13 ms·
> Without an MMU, swapping to disk becomes a sizeable challenge. Swapping object graphs out to disk (and substituting entry points by swap-in proxies) was a th
by mananaysiempre 3y ago
> Without an MMU, swapping to disk becomes a sizeable challenge.
Swapping object graphs out to disk (and substituting entry points by swap-in proxies) was a thing in Smalltalk systems, and I expect Lisp machines must have had their own solutions. For that matter, 16-bit Windows could (with great difficulty) swap on an 8086, and other DOS “overlay managers” existed. Not that I like the idea, necessarily, but this one problem is not unsolvable.
- rcarmo 3y agoWell, let's add efficiency to the mix then (I used Smalltalk and LISP machines, and neither managed RAM effectively enough, to the point where emacs was... fast! at the time).
- pjmlp 3y agoAnd in all cases they made use of MMUs to make it perform at an usable speed. I still remember using overlays on Turbo Pascal, Turbo Basic and Clipper. Amiga also didn't had a MMU, and we all "enjoyed" our Guru Meditation momments.
- gmueckl 3y agoSeeing that flashing red rectangle was quite a common sight, I might add.