[TUHS] Re: Any Bell 8-bit UNIX Efforts?

[Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au>]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 02:42:00PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> Just so you know, the folks in Western Electric's Teletype team retargeted
> the Ritchie compiler to become a Z80 cross-compiler/assembler dev tools
> suite. That implementation was floating around the Bell System in the
> 76/77/78 time frame.  I know Karn had brought it with him and started using
> it for his original KA9Q IP/TCP implementation, initially for his CP/M box
> and ham radio system; (as he ran it as a cross compiler on my 11/34 at
> CMU's Mellon Institute -- I trade cycles for access to the compiler).  I
> don't know if anyone ever tried to use the Teletype Z80 C compiler to build
> a UNIX or UNIX-like port for the z80 with it. I have since forgotten how
> complete it was.
> 
> A bit later, Loer Zohlman wrote BDS C,
> <https://streaklinks.com/BaWWWKCdXX0VeHglTwPJ67Kb/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bdsoft.com%2Fresources%2Fbdsc.html>which
> was pretty darned good/fairly complete C implementation for the time; and a
> few years back, he put it in the Public Domain [ you can download it from
> his website].  Missing/lost is/was the UNIX-like system they were working
> on to go along with the compiler - which I am trying to remember if it was
> quite complete/much less made it out for sale like his compiler was at the
> time.  However, at an early Boston USENIX, Leor had it running "good
> enough" that he brought it and showed it in his room on a dual floppy Z80
> IMSAI box
> <https://streaklinks.com/BaWWWN1JCX6k_N2uxQTLwc9m/http%3A%2F%2Fretrotechnology.com%2Fherbs_stuff%2Fd_imsai.html>
> with
> some 4K bank switching HW (I don't remember how much memory - probably
> 128Kish).  I was there when he demo'ed it to Dennis and a few other
> hackers.  Dennis's response at the time was it reminded him of the early
> UNIX efforts.  I just thought it was pretty cool.

'BDS C version 1 has just about saturated its framework; version 2 is now
being developed in close conjunction with the MARC Disk Operating System
(the work of Edwin P. Ziemba) to provide a unified software development
system for release sometime in 1981. MARC is a "Unix-like" operating
system that happens to fit quite comfortably in non-gargantuan
8080/Z8O-based machines.'
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/bd_software/BDS_C_1.46_Users_Guide_Mar82.pdf

'I had the pleasure of meeting Dennis once at the Boston Usenix
conference around 1980, where Ed Ziemba and I had set up a demo of Ed’s
MARC operating system (single-user single-process Unix clone that ran
parasitically on CP/M-80 machines). I think that one of the high points
of my life was giving a demo of a software project to Dennis Ritchie and
seeing it bring a big smile to his face.'
Leor Zolman, in the comments on
https://herbsutter.com/2011/10/16/your-first-c-program/

'Ed Ziemba, the originator, guiding force and one of the primary authors
of the UNIX-like operating system MARC, was killed June 7 in a freak
accident while snorkeling'
InfoWorld 17 Aug 1981
https://books.google.com/books?id=pD0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT14

There was a short writeup on MARC in the Dec 1982 issue of Byte
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-12/page/n219/mode/2up