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From: ast@botter.cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: MINIX
Message-ID: <1031@botter.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Tue, 13-Jan-87 13:59:08 EST
Article-I.D.: botter.1031
Posted: Tue Jan 13 13:59:08 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Jan-87 00:43:10 EST
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Distribution: world
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 23

Bruce Martin writes:
>   I suppose this should wait until I get the book, but I'm to interested and
> impatient.
> 
>   First, does MINIX run in the protected mode on an AT?  If not, are there
> any plans to support it in the future?
> 
>   Secondly, has anyone given thought to adding swapping to MINIX.  It
> would be very useful, and with hard drives becoming so common-place, not
> out of the question.  It sounds like a lot of work (to me) but well worth
> the trouble.
>

MINIX does not use protected mode on the 286, but adding it wouldn't be that
hard, provided one didn't get overambitious and try to redesign the whole
memory management scheme to use all those segments.  I don't have the time to 
do it, but maybe someone else does.

Although hard disks are getting cheap, so is memory.  I think a better 
improvement would be to allow MINIX to use memory above 640K.  On a system
with lots of memory and fairly small programs, swapping isn't so important.

Andy Tanenbaum (minix@cs.vu.nl)