mc68010+mc68451 Unix source?

Ethan Dicks ethan.dicks at gmail.com
Tue Oct 4 15:44:51 CDT 2016


On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 10:21 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
> the will probably be 68000
>
> unisoft kernels i've used weren't 010 with the 451
>
> i'll have to dig around for what bits of the 451 kernel i still
> have around. unisoft kept the mmu parts pretty well isolated since
> the did so many hw ports

I'd be interested in looking over something along these lines.  I have
some 80s hardware that we put a 68000 + 68451 on, but it would easily
take a 68010.  It was going to be a massive wad of async ports and
some sort of WAN port (X.25 was one technique).  It never made it out
the door as a product, but I have the prototypes in the attic.  Dual
Z8530 serial cards (4 ports) with a Motorola DMA engine or 8-port PIO
serial cards on top of a pedestrian 68000+68451 design w/2MB of 41256
DRAM and an early Sony 3.5" floppy drive - designed 1983 to 1984 ISTR.
We used a Perkin-Elmer 7300 Uniplus box w/System III as our software
design workstation because it was an inexpensive way to get 4
developers cranking out C code to 68000 object code to link into our
own format for the hardware target.  I still have the P-E 7300...
tried to sell it at Hamfests 20 years ago and nobody was remotely
interested.

We never finished the app for this thing, but I always wanted to see
about tossing UNIX on it - plenty of serial ports, and at least a few
hundred KB of removable storage... just have to figure out what to put
on it in the way of a mass storage device - perhaps hacking one of the
DMA serial cards to add a 5380 SCSI chip in place of a serial chip.

So... short form - I'd love to read over some 68K UNIX code to see
what it would take to make it run on orphan hardware from 30 years
ago.

-ethan


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