phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) (09/17/90)
Just a few question before I know if I can buy Amiga Minix:
1) Are there any known problems with any particular revisions of the Amiga.
eg. with/without 1meg chip ram
2) In the announcement posting it was stated that the Amiga version would
work either on one or two 720K drives.
^^^^
The Amiga uses 880K drives, or has this now been sacrificed for
compatibility with PC drives, and mac drives? Or was this, hopefully, a
typo.
#PH FLAME ON
Comparing the features on the four versions of 1.5 I was slightly peeved.
Fine the PC and ST versions are not first releases so it is reasonable that
they should have a FEW extra features compared to other 1.5 versions. BUT the
mac version has virtually the same feature list as the PC and ST versions, but
it is a first release. Given the relative features of the amiga version -
NO HARD DRIVES, NO RS232 Terminal Support, NO Concurrent Users - I don't
see how PH can justify giving it a 1.5 label and chargeing 1.5 prices for it.
Speaking to the MINIX Centre over here in England, PH say they won't
be delivering Amiga Minix until the end of September, and the mac version
until November. Anyone confident about these delivery dates?:-)
#FLAME OFF
BTW. If PC Minix 1.3 is still being sold, how many people are going to
buy 1.3 now and upgrade to 1.5 thru the net?:-)
*****************************************************************************
* Stuart Millington * "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing, Remember *
* UUCP:...!mcsun!ukc!warwick!phupp * That." - David Bryan, Bon Jovi *
* JANET:phupp@uk.ac.warwick.cu *****************************************
* ? :phupp%warwick.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk *
*****************************************************************************raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) (09/17/90)
phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes: > 1) Are there any known problems with any particular revisions of the Amiga. > eg. with/without 1meg chip ram No. > 2) In the announcement posting it was stated that the Amiga version would > work either on one or two 720K drives. > ^^^^ > The Amiga uses 880K drives, or has this now been sacrificed for > compatibility with PC drives, and mac drives? Or was this, hopefully, a > typo. This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with PCs, Atari's and Macs. >Given the relative features of the amiga version - >NO HARD DRIVES, NO RS232 Terminal Support, NO Concurrent Users - I don't >see how PH can justify giving it a 1.5 label and chargeing 1.5 prices for it. I have to admit that we don't have hard drive support, but we DO support RS232 and concurrent users just as the other versions do. -Raymond.
gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) (09/18/90)
In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes: >> 2) In the announcement posting it was stated that the Amiga version would >> work either on one or two 720K drives. >> ^^^^ >> The Amiga uses 880K drives, or has this now been sacrificed for >> compatibility with PC drives, and mac drives? Or was this, hopefully, a >> typo. > >This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with >PCs, Atari's and Macs. > > -Raymond. Just to prevent the introduction of wild rumours and misunderstandings :-) Disks are and are not the same between the PC's and the 68000's . They are essentially the same physical format i.e. 80 tracks of 9 sectors. But unfortunely the way things are written is different i.e. byte ordering. This has grown as it is somewhere in history (when Minix ST was developed). As someone pointed out in this newsgroup about a year ago when we talk about how Minix writes on disk we speak of File Systems. There's no law that you should be able to read them across architectural boundaries. (Allthough it can be quite handy at times :-/ ) During the porting of Minix to the Amiga and the Mac care was taken to not to create yet another variant. So at the moment we live with PC disks and M68000 disks so to speak. (Does the Sparc have floppies ?). P.S. Don't send me mail telling that PC's support other disk formats as the one mentioned. The story however stays the same. -- Gert Kanis gert@targon.UUCP Just to introduce wild rumours and some misunderstandings :-)
ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (09/19/90)
In article <1453@targon.UUCP> gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) writes: >As someone pointed out in this newsgroup about a year ago when we talk >about how Minix writes on disk we speak of File Systems. There's no law >that you should be able to read them across architectural boundaries. >(Allthough it can be quite handy at times :-/ ) Yesterday, for the first time I successfully mounted an Amiga disk on a PC. (I were a biologist, I'd probably be crossing a cat with a rabbit.) However, I was not able to read the Amiga disk (yet). But the mount took. That's a start. This feature is not intended to read Amiga disks on PCs or vice versa, but is needed because 2.0 will have a new and incompatible file system. Posix requires all three times, which means I have to go to a larger inode. To make upgrading possible, I have put a "file system switch" in the code, so it dynamically senses the file system type (based on the magic number in the superblock), and then converts from the external format to the internal one. This means that you can have PC, 68000, and new style disks mounted at the same time, for copying files from old to new disk partitions. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)
phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) (09/19/90)
In article <1453@targon.UUCP> gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) writes: >In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >> >>This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with >>PCs, Atari's and Macs. >> > >Disks are and are not the same between the PC's and the 68000's . >They are essentially the same physical format i.e. 80 tracks of 9 sectors. >But unfortunely the way things are written is different i.e. byte ordering. So what you are saying is that although the amiga 880K capacity has been sacrificed down to 720K to maintain compatibility they are NOT compatible in any real sense of the word. ***************************************************************************** * Stuart Millington * "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing, Remember * * UUCP:...!mcsun!ukc!warwick!phupp * That." - David Bryan, Bon Jovi * * JANET:phupp@uk.ac.warwick.cu ***************************************** * ? :phupp%warwick.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk * *****************************************************************************
raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) (09/19/90)
phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes: >In article <1453@targon.UUCP> gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) writes: >>In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (that's me) writes: >>> >>>This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with >>>PCs, Atari's and Macs. >> >>Disks are and are not the same between the PC's and the 68000's . >>They are essentially the same physical format i.e. 80 tracks of 9 sectors. >>But unfortunely the way things are written is different i.e. byte ordering. > So what you are saying is that although the amiga 880K capacity has been >sacrificed down to 720K to maintain compatibility they are NOT compatible >in any real sense of the word. But they are! Gert was (probably) talking about the difference between the PC and ST version. The Amiga, Atari and Mac versions are binary compatible: you can edit and compile a program on a Mac, take out the floppy, mount it on an Amiga and run it! If that isn't compatible, then what is? The only thing is not (yet) compatible is the PC and 68000 file systems, but since they all use the same physical format you can easily exchange data between them by using tar(1) or something similar. If we would have use the original Amiga format this would not have been possible. -Raymond.
KPURCELL@liverpool.ac.uk (Kevin Purcell) (09/19/90)
On Tue, 18 Sep 90 16:31:58 GMT Gert Kanis (gert@UUCP.TARGON) said: >In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >>phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes: >>[stuff about 800k or 720k drives] >>This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with >>PCs, Atari's and Macs. Macs also come with 800k disks (non-standard format) are these cut down to 720k too in Minix or are they standard HFS disks? [more deleted] > >During the porting of Minix to the Amiga and the Mac care was taken to >not to create yet another variant. So at the moment we live with PC disks >and M68000 disks so to speak. (Does the Sparc have floppies ?). Yes, 1.44Mbyte floppies >Gert Kanis gert@targon.UUCP Do you think migration towards 1.44Mbyte floppies (HDs) might be sensible given the increasing useage of these disk on a wide range of machines? Kevin Purcell | kpurcell@liverpool.ac.uk Surface Science, | Liverpool University | Programming the Macintosh is easy if you understand Liverpool L69 3BX | how the Mac works and hard if you don't. -- Dan Allen
archetyp@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Joseph R Pickert) (09/19/90)
raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >But they are! Gert was (probably) talking about the difference between >the PC and ST version. The Amiga, Atari and Mac versions are binary >compatible: you can edit and compile a program on a Mac, take out the >floppy, mount it on an Amiga and run it! This is WRONG. The binaries between the Mac and the Amiga and Atari ARE compatable, but the disks are not. You can't mount a floppy formatted with another version of MINIX on the Macintosh version. Joe Pickert
adrie@philica.ica.philips.nl (Adrie Koolen) (09/19/90)
In article <1453@targon.UUCP> gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) writes: >During the porting of Minix to the Amiga and the Mac care was taken to >not to create yet another variant. So at the moment we live with PC disks >and M68000 disks so to speak. (Does the Sparc have floppies ?). Yes, it does and its high-density drive can also read/write normal density (720KB) diskettes. But Minix doesn't consistently use int's or short int's to describe the zone and inode bit-maps. Because in 32-bit mode int's are not the same as short int's, this presented problems. I decided to use int's, but I later discovered that this made the 68000 and Sparc diskettes incompatible. I just left it that way. You can read an 68000 diskette on the SparcStation, and reversely read a Sparc diskette on an Atari, but DON'T try to write on it! Adrie Koolen (adrie@ica.philips.nl) Philips Innovation Centre Aachen
KPURCELL@liverpool.ac.uk (Kevin Purcell) (09/20/90)
On Wed, 19 Sep 90 11:28:54 GMT Raymond Michiels (raymond@NL.VU.CS) said: >But they are! Gert was (probably) talking about the difference between >the PC and ST version. The Amiga, Atari and Mac versions are binary >compatible: you can edit and compile a program on a Mac, take out the >floppy, mount it on an Amiga and run it! If that isn't compatible, then >what is? The only thing is not (yet) compatible is the PC and 68000 >file systems, but since they all use the same physical format you can >easily exchange data between them by using tar(1) or something similar. >If we would have use the original Amiga format this would not have been >possible. > > -Raymond. Is this true of the Mac disk on older Macs? Those that use the IWM chip to get 800k per drive (GCR type encoding) rather than the newer 1.4Mbyte disks that can read all formats? Kevin Purcell | kpurcell@liverpool.ac.uk Surface Science, | Liverpool University | Programming the Macintosh is easy if you understand Liverpool L69 3BX | how the Mac works and hard if you don't. -- Dan Allen
storkamp@sj.ate.slb.com (Mark Storkamp) (09/20/90)
>In article <1453@targon.UUCP> gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) writes: >>In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >>> >>>This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with >>>PCs, Atari's and Macs. >>> >> >>Disks are and are not the same between the PC's and the 68000's . >>They are essentially the same physical format i.e. 80 tracks of 9 sectors. >>But unfortunely the way things are written is different i.e. byte ordering. I don't know about the Macs, but I can take any DD 3 1/5" disk from a PC and read/edit text files with no problem on my Atari. ybet sra eon twspaep dnit xe tifel!s: )- I doubt if your realy looking for object code compatibility anyway. -Mark Storkamp
meulenbr@cst.philips.nl (Frans Meulenbroeks) (09/20/90)
phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes: > So what you are saying is that although the amiga 880K capacity has been >sacrificed down to 720K to maintain compatibility they are NOT compatible >in any real sense of the word. Yes they are. PC and 68000 filesystems are not compatible. However, the 68000 filesystems are compatible (that is: the amiga can use filesystems created on the ST and vice versa. I think that these can be used on the mac as well, but I'm not that familiar with the internals of the mac version.) -- Frans Meulenbroeks (meulenbr@cst.philips.nl) Centre for Software Technology ( or try: ...!mcsun!phigate!prle!cst!meulenbr)
raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) (09/20/90)
archetyp@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Joseph R Pickert) writes: >raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >>you can edit and compile a program on a Mac, take out the >>floppy, mount it on an Amiga and run it! >This is WRONG. The binaries between the Mac and the Amiga and >Atari ARE compatable, but the disks are not. I shouldn't have taken the Mac as an example, sorry for that. I should have said that the Atari and Amiga disks + binaries are compatible. (I have actually tried this.) Sorry for the confusion. -Raymond.
griffith@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Michael Griffith) (09/21/90)
phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes: >In article <1453@targon.UUCP> gert@targon.UUCP (Gert Kanis) writes: >>In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >>> >>>This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with >>>PCs, Atari's and Macs. >>> >> >>Disks are and are not the same between the PC's and the 68000's . >>They are essentially the same physical format i.e. 80 tracks of 9 sectors. >>But unfortunely the way things are written is different i.e. byte ordering. > So what you are saying is that although the amiga 880K capacity has been >sacrificed down to 720K to maintain compatibility they are NOT compatible >in any real sense of the word. I think what they are saying is that they sacrificed the space to make the source code for Minix easily portable over the machines. If you're a C guru, and I can't think of much reason yet to get Minix unless you want to play around with altering it, you can fix this yourself. If you aren't why are you thinking about getting it? BTW: I own an Amiga. I'm still thinking about Minix, but it does represent a large dent in my bank account. | 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. |
edp367s@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Rik Harris) (09/21/90)
KPURCELL@liverpool.ac.uk (Kevin Purcell) writes: >On Tue, 18 Sep 90 16:31:58 GMT Gert Kanis (gert@UUCP.TARGON) said: >>In article <7583@star.cs.vu.nl> raymond@cs.vu.nl (Raymond Michiels) writes: >>>phupp@warwick.ac.uk (S Millington) writes: >>>[stuff about 800k or 720k drives] >>>This was not a typo. We have sacrificed 160K to be compatible with >>>PCs, Atari's and Macs. >Macs also come with 800k disks (non-standard format) are these cut down to >720k too in Minix or are they standard HFS disks? >[more deleted] >> >>During the porting of Minix to the Amiga and the Mac care was taken to >>not to create yet another variant. So at the moment we live with PC disks >>and M68000 disks so to speak. (Does the Sparc have floppies ?). >Yes, 1.44Mbyte floppies >>Gert Kanis gert@targon.UUCP >Do you think migration towards 1.44Mbyte floppies (HDs) might be sensible >given the increasing useage of these disk on a wide range of machines? definitely not. Unless my 880k drive can read your 1.44Mb disks :-) I expect your 1.44Mb drive _will_ read my 880k disks, but why alienate all the atari and amiga and XT and etc owners by using 1.44Mb disks. Wait until everyone has 1.44Mb disks, and then I'll re-consider. The whole idea of making the formats compatible would be lost. rik. >Kevin Purcell | kpurcell@liverpool.ac.uk >Surface Science, | >Liverpool University | Programming the Macintosh is easy if you understand >Liverpool L69 3BX | how the Mac works and hard if you don't. -- Dan Allen -- Rik Harris - edp367s@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au | Build a system that Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, | even a fool can use, Monash University, Caulfield Campus, Australia | and only a fool will (say that with your mouth full!) | want to use it.
evans@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (Bruce.Evans) (09/25/90)
In article <669@philica.ica.philips.nl> adrie@beitel.ica.philips.nl (Adrie Koolen) writes: >(720KB) diskettes. But Minix doesn't consistently use int's or short int's >to describe the zone and inode bit-maps. Because in 32-bit mode int's are >not the same as short int's, this presented problems. I decided to use >int's, but I later discovered that this made the 68000 and Sparc diskettes >incompatible. I just left it that way. You can read an 68000 diskette on Actually, this is a byte-order problem and not an int-size problem. Minix-386 file systems are compatible with Minix-PC file systems because the byte order agrees with the bit order. However, big-endian machines like the ST are incompatible with themself when different sizes of ints are used! The problem should be fixed by using unsigned chars for the bit maps, not shorts. Then the bitmaps will be the same for ST and PC file systems too. -- Bruce Evans evans@syd.dit.csiro.au