johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.234724.24830@agate.berkeley.edu> c60b-1eq@e260-3e.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) writes: >UN*X can theoretically be run within the bounds of 640K, swapping processes >to the hard disk (very, very often). Ah, how soon they forget. There were several perfectly OK versions of Unix for the 8086. IBM sold PC/IX, which was a pretty straight port of Sys III as well as Xenix. I worked on PC/IX and can testify that it was a real no kidding Unix system running on an ordinary 640K PC/XT with a 10MB disk. Back in the Olden Days Unix ran on PDP-11s, and since the 8086 has slightly more compact code than a PDP-11 and pretty much the same data formats, anything that would fit in a split I/D process on a PDP-11 would also fit in small model under PC/IX. There were two big problems with PC/IX -- the technical one was that it really was small model only (it swapped and moved processes, adjusting segment registers as needed) and the non-technical one was that IBM didn't promote it much and overpriced it at $900. But it was quite reliable, people reported that it'd stay up for months at a time running canned applications with uucp in the background. And in most cases, it hardly swapped at all since 640K was enough for four or five resident proceses along with the kernel. Now, of course, I have 16MB of RAM and a 600MB disk on my 486 clone box, and Sys V R3.2 fills up a lot of it. Times change. -- John R. Levine, IECC, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 864 9650 johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {ima|spdcc|world}!iecc!johnl Cheap oil is an oxymoron.
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr10.035331.12694@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes: | Ah, how soon they forget. There were several perfectly OK versions of | Unix for the 8086. IBM sold PC/IX, which was a pretty straight port of | Sys III as well as Xenix. I worked on PC/IX and can testify that it was a | real no kidding Unix system running on an ordinary 640K PC/XT with a 10MB | disk. But he said SysV. I heard him. | it at $900. But it was quite reliable, people reported that it'd stay up | for months at a time running canned applications with uucp in the | background. We still run it on at least two machines at work. However, reliable I question, since there's a bug caused by a counter wrapping around every 13 months if it's not rebooted ;-) Yes, there is. Yes we found it. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
c60b-1eq@e260-1g.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) (04/11/91)
In article <3676@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >In article <1991Apr10.035331.12694@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes: >| Ah, how soon they forget. There were several perfectly OK versions of >| Unix for the 8086. IBM sold PC/IX, . . . > But he said SysV. I heard him. Yes, I know someone who ran System V, on an 8088 with 640K of memory and a 10MB 100ms hard disk with 20+ active processes. +==========================================================================+ | Noam Mendelson ..!agate!ucbvax!web!c60b-1eq | "I haven't lost my mind, | | c60b-1eq@web.Berkeley.EDU | it's backed up on tape | | University of California at Berkeley | somewhere." |