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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers The history of UNIX and the ideas behind it Post 29957 by elendil on Monday 14th of October 2002 08:14:40 PM
Old 10-14-2002
CPU & Memory The history of UNIX and the ideas behind it

Hi. I am new here, and this is my first post at the UNIX.com forums. I have read the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, and I noticed that neither UNIX nor Linux was mentioned once in the book. Why is this? What was UNIX's place in the early days of personal computers?

I realize that mainframes probably had proprietary operating systems specific to the manufacturer, or even the model of the computer. And it is also true that personal computers either had homebrewed operating systems or basic operating systems like Q-DOS or CP/M.

But what about UNIX? Where does that fit in? I've given it some thought, and it seems sensible that minicomputers (note that I refer to minicomputers as computers such as the PDP-8) might have used UNIX. It sounds like that would fit. Mainframe computers have their own proprietary operating system, minicomputers have a good operating system, such as UNIX, and UNIX probably won't fit on personal computers, so developers made homebrewed operating systems. Am I right?

Also, I have another question about the structure and basic ideas of UNIX. A small portion of the book Just for Fun, of which my copy is signed by Linus Torvalds, states that UNIX was a small-is-beautiful operating system. So I thought about how that would work. I would have the operating system take care of tasks such as the filesystem and the management of processes. But if thats roughly what UNIX does, what is Unix then? Is it just a central control station of the computer that manages processes, and manages the file system?

I also gave some thought about the notion of processes. Say I was making an operating system. I would either make a process for or integrate into the shell something like saving files and opening them. This process would take care of all of the stuff having to do with files. Maybe the file system itself would be embedded into the operating system, but this would not. Since it would be a modern operating system, it would seem sensible and convenient to not only add support for the hard drive, but for the floppy disk and the CD-ROM drive and CD-RW. I would want to have the desired effect of something like this:

> write E: doc1.txt, doc2.txt, doc3.tga, doc5.pdf

Even if this was a CD-RW, it would write the files to the E: drive. Would this be what a file i/o process would do, or would it have a special process for the floppy disk, the hard drive, and the CD-RW?

One last thing: in the shell sample I wrote above, write would be a command of the shell, and the word write would signal to start the process FILEio.exe with the parameters of E:, doc1.txt..., right?

I am sorry if I have bored you with my endless post. Thanks!
 

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mtools(1)						      General Commands Manual							 mtools(1)

NAME
mtools - Provides a collection of tools for manipulating DOS files DESCRIPTION
The mtools commands are a public domain collection of programs that let you read, write, and manipulate files on a DOS file system (typi- cally a diskette) from a UNIX system. Each command attempts to emulate the DOS equivalent command as closely as possible. The following commands are available: Converts a DOS file to UNIX Changes DOS file attribute options Changes or reports the DOS working directory Copies DOS files to and from a UNIX operating system Deletes a DOS file Displays contents of a DOS directory Copies a diskette to another diskette as a bit-image copy Adds a DOS file system to a low-level formatted diskette Creates a shell script to restore UNIX file names from DOS Labels a DOS volume Makes a DOS directory Removes a DOS directory Performs a low level read (copy) of a DOS file to UNIX Renames an exist- ing DOS file Displays the contents of a DOS file Performs a low level write (copy) of a UNIX file to DOS Converts a UNIX file to DOS format DOS file names optionally are composed of a drive letter followed by a colon, a subdirectory, and a file name. Subdirectory names can use either the '/' or '' separator. The use of the '' separator or wildcards requires the names to be enclosed in quotes to protect them from the shell. The regular expression "pattern matching" routines follow the UNIX rules. For example, an asterisk (*) matches all DOS files in place of asterisks separated by a dot (.) such as *.*. The archive, hidden, read-only and system attribute bits are ignored during pattern match- ing. Not all UNIX file names are supported in the DOS world. The mtools commands may have to change UNIX names to fit the DOS file name conven- tions. Most commands provide the verbose option (-v), that displays new file names if they have been changed. The following table shows some examples of file name conversions: ----------------------------------------------- UNIX name DOS name Reason for the change ----------------------------------------------- thisisatest THISISAT file name too long file.stuff FILE.STU extension too long prn.txt XRN.TXT PRN is a device name .abc X.ABC null file name hot+cold HOTXCOLD illegal character ----------------------------------------------- All options use the minus (-) option, not the slash (/) as provided under DOS conventions. The mcd command is used to establish the device and the current working directory (relative to the DOS file system), otherwise the default is assumed to be A:. All the mtools commands return 0 on success and 1 on complete failure. All mtools require a floppy diskette properly installed on the system. All mtools facilities address a device named /dev/disk/floppy, therefore, a symbolic link between the floppy device and /dev/disk/floppy is also required. RESTRICTIONS
If the proper device is not specified (when multiple disks capacities are supported), an error message from the device driver may be dis- played. This message can be ignored. EXAMPLES
If the diskette is a SCSI attached floppy drive designated device rz13, the following example sets up a floppy diskette for access by the mtools commands: # cd /dev # ./MAKEDEV disk/dsk13 You can then link the device to /dev/disk/floppy as follows: # ln -s /dev/rdisk/dsk/13c /dev/disk/floppy The following example sets up a floppy diskette for access by the mtools commands if the floppy drive is FDI attached: # cd /dev # ./MAKEDEV fd0 You can then link the device to /dev/disk/floppy as follows: # ln -s /dev/rfd0c /dev/disk/floppy The following example also sets up a SCSI attached floppy diskette for access by the mtools commands: # /usr/sbin/mknod /dev/rdisk/dsk13c c 8 21506 You can then link the device to /dev/disk/floppy as follows: # ln -s /dev/rdisk/dsk13c /dev/disk/floppy Remember to use the appropriate SCSI name and minor number for your configuration. In this example, this is dev/rdisk/dsk13c. Caution This method is recommended for use only by experienced system administrators. SEE ALSO
Commands: dos2unix(1), ln(1), mattrib(1), mcd(1), mcopy(1), mdel(1), mdir(1), mdiskcopy(1), mformat(1), mlabel(1), mmd(1), mrd(1), mread(1), mren(1), mtype(1), mwrite(1), unix2dos(1) Floppy disk interface: fd(7) Utilities: MAKEDEV(8), mknod(8) mtools(1)
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