Xref: utzoo comp.unix.microport:3023 comp.unix.questions:12418 comp.unix.wizards:15200
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!titan!donn
From: donn@titan.rice.edu (Donn Baumgartner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: C bug causes double panic
Message-ID: <2934@kalliope.rice.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 89 19:18:11 GMT
References: <244@tree.UUCP> <9884@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2044@viper.Lynx.MN.Org> <13866@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <2863@daisy.UUCP> <18227@gatech.edu>
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Reply-To: donn@titan.rice.edu (Donn Baumgartner)
Organization: Rice University, Houston
Lines: 37

In article <18227@gatech.edu> ken@gatech.UUCP (Ken Seefried iii) writes:
>In article <2863@daisy.UUCP> david@daisy.UUCP (David Schachter) writes:
>>In article <13866@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>>>The 80286 does have problems.  I doubt that a fully functional and
>>>robust operating system for an 80286 can ever be had.  
>
>I beg to differ...there is a group at Rice that has ported BSD 4.3 to
>the 286.  While some might not consider 4.3 functional, they have all
>been locked up somewhere safe...;') (and, no, you can't get 4.3 unless
>you have a source license, among other things...)

In all fairness, I must point out that the 4.3bsd port to the 286 was started
at the University of Illinois by Doug Gilmore (now with Multiflow).  And it
is not a "Rice project", in as much as the people working on it are generally
spred-out all over the world.  And frankly, the project is frowned on by the
Rice CS department because they don't want Rice to get a reputation as an
OS porting group (and since I'm the only one in the department that has any
thing to do with the project, I think they're safe).  The Rice CS department
is more oriented towards parallel processing (mild understatement); maybe I
should have tried porting MACH to the iPSC Hypercube...

>>But
>>is is a lot better than the PDP-11, which is what the chip was modelled after (as
>>well as upwardly compatible with the 8086/8.)  
>
>Um...this is sure news to me.  The PDP-11 has a nice, clean
>instruction set, lots (for the time) general purpose registers, and a
>different MMU scheme.  I LIKE to programme the PDP-11.  If I'm wrong, 
>do correct me...could you point out what features the PDP and the 286 
>have in common?

Actually, the reference probably refers to the segmented nature of the old
PDPs as used in early releases of BSD unix.  Anyway... this topic is getting
beat into the ground.
						- Donn Baumgartner
						ATbsd Project Coordinator
						donn@rice.edu