Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!jk0
From: jk0@sun.soe!clutx.clarkson.edu (Jason Coughlin,221 Rey,,)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: PC Minix/64KB limit
Message-ID: <2485@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Date: 15 Feb 89 16:31:05 GMT
References: <415@lzaz.ATT.COM>
Sender: news@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
Reply-To: jk0@sun.soe!clutx.clarkson.edu.UUCP
Lines: 40

From article <415@lzaz.ATT.COM>, by hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson):
> In article <8752@louie.udel.EDU>, ONM64%DMSWWU1A.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Kai Henningsen) writes:
>> 
>> That's just once too much to take. I really am unable to see why
>> Minix/PC can't support large Applications in the same way that
>> Minix/ST does.
>> 
> Kai somewhat misses the mark here.
> The beauty of MINIX/pc is that which the partitions less than 64 KB, the
> xx86 microprocessors are true virtual memory machines.  MINIX took this
> and made a neet UNIX(r) look alike.  It would even be possible to add
> swapping to it!
> 

	Who cares about swapping on the PC?  I mean it would be neat, but it
would be SLOW (even ast said that the original had swapping but he took it out
because it was ungoodly slow).  However, the 64k limit is a SERIOUS limit!  It
would be nice to be able to write some good interpreters for Minix like a LISP
interpreter, ISETL interpreter, etc.  But I'd love to see someone squeeze a
functional LISP or ISETL into 64k.

> Ultimately, the next unsupported port of MINIX/pc will be to a PC with more
> memory and use the ATARI version as the porting base.  I would suspect
> that AST may shed a small tear, tho, if this were done.

	Why should he shed a tear?  Minix would be much more useful if
applications could be >64k.  More usefulness means even more users!!  More
users means (more money) more applications!!
	Actually, I think the point of Minix has changed.  It used to be
a teaching OS, but it's fastly turning into a real OS (as evidenced with
version 1.3 which is "self-supporting").  Any real OS on a machine needs to
be able to handle the resources of the machine and I don't think 64k is
even close to the resources of the PC.
	I'm no engineer, but can't the PC address 1 meg?  Would it be
difficult to change Minix to use this much space?  Since it isn't Messy-Dos,
could it address 1 meg without those funny little LIM boards?

--
Jason Coughlin
( jk0@clutx.clarkson.edu , jk0@clutx )