmiths license badge attached to the 
case). Definitely a very interesting and probably quite rare machine and we would like
to revive it (and, if things go well, create a FPGA reimplementation of the system in
the context of a student design project).

Now, I would love to know more details about the implementation of 7th Edition Unix on 
the 68000 and the use of the custom MMU built out of fast SRAM and TTL logic. 
I do not think that source code to any of the various 68k 7th Edition ports produced by 
Unisoft is available somewhere - do you know of a possible source?

Alternatively, do you think it would be worthwhile asking Unisoft for the source code or
do you know if anyone has tried this already? According to the Unisoft history web page 
(http://www.unisoft.com/history.html), they still seem to know that they were porting Unix 
30 years ago...

The only remotely related source code I could find in my archives is the A/UX 0.7 source 
(SVR2, if I'm not mistaken), which probably already required a 68020 with 68851 MMU.

Best regards,
     Michael Engel
----- End forwarded message -----