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Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

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41–50 of 171 posts

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#41
post #20

The virtue of reusing an old system is somewhat eroded by the fact that its noise and power consumption exceed that of a more powerful Pi 3 B+, which can be had for $50-60 with case and power supply (circa 2020). I see little advantage in keeping the old hardware around anymore. I think I still have some old ISA cables downstairs in a box - high time to acknowledge to myself that I will NEVER use those again.

It’s more like art than an engineering accomplishment

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#42
post #19

Modern days Linux kernel requires a bootloader, as seen in the video. In the old days, you could dd the kernel to the floppy disk and use rdev to point to the root partition to start after loading the kernel.

A couple of days ago, I went looking for when this code was removed. It was removed in 2003: https://lwn.net/Articles/21512/

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#43
post #25

I wonder how well it works. If you take an x86_64 system and make a memory control group with only 32MB of memory (and kmem tracking is enabled, which is true by default) the container will OOM right away. I've been operating under the belief that Linux now requires 64MB at a minimum, but perhaps a 32-bit uniprocessor build can get by with less.

You're probably being killed (in part) by the default stack sizes, which is much larger on x86_64.

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#44
post #43
post #25

I wonder how well it works. If you take an x86_64 system and make a memory control group with only 32MB of memory (and kmem tracking is enabled, which is true by default) the container will OOM right away. I've been operating under the belief that Linux now requires 64MB at a minimum, but perhaps a 32-bit uniprocessor build can get by with less.

You're probably being killed (in part) by the default stack sizes, which is much larger on x86_64.

That doesn't seem likely, since stacks are and have always been demand-paged on Linux. If you don't use more than 4K, your stacks will be 4K for ever.

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#45
post #20

The virtue of reusing an old system is somewhat eroded by the fact that its noise and power consumption exceed that of a more powerful Pi 3 B+, which can be had for $50-60 with case and power supply (circa 2020). I see little advantage in keeping the old hardware around anymore. I think I still have some old ISA cables downstairs in a box - high time to acknowledge to myself that I will NEVER use those again.

I guess it depends on if noise and power are your primary considerations. For some, they'd rather not see a useful machine take up space in a landfill, leech toxins into the environment, and simultaneously drive unneeded demand for the production of yet another computer. I guess one would have to do the math and figure out what the environmental impact of a new Pi 3 B+ is. Or they could figure out if the increased el…

I fully empathize with this - I hate throwing out/recycling electronics. The power side it truly does depend on your local rates of course. If you consider a 24/7 draw of about 35 watts to power an out-of-box 486 DX2 (headless) vs like 3 watts for an RPI, you can do the math with some variance and figure out just how long the $60 will last you. But a 10-fold reduction in power consumption is pretty remarkable. When you consider that an RPI might replace multiple 486's, even more so.

Alternative uses for a 486 case - make a planter box, bird house or a bee hive. https://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-case-beehive/

Alternative uses for 486 mobo - incorporate it into furniture design, cut it up to create a wind chime, create stuff like that to avoid the landfill. :)

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#46
post #20

The virtue of reusing an old system is somewhat eroded by the fact that its noise and power consumption exceed that of a more powerful Pi 3 B+, which can be had for $50-60 with case and power supply (circa 2020). I see little advantage in keeping the old hardware around anymore. I think I still have some old ISA cables downstairs in a box - high time to acknowledge to myself that I will NEVER use those again.

You should develop the creativity to do something completely useless with everything.

https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/12/c...

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#47
post #39
post #25

I wonder how well it works. If you take an x86_64 system and make a memory control group with only 32MB of memory (and kmem tracking is enabled, which is true by default) the container will OOM right away. I've been operating under the belief that Linux now requires 64MB at a minimum, but perhaps a 32-bit uniprocessor build can get by with less.

What are you putting in your container? A trivial container with non-bloated userspace should not take nearly that much memory.

Thanks for your contribution. The reason I value HN so much is the willingness of inexperienced people to inform me of what Linux "should" do.

  # cd /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/
  # mkdir lol-hackernewses
  # cd lol-hackernewses
  # echo 32000000 > memory.limit_in_bytes 
  # echo $$ > tasks
  # find / > /dev/null
  Killed
  Memory cgroup stats for /lol-hackernewses:
               anon 135168
               file 11567104
               kernel_stack 0
               slab 19771392
               sock 0
               shmem 0
               file_mapped 0
               file_dirty 0
               file_writeback 0
               anon_thp 0
               inactive_anon 0
               active_anon 94208
               inactive_file 5517312
               active_file 5881856
               unevictable 0
               slab_reclaimable 19075072
               slab_unreclaimable 696320
               pgfault 14817
               pgmajfault 2376
               workingset_refault 25773
               workingset_activate 3465
               workingset_nodereclaim 0
               pgrefill 969886
               pgscan 971861
               pgsteal 50508
               pgactivate 913407
               pgdeactivate 969886
               pglazyfree 0
               pglazyfreed 0
               thp_fault_alloc 0
               thp_collapse_alloc 0

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#48
post #27
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent versions of Debian require a 686. https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.en.html#...

also, this video features a 486 cpu because linux dropped 386 support a while ago. https://www.zdnet.com/article/good-bye-386-linux-to-drop-sup...

I was always under the impression that Linux 386 simply meant 32 bit support. So, no 386 support would mean no 32 bit support rather than the 386 specifically.

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#49
A long time ago I remember installing gentoo on a 486 33Mhz (Tandy I think). I initially compiled everything on a much faster Athlon XP. I do remember compiling an updated kernel on the 486 and that it took 3 days, but it did finish :D

I remember the hard drive was too big to boot from directly, there was some bootloader that could run from the floppy disk then finish booting from the hard drive.

It also had this horrible sound card/cd-rom combo controller that I never was able to make work in linux

Re: Booting a 486 from floppy with the most up-to-date stable Linux kernel

#50
post #46
post #20

The virtue of reusing an old system is somewhat eroded by the fact that its noise and power consumption exceed that of a more powerful Pi 3 B+, which can be had for $50-60 with case and power supply (circa 2020). I see little advantage in keeping the old hardware around anymore. I think I still have some old ISA cables downstairs in a box - high time to acknowledge to myself that I will NEVER use those again.

You should develop the creativity to do something completely useless with everything. https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/12/c...

If you enjoy circuit board art I saw this artist year after year in the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. https://www.armadillobazaar.com/austin-circuit-board-2015-2/
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