To: rmh AT interlaced DOT net Cc: mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca, jfudge AT adams DOT berk DOT net, opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net Subject: Re: [opendos] BAD Filesystems Message-ID: <19970225.192150.6447.0.editor@juno.com> References: From: editor AT juno DOT com (Bruce Morgen) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 19:22:24 EST Sender: owner-opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net Precedence: bulk On 25 Feb 1997 17:20:20 -0500 Richard Hoskins writes: >mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca writes: > >> Minix is a UNIX operating system that would run on 286's and >> possibly even 8088's if I'm not mistaken. It had its own filesystem >> as well. Linux was originally designed (in Linus's own words) to "be >> a better Minix than Minix". > >The free Minix (2.0) requires IDE drives and an AT bus, given that, >an 8088 will run it. > This is what the FAQ seems to imply. It apparently isn't true. >If you have an XT, you need an earlier version (1.5), which is still >hoarded by Prentice-Hall. > I have gotten 2.0 up and running on two XT architecture machines, the biggest problems I ran into were the 360K floppy drives (I had to use the special "tiny" disk images). Minix seems to interact with hard drives at the BIOS level, so any hard drive support that is BIOS- intrinsic appears to be detected just dandy. My preliminary surmise is that Minix 2.0 doesn't really need an IDE drive (MFM, RLL, ESDI, and even some SCSI controllers "look" the same when accessed via BIOS) or an AT bus. For the record, the two XTish systems I used were an Ampro Little Board PC with built-in SCSI and an ancient full-height 80 MB CDC SCSI drive and a Leading Edge Model D with a Perstor ARLL controller and a Seagate ST-138 MFM drive. Both systems had the aforementioned single 360K floppy drive, PC-convention serial and parallel ports, and Hercules video.