john@minster.york.ac.uk (04/06/89)
>I have just purchased a MiniScribe M8450 40MB 40ms hard disk card on approval, >to see whether I could get it to work for Minix on my IBM-PC/XT clone. ... >here are capacity details: > > Cylinders: 771 > Heads: 4 > Sectors/Track: 26 > Blocks/sector: 1 > > Formatted capacity: 771 * 4 * 26 * 1 = 80184 blocks (~40MB). Whoops! There is just half a block per sector, so we get: 771 * 4 * 26 * .5 = 40092 blocks. I intend to partition the disk into three filesystems in the approximate ratio 20 : 5 : 15, and use them for /usr/src, /usr and /user, respectively. This idea, suggested by my colleague Martin Atkins, posits that I will be working either under /usr/src or /user at any one time, and keeps the executables, libraries etc. of /usr approximately equidistant from each filesystem, thus minimizing access times. I would like to keep only /tmp on device /dev/ram. I'll try arranging to boot from hard disk later. Any better ideas? I think quite a few of us (Minix users), previously limited to the use of floppies, may be splashing out on hard disks soon, as the prices are slowly falling (in the UK, at least). All praise to the people who are collecting and publishing the Minix machine/peripheral compatibility list! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- John A. Murdie UK 0904 432752 Dept. of Comp. Sci. seismo!mcvax!ukc!minster!john University of York England