[comp.os.minix] Question: Using the ST source for a non-ST machine.

henry@ginger.sri.com (Henry A. Pasternack) (03/13/90)

   I would like to port Minix to a generic 68020 machine, using the
Sun as a development system.  If I buy the source to Atari Minix, is
there any way of getting it into a Sun without an Atari computer?  Is
there any way of getting the ST source on a Unix compatible medium?

   Enquiring minds need to know.

-Henry


   

cyliax@bank.ecn.purdue.edu (Ingo Cyliax) (03/14/90)

In article <10061@unix.SRI.COM>, henry@ginger.sri.com (Henry A.
Pasternack) writes:
> 
>    I would like to port Minix to a generic 68020 machine, using the
> Sun as a development system.  If I buy the source to Atari Minix, is
> there any way of getting it into a Sun without an Atari computer?  Is
> there any way of getting the ST source on a Unix compatible medium?

Henry,

Probably the easiest way to do it is to borrow an Atari and upload the
sources to your Sun using kermit or Xmodem, after you uncompress/unarchive
them. Otherwise you will have to find a machine with 3.5" disk drive that
can read the Atari floppies (Sparcstations, Sun3/80 or some PC), and then
write some utilities to read Minix filesystem under SunOS. After extracting
all the archives from the Minix-ST disks, you will need an archiver on the
Sun that can read Minix *.a archives to unpack the sources. Borrowing a
atari is probably the easiest/fastest.

BTW, I'm planning on porting it to a 68020 system as well. I'm starting my
port on a Sun with gnu-C. Does your 68020 system have a MMU ? If it does,
have you thought about doing a protected Minix-68k ? That's what I would
eventually like to do. Has anyone else looked at protected Minix-68k ? I'm
afraid that the only thing portable about it would be support for a 68851
MMU and maybe a 68881 FPU, the device drivers would be very different for
everyone. The user programs should certainly be Minix-ST binary compatible.

Gruss, -ingo

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HBO043%DJUKFA11.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Christoph van Wuellen) (03/14/90)

Well, I ported MINIX to a 68000 machine using a Sun as developement platform.
If you can get a floppy image to the Sun, you can use the programs
readfs and makefs to extract and create MINIX filesystems. But don't try this
on a Sun386i since readfs and makefs depend on the host bytesex.
The best thing for you is if you can find a kind ATARI soul which makes
a tar-file on disk for you.