Z8000 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

4 Aug 2001

On August 4, Tony Duell wrote:
...
   The Z8000
included the Zilog (later Exxon Office Systems) Zeus office 
 automation Unix boxes...  
 Wasn't 'ZEUS' the operating system (Zilog Enhanced Unix System or 
 something like that). The machines had names like the 'S8000'. 

 I have one. It's about 2' square, and built from 4 slices about 9" high 
 each. The bottom 2 slices are emtpy (well, one of them has the 
 distibution panel for the serial ports on the back). The next slice 
 contains the hard disk (am SMD-interfaced winchester, possibly Fujitsu), 
 and the tape drive (QIC11 IIRC). The top slice contains the card cage and 
 the logic PSU. The boards plug in on DIN 41612 connectors.  
  That sounds like a Model 21 or 31.

  ZEUS is indeed the OS as you said above, Tony.  The family is called
System-8000, and the model numbers are 11, 21, and 31.

  The bus is called Zbus (big surprise there), and was designed with
multiprocessing in mind...the hardware supported plugging in multiple
processor boards, but the OS was never extended to handle
multiprocessor operation.  The bus was actually designed for the Z8000
and Z80,000 processors, and the spec was released separately, and then
the System-8000 line was designed using that bus.

  The one I had, a Model 31, was mounted in the optional 6' rack.  It
consisted of the same "slices" that you referred to, but rack-mounted.
At the top was a Zilog-labeled CDC Keystone magtape drive.

  The Model 11 didn't use those modular slices...it's a small deskside
tower design.

            -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Laurel, MD