[TUHS] Unix on Zilog Z8000?

[Clem Cole]

The Onyx box redated all the 68K and later Intel or other systems.   John
Bass brought one to USENIX to demo in early 1980 ru a V7 port and everyone
was blown away. Playing with it. It was a desktop (19" rack) system that
worked like a PDP-11.   I don't remember the bus, but I would guess it was
either custom or Multibus-I.

Besides being one of the first non-PDP-11 'ports', the original lockf(2)
system call was defined for the database that they had built.  John would
release the specs to /usr/group later.  I remember at one meeting in the
early 1980s discussing if file locking needed to be in the original
specification (Heinz probably remembers also as the chair of that
meeting).  I'm not at home, so I don't have the document to see if it was
picked up.  The argument was that serious computers like VMS or the like
ran real databases and without file locking UNIX would never be considered
a real OS that people could use.

BTW: Joy would later use Bass's call as a model for the 4.2 call, but Joy
made the locks advisory, Bass's version was full / mandatory locks.

FWIW: I think a search will pick up a number of other Z8000 based systems,
but Onyx was the first UNIX box.

On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 12:53 PM Jon Forrest <nobozo at gmail.com> 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
>
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