Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Apple II Port anyone?
Message-ID: <1989Apr12.171436.23045@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <592@madnix.UUCP> <1989Apr9.032455.7088@utzoo.uucp> <3828@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM> <2441@bucsb.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 89 17:14:36 GMT

In article <2441@bucsb.UUCP> crewman@bucsb.bu.edu writes:
>But I must admit: attempting to write a multi-tasking, multi-user operating
>system on a 3-register 64K machine would not be a good idea.  Minix is
>very compact, but I can't imagine it running on anything less than a
>PC based on an 80x86, just because of the memory and speed overhead
>required for multi-tasking.

Let us not forget that the first pdp11 Unix ran on a system that had 24KB
of memory, no memory management, a processor about the speed of an 8088,
and one 512KB hard disk (yes, "K", not "M").  This system supported
three word-processing users plus further software development.  Dennis
Ritchie described this configuration as "trying but successful".
-- 
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