Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!lll-tis!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!ast@cs.vu.nl
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: AN HISTORIC MOMENT!
Message-ID: <841@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 10 Jul 88 13:05:04 GMT
Sender: ast@cs.vu.nl
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 28


This is an historic moment indeed.  This message is being typed on a Z-248
running MINIX attached to a 1200 baud modem connected to a remote SUN 3/60
over a dialup line.  In short, the long awaited RS232 driver seems to be
working flawlessly at 1200 baud.  I have done 'cat file' and it seems to be
able to transmit/receive at 1200 baud without losing any characters at all.
I don't know whether it works at 2400/4800/9600 because I don't have any
modems for those speeds.  However, I can promise that it won't work at 19200
(because the 8250 UART used in the PC stops at 9600).

Terrence Holm and Edwin Froese recently posted a message starting the discussion
of 1.4.  To summarize my feelings on this briefly, since the distribution of
1.3 is almost done, I am not about to delay it at this point.  However, if we
collectively can generate a substantial fraction of the library routines and
utilities for POSIX, I am willing to migrate in that direction.  I am less
enthusiastic about changing the kernel, now that it actually works reliably,
but relatively small changes (measured by the number of lines of code added or
deleted) are negotiable.

I am so happy that this blanketey-blank RS232 driver finally works, that I'm
going to go have a drink (apricot juice).  I'll repost tty.c as well as the
changed login, init, who, stty, and a terminal simulator I just wrote as soon
as I have tested them some more.  As a final note, if you set /etc/ttys right,
you can get a slave terminal running on RS232 port 1 at 9600 baud, and that
works fine as terminal.  Whether it could do file transfers at that speed as
another matter.  I have tested MINIX with the console plus the second terminal,
and it seems to work fine.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)