Zilog Zeus

From: Matthias Knoth <mknoth at earthlink.net> Gaaah, it's coming back to haunt me! The NJ Computer Museum has a Zilog System 8000 model 21 what's probably running that! One of my AT&T IS consulting assignments was running URTS (Unix Regression Test Suite) on the SVR3 port and examining the source code. I'm unsure I have any of that on tape or printouts :-( The comments were amusing such as the Z8000 CPU forcing the Z80's "RETI" instruction on the peripheral bus to reset the Z80 peripherals chips interrupt daisy chain. The comments were something like ld foo ; now watch my lips ... mov bar ; RE- ld baz ; mov qux ; -TI That's the first place I saw "deadbeef" as a magic number. I really liked the System 8000 as a development system since it had a firmware monitor that could be invoked in case of a system crash to poke at the RAM. I think that's where I learned how to repair the system using the stand-alone bootable tapes such as SASH: Stand Alone Shell, and SADIE: the diagnostic tape. When Exxon owned Zilog (around 1982), they had an office in Rockefeller Center (NYC) for their office automation featuring the Zilog System 8000 running Zeus. Back then, breadbox sized Z8000 systems running Unix System III were common, such as the Onyx, so the Unix manuals were all around (Then 68k based systems took over, then Intel x86). I like in an apartment, so I can't save 'em all :-( From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> But did you get to peek into the kernel or use the maintenance programs? From: "Mark Davidson" <mdavidson1963 at gmail.com> I remember seeing 2 on the back of an old pickup truck, for sale, at the Trenton Computer Fest in the late 80s. Talk about a fall from grace! The only RM/COBOL I remember seeing was a manual for the NCR Tower, but I was a firm Unix/C kinda guy by then. -- Jeff Jonas