Ancient 8086/80286 unixes?

[Rod Smallwood]

Surely any publisher of an article past or present and where software is
an important part of the design and who does not print a listing is only
doing half the job. If they are doing this to sell a few preprogrammed
chips then shame on them. 

For old designs we may come across and wish to restore and are prevented
by this practice lets have a 'Wall of Shame' to identify those people
who left us a legacy like that.

Rod Smallwood




-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: 14 September 2007 20:41
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Ancient 8086/80286 unixes?

> 
> 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