Re: LINUX is obsolete Linux Inside
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Re: LINUX is obsolete



Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl) writes:
> The drivers have to read and write the device registers in I/O space, and
> this cannot be done in user mode on the 286 and 386. If it were possible
> to do I/O in a protected way in user space, all the I/O tasks could have
> been user programs, like FS and MM.

On the 386, you could run the drivers in V86 mode, which sort of counts
as user mode and allows access to I/O registers if the kernel sets things
up to allow this.

							Tim Smith