Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!otc!metro!ditsyda!evans
From: evans@ditsyda.oz (Bruce Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Problems with RS232 stuff in Atari Minix
Message-ID: <1090@ditsyda.oz>
Date: 14 Jan 89 14:43:46 GMT
References: <8901121341.AA16586@decwrl.dec.com> <366@lzaz.ATT.COM>
Organization: CSIRO DIT Sydney, Australia
Lines: 25

In article <366@lzaz.ATT.COM>, hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) writes:
> 2. I never see a login process, its burried in init.  Only after

On PC's, there is a login process, but its name is blank.

> 3. CU and any other terminal program cannot be used as long as init
> 	wants to try to login the line.  To use such a program
> 	I have to edit /etc/ttys, and reboot!!!

This is painful. Init should probably reread /etc/ttys and reopen the
tty every time it starts a new login. On Xenix, there are commands
'enable' and 'disable' which as far as I know do nothing but change
the permissions of the ttys. Init can interpret the permissions and
let them override /etc/ttys.

> PPS. per character io using rs232 is S L O W ! ! !.  MINIX is not nearly
> as fast as TOS.

It's not just rs232, single char io is slow on all *ix systems, with
message-passing systems like Minix probably among the slowest. The actual
speed is 10 to 15 millsec on a 5MHz PC. The solution is to do io in blocks.
Minix then goes from much slower than DOS to much faster. Unfortunately,
this is less convenient to program.
-- 
Bruce Evans		evans@ditsyda.oz.au
D