The new newsgroups have arrived! Yow!

[John M. Wright]

In article <GEORGE.91Jan9081353 at killer-tomato.cis.ohio-state.edu> george at tut.cis.ohio-state.eduGeorge M. Jones <george at cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
>
>Ok, I'll let my ignorance and lack of current knowledge about
>available Amiga software show: does MINIX exist for the Amiga yet & if
>so where do I get summaries of functionality, availability etc.
>
>---George Jones

And  on comp.os.minix, hawk at pnet01.cts.com (John Anderson) writes:

>  I had one question but since my copy of Amiga Minix isn't here yet I have
>two :-)  I ordered AmigaMinix from PH early November and was sent a letter a
>few weeks later telling that it would arrive in December.  The first question
>is: are there problems with Amiga Minix that it is being held back?  Has
>anybody else that ordered it in November received it?

Amiga Minix exists.  Here is a short piece of the periodically-posted
announcement from comp.os.minix:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. WHAT IS MINIX 1.5
     MINIX 1.5 is a new version of an operating system that is very similar to
UNIX.  MINIX has been written from scratch, and therefore does not contain any
AT&T code--not in the kernel, the compiler, the utilities, or the libraries.
For this reason it can be made available with the complete source code
(on diskette).  It runs on the IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2, 386, and most clones.
Versions are also available for the Atari ST, Macintosh, and Amiga.

2. MINIX 1.5 FEATURES (IBM, Macintosh, Atari, and Amiga versions)
  - System call compatible with V7 of the UNIX operating system
  - Full multiprogramming (multiple programs can run at once)
  - Kernighan and Ritchie compatible C compiler
  - Shell that is functionally identical to the Bourne shell
  - Five editors (emacs subset, vi clone, ex, ed, and simple screen editor)
  - Over 175 utilities (cat, cp, ed, grep, kermit, ls, make, sort, etc.)
  - Over 200 library procedures (atoi, fork, malloc, read, stdio, etc.)
  - Spelling checker with 40,000 word English dictionary
  - Full source code (in C) supplied on diskettes (OS, utilities, libraries)
  - Easy-to-read manual telling all about MINIX and how to install and use it

4. HARDWARE REQUIRED

  - Amiga:      Commodore Amiga 500 or 2000 with at least 1M of RAM. One  720K
                diskette drive is sufficient.   A hard disk is not required
                (or even supported).  To use a hard disk with the Amiga, 
                someone familiar with how this disk works will have to write
                a driver for it.  If this driver is then posted to the net,
                it will be possible to use a hard disk with MINIX on the Amiga.

9. HOW TO ORDER MINIX 1.5
     MINIX 1.5 is being sold by Prentice-Hall.  The product numbers and prices
are as follows:

  - MINIX 1.5 for the Amiga	    (0-13-585043-6)  $169

Sales tax and shipping are extra; Prices are slightly higher outside the U.S.

In North America and the Far East
  To order by email:	books at prenhall.com
  To order by FAX:  	(201) 767-5625
  To order by phone:	(800) 624-0023  or  (201) 767-5969
  To order by mail:	Microservice Customer Service
			Simon & Schuster
			200 Old Tappan Road
			Old Tappan, NJ 07675
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>From my own experience, I would *not* recommend purchasing Minix by email.

There is some, but relatively little, discussion of Amiga Minix on
comp.os.minix.  I have no idea how this new amiga.unix group will
mesh with comp.os.minix; a lot of crossposting, I would imagine.
(That's what I'm doing, anyway.  :-)

Now for a few nitty-gritty details about Amiga Minix that might not be
obvious from the announcement:

A) The Minix kernel file on essentially all of the original PH
distribution disks has unrecoverable errors.  Fortunately,
they included a backup copy, and apparently now the package
has a sticker warning that you must use minix.img.bu instead of
minix.img when you create your working boot disk.

B) There are some bugs in the original version of Amiga Minix which
cause it to trash both the disk buffers and screen memory if you
have more than 512 K of chip ram.  A fix for this has been posted
to comp.os.minix by Steven Reiz.

C) Even after the above fix is applied, there are some problems with
the Amiga Minix file system on floppies.  Floppy disks go bad with
"unrecoverable read errors" with distressing frequency.  This is *not*
due to Minix crashing or being shut down without properly sync'ing.

D) Amiga Minix will not yet run on a 680[2,3]0 processor.

E) Amiga Minix does not yet support any hard disk drives.
(A call for beta testers of a driver written for the A590
was just posted on comp.os.minix.)

F) Amiga Minix cannot yet use an interlaced screen.

Someone else asked if Amiga Minix was usable on an A500 with one
meg of ram and two floppies.  From my own experience, the floppy
file system is more stable and things work better in general on
my daughter's 500 (with 512 K chip) than on my B2000 with one meg
of chip ram.

   John Wright	Chemistry, B-014, UCSD, La Jolla,  CA 92093
		jmw at chem.ucsd.edu  jwright at ucsd   (619) 534-3049