Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: Unix for Atari 8-bit
Message-ID: <1990May27.213330.11881@utstat.uucp>
Date: Sun, 27 May 90 21:33:30 GMT
References: <20321@nigel.udel.EDU> <6719@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto

Juan Jose Noyles:
> Unix v7, upon which Minix is based, was capable of running quite well
> on a 64K machine (PDP 11/34).  Perhaps someone can find out from DEC
> ...  and find out who wrote v7.11m, which I used in 1983 (on a PDP
> 11/34), and ask try to persuade them to become involved with or at
> least look at Minix.

Actually, V7 was a bit cramped in the single 64k byte kernel address
space offered by the smaller 11s, at least when used for timesharing.
DEC produced V7M which ran on many more hardware configurations of
PDP-11 than did the original V7.  Fred Canter of DEC did much of the
work, if memory serves.  I don't recall if V7M was derived from 2BSD,
which was a severely hacked V7 from UC Berkeley which added memory
overlays to the V7 kernel, but which didn't always get it right (oops,
panic).  The 2BSD crew wanted to squeeze the features of 4BSD into a
PDP-11, and size and complexity be damned.

I was very glad that I was running an 11/70 and so didn't have to
choose among these V7 variants; our 11/70 ran real V7 until it was
sold in 1987.  Sigh, makes me nostalgic.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu