wscott@ecn.purdue.edu (Wayne H Scott) (09/12/90)
ok I am getting really excited about the macintosh version of minix that will
be coming out on Oct 1(?).
I have a couple questions. First a couple about the mac version that people
might not know right now, and then a couple general question about the os.
* How the MINIX filesystem use disk space on the mac?
* Is it one large file. or a seperate partrition?
* How large is the basic system?
* Can the file system be resized easily? .ie. Can I compress a couple files
and defragment the system and then give 1 Meg back to the mac to use.
or take an another megs from the mac.
* Can I access macintosh files? (At least text files)
* How is memory used?
* Under multifinder, does it take one large chunk of memory or does it
dynamicly request and release memory from the mac OS?
* How much will it need?
* Will it run in the background of other "multifinder-friendly" programs?
* Can I cut/paste text to the terminal window?
* What kind of terminal does the mac emulate?
* Does it do bold, underlining, graphics, ...?
* How fast does it scroll?
* Can calls be made to the Macintosh Toolbox?
* Is there a nice "Mac-ish" text editor?
* Is source included for the low-level macintosh code?
* Can I recompile that with THINK C?
Now some general MINIX questions?
* How the Prentice Hall handle upgrades?
* Has GNU C been ported yet? :)
* Does it do TCP/IP?
* SLIP?
* How about FTP, TELNET, MAIL, uucp?
* Does it include a good version of AWK?
* Will PERL run?
* Are any other shells available?
* YACC?
I hope some people can answer a couple of my questions.
MINIX sounds like the perfect OS. If I don't like it I can change it!
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Wayne Scott | INTERNET: wscott@en.ecn.purdue.edu
Electrical Engineering | BITNET: wscott%ea.ecn.purdue.edu@purccvm
Purdue University | UUCP: {purdue, pur-ee}!en.ecn.purdue.edu!wscottarchetyp@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Joseph R Pickert) (09/13/90)
>* How the MINIX filesystem use disk space on the mac? > * Is it one large file. or a seperate partrition? The file system uses a macintosh file as a virtual minix disk. That is, one sets up a mapping where /dev/hd0 -> MACINTOSH:FILEA /dev/hd1 -> MACINTOSH:FILEB etc. These mappings can be dynamically changed. For instance, assume we have the mapping /dev/hd1->MACINTOSH:B, and it is mounted on /user, we would type the following in MINIX: /etc/umount /dev/hd1 # unmount /etc/hdclose /dev/hd1 # remove old mapping /etc/hdopen MACINTOSH:C /dev/hd1 # set up new mapping (maybe fsck /dev/hd1 here) /etc/mount /dev/hd1 /user # mount "new" partition You can have as many of these file system file around as you like, eating up as much of your hard disk as you like. > * How large is the basic system? I assume you mean disk space here. I haven't looked in awhile, but just binaries is < 5 meg, while binaries + sources are at about 10. > * Can the file system be resized easily? .ie. Can I compress a couple files and defragment the system and then give 1 Meg back to the mac to use. or take an another megs from the mac. The way to "give back" some disk space would be to create a second new mac file partition smaller than the first, copy the files from the first to the second, then remove the first. How easy this is is in the eye of the beholder. (I would call it easy with a good shell script, painfull without). > * Can I access macintosh files? (At least text files) Yes. The system comes with a utility to list, read, and write Macintosh files. My assumption is that the user community will start adding more such utilites in short order. Things are such that MINIX utilities can make Macintosh system calls, and the system comes with a relatively complete set of includes and libraries to do just that. >* How is memory used? > * Under multifinder, does it take one large chunk of memory or does it dynamicly request and release memory from the mac OS? One large chunk. A small portion of the heap is left to support the Mac OS, while the rest is claimed as MINIX memory. > * How much will it need? What do you want to do? 1 Meg is enough for many things. > * Will it run in the background of other "multifinder-friendly" programs? Yes. >* Can I cut/paste text to the terminal window? No >* What kind of terminal does the mac emulate? It supports the basic MINIX console, sort of an abbreviated vt100. > * Does it do bold, underlining, graphics, ...? It does bold, reverse, a couple of other things. Nothing real fancy. > * How fast does it scroll? A question of perspective. Not significantly faster or slower than, for example, kermit. >* Can calls be made to the Macintosh Toolbox? Yes >* Is there a nice "Mac-ish" text editor? No, there are 5 "Unix-ish" editors. >* Is source included for the low-level macintosh code? Yes > * Can I recompile that with THINK C? The easy answer is no. I do have a version of the kernel that can be compiled and ran with Think C which I will give to people who plan to do kernel development, since it simplifies such development considerably. Joe Pickert