AW: [Oberon] USB, bloat, LNO, SCSI/IDE

[Stauber Sven Philipp]

Hi,
 
>It would be good if the work on USB for BB/Aos could be done so
>that it could easily be ported to native-oberon.  Perhaps also with
>some convenient test-points/hooks ?
For me, this has not been of high priority so far, but now that people are asking for, I'll try to keep an eye on NO portability. If somebody wants to do this, I, of course, can and will provide help. 
Test-point/hooks: Just enable all trace/debug options you find and connect a device. That will give you an quite precise overview over what works and what doesn't work (btw sorry about the huge masses of trace/debug code in the BB USB, it somewhat stinks, I know. But it's really useful to track down bugs.).
 
>Q -  are any machines with a BIOS which can boot from a USB-stick,  sold yet ?
Most PC's we have here can boot from USB harddisks. USB-sticks that are "harddisk-formatted" (contain a MBR) work the same way as USB harddisks, so if your PC can boot from USB harddisks, it can also boot from these USB sticks. 
 
>Q-  since the advantage of Compact Flash to IDE interface lacks
>   the ability to hot-plug, as a replacement for increasingly
>  unreliable floppies, and [as I understand] SCSI is hot-plugable,
>  do standard PC mother-boards have a SCSI connection ?
I don't know what SCSI versions/driver/controller do support hotplug. I friend of mine says, that there are so-called SCA connectors (google for details), which provide power/data on a single connector and are design for hotplug operation.
USB cardreaders would be the easy/cheap solution (works under BB, newest releases only), but, of course, you would need the BB USB stack. 
Another option would be to run Oberon on the AOS Kernel (if you really want to, this can also be done without involving the BB window manager at all, so it really looks&feels as NO does).
I'm unfortunately not 100% aware of all the differences between NO/BB, but what are the reasons why you are not doing that?
 
Cheers,
Sven Stauber
 

________________________________

Von: oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch im Auftrag von easlab at absamail.co.za
Gesendet: Di 24.01.2006 10:43
An: oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch
Betreff: [Oberon] USB, bloat, LNO, SCSI/IDE



 A number of related topics:

It would be good if the work on USB for BB/Aos could be done so
that it could easily be ported to native-oberon.  Perhaps also with
some convenient test-points/hooks ?

The several post against creeping bloat; also in our Wirthian systems
was welcome. Yes we must fight bloat !   But related to the kernel,
as I understand: if the extra booting capabilities are not required,
they need not be linked into the kernel, which will consequently
be smaller.

Q -  are any machines with a BIOS which can boot from a USB-stick,
  sold yet ?

I've previously noted that having LNO available at the same time
as N-O on the same machine, could be great; to use the superior
text handling facilities of N-O with all the other linux facilities which
N-O lacks, like *.ps, *.dpf viewers, a good threaded news reader ..etc.

To this end I've been trying to 'recover' my previously working
LNO versions.  My results further confirm the arguments against
creeping bloat, and that 'things get worse instead of better' !

Of my 4 versions of linux, the oldest Slakware is by far the best and
fastest for LNO. Newer RedHat6.2 finally manged to be restored, and
yet  newer Mandrake9 doesn't work, and the 'newest' of the 4: FC1; is
the slowest, and I don't want to waste time trying to get it running
LNO.   I think most of the 'getting worse as time progresses' is caused
by the influence of the art-school graduates ?

Q-  since the advantage of Compact Flash to IDE interface lacks
   the ability to hot-plug, as a replacement for increasingly
  unreliable floppies, and [as I understand] SCSI is hot-plugable,
  do standard PC mother-boards have a SCSI connection ?


Thanks for any info,

== Chris Glur.


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