BSD Unix for the PC?

[Piercarlo Grandi]

In article <1989Dec18.180105.1974 at ico.isc.com> rcd at ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:

   In article <28286 at amdcad.AMD.COM>, phil at diablo.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes:
   [going back a bit...]
   > |>Is a BSD version of unix available for the PC (80386)? 
   > |We went over this before, there is no such thing.  A lot of System V
   > You must not have heard of System V.4.
   >...by God, if it's
   > not SunOS/BSD, it's good enough for me! 

   Well, V.4 is NOT BSD.  It has most of the facilities of BSD systems, but
   that's hardly the same.  Here's why I make the distinction:  V.4 attempts
   to provide a way to get you all the facilities of V.3, Xenix, and 4.? BSD.

	[ .... ]

   It's going to be interesting to see how a kernel > 1 Mb with virtual memory
   gets ported to a PC!  (Note that Phil is making a distinction between 386
   and PC.)  A gambling sort of person ought to take that bet.  In the PC
   world, nothing short of a 386 has enough horsepower or reasonable
   addressing capability to make V.4 a believable proposition...I wouldn't
   even try it on an AT (i.e., 286).

All true, but I want to add two or three data points:

1) Some University guys have ported 4.3BSD to an 80286 (yes, an
80286).  They claim it works nicely, thank you. Somebody like
Everex or ISC should contact them and redistribute commercially
their work; I think many people would love a cheap 4.3BSD on a
cheap 80286. I sure would. I think that many Universities would
be interested in running 4.3BSD on cheapo 80286 clones.  From
what I remember the guys to ask for are at Rice University.  If
you have a Unix source license they are prepared to give you the
sources.

2) You can have Mach on an 80386. Mach is totally 4.3BSD API
compatible, and has quite a few nice tricks in addition. Ask CMU
or Mt. Xinu for details.

3) Rumours have it that Sun or somebody that licensed SunOS did
port SunOS 3, which is really 4.2BSD, to generic 386s. Now that
the Sun386i is not selling terribly well, Sun could make a few
quick bucks by selling binary SunOS for generic 386s.
--
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk