TI-H: Zunix?

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TI-H: Zunix?


Hello.

I'm not a programmer or a hardware builder, but I am very interested in 
hardware for the TI-8x.  My question is thus:

Can UNIX or some variant be ported to the z80?  More specifically, the 
TI-85?  This is probably wrong, but I had an idea for how it might work:

- It would require a memory expander of some sort.  You first download a 
regular shell, perhaps ZShell or Usgard.  A normal ZShell or Usgard 
program is placed on the calculator, and basically it just takes over 
and never returns control to ZShell or to the system OS.  Basically a 
permanent UNIX emulator, I suppose.  It would of course overwrite the 
old stuff.

It could perhaps use the 28k user memory (and system memory???) as RAM, 
and treat the expander as the /dev/hda.

Then one of two things could happen, either A) the calculator is "UNIX" 
until you do a reset and is worthless as a "calculator", or B) someone 
writes a "protected-mode" interface to the TI-OS.

Linking may not be necessary, because perhaps drivers could be written 
on the PC which send files to the expander through a graphlink or 
homemade link.

The next thing you are going to ask is, Why?  Why do you need a 
multi-user operating system on a single-user device like that?  And why 
UNIX?

My answer: UNIX has been ported to so many different architectures that 
it would be easy to obtain support in the net community, and it might 
pave the way to calculator networking as an inexpensive reality.  Think 
about being able to use one calculator as the server and run the program 
from there, and just use the other, ZShell or Usgard calculators as 
clients or even dumb terminals.

WARNING: I am extremely amateur, having little to no experience with the 
z80, assembly programming in general, building hardware, networking, and 
porting archaic operating systems.

At least I didn't come on here asking ya'll to port DOS to the TI-85.

--Matt Cooper / mnemonicdevice@hotmail.com

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