Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 4th Nov 2007 15:45 UTC
"Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the Minix OS - a cousin of Linux [I beg your pardon?] - running on his homebrew minicomputer, today at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. Magic-1, built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA."
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RE: "implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA"
by Javier O. Augusto on Sun 4th Nov 2007 19:09
in reply to ""implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA""
Member since:2005-08-10
RE: "implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA"
by whartung on Sun 4th Nov 2007 22:38
in reply to ""implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA""
Member since:2005-07-06
I think it started out as a Z80, that's what he mentions, but then he morphed it more towards the 8086. Most likely just to get the architecture closer to what something like Minix was designed to work with.
I think the novelety of going in both directions to get code running is interesting. Basically he had a blob of software (minix) that he wanted to get running, so he hacked botht the software AND his CPU to get it to work.
Can you imagine how nice it would be when you ran in to a problem with the chipset to fix that instead of have to write code around it?
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Member since:
2006-04-05
Now that's a glutton for pain. Why not something like Z80 or 68k, if one wants to keep oneself in the microcode realm?
I guess it's a matter of taste, after all. All I can say is that I'd never use 8086 for inspiration.
(Unless the article is regarding ISA as the instruction set mnemonics, and not the actual machine code representation.)
All IMHO, of course.