Does anybody no anything about UNIX on an Atari ST
Stefan Alkman
I wonder if anybody knows anything about Unix on Atari ST. I have been
using Unix two years now and i think it is a nice operating system. Now
I'd like to run Unix or something like that on my Atari Mega 2 ST.
I've heard that there are something called 'minix', but i don't
now anything about it. So if someone who has tried something like
that or somthing else who is like Unix, I'd like to hear from YOU!
Stefan Alkman
-----------------------------------------------------------
Stefan Alkman, Bjorkrisv 7 S, S-702 34 OEREBRO, Sweden
Internet: alk...@hexagon.pkmab.se
UUCP: sunic!kullmar!pkmab!hexagon!alkman
Marc Balmer
>I'd like to run Unix or something like that on my Atari Mega 2 ST.
>I've heard that there are something called 'minix', but i don't
A real UNIX doesn't exist for the Atari ST because this computer
lcks a paged-mmu. MINIX, in fact exists, but it is an educational
operating system written completely in the C language and therefore
a little bit slow.
If you want to use a UNIX like operating system on the ST, use OS-9/68k,
it's much more powerful and faster than MINIX is. OS-9 is a multi-
tasking, multi-user and real-time operating system.
OS-9/68000 is an advanced multi-tasking operating system specifically
designed for the Motorola 68000 range of microprocessors and has been
optimised for low cost, high performance applications on Atari ST
personal computers.
It is compact and highly efficient providing extremly high system
throughput on any size system. Professional support material is supplied
in the form of companion programming languages and development tools
which in themselves are a decisive element in unlocking the performance
potential of the 68000.
Besides, OS-9 is Software compatible with UNIX at C source code level.
Regards,
Marc Balmer
L.J.Dickey
> ...
>A real UNIX doesn't exist for the Atari ST because this computer
>lcks a paged-mmu. MINIX, in fact exists, but it is an educational
>operating system written completely in the C language and therefore
>a little bit slow.
>
>If you want to use a UNIX like operating system on the ST, use OS-9/68k,
>it's much more powerful and faster than MINIX is. OS-9 is a multi-
>tasking, multi-user and real-time operating system.
I wonder how this OS-9 stuff compares with IDRIS .
IDRIS has been available for the ST for several years.
It was first developed in Whitesmith c for the IBMPC, and
was ported to the ST by Computer Tools International.
In 1985, UNIX WORLD magazine reportedly praised the IDRIS system for
its ability to run on hardware with no memory management unit (MMU).
I believe that IDRIS provides a HYBRID scheduler that controls its
its multitasking. (*)
I would be intererested to hear from any users about their experience
with IDRIS. I would be more interested to hear comparisons between
IDRIS and OS/9. It is my impression that IDRIS was (at one time) priced
lower than OS/9.
Lee Dickey
(*) My source for this information is ST World, Vol II, Number 6, August, 87.
Carsten Schiers
>I've heard that there are something called 'minix', but i don't
>now anything about it. So if someone who has tried something like
>that or somthing else who is like Unix, I'd like to hear from YOU!
Yes, Minix/ST is now out in its version 1.5.10. It is now compatible in
most parts to its IBM pendent. It includes the source of a UNIX like
operating system and has System 7 compatible system calls as well as a
POSIX library. The standard compiler, which is used to compile it, has
ANSI abilities. This is due to the fact that a real ANSI PC version won't
fit into the magic 64KB.
Well, it made itself to become a very good OS in its V1.5.X versions,
which are not official, but from a nice man called Frans Meulenbroeks.
Therefore you'll not be able to buy it. You only can get V1.1 for about
ECU 130,- and then get any upgrades from someone you might find in
comp.os.minix, where you'll find further upgrades, too. Otherwise you'll
might find anotherone in Sverige there, because everybody is allowed to
make three copies for friends for educational purposes.
You can get the famous GNU full ANSI C compiler, too. Some 100 standard
unix tools are included, e.g. sed, awk, yacc, vi-clones, etc. I like it
very much.
Keep in mind that it is for educational purposes, and therefore in a
very modular design, with message passing between the relevant parts of
the system. Therefore it is not very speedy, but it satisfies.
CU Carsten.
unido!imdm.uke.uni-hamburg.dbp.de!schiers
unido!netmbx!mcshh!schiers
Martin Boening
>Yes, Minix/ST is now out in its version 1.5.10. It is now compatible in
>most parts to its IBM pendent.
[ capabilities description deleted ]
>Well, it made itself to become a very good OS in its V1.5.X versions,
>which are not official, but from a nice man called Frans Meulenbroeks.
>Therefore you'll not be able to buy it.
[ stuff about buying V1.1 deleted ]
If I got it right from Frans' answers to some foulups in crc matching (see
comp.os.minix if you don't know what I'm talking about here) MINIX ST 1.5.10
WILL BE AVAILABLE from PH. (Frans mentioned sending in a set of diskettes
to PH and Mr. Tanenbaum, often called Andy, sent in the PC 1.5.10 version.
HOWEVER, nobody know how long it will take PH to come out with the new version.
If you are a patient fellow, you can save yourself the upgrade hassle and wait
for PH to sell the thing. Supposedly this will come with a new enhanced manual
booklet.
>You can get the famous GNU full ANSI C compiler, too. Some 100 standard
>unix tools are included, e.g. sed, awk, yacc, vi-clones, etc. I like it
>very much.
Just for interest: the GNU C I've got has it's own include files and library
functions. These would probably have to be updated for MINIX ST 1.5.10 since
they now relate to MINIX 1.1. Anybody out there who's already done that?
So long
Martin
--
Email: in the USA -> ...!uunet!philabs!linus!nixbur!mboening.pad
outside USA -> {...!mcvax}!unido!nixpbe!mboening.pad
Paper Mail: Martin Boening, Nixdorf Computer AG, DS-CC22,
Pontanusstr. 55, 4790 Paderborn, W.-Germany
Kenn Goutal
development system, the micro-shell. It sounds, from a previous
article, as if OS/9 is considerably more powerful. I've never
used OS/9 so I can't compare either performance, features, or price.
But I do use the MWC micro-shell and like it well enough.
-- Kenn Goutal
"Ship and travel intermodally; commute electronically!"
UUCP: ke...@rr.MV.COM (...decvax!zinn!rr!kenn)
or: ke...@zinn.MV.COM (...decvax!zinn!kenn)
BIX: kenn
CompuServe: 71117.2572 (PARTI handle == kenn)
TelePath: kenn
L.J.Dickey
>I wonder how this OS-9 stuff compares with IDRIS .
>
>IDRIS has been available for the ST for several years.
> ...
>I would be intererested to hear from any users about their experience
>with IDRIS. I would be more interested to hear comparisons between
>IDRIS and OS/9.
This is just to report that I have had no responses from anyone
who has had their hands on IDRIS. If there were any IDRIS
buyers, they seem not to be on the net now. What a pity.
I had the impression at the time that IDRIS was ahead of
its time.
Someone wrote and asked the address for Whitesmiths.
I do not have it.
Daniel Deimert
>You might also want to consider Mark Williams C and its companion
>development system, the micro-shell. It sounds, from a previous
>article, as if OS/9 is considerably more powerful. I've never
>used OS/9 so I can't compare either performance, features, or price.
>But I do use the MWC micro-shell and like it well enough.
I don't think the MWC "msh" really is what he's looking for (Stefan is
a friend of mine). It has no multi-tasking capabilities (minix has, I
presume?), and it is not compatible with unix on a source code level.
Maybe the Gnu gcc with David B's "RTX" would do the trick.
Someone who knows where we can get hold of gcc and rtx? Are rtx
released to the public domain or is it still sold??
We do not have access to ftp.
--
Daniel Deimert, Fridstavagen 4, S-715 94 Odensbacken, SWEDEN
Internet: dan...@pkmab.se or dan...@hexagon.pkmab.se
Diana Eichert
>>I would be intererested to hear from any users about their experience
>>with IDRIS. I would be more interested to hear comparisons between
>>IDRIS and OS/9.
>
>
>This is just to report that I have had no responses from anyone
>who has had their hands on IDRIS. If there were any IDRIS
>buyers, they seem not to be on the net now. What a pity.
>I had the impression at the time that IDRIS was ahead of
>its time.
>
>Someone wrote and asked the address for Whitesmiths.
>I do not have it.
I had an evaluation copy of IDRIS back in the fall of '87, it was the full
up developers version with the C & Pascal compilers also. I didn't really
do much with it as I did not win the contract that I had proposed using
the ST with IDRIS.
Whitesmith did not do the port for the ST, it was done by a company in the
Seattle area called Computer Tools International. At one of the Comdex's
many years ago Atari made lots of fan fair on how IDRIS was going to be the
official UNIX-type OS for the ST AND then they promptly dropped it.
X-windows Rev. 10 was also ported to IDRIS by Computer Tools. This all
I can remember as this is close to a 2.5 year memory.
diana eichert
Yrisarri Systems
Kevin Maguire
says:
>
>In article <7...@zinn.MV.COM> k...@zinn.MV.COM (Kenn Goutal) writes:
>>You might also want to consider Mark Williams C and its companion
>a friend of mine). It has no multi-tasking capabilities (minix has, I
>presume?), and it is not compatible with unix on a source code level.
>Maybe the Gnu gcc with David B's "RTX" would do the trick.
Better sticking with minix and gcc. Yes minix is multi-tasking and gcc
tex, flex, yacc you name it everything is available for ST minix.
(Not PC though as the PC version has a limit of 64K for text and data
space 128K for big (?) processes). The ST is only limited by memory size.
OF course it's nice to have 4M as minix has no virtual memory, but
my 2.5M system is fine and my older 1M system is okay for one user.
You can have multiple logins via the rs232 and midi ports ;-)
Kevin Maguire
Nsfnet : sa44%liv....@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Uucp : ...!mcsun!ukc!liv-ib!sa44
Juxtaposer
>space 128K for big (?) processes). The ST is only limited by memory size.
>OF course it's nice to have 4M as minix has no virtual memory, but
Disclaimer: I do not claim to know much about the ST architecture but...
I was wondering if there are ANY (preferably transparent) programs out that
will enable an ST to use its hard-drive as a source of virtual-memory: As long
as the software you are using doesn't need to skip all over memory while it is
running, this sure would be a nice way to give yourself an 8-meg machine (4meg
chipped + swap 6meg or so [leaving 2meg for system,etc]) or some other exotic
memory size by utilizing the memory storage most people already have. Or even
give someone with a 1meg-machine 4meg of useable memory. Of course by using
certain replacement policies you can speed up what could be excruciatingly
slow, but for some programs like word processors, I can't see that it would
slow it down that much if most of what is in memory (pages of information) were
read into the ST in bursts.
Would this be so impossible? Or have I been hitting the caffeine just a
little too much ...:)
>
>Kevin Maguire
>
>Nsfnet : sa44%liv....@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
>Uucp : ...!mcsun!ukc!liv-ib!sa44
-Mike Baffoni
Howard Chu
>In article <90150.16...@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK> SA...@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK (Kevin Maguire) writes:
>>space 128K for big (?) processes). The ST is only limited by memory size.
>>OF course it's nice to have 4M as minix has no virtual memory, but
>
>Disclaimer: I do not claim to know much about the ST architecture but...
>
>
> I was wondering if there are ANY (preferably transparent) programs out that
>will enable an ST to use its hard-drive as a source of virtual-memory: As long
>as the software you are using doesn't need to skip all over memory while it is
>running, this sure would be a nice way to give yourself an 8-meg machine (4meg
>chipped + swap 6meg or so [leaving 2meg for system,etc]) or some other exotic
>memory size by utilizing the memory storage most people already have. Or even
>give someone with a 1meg-machine 4meg of useable memory. Of course by using
>certain replacement policies you can speed up what could be excruciatingly
>slow, but for some programs like word processors, I can't see that it would
>slow it down that much if most of what is in memory (pages of information) were
>read into the ST in bursts.
This seems to be impossible on a plain ST. A paged virtual memory system
automatically implies page-faults - traps generated by accessing a virtual
page that isn't currently in real memory. First there's no straightforward
way to distinguish a virtual address from a physical address. This is pretty
much essential, that is, you must be able to keep the two distinct. Second,
assuming you have some way of recognizing an access to a virtual address,
and generating a page fault if the corresponding page isn't in physical
memory, you can't reliably restart the instruction that caused the fault to
occur. (This is *really* a problem if you fault while accessing a memory
mapped I/O device, but we'll leave that alone for now...) Before the advent
of the 68010 with VM support on the chip, there were one or two 68000 based
Unix systems on the market. I think Sun & Apollo used custom designed MMUs,
which probably suspended the CPU in lieu of interrupting it. This implies
that the VM management was handled almost entirely in hardware, with no input
from the OS. Another approach was to use two 68000s running in parallel. On
a page fault, one 68000 is suspended, the other traps & does the necessary
VM magic, the suspended processor is resumed, and the 2nd processor re-syncs
at the following instruction.
So... Unless you can add in some whiz-bang hardware, I don't think you can
get away with it. And even if you can, I don't think it'll run very quickly,
but that's probably not important. The main thing is, you can get better
performance using a chip that was designed to handle VM in the first place.
(68010 on up. 68020 would probably be minimum, though I *think* you can use the
PMMU with the 68010.)
--
-- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan
... the glass is always greener on the side ...
Ryan 'Gozar' Collins
> In article <10...@chaph.usc.edu> baf...@alcor.usc.edu (Juxtaposer) writes:
>>In article <90150.16...@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK> SA...@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK (Kevin Maguire) writes:
>>>space 128K for big (?) processes). The ST is only limited by memory size.
>>>OF course it's nice to have 4M as minix has no virtual memory, but
>>
>>Disclaimer: I do not claim to know much about the ST architecture but...
>>
>>
>> I was wondering if there are ANY (preferably transparent) programs out that
>>will enable an ST to use its hard-drive as a source of virtual-memory: As long
>>as the software you are using doesn't need to skip all over memory while it is
>>running, this sure would be a nice way to give yourself an 8-meg machine (4meg
>
> automatically implies page-faults - traps generated by accessing a virtual
> page that isn't currently in real memory. First there's no straightforward
> So... Unless you can add in some whiz-bang hardware, I don't think you can
> get away with it. And even if you can, I don't think it'll run very quickly,
> but that's probably not important. The main thing is, you can get better
> performance using a chip that was designed to handle VM in the first place.
> (68010 on up. 68020 would probably be minimum, though I *think* you can use the
> PMMU with the 68010.)
> --
> -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan
> ... the glass is always greener on the side ...
Goz
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ryan 'Gozar' Collins ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When you have Super Powers, rlco...@miavx1.BITNET
hard work is easy" rc1d...@miamiu.BITNET
-Dufus from Ducktails
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Yea, right, thats what I said.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fariborz Skip Tavakkolian
>>> ...
>>>I would be intererested to hear from any users about their experience
>>>with IDRIS. I would be more interested to hear comparisons between
>>>IDRIS and OS/9.
>I had an evaluation copy of IDRIS back in the fall of '87, it was the full
>up developers version with the C & Pascal compilers also. I didn't really
>do much with it as I did not win the contract that I had proposed using
>the ST with IDRIS.
>Whitesmith did not do the port for the ST, it was done by a company in the
>Seattle area called Computer Tools International. At one of the Comdex's
>many years ago Atari made lots of fan fair on how IDRIS was going to be the
>official UNIX-type OS for the ST AND then they promptly dropped it.
>X-windows Rev. 10 was also ported to IDRIS by Computer Tools. This all
>I can remember as this is close to a 2.5 year memory.
>diana eichert
Well, Computer Tools and IDRIS-ST are still alive and mostly selling
in Europe. Computer Tools ported the liberated BSD networking software
(TCP/IP and the ``r'' utilities) to IDRIS and IDRIS-ST over a year ago and
the overseas customer for whom the port was done, seems to be very satisfied
with it. Unfortunately nobody else could use this code on the ST/MEGA since
there are no ethernet cards (other than the handful that Computer Tools built)
commercially available for these machines. One could still use the SL/IP
to hookup to VAXen and such.
X11R3 is ported to the IDRIS-ST, but due to the size of X11 not very
realistic for use in this environment. I was thinking of porting the
Bellcore MGR window system to the IDRIS-ST, since it is much smaller and
well suited for ST/MEGAs; I never did continue with it since ATARI ST/MEGA
systems seem to be dying a slow death.
Europe seems to be more interested in doing ``real'' stuff with IDRIS than
U.S., perhaps due to price of computers.
To the original poster:
If you are interested, send for information to this e-mail address:
tiny1!pat@gtenmc
Hope this helps
Skip
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fariborz "Skip" Tavakkolian -of- Automated Cellular Engineering
Currently consulting -at- GTE Telecom, Inc. Bothell, Wa
Mail: tiny1!fst@mcgp1 -or- fst@gtenmc