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

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

#161

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #66
aksss wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

There's also the environmental impact of the energy use. That 486 is pumping out 10x the greenhouse gasses.

Not really. 10x per MIPS, otherwise 486 CPU consumes about same number of watts. The whole PC though...

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

#162

Post by nemetroid »

skissane wrote: post #76
nemetroid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be pedantic, FCC-730 is the name of the Flight Control Computer itself. Its CPU may or may not be a 286. It has however been speculated that it is, as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380523.

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

#163

Post by anthk »

kristopolous wrote: post #122
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.

Dealing with garbage tech is what brings me down. Completely broken, unusable garbage software is everywhere, backed by egos, emotions, power plays, and entrenchment. That's the part I don't want to deal with. The only thing worse than having to deal with a bunch of idiots is having to deal with a bunch of things made by them. It pisses me off how broken everything is and how few people seem to take issue with it. Ev…

Get OpenBSD/Slackware, set XFCE as your main DE. With that and a bunch of tools you won't come back.

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

#164

Post by anthk »

icedchai wrote: post #78
amluto wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Tiny-X and fvwm with rxvt would run far better than any other VM + an XTerm.

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

#165

Post by Teknoman117 »

myself248 wrote: post #132
Teknoman117 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually had quite a bit of motivation after moving out of my old apartment. I was able to unpack all of my electronics stuff and tools again. Previous place was way too small. Actually unpacking stuff triggered a lot of desire to do stuff with it again. One of the things I found was a tube full of rom-less 8051 microcontrollers and another tube of AM85C30 Dual UARTs I probably picked up at a robotics club swap…

You need some "magic baud" crystals! I'm partial to 11.0592 because it fits nicely under chips rated for 12MHz without wasting much, and a lot of parts rated for 10 will happily overclock there quite stably. This is an incredibly useful reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator_frequencies

Yup! I have some on hand, but the DUART only takes a single clock line and I didn't have the parts for to build the crystal driver. This particular 8051 has a built in one, but no oscillator out. Was contemplating using one of its timers.

I didn't even realize the AVR supported a clock out until I bumped into it in the data sheet. Maddeningly it's not broken out on the Arduno Mega =P.

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

#166

Post by skissane »

nemetroid wrote: post #162
skissane wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

To be pedantic, FCC-730 is the name of the Flight Control Computer itself. Its CPU may or may not be a 286. It has however been speculated that it is, as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380523 .

I agree, the FCC-730/EDFCS-730 is not the name of the CPU, it is the name of the computer.

According to the diagrams in US patent 7,852,235 [1], the FCC-730 CPU is an FCP-2002. I would caution against the possibly mistaken inference that this patent describes the actual architecture of the 737-MAX or any other actual flight computer, as opposed to simply a design that Rockwell-Collins may have developed and not (yet) actually deployed. In particular, while the 737-MAX does have an FCC-730, I don't think it has an IPS-5000.

A NASA Langley presentation [2] mentions formal verification of the FCP-2002. I think that if it is formally verified, it is probably not a 286. A 286 would be a poor choice for a formally verified microprocessor for embedded applications since it has a huge number of extraneous features that would complicate the verification process while yielding no benefit for the embedded application. The presentation also mentions a new "FCS 5000" product line, and its formal verification, and I wonder if that has any connection with the IPS-5000 CPU card mentioned in the patent diagram? Probably, the patent describes a new flight control computer design, meant as a successor to the design used in the 737-MAX (and other Boeing aircraft such as the 777).

The Boeing 777 autopilot uses FCP 2002 CPUs as well [3]

I swear I read somewhere that the FCP 2002 had a stack machine architecture, but now I can't find where I read that. (Did I imagine reading it?)

I'm not sure where this "286" stuff comes from. I think maybe, FCP-2002 is a 16-bit CPU, and then people say a 16-bit CPU is "like a 286", and then maybe that gets corrupted in the retelling, and "like a 286" turns into "a 286"?

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US7852235B1

[2] https://shemesh.larc.nasa.gov/NFM2018/talks/Butler.pdf

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20100822151603/http://www.rockwe...

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

#167

Post by nemetroid »

skissane wrote: post #166
nemetroid wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be pedantic, FCC-730 is the name of the Flight Control Computer itself. Its CPU may or may not be a 286. It has however been speculated that it is, as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380523 .

I agree, the FCC-730/EDFCS-730 is not the name of the CPU, it is the name of the computer. According to the diagrams in US patent 7,852,235 [1], the FCC-730 CPU is an FCP-2002. I would caution against the possibly mistaken inference that this patent describes the actual architecture of the 737-MAX or any other actual flight computer, as opposed to simply a design that Rockwell-Collins may have developed and not (yet)…

> A NASA Langley presentation [2] mentions formal verification of the FCP-2002. I think that if it is formally verified, it is probably not a 286. A 286 would be a poor choice for a formally verified microprocessor for embedded applications since it has a huge number of extraneous features that would complicate the verification process while yielding no benefit for the embedded application.

That's an interesting observation. The presentation specifically mentions verification of the microcode, which I think would be feasible to do for a 286?

> I'm not sure where this "286" stuff comes from. I think maybe, FCP-2002 is a 16-bit CPU, and then people say a 16-bit CPU is "like a 286", and then maybe that gets corrupted in the retelling, and "like a 286" turns into "a 286"?

Yeah, I'm not sure where the rumour came from either. But I do think it's plausible. According to "Computers take flight" [1], the 777 uses (among others) a 486 for its control system:

> Boeing finally built an airliner with fly-by-wire controls, the 777. The control system is more straightforward than that used by Airbus. It contains three “lanes” of three different computers each: an AMD 29050, a Motorola 68043, and an Intel 80486.

The source given is "Primary flight computers for the Boeing 777" [2], which doesn't seem publicly available.

Given the closeness in time for the 777 and the 737 NG, it seems somewhat unlikely (to me) that the 777 would go for the most popular options, while the 737 would use a bespoke CPU design. The A320 used 80186 and 68K processors [3], so the 737 would really be the odd one out in that case.

1: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/200501...

2: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01419...

3: https://books.google.se/books?id=KDX0BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA214&lpg=P...

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

#168

Post by skissane »

nemetroid wrote: post #167
skissane wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, the FCC-730/EDFCS-730 is not the name of the CPU, it is the name of the computer. According to the diagrams in US patent 7,852,235 [1], the FCC-730 CPU is an FCP-2002. I would caution against the possibly mistaken inference that this patent describes the actual architecture of the 737-MAX or any other actual flight computer, as opposed to simply a design that Rockwell-Collins may have developed and not (yet)…

> A NASA Langley presentation [2] mentions formal verification of the FCP-2002. I think that if it is formally verified, it is probably not a 286. A 286 would be a poor choice for a formally verified microprocessor for embedded applications since it has a huge number of extraneous features that would complicate the verification process while yielding no benefit for the embedded application. That's an interesting obse…

Well, one point to note – according to your [2], the primary flight computers on the 777 are by GEC Marconi. The primary flight computers on the 737 are by Rockwell Collins. So, the CPU choices by GEC Marconi don't necessarily have any relevance to the CPU choices of Rockwell Collins.

Rockwell Collins didn't build the primary flight computer of the 777, but they did build the 777 autopilot (which is a separate computer system). The 777 autopilot and the 737 flight computer appear to have some shared technical heritage, including both using the FCP-2002 CPU (whatever it actually is).

(Why Boeing chooses different vendors for different aircraft models, I don't know, but I presume it is part of a corporate strategy of ensuring some diversity in vendors to avoid "putting all its eggs in one basket".)

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

#169

Post by throwaway43234 »

kjs3 wrote: post #95
throwaway43234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Citation needed. I know a ton of folks who bought those things by the cubic yard for the metals, and only managed to make an environmental mess with little dollar return.

There's much less volume of copper in a RPi than a 486, so if you recycle your 386 to get a Rpi, the net copper reserve increases.

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

#170

Post by arantius »

mobilio wrote: post #40

Almost 20 years ago i have internet, but didn't buy router. And found floppyfw: https://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/ Absolutely brilliant distribution that works perfect. And fit on one floppy - kernel and userspace.

Also in the late 90s (maybe super early 2000s?) I used "LRP" for my router, booting from only one floppy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Router_Project
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