Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 12:06:26 +0800 (GMT)
From: Orlando Andico <orly AT gibson DOT eee DOT upd DOT edu DOT ph>
To: Mark Habersack <grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl>
cc: leathm AT gbrmpa DOT gov DOT au, Mark Wodrich <mwodrich AT ct DOT lia DOT net>,
        djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Porting real-time, multiprocess, distrib. OS Kernel to djgpp?
In-Reply-To: <3282A05D.2C10@ananke.amu.edu.pl>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.93.961108120306.6837A-100000@gibson.eee.upd.edu.ph>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Mark Habersack wrote:

[...]
> But the absolute record here is the QNX OS kernel - 10 KB in PROTECTED
> MODE!!! How about that?
> 

Yes, that may be so.. :)
I have all the technical documentation for QNX and it is a very impressive
achievement; it even has an OpenLook-like GUI which can run in less than
1meg of RAM, it's POSIX-compliant, and can run X Windows.

But: and this is a very large "but"...
Does anyone know the COST of QNX? it's in the several-hundreds of US$
range. Now if all you're concerned about is saving $$$ by saving memory,
QNX, even though it has a very small memory footprint, is a net loss.

Sure, I need 16MB to run Linux decently with X Windows, true. But how much
does 16MB of RAM cost? around US$ 100 the last time I checked. So, it's
cheaper to just buy tons of memory than scrounge around for little scraps
with a small OS.