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Linux on an 8-bit micro

dmitry.gr

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Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#71

Post by andthen22 »

D9u wrote: post #19

Awesomely cool project, but I was somewhat dismayed by the choice of GNOME, as GNOME is quite bloated and a smaller window manager, instead of a DE, seems to make more sense while not detracting from usability.

hahaha, this comment is hilarious. The guy got an 8-bit tiny little 55 cent chip (8 bits means an isntruction is between 0-255) to slowly crawl its way through pretending to be a real mdoern CPU by pretending to execute a real modern desktop CPU instruction every few cycles.

He got it to starting up x in a day and you're like, "Cool project bro but I'm dsmayed by the choice of GNOME".

saying it, "detracts from usability." this is just hilarious.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#72

Post by blaabjerg »

andthen22 wrote: post #71
D9u wrote: post #19

Awesomely cool project, but I was somewhat dismayed by the choice of GNOME, as GNOME is quite bloated and a smaller window manager, instead of a DE, seems to make more sense while not detracting from usability.

hahaha, this comment is hilarious. The guy got an 8-bit tiny little 55 cent chip (8 bits means an isntruction is between 0-255) to slowly crawl its way through pretending to be a real mdoern CPU by pretending to execute a real modern desktop CPU instruction every few cycles. He got it to starting up x in a day and you're like, "Cool project bro but I'm dsmayed by the choice of GNOME". saying it, "detracts from usabil…

I'm still confused as to whether he's being serious or trolling us hard.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#73

Post by iso8859-1 »

danellis wrote: post #58
iso8859-1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you open source it? :) Found you on Github, it's not there.

Oh, absolutely. It's not like I'll use it for anything other than saying, "Hey, look at RISC OS running (slowly) in a browser!", which is the end goal.

Did you consider using an existing platform like https://github.com/asmblah/jemul8 ? Would be nice with a multiple-CPU emulator in JavaScript.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#74

Post by sigkill »

dmitrygr wrote: post #49
jmtame wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's more on the side of genius, but less on the side of practical. I think he'd do really well if he tried a startup with someone who could help push him in the direction of building things with more practical use.

I've done plenty of practical things a while back (palmpowerups in PalmOS days) but nowadays I am relaxing (I work at Google and I fly planes for fun). I'll go back to doing practical things with a purpose in a year or two :)

Things don't generally translate well on the internet, but be rest assured that when I said you were insane, I meant the good and awesome insane.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#75

Post by NewAccnt3 »

noselasd wrote: post #25
NewAccnt3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying you can't compile Linux to an 8-bit CPU, but you can run an emulator of a much larger chip on that CPU and run linux on that ? Are you sure?

That's what the person here did, so yes indeed.

I'm not sure that statement is based on any logical standing.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#76

Post by iso8859-1 »

vidarh wrote: post #67
iso8859-1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some real ports of Linux for "limited" architectures, like uClinux reginaldo (a guy who posted his emulator (jslm32) last time this was on HN) actually uses uClinux on LatticeMico32. [1]: https://github.com/ubercomp/jslm32 I'm considering trying to get this to compile on Emscripten. It's so self-contained that I think it will be fairly unproblematic. Emscripten's 64-bit math emulation surely won't be need…

You can boot Linux in the browser already. Or do you have another interesting use specifically for an ARM emulator

jsLinux is not FOSS.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#77

Post by wazoox »

qb45 wrote: post #62
wazoox wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the time, there were even hacks to run Windows 95 in safe mode on 286 machines. 386 with 4 megs was the official minimal requirement.

What were the limitations and hacks involved in this? I mean, parts of W95 (certainly including explorer.exe) were 32-bit so either they had to be disabled/replaced or the kernel extended with an 80386 emulator.

IIRC it may involve using some parts from Win 3.11 running on MS-DOS 7.0 and other windows 95 parts.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#78

Post by danellis »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #73
danellis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, absolutely. It's not like I'll use it for anything other than saying, "Hey, look at RISC OS running (slowly) in a browser!", which is the end goal.

Did you consider using an existing platform like https://github.com/asmblah/jemul8 ? Would be nice with a multiple-CPU emulator in JavaScript.

I think it would be more trouble than it's worth to take an x86 emulator and try to make it do ARM as well, unless it was written with multiple CPU types in mind in the first place.

But more importantly, it's written in JavaScript -- this is an exercise in learning Dart.

I do refer to various C-based implementations from time to time, though.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#79

Post by D9u »

blaabjerg wrote: post #72
andthen22 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hahaha, this comment is hilarious. The guy got an 8-bit tiny little 55 cent chip (8 bits means an isntruction is between 0-255) to slowly crawl its way through pretending to be a real mdoern CPU by pretending to execute a real modern desktop CPU instruction every few cycles. He got it to starting up x in a day and you're like, "Cool project bro but I'm dsmayed by the choice of GNOME". saying it, "detracts from usabil…

I'm still confused as to whether he's being serious or trolling us hard.

I'm just a GNOME hater... Forgive my uninformed comments.

Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro

#80

Post by tmzt »

DanBC wrote: post #8

That's impressive! I remember when "getting linux working on a laptop" was thought to be tricky.[1] ELKS was a linux distribution for old small machines. It was supposed to run on an 8086, and use just 512 KB (not MB) for ram. ( http://web.archive.org/web/19990117003949/http://www.uk.linu... ) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embeddable_Linux_Kernel_Subset ) Wow, still sort of live. ( http://elks.sourceforge.net/ ) [1]…

Does anybody have a copy of the original ELKS homepage with the quote from Linus about Linux not being portable?

It seems not to be in IA.

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