Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!kunivv1!wn2!janhen
From: janhen@wn2.sci.kun.nl (Jan Hendrikx)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Amiga version of Minix
Message-ID: <301@wn2.sci.kun.nl>
Date: 12 Jan 89 20:06:53 GMT
References: <6537@louie.udel.EDU>
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Lines: 38

In article <6537@louie.udel.EDU>, HELMER%SDNET.BITNET@vm1.nodak.edu (Guy Helmer) writes:
> (irrelevant stuff deleted...)
> In a recent posting, Olaf Seibert writes:
> >I wouldn't call the Amiga 'poorly documented hardware'. There is
> >something called '(Commodore-Amiga) Hardware Reference Manual',
> >published by Addison/Wesley, that contains (almost) all information
> >you normally should not want to know. And besides, the Amiga already
> >has a proper multitasking operating system.
> 
> The documentation you refer to is hardly understandable and mostly unusable,
> besides being inconsistent and incomplete. 

Did you really read the hardware manual? I do have it, and most of it
is perfectly understandable and complete. Even for me, while I am just
a software type. The only part where it gets inconsistent is when
discussing the exact timing of the video DMA. But that is easily
cleared up when you look at the nice illustration of cycle useage.  And
of course, almost everything in that manual is unusable, since in a
multitasking system the only one to go straight to the hardware is the
operating system itself (as you should know from Minix).

>                                             As for having a proper
> multitasking operating system, the Amiga is in desperate need of an
> operating system that doesn't just crash every so often for fun.  I
> tried to write programs on the Amiga using AmigaDOS, and I quickly
> went back to using my stable (but single-tasking) PC-DOS on my 8088
> machine.

Did you ever write a device driver for minix during an operating
systems course? I did, and I can assure you that it always crashes
for the same reason that an Amiga also crashes: programming errors.
Minix does not crash for fun; neither does the Amiga O/S.
And writing a new device driver for the Amiga is lots easier than
for any unix variant.

> - Guy Helmer,  South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

-Olaf Seibert.