Sort-of OT: Minix

[Brian Densmore]

I *may* have one laying around. If someone wants one,
I will dig through my stuff to see what it is I have.
Then again I may not have one. All my ISA stuff is boxed
up in the "scavange chips for robotics" section of my
"workshop".

-----Original Message-----
From:	Leo J Mauler [mailto:webgiant at juno.com]
Sent:	Mon 3/8/2004 2:40 AM
To:	kclug at kclug.org
Cc:	
Subject:	Re: Sort-of OT: Minix

On Sun, 7 Mar 2004 18:24:39 -0600 Jonathan Hutchins
<hutchins at tarcanfel.org> writes:
> On Sunday, March 07, 2004 05:36 am, Leo J Mauler wrote:
> 
> > It does appear that MFM/RLL isn't supported, as 
> > the docs only talk about IDE hard drives.  This means 
> > that your IBM PC will be running Minix entirely on 
> > floppies, though you can probably load up Minix on 
> > your 286's hard drive. 
> 
> As usual, your logic escapes me.  Why not just drop an 
> ISA IDE controller in it, and run your CD and HD off it?

There were *8-bit* ISA IDE controllers?  I've only seen the *16-bit* ISA
IDE controllers.

I did a bit of a Google Search and discovered that there is a company
right now which will sell me a new (or at least shrinkwrapped) 8-bit ISA
IDE controller for $29.99 which comes with LBA mode and jumpers for
address selection.  Partition sizes up to 528MB!   One IDE channel with
two devices.

http://www.jdr.com/interact/item.asp?itemno=MCT-LBA

http://www.jdr.com/pdf/mct-lba.pdf

So it would appear that Minix can still be enjoyed on IBM PCs & XTs using
IDE drives. 

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