kjm@ut-emx.UUCP (kjm) (04/01/89)
I just recently received a copy of Minix 1.2. I just tried to use it this
evening. So far, I am severely underwhelmed.
This is the deal:
I'm running on a semi-homebrew AT clone, based on the Jameco Baby AT board.
(It uses the Award BIOS; runs PHOENIX MS-DOS 3.3 OK.) I can boot Minix OK,
mount and unmount floppies OK, run programs on the floppies OK, but I have
two rather wierd problems:
1) The cursor sometimes goes away when it is in the bottom half or so of
the screen. Doing 'clr', moving it to the top half or so of the screen
(in mined), or just continuing on will generally bring it back a little
bit later. This cycle repeats ad nauseam.
2) I am completely unable to make a file system on my hard disk and mount
it successfully. The following is a (not necessarily complete) list
of the gyrations I have gone through this evening:
- Use 'dd' to read the first 1000 blocks of /dev/hd0; works OK
- Decide that it would be neat to have multiple mounted HD file systems
- Lay out the partition sizes:
part unit dir 1st cy #cyls #blks comments
1 hd6 /usr 0 145 6161 /usr + sources
2 hd7 /tmp 145 102 4334
3 hd8 /h 247 121 5141 home directory(s)
4 hd9 /x 368 363 15640 projects
The blocks counts are based on the parameters displayed by the BIOS
setup menu for my (type 8) disks: 733 cylinders, 5 heads/cylinder,
17 sectors/track.
- Run Minix fdisk to set them
- Do 5 mknod's (for drive D; I have DOS on drive C and don't really
want to move it)
- Run 'mkfs' for hd[6-9] with corresponding block counts; hd6 looks OK,
but others complain about not being able to write the disk
- Use 'dd' to read the first 1000 blocks of each of /dev/hd[6-9]; OK
- Attempt to 'fsck' hd6; discover that 'fsck' is not on the /usr floppy
- Reboot and select 'check hard disk' option, specifying unit 6; the
system proceeds to tell me that the file system is totally busted
- Get started up without the hard disk; run 'fdisk' again, changing
origin of hd6 to cylinder 1; remake file systems -- no joy
- Make a file system using the full disk (30MB) on /dev/hd5; looks OK
- Get a panic ("out of buffers 20", or some such) from FS, after getting
the message indicating that the file system got mounted OK.
- Give up and post this message to comp.os.minix...
I've got about 5-6 days left in which I can return this thing and get a
refund. I bought Minix hoping to get an inexpensive, friendly, UNIX-oid
development environment for some personal projects. I cannot afford to
own a $100+ toy. If I can't get it to use my hard disk, I'm going to have
to send it back, and be stuck with MS-GROSS (which at least can drive the
hard disks)...
Is Minix really just broken? Am I doing something bizarre and/or wrong
to it? Help!
--
The above viewpoints are mine. They are unrelated to those of
anyone else, including my wife, our cats, and my employer.
Kenneth J. Montgomery "Shredder-of-hapless-smurfs"
Charter Member, Heathen and Atheist SCUM Alliance, "Heathen" division
kjm@hermes.chpc.utexas.edu University of Texas System
kjm@cerberus.chpc.utexas.edu Center for High Performance Computingast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) (04/02/89)
In article <11641@ut-emx.UUCP> kjm@ut-emx.UUCP (kjm) writes: >I'm running on a semi-homebrew AT clone Is the semi-homebrew 100% hardware compatible with the real IBM AT? If not, that is probably related to your problems. Thousands of people are now running MINIX on dozens of machines without too many major problems, so I think the basic operating system is at least moderately debugged by now. >1) The cursor sometimes goes away when it is in the bottom half or so of > the screen. This problem is well known. It is caused by having an EGA card that is not compatible with IBM's. Some clone EGA boards are compatible and some are not. I'll bet yours is in the latter category. V1.3 should work ok if you enable software scrolling (hit F3). >2) I am completely unable to make a file system on my hard disk Hard disk problems have been reported with many incompatible controllers. Again, I suspect hardware incompatibility. If you tried booting a plain vanilla Xenix out of the box, I think you would have the same problems. Unlike user programs, operating systems make much tougher demands on the hardware. You might try V1.3, which is more robust than V1.2, but I give no promise of success with a semi-homebrew machine. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)
hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (04/02/89)
I can't comment on your disk problem. The problem with the cursor going away is probably due to assumptions 1.1 and 1.2 made about how the display adapter worked. If so, it is fixed in 1.3.
wnp@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Wolf Paul) (04/03/89)
In article <11641@ut-emx.UUCP> kjm@ut-emx.UUCP (kjm) writes: >I just recently received a copy of Minix 1.2. I just tried to use it this >evening. So far, I am severely underwhelmed. > >This is the deal: > >I'm running on a semi-homebrew AT clone, based on the Jameco Baby AT board. >(It uses the Award BIOS; runs PHOENIX MS-DOS 3.3 OK.) I can boot Minix OK, >mount and unmount floppies OK, run programs on the floppies OK, but I have >two rather wierd problems: > [ problem descriptions deleted ] > >I've got about 5-6 days left in which I can return this thing and get a >refund. I bought Minix hoping to get an inexpensive, friendly, UNIX-oid >development environment for some personal projects. I cannot afford to >own a $100+ toy. If I can't get it to use my hard disk, I'm going to have >to send it back, and be stuck with MS-GROSS (which at least can drive the >hard disks)... > >Is Minix really just broken? Am I doing something bizarre and/or wrong >to it? Help! Contrary to some of P-H's advertising, MINIX straight out of the box is not a production-quality OS. That's not what it is intended for, although it may develop into that with time, or can be turned into that with some hacking effort (i.e. applying various patches posted to this group, and/or getting the 1.3 upgrade from P-H). Without going into your specific problems, the main cause of almost all problems I have seen discussed here hinges on the fact that many so-called IBM-compatibles are not 100% compatible on the lowest hardware level, but achieve compatibility in a DOS environment by means of the BIOS. Since MINIX as distributed does not use the BIOS, it stumbles over some of these incompatibilities. This happens with OSs like Xenix or UNIX as well; being much more commercially oriented, vendors like SCO will attempt to fix some of these problems by making their software compatible with a reasonable range of different hardware. With the prices they charge for their software, they can afford to do that. MINIX at under $100 does not pay for extensive vendor support; its main support channel is this newsgroup, and you just have to take the time to obtain fixes from here, or else find another OS for your purpose. Let us know if you can find another, more stable UNIX-like environment for a PC, AT MINIX PRICES! -- Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101 UUCP: killer!wnp ESL: 62832882 DOMAIN: wnp@killer.dallas.tx.us TLX: 910-380-0585 EES PLANO UD
jnall%FSU.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (John Nall 904-644-5241) (04/03/89)
In Article <11641@ut-emx.UUCP> kmj@ut-emx.UUCP (kmj) writes: > (... bunch of stuff deleted...) > system is a Jameco mini-AT.... It's difficult to tell exactly what the system is from the system. However, my system here is a Jameco mini-AT motherboard, with the 'm working from memory, it may be ST250) 40 MB hard drive, 1 meg of memory, 360K and 1.2 Meg floppies, and the jameco video board driving a color monitor. Minix 1.2, 1.3 and now 1.4a all work very well. For awhile, I was driven up the wall with "illegal interrupts" but that turned out to be caused by an error in the floppy driver. Once that was fixed, it has been peachy keen ever since. One thing, however. A friend and I both got these systems at the same time (it was $695 for the basic kit, and I had to add some other stuff, but still less than $1500 for a super system). Both of us had problems with the mother board, and w^Ound up returning them. Jameco replaced them, and said they had problems with that batch of boards. John Nall
steve@basser.oz (Stephen Russell) (04/09/89)
In article <7749@killer.Dallas.TX.US> wnp@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Wolf Paul) writes: >In article <11641@ut-emx.UUCP> kjm@ut-emx.UUCP (kjm) writes: >>development environment for some personal projects. I cannot afford to >>own a $100+ toy. If I can't get it to use my hard disk, I'm going to have >>to send it back, and be stuck with MS-GROSS (which at least can drive the >>hard disks)... > >Let us know if you can find another, more stable UNIX-like environment for >a PC, AT MINIX PRICES! While it may seem out of place in this newsgroup, the MKS Toolkit is in similar price range to Minix (around $150), and has many things missing from Minix, such as awk, vi, yacc, ksh, etc. Now it is missing a C compiler, so add extra for that, and is not multitasking. So, if you want a "stable UNIX-like environment for a PC", try it. I you want a fun OS to hack which includes the full sources, try Minix.
wheels@mks.UUCP (Gerry Wheeler) (04/11/89)
In article <1926@basser.oz>, steve@basser.oz (Stephen Russell) writes: > While it may seem out of place in this newsgroup, the MKS Toolkit is in > similar price range to Minix (around $150). > So, if you want a "stable UNIX-like environment for a PC", try it. We appreciate the plug. However, I should clarify that the MKS Toolkit is *not* an operating system -- it is a collection of Unix-like utilities, including a Korn shell, that runs on MS-DOS. While it makes for a look alike environment, the user is still restricted to the DOS file system (with DOS file names), and 640K of memory. 'Nuff said. -- Gerry Wheeler Phone: (519)884-2251 Mortice Kern Systems Inc. UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!wheels 35 King St. North BIX: join mks Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9 CompuServe: 73260,1043 -- Gerry Wheeler Phone: (519)884-2251 Mortice Kern Systems Inc. UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!wheels 35 King St. North BIX: join mks Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9 CompuServe: 73260,1043