ews00461@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (07/12/90)
I have heard that Mach has been ported to the Macintosh, in its totally free (no ATT code) form. It was running under the Finder, and multiple finders were running, without knowledge of each other. Does anyone know anything about this ? When will it be released to the public ? Is this a viable possibility for use by the average user to attain pre-emptive multitasking ? Is this a viable possibility for the user wanting to hack the innards of an OS for learning purposes ? Eric W Sink
ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould) (07/13/90)
>I have heard that Mach has been ported to the Macintosh, in its >totally free (no ATT code) form. It was running under the Finder, >and multiple finders were running, without knowledge of each >other. Ah, the rumor mills are at it again. Mach is running on the Mac, but - so far as I know, anyway - just Mach 2.5, which has the Unix services in the kernel. Hence, even the kernel is not free of AT&T code. (Even if Mach 3.0 - the pure kernel - is running on the Mac, the Unix server and utilities are still derived from AT&T code, so a usable Unix-interface system unencumbered by an AT&T licence is *not* available.) Also, Mach runs native on the Mac, not under the finder. Currently, distributioon of MacMach is being held up by Apple, but my understanding is that things are moving along and that it will be released fairly soon - maybe even this year. -- Ed Gould mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 USA ed@mtxinu.COM +1 415 644 0146 "I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady. I'll fight them as an engineer."
larry@belch.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Foard) (07/13/90)
What is the legal status of MACH? Is there any reason it is not being made available to the general public? It is very frustrating to be stuck using Sys V on a 386 system when it is quite capable of running one of the newer operating systems. I don't understand why MACH is only available commercially for expensive system such as the Next but is not available for systems that the general public can afford. P.S. There is a limited distribution of MACH for the 386 but it requires one to track down 3 licensing agreements and have a 386 system on the network, thus making it unobtainable for the average computer user.
eb1z+@andrew.cmu.edu (Edward Joseph Bennett) (07/14/90)
Basically Finder/Multifinder run under MacMach. It wasn't supporting multiple virtual Macs when I saw the demo(march?April?I forget) but that was a feature that they said they would probably be adding so it probably does by now. If they put support in for multiple virtual Macs like they discussed it would indeed bring protected preemptive multitasking to the Mac (if ever available to the market). The MacMach has been released to the campus at CMU and installation stuff can be downloaded from a Mac Server on campus. I would download it myself but I lack two things : an EtherNet connection and a large enough hard drive. :-( MacMach has some serious potential. I hope it makes it to market. Ed