Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!chinet!bill From: bill@chinet.chi.il.us (Bill Mitchell) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: proposal for PC distribution Message-ID: <9253@chinet.chi.il.us> Date: 12 Aug 89 17:53:43 GMT Organization: Chinet - Chicago, Ill. Lines: 27 Article 6896 suggests a totally BIOS based distribution copy of MINIX, with instructions for recompiling the kernel to use hardware-specific drivers, etc. Article 6898 says it sounds great - - but who will write the BIOS based drivers? I bought PH minix 1.3 to actually _use_ - not to twiddle with. I wanted a cheap unix-like platform to develop and test some applications at home - one which wouldn't leave me stuck with no vendor support and no way to roll my own in a pinch. MINIX looked ideal - especially since I had twiddled with v1.2 a bit. Making a short story long, I had hard disk install problems. I Emailed AST about them, and he sent me BIOS based versions of wini.c and klib88.s. I had only minimal problems rebuilding the kernel with these, and my hard disk began working. I'm no doubt paying a performance penalty, but low performance beats the heck out of no performance. I'll probably never get around to trying to fix and install the distribution drivers. I assumed the BIOS drivers AST sent me were available in the archives. I still haven't found a good way to get at archive material myself, so don't know for sure. Should I post them? (Now if I can just get UUPC working I'll be in hog heaven)