wheels@mks.UUCP (Gerry Wheeler) (03/08/88)
In article <8803060401.AA21207@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, TCORAM@UDCVAX.BITNET (maroC ddoT) writes: > what exactly makes a ST a ST? I mean, is a ST without GEM/GEMDOS/TOS > still a ST? Well, I suppose that depends on the user. If a person is willing to use a less-well-known operating system, then for them the hardware is the important item. For other users, they want to continue to conform to the standard environment. The Coco 3 is a good example -- OS9 runs on it, but still lots of people use RS-DOS. > Just how UNIX compatible is the C compiler for OS-9 with UNIX? They say they > are source compatible in thier ads... Does this mean I can REALLY port C > stuff (forking and all) to OS-9? Or is it just 'file' function compatible > with UNIX (as is most decent C compilers seem to be)? I used the 6809 version of OS9 a while ago. Since they are multi-tasking, they do have techniques to spawn concurrent tasks, but as I recall, their names for these things was different. However, I suspect one could easily put together a Unix compatible library. > I seem to get the feeling that quite a few people out there waiting for MINIX > for the ST (it is coming in late spring) expect more of it than what it will > probally deliver. Well, of course we won't know until we get it. But, as long as it is fairly Unix compatible and supports the midi and serial ports, I'll be happy. > MINIX is great > for experimenting and playing with, but it will probally never become the > standard multitasking OS for the ST that everyone is looking for. As I mentioned, OS9 is the multi-tasking system of choice on the Coco, but I think the ST version is too expensive. The $150 personal version doesn't include the C compiler. To get that you have to go to the $600 Professional version. I wish they would offer a lower cost version without Basic09 but with the C compiler. As for the hacking of Minix, well I suspect one of the first things people will try is to get a windowing front end for it. I hope that we'll be able to make calls to the line A routines in ROM when Minix is booted. -- Gerry Wheeler Phone: (519)884-2251 Mortice Kern Systems Inc. UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!wheels 35 King St. North BIX: join mks Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9 CompuServe: 73260,1043
wes@wsccs.UUCP (Barnacle Wes) (03/12/88)
In article <419@mks.UUCP>, wheels@mks.UUCP (Gerry Wheeler) writes: % In article <8803060401.AA21207@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, TCORAM@UDCVAX.BITNET (maroC ddoT) writes: %% Just how UNIX compatible is the C compiler for OS-9 with UNIX? They say they %% are source compatible in thier ads... Does this mean I can REALLY port C %% stuff (forking and all) to OS-9? Or is it just 'file' function compatible %% with UNIX (as is most decent C compilers seem to be)? % % I used the 6809 version of OS9 a while ago. Since they are multi-tasking, % they do have techniques to spawn concurrent tasks, but as I recall, their % names for these things was different. However, I suspect one could easily % put together a Unix compatible library. I haven't throughly wrung out the Minix C library, but it seems pretty complete. This was for the PC version, the ST should contain the same routines. You can flush out a library quite a bit by grabbing routines of the net; I saw a 'getopt' go by in comp.os.minix a couple of weeks ago. %% I seem to get the feeling that quite a few people out there waiting for MINIX %% for the ST (it is coming in late spring) expect more of it than what it will %% probally deliver. % % Well, of course we won't know until we get it. But, as long as it is fairly % Unix compatible and supports the midi and serial ports, I'll be happy. I've been "playing" with the PC version of Minix for about 9 months now. Minix supports the same set of system calls as the V7 documentation we have for an ancient PDP-11 version here at WSC. The PC compiler is limited to 64K instruction space, 64K data space, which means you must pay attention to size limitations. The 68K compiler suffers no such limitations. Porting code that runs on Unix *version 7* should be straightforward. The pat answer to your serial and midi port question is, "You have the source." A device driver for the MIDI port should be pretty trivial, also a good exercise in writing a simple device driver. An interesting side-effect of the way the Minix kernel is written: The different pieces of the kernel communicate with each other via message passing. The Minix file system is basically just a task running at the kernel level that accepts and handles requests to read/write disk-type devices. With this in mind, it should be pretty straight forward to develop a network for Minix using the MIDI ports. BTW, the MIDI hardware on the ST can be driven at 500 Kbps without modification. I don't know what the interrupt overhead would be at that kind of speed, though :-). %% MINIX is great %% for experimenting and playing with, but it will probally never become the %% standard multitasking OS for the ST that everyone is looking for. % % As I mentioned, OS9 is the multi-tasking system of choice on the Coco, but % I think the ST version is too expensive. The $150 personal version doesn't % include the C compiler. To get that you have to go to the $600 Professional % version. I wish they would offer a lower cost version without Basic09 but % with the C compiler. Minix is *not* a supported system; it was intended for learning about how operating systems work. Of course, this was true of Unix for the first 7 or 8 years of it's existence, and it's far from a commercial failure now. Unix is not the be-all, end-all of operating systems, but it is a good general-purpose time sharing system. I think Minix could become a good, general-purpose multi-tasking system for the Atari ST, Amiga, and perhaps the Mac, if the 68K/Minix community wants to make it so. We'll see. I'm not going to stake my life or livelihood on it, but I am planning to invest a fair amount of my spare time into it. % As for the hacking of Minix, well I suspect one of the first things people % will try is to get a windowing front end for it. I hope that we'll be able % to make calls to the line A routines in ROM when Minix is booted. I hope this is so, too. It would be especially nice if we could have windowing system AND binary compatibility for Minix on the ST, Amiga, and perhaps even the Mac. THAT might be a system developers would be interested in, imagine the market potential! -- /\ - " Against Stupidity, - {backbones}! /\/\ . /\ - The Gods Themselves - utah-cs!utah-gr! / \/ \/\/ \ - Contend in Vain." - uplherc!sp7040! / U i n T e c h \ - Schiller - obie!wes
david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) (03/17/88)
In article <301@wsccs.UUCP> wes@wsccs.UUCP (Barnacle Wes) writes: >The different pieces of the kernel communicate with each other via message >passing. The Minix file system is basically just a task running at the >kernel level that accepts and handles requests to read/write disk-type >devices. With this in mind, it should be pretty straight forward to >develop a network for Minix using the MIDI ports. BTW, the MIDI hardware >on the ST can be driven at 500 Kbps without modification. I don't know >what the interrupt overhead would be at that kind of speed, though :-). I like the idea of the above, but why do I remember that the MIDI port was hardwired to a timer that gives you 31.5 Kbit/sec (or whatever MIDI is, I forget exactly). And it as also been my experience that MIDI cannot even rrun reliably contiuously at 31.5 Kbps becuase the ISP runs at low level (I think 1), below every thing else. So I doubt that it would be anywhere near reliable enough at 500 kps! -- David Beckemeyer | "To understand ranch lingo all yuh Beckemeyer Development Tools | have to do is to know in advance what 478 Santa Clara Ave, Oakland, CA 94610 | the other feller means an' then pay UUCP: ...!ihnp4!hoptoad!bdt!david | no attention to what he says"