Thread View: net.micro.atari
4 messages
4 total messages
Started by cc
Sun, 07 Jul 1985 17:47
UNIX on Atari ST or Commodore Amiga?
Author: cc
Date: Sun, 07 Jul 1985 17:47
Date: Sun, 07 Jul 1985 17:47
11 lines
1254 bytes
1254 bytes
With the advent of relatively cheap read-only storage (i.e the CD ROM), wouldn't it now be practical to run UNIX on some of these cheap-but-powerful personal computers that are coming down the pike? Supposedly a CD can hold about 550 megabytes, so it would be easy to put the UNIX manual pages and system programs (kernel, ls, cat, yacc, etc.) onto a CD (an audio CD now sells for about $15-$20, so bug-fixes and upgrades shouldn't be expensive), then use a small hard-disk drive or even one of the new fast mini-floppies for the rest of the system that can't be put in ROM. Does anybody know if this is in the cards?
Re: UNIX on Atari ST or Commodore Amiga?
Author: Steve McIntosh
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 1985 17:36
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 1985 17:36
18 lines
1759 bytes
1759 bytes
> Supposedly a CD can hold about 550 megabytes, so it would be easy to > put the UNIX manual pages and system programs (kernel, ls, cat, yacc, etc.) > onto a CD (an audio CD now sells for about $15-$20, so bug-fixes and > upgrades shouldn't be expensive), then use a small hard-disk drive or > even one of the new fast mini-floppies for the rest of the system that > can't be put in ROM. The main problem with the CD/ROM is that the worst case access time is over 1 second. On second thought, perhaps its not such a problem people used to a heavily loaded vax might see a performance improvement. I am sure that someone, somewhere, is going to put some flavor of UNIX on the new 68000 machines. Most of the people that are considering it complain that the memory management on the ST/Amiga is too simple for the kind of UNIX system they want. A good alternative for the ST might be OS-9 (level 1) which as far as I can tell has all the things I like about UNIX, and the Amiga is supposed to come with a multi tasking OS (called Intuition) built in.
Re: UNIX on Atari ST or Commodore Amiga?
Author: Daryl Monge
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1985 02:54
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1985 02:54
10 lines
913 bytes
913 bytes
The CD-ROM seeks fairly slow. Add in the fact that the UNIX file system is not notably fast and CD-ROM have limited use as OS disks. However, a staging of programs to a fast disk as they were used (sort of like a UNIX Sticky bit) might be feasible. It would be a fun hack. Daryl Monge AT&T Bell Labs Holmdel, NJ ...!ihnp4!piggy!dlm
Re: UNIX on Atari ST or Commodore Amiga
Author: preece
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1985 15:45
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1985 15:45
20 lines
1514 bytes
1514 bytes
> The CD-ROM seeks fairly slow. Add in the fact that the UNIX file > system is not notably fast and CD-ROM have limited use as OS disks. > However, a staging of programs to a fast disk as they were used (sort > of like a UNIX Sticky bit) might be feasible. It would be a fun hack. ---------- Slow by comparison to a floppy? As long as we're only talking about using it for ROM storage of commands and documentation, that shouldn't be a problem. The transfer rate ought to be fine, it's just seek that's slow. For those purposes it shouldn't matter much if it takes a couple of seconds to position itself. The staging idea is good, though, especially if you're using a fast disk for paging: the CD-ROM could pre-load a whole image to the fast disk and then page in pieces as needed (Z-magic). -- scott preece gould/csd - urbana ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece
Thread Navigation
This is a paginated view of messages in the thread with full content displayed inline.
Messages are displayed in chronological order, with the original post highlighted in green.
Use pagination controls to navigate through all messages in large threads.
Back to All Threads