![]() ![]() I never looked at Fred’s version, mostly because it had been taken down before I had internet access. You were only allowed to distribute patches against the official source code.įred van Kempen implemented virtual memory on the 80386 for Minix, but Prentice-Hall forced him to take it off the internet because he distributed the full source rather than just a patch. Prentice-Hall behaved like real jerks about the source code which is why Linux came to be. “Operating Systems Design and Implementation”, A. it would be difficult, if not impossible, to port it to machines not having these features.” The portability issue argues for as simple a memory management scheme as possible. It does not support virtual memory in any form and does not even detect stack overflow, a defect that has major implications for the way processes are laid out in memory. “The 8088’s memory management architecture is very primitive. I think the following quotation settles the question of portability as a design goal, though there are more explicit statements in that regard. MINIX today is very different from the MINIX of 30 years ago. You’re conflating MINIX 3.x with Minix 1.x. Why have code in the kernel that’s taking up space doing nothing? Go ahead and install with PAE because it will work.”īetter yet would be options to not install PAE on a computer that’s limited by hardware and/or firmware to less than 4 gig RAM. It has PAE even though it’s not telling me it has it. What gets me is why Linux installers aren’t programmed to check for this PAE case? Should be “Oh, one of *those* CPUs. The next revision, with a different core name, had PAE that would properly jump up and say ‘present’ when probed, and IIRC those CPUs were used in laptops capable of using 100% of 4 gigs RAM. That’s likely why Intel ‘soft disabled’ PAE on this CPU core. No laptop I know of with one of these CPUs was built to accept more than 2 gig RAM. The CPU is Intel’s first mobile Pentium design that has PAE, but it doesn’t actually tell the OS it has PAE capability.įorcing PAE on one of these CPUs won’t actually do anything because PAE isn’t needed with less than 4 gig RAM. I got Lubuntu 16.10 running on a Compaq NC6000 laptop. Posted in classic hacks Tagged RC2014, unix, z80 Post navigation If you are interested in finding out more about the RC2014, we’ve reviewed it for you. We are always surprised we don’t see more retro computers running MINIX, which was a common Unix alternate back in the day. However, there are a large number of platforms working including Amstrad, Atari, Radio Shack computers, N8VEM boards and many more. According to the Fuzix page, there’s no 8086 compiler, and limitation on some of the other C compilers it targets. You’ll see it looks a lot like a Linux system, although that analogy only goes so far.Īlthough the kernel is pretty portable, there are some tool issues. The video below shows RC2014 computer running Fuzix. As you might expect, the system can fit in a pretty small system. It can target a variety of older processors including the 6502, the 6809, the 8086, and others. ![]() The kernel isn’t just for the Z80, by the way. Fuzix also adds several modern features like 30 character file names and up-to-date APIs. Of course, 1980 Unix was a lot different from modern-day Linux, but it is still closer to a modern system than CP/M. There have been lots of forks of it over the years, and a project called FuzixOS aims to make a useful Z80 Unix-like OS. Or is it? Linux borrows from Unix and back in the 1980s wrote a Unix-like OS for the Z80 called UZI. Linux is more comfortable but isn’t likely to run on a Z80. However, for actual use, CP/M does feel dated these days. If you’re a purist you’ll be happy with that because that’s certainly what most serious Z80 computers ran back in the day.
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