Subject: Re: Sun Unix on 68000
To: None <amiga@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Ty Sarna <tsarna@endicor.com>
List: amiga
Date: 12/05/1995 01:59:48
In article <Pine.BSF.3.91.951204142801.325A-100000@localhost>,
Jake Hamby  <jehamby@lightside.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Dec 1995, Christopher Eric Hanson wrote:
> 
> > In article <NETBSDList.1vnl@arcticus.burner.com> John Shardlow <john@iceberg.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > > > Actually, the timeline for Sun was: Sun1 and Sun2 (68000) then Sun3
> > > > (68020 and a few 030).  Then Sun made some i386 boxes.  Then Sun4
> > > > (sparc).
> > 
> >   Nope. I believe the Sun 68000 boxes had a Sun-proprietary mini-MMU.
> > 
> >   Didn't the AT&T 7300 Unix PC have something similar?
> 
> 68010 in order for any kind of MMU to work.  So the Sun-1 must be at 
> least a 68010, or else they would have to be very careful because the 

I believe the Sun-1 used the dual 68k approach (at least from what I
remember of the description on the one they have as a museum piece in
the Brown CS department lobby when I visted there). I'm pretty sure the
Sun-2 used at 68010. 

> As for the AT&T, that is just an Intel 80386 running SVR3.2, I should 
> know because we have a number of these in our CS Lab, but the stupid 
> sysadmin couldn't hack Unix so he just put DOS on all of them... :-(

BZZZT! Sorry, he was right...  the AT&T 7300 (not to be confused with
the 6300 x86 machines), also known as the AT&T Unix PC and AT&T 3B1 (not
to be confused with the 3B2) is a 68010 machine with custom MMU. It was
designed by Convergent Technologies, and ran a SVR3.2 with some BSD
extensions and demand paging, and a funky kernel-integrated windowing
environment. It had a cool-but-wierd wedge-shaped case with integrated
monitor on top with a tilt/swivel base, and a keyboard that was attached
to the main case (like an A500, sort of) but that was detachable, and
which when removed revelaed the 5.25" floppy driver (for which MS-DOS
format read/write utilities, vaguely like mtools, were included). It
also had an integral 1200bps modem. There is a newsgroup for these
systems (comp.sys.unix-pc, or comp.sys.3b1, I think). The 7300 also
had a BYTE cover when it was introduced (with a 512K ram and 5M hard
drive!). WordStar and some other applications (Lotus?) were released
for it. It was an attempt to get Unix into the mainstream business
environment, but alas one that failed.

Many people had them as cheap home Unix boxes (the same place held now
by Sun3's) back before before Sun3s were cheap. Quite a few still run
them, including my father. Neat little machine! Would be neat to see
NetBSD ported to it, but I doubt it's practical (they max out a 4M, and
few have even 2M and for what it costs to expand the memory, you can buy a
Sun3/60 with 8M or more...)