Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!DMasterson
From: DMasterson@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga UNIX
Message-ID: <4697@cup.portal.com>
Date: 22 Apr 88 20:44:42 GMT
References: <211@laic.UUCP> <3663@cbmvax.UUCP> <9031@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 52
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.2888


In message <9031@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, doug@eris (Doug Merritt) writes:
>In article <3663@cbmvax.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes:
>>While the 80286 machines that Xenix run on are pretty brain damaged from
>                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>(definitely agree!)
>
>>an architectural point of view, their segmentation scheme works as well
>>as paging to make each process appear to run at the same location in 
>>memory.  So you can just drop Xenix into an AT[Clone] and go.  The plain
>>old 68000 doesn't support anything like that.
>
>Quite the contrary! Having worked *extensively* with Xenix on the 286,
>and with Unix on a 68000 (with a custom MMU), I can tell you definitively
>that the 68000 is a *much* more pleasant architecture. As an example,
>try porting any Unix program that has arrays larger than 64K. It's
>trivial on a 68K, but requires a rewrite from the ground up, in general,
>for the 286. 
>
[The line eater was here.]
>
>The 286 is newer than the 68000; a fair comparison is against the
>68010 with the 68851 or something. In which case Unix works better
>on the 68010 than Xenix on the 286. By far.
>
I just wanted to add a couple of things to this.  I have worked with a version
of Unix (Sys III) that ran on IBM PC/XTs.  It was ssslllooowww (no doubt about
that), but it did work (yes it was a small model architecture).  I also
remember seeing advertisements for Unix running on 68K systems.  The point
being that Unix can be made to fit in smaller architectures (they don't call
it portable for nothing).

Why would you want to put it in these smaller architectures considering
everything you would give up??  This is the problem with Commodore's and all
Unix vendor's philosophies.  They are ignoring the home market for Unix!!  A
large number of people work on Unix development at work and often want to do
some development at home (or at least test out ideas).  In the home market, a
system at $3K and up doesn't make sense just to run Unix, but a $1.5K to $2K
system could.  If Unix is to make the impact that MS-DOS did in the PC market,
it has to be made affordable enough that people can take it home!!!  Once
people begin taking it home to use, support for them and products for the home
market will follow.

Perhaps Minix is the way to go?!?  Well, I guess I'll have to break down and
use it on the PC side of my A2000.   <*sigh*>  (floating thought, consider the
sale you just lost ,:-(

>	Doug Merritt		doug@mica.berkeley.edu (ucbvax!mica!doug)
>			or	ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug
>			or	sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt

David Masterson
DMasterson@cup.portal.com