shaver@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Dave Shaver) (06/23/89)
I have several questions. But first, here's a little background. We
have the distributions of both version 1.2 PC-MINIX and version 1.1
Atari ST MINIX. I can apply the diffs to get 1.3 PC-MINIX if necessary.
Last year we had a graduate student port PC-MINIX 1.2 to a HP 9220
``workstation.'' (It's an old, slow 68010-based machine.) The 9220s
are now gone and we're going to re-port some version of MINIX to the HP
340 workstation. (They are 68030-based.) Since the 340 and 9220 are
quite different, we thought we might start with the port with the Atari
ST version of MINIX since that would provide a supported base of 68000
code. Is this a sane thing to do? Would it be any easier to start
with 1.3 PC-MINIX? Or something else?
The first obvious question is: Has anyone ported MINIX (any version)
to any HP workstation? Assuming we're going to have to do the port
ourselves, then we have some other problems.
The first is rather trivial: Getting the Atari MINIX code off of the
floppies. We have borrowed an Atari ST512 with one floppy drive.
Thus, we need some communication program to transfer the archived
source code to a UNIX machine. Does anyone out there have some simple
way for us to transfer the source? Or even better, do they have it
online someplace where we can copy it? (All legally since we own the
stuff but can't get it off the disks easily!)
Another option would be to get the diffs to go from PC-MINIX 1.3 to
ST-MINIX 1.1, but that could be messy.
Second, does anyone have hints on porting the system? We'll be running
HP-UX 6.5 as the development environment. We're hoping to use GCC, but
we may use the native HP-UX compiler.
Finally, we have about 40 HP ES/12 Vectras. Each has a 20mb hard
drive. They are supposed to be AT ``compatible.'' Has anyone tried
MINIX on these? I looked in the archives at bugs.nosc.mil and found
three articles: 2355@louie.udel.edu, 4187@louie.udel.edu,
8577@watdragon.waterloo.edu. They all seem to be talking about the
older, uncompatible-with-everything Vectra.
Any comments you might have regarding any of this mess would be very
much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
/\ Dave Shaver -=*=- CS Systems Support Group, Iowa State University
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...In stereo where available...MBramwel@business.uwo.ca (Mark Bramwell 519 661-3714) (06/24/89)
We here at the Business School have some of the newer HP ES machines. We have not had any compatiblity problems with the machines. We run Novell 2.15, Word Perfect 5.0, IBM DisplayWrite 4, Turbo Pascal/C/Basic, plus a whole mess of assorted other stuff. No problems yet. The EGA card/monitor is much sharper when compared to the IBM devices. We are just starting to look at minix mainly out of curiousity, not for its usefulness.
walter@hpsad.HP.COM (Walter Coole) (07/15/89)
There are versions of MINIX for the ES/12; I have one such. As I recall, there were some changes to accomodate the particular disc controller and keyboard. It's possible that versions newer than 1.2 don't need the fix.
alex@hpqtdla.HP.COM (Alex Ballantyne) (07/17/89)
If your 340 runs HP-UX, one way of transferring data to and from your Atari is to use the MINIX tos program. This program will compile on your 340 and allow it to access an Atari 3.5" floppy placed in a 9122 floppy disc drive, or in the floppy drive of a 9133 hard disc. Since your Atari uses single sided discs, it might work with a 9121 too. How do you get "tos" onto your HP-UX computer? Well, I used a double sided drive in an Atari to write "tos" to an IBM PC 3.5" disc, then used the HP-UX dos utilities to read the disc on an HP-UX machine. The well known Atari terminal emulator "UNITERM" would allow you to do it using RS232, if you can get the machines attached somehow. If you are really brave, you could try to port the MINIX code that deals with the disc to HP-UX, then you could just mount the MINIX discs onto the HP-UX file system. (That's the ideal solution if you can be bothered, because then you could use HP-UX as you development envirnment.)