Home/ Questions/Q 3982640
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-20T05:33:07+00:00

Is it possible to have a Unix OS for 80286 machine (or any machine

  • 0

Is it possible to have a Unix OS for 80286 machine (or any machine without paged memory mechanism but with segmented memory)?

80286 is a CPU without TLB, Page tables; only with segmented virtual memory and segmented protection of memory.

Is it possible to have a Linux on such machine?

UPD: the processor is very old, so I only ask about historic versions, not the ultra modern linux 2.6.42.11 or Solaris 13 or FreeBSD 10 or …

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    User Zack says that Xenix (based on original UNIX) was capable of running on 80286:

    There certainly were Unixes that ran on the 80286 — Xenix comes to mind — but I don’t know if there’s anything that implements what you would call a modern programming environment.

    I’d checked, the Xenix FAQ http://www.uni-giessen.de/faq/archiv/sco-xenix/msg00000.html says

    QA1 … The PC/AT offered hardware memory protection, and SCO Xenix/286 took advantage of it.

    So it was a PC/AT (80286) unix, which did used a memory protection using segmented memory (unlike modern unixes which use page based memory protection).

    According to http://www.deinmeister.de/x86modes.htm 80286 have memory protection only in terms of segments, not a pages (pages was added in 80386).

    • 0