[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at verizon.net>
>Date: 2007/06/06 Wed PM 02:58:27 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Microsoft Surface...

>>From: "Geoffrey S. Mendelson" <gsm at mendelson.com>
>>Date: 2007/06/06 Wed AM 11:54:43 CDT
>>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>>Subject: Re: [geeks] Microsoft Surface...
>
>>On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 11:42:39AM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>> TRS-80 Model I and Model II each had COBOL and FORTRAN compilers too.
>>
>>Wait a minute, TRS-80 model I and II (and I think there was a IV)
>>were 8080 type computers (I think they actually had Z80's).
>
>Yep, Z-80 CPUs in the Model I, II, III, and IV. [0]
>
>>The Model II ran Xenix. It was an entirely different animal.
>
>Xenix ran on the Z-80 CPU, and was sold by... Microsoft!

Bzzt! I was wrong - the Model II did have a Z-80 CPU, but to run Xenix you had to install a 68000 co-processor card.

Wikipedia reports[1] that Xenix was ported from the PDP-11 source to the Z8001, 8086, 80286, and 68000 CPUs (all of which were licensed from MS, but ported by the licensee (Altos, Radio Shack, etc.), but the port would have been pretty straight-forward, since I think it was all still in C to a large extent, IIRC.

Lionel

[0] http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=243
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix