>Even a scaled-down version of Unix was too demanding for the 8086 chip”.
Interesting. At my old job I got my hands on Wang IN/ix around 1985, a 16 bit UNIX.
It ran on an 8086 but needed 512k memory. It ran fine. I wonder if memory was the main issue ? But seems the issue was probably memory for IBM and MS
2BSD is still hanging on getting updates and forked projects to this day. My understanding is that it's longevity in the face of the existence of 4bsd is because it is 16-bit clean, These days it is mainly for people who want a unix for their microcontroller.
Here is one, https://github.com/RetroBSD/retrobsd. This is for the pic32, so I may be wrong about the 16-bit thing.
I don't know if anyone has done it but it looks like it could fit, perhaps not on a original 8086 PC, but perhaps a 286 with 640K.
Yes, memory was the main issue. The PC launched with 64KB of RAM. Technically there was a model with 16KB of RAM and no disk drive but I don't think they produced or sold many of those.
640
64, not 640.
Well, 16 KB - 256 KB, with a directly addressable 64 KB and a segmented architecture to reach further.
I had one of these in mid 1982 to late https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer
And it included a cassette interface.