Xref: utzoo comp.os.minix:4016 comp.sys.atari.st:12467
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!unisoft!bae
From: bae@unisoft.UUCP (Hwa Jin Bae)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Minix/ST question
Message-ID: <1416@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: 16 Nov 88 19:09:28 GMT
References: <357@cvbnet2.UUCP> <3795@ihlpe.ATT.COM>
Lines: 38
In-reply-to: daryl@ihlpe.ATT.COM's message of 16 Nov 88 04:03:01 GMT


>Boy, do I agree.  I had basically put off getting an ST (I have a 130XE)
>but with Minix/ST announced, I have renewed interest.  But it would
>be far more useful with a SunView/X/News/Whatever type of environment.
>(I assume Minix/ST does not have one yet.  Yes/No?)
>Sounds like a fun project to me also.

I agree.  Porting X to MINIX could be an interesting project.
Since MINIX now has amoeba RPC, we could write an IPC interface to
X server IPC routines (and client IPC library calls) to handle
communication between client and server.  I haven't looked at amoeba
stuff yet but according to AST it's one of the fastest RPC's around,
so it should be interesting to find out the performance of the server-
client communication (compared to Sun using TCP/IP).
Some extra work is needed in finding an ethernet board for ATARI-ST
(is there such a thing?) and writing a device driver for it.
Also, the version 11 X server has a very portable porting layer for either
mono or color frame buffer displays, so ATARI-ST running MINIX may be a
perfect X server station.  I don't have an ATARI-ST, but the same can be
done on a PC (perhaps easily using already provide Western Digital driver)
using EGA/CGA/HGA display.  One concern:  the size of X server is fairly
big, which doesn't go along well with MINIX philosophy (or the compiler
and kernel itself).  I heard that someone has ported GNU CC to MINIX-ST.  How
is it working?  Can you compile and run a significantly large program (say,
about 600K size excutables?) on MINIX-ST (with added memory)?

/hjb







-- 
 Hwa Jin Bae               bae@tis.llnl.gov       (Internet)
 UniSoft                   bae@unisoft.UniSoft    (smail uucp)
 Emeryville, CA            ...!uunet!unisoft!bae  (plain uucp)
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