Re: NetBSD without MMU ?

[woods%weird.com@localhost (Greg A. Woods)]

[ On Friday, April 12, 2002 at 11:26:33 (-0700), John Clark wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: NetBSD without MMU ?
>
> However, wasn't one of the early Santa Cruz Operation unices such
> that it could run on something other than a 286. But this is so ancient
> I am very hazy on just what it was... At the time I did implement a
> Douglas Comer like real time scheduler which ran on top DOS 3...

My first major "commercial" experience with Unix was a port of XENIX
done by IBM to the 8088.  I had it running on a PC-XT.

At about the same time I was working with a group that had implemented a
multi-tasking kernel for PC-DOS 2.x.  (I don't remember how it loaded
separate tasks into memory, but I presume it used base registers just
like MINIX.)

My second "commercial" experience with Unix was writing commications
programs and libraries (as well as a couple of graphics device drivers)
to support a real-time distributed "process-control" kind of application
for SCO Xenix on a 286.  Oh the joys of Micro$oft C and near/far/huge
model programming on Xenix.  Gak!  Not long into that job I had a poster
of the i386 chip on my cubicle wall (even though I didn't really like
Intel by then), dreaming of the day when we could convert the system to
a "real" Unix on at least i386 or better (i.e. with demand paged VM!).
It was very the day the project finished was the day the VP of the
company made an announcement that every employee's desktop computer
would be upgraded to a 386 (which at the time was not long after they'd
gone from PC's and XTs to 286's!).  Unfortunately we never got to take
full advantage of an i386 or better platform for the project I was
working on.

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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