Info-Mac 4/Info_Mac IV CD-ROM (Pacific HiTech Inc.)(August 1994).iso/Applications/mint/readme

Text File | 1994-05-19 | 8.7 KB | 194 lines | [TEXT/R*ch]

May 18, 1994

INTRODUCTION

MacMiNT is a port of MiNT from the Atari ST to the Macintosh.  MiNT is
an enhanced version of the Atari OS TOS that supports many UNIX-like
features.  Many free programs available on the net (GCC, tcsh, make,
etc.) have been ported to MiNT.  MacMiNT can run nearly everything
that MiNT can.  This software still has bugs though, so USE IT AT YOUR
OWN RISK!  MacMiNT is not officially supported by anybody, so it is
not appropriate as a basis for commercial work.  Because it exploits
many of the low-level parts of the 680x0 CPU and the MacOS, it may not
work with future versions (> 7.1) of MacOS.

I have run MacMiNT on Macs ranging from the Portable to the Quadra to
the PowerMacs.  Please let me know if it doesn't work on your machine.
It does not work with virtual memory turned on.  It does not get much
testing under 68000 based Macs or under System 6 so it is more likely
to fail on such systems.  It might run on a Mac with 2M RAM, but it
needs 8M if you want to run programs like GCC.  The minimal
installation of MacMiNT requires about 3M of free disk space, but you
will need more like 15M to use MacMiNT as a development environment.

MacMiNT is composed of 2 programs: 'JET' and 'mint.prg'.  The 'JET'
application loads 'mint.prg' and implements Just Enough TOS to support
'mint.prg'.  TOS is the Atari operating system that MiNT was designed
to run on top of.  The file 'mint.prg' is the real MiNT OS which has
been only slightly modified to work on the Macintosh.

The copyright, readme's, and documentation that came with the Atari
distribution are in the 'mint095' directory.  Make sure you read and
abide by the copyright information.  My additions to MiNT are neither
copyrighted nor documented.  Because of the lack of documentation,
MacMiNT is mainly useful to people who have UNIX experience.

The MacMiNT distribution contains only the minimum files needed to get
started.  Many other files will need to be retrieved over the net
before doing a complete installation.  MacMiNT stuff can be found at
nic.switch.ch in /software/mac/src/macmint,
suniams1.statistik.tu-muenchen.de in /incoming/MacMiNT, and at
archive.cis.ohio-state.edu in /pub/mac-unix/macmint.  Mac software can
be found at ftp.apple.com, sumex-aim.stanford.edu, and
mac.archive.umich.edu.  Atari software can be found at
atari.archive.umich.edu.  The Atari programs most likely to work under
MacMiNT can be found under atari/Mint and atari/Gnustuff/Tos.  The
suniams1.statistik.tu-muenchen.de site is probably the most up to date
site for MacMiNT stuff.

There are two reasons why distributing all of this software with
MacMiNT is impractical.  The first is that most of this software has
copyright restrictions that make it difficult to distribute with other
packages.  The other is that MacMiNT is a very general purpose
program.  It would be impossible to decide which software to include
to make MacMiNT useful to the widest group of users.

The following installation instructions describe how to set up a
minimal MacMiNT system.  This is enough to play around with and decide
whether MacMiNT might be useful to you.  If you decide that MacMiNT
might be useful, you should install the 'normal' set of tools by
following the directions at the top of 'normal.sh' in the '/setup'
directory.  If you decide that you would like to help develop MacMiNT
or compile a new version of MacMiNT, you should install the 'develop'
set of tools.  Scripts for installing other sets of tools should be
available from MacMiNT archive sites.  These scripts look for the
needed archives in the '/save' directory.  To find out what files are
required by an installation script, or any other information that is
specific to that installation, you should read the top section of the
script with an editor like BBEdit.

INSTALLATION

You should have extracted the contents of the distribution archive and
followed the instructions given there.

Get and install Macsbug.  MacMiNT still crashes and Macsbug helps you
figure out why. (Optional)

Get a gopher client (ie TurboGopher for the Mac).  Make a bookmark for
'gopher.archive.merit.edu' port '70' directory '/.software-archives'.
This allows easy connection to both the Macintosh and Atari archives.
All references to software that needs to be downloaded will be
relative to the Macintosh and Atari software archives found here.
They are mirrors of the umich ftp archives. (Optional)

Edit 'profile.sh' (and 'cshrc.csh').  Change the 'TZ' variable to
reflect your location (atleast change the 8 to the number of hours you
are different from GMT).

Get the following archives and put them in your '/save' folder:

(MacMiNT archive)
futilb.zoo

(Atari archive)
Gnustuff/Tos/Othergnu/shlutl18.zoo
Gnustuff/Tos/Othergnu/gzip107st.zoo
Mint/Utilities/tar-1112.zoo

Launch MacMiNT and run the minimal setup script.
# sh setup/minimal.sh

At this point you should be ready to explore MacMiNT.

Questions about MacMiNT should be sent to the mailing list at
[e-mail].  You must first join the mailing list
by sending a message to [e-mail] with 'subscribe
altmacos <your name>' in the body of the message.  The altmacos
mailing list is for the discussion of alternate operating systems for
the macintosh.  This list should be a good place to discuss MacMiNT
and other OS's like MacMach, MacLinux, MacBSD and MacMINIX.  Most of
the discussion on this list is about MacMiNT, though, because the
other alternate OS's have their own discussion lists.  You might also
want to subscribe to the comp.sys.atari.tech newsgroup.

HINTS

Files used by MacMiNT should be in DOS or UNIX format in most
circumstances (usually UNIX).  Many programs will not work correctly
if certain files (i.e. 'mint.cnf') are not in the correct format.  The
program 'crlf' can be used to convert from one format to another.  To
convert to UNIX format, use 'crlf -u <file name>'.

Read what ever documentation you can find on GEMDOS and MiNT.  Most of
the information should be true for MacMiNT.

The Mac filesystem is case insensitive, so commands like: 'mv makefile
Makefile' will actually DELETE the file!

MiNT programs do not recognize the existence of the resource fork of a
file.  Commands like 'cp Finder Finder.x' will only copy the data
fork.  This is probably not what you would expect.  Also, symbolic
links contain information in the resource fork, so they cannot be
copied either.

MacMiNT is known to be incompatible with:
FaxSTF (the FaxMonitor INIT)
Virtual Memory

MacMiNT uses traps 1, 13, 14 and also the TRACE exception vector.
This interferes with Macsbug.  Break points, single stepping, and some
other Macsbug commands will not work properly when MacMiNT is active.
Macsbug features like examining memory, that do not rely on these
traps and exceptions, should work fine.

Starting with the command key down will cause MacMiNT to bring up a
command line to enter arguments to be passed to mint.

Starting with the control key down will cause MacMiNT to enter the
debugger, allowing break points to be set before mint gets started.

GDB doesn't work with MiNT 0.95.  This version of MacMiNT is based on
MiNT 0.95, so GDB won't work.  GDB does work under the MacMiNT based
on 1.08. Because of copyright changes, MacMiNT based on more recent
MiNT versions can only be distributed in source form.  There is a
setup script in /setup/mcmnt108.sh which can be used to build the 1.08
version from the Atari sources and the Mac diffs in mcmnt108.zoo.

CONCLUSION

The source code is there for you to examine, fix, and enhance.  Please
send me any changes you feel should be put in my distribution.  Please
let me know if there is any other information that should be in this
README.  I welcome suggestions on anything about MacMiNT but I make no
guarantees.  If you have something MacMiNT related that you would like
to share, contact Rainer Menes <[e-mail]> to see
if it should be put in the 'contrib' directory on
suniams1.statistik.tu-muenchen.de.

I will probably not put much more effort in to developing MacMiNT.  I
will try to add fixes and enhancements that people send to me if they
seem appropriate.  It seems pretty reliable now, so I think it is quite
useful as it stands.

Brad Pickering <[e-mail]>

PS - Thanks to Eric Smith for writing a cool OS and making the sources
freely available.

CONTRIBUTORS
Rainer Menes <[e-mail]>
Fred Grey <[e-mail]>
Warren DeLano <[e-mail]>
Pete Keleher <[e-mail]>
Harry Eaton <[e-mail]>
Blair MacIntyre <[e-mail]>
Rick Watson <[e-mail]>
Greg Satz <[e-mail]>
Michael.Smith <[e-mail]>
Patrick C. Beard <[e-mail]>
Mike Monaco <[e-mail]>
Rod Morehead <[e-mail]>

(please let me know if your name should be here but it isn't)