[TUHS] Unix on Zilog Z8000?

[Mary Ann Horton]

Absolutely. When I was an impoverished grad student at Berkeley, Zilog 
hired me as a consultant to port vi and the other Berkeley tools to 
their Z8000 UNIX system. It was a treasured paying gig.

As I recall, it was a 16 bit system (with some addressing enhancements 
ala the 11/70). By then, the VAX was popular and everybody wanted 32 bit 
systems. People were pinning their micro-UNIX hopes on the Motorola 68K.

Even before Zilog's ZEUS, Onyx came out with a microwave oven-sized box 
based on the Z8000. They loaned one to Berkeley, and it was my first 
home computer when I took it home to port the tools. Everything had to 
be copied over by serial port.

     Mary Ann

On 1/21/20 9:52 AM, Jon Forrest 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