Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!rutgers!paul.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: PC vs. ST Message-ID: Date: 18 Feb 89 00:16:29 GMT References: <4271@cs.Buffalo.EDU> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 11 As a user of PC Minix, I'd have to say that I would strongly recommend choosing the ST over the PC, assuming that ST Minix is stable. The 64K limit in the PC implementation is quite serious. It means that no matter how far Minix progresses towards Posix compatibility, you won't be able to use a lot of recent software. Lots of code now assumes 32-bit ints, and a large contiguous address space. A "large model" compiler for the PC would help, but even the large model compilers normally give you 16-bit ints, and while the data area may be large, it isn't contiguous. In my opinion, anybody who is serious about Unix should be using a 680xx or a 386. And Minix currently doesn't support the 386 (except when it is emulating an 8086).