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I recently came into possession of a fully-functioning TRS-80 Model 4, and I fantasize regularly about putting some vaguely Unix-esque thing on it. The fantasy continues.
Start there and you’ll find a rabbit hole of reasonable depth.
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Says you. llvm-mos generates surprisingly efficient 6502 code given its age and maturity. Don't take my word for it, try some experiments with it on godbolt.
Sure. Here's a couple of functions to iterate over an array of "Ball" objects, as you might do in a Breakout-style game that has a multi-ball powerup. I didn't do anything to make it particularly 6502-amenable; it's how I'd write it for a modern machine, probably. Even compiled with -O2: as expected, the code is slow and enormous - a single addition compiles to something like 30 instructions. [0] https://godbolt.org/…
Still impressive of course, but semantics matter :)
This isn't Linux running on C64 per se. This is C64 emulating a RISC-V environment on which Linux runs. Still impressive of course, but semantics matter :)
Is this different from Lunix? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUnix
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Says you. llvm-mos generates surprisingly efficient 6502 code given its age and maturity. Don't take my word for it, try some experiments with it on godbolt.
I've yet to see the 6502 C compiler that can beat good assembly code. I appreciate the convenience and llvm-mos has certainly improved greatly, but if you want speed on a 6502, there's no substitute.
This begs the question. What is the oldest hardware that can boot modern Linux but still be used as a daily driver?
I think you'd want to aim somewhere around the Pentium 4 / Athlon XP era. The docs say it doesn't support the original Pentium, so I suppose you could go back as far as the Pentium II if you really want to suffer.
This begs the question. What is the oldest hardware that can boot modern Linux but still be used as a daily driver?
For the sake of argument, let's say a computer where you can install Debian 12 and run a WM and a browser, and it's not excruciatingly slow. I think you'd want to aim somewhere around the Pentium 4 / Athlon XP era. The docs say it doesn't support the original Pentium, so I suppose you could go back as far as the Pentium II if you really want to suffer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the sake of argument, let's say a computer where you can install Debian 12 and run a WM and a browser, and it's not excruciatingly slow. I think you'd want to aim somewhere around the Pentium 4 / Athlon XP era. The docs say it doesn't support the original Pentium, so I suppose you could go back as far as the Pentium II if you really want to suffer.
Damn and I still remember when Pentium 4 is the epitome of speed and I have to make do with Pentium 3 and even 2.