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From: winans@sirius.mcs.anl.gov (John Winans)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: What's the Catch?
Keywords: coherent
Message-ID: <1991Apr8.155202.27275@mcs.anl.gov>
Date: 8 Apr 91 15:52:02 GMT
References: <1991Apr5.163104.28033@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
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In article <1991Apr5.163104.28033@spool.cs.wisc.edu> rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Alice Waters) writes:
>Before folks get too excited about the prospect of porting big things like
>TCP/IP or X11R-anything to Coherent, allow me to point out one little thing
>that might rain on that parade a wee bit-- the compiler only supports small
>model.  That means 64K code and 64K data, max.  Now, you could do some creative
>things with a ram disk to make things work, but it isn't going to be a matter
>of just changing a few defines in the code to get big things to compile-- its
>going to be the sort of port where you really get your hands dirty.  I 
>personally would want to have a good assurance that a 32-bit version of the
>operating system was not going to come out the day after I finished a port like
>that, but that might just indicate a character flaw on my part.

Perhaps it is my age showing.  But I remember when 64K for both code AND data
was "more than anyone would ever want."

*SIGH*     Ahh.  The good ol' days  :'(


But times do change & as an observation (that I am sure MWC has made too) a 32 
bit version of Coherent for less than $500 would probably become THE OS of the 
90's.  Even if there is no source available for the thing.  Just don't loose
the loadable device driver stuff and I think us hacker types will stay happy.

--
! John Winans                     Advanced Computing Research Facility  !
! winans@mcs.anl.gov              Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois !
!                                                                       !
!"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"-- Tom Waits  !