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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

#11

Post by quotemstr »

drt1245 wrote: post #9
jschwartzi wrote: post #8

If you want to boot Debian on there you can actually build a complete Debian system from the package archives using either Debootstrap or Multistrap. Debootstrap is useful for building a Debian system inside of another Debian system, while Multistrap is useful for building a root filesystem to copy to another computer. If you can boot an initramfs then you can boot the root filesystem using pivot-root. The Linux kern…

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

Would it be feasible to just build a Debian image for the i486? Few packages should depend on something newer.

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

#12

Post by djxfade »

zozbot234 wrote: post #6
josteink wrote: post #2

Posts like this showcase how malleable Linux really is without getting overly complicated to follow. Really a nice quick read.

But not nearly as malleable as it could be. Hopefully, true 80386 support can be reintroduced to the kernel in a way that keeps it properly self-contained and easy to support. There are also a few kernel-tinification approaches floating around that could make the kernel smaller and easy to fit in a floppy-using scenario.

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.

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

#13

Post by boogies »

ianlevesque wrote: post #5
josteink wrote: post #2

Posts like this showcase how malleable Linux really is without getting overly complicated to follow. Really a nice quick read.

Yeah slightly tangential but I wonder if some of the alternative OSes (looking at you Haiku) could just use Linux as the kernel for portability.

That would be great if people could admit that the kernel isn't the operating system.

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

#16

Post by nemetroid »

djxfade wrote: post #12
zozbot234 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not nearly as malleable as it could be. Hopefully, true 80386 support can be reintroduced to the kernel in a way that keeps it properly self-contained and easy to support. There are also a few kernel-tinification approaches floating around that could make the kernel smaller and easy to fit in a floppy-using scenario.

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.

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

#17

Post by JoshTriplett »

zozbot234 wrote: post #6
josteink wrote: post #2

Posts like this showcase how malleable Linux really is without getting overly complicated to follow. Really a nice quick read.

But not nearly as malleable as it could be. Hopefully, true 80386 support can be reintroduced to the kernel in a way that keeps it properly self-contained and easy to support. There are also a few kernel-tinification approaches floating around that could make the kernel smaller and easy to fit in a floppy-using scenario.

> Hopefully, true 80386 support can be reintroduced

To the best of my knowledge, nobody is making new 386-only chips (that have no 486 or 586 support). As long as that remains the case, hopefully that support stays removed.

> There are also a few kernel-tinification approaches floating around that could make the kernel smaller and easy to fit in a floppy-using scenario.

We could always use more people looking at the size regressions, and working on making more kernel components optional. If anyone is interested in working on this, send me email and I'd be happy to get you connected with it.

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

#18

Post by asveikau »

quotemstr wrote: post #11
drt1245 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would it be feasible to just build a Debian image for the i486? Few packages should depend on something newer.

I don't know offhand what instructions were introduced in Pentium or later.

Doing some googling... 486 had cmpxchg, that's good.

Seems it didn't have rdtsc. It's not out of the question, I might say even pretty common, for user mode code to use that one via inline asm to implement a timer.

Obviously no SIMD instructions. If they say they're supporting 686 or better they might have some compiler flags that depend on mmx or similar? SSE came late to P6.

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

#20

Post by aksss »

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.

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