waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org (Fred 'The Rebel' van Kempen) (02/19/91)
Dear All,
At long last, here is the announcement of my NEWS package for the MINIX
operating system (and, probably, other small *NIX systems).
W-NEWS is a re-implementation of the B News (version 2.11) software package
available for the UNIX operating system. I once ported B News to MINIX, but
it was still an enourmous hog for the system here ("minixug"). Furthermore,
B News does many things that need not be done for smaller (end-node) systems
in a network (like "uwalt"), of which MUGNET has many. The major thing
missing in B News was resource accounting: I wanted it to keep a log of what
went where.
So, I started to expand my (now ancient) W-NEWS 2.00 into a more robust
system. Doing that, I decided that it should be as much as possible
compatible with already existing software, to allow standard tools (news
readers, batchers and such) to be used with W-NEWS. I think this has been
achieved with W-NEWS 3.00 .
Several people of MUGNET-NL are now using (and debugging :-) the package,
and it will be available for BETA testing this week. So, it already runs,
but we need to get all minor things (like pointers on Ataris, documentation)
sorted out before the real posting to This Audience.
I am looking for people who are willing to test W-NEWS on the following
systems:
- MINIX 1.5.10 : PC/XT, PC/AT and AT/386 systems, in all modes.
It has been tested extensively on these systems running the NLMUG Advanced
version of MINIX, but not on systems running "vanilla" MINIX....
- MINIX 1.5.10.3 ST : all configurations
It _does_ run on an Atari 1040ST with 1.5.10.3, but never can tell...
- MINIX 1.5.10.?? Amiga: not needed, since AmigaMINIX does not have a
reliable (and widely distributed) hard disk driver yet- correct me if
I am wrong.
- MINIX 1.5.10.?? Mac : all configurations
- MINIX SPARC? Is it alive ?
If you are interested in testing this system (for which, of course, you
must have some sort of UUCP link), please send your system confiuration
to:
W-NEWS Support Desk <wnews@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org>
and _NOT_ to me. All requests will be evaluated, and I will let people
know if they are accepted or not (testing it on 100 PC's is not really
useful, eh?).
Thank you very much for your attention,
Fred `The Rebel' N. van Kempen
waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org
--
MicroWalt Corporation, for MINIX Development waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org
Tel (+31) 252 230 205, Hoefbladhof 27, 2215 DV VOORHOUT, The Netherlands