Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool.mu.edu!munnari.oz.au!metro!usage.csd.unsw.oz.au!hydra.maths.unsw.OZ.AU!1013734 From: 1013734@hydra.maths.unsw.OZ.AU Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Amiga MINIX, III Keywords: MINIX, what a joke! Message-ID: <1706@usage.csd.unsw.oz.au> Date: 3 Jun 91 11:28:06 GMT References: <1991Jun1.162833.18719@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <8097@oasys.dt.navy.mil> <23102@shlump.lkg.dec.com> Sender: news@usage.csd.unsw.oz.au Reply-To: 1013734@hydra.maths.unsw.OZ.AU.unsw.oz (Peter "Silicon Head" Urbanec) Organization: University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Lines: 82 In article <23102@shlump.lkg.dec.com> guineau@star.enet.dec.com () writes: > >Amiga Minix does support hard disks and 680x0 processors (not the Prentice Hall 1.5.10 >version, though) and it works great! What is the use of 5 people having a PRIVATE version of MINIX for the Amiga and PH selling a version which is useless to anyone who could be interested in UNIX. As it is, Amiga Minix runs only on games machines (A500's). And the argument of the price scaling is perfectly valid. If you get a piece of software for brand X computer for $169 and it performs only half as well as the same piece of software for brand Y you should only pay half as much (even 2/3 would be reasonable.) As for the "provisional" versions of Minix that did support 68020 and 68030, and claimed to support CBM hard drive controlers - they suck. The kernel that supported the 680x0 but no hard drives couldn't even identify the CPU that I was using. When I had my A2620 activated, it was OK, it recog- nised the 68020 and the 68851. I wasn't too worried about it ignoring the 68881. But when I used it with my A2630 it was way off, it identified my CPU setup to be the same as the A2620, even though the A2630 has a 68030 and a 68882. Now, before you start telling me that the 68030 is same as 68020 with a 68851, it is most definitely NOT. The 68030 doesn't implement MANY of the 68851 MMU commands, but it has more levels of protection than the 68851. Which really doesn't matter anyway because I suspect that MINIX wouldn't use it. Now for the hard drive support. The version of kernel that claimed to support CBM hard drive controlers did not work properly. The problem with it was that it hated just about anyone with A2500. Users with A2500 have the A2090A hard drive controler with an XT (ST-506) drive. (Many A2000 users have it as well.) Now, if you have an XT drive connected, but no SCSI, Amiga Minix would hang as soon as it was booted. It did find the controller and it did start talking to it, but when it found no SCSI drive it just threw up all over itself and then pulled the cord. ie. Did an equivalent of GURU and asked you to reboot the machine. > >The 720K drive size is for compatibility reasons. > Yeah, great. How about mounting one drive for compatibility and the other 3 for use. You can store up to 1 Meg of data on a disk safelly. >Talk to Steve Reiz. I have been beta testing a version of Amiga Minix with all these features. >I have an A2500/30 with 100MB of hard disk dedicated to Minix. Minix boots directly off >the hard drive from AmigaDOS. > Well, I just hope that you are doing some real TESTING and do tell him all about the silly things that MINIX does when you have differently configured hardware. Did you ever try, running Minix without any drives connected to the hard drive controller? With a ST506 only? With ST506 and SCSI, with SCSI only? How about 1Meg of chip memory? More than 8 Meg of fast RAM? With two hard drive controllers? etc. >(sorry for spilling the beans Steve, I just can't bear to see people bashing Amiga Minix) > Please don't take this personaly, because it isn't aimed at anyone in parti- cular. I am just frustrated and want to see something done to have this ugly state of Minix brought up to some reasonable standard. Take it as constructive criticism. >-- >W. John Guineau grep meaning life | more >VMS Development >Digital Equipment Corporation guineau@star.enet.dec.com Peter Urbanec. 1013734@hydra.maths.unsw.oz.au s1013734@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au ---- The only sin is stupidity. ---- P.S. - If you need some beta testing done on some of the hardware mentioned above, get in touch with me, I'll be glad to help, just to see a good version of MINIX for Amiga. BTW: Could we have a PAL version of MINIX that doesn't run with the 10 foot NTSC border at the bottom of the screen. PLEASE PLEASE pretty PLEASE :-)