Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!natmlab.dap.csiro.au!ditsyda!evans
From: evans@ditsyda.oz (Bruce.Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Increasing buffersize causes real problems
Message-ID: <2675@ditsyda.oz>
Date: 3 Jul 90 19:01:14 GMT
References: <90.179.12:00:44@ira.uka.de> <1297@nixhhs.UUCP> <2004@unido.UUCP>
Organization: CSIRO DIT Sydney, Australia
Lines: 16

In article <2004@unido.UUCP> jf@walhalla.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) writes:
>OK, I think this is a compiler bug, but I haven't tested out with c68...
>What I observed was:
>if((NR_BUFS > 200) || (NR_BUF_HASH > 512)) {
>	kenrnel_does_not_boot_on_ST();
>}

The boot loader for Minix-ST has the magic number ldaddr = 0x40000. I think
the loader may be getting tangled up with the system when the system is
bigger than 256K. This might not matter if only unimportant data in the bss
gets clobbered, and this might be compiler dependent.

Minix-PC has a similar arbitrary limit as well as a hardware barrier at 640K.
A too-big kernel always clobbers the loader.
-- 
Bruce Evans		evans@ditsyda.syd.dit.csiro.au