BBC Tube... Running UNIX?

[Aaron Jackson]

So the Wikipedia article isn't lying, there are some passing references
to UNIX on the BBC. I have a BBC but not a Tube... I am wondering what I
can find for BeebEm.

Thanks for the info. Very interesting.

Aaron 



> 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