Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #432
From: Digestifier <Linux-Misc-Request@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Date:     Wed, 15 Dec 93 17:13:15 EST

Linux-Misc Digest #432, Volume #1                Wed, 15 Dec 93 17:13:15 EST

Contents:
  AT&T StarLAN card (Dale J. Chatham)
  Re: Xwindows Terminal (Mark A. Davis)
  Re: _Real_ hackers ... (John A. Martin)
  Lisp anyone?  How about CMU Lisp?  Garnet? (Steve Benz)
  Re: _Real_ hackers ... (Tom Murray)
  fork: try again (Paul Tomblin)
  Linux on 386SX 33MHz ONLY 2MB RAM! (Zbigniew Zych)
  Bugs (Louis J. LaBash Jr.)
  Re: Lisp anyone?  How about CMU Lisp?  Garnet? (Matthew Donadio)
  Re: _Real_ hackers ... (Craig Burley)
  RE: not a Linux Consortium (andrewh@earlham.edu)
  RE: Linux Foundation (was Re: Linux Consortium) (andrewh@earlham.edu)
  **** This newsgroup **** (Andrew Bray)
  Re: SLS - Installation (Chester A. Wright)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: dchatham@afit.af.mil (Dale J. Chatham)
Subject: AT&T StarLAN card
Reply-To: dchatham@afit.af.mil
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1993 14:03:22 GMT


I am trying to make linux work on a number of AT&T PCs.  They have an
AT&T StarLAN card (no doubt made by somebody else).  Does anyone know
whether these cards emulate a supported card or if any work is being
done to support them.  There is a crynwr driver for dos made
specifically for this card.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any help in advance.

     Dale


------------------------------

From: mark@taylor.wyvern.com (Mark A. Davis)
Subject: Re: Xwindows Terminal
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1993 13:52:52 GMT

bet@std.sbi.com (Bennett Todd) writes:

>In article <2e7t55$dpk@snoopy.cis.ufl.edu>, Kelly Murray <kem@prl.ufl.edu> wrote:
>>Price out that Linux X-Terminal, and you will find that my company can
>>sell you a real X Terminal for less (15" Color, $983), and you will
>>avoid the hassle of trying to setup, configure, and maintain a diskless
>>Linux box, and probably get better performance as well.

>Sometimes the best solution is a really truly X terminal. I'm typing right
>now on an NCD X terminal with a 19" 1280x1024 mono display, and I _love_ it.

Absolutely agreed.

>Sometimes old Sun 3 desktop systems are essentially free, and they are the
>ideal X terminals.

True, except for media failures and such.

>Sometimes old PCs are essentially free, and they can make adequate X
>terminals. Linux is probably the most efficient way to make a PC run X. Of

Also agreed.

>And let's not downplay the complexity of configuring an X terminal.

No, let's do downplay...

> At least
>from NCD, you've got two choices. Either you've got no configuration
>complexity, but you pay an extra $500 or so per terminal for the proms, and
>you have X11R4, or you've got to use their diskless boot configuration where
>a server downloads the X implementation into the terminal. Setting that up
>is more complex than loading one the the Linux releases and configuring
>XFree86.

That is an utterly silly thing to say.  To get Xterminals up and going-
1) you transfer the boot file from tape to the host (big whoop)
2) you MAY want to edit the configuration the on the host, but it is mostly
   fine.
3) you add an entry in /etc/hosts (big whoop again, and you would have to
   do this if using a Linux box also.
4) you physically connect the xterminal to the net (wow- you plug a cable
   in)
5) You turn on the Xterminal and tell it what it's address is.

You are done, the thing boots, uses xdmcp and start working.  Steps 1 & 2 have
to be done only once.  Everything else takes about 5 minutes or less.  You
are computing on a display with very fast Xperformance and net response.

With Linux, or using ANY computer as an Xterminal, you have to do the following:

1) find a suitable computer
2) possibly upgrade the memory or any other component you may be missing:
   bus mouse, suitable and compatible display & card, etc.....
3) find a suitable ethernet card, configure it and install it
4) format and/or partition drives correctly
5) install Linux (and wait...........)
6) completely configure Linux base OS & disable the authentication process.
7) start configuring X on Linux, rip your hair out if your monitor/card
   timings are not easily available.  Check all fonts and utils.
8) configure all the networking stuff, make sure it all works.
9) add an entry in /etc/hosts and other areas telling the Linux box which
   address it is.
10) add an entry for the Linux box on the host.
11) hope the thing works.  If it does, great!  If not, go back through
    steps 1 through 10; wade through weak documentation, etc.

No technical support, time to assemble proper machine, poor performance with
most graphics cards and ISA ethernet controller, no warranty on unit as a
whole, media to fail, larger footprint, etc.

>So it isn't correct to say ``Linux completely obsoletes X terminals''. But
>it also isn't always correct to say ``Linux as an X terminal is a dumb idea;
>buy a real X terminal instead.''

Both very true.  There are times when the extreme simplicity and performance
of an Xterminal is the best idea.  There are also times when the flexibility
of a Linux box is the best idea, especially when local processing is
needed or when one wants to utilize existing equipment.

If someone could/would take a micro version of the Linux OS, plus a micro
version of the Xserver for Linux and put it in flash RAM or ROM; and perhaps
combine it with a high-perf. graphics card and ethernet card..... one could plug
this one card into any clone and turn it into an instant, true, Xterminal....
with little configuration and no media to format, install, worry about failing,
etc.  I am still surprised this has not happened..... even just an Xkernel
(like Sun) on a simple, booting, ISA card would do it.......
-- 
  /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
  | Mark A. Davis    | Lake Taylor Hospital | Norfolk, VA (804)-461-5001x431 |
  | Sys.Administrator|  Computer Services   | mark@taylor.wyvern.com   .uucp |
  \--------------------------------------------------------------------------/

------------------------------

From: jmartin@opus.starlab.csc.com (John A. Martin)
Subject: Re: _Real_ hackers ...
Date: 15 Dec 1993 10:04:43 -0500
Reply-To: jmartin@opus.starlab.csc.com (John A. Martin)


Thus spake ges@earth.baylor.edu (Tracer Bullet P.I.):
| In article <1993Dec14.222407.32313@kf8nh.wariat.org>,
| Brandon S. Allbery <bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org> wrote:
| >Tell that to my HT.  I get the weirdest set of beeps and boops and hums and
| >clicks on some frequencies with the radio within about 15 feet of a 386 or
| >better machine...
| >
| >++Brandon
| I get the most interference from my machine when it is doing
| it's power up memory check.  this makes me think that it is
| the bus that is putting out most of the noise.
| 
| Now all I have to do is play music on the radio using
| the interfernece. this could be done in the old days
| (when real programmers programmed real computers by
| entering machine code on the console)
| 
| Gene E. Scogin

A colleague, Dick Sites, once played "Happy Birthday" on a bank of tape
drives for his girlfriend from the console of an IBM 709.  We all had 
been very curious why he had signed up for computer time when we knew 
he had a date!

--jam

------------------------------

From: steveb@newsouthwales.uucp (Steve Benz)
Subject: Lisp anyone?  How about CMU Lisp?  Garnet?
Date: 15 Dec 1993 15:10:45 GMT

I'm gearing up to write a fairly big-time application, much of
which would do well if written in Lisp.  I still haven't settled
on exactly what dialect to use, but CMU Lisp seems like a good
option -- except that it's not ported to Linux at the moment.
Has anybody tried?  Anybody thought about it?  If so, what'd you
think?  From the look of it, you'd want to start with a Motif
license, but beyond that it seems like a doable thing.

And what about Garnet?  Anybody looked at porting that?

                                        - Steve

------------------------------

From: tmurr@hw22.ma30.bull.com (Tom Murray)
Subject: Re: _Real_ hackers ...
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1993 15:36:57 GMT

In article <dgfCI1pw2.C4G@netcom.com>, dgf@netcom.com (David Feldman) writes:
|> In article <13952@dirac.physics.purdue.edu> bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) writes:
|> >In article <2eikok$o55@fitz.TC.Cornell.EDU> elan@tasha.cheme.cornell.edu (Elan Feingold) writes:
|> >>Real hackers debug by listening to the interferance generated by the
|> >>running microprocessor on their FM radio.
|> >
|> >                                 Bill
|> >
|> >
|> 
|> As far as I could tell in college (in 1975) my 6501 (not 6502) machine
|> was generating most of it's music (based on whatever code I toggled
|> into it's 256 bytes of RAM) from the eight LEDs on the front panel
|> (driven from a TTL output port). Maybe DEC was really onto something
|> when they used incandescent lights for their PDP-8 front panels rather
|> than LEDs.
|> 
|> Dave
|> 

   Or it could have been that LED's weren't available in 1967? when the
   pdp8 was being built ?

-- 
== Tom Murray                   Zenith Data Systems              ==
== (508) 294-2285               300 Concord Road    MA30/MS853A  ==
== T.Murray@ma30.bull.com       Billerica, MA       01821-4186   ==

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: ab401@freenet.carleton.ca (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: fork: try again
Reply-To: ab401@freenet.carleton.ca
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1993 16:07:58 GMT

I'm getting this message every day.  When it happens, I can't run anything, 
and the only solution is to hit the reset button.  This is since I went from 
the pl12 kernal to the pl14 kernal.  Is there a patch to the pl14 kernal that 
I'm missing?  Is there something I've configured wrong?
-- 
Paul Tomblin.  In Vicki Robinson we trust.
"When viewed from the proper perspective, this thread is actually just a bunch
of people being silly." - Daniel Lottero

------------------------------

From: zych@galaxyuci.agh.edu.pl (Zbigniew Zych)
Subject: Linux on 386SX 33MHz ONLY 2MB RAM!
Date: 15 Dec 1993 16:28:34 GMT

Hello!
  I'm beginner at Linux & News - sorry for errors...

  I have only 2MB RAM in my computer, but in fact this is SX,
I can't get full 2MB - so I have only 1664kB !
(384kB is lost!)


  BUT I SUCCEDD WITH SLS 1.03 !!   TWO TIMES!
  At my computer and friends.

  If anyone want help - how to do it - ask!
  I will help!


                                                     Zbigniew Zych

---
zych@icslab.agh.edu.pl
Zyzio!IRC
At Cracow, Poland: home phone: 48+12+48-74-29


------------------------------

From: lou@minuet.siue.edu (Louis J. LaBash Jr. )
Subject: Bugs
Date: 15 Dec 1993 13:19:09 -0500
Reply-To: lou@minuet.siue.edu (Louis J. LaBash Jr. )

.  .  .  .  .  .     .  *  .  .     .  .  .  .     .  .  .  .  .  *  .  .  .
 .  .  .  .  *  .  .  .  .  .     .  .  .  .  .   * .  .     .  .  .  .   .    
.     .  .     .     .  .  .  .  .  .     .  .  ./^\ .  .  .  .  .     . .  .
  .     .  .  .  .  .     *  .  .     .  .  . . / + \ .  .  .  *  .  .  . .
*  .  .  .     .  .     .  .  .     .  .     . / +   \    .     .  .  .  *  .
 .     .  .  *     .  .  .     .  .     .     / +  +  \ .  *  .     .  .  .
.     .  .  .  .  .     *  .  .     .  .  .  / +  +    \ .  .  .  *  .  .  .
 .  .  *     .  .  .  .  .     .  .  *  . . /  +     +  \    .  .     .  *  .
.  *     .  .  .  .  .     *  .  .  .  .   /+  +  +    + \ .  *  .      .  . 
 .      .  .  .     .  .  .  .  .     .  ./  +   +   +    \    .  .  .     .
  .   .  .     .     .  .     .  .  .    / +   +   +   +  +\  .     .  .     .
 .     .  .  .  What's up Doc? .  .  .  /+   +   +   +   +  \ .    .  .  .   .
. . .    .  .       /\  /\    .  .  .  /+  +   +    +  +   + \  .  .  .   .  .
 . .  . .  . .    <  /  \  >  .   . . /+  +  +   +   +    +   \ .   . . .   .
.   .     .   .    \ \ / /    . .    /+  +  +  +    +  +   +   \ .  .  .  .  .
.  .  .  .  .      ( o_o )     . .  / + +  +      +    +  +  +  \ .   .    . .
 .   .    .  .     /     \    .  .  ~~~~~~~~~~~~|  |~~~~~~~~~~~~~.  .    .    .
.   .   .    .    ( )   ( )    ..  .            |  |            .  .   .    .  .
   .     .         oo " oo     .                |  |          .      .     .   .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Merry Xmas.
Louis-ljl-

------------------------------

From: donadio@mxd120.rh.psu.edu (Matthew Donadio)
Subject: Re: Lisp anyone?  How about CMU Lisp?  Garnet?
Date: 15 Dec 1993 17:05:01 GMT

Steve Benz (steveb@newsouthwales.uucp) wrote:
: I'm gearing up to write a fairly big-time application, much of
: which would do well if written in Lisp.  I still haven't settled
: on exactly what dialect to use, but CMU Lisp seems like a good
: option -- except that it's not ported to Linux at the moment.
: Has anybody tried?  Anybody thought about it?  If so, what'd you
: think?  From the look of it, you'd want to start with a Motif
: license, but beyond that it seems like a doable thing.

: And what about Garnet?  Anybody looked at porting that?

CLISP and KCL/AKCL have been ported to Linux.  Both support Common
Lisp, and AKCL has a few extensions to this.  I am also pretty sure
Scheme has been ported to Linux.

BTW, I tried responding to this but the mail bounced...

--
Beaker aka Matt Donadio   | Life is short,     ---   __ o    __~o    __ o
donadio@mxd120.rh.psu.edu |    ride like    ----    _`\<,   _`\<,   _`\<,
--- Penn State Cycling ---|      the wind.    ---  ( )/( ) ( )/( ) ( )/( )

------------------------------

From: burley@mole.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Craig Burley)
Subject: Re: _Real_ hackers ...
Date: 15 Dec 93 13:02:56

In article <2elvkt$45l@earth.baylor.edu> ges@earth.baylor.edu (Tracer Bullet P.I.) writes:

   (when real programmers programmed real computers by
   entering machine code on the console)

True story: my father (not a real hacker, but a real salesman back in
the early days) used to enter code into the PDP-1s, -5s, and -8s
at DEC the way several of the "real hackers" did -- by writing the
"assembler" code, assembling it by hand, then determining what the
loader paper tape would have to contain (as far as byte codes) to
load the program into memory, then punching that tape on a teletype-
with-paper-tape unit (which, later I think, turned into the classic
model ASR33 -- the KSR33 was missing the paper tape punch/reader) by
punching whatever keys (control keys, whatever) to produce the correct
loader tape.

Other true story: for quite a while he didn't understand that he
could just put constant values in memory via the loader in the
same way that he assembled instructions into memory.  This seems strange
to us perhaps, but before "understanding" one thinks strange things,
and I guess he thought memory could hold only preprogrammed instructions
or variables but not constants!  So most of the code he wrote did
the necessary clear, increment, shift, etc. instructions to produce
the constants he needed, which would then be stored in the appropriate
memory locations.
--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    burley@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) lpf@uunet.uu.net

------------------------------

Subject: RE: not a Linux Consortium
From: andrewh@earlham.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 93 03:56:46 -500

In Article <2ee1r8$ac5@due.uninett.no>
magnus@vipe.ii.uib.no (Magnus Y Alvestad) writes:
>Attention!
>
>I'm not driving for a Linux Consortium any more. I've found other ways
>of getting the word to the people that I think the community will find
>it easier to accept. It will probably involve:
>
>- A revised version of the Distribution HOWTO, a Linux Buyer's Guide.
>- A group of people testing distributions, rating them.
>- Feedback from people on the net - their ratings of distributions.
>- Making all this information available on and off the net.


This will be valuable, but it isn't enough.

How are you going to make this information available off the
net?

How are distributors supposed to use these ratings to help sell
their product?
Why should a non-technical uninformed user trust these ratings?
It would help to have a thumbs up / thumbs down approval from
an independent organization. The approval should be based on a
basic reasonableness of various distributions and CD-ROMs.

I'll explain myself more in the Linux Foundation thread.

>Hope this stops the flame war. I'm sorry I started it. If I had been
>more patient, it might have been avoided. *bonk*

Don't be sorry. It was a good idea.

__
Andrew W. Hagen            andrewh@earlham.edu

   To Stand within The Pleasure Dome / Decreed by Kubla Khan      --rush

------------------------------

Subject: RE: Linux Foundation (was Re: Linux Consortium)
From: andrewh@earlham.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 93 04:47:50 -500

In Article <1993Dec11.164519.21259@cs.cornell.edu>mdw@cs.cornell.edu (Matt Welsh) writes:
>In article <1993Dec10.231123.230@earlham.edu> andrewh@earlham.edu writes:
>>With an organization called the "Linux Consortium" a logo could be put
>>together by some kind artist. It would say LINUX in large, bold
>>letters. Then in a much smaller pitch directly beneath it would say
>>"Consortium." It might be encased in a box. It should have a modern
>>look. It should be recognizable both with and without color. And it
>>should be legible even if made small enough for the small ads
>>appearing in the back of computer magazines by Yggdrasil and others.
>>
>>The purpose of this organization would be soley to market Linux.
>
>Very, very bad idea. Instead of attempting to create some falsely
>official organization with a slick look and no content, why don't you
>concentrate on an organization that will actually DO something useful
>for Linux, slick look or not? The existence of such an "official" LC
>is misleading in that it attempts to represent some kind of central
>organization which is "responsible" for Linux. No such organization
>exists, and you can't create an artificial one to serve the purpose.
>Either the Linux developers themselves create such an organization, or
>nobody does.



To my knowledge never has anyone who propounds something like the
Linux Consortium felt that this group would be in any sense official.
In fact, it's legitimateness would come solely from itself. It would
exist as an organization wholly independent of developers and those
who hold the Linux copyright.

It would exist only to review the various CD-ROMs and distributions
that numerous companies are now selling. It would *never* have a need
to directly review or comment on *any* source or executables made
available by developers.

Only when that source and those executables are delivered to consumers
via commercial entities would the Linux Consortium look at and comment
on anything.

If a company was selling a broken, buggy Linux that was so bad that
the operating system was unusable, the LC would take that into
consideration. If the next vendor's Linux used the same kernel, the LC
would not just assume that this distribution has to be bad, too. Each
distribution would be tested seperately.

Furthermore, the LC would have absolutely nothing to do with the Linux
Foundation.


>Your in-depth description of the LC's logo suggest that you're
>primarily concerned with the appearance of this organization.


No. I'm not primarily concerned about the LC's appearance. I'm
primarily concerned about it's legitimateness. I do think that it's
"appearance" or "image" or P.R. tactics should good, though.

As I suggested in a previous posting, another important field of
action for the LC would be to help market Linux the operating system
to the general public. By providing a logo that would readily identify
a particular vendor's product as reasonably bug-free and usable Linux
the LC would provide a service to all consumers spending money on
Linux software. It would also provide a service to Linux vendors by
giving them something to show off and readily identify themselves. And
it would provide a service to the entire Linux community and helping
to expand the user base and thus the demand for more applications.


>The best solution would be to move Linux towards a stronger, more
>centralized development process. (I'm not suggesting that we should do
>this, but it would be able to implement your stated goals for the
>so-called LC.) Something along the lines of the "Linux Foundation"
>[......]


Sounds great. I agree with markline on this.

But I guess I disagree with him on whether the Linux Foundation should
review its own work. I think that would be great.

Let's remember the distinction between the LF which mdw proposes which
will produce source and executables, and Linux vendors which
re-arrange and change the executables and maybe even the sources and
then sell their own distribution/flavor for a small profit.

If the LF puts out a new patch level, the LF might choose to praise or
denigrate its latest efforts. "Latest patch level fixes bugs and
increases security." "Latest patch introduces new features, but also
new bugs." This sort of information is invaluable to those who
download Linux from an ftp site or BBS, and to the Linux vendors, who
need to know whether they should incorporate a new release into their
distribution.

But this still leaves room for the LC. Should the LF review the
various distributions? I think, Matt, that you would agree that the LF
shouldn't do this. I've tried to point out why I think this role is
important and should be filled.

As for those who question why the Linux user base has to grow if it is
to survive, the answer is applications. The more users, the more
enticing it becomes for commercial software companies to produce
software for Linux, and for device manufacturers to write device
drivers for it.

One question that pops into my head, though, about this is whether it
is possible to create an application written for Linux and legally
sell it. Are there any compilers for Linux that allow the full
copyrighting of executables? Doesn't the GPL for gcc prohibit those
who wish to compile with gcc a commercial app?

__
Andrew W. Hagen            andrewh@earlham.edu

   To Stand within The Pleasure Dome / Decreed by Kubla Khan      --rush

------------------------------

From: andy@madhouse.demon.co.uk (Andrew Bray)
Subject: **** This newsgroup ****
Date: 8 Dec 93 11:54:46 GMT

I would like to remind people posting to this group that it has been deleted
from most sites, and replaced with:

comp.os.linux.help
comp.os.linux.admin
comp.os.linux.misc
comp.os.linux.development
comp.os.linux.announce

You should have noticed that this group is now rather low bandwidth, and
it has been abandoned by most of the kind of people that give good
authoratitive answers to questions.

I would heartily recommend that the rest of you abandon this group, and
join the rest of us using the new groups.  Hassle your news administrator
if these groups aren't already being taken by your site.

Of course, if you want to keep this newsgroup as a little private forum,
no-one is going to stop you, but this is rather a backwater nowadays.

Regards,

Andy

------------------------------

From: wrightc@lonexa.admin.rl.af.mil (Chester A. Wright)
Subject: Re: SLS - Installation
Date: 8 Dec 93 18:45:41 GMT

Also, if you have room left on your DOS partition, you can install
from it to avoid floppy switching.  You need a top level directory
called install and subdirectories called a2, a3, . . . .

------------------------------


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