Minor Tektronix success story.

From: Jeff Kaneko <jeff.kaneko_at_ifrsys.com>
Date: Thu Aug 20 13:48:30 1998

At 04:52 PM 8/20/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Jeff wrote:
>
>> Yow!!! That means maybe it will run FLEX! [insert Homer Simpson
>> impersonation]
>
>Could someone please enlighten me... What, pray, is FLEX?

For years, it was *THE* disk operating system if you had a 6800/6802 based
system. Originally written in the late 70's, it powered the majority of
the SS-50 computers until the 6809 came out. Then came FLEX/09, StarDOS,
UniFLEX, OS/9. . . .

There were other (some better) DOS's that were available at the time from
Smoke Signal, Moto, and a couple of others, but FLEX gained alot of support
from developers, and had alot of applications. I'm trying to get one of my
s-50's working again so I can play with FLEX (I won't settle for emulation
when I can have the *real* thing).

It was a bit limited, but it was small enough to fit within the 6800's 64K
address space, with *plenty* of room to spare!

>> Woo Hoo!. Dang! I can just imagine running FLEX at 25Mc! Its
performance
>> over a 1Mc 6800 must have been blistering!
>
>Warning. Clock speeds may not be comparable. 6800 and friends
>(including 6502) often do more per cycle than 2901s.

Well, yeah, but still faster then 1Mc (or 800kc if you didn't modify the
cpu board).

>That said, the 4052 is a 16 bit system, despite its 8-bit instruction
>set. The data path is 16 bit throughout, it fetches two byte
>instructions in a single memory cycle, etc.

OIC

>And Tek do claim some quite impressive performance boosts upgrading from
>4051 to 4052 (average gain they claimed was ten times, I think)

Yeah, still pretty hot s---.

>> Yikes!! I think I may have seen some boards from a system like that one
>> in a junk heap last week! It used four 2901's eh? Hm, I'm gonna haveto
>> revisit that particular junque pile . . .
>
>Bear in mind Tony Duell's comments - 16 bit systems based around 4 2901s
>used to be common, but may now be worth grabbing anyway.

Umm, yeah, but being a 6800 enthusiast, this carries with it some
especially interesting possibilities!

>I must do some more research into the relationship between 4052 and 6800
>instruction sets.

Yes. How the implemented the microcode would be of particular interest.

Jeff
Received on Thu Aug 20 1998 - 13:48:30 BST

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