flynn@anyguay.acm.rpi.edu (Kevin Lincoln Flynn) (07/01/89)
Hello; this is my first posting so please bear with me. [ :) ]
I am one of the administrators of the machines the RPI chapter of the ACM
operates. Currently we run six AT&T 3B2/300's and will soon add a 3B2/400
and a 3B15/201. Recently imaguay.acm.rpi.edu (one of our /300's) crashed;
we think a power failure corrupted an important file or two and that imaguay
will need at least a partial restore to fix the problem.
When we were talking about this and people (including myself [ :) ]) were
being annoyed about the amount of time to do the restore, and the lack of
speed on the 'Guays, and this and that, someone suggested bagging Unix SysV
and running Minix instead... reasons being the Minix is smaller, lighter,
hopefully faster and we'll have full source for it, so it could prove much
more educational and maybe even more useful.
Since imaguay is down as it stands and will already take someone going in
and messing with floppies and taking some time with it and maybe having to
deal with God-only-knows-what, and since we can afford the downtime to play
with it for awhile (we've the other five /300s still up and running, after
all), the Minix suggestion is being taken kind of seriously. It boils down
to a few questions that I hope someone can answer:
1) Is Minix really smaller and possibly faster than Unix SysV R3.1?
2) Is full source available? Is it (gasp) maybe even included?
3) Where do we get it and what does it cost?
4) and most importantly, has anyone ported Minix to a 3B2/300 before?
We have the knowledge as far as programming goes to do a port ourselves;
but we don't have anything even close to the required reference infor-
mation. (For instance, no documentation on how to deal with driver
requirements.)
It's also _extremely_ important to us that we be able to use the network inter-
face hardware we have to continue communicating on the Internet.
If you have any information on this, please send me email; and I'll continue
reading here if the mailer barfs flynn@anyguay.acm.rpi.edu. Thanks a _lot_,
in advance.
Kevin Lincoln Flynn flynn@anyguay.acm.rpi.edu, userfwvl@mts.rpi.edu
2151 12th Street H (518) 273-6914 W (518) 447-8561
Troy, NY 12180
...Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.