Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:40349 comp.unix.i386:1861 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!rupert!pcg From: pcg@rupert.cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.unix.i386 Subject: Re: BSD Unix for the PC? Message-ID: Date: 19 Dec 89 20:39:20 GMT References: <841@crash.cts.com> <28286@amdcad.AMD.COM> <1989Dec18.180105.1974@ico.isc.com> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 47 In-reply-to: rcd@ico.isc.com's message of 18 Dec 89 18:01:05 GMT In article <1989Dec18.180105.1974@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: In article <28286@amdcad.AMD.COM>, phil@diablo.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: [going back a bit...] > |>Is a BSD version of unix available for the PC (80386)? > |We went over this before, there is no such thing. A lot of System V > You must not have heard of System V.4. >...by God, if it's > not SunOS/BSD, it's good enough for me! Well, V.4 is NOT BSD. It has most of the facilities of BSD systems, but that's hardly the same. Here's why I make the distinction: V.4 attempts to provide a way to get you all the facilities of V.3, Xenix, and 4.? BSD. [ .... ] It's going to be interesting to see how a kernel > 1 Mb with virtual memory gets ported to a PC! (Note that Phil is making a distinction between 386 and PC.) A gambling sort of person ought to take that bet. In the PC world, nothing short of a 386 has enough horsepower or reasonable addressing capability to make V.4 a believable proposition...I wouldn't even try it on an AT (i.e., 286). All true, but I want to add two or three data points: 1) Some University guys have ported 4.3BSD to an 80286 (yes, an 80286). They claim it works nicely, thank you. Somebody like Everex or ISC should contact them and redistribute commercially their work; I think many people would love a cheap 4.3BSD on a cheap 80286. I sure would. I think that many Universities would be interested in running 4.3BSD on cheapo 80286 clones. From what I remember the guys to ask for are at Rice University. If you have a Unix source license they are prepared to give you the sources. 2) You can have Mach on an 80386. Mach is totally 4.3BSD API compatible, and has quite a few nice tricks in addition. Ask CMU or Mt. Xinu for details. 3) Rumours have it that Sun or somebody that licensed SunOS did port SunOS 3, which is really 4.2BSD, to generic 386s. Now that the Sun386i is not selling terribly well, Sun could make a few quick bucks by selling binary SunOS for generic 386s. -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk