Re: Codename G-OS

["Tom Hunt Sr." <tomhunt@bright.net>]

Lazy Bone wrote in message <34394CFA.MD-0.198.zhulien@alphalink.com.au>...
>Hi All,
>
>This is the first email to announce the start of a new international
>multiplatform 'commercial' project 'Codename G-OS'.
>


Back in the '80's there was a system named the p-system.  It ran on z80,
6502, dec vax, ibm pc, SCO IV, and a bunch of others.  It uses UCSD Pascal.
The concept was to create an operating system that used a virtual machine.
This virtual machine had it's own virtual cpu, virtual assembly code,
virtual devices.  I'm surprised more people haven't heard about it.  I've
worked with the p-system for about a year now on a z80 and SCO IV.  The same
code that runs on the z80 will run on the SCO IV system.  Pretty cool.
Below is an excerpt I ran across while surfing the web:
http://www.threedee.com/terak/ucsd.html

---------------------

What is the UCSD P-System?

It is a portable operating system that was popular in the early days of
personal computers, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Like today's Java, it was based on a "virtual machine" with a standard set
of low-level, machine-language-like "p-code" instructions that were emulated
on different hardware, including the 6502, the Z-80, and the PDP-11. In this
way, a Pascal compiler that emitted p-code executables could produce a
program that could be run under the P-System on an Apple II, a Xerox 820, or
a DEC PDP-11.

--------------------

I would also like to point out that there is another "virtual machine"
system already available for most types of personal and home computers.  It
is the z-machine that Infocom created.  I have used the Inform 5.5 compiler
and an atari 8-bit version 3 interpreter to create the Infocom-style games
found at:
ftp://cth.dynip.com/ftp/pub/Atari_8bit/More_Atari8bit/CTH_SHAREWARE/TGAMES.A
RC .  These particular games will boot the atari 8-bit version 3
interpreter.  But the actual (z-code) games will run on ANY machine that has
a version 3 interpreter!  Pretty nifty.