Re: TI-H: Zunix?

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Re: TI-H: Zunix?


>Hello.
>
>I'm not a programmer or a hardware builder, but I am very interested in
>hardware for the TI-8x.  My question is thus:
>
>Can UNIX or some variant be ported to the z80?  More specifically, the
>TI-85?  This is probably wrong, but I had an idea for how it might work:

yes, but besides the prompt, you wouldn't get much.

>- It would require a memory expander of some sort.  You first download a
>regular shell, perhaps ZShell or Usgard.  A normal ZShell or Usgard
>program is placed on the calculator, and basically it just takes over
>and never returns control to ZShell or to the system OS.  Basically a
>permanent UNIX emulator, I suppose.  It would of course overwrite the
>old stuff.

There is already a unix for the Z80...I don't see why you 'emulate' a
multi-platform OS...  :\

>It could perhaps use the 28k user memory (and system memory???) as RAM,
>and treat the expander as the /dev/hda.

That would do alot of good to the Flash...  :)

>Then one of two things could happen, either A) the calculator is "UNIX"
>until you do a reset and is worthless as a "calculator", or B) someone
>writes a "protected-mode" interface to the TI-OS.

You could use external battery backed SRAM and just make a small boot
loader as an ASM prog...

>Linking may not be necessary, because perhaps drivers could be written
>on the PC which send files to the expander through a graphlink or
>homemade link.

To go this far, just desolder the internal ROM and make a new one.

>The next thing you are going to ask is, Why?  Why do you need a
>multi-user operating system on a single-user device like that?  And why
>UNIX?

It would be real slow and not do much.

>My answer: UNIX has been ported to so many different architectures that
>it would be easy to obtain support in the net community, and it might
>pave the way to calculator networking as an inexpensive reality.  Think
>about being able to use one calculator as the server and run the program
>from there, and just use the other, ZShell or Usgard calculators as
>clients or even dumb terminals.

So you want to locate the unix code on an expander and do networking at the
same time?  :\

>WARNING: I am extremely amateur, having little to no experience with the
>z80, assembly programming in general, building hardware, networking, and
>porting archaic operating systems.

Its already been ported to the Z80 but I forget the name...  A linux kernal
has even been ported to the 68HC11...  :)

>At least I didn't come on here asking ya'll to port DOS to the TI-85.

Thats even more useless...  :)
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