Ancient 8086/80286 unixes?

[Tony Duell]

> 
> On Thursday 13 September 2007 01:30:39 Ensor wrote:
> 
> > I first came across this myself in the mid-90s. I'd picked up a copy of
> > "Elektor" for the first time in almost 10 years and was surprised that they
> > didn't provide any listings of any form for the projects based around PICs,
> > you had to send away for pre-programmed parts.
> 
> That's about when I remember seeing it happen; also with an article in 
> (possibly) PE&EE about building a Z80-based SBC that ran Forth.

Actually, Elektor have been rather better about this recently, and in a 
lot of cases the _source_ code for the microcontroller firmware is 
available as a free download from their web site.

Alas, in some cases (often for the projects I am most interested in :-(), 
this is not the case, often becasue the author gets a royalty from each 
pre-programmed chip sold.


> 
> These days when you can build a simple PIC or ATMEL programmer from a couple 
> of components, or buy an EPROM programmer off eBay for about a tenner, 
> there's not really an excuse.

I suspect the reason (not an excuse...) was that they made money selling 
pre-programmed chips. Certainly when you boughht the pre-programmed chip, 
it came copy-protected.

> 
> Ob. on-topic: does anyone remember the Forth SBC article I was talking about, 
> and does a copy of it exist online anywhere?

No, and as a Forth (and stack based languages in general) lover, I would 
be interested.

-tony