From owner-freebsd-chat  Tue Aug  7 15:44:50 2001
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Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 16:44:23 -0600
To: John Galt <galt@inconnu.isu.edu>
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Subject: Re: How did the MSFT monopoly start?
Cc: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>,
	Bob Willcox <bob@immure.com>, chat list <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
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At 04:24 PM 8/7/2001, John Galt wrote:
  
>On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Brett Glass wrote:
>
>>At 03:43 PM 8/7/2001, Brad Knowles wrote:
>>
>>>        Surely a free version of Unix based on BSD would not have been "expensive".
>>
>>The only alternative at that point might have been, ironically,
>>Microsoft Zenix. Which the PC, lacking an MMU, couldn't support.
>
>You had us all going, right up to the point of you misspelling "Xenix".

That was a typo. I intended to hit the "X", but missed and hit the
"Z" instead. 

>Nobody using a computer at the time would've forgotten Xenix: it worked
>splendidly on such greats as the PC/XT and the TRS-80 mod16 (neither of
>which had a MMU...).
>
>http://www.unicom.com/pw/sco-xenix

IIRC, the TRS-80 Model 16 used bank switching as a primitive form
of memory protection. Sort of a poor man's MMU.

I wasn't aware that it ever COULD run on the XT without a daughterboard
with a "real" CPU. (Microway and one or two other vendors were selling
such boards, as I recall.)

--Brett


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