dhb@mst.UUCP (Don Barstow) (02/01/84)
About 10 motnhs ago I was asked to port System III to the IBM PC for the company I worked for at that time. I spent an hour or so looking over the architecture of the 8088, and told my employer that it did not look like a good idea to me, and that it would never support four users (which was what they wanted). My main problem was with the fact that the 8088 provides no hardware support for memory protection or memory management. There is no "kernal" and "user" mode distinction, there are no priviledged instructions, and there is no way to prevent a user from fooling with I/O devices. To check this out, we called Venturcom (the Venix people), and asked what they had done. They said that they recommended against doing any kind of software development on the PC because of this. They said that it would be smarter to just run existing (read debugged) applications, and leave development to the mini's and super-micro's. So, my question is, what about PC/IX, and other versions for the PC. Has anybody had experiences with these that would support or contradict my feeling that the PC is a totally unsuitable environment for a "real" multi-user Unix, especially if it is intended as a development system?? Don Barstow MicroStandard Technologies cbosgd!qusavx!mst!dhb
guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (02/05/84)
> So, my question is, what about PC/IX, and other versions for the PC. > Has anybody had experiences with these that would support or contradict > my feeling that the PC is a totally unsuitable environment for a > "real" multi-user Unix, especially if it is intended as a development > system?? Well, the same complaint could be leveled against any other OS on any unprotected computer like the PC. The PC may be messy for a multi-user system, but there's nothing wrong or unnatural about a single-user UNIX system. Protection is useful in a multi-user system to keep one user from stepping over other users, but if the other users can put up with it it's not a problem (remember, the original PDP-11/20 UNIX, I believe, was a multi- user system which provided no protection). It's all a question of how much you're willing to put up with. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy