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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!ukc!warwick!ham
From: ham@warwick.UUCP (Hot Air Machine Project)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: ns32016 port + misc.
Message-ID: <549@ubu.warwick.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Jun-87 19:27:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubu.549
Posted: Tue Jun 16 19:27:08 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 14:42:34 EDT
Organization: Computer Science, Warwick University, UK
Lines: 55
Keywords: 32016, stty, kermit

Hello again, this is a little update about the 32016 port of Minix, plus
a bug fix and a request.

The kernel seems to be working fine apart from the tty driver (what else!)
which lacks a few useful v7 features like TANDEM mode etc; I will be doing
a proper rewrite of it soon.  John has modified the PROMs on our 32016 boards
to boot off the floppy, so we now have Minix loading in the traditional way;
kernel grabbed off floppy, and then root diskette loaded into RAM disk -- a
nice twist is that with 800k floppies, we decided to partition the floppy
disk, so /dev/fd0a (from which the RAM disk is loaded) starts 200k into the
disk, thus we only need one disk to boot from.

The latest version of init looks at /etc/ttys and forks a shell for each
terminal (each having a different process group of course!) et voila! Multi
user Minix! (Login works; we just can't be bothered to type passwords all
the time :-)

We want to start porting the utilities across now (we have the essentials),
but we have run into problems transferring files:

Unfortunately the tty I/O is mind-bogglingly slow, partly because it is over
RS-232 lines.  It can keep up (just) with a couple of hackers using
microGnuEmacs, but can't keep up with touch-typists; it just misses
interrupts....  In view of this, has anyone got a file transfer package
such as kermit running on Minix yet?  I have tried a teeny-weeny version,
but the connect mode kept losing characters as the VAX I was talking
to sent them too fast (no, this wasn't a baud rate mismatch).  If you have
done anything like this, how did you manage, and how fast does it go?

....And the bugfix.  stty.c performs its ioctl()s on file descriptor 0 (stdin)
this means that to change the settings on terminals other than the one you
are using, you have to type e.g: stty -echo < /dev/tty1
which is rather counter-intuitive, not to mention different to UNIX.  The
solution is to replace all occurences of "ioctl(0," by "ioctl(1," in stty.c --
I think there are four of them.

Now for a couple of messages....

reza at kcl??
I tried to mail you, but kept getting bounced.  The first part
was answered (more appropriately for PCs) by Andy Valencia, and I am afraid
we know very little about PC Minix, and nothing at all about PCs, so we can't
help you with the Hard disk... could you send us a nice, simple address, maybe
relative to ukc or mcvax?

John Gilmore @ingres
You should have got some mail from us, but if not,  YES PLEASE, we would love
a copy, please mail us again with details of how to get one... do you know
of any PD or cheap 32016 assembler/linkers?

Thanks for your time,

Tim Bissell

donald@warwick.UUCP      or   {..seismo!}mcvax!ukc!warwick!donald