Re: NEWSFLASH! Linux ported to Commodore VIC-20!!

Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH (allbery@kf8nh.apk.net)
Mon, 14 Sep 1998 18:12:52 -0300

In message <98Sep14.145745gmt.66309@gateway.ukaea.org.uk>, Neil Conway
writes:
+-----
| Alex Buell wrote:
| > On 14 Sep 1998, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
| > > In all seriousness, with the processing speed of modern CPUs it
| > > probably would be a no-brainer to support data storage to tape. In
| > If the old Spectrum, ZX81 and BBC B and many others that were around in
| > the early 1980s can do it, then it can be done. I remember the VAX
| > minicomputers had to be booted directly from tape.
| Speaking as a sad git who disassembled the code in the Speccy ROM which
| handled tape I/O, I can confirm that it was really simple stuff. Only a
+--->8

The Ohio Scientific P1 did it with a cheap DAC (which doubled as an on-board
300baud modem) and simply did raw bytes to/from the tape drive. No error
correction, so loading from tape was always an adventure even if the tape
was known good :-)

I had to boot a Plexus P/60 from tape once or twice, but that was 1600bpi
magtape. Again, it was pretty much raw data, albeit in the form of a
filesystem image written to the tape.

I agree with the question "why?" :-)

-- 
brandon s. allbery	[os/2][linux][solaris][japh]	 allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator	     [WAY too many hats]	   allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering					 KF8NH
carnegie mellon university






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