Re: Linux + Win95 simultaneously
Mike Sharkey (msharkey@softarc.com)
Mon, 03 Nov 1997 17:02:02 -0500
davies@pobox.com,Internet writes:
>With a dual-processor Pentium, would it be possible in principle to run
>Linux and Win95 simultaneously, one on each processor?
>
>Here's why I thought there might be a chance. For a PCI Mac, you can get a
>PCI card with a Pentium running Windows. Although all I/O devices are
>physically attached to the Mac, the two processors share them, including
>monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drives, diskette drive, CD-ROM, etc. On the
>Windows side, the drivers are modified to invoke Mac functions for I/O via
>PCI. On the Mac side, extensions are provided to listen for Windows I/O
>commands and execute them on the Mac I/O devices.
>
>For the next step, substitute Linux on a (single processor) PCI Pentium for
>the Mac. The same PCI board could be made to work by emulating Windows I/O
>in Linux, instead of in MacOS.
>
>Supposing we have that working, now substitute a dual-processor Pentium for
>the two Pentiums linked by PCI, and substitute the memory bus for the PCI
>bus. Allocate different regions in memory for Windows and for Linux, and
>have the Windows drivers communicate through shared memory rather than
>through PCI.
>
>With suitable support in Linux, could this work?
>
>My feeling is that if this would work at all, it would require a significant
amount of effort. I have to ask myself why would many people want this? It
seems easier and more reliable to just run win95 on another box joined to your
linux box by ethernet. Once you've connected the machines via ethernet, you can
share most everything anyway, so why bother trying to get them both to run on
one machine?
Mike Sharkey
X11 Development
SoftArc Inc.
http://www.softarc.com/~msharkey