[9fans] how large is plan9 sys?

[9fans] how large is plan9 sys?

[Quentin]

Who can tell me the size of plan9, I want to download the system, but
I am not sure about the size?
can anybody tell me where can I get the formal papers about plan9, not
including the papers in bell-labs?
thanks!

[9fans] An old laptop

[Digby Tarvin]

Hello all,

I have an ageing Toshiba 1850C laptop, with 4Mb of ram and 160MB of disk.
Certainly not up to the task of running modern bloated operating systems
from Microsoft, and only able to run BSD Unix by omitting the graphical
environment.

The obvious question is - could it be gainfully employed as a Plan9
terminal server?

The challenge I see is that the only ethernet connectivity it has is
a Xircom PE3 (parallel port adapter). The alternative is to use a
parallel or serial based network connection (PLIP/SLIP etc).

Anyone tried a setup like this? Is the memory sufficient? I seem to recall
that small memory was a problem during the install process at one time.

Has anyone made a Xircom driver? Parallel network? Would a serial
network give adequate performance?

I can probably increase the disk size using something discarded from a
more recent laptop - I know the BIOS won't see the extra space, but
if it boots, a decent OS should.

Any other obvious problems.

Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Don]

> I have an ageing Toshiba 1850C laptop, with 4Mb of ram and 160MB of disk.
> Certainly not up to the task of running modern bloated operating systems
> from Microsoft, and only able to run BSD Unix by omitting the graphical
> environment.
>
> The obvious question is - could it be gainfully employed as a Plan9
> terminal server?
>
Well, it seems u are interested in graphics. However, you could always boot
Plan9 over an ether connection via a boot disk and use another machine's
file server capability. Also, utilize a CPU server for ur work. This would
eradicate the confining hard disk space u have as well as the lacking CPU
power. The only compromise, really, is the necessity of running without
a windowing environment. Though, with ed and the usual plan9 command line
functionality I don't really see the overall disadvantage. I, personally,
will take another box however I can get it :)

> The challenge I see is that the only ethernet connectivity it has is
> a Xircom PE3 (parallel port adapter). The alternative is to use a
> parallel or serial based network connection (PLIP/SLIP etc).
>
> Anyone tried a setup like this? Is the memory sufficient? I seem to recall
> that small memory was a problem during the install process at one time.
>
With a boot disk u don't need to install it, just boot it via the floppy. Your
only issue would be hacking up a boot disk that uses Xircom parallel networking.
I know lanl has a Xircom PCMCIA driver, but, I do not know how much
functionality Xircom has layered from the actual device interface. Maybe
coding up a parallel driver wouldn't be too hard?

I hope you give it a try ;) Would be nice to see it work
Don
http://www.7f.no-ip.info/

Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Boyd Roberts]

Digby Tarvin wrote:
> I have an ageing Toshiba 1850C laptop, with 4Mb of ram ...

I put R2 on a 386 with 4Mb and that required some trickery.

It just isn't viable.

Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Digby Tarvin]

Hi,

> > The obvious question is - could it be gainfully employed as a Plan9
> > terminal server?
> >
> Well, it seems u are interested in graphics. However, you could always boot
> Plan9 over an ether connection via a boot disk and use another machine's
> file server capability. Also, utilize a CPU server for ur work. This would
> eradicate the confining hard disk space u have as well as the lacking CPU
> power. The only compromise, really, is the necessity of running without
> a windowing environment. Though, with ed and the usual plan9 command line
> functionality I don't really see the overall disadvantage. I, personally,
> will take another box however I can get it :)

Yes, that is what I had in mind.

> > The challenge I see is that the only ethernet connectivity it has is
> > a Xircom PE3 (parallel port adapter). The alternative is to use a
> > parallel or serial based network connection (PLIP/SLIP etc).
> >
> > Anyone tried a setup like this? Is the memory sufficient? I seem to recall
> > that small memory was a problem during the install process at one time.
> >
> With a boot disk u don't need to install it, just boot it via the floppy. Your
> only issue would be hacking up a boot disk that uses Xircom parallel networking.
> I know lanl has a Xircom PCMCIA driver, but, I do not know how much
> functionality Xircom has layered from the actual device interface. Maybe
> coding up a parallel driver wouldn't be too hard?
>
> I hope you give it a try ;) Would be nice to see it work

I would quite like to have a go at a driver, but the stumbling block
was that Xircom were never willing to release programming information
for the PE3.

There was a BSD/OS (commercial BSD)  driver, which is how I have been
able to use Unix on it, but BSDI had to agree not to release the source
in order to obtain the information from Xircom. So I guess unless
someone interested in Plan9 has worked for a company with access to this
information and written a driver, or someone has managed to reverse
engineer a driver, it is not going to be easy.

I wonder if anyone has gotten a Linux driver to work - if so I might
be able to glean the programming details from that...

Thanks for your comments.

Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Lucio De Re]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 10:51:30AM +0100, Digby Tarvin wrote:
>
> I would quite like to have a go at a driver, but the stumbling block
> was that Xircom were never willing to release programming information
> for the PE3.
>
There are other parallel to ethernet adapters, Accton, for one,
used to build such an item.

I don't like the PC parallel port, however, it seems to be quite
weakly supported all round.  My limited electronic knowledge does
not explain why, for example, my WinNT box has so much trouble
printing (admittedly past an HP scanner) - it positively grinds to
a ver slow pace.

Funnily enough, Russ Nelson, who was deeply involved with the
ancient packet drivers for ethernet adapters (anyone remember him?
he still hangs around lugnet and lego robotics, apparently) complained
that Xircom had broken the packet drivers licence by adopting them
for their adapters and refusing to disclose the details.

Might explain why they insist on so much secrecy.

Going back to Accton, someone recently mentioned finding the details
of just such a device from some site that archived drivers that
Accton had stopped providing, I don't recall the exact details,
but I can find out more if it helps.

++L

Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Digby Tarvin]

Lucio De Re:
> There are other parallel to ethernet adapters, Accton, for one,
> used to build such an item.

True, but while I could justify spending a little spare time fiddling
with it as a learning exercise, I would have a bit of trouble justifying
spending any money on this old machine.

> I don't like the PC parallel port, however, it seems to be quite
> weakly supported all round.  My limited electronic knowledge does
> not explain why, for example, my WinNT box has so much trouble
> printing (admittedly past an HP scanner) - it positively grinds to
> a ver slow pace.

Early PC hardware did leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately the
machien pre-dates PCMCIA interfaces, so my only options are serial
or parallel, and I don't think serial was much better...

> Funnily enough, Russ Nelson, who was deeply involved with the
> ancient packet drivers for ethernet adapters (anyone remember him?
> he still hangs around lugnet and lego robotics, apparently) complained
> that Xircom had broken the packet drivers licence by adopting them
> for their adapters and refusing to disclose the details.

Yes - the Xircom was the first encounter I had with packet drivers.
With NCSA telnet, it made the Windows system usable as a network
terminal.

> Might explain why they insist on so much secrecy.
>
> Going back to Accton, someone recently mentioned finding the details
> of just such a device from some site that archived drivers that
> Accton had stopped providing, I don't recall the exact details,
> but I can find out more if it helps.

Sure - if I could work out how to program it, it could be useful for
a whole range of old machines that have parallel ports but need a
LAN interface. If you can point me at such an archive, that would
be great.

Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Lucio De Re]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 11:37:36AM +0100, Digby Tarvin wrote:
>
> Lucio De Re:

> > I don't like the PC parallel port, however, it seems to be quite
> > weakly supported all round.  My limited electronic knowledge does
> > not explain why, for example, my WinNT box has so much trouble
> > printing (admittedly past an HP scanner) - it positively grinds to
> > a ver slow pace.
>
> Early PC hardware did leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately the
> machien pre-dates PCMCIA interfaces, so my only options are serial
> or parallel, and I don't think serial was much better...
>
Serial is slower but better implemented, ever since the 16550s, the
devices all seem to have identical characteristics, I am not convinced
that applies to the parallel port.

All in all, wired PPP at 115.2 kbps may be OK.

> Sure - if I could work out how to program it, it could be useful for
> a whole range of old machines that have parallel ports but need a
> LAN interface. If you can point me at such an archive, that would
> be great.
>
I'll ask.

++L

Re: [9fans] An old laptop

[Don]

> I would quite like to have a go at a driver, but the stumbling block
> was that Xircom were never willing to release programming information
> for the PE3.
>
> There was a BSD/OS (commercial BSD)  driver, which is how I have been
> able to use Unix on it, but BSDI had to agree not to release the source
> in order to obtain the information from Xircom. So I guess unless
> someone interested in Plan9 has worked for a company with access to this
> information and written a driver, or someone has managed to reverse
> engineer a driver, it is not going to be easy.
What version of BSD/OS?
Don
http://www.7f.no-ip.info/

Re: [9fans] how large is plan9 sys?

[plan9]

And the same /sys/doc/...

	is available in French (not finished).

	Everything Russ wrote about Installing, requirements, ... is translated.

	http://www.itic.ca/fr/sys/doc/index.html


"Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com> a crit dans le message news:<7179e6b7fcf64b2937f4985db7e682bc@plan9.bell-labs.com>...
> As mentioned on the web page, the distribution
> archive is about 60MB.  All the papers in the 
> distribution are also at http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc
> 
> Russ

Re: [9fans] how large is plan9 sys?

[Russ Cox]

As mentioned on the web page, the distribution
archive is about 60MB.  All the papers in the
distribution are also at http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc

Russ