Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!mailrus!um-math!hyc From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: ST-MINIX questions Keywords: ST, MINIX, SUPRA-HARD DISK DRIVE, X-WINDOWS Message-ID: <413@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> Date: 21 Sep 88 22:16:08 GMT References: <507@uvicctr.UUCP> <22214@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu Reply-To: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor Lines: 61 UUCP-Path: {mailrus,umix}!um-math!hyc In article <22214@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> amra@orange.cis.ohio-state.edu (Nasir K Amra) writes: >I have the following questions about ST_MINIX: I have a preliminary version of ST Minix, current as of a couple months ago. >1. What exactly comes with the software when you buy it from P-H? The system I received came on 9 single sided floppy diskettes, 1 in TOS format with a collection of TOS compatible Minix utilities. The others consisted of a boot disk, a disk for the root partition (which is loaded into a RAMdisk), two disks of user commands (pretty much the contents of /bin on a regular Unix system), two disks of compiler system (include files, compiler executables, libraries, archiver, etc.) and two disks of source code, in compressed ar format. The RAMdisk is fairly flexible - its size is equal to the size of the filesystem contained on the root diskette. The mkfs command allows one to create filesystems larger than will actually fit onto a diskette - this is useful for creating a RAMdisk with extra empty space in it. The floppies are standard 360K format, formatted by any TOS disk formatting utility. I used DCFORMAT to generate my working copy, using 82 tracks, 10 sectors per track, Twister format. Works just fine. My working system (on a Mega 4) boots off an 820K floppy with a 1640K filesystem on it. I load all the binries onto it, (excluding the compiler disks) taking about 550K of the RAMdisk, leaving the rest as workspace. >2. Will it run from a supra 30 meg hard disk drive without any modifications? I was unable to get Minix to recognize my Supra 20. I suspect it had something to do with my old set of Supra formatting software, and an incompatible disk partition map. I.e., the docs mention formatting and partitioning with Atari's HDX.PRG, which I do not have. In any case, I was unable to use my Supra. I have since gotten a newer update of their software (along with a new host adapter card I ordered) as well as ICD's software, but my drive died before I could try things out. (Totally unrelated; don't ask...) >3. Does it carry with it the same 64K limitations that the IBM MINIX has? This *is* a 68000, after all. No 64K limitations. >4. How big is the binary code , i.e. how much space in ram does it take up? I don't remember exactly, but I'd say around 100K for the kernel and 140K for the default RAMdisk. >5. Has X-windows ever been ported to MINIX? Not to my knowledge, and so far I'm the only person I've seen who's seriously talked about doing it so far. We need a standard network library. >6. Where can one find out more information about the Amoeba networking protocol. >(Tenanbaum's OS book does not mention Amoeba) Wish I knew more, but all the code, and I presume all the available docs, have already been sent out to this newsgroup. >7. Are there usefull programs and source code not included in P-H's distribution >of MINIX that is available, and if so where I can I get them? Read this newsgroup, get stuff you missed from sites archiving this group. I'm beginning to think that porting ARC to Minix would be of more immediate use than porting GCC (should be easier, too!) and will probably get that going fairly soon. (Trouble with bootstrapping - how do you decide where to start?) -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems