Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!star.cs.vu.nl!sreiz From: sreiz@cs.vu.nl (Steven Reiz) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Some initial impressions of Amiga MINIX Message-ID: <8960@star.cs.vu.nl> Date: 5 Feb 91 13:03:45 GMT References: Sender: news@cs.vu.nl Distribution: comp Lines: 101 jkh@bambam.pcs.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes: [problems with purchasing minix deleted...] > Download new kernel that Steven was so kind as to post to the net and >bring it up. Yippe! Boots! Hmmm. Better back up them there disks. ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Good! Even better :-) Please note that a more recent version of the kernel can be ftp-ed from ftp.cs.vu.nl, directory /pub/sreiz/minix, file latest_aminix.lzh. It fixes some problems with floppy drives, which might prevent the problems you had in copying the disks. >Lesse, use transfer -f to format disks (so says the manual), then >diskcopy. Zilch. Diskcopy reports errors left right up and down. [Jordan was finally able to copy the disks using commercial copiers] The BOOT disk is an amiga disk, you can copy it with any amiga copy program, even with the DiskCopy program that comes with your Amiga... The other disks are basically MSDOS format disks (with a different filesystem). >backups.. Time to TEST it. cd /usr/test... /usr/test? Where is /usr/test? Sorry, we accidently left the test binaries out. The test sources are included though, you might consider compiling them to be the first test :-) >Let's do a "ps", that should be interesting.. >2 pages of "processes" roll by, almost all with horribly bogus values. >What's going on here? How do I see if a getty is running or not? I'm not sure what the problem with ps is, but I am under the impression that ST minix also has this problem. There is, of course, always good old ctrl-alt-F1, which should dump the process table. >kermit? Yes! It works! I can log into my other unix machine! 9600 >baud max, but hey, I can live with that.. Um.. Can't I? No I can't. The thing >is slower than molasses in January! I can type 10 characters, count >What is Minix doing on the serial port between reads? Calculating PI?!? >I'm running only ONE THING!! I think that this problem is inherent in the current implementation of minix, which is a bit slow in some areas. Every character that goes through the serial line causes an interrupt. The handling of these interrupts is done very well by the Amiga OS, and not so well by minix. I am pretty sure that this performance can be boosted by using buffering of characters on a lower level (in the routine which catches the serial interrupt). In the current implementation the serial task will be scheduled for every character coming in or going out. >3. Why Elvis and not Stevie? Stevie seems to be much more vi-like, from > what I've seen. And it's free. Elvis is free as well, and better than stevie (from what I've heard), there may be a more recent version of Elvis than the one distributed, though. >4. What's this ELLE, um, editor? It's just close enough to Emacs to make > you think you know what you're doing until you actually try to >.. > Ok, ok, I'm sorry, that was a cheap shot. But seriously, I think > "mg" (or uEmacs) and "stevie" would make a much better pair than >.. Elle might give you the ability to rebind keys, i'm not sure about it, though. Microemacs 3.8 can be compiled very easily under minix, I know because I did it. I'm not going to post it, though, because I used non-standard keybindings, and I'm not sure if I can endure another one of these flames of yours :-) I'm currently trying to compile mg3abeta on our suns here, if that succeeds i plan on trying a minix version as well. You might want to check out microemacs 3.10, though. >5. Given that the serial driver can be given the appropriate laxatives > to speed it up, has anyone done a simple "file server" client > that ports easily to Unix? I can easily see a very simplistic (but useful) The most probable candidate for this is UUCP. >6. Does a format utility exist under Minix? I can't find one.. I would Sorry, no. Well, it does exist, but it doesn't work because the current floppy driver doesn't support it. >7. I have 2.5MB of memory in my Amiga. I'd like more of it to be used > for the root file system so I could have a larger /tmp. Ideally, I'd > like it to grow dynamically, competing with processes for memory, but > I realize that this might be a bit much to ask for. Simply being able > to resize it to another fixed size would be nice. Dynamic resizing, though very attractive, would be very un-minix, i'm afraid. You can create a root disk of a different size, though, even larger than the physical size (720 kb), and boot from it, to get the effect that I think you're looking for? I believe that the exact procedure to be followed is explained in the manual under the heading 'increasing the size of the ram disk'. Regards, Steven Reiz