Amiga.org

Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Failure on January 14, 2005, 10:02:39 PM

Title: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 14, 2005, 10:02:39 PM
Here's all I will say about this for now, until I know whether I should really be excited or not :-D

Code: [Select]

failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ file 00
00: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ cat 00 | cpio -i
5 blocks
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ ls
00  02  04  06  08  10  12  14  16  18  20  22  24  26  28    Version
01  03  05  07  09  11  13  15  17  19  21  23  25  27  List  seglist
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ cat Version    
Amiga UNIX Version 2.1
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ cat List  
pkg=core     size=27124  name="Amiga Unix essential components"
pkg=bsd      size=3406   name="Berkeley compatiblity package"
pkg=Cdev     size=21182  name="C Development system"
pkg=lp       size=4536   name="Lp print spooler"
pkg=man      size=13702  name="On-line manual pages"
pkg=net      size=6138   name="Networking commands and daemons"
pkg=public   size=15498  name="Shareware and public domain utilities"
pkg=sysadm   size=13668  name="System administration utility"    zcat=y
pkg=terminfo size=4780   name="Support for non-Amiga terminals"
pkg=text     size=3278   name="Text processing tools"
pkg=uucp     size=1894   name="Uucp networking software"
pkg=Xcore    size=16562  name="X Window System essential components"
pkg=Xbasic   size=1536   name="X Window System basic components"
pkg=olcore   size=4774   name="Open Look"
pkg=Xtras    size=18816  name="X extras"                         zcat=y opt=y
pkg=Xdev     size=5870   name="X Window System development tools"       opt=y
pkg=oldev    size=4330   name="Open Look development tools"             opt=y
pkg=conf     size=6140   name="Kernel configuration package"            opt=y
pkg=emacs    size=15906  name="GNU Emacs editor"                 zcat=y opt=y
pkg=games    size=4726   name="Games"                                   opt=y
pkg=amigasrc size=2516   name="Amiga source code"                zcat=y opt=y
pkg=emacsrc  size=22956  name="GNU emacs source code"            zcat=y opt=y
pkg=gnusrc   size=44578  name="Other GNU source code, part 1"    zcat=y opt=y
pkg=gnusrc2  size=76224  name="Other GNU source code, part 2"    zcat=y opt=y
pkg=pubsrc   size=37782  name="Shareware and public domain source" zcat=y opt=y
pkg=Xsource  size=102364 name="X window source code - X11R4"     zcat=y opt=y
pkg=X11r5src size=127432 name="X window source code - X11R5"     zcat=y opt=y
failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$


Could be an interesting weekend here...
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: mjg59 on January 15, 2005, 12:35:35 AM
Ooh, excellent. I don't suppose you have copies of the drivers from the Gateway! CD as well, do you?
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Matt_H on January 15, 2005, 01:23:35 AM
Finally found one, I see! ;-)
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 15, 2005, 03:00:19 AM
Yes, finally found it.  A nice German visitor to the Wiki asked me some questions, and I found out he had a copy of the 2.1 tape...I helped him out with the 2.1c patch disk, and he helped me out in kind :-)

Right now I am being thwarted however, I have no working SCSI drive to hook to my Linux box to transfer the install image.  So I am going to have to yank one out of one of the 3000s :-/  Hopefully it'll be worth it.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 15, 2005, 05:28:26 AM
More problems.  Turns out my PCI SCSI controller was bad, so I need to use an Amiga to write the image to disk.  I elected to use the AMIX box, so I started to copy the cpio file I made over only to get this message much later:

[color=0000ff]rcp: ./amix_2.1.cpio: File too large[/color]

Here is what was on the AMIX box:

[color=0000ff]# ls -l amix*
-rw-r--r--   1 failure  other    268435456 Jan 15 00:07 amix_2.1.cpio[/color]

Turns out that is precisely 256 megs.  So rather than start over I did this:

[color=0000ff]failure@kos-mos:~/amix_2.1/Tape_Amiga_Unix_2.1$ dd if=amix_2.1.cpio bs=1024k of=amix_part_2.cpio skip=256[/color]

...and I'm going to dd them onto the drive one after the other.  I hope I don't make a mistake.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 15, 2005, 03:50:47 PM
And another reply to myself.  Installation was successful (I let it go overnight).  I think that anybody using AMIX will be very pleased with this upgrade.  Having used it a whole 15 minutes now, these are the additions I have noticed so far.

* bash shell (!!! tab completion woohoo!)
* perl4
* netnews
* sources for x11r5
* sources for gcc2.0 (default compiler still 1.4)
* audio driver present in kernel

I have also noticed that the system is more responsive under load than before, particularly during heavy network I/O.  NFS transfers seem to be taking place much faster.  Things that took nearly an hour to copy now take minutes.

I have attempted to install the 2a patch disk (brings AMIX up to the latest so-called "2.1c" revision, if I am reading Usenet correctly).  This depends on package management to be present.  I changed all the checks for packages to true in the patch script, and was able to install the software updates, but kernel compilation failed.  I am right now working on restoring the package management system so I can use the disk properly, but I am able to use the updated software just fine.

After using this for such a short time, I can already agree with the statement that 2.03 is buggy as hell in comparison to 2.1.  2.1 is indeed very pleasant so far.  Glad that a piece of history won't be lost forever.

*edit* network speed test just finished, I am getting 160KB/sec now via nfs, before it was between 50-60KB/sec.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 16, 2005, 07:45:59 AM
YEY!  Trying to Download now.  Seems to be a problem with the download.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: patrik on January 17, 2005, 04:53:33 AM
@Failure:

Great work making it publically available!


/Patrik
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 17, 2005, 05:32:05 AM
Thanks :-)  I've been inspired to get back to work on the wiki site as well, so I have been cleaning up things and adding new info and files lately.  Since mmhart.com is down I'm the only one left.

I'm mostly happy that AMIX did not suffer the fate of, say, Xenix, and vanish completely.  The only media that seems to be lost is the original 1.0, and 1.1.  And having used 1.1, no big loss there!
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: gregthecanuck on January 17, 2005, 07:23:40 AM
Wow this is pretty cool!

I have an A3000UX lurking in the closet somewhere.  I don't think it had the latest 2.1 but when I get a chance I will dig it out and see.

C= screwed up big time dropping the ball on this product.


Cheers!
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: patrik on January 17, 2005, 02:38:27 PM
@Failure:

Do you know what has happened to mmhart.com?


@gregthecanuck:

You might have heard this already, but it never hurts talking about it - if you haven't checked the RTC battery in your A3000UX, you better dig it up from your closet ASAP and make sure it havent leaked and started corroding the motherboard.

Here are some more information about this issue:
link 1 (http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/batt.html)
link 2 (http://amiga.serveftp.net/battery.html)



/Patrik
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Karlos on January 17, 2005, 03:42:59 PM
Stop it all of you! Your'e making me want to try unixy stuff :-x
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 17, 2005, 10:23:15 PM
@patrik:

No, I do not know.  I looked at netcraft for an outage or if the server info changed, but uptime info wasn't available.  I sent an email to Mark inquiring as to the status of the Amiga UNIX info, but haven't received a response.

@Karlos

Do you fear the UNIX?  ;-)
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Karlos on January 18, 2005, 12:42:56 AM
Quote

Failure wrote:

@Karlos

Do you fear the UNIX?  ;-)


I phear it fully! Actually used to use an old BSD back at Uni on some of the NMR hardware, but never had to tinker too much.

MacOSX's bash shell is about as close as I get to it nowadays.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Matt_H on January 18, 2005, 01:36:42 AM
Hey, is the 2.1 version of SetClock still Y2K non-compliant?
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 18, 2005, 02:26:08 AM
Quote

Matt_H wrote:
Hey, is the 2.1 version of SetClock still Y2K non-compliant?


Does the sun still rise in the east?

But it does do a lot of things better.  Compilation for instance.  I am merrily compiling my way through gcc 2.95.3, getting much farther than in 2.03.  I had to fix a bug in collect2.c myself, but now it is chugging along having compiled that properly.  I doubt it will be the last error and I'm not really hopeful it will go all the way through, but the stage1 compiler has now completed and it is compiling stage2 using the newly built gcc 2.95.3 :-)

If this works, in addition to C, C++ and Objective C, we will have Java(!) on AMIX via gcj.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 18, 2005, 03:22:37 AM
I did manage to get the PDF AMIX Manuals off of mmhart if anyone ever needs them just in case the site doesn't come back up.

I'm working on compiling Apache on 2.1 so I'm hopeful that I will have a full time AMIX web server running Soon(tm).  

Oh boy!  My A3000 running UNIX, and my A4000 running OS3.9.  I'm in Classic heaven.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Minuous on January 18, 2005, 01:02:24 PM
Now we just need the AMIX SDK...

...because I still need to find out the meanings of the AMIX bits in the battery-backed memory...
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 18, 2005, 03:54:36 PM
@Minuous

Have you tried the Amiga Technical Reference book series?  I remember digging through there and finding out way more than I wanted to know about the Amiga.  Just a thought.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 19, 2005, 05:57:49 AM
@Failsure

Can you add a section for the UNIX manuals that MMHART scanned?  I will upload the one incomplete archive I have.  It's better than nothing.  I also have the marketing brochure for the 3000UX scanned.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 19, 2005, 05:43:35 PM
Sure Dal.  I'll even do one better and give you upload rights to it as well ;-)  I'm kinda sad that site is gone, it has been around a long time.

Were you able to get Apache compiled on your system?  Just wondering how that webserver is coming along.

I just got a cleaning tape for my A3070 drive, and I'm waiting on getting ten of the 6150 tape carts.  I bought them used very cheap, but I won't get them until February.  Once I do I'm going to try and make a working 2.1 tape.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 20, 2005, 02:31:44 AM
I have tried to make the tape with my 3070 already.  It writes out OK (after I have renamed all the 01,02,03 files to the files in seglist) but when I use the boot floppies I get read error on the tape before it even loads in the first package.  I'm trying again with the bs=32k statement removed from dtdist.sh.  I will make two tapes just to be sure.  I blew up the AMIX install when I tried this so I've had to reinstall a bare bones version to try again.

Wish me luck on attempt two.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 20, 2005, 03:17:43 AM
Yeah, I read on Usenet that the blocksize specification screwed up the read.  Let me know how it turns out without it.  If you install with the tape successfully, I believe you should be able to patch your system to 2.1c without the problems HD hack people are having.

My tape drive was absolutely filthy by the way.  Good thing I cleaned it before using it...

*edit* if you continue having problems, try zeroing out the tape before writing the cpio files to it with the script.  Especially with old tapes this seems to help sometimes.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: odin on January 20, 2005, 04:35:14 AM
@you guys
Good stuff keeping C= history like this alive!
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 20, 2005, 04:36:42 AM
Since I can say I'm not very savy when it comes to tapes how does one zero out a tape?  I tried mt erase, but that's not supported.

Also, where did you locate a cleaning tape?
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 20, 2005, 04:46:52 AM
Thanks odin.  It's been a lot of fun I must admit.  All of this Amiga stuff running around here.  :-)  Getting Amix 2.1 up and running has been an obsession of mine for over two years now.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 20, 2005, 05:27:52 AM
Ok.  Assuming you are using the scripts from the wiki site, they are wrong O_o

Change the dd in dtdist.sh so it says:

[color=0000ff]dd if=$name of=/dev/rmt/4hn bs=32k[/color]

4n is 120MB mode.  That works for every release of AMIX except 2.1, because 2.1 is huge and needs a 150MB tape.

I am seeing conflicting reports on Usenet as to whether the "32k" is good or bad.  Apparently it is the blocksize used on the original 2.1 tape.

Second thing, to zero out anything (tape, disk, or to make a big empty file) use /dev/zero:

[color=0000ff]dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rmt/4hn[/color]

I got my cleaning tape from these guys (http://www.colamco.com/).  Part number 343032, cheapest I could find it.

Better luck now that you can fix the script :-)
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 20, 2005, 05:33:22 AM
OK>  I'll try the above if this run doesn't work.  At this point I'm running the tape that I created without the 32k and it's had no read errors.  It's not done installing but at least it actually started this time.  

/me crosses fingers....

Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 20, 2005, 05:38:30 AM
Hmm.  I wonder if you can avoid destroying your installation every time you try this :-/

I will post the 2.1 installation script on the site, the tape extraction part is near the end (search for QUIETCPIO).  If you set the environment variables accordingly you should be able to "fake" the install into a temporary directory without blowing away your working install.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 20, 2005, 06:41:28 AM
Well, the install failed.  I didn't modify the tape create script with the 150MB mode (I didn't see that post until the install was running) but here is what happened:

I created the tape
Installed off of floppies
The tape kicked in and ran but every package following core fails with unexpected-end-of-archive....  

I've tried running amixpkg from the working core install to get the net package, and I get the same result.  None of the packages are installing after core.    How annoying.  Is it possible that the packages are out of order somehow on the tape?  This is a bit over my head now.  I've never had luck with tapes.

Is there any way to install the net package so I can at least use this install to make more tapes?
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 20, 2005, 11:27:36 PM
Well, it is certainly possible that they are the wrong order, but I think that they are in the correct order, numbered at least.  You can list the cpio files and see if the names make sense given what they are in the seglist:

[color=0000ff]cat filename | cpio -itc | more[/color]

Not having a tape cart I can only guess, but my guess is that if you use the 150MB tape device and 32k blocksize it should work.  But I have seen a post saying that 32k blocksize breaks the read so...who knows until you try.

If the tape is wrong I doubt you can install the net package from it.  But maybe you could make a new cpio image with just core and net, and use that instead of installing everything in the whole world :-)
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 21, 2005, 12:37:17 AM
Must... not.... install....... AGAIN>>>!>!>!>!>  AAAAAAAAA!!!!

I'm going to do the hack install again to make different kinds of tapes this time.  I will make this work if it's the last thing I do.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: on January 21, 2005, 01:45:53 AM
Excuse for asking a possibly stupid qestion, but wouldn't it just be easier if failure just created a tarball of a working installation?
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 21, 2005, 02:28:52 AM
There are no stupid questions ;-)  You would be excused for thinking that.  To sum up the current state:

* AMIX 2.01, 2.03, and 2.1 are installable via an HD hack method that bypasses the need for a tape drive and installation tape using modified boot floppies and the tape archives dd'd directly to a hard disk.

* The HD hack has the side effect of never initializing the package management system, and maybe some other things.  This isn't really clear since nobody I/we know has installed using the tape: we have no reference point.

* Package management didn't matter in 2.01 and 2.03.  Everything was already installed, and there never were pre-packaged AMIX binaries, and there were no patch disks issued for 2.01 and 2.03.  2.1 is different, since it has a patch disk.

* 2.1's patch disk brings it to patch level 2a, or so-called "2.1c".  It checks for installed packages to determine what files to install, which fails with the HD hack method.  I forced the checks to "true" and forced all the patches to install, however the kernel failed to compile, which broke some system utilities upgraded by the patch.

Clear as mud?  :-)  So we are trying to recreate the install tape using some scripts I dug up on Usenet.  Hopefully Dal will figure it out before I get my tapes in a couple of weeks.  From that point, we can look at what a properly installed system looks like compared to an HD hack system, and make the necessary changes to the HD hack installation image.  And those of us with A3070 drives can avoid the HD hack altogether!
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 21, 2005, 06:41:54 AM
dd if=$name of=/dev/rmt/4hn bs=32k in dtdist.sh...

Works!  I'm three packages into the tape install and going strong.  By tomorrow I should know if it is fully working.  
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Crusher on January 21, 2005, 09:15:30 AM
@Failure, you have a PM  :-)
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 21, 2005, 05:50:19 PM
YEY!

UNIX(r) System V Release 4.0

login: root
Password:
UNIX System V Release 4.0 AT&T Amiga (Unlimited)
Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988 AT&T
All Rights Reserved
Last login: Tue Jan 20 10:45:24 on console
        System V Release 4.0            Amiga Version 2.1p2a
#
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 21, 2005, 09:16:33 PM
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 21, 2005, 10:20:13 PM
During the compile of the kernel on the patch disk there were many warnings, but I didn't get a failure.  I'm working on Apache next.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: odin on January 22, 2005, 12:06:32 AM
So you guys didn't have original install tapes? Where did you find AMIX then? Spread around on the interweb? Or trying to reverse engineer a tape from a working AMIX install on a HD?
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 22, 2005, 08:42:55 AM
@odin

I put the image of someone elses tape back on a tape here.  That image was obtained by Failsure.  

@failsure
Where did you get the source for NTP?  I'd like to compile that next.  Web is up an running but there is nothing there yet.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Crusher on January 22, 2005, 02:33:57 PM
Is it possible that you´ll put an AMIX install on a CD in the future?  :-)
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 22, 2005, 06:27:32 PM
@Dal

Got it here (http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Main/SoftwareDownloads).  4.20 is the version I was able to compile, but since 2.03's nameservice stuff was wonky I never really got it to work right.  2.1 isn't having those same problems.  And congrats on getting Apache compiled!

@Crusher

Well, you could put the stuff on CD, but since AMIX cannot read CDs it would be a bit futile :-/
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 23, 2005, 12:13:41 AM
OK.  Downloaded it and ran configure:
configure: error: sources are in ., but `cd .' does not work
Ever seen that b4?  cd . dess work....  Hmmm...
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 23, 2005, 12:42:59 AM
Yeah, seen that one.  If you get that error, make a build directory in there, and run configure from there.  ie:

mkdir build && cd build && ../configure +your config arguments
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 25, 2005, 07:17:19 PM
I'm running that as requested (though I changed build to buildit cause there is already a build dir), but I can see this happening over and over during configure:

../configure[1698]: pwd: cannot access parent directories

Configure is still running though.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 26, 2005, 03:00:56 AM
Hiya, are you trying to run all your configures in sh?  Try running them in ksh.  I seem to recall having better luck with the "can't do cd ." with that in 2.03.  I will try the NTP stuff once I get done failing at compiling Lynx :-)

One of the "exciting" things about AMIX is that things fail to compile in different ways based on what compiler I use.  It's actually rather amusing.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 26, 2005, 04:54:29 AM
I have noticed that too.  I did update the Wiki for NTP.  It looks like it needs automake 1.7 which needs Perl5.  Ug.  I'm out of my league on this one. :lol:
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: gregthecanuck on January 26, 2005, 07:49:31 AM
You won't believe this but I just found my AcuCOBOL demo disk for AMIX.

Here is what is on the label:

     acucobol/85
     COMMODORE AMIGA 3000UX
     Evaluation Version 1.5.4
     CPIO -cB format
     Low Density Disk #1

Anybody interested?



Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 27, 2005, 04:47:35 AM
Quote

Dalamar wrote:
I have noticed that too.  I did update the Wiki for NTP.  It looks like it needs automake 1.7 which needs Perl5.  Ug.  I'm out of my league on this one. :lol:


Dude, what were you doing?  Configure ran fine for me?

Compilation is progressing and I expect it to complete since it did on 2.03, hopefully the result will work better (2.03 compiled one could not figure out DNS names)

@greg

That's really interesting, I was under the impression that there was zero third-party software for AMIX.  Do you think you could upload that to the wiki site for us to play with?
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: gregthecanuck on January 27, 2005, 09:52:31 AM
Quote

Failure wrote:

That's really interesting, I was under the impression that there was zero third-party software for AMIX.  Do you think you could upload that to the wiki site for us to play with?


Unfortunately at the moment I don't have my A3000UX running with AMIX.  On top of that I haven't yet found the instructions or possible disk 2/3?  Once I have the whole kit/kaboodle I can mail it off to you.

I will pipe back in here with an update.  I am slowly unpacking my way through a *mountain* of stuff, part of which is ancient Amiga odds and ends.


Cheers!
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 27, 2005, 02:22:15 PM
@greg

No rush, I don't even know Cobol...although back in the day I had a Cobol compiler for C64.

@dal

Well I need to recompile it, because it thought I was cross-compiling and it prepended "amix-" to all the filenames.  It's because I spec'd build/host/target as "amix" to configure, which works for most everything, but it detected them as "m68k-unknown-sysv4".  I guess I'll just spec the full m68k-cbm-sysv4 from now on.  But take a look at this:

[color=0000ff]
# ./amix-ntpdate timex.peachnet.edu
Looking for host timex.peachnet.edu and service ntp
host found : ns2.usg.edu
27 Jan 09:17:09 amix-ntpdate[29836]: step time server 131.144.4.9 offset 31622915.058509 sec
[/color]

It does DNS lookups properly :-D
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: DethKnight on January 27, 2005, 08:29:04 PM
am I reading that avatar correctly?
9697 days uptime?

(if so, that has my 15 hours beat by a certain margin) :-D
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 28, 2005, 05:20:10 PM
Yes, 9697 days...see, my 3000UX has no battery, so when it comes up it thinks it is sometime in 1970.  I reset the date using the date command, and AMIX's rather simple-minded uptime mechanism just went ahead and assumed the system had been up that long :-)  A reboot sets things right again, as long as I don't turn the power off.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Dalamar on January 29, 2005, 04:33:48 PM
@Failure

Perhaps I don't know what I'm doing...  :-)  

I'm out of town (actually near your coast) so nothing will be happening with my progress for a few days.  I'll try again when I have time.  
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 29, 2005, 06:45:12 PM
When you get back, you'll have bash 3.0 waiting for you.  I fixed some bad defines and it compiled just now (literally 2 mins ago).  Woo!

No such luck with gcc beyond 2.7.2.3, all have assembler errors building stage1 libgcc2.a.  And that's after I fixed collect2.c.

*edit*

[color=0000ff]gcc -L./builtins -L./lib/readline -L./lib/readline -L./lib/glob -L./lib/tilde -L
./lib/malloc -L./lib/sh    -O2 -o bash shell.o eval.o y.tab.o general.o make_cmd
.o print_cmd.o  dispose_cmd.o execute_cmd.o variables.o copy_cmd.o error.o expr.
o flags.o jobs.o subst.o hashcmd.o hashlib.o mailcheck.o trap.o input.o unwind_p
rot.o pathexp.o sig.o test.o version.o alias.o array.o arrayfunc.o braces.o brac
ecomp.o bashhist.o bashline.o  list.o stringlib.o locale.o findcmd.o redir.o pco
mplete.o pcomplib.o syntax.o xmalloc.o -lbuiltins -lsh -lreadline -lhistory -lte
rmcap -lglob -ltilde -lmalloc lib/intl/libintl.a   -lsocket -lnsl -ldl
ls -l bash
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root      734308 Jan 29 13:43 bash
size bash
501144 + 28364 + 22112 = 551620
root@motoko:/usr/src/bash-3.0/build# ./bash
bash-3.00#[/color]

Had to fix the bolded thing, defined getwd/getcwd wrong for AMIX.
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on January 29, 2005, 09:35:21 PM
Replying to myself...AMIX uses a deprecated trap designation in /etc/profile so CTRL-C stops working with bash 3.0, I added a section like this for bash shells:

[color=0000ff]if [ "$BASH" ]
then
  PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '
  trap - 2 3
fi
[/color]

Setting it this way keeps the deprecated form intact for the old shells.  The PS1 line isn't necessary, it sets my prompt to "Debian style" the way I likes it :-)
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on February 01, 2005, 07:16:06 PM
Well, wanted to resurrect this thread again to let you know that I was able to compile a web browser (Lynx) on AMIX after fixing a few compile problems.
In fact I am using it to enter this post.  So, I can verify that amiga.org is ok for text-only browsers :-)
I have been able to get lots of new stuff compiled for 2.1, but a web browser was something I really wanted.  Woo!
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: ltstanfo on March 02, 2005, 03:45:45 PM
Failure,

All this talk about AMIX has made my interested to see if I can convert my old A3000 into a UX machine.  I have my old AMIX tapes and floppy disks but never got around to trying to install them.  I also have an old A3070 drive that came with the AMIX set.

At the moment, I am trying to resurrect my old A3000 (it's been in the closet for quite some time..no battery damage) and plan to load WB3.1 on it.  Is there anything else I need to do before I attempt to load AMIX?

Thanks,
ltstanfo
Title: Re: Exciting but cryptic announcement for AMIX enthusiasts
Post by: Failure on March 03, 2005, 05:46:13 AM
Hey, well no not really in your case.  If you can make a new tape (or verify yours still works) before you install you can save yourself a lot of grief.  I actually made three copies before attempting it myself.  You may want to run a cleaning tape through the drive too...mine was filthy.

IIRC, the install script won't go stomp on AmigaDOS partitions, but be careful during the install process :-)

As an aside, there has been some behind the scenes activity on my end re: AMIX.  I have the contents of the mmhart.com site (manuals, etc), as well as the X11R5 patches for AMIX, and a variety of other things.  Another individual has provided scripts to create install tapes from Linux (verified working).  He is going to help me revamp the site a little bit, and for my part I plan to get the files uploaded by this weekend.