Fuzix applications

[Robb Bates]

I ran across Fuzix, which does support the RC2014 system.  But makes me ask, once you have it set up, what applications can you even run on it?  Can CP/M applications even run on it?  Apparently, you can run CP/M programs on SymbOS with a kind of CP/M virtual machine, but what about Fuzix?  What's the point of using Fuzix if there's nothing to run on it other than stuff you develop yourself?

Robb

[Steve Clarke]

It's a fully multi-user multitasking unix-like system. It comes bundled with all your favourite classic unix applications and utilities, full pipes and redirection, networking and even a version of cowsay and ascii invaders ;)

I believe there is even a CP/M emulator but I must admit I've never even looked at this.

I would say It's definitely worth a small investment of time to burn the image to a disk.

[Alan Cox]

It can run its own apps (lots of unix apps). On some systems (Z80 ones with a CP/M compatible memory map) it can run CP/M emulation. On 6809 it can run some Flex apps and other bits but I don't think Brett ever finished making that really useful. There's still quite a lot of work to do to get it self hosting but you can build C programs natively on it for some processors.

With the right cards it can also run ZX81 applications, although they run a bit quick so 3D Monster Maze is a reaction game, and 3D Defender is wicked. Does make Catacomb rathe more playable 8)

Fuzix is really an art project showing what you can do on a Z80 board and how to write tiny programs. If Symbos is "What would happen if you wrote AmigaOS on a Z80" Fuzix is "what would happen if you ported Unix to an 8bit micro"

Alan

[7alken]

congrats Alan to mentioning fuzix also here ... are you moving also with the tms9900? or tms9995? 
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/26/unix-for-a-legacy-ti/
(back in early nineties I got for todays $100 entire set of TI-99/4a with that big expansion box/cards and few manuals and assembler and extended basic carts (seller was local conductor of "jesus christ superstar" musical, he got it from german uncle), but it was so big, I had no room to place it anywhere permanently, we were using with my brother small atari 800xl with soviet BW 5" portable television  Silelis 402 and that handmade cd4046 tape interface only... and the big fortune TI box rusted later in garage...)
P.

[Alan Cox]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 at 21:32, 7alken <antos...@gmail.com> wrote:

congrats Alan to mentioning fuzix also here ... are you moving also with the tms9900? or tms9995? 
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/26/unix-for-a-legacy-ti/

I have it sorted of working on the TMS9995 ish but I need to fix a load of compiler bugs or change compiler to finish the job and there are lots of other things I need to do further up my current TODO list

(and I think rather correctly someone described it as Roomba brain - where you follow a straight line and then bump into something interesting and promptly go off at a new angle)

The kernel runs on the TMS9995 as far as I can tell correctly, but the compiler is miscompiling some of user space including bits of stdio at this point.

(further discussion of TMS9995 probably belongs on retrocomp before the Z80 people feel inadequate)

[free...@gmail.com]

Speaking of Fuzix, what might be required to garner interest in porting it to the SEGA Genesis? (O.K.A. Mega Drive) it has a Motorola 68k, and a z80. The default I think is 64KB system ram and can be expanded more via the cart slot. 

Justin  

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2025 at 00:16, free...@gmail.com <free...@gmail.com> wrote:

Speaking of Fuzix, what might be required to garner interest in porting it to the SEGA Genesis? (O.K.A. Mega Drive) it has a Motorola 68k, and a z80. The default I think is 64KB system ram and can be expanded more via the cart slot. 

I tend not to look at game consoles (Z80 or otherwise) because they tend not to have a keyboard, disk storage or enough RAM. If it does and you can write the drivers then it should just work and run the same user space as anything else but it's not something I'm personally interested in. Things like the kiddy vtech "computers" would be a more interesting target though 8)

Alan