31–40 of 58 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
how old are you ? :-)
There are people alive in the industry today who have never seen a floppy disk. CDROMS Too but because of DVDs and BDs they are still in recent memory
First, I think this is a great idea, and I second your idea! But, there's sort of a larger problem at stake here with operating systems, and that is the "archaeological WHY". You see, the way Operating Systems classes are typically taught at university is that you are given an already working, already functional Operating System, which might be as "simple" (a term I use loosely, because it's relative) as Minix. (Mini…
This isn't just in Operating System, or Programming but Computer Technology in general. Unlike other Engineering courses from AeroSpace to Mechanical Engineering, which explains everything from basic theory to practice and how we evolve to current design and current ( likely slightly outdated ) industry practice.
A possible alternative: pester Blackberry with requests for opening the 32bit variant of QNX (crowfunding?), since they're likely moving to 64bit anyway. Very small devices with RAM sizes well below the Gigabyte are the ones which would benefit the most from it.
Surely they are still selling the 32 bit version to the embedded market?
A possible alternative: pester Blackberry with requests for opening the 32bit variant of QNX (crowfunding?), since they're likely moving to 64bit anyway. Very small devices with RAM sizes well below the Gigabyte are the ones which would benefit the most from it.
Alas, it was not to be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are about twenty years old (Linux 2.2 and FreeBSD 3). While they almost certainly still work on modern hardware thanks to the backwards compatibility of the PC platform, can it be done with newer software?
OpenWrt run's on 4mb flash / 32mb memory devices. If you disable IPv6 / Wireless drivers and tune some more knobs you get probably something that boots a recent 4.14 kernel / musl / busybox from a 3mb squashfs and runs in 16mb memory.
A possible alternative: pester Blackberry with requests for opening the 32bit variant of QNX (crowfunding?), since they're likely moving to 64bit anyway. Very small devices with RAM sizes well below the Gigabyte are the ones which would benefit the most from it.
The ever elusive QNX. I remember being given a boot floppy of QNX for PC, it had a graphics environment, a shell and a web browser. On one floppy. Stable like Linux, small, graphical and fast like Amiga (actually smaller!) and could run circles around Windows 95 on off the shelf hardware. Alas, it was not to be.
http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html
Demo video
"take advantage of modern hardware, (2) fit on a single floppy disk" that's kinda funny using the works modern hardware and floppy disk together. Tell me where you would even buy a floppy disk or a floppy disk drive.
"take advantage of modern hardware, (2) fit on a single floppy disk" that's kinda funny using the works modern hardware and floppy disk together. Tell me where you would even buy a floppy disk or a floppy disk drive.
Amazon sells both. I have no use for either and think "fits on a floppy disk" is not a very useful metaphor anymore but Amazon still sells them.
I'm always in favor of homebuilt OS projects, I've worked on several in-house OSs and they seem to have good ideas salted around them. If it were me, I'd write an open source RTOS (yet another one) and cast around for clever notions to stick in the thing, for the mental exercise if nothing else. Perhaps carve out a niche in quality/safety and not so much in performance.
What I partially would love to see is a Unix like OS for the Pi thats designed and built specifically to take full advantage of everything the Pi has to offer. The Pi especially with the Pi Zero is a great tool to learn and teach. Since the Pi Zero is so cheap if it breaks you buy a new one...
I did laugh at this.