Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

insentricity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 171 posts

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

#71

Post by russdill »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #68
aksss wrote: 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 find the most useful application of old hardware is to occasionally re-ground your perspective on code performance and resource utilization. Writing software for old hardware is an effective way to force yourself to write performant code, even if only as a rare weekend exercise :)

You can get all that from using an AT-tiny :)

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

#72

Post by nessunodoro »

sosuke wrote: post #50
6510 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Artist John Zaklikowski had a great exhibit called Hard Drive Universe in 2012 in SF

https://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/albums/7215762935517133...

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

#73

Post by userbinator »

aksss wrote: 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.

The Pi is also notoriously Broadcom-proprietary[1], whereas an x86 PC has been a de-facto standard for decades; everything is well-known or has been reverse-engineered already, especially with a 486-era system.

It's somewhat similar to the reason people (like me) restore and drive old cars, also despite the "noise and power consumption" (and some happen to like the former ;-) --- they're relatively simple and well-understood.

Likewise, there is also a very active retrocomputing community, although a lot of it goes back much older than 486 or even PC --- the C64, ZX, and the like continue to have plenty of new software written for them.

[1] and if you ask for a datasheet or any more details about it on their "excellent community" (to quote some), you basically get told politely to f'off: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=163420

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

#74

Post by throwaway43234 »

reaperducer wrote: post #29
aksss wrote: 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…

For some resources such as copper, it might actually be environmentally net positive to recycle to old copper and buy new.

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

#75

Post by aswanson »

userbinator wrote: post #73
aksss wrote: 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.

The Pi is also notoriously Broadcom-proprietary[1], whereas an x86 PC has been a de-facto standard for decades; everything is well-known or has been reverse-engineered already, especially with a 486-era system. It's somewhat similar to the reason people (like me) restore and drive old cars, also despite the "noise and power consumption" (and some happen to like the former ;-) --- they're relatively simple and well-un…

Broadcom is horrible with datasheets. If you're not apple or intel, an f off should be expected in any request for a datasheet from them.

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

#76

Post by skissane »

nemetroid wrote: post #16
djxfade wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? What "real" hardware would actually have any use for it today? I understand that it might be fun, but I don't see the practical use case for it.

The 737 Max? It uses an 80286, so it’s even older. I'm also curious what use it would have. I imagine in cases where you're tied to such old hardware, you would also be tied to old software.

> The 737 Max? It uses an 80286, so it’s even older.

If we are talking about the computer that runs MCAS, my understanding is that it isn't a 286, it is a Rockwell Collins FCC-730 (aka EDFCS-730). The FCC-730 is a proprietary custom CPU architecture, there is limited public info available on it, although I did read somewhere that it uses a stack machine architecture (like Burroughs mainframes, classic HP 3000, Tandem T-16, various "Forth on a chip" processors, etc)

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

#77

Post by Scoundreller »

throwaway43234 wrote: post #74
reaperducer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For some resources such as copper, it might actually be environmentally net positive to recycle to old copper and buy new.

And about $5 in gold in a 486 chip:

https://www.ozcopper.com/computer-cpu-gold-yields/

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

#78

Post by icedchai »

amluto wrote: post #39
jeffbee wrote: 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.

"should"... Unfortunately, almost everything is bloated these days. My first Linux box, a 386SX/20, had only 4 megabytes of memory. I ran SLS Linux which installed off of roughly 20 floppies. I could compile C programs, and barely run X!

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

#79

Post by dbolgheroni »

Wish I had this flexibility with other kinds of hardware, like a phone. Having to throw out a much newer and completely functional hardware 2 years after being released, because there is almost nothing you can do with it is not good.

(And for those who want to instruct me about PC being a defined architecture, where there no such thing with smartphones, etc, etc, etc, I know all this, but the point is still valid.)

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

#80

Post by gfosco »

locao wrote: post #37

Does anyone else miss having this level of motivation? And that's not an isolation effect on me, I gave up on trying fun things like this for a long long time now.

I still have it, but almost everything else in life is fighting against letting me explore it.
Post reply on HN