Aucbvax.1786 fa.info-cpm utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!DAG@MIT-AI Wed Jun 17 00:02:45 1981 CP/M and UNIX DAG@MIT-AI 06/17/81 02:35:43 Re: CP/M and UNIX To: info-cpm at MIT-MC In reading your commentary, it strikes me that there is one consideration that is conspicously missing, that of upgradeability. Although I have found UNIX to be a whole lot of fun to use (as a systems type), it is not practicle for some folks to consider. To reitterate some of the other comparisions of UNIX and CP/M-80 (note the suffix), CP/M was designed for a single user small computer on 8080 level, with at most 64k of memory. UNIX was designed for an eleven. It is very difficult to consider the reletive merits of the two on the smaller machines, as (for the moment, and discounting rumors about the Decision-1) UNIX is not available for the small CP/M machines. For the larger machines, UNIX is great (but does not have loads of business type software). I should think that for people on small budgets, who already own an 8000 dollar CP/M type machine, it would be near to immpossible to upgrade to UNIX on 16 bit without a major expense. What I would REALLY (underline that) would like to see would be a form of UNIX (real live UNIX, not some thing claiming to have a tree structure) that would run on the Z80 machine and would also allow CP/M programs to run as well (say in a subdirectory). If this could be done with a minimum of hardware (maybe a $500 board to do some form of management) and a reasonable priced software package, it would be really neat and highly useful. There are rumors (I have a not quite working version) of a UNIX like OS being developed by Ed Ziemba (who had a fatal diving accident recently, and whom many will miss) and Leor Zolman, that is based on BDS C. Also, the ONYX system is very nice, provideing multi user UNIX on a Z8000 and hard disk for arround 18000 dollars end user. So much for putting my two cents in. Dave ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.