
Z80 Symbos OS now has networking support on MSX - tluyben2
http://www.msx.org/nl/node/4993?page=358
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TazeTSchnitzel
The MSX was a funny beast.

The MSX used the Z80, which is similar to the Intel 8080. After the 8080,
Intel made the 8086, an enhanced 16-bit version.

CP/M ran on, among other things, the Z80. When IBM made the PC, they wanted
something like CP/M, so Microsoft took an 8086 port of CP/M and made it into
MS-DOS. Then when Microsoft Japan came up with the MSX standard, Paul Allen
ported MS-DOS back to the Z80, to create MSX-DOS. Because it was ultimately
derived from CP/M, and ran on the same chip, MSX-DOS could (at least
theoretically) run CP/M programs unmodified!

~~~
bane
It lasted for quite a while and founded an unbelievable number of huge gaming
franchises.

The last version of the systems, the MSX turboR ran an R800, a Z80 compatible
semi-16-bit CPU. This was required because the 16-bit successor from Zilog was
the Z8000 which _wasn 't_ Z80 compatible. There was also the Z80000, a 32-bit
CPU, but I don't think that was Z80 compatible (but it was probably powerful
enough to just emulate it at full-speed).

It's weird the confluence of decisions that made Intel and Motorola decide to
keep making new, more powerful CPUs, that were backwards compatible (until
Itanium) while this wasn't necessarily a prized requirement in the industry.
People were pretty happy to just port whatever over to yet another system
since that was just the state of things.

IIR, there was never a 16-bit successor to the 6502, despite being one of the
most popular processors of all time.

Between the Z80 and the 6502, 8-bits just really had nowhere, evolutionary-
wise, to go.

~~~
jdswain
The 68000 really took over from the 6502, even though it was completely
incompatible. There is a 16-bit 6502, called the 65816, from WDC. They are
still in production today and were used in some very high volume applications,
like the SuperNES game console, but only really in the Apple IIgs personal
computer. By the time the 65816 came out the 68000 was well established both
in workstations and in the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and the Macintosh. The
68000 family had a long life and competed quite well against x86 for a while.

~~~
amyjess
The 68000 really fascinates me, because it has an interesting legacy: the m68k
ISA was heavily inspired by the DEC PDP-11 ( _the_ classic Unix architecture),
and the assembly language was almost identical.

If a few things went differently, the modern computer industry could've been
dominated by a descendent of the PDP-11...

Instead, however, we got x86, which is the worst of all possible worlds.
People like to shit on x86 for being CISC instead of RISC, but the truth is
that a good CISC architecture has lots of things (e.g. orthogonality) that can
make up for not being RISC, and x86 is just a really poor example of CISC. The
ultimate CISC ISA was VAX, but PDP-11 and m68k came pretty damn close, and
it's a real shame that they got crushed under the x86 juggernaut.

~~~
lmm
x86 works really well as an ISA in the modern micro-op world. The instruction
stream acts as a primitive kind of compression - common programs are more
concise than they would be under either a fully orthogonal or a pure RISC
approach.

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tluyben2
For those who do not know: the MSX/Z80 running this OS runs at 3.58 mhz.
Symbos is a preemptive multitasking graphical OS with, now, networking running
on machines with 3.58 mhz and 128kb of mem. It is an incredible feat in many
ways.

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pandaman
The MSX machines (made by Yamaha) that the USSR imported in 80s had network
built into BIOS[0]. Now I wonder if it was that model special feature only?

[0]
[http://www.sensi.org/~tnt23/msx/yamahamsxnet.pdf](http://www.sensi.org/~tnt23/msx/yamahamsxnet.pdf)
(NET BIOS manual in Russian)

~~~
rdtsc
Oh yeah...I remember. In my school back in Soviet Union we had a computer lab
with MSX machines. I remember my teacher could load programs, remotely reset
and do a few other such things from their console.

Reading the documentation, it seems the network was explicitly created for
teaching. The instructions refer to the case of a classroom of 15 students and
a teacher. It seems it was possible to load programs, send mail, private
messages, check network status.

~~~
fit2rule
Yamaha was quite good at glomming networking features on top of MIDI. They did
it in a few ways - I remember double-taking in a Tokyo ops room when I saw a
Yamaha C1 being used as a server for a bunch of CX5M's .. traditionally a game
or music-making setup, but in this case it was electronic mail and bulletin-
boards .. in Japanese ..

Anyway MIDI lives on today because its a great little easy networking
protocol, easy to implement and suddenly your device can communicate to a lot
of other interesting things..

~~~
pandaman
So it was MIDI! I suspected as much but could not find any documentation.

Funny that since it was the first network I've seen I was naturally expecting
all networks to use mini-DIN cables and daisy chaining. The next network, many
years later, was a co-axial setup - my mind was blown.

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synchronise
Symbos is still being developed for? I thought that stopped years ago. Great
to see it still around.

Any chance of getting the source opened in the near future?

~~~
tluyben2
Prodatron went back to work on it about a year ago I think. I ask for open
source regurlalry and he is thinking about it. Although ofcourse, you do not
really gain anything more than proper comments as it is asm. It saves time.

~~~
synchronise
Ah okay then, I might have to pester him to see if a port to the C128 is
possible. I know that the Z80 in that only runs at 2mhz but it would be an
interesting experiment.

