[TUHS] porting to different systems, Bootstrapping UNIX - how was it done

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2026 at 1:24 PM John R Levine via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Mar 2026, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> > If I recall correctly, the labs port was to an Interdata 8/32.
>
> Quite possibly.  Programming for the 7/32 and 8/32 were nearly the same.
>

It true: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Interdata_7/32

They shared a core set of Instructions (largely based on S/360 BTW).
Gunkies calls the 8/32 the 7/32's big sister.   IIRC 7/32 binaries ran on
8/32 but not the other way around.   While (like the S/360 architectural
definition) they both used 32-bit registers, the 8/32 had 32-bit data paths
and the 7/32 had 16-bit data paths.  Also the implementations differed
using 7400 logic in the one and 74S00 in the other.  The combination of a
double datapath and faster logic implementation made the 8/32 2-2.5 times
faster than the 7/32.