rds95@leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) (01/18/89)
[Note the newsgroup change.] In article <13702@ico.ISC.COM>, rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes: > Some time back, probably more than a year ago, I heard of the beginnings of > a project to put a BSD system on the PC/AT. (I mean a regular 286 box.) > > If you speak for the project, please post. Otherwise, if you have > information about it, EMAIL to me and I'll summarize in a posting. Well, I don't fit into either category, so I post. I was going to post a similar question today anyway. The Sun 386i with SunOS 4.0 is an example of an Intel architecture running a BSD-derived system*. Unfortunately, it's somewhat proprietary (the call of capitalism has won you, Bill joy (;). There are certain problems running Unix on chips <= 80286, which have been detailed elsewhere. But now that I have this nice 20MHz 386 box on my desk, I want 4.3!!! * If DEC offers Ultrix on the Shackmate, that'd be another. The best thing would be GNU, and recent versions of gcc have included installation for 386 systems, but so far I think they assume that the machine is already running some kind of ATT-style Unix. Granted, I could go and spend the $200 (or whatever) for the official base 386 Unix TM, and then the $292,346 for the development and text tools, but hey, I'm in research! We don't have that kind of money!! So, Chris, what kind of nighmare is involved in porting 4.3tahoe to a generic 80386 box? Hmmm? And I want it SOON! rob
chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (01/19/89)
In article <1445@leah.Albany.Edu> rds95@leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) writes: >So, Chris, what kind of nighmare is involved in porting 4.3tahoe >to a generic 80386 box? Hmmm? (Why me?...) Well, you need a compiler (gcc), an assembler (gas?), the machine-dependent part of the kernel (boot, assembly, drivers), and---oops---source code. Oh well. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra) (01/19/89)
In article <1445@leah.Albany.Edu> rds95@leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) writes: >The Sun 386i with SunOS 4.0 is an example of an Intel architecture >running a BSD-derived system*. Unfortunately, it's somewhat proprietary >(the call of capitalism has won you, Bill joy (;). There are certain >problems running Unix on chips <= 80286, which have been detailed elsewhere. >But now that I have this nice 20MHz 386 box on my desk, I want 4.3!!! > Sun could easily come out with SunOS 4.0 for a basic 386 box, since they did some of the development for the Sun 386i on Compacs (mostly because they didn't have the Sun 386i yet while they were writing the software). But they don't want to do that of course, because they want to sell the 386i. Now, I ran a couple of tests on a 16Mhz 6386 (not exactly a fast box one could say, no cache or anything...) with plain AT&T Unix and on the 25Mhz Sun 386i (with cache and everything). The following small table will make it very clear that although the Sun hardware is indeed about twice as fast as thhe 6386, the Unix is SLOW. test Sun 386i/250 AT&T 6386 LOW-LEVEL 250000 getpid() 16.8 32.5 2500000 func-calls 5.7 10.5 sieve 3.6 6.5 100000 sines 3.1 8.6 loop 100000000 9.9 11.2 HIGH-LEVEL pipe 5Mbytes 13.8 14.3 some shell script 2.5 2.9 8 scripts & 18.7 16.7 15 scripts & 35.4 31.3 I think I'll wait until Sun gets more out of the 386 before trying to switch. Paul. -- ------------------------------------------------------ |debra@research.att.com | uunet!research!debra | ------------------------------------------------------
guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (01/20/89)
>The Sun 386i with SunOS 4.0 is an example of an Intel architecture >running a BSD-derived system*. Another example is the Sequent Symmetry. I've heard that somebody has ported 4.3BSD to a Toshiba 386 laptop machine, or is doing so. >The best thing would be GNU, and recent versions of gcc have included >installation for 386 systems, but so far I think they assume that >the machine is already running some kind of ATT-style Unix. They assume it has some environment in which you can run the GNU software, which need not be UNIX (I think "gcc" and GNU EMACS run under VMS, for example). They don't have a kernel at present, and I don't know how much of a library they have, so it's not a complete OS.