UNIX PCs was Re: Dreaming of a lean installation method [was Re: *nix on - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

11 Apr 2007

...
   I have a feeling this thread has existed already,
but
 searching the archives rendered no hits. What should
 be considered the first UNIX PC? Now there is some
 form of UNIX available for just about everything (even
 vintage ports), but what computer was made run UNIX
 from the getgo? And please let's not get into
 exhaustive definitions of UNIX, although frankly that
 might add delightfully to the conversation. 
I did much of the port of V7 UNIX for the Fortune Systems 32:16 computer
in 1981.

It was a 6 MHz 68000 (not 68010!) designed specifically to run the UNIX
operating system with business applications on top of it.  It could
run with 256KB of memory and two floppies (although it was really
a lot more useful with a 5MB hard drive).  That was the sole operating
system intended for it.

The 68000 did not have proper instruction restart after taking a trap,
so we had to do some tricks to support traps due to stack growth.
It had a real (and simple) MMU that supported text, data/bss, stack,
and u_page, all built using MSI TTL and maybe a PAL -- no LSI MMU.

The box was still rock solid when I last had it powered on, probably about
10 years ago.  Mine is maxed out with 1MB of memory and four 68MB disk
drives (if I am recalling the max supported disk size correctly).

James Markevitch