semi-homemade micro

[Scott Stevens]

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:18:41 -0700
woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:

> Allison wrote:
> 
> >Uhm, what about 12bit[OS8 srt-8]?   There are few othter word lenths
> >than those that are not unobtainium.
> >
> >  
> >
> Well what about them?
> 
> >>You can only get the 16 machines easly and resonable source of a OS.  
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Explain that from your perspective.
> >
> >  
> >
> My perspective is things that I have seen in my past other than DEC or 
> IBM or other BIG IRON.
> That  was mostly 8080's , Z80's and other items advertised in BYTE. CP/M 
> was the only one
> that I know of  that you could get source for to adapt to your 
> computer.  Once the PC arrived
> open source vanished.  Sure  linux  is open source but who can read  or 
> adpt the several meg
> of source to a small machine.  Minux was a nice try but it lacked a C 
> Compiler. 

Minix has a C compiler.  And you don't have to buy Andrew Tannenbaum's book to get it anymore.  And there are many, numerous other small and 'free' OSes out there.  uCOs, for example.

Open source didn't 'vanish' when the PC arrived.  What happened was the field exploded, and suddenly there were so many different directions to take with things that a small tight community was no longer possible.  With the dozens, hundreds of tools people were using in the MS-DOS era to develop programs for the PC, it no longer was possible for everybody to share the same codebase.