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Home Forums 68kMLA Unix for 8-bit Apple — #37
Post #37 by porter
Source Forum68kMLA
CategoryDevelopment
Post DateThu, 20 Aug 2009 - 23:35
Original URLhttps://68kmla.org/bb/threads/unix-for-8-bit-apple.17548/
Post
The PDP-7 was an 18-bit machine. Has a "real Unix" ever been developed for any 8- or 16-bit machine? Doesn't seem a big stretch to run in 16 bits.
The original QNX ran on 8088. It used the 8086 segmented model so a single process could use a maximum of 64k code+data+stack combined. And fork() really worked because it simply copied the whole proces image and used different segment register values. All pointers were, and had to be 16 bit ( AKA small model ). Processes could also be moved in memory. There was no memory protection at all and if you used assembler you could easily trash the system.

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