Xref: utzoo comp.os.misc:538 comp.os.cpm:1809
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!chasm
From: chasm@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Charles Marslett)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc,comp.os.cpm
Subject: Re: a very naive Question???
Summary: Relinking the OS is not a complication?
Message-ID: <5796@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 13 Oct 88 05:03:38 GMT
References: <6693@ut-emx.UUCP> <251@acheron.UUCP>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 27

In article <251@acheron.UUCP>, clarke@acheron.UUCP (Ed Clarke) writes:
> 1. . . .                                       AIX uses VRM which is a sort
> of low level idealized machine that comes between AIX and the true hardware.
> It complicates life quite a bit when you want to add support for non
> standard devices.  I think it's supposed to disapear in the future.

Are you serious?  It probably has its flaws, but the idea that every copy of
the OS has to be relinked every time any hardware is changes went out of
favor everywhere but here in Unix-land years ago.  I was of the opinion, last
I read anything of the AIX docs, that the VRM/dynamic drivers system was
AIX's most useful "enhancement".  (Even Messy-DOS is simpler and more
versatile at the same time than the Unices I have looked at recently (:-).

> 2. MS-Dos has neither.  It's a program loader that runs in 8086/8088
> mode (< 1 Meg).  Yeah, it'll run on 80286/80386 machines, but it doesn't
> take advantage of any of the extended features.

Actually, to repeat myself, user loadable drivers and the much maligned
"BIOS" create a reasonable virtual machine (virtual memory, . . . lets
talk about real computers now . . .).

> Ed Clarke
> uunet!bywater!acheron!clarke

Charles Marslett
chasm@killer.dallas.tx.us   <-- apply all standard disclaimers
                             <-- since I KNOW nothing!