80286 Support question
Martin Ebnoether
Minix V3 is out and it's for 32 bit architectures (80386+) only.
I was always happy to have a unix like operating system to use with my
old 80286 laptop. So I take it that Minix 2.0.x will be the last release
to run on 16 bit Intel boxes. Or will there be a version of Minix V3 too?
CU, Venty
Segin
Philip Homburg
It is unlikely that a 16-bit version of Minix V3 will appear. Minix 2.x
contains quite a number of hacks to get it to run and compile on 16-bit
systems.
Another problem is that there are hardly any 286 systems with more than
one 1 MByte of memory. Minix has simply become too big to run in 1 Mbyte
of memory.
--
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could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
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Giovanni
I took a try to compile Minix V3 on a 80286 but there are lots of
problems with the compiler. The preprocessor runs out of memory due to
the segment size limitation. Lots of reworking to reduce the total
amount of macros would is required so I gave up.
It would be impossible also to handle the new file system. On the
assumption that you use 4K maximum block size you will get only 10 cache
buffers and very poor performances.
Ciao
Giovanni
--
A computer is like an air conditioner,
it stops working when you open Windows.
Registered Linux user #337974 <http://counter.li.org/>
ast
port to 16-bit embedded system might happen some day. I don't know if
it would fit in 1 MB, but with some tuning it might. Certainly the
disk block size has to be set to 1 KB then.
If someone with a 16-bit PC wants to work on this, by all means give it
a try. My guess is that it is doable, but will require a lot of fussing
with constants, chmem sizes and the like.
Andy Tanenbaum