Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!ast
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: The future of MINIX
Keywords: MINIX , Atari ST , disk compatibility
Message-ID: <2880@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 15 Jul 89 09:44:34 GMT
References: <2835@ast.cs.vu.nl> <563@prles2.UUCP> <575@targon.UUCP>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 26

In article <575@targon.UUCP> targon!gert@nluug.nl (Gert Kanis) writes:
>1)At this moment we have MINIX ST 1.1  that is said to equal MINIX PC 1.3 .
>So why isn't it CALLED MINIX ST 1.3 ?

Johan and I felt it strange to call the first release 1.3.  Maybe it isn't.
Also, it is not exactly 1.3.


>2)Why is it impossible to read disks written on the other version although
>the original OS'es of PC and ST can do so easily?  

I am not really sure.  Probably we slipped up.  The Amiga version should be
able to read MINIX-ST disks, so we have tried to avoid that mistake again.


>I hope 2.0 will again become available for many computers. There is
>more than this PECEE. (You might have guessed I have an Atari :=) )
It may be a long road.  What I do realistically hope to do is have FS and MM
be absolutely identical on all versions.  That is one of the advantages of
splitting them off from the kernel.  After V2.0 is done for the PC, I hope
we can find some ambitious volunteer to try to retrofit the ST and Amiga
kernels to the V2.0 kernel, where possible.  I don't know if this will work.
The SPARC is yet another story, since the register window business is quite
different than all the other machines.  

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)