Amitccc.105 net.unix-wizards utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!eagle!mitccc!zrm Sun Jan 24 03:07:47 1982 UNIX on 68000s? As microprocessors like the 68000 plummet in price, being able to get a hold of a high quality UNIX for one of these beasties becomes something of a preoccupation. The trouble is that there don't seem to be any decent 68000 boards extant. Things like write protected pages for shared text, and memory protection in general are pretty much neccesary to run UNIX reasonably. The scads of ads claiming UNIX runs on this or that firm's 68000 based system seem a bit dubious. The only rumor that seems promising is the one about Lucasfilms having sold all its PERQs and replaced them with 68000 based systems running V7 with all sorts of Berkeley goodies thrown in. But with the current lack of an MMU for the 68000, there just has to be loads of cruft in existing systems (or perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised). It seems that what will separate the good from the bad -- for now -- is how cleanly the memory management meshes with the UNIX implementation. Making UNIX deal with real live memory management ain't easy. I would be surprised if anybody managed to do a good job of it. I guess what I would really like to see is: 1)Hardware that can hack page faults, page address translation, and memory protection. 2)Software that takes advantage of this, as VMUNIX takes full advantage of a VAX. Somehow I doubt anyone has got their act this much together. 3)The nitty little details, like some device drivers for Multibus devices, a debugger and whatever other machine dependent utilities there need be. If anybody out there has experience with UNIX on 68000s PLEASE share your experiences with me. Thanks in advance and Cheers, Zig ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.