25 May
2016
25 May
'16
3:26 p.m.
On 05/25/2016 08:36 AM, Aaron Jackson wrote:
I just revisited the Wikipedia page for the BBC Micro
Tube [1].
Apparently with a 32bit NS320 processor it was possible to run some
variant of UNIX? Does anyone know anything about this? I'd be very
interested in experimenting with it, if it is true.
All evidence that I've seen suggests that it didn't exist, at least in the
wild, even though some documentation does make a passing reference to it
(it's quoted in the BBC user manual, I believe, and I've seen it in some
Acorn Business Computer marketing material).
Acorn - with involvement from Logica - certainly attempted a port of Xenix
to the hardware, but it's not clear how far they ever got. I've seen a few
corporate emails which suggest that they were encountering severe
performance problems, both with the ns32k CPU itself and with transfer of
data across the Tube link.
For Unix "on a BBC" I think the only option was System III from Torch
running on a m68k "Atlas" co-processor.
cheers
Jules