andie@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Andie Ness) (01/13/89)
I am in the process of acquiring an NEC APC which I beleive is semi-IBM compatible. Has anyone got a version of MINIX running on this beast ? If so, how do I go about getting one for mine ? --Andie. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Andie Ness | ARPA: andie%ed.eusip@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk | |Speech Input Project, | UUCP: ...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!eusip!andie | |University of Edinburgh, | JANET: andie@uk.ac.ed.eusip | |80, South Bridge, |----------------------------------------------| |Edinburgh EH1, | "To be or not to be what was the question ?" | |Scotland. | "If music be the food of love eat Tunes" | |(Phone: +31 225 8883 x265.) | | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
petem@runx.ips.oz (Peter Mason) (01/16/89)
?? In that case, I noticed 1.1 was able to boot on such a machine. Don't know about post-1.1.
steve@basser.oz (Stephen Russell) (01/19/89)
In article <1941@runx.ips.oz> petem@runx.OZ (Peter Mason) writes: >?? In that case, I noticed 1.1 was able to >boot on such a machine. Don't know about post-1.1. Minix (any version) doesn't run on an APC-III - the device drivers expect a hardware compatible machine. It is possible to load Minix, if the APC has an SLE card, but it dies as soon as control switches from MS-DOS to Minix. Porting Minix to an APC-III is not impossible, but will require some patience, and either a working Minix on another PC, or a suitable C compiler (say Turbo C's tcc, or tc with an SLE) and some editing on the APC itself. The major changes needed are to the console drivers, because the APC doesn't use a 6845 CRT controller, and the different keyboard scan codes. There are many minor changes needed, mainly to the chip addresses. Fortunately, the APC's chipset is similar enough (8086, 825[139], etc.) to a PC that most of the device control code remains unchanged, except for addressing. All of these changes are to the kernel code; MM and FS should be ok. The APC-III is a nice machine. Its graphics are good (640x480), with fast hardware assist from the 7220's. Pity that NEC decided to make _all_ the chip addresses and interrupt vectors different from a PC.