NatSemi 32000 (Was: RE: Drop the Microsoft & OS Discussion!) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

21 Oct 2000

On Oct 21,  3:24, Derek Peschel wrote:

...
  Second, I believe Acorn made a 32016 "second
processor" box for their BBC
 Micro.  Those boxes connect to the main machine (2MHz 6502) via a 2MHz bus
...
  (the Tube) with a semi-custom chip (with a couple of
FIFOs and some
 registers) at each end.  I believe the second processor has a stub OS in ROM
...
  with entry points matching the ones in the main
machine.  The main OS knows
...
  how to process calls from the Tube and how to download
software to the Tube.
...
  I thin the OS on the 32016 second processor was
TRIPOS.  I'm still sorting
...
  out the conflicting docs -- one of them mentions UNIX
but that might have
 been scrapped. 
I don't think it was either.  I think it was an Acorn proprietary OS called
PANOS, which looked vaguely Unix-like.  IIRC, it used BCPL rather than C.
 Somewhere I have all the advertising blurb (but not accessible ATM, if
it's where I think it is), and I used to have a complete set of PANOS disks
and docs, but I may have given that to someone who actually has a 32016.  I
never did, though for a while I did have an Acorn Scientific, which was a
Beeb and 32016 co-pro integated in a bulky box with colour monitor and hard
drive.  PANOS, by the way, was names after a certain rather good Greek
restaurant in Cambridge, which Acorn staff were later banned from -- not
because of the OS, I hasten to add, but allegedly because one night Chris
Curry took a swing at Clive Sinclair in there.

-- 

Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Dept. of Computer Science
						University of York