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From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: The future of MINIX
Message-ID: <2850@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 10 Jul 89 09:31:24 GMT
References: <2835@ast.cs.vu.nl> <8678@june.cs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 19

In article <8678@june.cs.washington.edu> phil@june.cs.washington.edu (Phil Nelson) writes:
>I don't have a 286.
>What does this move [Bruce Evans' code] mean to those of us without a
>286?  Will the same code run on both 8088s and 80286s?
Yes.  Definitely.  Bruce was extremely careful to distinguish where something
was specific for the 286.  In the next release, the test for 8088 vs. other
CPUs will be dynamic.  

Conclusion: don't worry.  We are not planning to dump the 8088 by any means.

One thing I may do, however, is make the assumption that by the time this
system (V2.0) is released, probably 1991, everybody wanting to recompile
the system will have a hard disk.  Making the system boot and run with
floppy only isn't so hard, but as the kernel has grown, it is getting harder
and harder to recompile the whole operating system on floppies.  By 1991
hard disks will be so cheap that it is hard to imagine any serious user
not having one.

Andy Tanenbaum