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Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014) by bsharitt on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @12:25PM (#26727167)
I know the model 16 had a 68k, but it just seems bizarre that a version of Unix ran on a TRS-80.
Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014) by jandrese on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @02:32PM (#26728972)
It's not so crazy when you consider the specs of the machines Unix was developed on. A PDP-11/20 comes with 24k of memory (16k 18bit words) and 500k of drive space and was shared between an entire department full of people.

The reason Unix exists is because they couldn't afford a machine big enough to run Multics.

Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014) by dboreham on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @04:29PM (#26730773)
An 11/20 didn't give a great Unix experience though. You needed an 11/45 with a 80MB drive to support multiple users.
Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014) by nix23 on Thursday April 08, 2021 @07:42PM (#26745150)
>The reason Unix exists is because they couldn't afford a machine big enough to run Multics.

So true, just imagine a world where multics and some unix spice would be the to-go system....like linux is today.

Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014) by hapless on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @04:28PM (#26730763)
The model 16 was so much bigger and more powerful than the original TRS-80 that it included an entire original TRS-80, whose only job was to operate the keyboard and serial port.

Seriously 100x as much CPU power

Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014) by leejoramo on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @01:12PM (#26727777)
The earlier Model II was the first TSR-80 with Xenix.
Re:A bit of XENIX history (2014) by housel on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @06:34PM (#26732375)
No, the Model II had only a 4MHz Z-80. The Model 16 (and later the Model 6000) had a 68k-series coprocessor, and Xenix ran in that (using the Z-80 for I/O).