On Oct 24, 2:32pm in "Re: Bob's amazing hard-drive plans...", Si warbled: ] Martin is working on a PC-->SAM bus interface, but the IDE drive ] doesn't need that -- in fact, it *may* only need port decoding logic, ] depending on how many drives stick to the original 8/16 bit ] switchable standard. If not, it requires a couple of Input/output ] latches to convert 16bit data to 8... not a great hassle. ] ] We're gonna release one at about 80 quid which will have a 512k SAM ] OS in it, and assemblers, shells, the works. I'd like a UNIX system on ] it -- any takers?
No. 80 quid is too much. All I want is a Hard Disk interface. If you're going to stick all that stuff on top either make it free or make the shells+assemblers optional. Unix on z80? No point. The best part about UNIX is that you can have lots of users running on an amazingly fast (sometimes :)) machine. There's no chance that unix, with its extreme complexities, would be either useful or usable on Sam. ] (Don't worry about the C compiler -- we'll sort that out later) Now to me, the C compiler is the most important part... especially if you're going to have UN*X on it. A C compiler is really the standard tool for developing software - look at the ST/Amiga utilities for proof (except the direct-coded ones, of course :) of that. There are loads of standard utilities (like vi, for example :) which could be adapted to Sam quite easily if we could get a C compiler to run on it. I'm going to try a cross-compile and then see what sort of hacking it needs to run on Sam... :) ] It's already got CP/M in the ROM. Why??? CP/M is ok as long as you've got nothing better... but surely we can come up with something... And with Pro-Dos around, why put out something that almost certainly won't work as well (unless it _is_ Pro-Dos, in which case I don't want to have to pay for a package I don't want to use)... ] Si Cooke ] ] ] ] ] These ^^^ spaces are really getting me down, si... You get the general gist: I'm not happy with the Sam scene at the moment. It doesn't seem to be moving in the right direction and it's not moving in _any_ direction any speed fast. I'm just about to lay out getting on for a grand for a decent PC, basically because I don't find the Sam useful any more. That's always assuming I do actually _get_ a student loan this year... This time I'm not giving up the sam (like I did with the Amiga, as I'm sure many of you will remember) but unless the Sam gets sorted with a decent processor upgrade and disk upgrade soonish it'll go the same way as the Amiga eventually did (I got bored of playing Pinball Fantasies...) Enough? I think so. Oh yeah... what's happened to the `reply to' line, arnt???? Geoff ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- INET)
