jkh@meepmeep.pcs.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) (08/20/90)
Hi. I'm one 'o those folks who has an Amiga 500 with a couple of floppy drives but no hard disk. I also own a couple of other unix machines, both of which have ample (> 400 MB total) storage. Considering the prices (1100DM for a palty 40MB, puke!) for an amiga hard drive, I'm not in a real hurry to buy one either. Hmmmmmm, Says I. I do have very fast serial ports on both the unix boxen (one will do 19.2 comfortably, the other will do 38.4 on all ports simultaneously [yes, it's been tested!] due to very intelligent serial hardware) so there's gotta be a way to utilize this somehow! Here's (very roughly) what I propose: Unix/messdos/vms side: aslserver device directory [size] Amiga side: mount SNFS: .. followed by normal directory access through SNFS: device .. Under unix, for example, you might do something like: aslserver /dev/tty01 /usr/src/amiga 10000 & To start an "amiga serial line" server on /dev/tty01 for the directory /usr/src/amiga with a "size" of 10000 blocks. Actually, I don't know if the Amiga device driver is going to want to have a hard size (probably) for the "device", but this would be a way to specify it. Failing this, I suppose you could also specify it on the amiga end. The size feature is gravy, tho, and could be worked out in a variety of ways later. The main thing is that the "aslserver" would field requests from the SNFS: driver for files/directories/ whatever and translate them into unix file system (or messdos, or vms, or whatever) terms. It wouldn't be a blazing bat at 19.2KBaud (though it might be usable enough at 38.4, dunno), but it would be far better than nothing. It would certainly allow me to keep less frequently used stuff around in archive form on the other machines. It would also make file transfers a heck of a lot easier. If we were feeling really fancy, a bit of Zimple-Lev compression could be done on the fly to increase the apparent throughput. I've seen someone do work on an NFS mounted filesystem over SLIP with a telebit modem, so the idea isn't totally nuts! We wouldn't have anything near the overhead of TCP/IP either. I wouldn't object to making it a single-process device, for that matter. I could easily live with such a restriction since it would mean that no multiplexing or packetizing would need to be done (saving us bandwidth that would be wasted on header info). I've looked at DNET a bit, but it doesn't appear to handle this kind of thing. I also just plain can't get it to compile under Lattice 5.05 since it uses DMake, which crashes my machine! (If anyone's been successful in getting it to compile under stock "lmk", please let me know!). While I could easily handle the unix end of this, my Amiga device driver knowledge is less than ideal. I'm reading Markus Wandel's document now, but can use all the help I can get. Provided that this hasn't already been written, I'd be interested in doing it for the public domain. Comments? Pointers to existing examples? Also, as I said, I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who's gotten DNET to work on the Amiga. I was able to get the unix side up, but can't get Dmake to do anything but guru my machine. I'm not willing to make the whole mess by hand, either! (Matt! Why can't you distribute plain vanilla makefiles! The world really didn't need another Makefile format, for that matter.. Sigh). Jordan -- PCS Computer Systeme GmbH, Munich, West Germany UUCP: pyramid!pcsbst!jkh jkh@meepmeep.pcs.com EUNET: unido!pcsbst!jkh ARPA: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu or hubbard@decwrl.dec.com
hclausen@adspdk.CBMNET (Henrik Clausen) (08/21/90)
>In article <JKH.90Aug20144215@meepmeep.pcs.com> jkh@meepmeep.pcs.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes: >It wouldn't be a blazing bat at 19.2KBaud (though it might be usable >enough at 38.4, dunno), but it would be far better than nothing. I think you'll find 19.2 working best - receiving at 38.4 is too much for a 68000 CPU. I tried DNet at 31.25 (MIDI speed), it really hogs the machine a way that 19.2 doesn't. >I've looked at DNET a bit, but it doesn't appear to handle this kind >of thing. I also just plain can't get it to compile under Lattice 5.05 >since it uses DMake, which crashes my machine! (If anyone's been successful >in getting it to compile under stock "lmk", please let me know!). First off, there should be binaries along with DNet, not needing any compiling. >Comments? Pointers to existing examples? The Software Distillery put out a server module that would run NFS at least between two Amiga's - so you might be able to do the Unix part. >Also, as I said, I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who's gotten >DNET to work on the Amiga. I ran DNet happily from about the first version to V2.01 or 2.20, both between Amiga's and Amiga<->Unix. Real great stuff, I used a null- modem cable to my neighbour's Amiga, and modem to my Unix account. You can even read mail and news while downloading from the source/binary groups. >but can't get Dmake to do anything but guru my machine. I never needed to compile the thing - binaries are in the distribution archive. Hope this helps! -Henrik -- | Henrik Clausen, Graffiti Data (Fido: 2:230/22.33) | | ...{pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmehq!adspdk!hclausen | \__"Do not accept the heart that is the slave to reason" - Qawwali trad__/