From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jim Winchester Subject: High-end '286 available for ELKS testing/development Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2002 14:31:20 -0400 Sender: linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <3D765178.22719AAD@hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: Linux-8086@Vger.Kernel.Org I'd really like to make a contribution to ELKS, since I first got started on Minix many years ago. Since I did some translator tool development back in the 80's with several companies in New Jersey (compilers, librarians, run-time libraries), I've always maintained a pair of each major class of PC. Naturally, to keep them tolerable, I've kept all of them on a pretty mean upgrade path, to the end that they're still pretty fast, even by modern standards. The '286 twins, in particular, should be good testing platforms: both have the rare Harris 25Mhz chip and the 20Mhz IIT co-processor, 16Mb of SIMM motherboard RAM (maximum theoretical amount), and 32Mb EMS 4.0 (also maximum theoritical amount), multiple video cards (3), multiple disk interfaces (3: primary IDE or ESDI, plus secondary & tertiary SCSI, all fully loaded), one floppy of each major type (I skipped 720kb 3.5"), etc. More important than the H/W laundry list, they also run other protected-mode O/Ss: OS/2 in several flavors, AT&T System V/AT, and SCO Xenix for '286, and I'm sure others. It also runs Windows 3.1, naturally, but runs the starfield screen saver fast enough so that none of my buddies have ever guessed it's only a '286 (until I tell them). I am concerned that none of the news I've read lately concerns itself with support of EMS or extended memory or protected mode operation. This kind of really matters on the '286, as it's the way you tap the real power of the machine. OS/2 does a good job at both, and I'm sure you want to best them. Can I help? Sincerely, Jim Winchester CEO, Serious Software Corporation (732)928-0117 (USA) jim_winchester@excite.com