mcm@citron.ucsb.edu (Marcelo C. Mourier) (11/17/89)
Hi guys! I've been using MINIX 1.2 on my XT clone with an ST-238R RLL hard disk and Western Digital RLL controller card for almost two years with no problems. The xt_wini driver in the original PH distribution ran smoothly from the start with no patches (yeah..!). But now the fun is over, I've upgraded to an AT clone and to MINIX 1.3, and it seems that the at_wini driver and the HD contro- ller card speak different languages... My problem is probably the architypical one: when you try the command dd if=/dev/hd0 of=/dev/null count=1000, the sys- tem hungs. The information dumped by the F1 key shows that the WINCHEster task is blocked waiting for a message from IDLE, but the HD controller's interrupt that originates that message never occurs. There's also no activity on the HD drive because its front panel light is off all the time. My new system has an ST-157R RLL hard disk (6 heads, 26 sec/trk, 615 cyl) and an Adaptec 16-bit RLL 1:1 interleaved HD controller card. I've tried the at_wini's patch for the Compaq Portable III posted a few days ago, but it didn't work. I wonder if any of you guys has had a similar problem and has come out with a patch to at_wini that solves it. If any of you can help me, please don't doubt to do it; I'll really appreciate it. If nobody has faced this problem before, I'll try to solve it myself and post the patches to the net. The problem I'm having is probably just one instance of something that (I guess) is very common. Namely, with the variety of PC hardware available out there (HD Controllers, Video Controller's, Ethernet Controllers, etc.) the chances that a given machine will NOT run MINIX from the start (e.g., as dis- tributed by PH) are probably high. And anybody who's worked on a single floppy system (because of an incompatible HD), knows very well that trying to patch code in that situation is a pain. My suggestion is to add to the standard dis- tribution more options than, in the case of the HD driver, the xt_wini and at_wini drivers for MFM HD controllers. How about having: rll_wini, esdi_wini or scsi_wini as well..? After all, these kind of controllers are becoming more and more common every year... Marcelo mcm@cs.ucsb.edu
mpsimon@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (M. Patrick Simon) (11/18/89)
I have also had problems hooking up a hard disk to minix. In my case, I have an Atari ST, and I am trying to hook up a SYQUEST drive (44 meg removable cartridge) assemble by Toad Computer. At first, I thought the problem was the non-standard configuration of my drive: the hd is drive 1, and there is no drive 0. However, I changed STWINI.C, recompiled and rebuilt minix (on a single floppy drive 1 meg system, what a pain!), and modified /dev/Makedev in the obvious ways, all without success. Do I need a completely separate device driver, or is there some small change I have simply forgotten to make? --Patrick Simon mpsimon@phoenix.princeton.edu 11-17-89