Subject: Re: Bob's amazing hard-drive plans... On <26 Oct 94 13:01> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
IC> Aargh, I've just been bitten by the IC> "no reply-to line" bug. hehe.. I'd be stuck out of the exchange as at no point during the subscription process is the FQDN for submissions revealed! For those that read this list but don't know the address to post to it's:- [email protected] IC> Never mind, here is my message again... IC> On 26 Oct 94 00:21:00 +0000, Johnathan Taylor said: >> Most people seem to view the sam as >> just a speccy with more ram and better >> graphics:-( IC> Isn't it? :-) Nope it's a disc-based z80 machine with builtin graphics and a flexible enough ram/rom banking system to allow it to run any portable z80 operatings system from the humble speccy, cpm/m2 or 3, probably turbodos and even unix! >> I think the crappy >> machine-code DOS interface is one reason why >> most applictions are totally ram-bound, and because most >> applications are ram-bound, disk based utils like >> ARC,LHA,ZIP arn't usable... IC> That is perhaps more to do with the IC> fact that floppy disks are a bit slow IC> for running disk-intensive programs IC> (plus you can't actually get a great IC> deal of stuff on a 780K disk). Also, That's another moan I have, I hate the Disciple format on the sam, it was a bad enough idea on the disciple! drives would reliably read&write 84+ tracks but the stupid fixed allocation map mean't that the extra space cannot be used within the file-system! And to restrict the Sam Ram-drives to the same format restrictions was ludicrous IMHO who needs all those 780k ram-drives? a single ram-drive upto 4meg in size would've been MUCH better for real data handling! Most other serious operating systems are disc based, even if the larger memory models use a substantial disc-buffer in ram to reduce drive accesses in a multi-tasking enviroment! IC> perhaps it's just because no one has IC> written those things yet. Personally IC> I'd like to see a gzip for Sam, and I IC> may write one if I ever get round to it. AFAIK gzip is useless without tar to make sam-dos filetypes a generic serial file! LHARC could be used to do that much simpler and in less space and in one process! >> LOAD d1;a$ >> the ; has to be used as a seperator or it screws up! >> Of course if the +D syntax is >> duplicated entirely then using:- >> LOAD D*;a$ IC> Why doesn't he just go the whole hog and have IC> LOAD *"d";1;"a_file" IC> ? :-) Ya never know, he might've tried;-) >> I'm begining to think that a full-blown >> banked unix would be MOST useful! IC> No it wouldn't. The Sam is slow IC> enough as it is, and besides a "proper" IC> Unix requires a hardware memory IC> management unit. Unix also requires a IC> large mass storage device. 1) If you're after high speed to compete with 66MHz DX2 then a z80 is always going to disapoint! 2) There's nothing non-unix about total swapping to a swap-files on a ram-drive. 3) My Sam has 4Meg external Ram fitted and functioning! So even without my IDE-HD interface and drive I'd still have plenty of space for unix to run in! Obviously the multi-task facility would be functional but NOT for general use. It'd normally only get used if say a remote user was logged in and the operator (me) needed to do somthing important! otherwise it'd be only running a single task but using the unix parent/child processing to seriously simplify the linking of programs actions to make a powerful if not blindingly fast system:-) Anyway as I'm a lone hacker I doubt that any of the operating systems I devise will ever be run on other peoples sams anyway, so I doubt it'll ever be somthing that needs to be *sold* to the masses:-) CYL. Johnathan. ___ Olms 1.60 [Evaluation] -- |Fidonet: Johnathan Taylor 2:2501/307 |Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.
