71 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
71 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
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UNIX CONVERSIONS
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(By David Johnson)
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Welcome to UNIX CONVERSION, hopefully a regular here at
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MODEMNEWS. I would like to start with an offer to allow you the
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reader to mold this column to your desires. I will be writing about
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UNIX in general as well as how it is similar or different to DOS. I
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even plan to cover some subjects on converting from DOS to UNIX
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since it has become so popular these days.
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First let me explain a little about myself. I am the SYSOP of
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"The Unknown RBBS" operated on Long Island NY. I started my system
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4 years ago to help beginners get started on computers as well as
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answer questions about AT&T computer products. After a very short
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time my system grew rapidly to what it is now. The Unknown operates
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on a dedicated AT&T 386 machine with two nodes running under Desq-
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view with 318 Megs of disk storage.
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WHAT IS UNIX?
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Let me just start todays column with a quick description of UNIX
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and compare it to DOS. UNIX is an Operating system just like DOS in
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that it is the master control program that give the machine its
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personality after booting up. DOS (both MS and PC) have a control
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program called COMMAND.COM which is about 12K to 16K in size
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depending on the version and brand. This program is used to
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initialize the machine and give you the A> or C> prompt you are all
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so familiar with. It is also just one of several DOS related
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commands that fit on the two 360K formatted disks when you purchase
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DOS. So it is safe to say that all of DOS and its support programs
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(about 30 commands in all) could fit in about 720K of disk space.
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Lets get an idea now of the size of UNIX.
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The master control program of UNIX is called the KERNEL. This
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program is executed when a UNIX machine is booted and eventually
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give a user a $ prompt which is equivalent to the DOS A> or C>
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prompt. The UNIX kernel can be as small as 380K or on a standard
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386 machine 1.4Meg big, or on other larger UNIX machines over 2 Meg
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in size! ALL of UNIX and its support programs (about 300 - 500
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commands) comes on anywhere from 10 to 45 1.2 Meg disks! On some of
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the larger machines it is sold only on 60 Meg tapes because its so
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large. But don't let this scare you because in most cases it is
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much smaller for use on 386 based machines.
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As you can see it is not possible to run UNIX on a floppy only
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based machine. In fact, AT&T had a lot of problems selling UNIX
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machines with 10 Meg hard disks since there was less then 1 Meg
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left for user programs. A typical UNIX system for the end user
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these days is sold with a 40 or 68 Meg hard drive. One of the major
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advantages of UNIX is that it is user configurable. This process
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similar to a DOS CONFIG.SYS file consists of dozens of files that
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can be changed to allow dozens of SERIAL and PARALLEL ports,
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multiple users (simultaneously) and even allows you to run several
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programs at once, both DOS and UNIX! Sound too good to be true, no
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its not, but there is a price you pay for this and that will be the
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topic of discussion for the next issue.
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Well I can see I'm out of space already, so I will just end this
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by saying that you can help decide what gets written here by
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leaving your suggestions on "The Unknown RBBS" at 516-486-4813.
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