Leisner.Henr@xerox.com (Marty) (08/08/89)
In light of all the PC compatability problems , I think the following proposal would make sense. The distribution release would be totally BIOS based -- i.e. must hard disk, maybe floppy disk, perhaps keyboard and video would use the BIOS. The system would contain instructions to recompile the kernel and try to use the standard device drivers. If the user wants better performance, he'll rebuild the boot disk and see what device drivers actually work on his system. Otherwise, he'd have a system that would at least work. I find the hard disk problems to be somewhat intolerable. marty ARPA: leisner.henr@xerox.com GV: leisner.henr NS: leisner:wbst139:xerox UUCP: hplabs!arisia!leisner
rbthomas@athos.rutgers.edu (Rick Thomas) (08/08/89)
> The distribution release would be totally BIOS based -- i.e. must hard > disk, maybe floppy disk, perhaps keyboard and video would use the BIOS. > > S/he'd have a system that would at least work. I find the hard > disk problems to be somewhat intolerable. > > marty > ARPA: leisner.henr@xerox.com Sounds great to me. The only problem is who is going to write the bios based drivers for floppy, keyboard, video, etc. (is it even possible? What assumptions does the Bios make about interruptability?) And then how does it fit in with Andy's announced intention to base 2.0 on Bruce's protected mode stuff? Any-thoughts? Any-body? Rick -- Rick Thomas uucp: {ames, att, harvard}!rutgers!jove.rutgers.edu!rbthomas internet: rbthomas@JOVE.RUTGERS.EDU bitnet: rbthomas@zodiac.bitnet Phone: (201) 932-4301
bill@chinet.chi.il.us (Bill Mitchell) (08/13/89)
Article 6896 suggests a totally BIOS based distribution copy of MINIX, with instructions for recompiling the kernel to use hardware-specific drivers, etc. Article 6898 says it sounds great - - but who will write the BIOS based drivers? I bought PH minix 1.3 to actually _use_ - not to twiddle with. I wanted a cheap unix-like platform to develop and test some applications at home - one which wouldn't leave me stuck with no vendor support and no way to roll my own in a pinch. MINIX looked ideal - especially since I had twiddled with v1.2 a bit. Making a short story long, I had hard disk install problems. I Emailed AST about them, and he sent me BIOS based versions of wini.c and klib88.s. I had only minimal problems rebuilding the kernel with these, and my hard disk began working. I'm no doubt paying a performance penalty, but low performance beats the heck out of no performance. I'll probably never get around to trying to fix and install the distribution drivers. I assumed the BIOS drivers AST sent me were available in the archives. I still haven't found a good way to get at archive material myself, so don't know for sure. Should I post them? (Now if I can just get UUPC working I'll be in hog heaven)
ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (08/20/89)
I am back. First priority is reading the news, of course. About 50 messages were purged as being too old, so I can't reply to any of them conveniently, but I did manage to read them off another disk where we keep a MINIX morgue. As I go through the news, I will respond in the order the messages appear. In article <9253@chinet.chi.il.us> bill@chinet.chi.il.us (Bill Mitchell) writes: > >I assumed the BIOS drivers AST sent me were available in the >archives. I still haven't found a good way to get at archive >material myself, so don't know for sure. Should I post them? They have already been posted repeatedly. To answer the question about the distribution, next time around I will probably include two boot diskettes, one with the BIOS HD driver and one with the AT driver. The BIOS disk should work on almost any machine, PC, AT, or 386. The AT driver should work on most ATs and probably most 386s. I probably won't have two sets: one for the PC and one for the AT, but a merged one. While this adds bulk to the package and increases the price slightly, it avoids a LOT of confusion. However, the subject of the distribution can wait a year. First I have to write it. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)