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Date:      Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:23:33 -0700
From:      Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>
To:        Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
Cc:        nate@yogotech.com (Nate Williams), 9ustavo 9onzalez 9iron <gstgnzgr@libertad.univalle.edu.co>, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: i286 
Message-ID:  <15382.20261.860671.461839@caddis.yogotech.com>
In-Reply-To: <200112110552.AAA08679@valiant.cnchost.com>
References:  <15381.12530.404008.733531@caddis.yogotech.com> <200112110552.AAA08679@valiant.cnchost.com>

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> > >  Exist some kind of FreeBSD's version for intel 286 processor? 
> > 
> > Never in a million years.  There exists no 'real' unix for the 286,
> > since the 286 hardware is incapable of protecting processes well enough
> > to be safe.
> 
> Not that anyone cares any more but...  i286 provides good
> enough protection -- you can have each prcoess in its own
> protected address space without any external h/w support
> (like we had to do for Moto 68000 based machines).  What it
> didn't provide was support for paging.

As I understand, don't you need paging for 'real' protection to work
right, otherwise you're limited to one/two processes on the box?

> A company called
> Microport released a "real" unix for 286 in, I think, 1985.
> Another company called Bell Technologies used to sell PC/ATs
> bundled with Microport's Unix and their own drivers for
> various I/O devices until Intel bought them out.  Microport
> is still around but don't know if they sell Unix on PC/ATs
> anymore!

Thanks for the info!


Nate

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