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#Amiga Unix?
7 messages in this thread
Sorry all — I didn't mean to start a social/political upheaval between
programmers here, I just wanted to see if anyone else thought we might
actually see a Unix (or GNU, etc.) for Amiga. Judging from the response, I
would guess there are either many people interested in the idea or many
people disappointed with AmigaDOS, or both. Oh, well, let's just try to stay
on the subject from now on. Now, any new views, news, etc., anyone? = Brent
There was a time when I would have thought Unix on an Amiga was the ultimate
dumbness. Unix is an anachronism dating back to the days of 110-baud TTY's,
while AmigaDOS has many elegant and modern design features.
However, as I try to actually use AmigaDOS I'm rapidly coming around to the
conclusion that, while the concept of AmigaDOS may be elegant in the extreme,
I'd love to have ANYTHING else … I'd even love CPM68. My complaint is the
speed. With all the power of the 68000 chip, there has to be a faster way to
do a DIR!
At the moment I'm consoling myself with the reminder that I was also pretty
unhappy with CP/M when I first began using it. Times have changed there …
partly because I got smarter and learned how to use it better, and partly
because I no longer use any of the CP/M utilities. PIP, ASM, DDT, ED, STAT
have all bitten the dust. I don't even use the builtins, DIR, REN, ERA, and
TYPE anymore. No doubt that day will come for the Amiga, too. I pray that
it's soon.
Jack, From what I understand, the reason a DIR takes so $#%$ long is that
Commodore elected to allow "infinite" directory size by linking the directory
entries throughout the disk. I think they wanted to avoid the problem Mac
owners have had with a limited directory size. This way, you can have as
many files as space permits. Can you imagine how long it must take to get a
directory on a full 20M hard disk! I think they should have let you set aside
a directory block of a size you need, rather than take the radical approach
they did. It doesn't bother me as much as it once did, though. – brent
Jack, From what I understand, the reason a DIR takes so $#%$ long is that
Commodore elected to allow "infinite" directory size by linking the directory
entries throughout the disk. I think they wanted to avoid the problem Mac
owners have had with a limited directory size. This way, you can have as
many files as space permits. Can you imagine how long it must take to get a
directory on a full 20M hard disk! I think they should have let you set aside
a directory block of a size you need, rather than take the radical approach
they did. It doesn't bother me as much as it once did, though. – brent
Jack-
I can certainly sympathize with you on the slow speed of the AmigaDOS
directory, copy, etc. You'll notice that, especially with the copy, that the
workbench does this MUCH faster than the DOS. A programmer here explained
that the copy command in DOS only pulls over very small blocks at a time,
while the WB copy moves something like 256byte blocks. So a copy replacement
that's much faster should be simple to do. I tried that with a directory
command, however, with mixed results.
The command is called LD, and I'm uploading it here for all to see. It uses
the normal DOS calls, but does very little else. I think part of the
slowness is Lattice, but who knows how much; DIR and LIST were compiled under
Greenhill's on a Sun (most likely). Anyway, part of the problem is that
AmigaDOS tends to scatter stuff all over the disk, in order to make the disk
easily recoverable. That seems to be a main reason why some commands are so
slow, and seems to me kind of a bad tradeoff. Anyway, maybe someone will be
able to speed up my LD command some, maybe using Aztec or Assembly.
Jack-
I can certainly sympathize with you on the slow speed of the AmigaDOS
directory, copy, etc. You'll notice that, especially with the copy, that the
workbench does this MUCH faster than the DOS. A programmer here explained
that the copy command in DOS only pulls over very small blocks at a time,
while the WB copy moves something like 256byte blocks. So a copy replacement
that's much faster should be simple to do. I tried that with a directory
command, however, with mixed results.
The command is called LD, and I'm uploading it here for all to see. It uses
the normal DOS calls, but does very little else. I think part of the
slowness is Lattice, but who knows how much; DIR and LIST were compiled under
Greenhill's on a Sun (most likely). Anyway, part of the problem is that
AmigaDOS tends to scatter stuff all over the disk, in order to make the disk
easily recoverable. That seems to be a main reason why some commands are so
slow, and seems to me kind of a bad tradeoff. Anyway, maybe someone will be
able to speed up my LD command some, maybe using Aztec or Assembly.
There was a time when I would have thought Unix on an Amiga was the ultimate
dumbness. Unix is an anachronism dating back to the days of 110-baud TTY's,
while AmigaDOS has many elegant and modern design features.
However, as I try to actually use AmigaDOS I'm rapidly coming around to the
conclusion that, while the concept of AmigaDOS may be elegant in the extreme,
I'd love to have ANYTHING else … I'd even love CPM68. My complaint is the
speed. With all the power of the 68000 chip, there has to be a faster way to
do a DIR!
At the moment I'm consoling myself with the reminder that I was also pretty
unhappy with CP/M when I first began using it. Times have changed there …
partly because I got smarter and learned how to use it better, and partly
because I no longer use any of the CP/M utilities. PIP, ASM, DDT, ED, STAT
have all bitten the dust. I don't even use the builtins, DIR, REN, ERA, and
TYPE anymore. No doubt that day will come for the Amiga, too. I pray that
it's soon.