Minix Information Sheet 1.5 ...

Information Sheet 1.5

MINIX 1.5 FEATURES
(IBM, Macintosh, Atari, Amiga and SparcStation 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
ADDITIONAL FEATURES (MACHINTOSH ver.)
  • Up to 3 simultaneous users on one machine
  • RS-232 serial line support with terminal emulation, kermit, zmodem, etc.
  • Runs under Multifinder
  • Includes support for multiple user windows
ADDITIONAL FEATURES (ATARI ST ver.)
  • Up to 2 simultaneous users on one machine
  • RS-232 serial line support with terminal emulation, kermit, zmodem, etc.
  • Support for various real time clocks (Mega, BMS, ICD, Supra, Weide)
ADDITIONAL FEATURES (SUNSPARCSTATION ver.)
  • Native operating system. Runs on bare SparcStation hardware.
  • Up to 3 simultaneous users on one machine
  • RS-232 serial line support with terminal emulation, kermit, zmodem, etc.
  • Multi-windowed display driver
  • ANSI compatible GNU C compiler
HARDWARE REQUIRED

Macintosh

Apple Macintosh Plus, SE, SE/30, II, IIcx, or IIx with at least 1M of RAM. An additional 1M of RAM and a hard disk is strongly recommended. MINIX has been tested primarily with version 6.0 and latter of the Apple system software. Problems may conceivably arise with earlier versions. Any hard disk or display that is supported by the normal Macintosh OS is also supported by MINIX.

Atari

Atari ST or Mega ST with at least 1M of RAM. Although the system will boot with only 512K, you will be very restricted in what you can do. A 720K diskette drive is required to install the software. The older 360K diskette drives are supported, but are not capable of reading the (720K) distribution disks. A hard disk is supported, but is optional. Some of the Supra hard disks are not Atari compatible, which can cause problems. A fix is available from the MINIX Centre.

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. Minix will NOT run on 68020 and larger Amiga systems.

Sparc

Sun SparcStation 1, 1+ or IPC. Does NOT run on a SparcStation 2 and has not yet been tested on a SLC, IPX or ELC. A floppy disk drive is required, a SCSI hard disk is not required but strongly recommended to take full advantage of the system. 4MB RAM is sufficient to run Minix, up to 64MB is supported. The monochrome framebuffer (bw2) as well as a color framebuffer (cg3 or cg6) are supported. SCSI hard disks can be used and even booted from. Ethernet, mouse and audio are not supported. Printers can only be connected via a serial port.
PARTIAL LIST OF MINIX 1.5 UTILITIES
animals ar ascii at atrun backup badblocks banner basename bawk btoa cal cat cdiff cgrep chgrp chip chmem chmod chown clr cmp comm compress cp cpdir crc cron ctags cut date dd de df dhrystone diff diskcheck dosdir dosread doswrite du echo ed elle ex expand expr factor fgrep file find fold fortune fsck gather getlf getty grep gres head ic id ifdef indent inodes kill last leave ln login look lpr ls m4 machine mail make man mined mkdir mkfs mknod modem more mount mref mv nm nroff od passwd paste patch pr prep pretty printenv printroot ps pwd readall readfs recover ref rev rm rmdir roff rz sed shar size sleep sort spell split strings strip stty su sum sync sz tail tar tee term termcap test time touch tr traverse treecmp true tset tsort ttt umount unexpand uniq unshar update users uud uue vi vol wc whatsnew whereis which who whoami width write
PARTIAL LIST OF MINIX 1.5 LIBRARY FUNCTIONS
abort abs access alarm atoi atol bcmp bcopy chmod chown chroot ctermid ctime ctype curses cuserid doprintf dup dup2 fgetc fgets fopen fork fpathconf fprintf fputc fputs fread freopen fseek fstat ftell fwrite getcwd getdents getegid getenv geteuid getgid getutil gtty index ioctl isatty kill link lock lrand lsearch lseek malloc memccpy memchr memcmp memcpy memmove memset message mkdir mkfifo mknod mktemp nlist open opendir pathconf pause peekpoke perror rand read readdir regexp regsub rename setbuf setgid setjmp setuid signal sleep sprintf stat strerror strlen strncat strncmp strncpy strpbrk strrchr strspn system telldir termcap time times tmpnam ttyname umask umount
MINIX BOOK
Minix has been designed as a teaching system. It is easy to learn and maintain. A book describing operating systems in general and how Minix works in particular is available. It can be used as a textbook or for independent study. The bibliographic information is:
  • Title: Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, 2/e
  • Authors: Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Albert S. Woodhull
  • Publisher: Prentice-Hall
SUNOS MINIX
SunOS Minix is a version of Minix that runs as a user process on Sun 3s and 4s running SunOS 4.X. In SunOS Minix, the processor time used is the time allocated to the SunOS process running SunOS Minix, each file system is a SunOS file, and the console is /dev/tty of the SunOS process. Also, it is possible for multiple users to log into a single instance of SunOS Minix.

SunOS Minix runs as a user process, so does not require a dedicated machine. Also, multiple instance of SunOS Minix can run on a single machine simultaneously without interfering with each other.

SunOS Minix is produced by applying a set of patches to Mac Minix 1.5 (both 1.5.10.0 and 1.5.10.1 can be used) or PC Minix 1.5. Also, Atari Minix has been used as the base version by at least one person. The SunOS Minix patches are available via anonymous ftp from csc.canterbury.ac.nz in the file SMX_2_00.TAR_Z in the UNIX directory.

Also in version 2 of SunOS Minix is our first efforts at providing support for Solaris 2.0.

Any enquiries should be sent to paul@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz. There is a SunOS Minix mailing list. Postings and admin requests for the mailing list should be sent to the same address.

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Computer Science department, University of Genoa, Italy
E-mail to: minix@arsenio.disi.unige.it (Minix/P5 Workgroup)