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From: griffith@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Michael Griffith)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Amiga Minix Questions (Floppy drives)
Keywords: floppy 68000 compatibility
Message-ID: <124@pdxgate.UUCP>
Date: 20 Sep 90 20:49:47 GMT
References: <1990Sep17.115240.16619@warwick.ac.uk> <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> <1453@targon.UUCP> <1990Sep19.074613.27826@warwick.ac.uk>
Sender: news@pdxgate.UUCP
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phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes:

>In article <1453@targon.UUCP> gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) writes:
>>In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes:
>>>
>>>This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with
>>>PCs, Atari's and Macs.
>>>
>>
>>Disks are and are not the same between the PC's and the 68000's .
>>They are essentially the same physical format  i.e. 80 tracks of 9 sectors.
>>But unfortunely the way things are written is different  i.e. byte ordering.


>   So what you are saying is that although the amiga 880K capacity has been
>sacrificed down to 720K to maintain compatibility they are NOT compatible
>in any real sense of the word.

I think what they are saying is that they sacrificed the space to make the
source code for Minix easily portable over the machines. If you're a C guru,
and I can't think of much reason yet to get Minix unless you want to play
around with altering it, you can fix this yourself.
    If you aren't why are you thinking about getting it?

BTW: I own an Amiga. I'm still thinking about Minix, but it does represent a
large dent in my bank account.


| Michael Griffith                     | If I had an opinion it certainly   |
| griffith@eecs.ee.pdx.edu             | wouldn't be the same one as        |
| ...!tektronix!psueea!eecs!griffith   | Portland State University anyways. |