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




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