ad-hominem attacks go to hell

[Leroy Dorman]

In article <531 at micropen>, dave at micropen (David F. Carlson) writes:
> 
> There is no doubt that the Intel 80286 processor in the IBM PC/AT environment
> is a son-of-a-gun to support. 

The operative word is 'IBM PC/AT environment'. I've run 80286's
on Multibus I (THE porting base for V/286) with few problems.

> small 64K kernel stack and a very expensive context switching mechanism
> makes for real headaches in the serial device drivers.  I have looked at
> the serial device driver code and have wrung my hands at the double panics
> but it is a rock and a hard place situation--no one wins.  At 9600 baud
> you will have an interrupt every millisecond.  The service routine for pushing

I've eaten 19200Kb sustained rate (no handshaking!!) into an
Intel smart serial board to Unix V/286 (using a general purpose
terminal driver) and didn't lose a character. I only had 1Mb or
ram and 1K kernel stack. Smart hardware wins again.

> David F. Carlson, Micropen, Inc.
> micropen!dave at ee.rochester.edu

Regardless, John, I suspect, will do a kick-a** job just as he
always has. No one has a right to fault him for things not under
his control.

As far as V/AT goes, running it on an AT is probably more
trouble than it's worth. I've been running V/286 from the
release tape on Multibus I with MUCH more stability that an AT.
Don't know why . . . (actually, I do. Stupid H/W vs. Smart H/W)


Eric Dorman				Inch by painful inch
University of California, San Diego	    toward a better tomorrow
Scripps Institution of Oceanography	        -Me
 siolmd!eric at sdsioa.ucsd.edu
 mp1 at sdcc12.ucsd.edu  Attn: eric
 dorman at mplvax.nosc.mil  Attn: eric

Disclaimer:
	Just because I think this way doesn't mean anyone else
does.