6809 vs. '286 (long - Was: Re: Still OT: Pentium / M$

From: Ward Donald Griffiths III <gram_at_cnct.com>
Date: Sat Jan 2 00:38:49 1999

Roger Merchberger wrote:

> IMHO, a <$1000 loaded home machine is *not* supposed to outperform a >$4000
> business machine. Oh, and Ward could prolly answer this: Was there a
> version of Xenix available for an IBM / Clone? I know there was one for
> the Tandy 2000, but that's the only version I've ever seen. How far did
> M$'s licensing go with that OS?

SCO's first release of Xenix was for an XT with 512K or more RAM. It
was a dog, Xenix for the X86 series didn't hit its stride until the AT
and the 80286. I never actually saw a copy of Xenix for the T2k, but I
have it on good authority (Frank Gottschalk) that its stability was
never anything to write home about. Venturecom's Venix for the T2k on
the other hand apparently was pretty solid. (Actually, if I ever
acquire another T2k, what I'd like to do is see what I can do for it
with the TRSDOS6/LS-DOS source code available from Tim Mann's site)
(actually, I'm thinking of trying that source with the ancient AT I'm
otherwise ignoring).

Xenix for the X86 series didn't out-perform the Tandy 6000 until the
386 and proper memory addressing.

> In closing, anyone ever played Rogue on both the CoCo (OS-9) and the IBM
> version? 40K code for the CoCo, ~140K code on the IBM, on respective
> machines the CoCo version was much faster (except booting - floppy vs. hard
> drive is no comparison) and - well - the IBM version sucked. Weren't as
> many features, despite the code bloat. Oh, and if anyone wants my custom
> font for playing Rogue on the CoCo (stairs look like stairs, scrolls look
> like scrolls, etc.) lemme know - I'll spark up the CoCo slide the font file
> over to the emulator, so I can put it on the Web sometime. Requires 512K.

I'll take it. Seems to me it should work OK with Hack as well as
Rogue.

> So... Did I fill 1999's quota for drivel yet??? ;-)
>
> See ya, and happy new year,
> Roger "Merch" Merchberger

And the same to all.
-- 
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram_at_cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING:  The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
Received on Sat Jan 02 1999 - 00:38:49 GMT

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