Article-I.D.: whuts.114
Posted: Wed Mar 13 16:57:10 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Mar-85 06:17:29 EST
References: <5173@utzoo.UUCP> <161@sesame.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 82

 >  I have VENIX running on my AT, and in fact wrote the Hard Disk driver
 >  which is used by VENIX.  Some responses to your questions follow:
 >  
 >>  I have recently acquired Venix for the PC/AT and have run into a few problems,
 >>  and was wondering if others out there (there MUST be others :-) ) had run
 >>  into them as well....
 >>   1) date/time on bootup is sort-of correct..month, day and time are correct,
 >>      year is always 1970
 >  Not a problem on my machine.  Check that you have used IBM's 'setup' properly.
 >  
 >>   2) awk(1) does not handle the BEGIN pattern correctly..it hangs the process
 >  Sorry- I avoid using awk on any machine.  It's too slow even when it works.
 >  
 >>   3) curses(3) routine getstr does not return when RETURN pressed..have to
 >>      hit ^J (that took a while to stumble into)
 >  You probably want to use CBREAK rather than RAW mode.
 >  
 >>   4) awk(1) does not handle this type of command line properly:
 >>  	awk -f prog filename
 >>      it just hangs there
 >>  
 >>  Some observations:
 >>   1) though I could not find it anywhere in the manuals, I have discovered
 >>      that kill -2 1 causes /etc/ttys to be re-read..sure beats re-booting as
 >>      the manual's way to re-configure your ports
 >  This is the historic method used by V7 derivatives.
 >  
 >>   2) arbitrary-length reads directed at a tty in raw mode
 >>      block until the number of characters
 >>      requested are input. THIS IS MENTIONED in ONE (1) PLACE as far as I can
 >>      see, and not well marked.
 >>     (in thinking about this, it might be why getstr screws up)
 >>      This means, among other things, that stdio can not be used in raw
 >>      mode (I have some public software which does this), as the old
 >>      _filbuf does a read of BUFSIZ. cute
 >  This is very true,  although it has hidden benefits for things like
 >  uucp that want to read 64 bytes RAW, and need all of them before anything
 >  can be done.
 >  
 >>   3) performance is pretty good
 >>  
 >>  Has anyone put the floating point processor in? how does venix live with it?
 >>  How about the AST Advantage card??? Anyone with it?
 >>  And of course, the 64 dollar question, what about second source hard disks?
 >  I haven't been able to get the FPP, but it does work on machines that have it.
 >  I have an Advantage card in my machine, and am about to load it up with those
 >  $8.00 256K RAM chips that are now available.  As far as second source hard
 >  disks and VENIX go, here's the poop:  If the disk matches one of IBM's disk
 >  types as listed in the TR, fine.  If it doesn't, you'll need a later version
 >  of my disk driver, that can handle 'odd ball' disks.  In particular, the
 >  Maxtor-140 is one of these.
 >  
 >>  
 >>  I would appreciate hearing from those hearty souls who are running Venix
 >>  on a PC/AT....
 >>  
 >>     as they say, thanks in advance
 >>  -- 
 >>       Jerry J. Deroo
 >>  	{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!jerry
 >  
 >  One further bit of advice:  Pop for the $1.59 and get a 15Mhz crystal for
 >  the AT.  The 15Mhz seems to work well, and even though it runs the 80286
 >  over spec, it won't be running the 80287 over spec.  The 286 will be running
 >  at 7.5Mhz and the 287 will be running at 5Mhz.  I think this is
 >  a reasonable compromise.  With a 15Mhz crystal, the 80286 out benchmarks
 >  a 10Mhz 68010 when running the drystone benchmark (balanced statement
 >  mix, variable types, but no floating point or disk).
 >  
 >  -- 
 >  		Rick Richardson, PC Research, Inc.
 >  
 >  	{genrad|ihnp4|ima}!wjh12!talcott!sesame!{rick|pcrat!rick}
 >  		{cbosgd|harvard}!talcott!sesame!{rick|pcrat!rick}
 >  			rick%sesame@harvard.ARPA 

I'm currently running an AT with a 80287 and 512K, but no hard disk.  Could you
give me a source for a 15Mhz crystal?  Sure would appreciate it.

Max Robin AT&T BellLabs                
ZZ
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