Info needed: UNIX for 286/386 machines

[Bruce Martin Jr.]

In article <863 at athos.rutgers.edu> hedrick at athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes:
[...stuff deleted...]
>attempt has been made to support specific features of the PC.  I
>particularly like the virtual consoles.  By hitting ALT-F1 through
>ALT-F4 (and I think you can raise the number if you need more) the
>screen switches among 4 virtual screens.

Has anyone figured out how to increase the number of virtual consoles?
I'd like to up the number (four can sometimes be limiting), but haven't
found it in the manual.

>Microport says you need at least a 17MB disk partition and 512K of
>memory.  I think the 512K of memory is intended as a joke.  Presumably
>you can boot the system in it, but I wouldn't try to execute any
>commands.  (Note that Microport doesn't seriously advise anybody to
>use it on a 512K system.  I asked them over the phone whether their
>system would work on a 640K machine.  The answer was "well, yes, but
>it will be beastly slow.")  I ran for a week with 1M of memory.

I'll second the need for memory.  I ran for a couple of months with
1Mb and it was not very usable for compilation (make, cc, etc running
together).  I've upgraded to 4Mb and the machine runs like a top...
Also, uPort supplies two version of the kernel (one is smaller, and
missing certain builtin functions; semaphores come to mind).  If
you only have 1Mb, run the small kernel unless you absolutely need
the functionality.  Of course, a fast disk make a lot of difference 
also.  You don't want to try running with a 'PC-speed' disk (in the 
80ms avg. access range).


				...bruce
Bruce Martin Jr.			ARPA: bkm at sun.com
Window Systems Group			UUCP: ucbvax!sun!bkm
Sun Microsystems, Inc.			415/691-2992