UZI for the Z180
Harold Bower
For those who are interested, I promised to pass along any experiences in
developing
a Z180 version of UZI. This is the first installment.
It appears to be easier to modify the original Z80 version of UZI than to
modify
UZI280. The effort to strip out the Z280-specific items (particularly
those relating
to the use of extra memory for caching) is great since affected code is
spread
throughout the modules. At this point, I am using some of the good
architectural
features of UZI280 in modifying UZI for the Z180. At this time, the system
can be
completely compiled, linked and executed, but dies when it can't find a
valid file
system (I have not yet tackled the utilities).
Two targets are being tackled simultaneously, a modified YASBEC with LCD
interface
(9.216 MHz Z180, 480k RAM, DS-1216E Clock, SCSI Hard drive) and a P112
(18.432 MHz
Z182, 512k RAM, DS-1202 Clock, IDE Hard Drive with GIDE). Both are at the
same
stage of porting. A complete compilation of the kernel on the P112 takes
about nine
minutes, and linking the modules to a loadable kernel about one minute.
The biggest problem in this project has been learning the Hi-Tech tools,
and adapting
the original Codeworks C Code to the ANSI Hi-Tech format. Only a couple of
modules
still give warnings with the majority compiling cleanly. There was much
difficulty
in trying to get the code optimizer to run since it is very sensitive to
inline
assembly code. Once the nuances were identified and corrected, it has
become the
practice to use the optimizer for all C-code compilations. Since the
compiler is
a memory hog, some of the modules had to be broken into smaller pieces to
get them to
compile on a ZCPR3.4-compatible Z-System.
With optimized modules, the current kernel image comes in at about 29k of
combined
code, data and bss (unitialized RAM), so the future changes should be
easily
accomodated. I am trying tame the urge to convert the entire package to
assembly
language, and so far am limiting assembly to only the parts of the program
which
will change with different hardware (low-level Floppy and Hard Disk
routines, parts
or the MACHDEP module, serial and parallel port drivers and memory
management). The
rest of the code is being retained in C (although I really prefer Modula-2
or Oberon).
If anyone is interested in assisting in this effort, or can put me in
contact with
Doug Braun (the original UZI author) or Stefan Nietschke (the UZI280
author), I would
appreciate the help.
Hal
Steven N. Hirsch
In article <68nqqs$i...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>, Harold Bower wrote:
>For those who are interested, I promised to pass along any experiences in
>developing
>a Z180 version of UZI. This is the first installment.
>
>If anyone is interested in assisting in this effort, or can put me in
>contact with
>Doug Braun (the original UZI author) or Stefan Nietschke (the UZI280
>author), I would
>appreciate the help.
Hi Hal,
I'd be interested in in knowing if you get UZI ported to a Yasbec. I
might give me the impetus to dig mine out and set it up again.
Steve
timo...@cyberramp.net
Is UZI a free system? I had understood that it was commercial. What is
the status of it? I'm alwasy interested in any operating system taht
is available in source code.
Tim Olmstead
webmaster of the CP/M Unofficial web page
email : timo...@cyberramp.net
http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm
Michael Engel
Tim,
timo...@cyberramp.net wrote:
: Is UZI a free system? I had understood that it was commercial. What is
: the status of it? I'm alwasy interested in any operating system taht
: is available in source code.
Uzi is more or less free. The original Uzi can be found at
ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/cpm/uzi
The Z280 version can be found on our ftp server
ftp://ftp.unix-ag.uni-siegen.de/pub/os/uzi280
... as soon as I've got that darn machine running again ... I *hate* crashing
ESDI drives :-(
regards,
Michael Engel (en...@unix-ag.uni-siegen.de)
Will Rose
timo...@cyberramp.net wrote:
: Is UZI a free system? I had understood that it was commercial. What is
: the status of it? I'm alwasy interested in any operating system taht
: is available in source code.
It's on the Walnut Creek CP/M CDROM - both UZI, and a version of
UZI for the Zilog 280. It was never commercial.