isis - ISIS-II (Intel 8080 OS) simulator

ISIS-II Simulator for Linux, Win32, and MS-DOS
Login

ISIS-II Simulator for Linux, Win32, and MS-DOS

ISIS-II was an operating system developed by Intel in the mid-70s for their MDS (Microprocessor Development System). The MDS was an 8080-based system that ran on 8-inch floppies. It included an assembler, a compiler for PL/M (a high-level programming language streamlined for microprocessors), a linker, and associated tools. (Read a history of the ISIS-II project by its designer, Ken Burgett, here).

To make it possible to run ISIS-based tools (mainly compilers and related tools), I've written this simulator for ISIS-II, which includes an 8080 simulator written in assembly language for speed. It currently builds and runs on:

I originally wrote the simulator in the early 80s for MS-DOS. See the dos subdirectory for that older version of the simulator, including a makefile that builds the simulator using Turbo C.

To build on Linux, or on Windows using MinGW, simply move to the gnu directory and run make. The resulting executable is called isis (isis.exe on Windows). Then run make test to make sure that everything is working; this will compile a simple PL/M program and run it on the simulator.

This repository also includes free copies of Intel's linker, assembler, and PL/M compiler that I obtained from Intel's web site.

In order to use the ISIS-II simulator on Linux, or on Windows under MinGW, you must set environment variables that map directories to ISIS drive names. Take a look at test/setup.sh and test/Makefile for examples.

As an example: On Linux, if you want to run the PL/M-80 compiler, which is located in the intel/plm80 directory, you would use this command at the shell prompt to tell the simulator that ISIS-II drive :F1: points to that directory:

export ISIS_F1=intel/plm80

(Note that the environment variable uses upper-case letters.)

Then to run the PL/M-80 compiler, you could use this command:

gnu/isis :f1:plm80 <arguments>

(Note that the drive letter and other arguments use lower-case letters.)

OMF dumper

This repository also includes a simple program, omfdump, that dumps OMF files (.obj) and libraries (.lib). It will be built along with isis when you run make in the gnu directory.