[comp.os.minix] Xinu, Minix and other manners

griffith@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Michael Griffith) (10/13/90)

Don't have a cow, man!

But seriously, after looking in the Xinu book, I see a couple of items by you
are in the bibliography [A. Tanenbaum (sp? sorry but I don't have it with me
at the moment)].  Sorry for the confusion.  The grandiose AT&T logo appears
on the inside cover of Xinu, and possibly ??? Minix? Does AT&T have a deal
with Prentice-Hall, is it due to the basis of Minix on AT&T source code
(naw, that would require a source license, right?), some AT&T control over
Unix clones (I think that if you use you're own source code you're free from
this automatically, right?) or just some other reason (perhaps I'm just plain
wrong). Anyways, I would appreciate anyone who could give me more information
as to the status of Xinu and any other OS code. (It doesn't have to be for
Unix type, just anything that multi-tasks) Thanks all, I would appreciate it.
Oh, and how much is Minix again for the Amiga, and how buggy are those disks?


| Michael Griffith                     | If I had an opinion it certainly   |
| griffith@eecs.ee.pdx.edu             | wouldn't be the same one as        |
| ...!tektronix!psueea!eecs!griffith   | Portland State University anyways. |

ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (10/13/90)

In article <321@pdxgate.UUCP> griffith@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Michael Griffith) writes:
>The grandiose AT&T logo appears
>on the inside cover of Xinu, and possibly ??? Minix? Does AT&T have a deal
>with Prentice-Hall [?]

I don't have a copy of the Xinu book, but I can assure you that there is no
AT&T logo in the MINIX book.  I am virtually certain that Xinu does not
contain a line of AT&T code, but you would have to ask Doug Comer to be
100% sure, as I am only 99.99999999% sure.  The only connection betwen AT&T
and PH is that when AT&T wanted to publish the system V manuals, they decided
that they were really a phone company and not a book publisher.  Thus they
went shopping for a publisher, and chose PH.  Given that PH is far and away
the biggest computer science book publisher, this decision was undoubtedly
made for business reasons, and has nothing to do with either Xinu or MINIX.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)

overby@plains.NoDak.edu (Glen Overby) (10/15/90)

In article <7945@star.cs.vu.nl> ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
>In article <321@pdxgate.UUCP> griffith@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Michael Griffith) writes:
>>The grandiose AT&T logo appears
>>on the inside cover of Xinu, and possibly ??? Minix? Does AT&T have a deal
>>with Prentice-Hall [?]

The AT&T "Death Star" does not appear in my 1985 purchase date Comer Volume
1, but does appear in Volume 2, "Internetworking with XINU".

Douglas Comer's "Operating System Design: The XINU Approach" apparently did
get some support from AT&T.  Comer's affiliation on the title page is listed
as "Bell Laboratories".  The book was typeset at Bell Laboratories, and
Comer's introduction concludes with the thanks:

	Finally, I am indebted to Purdue University and Bell 
	Laboratories for support of the project, and to Bell 
	Laboratories for the excellent typesetting facilities
	that made this book possible

(nowhere near as fun as Andy's comments about computer games, mice and kids).

As for Prentice-Hall, the book is listed as "PRENTICE-HALL SOFTWARE SERIES"
Brian W. Kernighan, advisor.

To digress even further into publishing, what are the numbers on the credits
page for?  Printing numbers, I assume?

Enough of a plug for XINU :-)  Now back to our regularly scheduled discussion
of PDP/11 memory management.
-- 
		Glen Overby	<overby@plains.nodak.edu>
	uunet!plains!overby (UUCP)  overby@plains (Bitnet)

ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (10/16/90)

In article <6286@plains.NoDak.edu> overby@plains.NoDak.edu (Glen Overby) writes:
>To digress even further into publishing, what are the numbers on the credits
>page for?  Printing numbers, I assume?

Yes.  The line: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 (ignition) tells which printing it is.
On each new printing, they put some snopake-type stuff on the negatives to
erase the rightmost number.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)