*BSD News Article 14547


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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!garrett
From: garrett@garnet.berkeley.edu (Garrett D'Amore)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent,comp.os.linux,comp.os.minix,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Unix OS for 286
Date: 16 Apr 1993 00:40:50 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <1qkvai$d3g@agate.berkeley.edu>
References: <1993Apr15.224745.9378@nwnexus.WA.COM>
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu


Get yourself a copy of Coherent.  It's sold by Mark Williams Company, and
comes in two flavors, v4.0 and v3.2.  You won't be able to use v3.2 -- 
becuase it requires a 386, but v4.0 should work.  MWC charges $99 for 
either version, regardless of price.  They do include nice documentation,
and their o.s. is much more stable (if it doesn't include as many nice
features -- like TCP/IP networking).   

A few notes -- you will be limited to programs that fit in 64K of ram.  You
won't be able to run X.  There are probably other limitations as well.  This
is because the 286 is an old cpu which doesn't have as much support for 
protection and large-space addressing as the 386.  Coherent 3.2 is the only
286 based version of Un*x I know of worth messing with. 

On a side note: if you're going to do anything real with Unix, get yourself
a 386 or 486 and save yourself some headaches. :-)

PS: There is a group devoted to Coherent on the internet... comp.os.coherent,
I think.


====================================================================
Garrett D'Amore                 |     garrett@haas.berkeley.edu
Software Co-Ordinator           |     68 Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley
Haas Computing Services         |     Ph: 510-643-5923 Fax: 642-4769
====================================================================