Problems with 1.1 AMIX

[Keith Gabryelski]

In article <1991Apr25.055026.4278 at digibd.com> rhealey at digibd.com (Rob Healey)
writes:
>	2) MotherBoard serial driver. Enter face filled with disgust
>	mode: Come on guys, this is an AMIGA for crying out loud.
>	There is zero, zilcho, zippo, nadda excuse for a serial port
>	that drops characters at 9600 baud like it's going out of
>	style. What's worse, the serial driver PANIC'D MY SYSTEM from
>	a USER mode kermit, ckermit 5a(169) alpha to be exact, and I
>	wasn't even running as root! I'll admit I'm spoiled when it
>	comes to serial performance due to where I work but come on
>	people. A thousand lashings with a wet noodle on this one. I
>	hope 2.0 has a better serial driver for the motherboard port.

It is difficult to get a unix machine to use a dumb serial device (ie
no character buffering ala the internal serial port on the amiga)
without droppping characters on input.  Unix has never been a real
time operating system and expecting it to service an interrupt before
it damn well wants to is just wishful thinking.

But, infact, this has been fixed.  We now have the internal serial
device running at 153600.  We have solved all system curruption
problems with running the serial device.  This new device driver
will be available in 2.0.

>	   The MOST frustrating thing is that the system panic didn't
>	   do a panic dump on the paging area even though there was
>	   enough blocks to do so. How am I supposed to psychoanalyse
>	   a panic dump with crash when the kernel doesn't have the common
>	   decency to make one? I use crash at work quite a bit so I
>	   know what to do once I get the dump. Can I set any magic
>	   variables to tell AMIX to dump to swap?

This is a problem.  We are looking into solving this.

>	 3) X needs pty 0 free in order to startup??? HUH? I'd
>	    REALLY like to know why this is. I've worked with quite a
>	    few X servers and most recently X386. NONE of them require
>	    a pty, let alone the FIRST pty, to be free in order to work.
>	    I can't wait to hear the reason for this one...

This is a problem with the way AT&T deals with client connections via
a streams interface.  You actually need to remove the file
`/dev/X/server.0'.  We have moved to X11R4 without AT&T enhancements
in 2.0.  You will find X to be much faster and much more reliable.

Pax, Keith


-- 
Keith Gabryelski                                 Advanced Products Group
ag at amix.commodore.com                                 ...!cbmvax!amix!ag