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From: apratt@atari.UUcp (Allan Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Minix for the ST
Message-ID: <804@atari.UUcp>
Date: Mon, 3-Aug-87 13:56:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: atari.804
Posted: Mon Aug  3 13:56:05 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Aug-87 05:16:08 EDT
References: <4330@cae780.TEK.COM>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 27

in article <4330@cae780.TEK.COM>, scottj@cae780.TEK.COM (Scott Jordahl) says:
> Keywords: minix, release date
> 
> In article <195@stag.UUCP> trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey ) writes:
>>How about running Minix under the PC-Ditto Emulator.
>
> The thing everyone should keep in mind is that MINIX is VERY hardware
> dependent.  This means that a software emulator doesn't have a chance.

I beg to differ.  I don't know about PC-DITTO, but I was involved in the
Xerox 6085 PC-emulation project, and that was done almost entirely
in software.  There was a little hardware assist, but mostly, the 8088's
external devices were emulated with software.  When you said OUT ax,NN
our software emulated the side effects of that instruction.

Note that the 6085's PC option ran on an 80186, so the speed hit of the
software emulation was made up in the faster CPU, but aside from speed,
PC DITTO *could* work just fine.

(Note also that a hardware trick was used to catch the IN and OUT bus
cycles and direct writes to screen memory, but PC DITTO already handles
these problems in software.)

/----------------------------------------------\
| Opinions expressed above do not necessarily  |  -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
| reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. |     ...lll-lcc!atari!apratt
\----------------------------------------------/  "Yow! Am I parity-checked?"