Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: VGA/Graphics Driver
References: <87de2b$arm$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <6su2jo0yg1.fsf@iago.nac.net> <87h19t$bo8@cs.vu.nl> <6svh43x37x.fsf@iago.nac.net> <k99h78.uae.ln@jetsam.cs.vu.nl>
From: Mark Gray <markgray@iago.nac.net>
Date: 05 Feb 2000 09:32:21 -0500
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kjb=732035@cs.vu.nl (Kees J Bot) writes:
> In article <6svh43x37x.fsf@iago.nac.net>,
> Mark Gray  <markgray@iago.nac.net> wrote:
> 
>> Kees J Bot <kjb@cs.vu.nl> writes:
> 
> Damn, my post without the obfuscated mail address escaped.  Spam will double.

I know the feeling -- I used to be a rabid spam-fighter over in
news.admin.net-abuse.email, and then one of the spammers launched a
campaign to ruin a fellow 'spam fighter' and I realized: they are not
only criminally insane, there will be another one born every minute as
long as it is legal.  (And I also realized an important lesson about
American politics -- "single issue" political groups are milked by the
politicians -- the chance of getting action from U.S. politicians on
spam is less than nil as long as they can milk the issue for more
"campaign contributions.")

>> ... -- How much of a
>> "hair pulling" hastle is it doing a large project for 16-bit minix in
>> your experience?  (I have minix installed on faster machines to do the
>> actual compilation.)
> 
> The 64K limit is the main problem.  Not just for your own program, but
> the C compiler is only a semicolon away from running into it.  It has
> come to the point that an few extra function definitions in
> kernel/proto.h will make it run out of memory.

This is much as I expected -- when I built a kernel with too large a
data segment for 16-bit minix I began to have second thoughts about
the project.  I will probably end up doing it for 32-bit first, and if
the results are not enough of an improvement over Linux, only then try
a 16-bit version.

(It used to take the poor baby about an hour (slight exaggeration) to
reboot using Linux: even 386-minix is delightfully responsive, reboots
in seconds, and has every feature I could need (including a good book,
excellent tools, lots of as yet undone projects, and a reason to
improve my vi skills :-))

