7 Feb
2002
7 Feb
'02
4:23 p.m.
On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 10:36:42AM -0600, Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote:
I don't insist on it. It was just my reckoning to get things going, that
a floppy as an RK would be enough.
Instead we
should aim at getting a "1970s version of Unix" running on a
PC. So initially the teletype becomes the screen and the keyboard and
the disk unit becomes say the floppy drive.
Later things can be expanded to talk IDE/SCSI whatever - but at that
point you are evolving the "1970s version of Unix" on a stage further -
Screen => console tty is obvious. But why do you insist on the floppy
drive as the storage medium? The floppy drive subsystem has drives and a controller
with a certain
programatic interface. The IDE/SCSI subsystem has drives and a controller
with a certain programatic interface. They're the same kind of thing.
Why is one more guilty of evolving the 1970s version of UNXI?
Re-reading that last mail of mine, I see that my mind kind of meandered.
So to be honest - I think you could well be right.
I think that a floppy might make a good RK03/05
(capacity differences
aside), but why not implement some RP drives with hard drives of even zip
drives?
I don't see any particular reason not to do so. I was attempting to
openly straighten my own thoughts out (perhaps thinking out loud is not
the best plan) and suggest that initially an RK - floppy would be a start,
and that RP - hard disk could be done later.
Paul