NatSemi 32000 (Was: RE: Drop the Microsoft & OS Discussion!)

From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
Date: Sat Oct 21 18:02:27 2000

On Oct 21, 3:24, Derek Peschel wrote:

> Second, I believe Acorn made a 32016 "second processor" box for their BBC
> Micro. Those boxes connect to the main machine (2MHz 6502) via a 2MHz
bus
> (the Tube) with a semi-custom chip (with a couple of FIFOs and some
> registers) at each end. I believe the second processor has a stub OS in
ROM
> with entry points matching the ones in the main machine. The main OS
knows
> how to process calls from the Tube and how to download software to the
Tube.
> I thin the OS on the 32016 second processor was TRIPOS. I'm still
sorting
> out the conflicting docs -- one of them mentions UNIX but that might have
> been scrapped.

I don't think it was either. I think it was an Acorn proprietary OS called
PANOS, which looked vaguely Unix-like. IIRC, it used BCPL rather than C.
 Somewhere I have all the advertising blurb (but not accessible ATM, if
it's where I think it is), and I used to have a complete set of PANOS disks
and docs, but I may have given that to someone who actually has a 32016. I
never did, though for a while I did have an Acorn Scientific, which was a
Beeb and 32016 co-pro integated in a bulky box with colour monitor and hard
drive. PANOS, by the way, was names after a certain rather good Greek
restaurant in Cambridge, which Acorn staff were later banned from -- not
because of the OS, I hasten to add, but allegedly because one night Chris
Curry took a swing at Clive Sinclair in there.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Dept. of Computer Science
						University of York
Received on Sat Oct 21 2000 - 18:02:27 BST

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