[TUHS] late research unix question

* [TUHS]  late research unix question
@ 2009-12-02  0:30 Norman Wilson
  2009-12-02  0:43 ` Al Kossow
  2009-12-02  0:48 ` M. Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2009-12-02  0:30 UTC (permalink / raw)

Tim Newsham:

  Does anyone know if emulators are capable of running 8th ed
  unix or later?  What about emulation of the bitblit?

========

Who knows what blitjerq lurks in the hearts of men?

Seriously, an emulator with appropriate CPU settings should
be able to run latter-day Research UNIX without much trouble.
8/e would need a VAX-11/780 or 750; 10/e would work on a
VAX 8550 or 8700 (only one CPU, though) or a MicroVAX II
or III.  I forget just when the MicroVAX work was first
done (by Ted Kowalski, who in an earlier day wrote fsck),
so I'm not sure at what point in the 9/e era it appeared;
but since 8/e was the last really organized tape we made,
it doesn't really matter.

As others have pointed out, the blit/jerq code didn't
run on the VAX, but in a separate terminal.  For that
you'd need an emulator for the MC68000 or the WE32100.
By the time the 8/e tape was cut, the 68K-based Blits
had pretty much been retired; I'm not sure that code
would be as interesting to resurrect as that for the
WE32100-based Teletype 5620 DMD.  Of course you'd
also have to emulate all the I/O devices, including
the decidedly-non-PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

I don't remember for sure any more (maybe Dennis does),
but the jerq code may have been on a separate tape
because the special C compiler for that CPU chip wasn't
easily redistributed--it came from the commercial side
of AT&T, not the research part.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
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