Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:39137 comp.sys.mac.programmer:9338
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Todd Rundgren's Macintosh OS
Message-ID: <39078@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 28 Sep 89 13:54:48 GMT
References: <16409@brunix.UUCP> <4399@internal.Apple.COM>  <32895@srcsip.UUCP> <1989Sep27.220839.13648@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 29


>The mach kernel is a pretty basic operating system, providing only
>minimal services.  You *always* put something "on top of" mach;
>in this way, it's somewhat like IBM's VM.

That's not true. It might be a goal of the mach project but for now
the releases have been a 4.3bsd kernel with a bunch of changes mostly
adding new IPC facilities, virtual memory features, thread support and
several other things. It's a lot of interesting stuff but the above
doesn't describe it.

>NeXT has put 4.3bsd UNIX "on top of" mach; sometimes, this combination
>is referred to as "mach", but that's not *really* correct.

NeXT has done no such thing to my knowledge. CMU's Mach project
developed what you see on the NeXT, and most of it before NeXT even
existed. Let's give credit where credit is due.

(Just a note: I was involved with Mach development at Encore Computer,
they've been delivering mach on their parallel systems for about two
years now.)

-- 
	-Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die, Purveyors to the Trade
1330 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02146, (617) 739-0202
Internet: bzs@skuld.std.com
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