Re: [MiNT] N.aes v2.0 questions?

[Mark Duckworth <mduckworth@atari-source.com>]

On Sat, 2004-10-23 at 01:24 -0400, Ronald J. Hall wrote:
> Hi. I've just received N.aes v2.0 from Woller Systems, and I have a few 
> questions.
> 
> Unfortunately, I do not have the honor of being literate in the German 
> language. :-(
> 

Neither are a bunch of peoples ;-)

> I was told to install N.aes *before* attempting to install easymint, that its 
> easier. Correct?
> 

Well IMHO it really doesn't matter.  Either one will break the other in
some way or another.

> I have a CT60 equipped Falcon. Should I still pick 030 during the 
> installation, or go for the 060 Milan?
> 

060 milan just installs the 060 mint kernel.  The installer sets up a
full mint distro with a quite old kernel, etc.  This really isn't what
you want.  Install n.aes, delete all it's mint stuff (mint in auto
folder, etc), then install easymint.  Once easymint is installed simply
boot the machine and go into n_aes folder and type ./n_aes030.sys.  This
will start n_aes.  Get things setup right and then when you want to
auto-start n.aes in the future, just edit /etc/ttytab with any good
editor like pico in text mode or qed in graphical mode and set a line
like this: 
console "/c/n_aes/n_aes030.sys"         tw52    on secure
I don't think tabbing or spacing matters that much.  Now instead of
showing a text console on reboot it will auto-start n.aes.  I believe
n.aes should pretty much run fine without any configuration after
install.

> The final popup window, if I'm reading it right, tells me its finished 
> installing and that I need to reboot for any changes to be in effect, or to 
> continue.
> 

Yes, because N.aes wants it's own version of mint etc.  These are old.
Trash them.  Trash the multitos dir it creates (well save it somewhere
just in case).  Then install easymint, and replace the easymint kernel
with freemint 1.16.1 for http://www.sparemint.org.  Replace all
xfs,xdd,xif in C:\mint with the new ones and then reboot again.  Make
sure after you install easymint that your mint.cnf has GEM= line
commented out and INIT= line set to INIT=u:\sbin\init (or it might be
INIT=u:\sbin\init.prg).

> I was told that N.aes will not work straight with TOS, so I need to continue, 
> then disable N.aes until I install easymint. Is that right? (I did try 
> rebooting at this point, just to see what would happen - my Falcon went into 
> an endless bootup/reboot cycle <smile>)
> 

N.Aes won't do anything without mint.  It can't and won't start.  Just
set mint.prg in your auto folder to mint.prx to disable. Then delete the
old n.aes installed mint.prg, mint.cnf, etc and install easymint like I
said above.  Follow those directions and come back with probs and I'll
help.

> If so, what do I have to do to disable it, since it installs itself in various 
> places, such as the auto folder, naes, multitos, and a few ACCs.
> 

Hrmm..   You probably want to use C:\mint rather than multitos as your
mint folder.  Remember that.  Rename the acc's to accname.acx (just
n_fsel I believe), they shouldn't crash the system if they load under
single tos.  and rename mint*.prg in your auto folder to mint.prx.
Remember n.aes is an extension of mint and should only be loaded under
mint.  n_aes030 should be n_aes030.sys rather than .prg in order to
prevent you from accidentally running it under tos.  In this small
system configuration the procedure is as follows:
Boot -> auto folder -> Mint.prg -> load and read C:\multitos\mint.cnf ->
mint.cnf says load C:\n_aes\n_aes030.sys as the GEM.

In your final solution you will have:
Boot -> auto folder -> not so old Mint.prg -> load and read C:\mint
\mint.cnf (from new freemint archive!) -> runs u:\sbin\init (u is
symlinked properly inside your mint.cnf) -> init boots your easymint
system -> init loads and processes /etc/ttytab -> which there in turn
finally loads n.aes.  

This solution is ideal otherwise not much point to installing easymint.
This does all necessary boot stuff.  It will also load daemons like
samba for windows filesharing, setup your network card, ssh for remote
shell to your atari, etc.

There's a lot to learn but that's part of the fun ;-)

Thanks,
Mark