Slashdot Mirror
Contiki on Ethernut
randomErr writes "Many of you may remember Contiki, the OS and GUI for the C64 and many other 8 bit platforms, which was posted on Slashdot in March. Adam Dunkels has ported Contiki to a more modern platorm: the open source Ethernut board. You can also see the working webserver and VNC server."
You can also see the working webserver and VNC server.
:)
If that webserver is hooked up to the net, you won't be seeing it for long.
My blog
The answer should be obvious: a web server able to run on a C64 can run on any embedded system that can emulate a 6502 CPU. This means I can put a web server into my mouse. The possibilities are stunning...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The answer is simple: because we can!
This was going to be a story about drunken backpackers travelling round Europe!!!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Yes, within 5 years all mice will have Bluetooth and you can surf to your mouse site and ask stuff like 'how many clicks have I done since whenever'. Using your keyboard, hopefully.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Just say it's rumored to contian SCOde - all hell will break lose.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Now go forth, Slashdot readers, and give that server a good kick in the ethernuts!
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Imagine a low cost, already documented, platform that could be used for say plastic injection machine controllers. Think about a Minitel like device for a $100.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
It seems so unfair, Ethernut vs. Slashdot vs.
/cgi/tcp page and check the connections, truely evil.
Almost like David vs. Goliath, except in this case, David has two broken arms, no legs, 3 gunshot wounds center mass, and massive blunt trauma to the head. And Goliath is a hungry T-Rex.
I gotta say, the thing appears to still be responding right now as I post, not bad, not bad at all. Not necessarily *working*, but responding. Hit that
Wow, 15 comments, and the Ethernut webserver is still running fine. Wow, I'm impressed! Looks like servedby.advertising.com is going to be /.ed before that card! :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
HA. I got to see the true Slashdot effect in action.
... that's right, TWO... connections. Literally, a few seconds later I refreshed the page and constantly got garbage in return. (Basically, it looked like the server would never output the entire HTML document. I'd sometimes see some gibberish, sometimes some CSS code, sometimes only the navigation table...) After about 60 seconds of refreshing the page, I finally saw the page again. Results: about 50 connections. And this Slashdot article only has 19 comments so far.
:D
I went to the Current Connections screen and only saw 2
Burn little server, burn.
Karma: NaN
Then we'd have a real webserver (except they'd probably flood themselves off under normal operation.)
Faster than IIS, I should add. Reminds me of a naive qn. I used to ask: If a 486@66MHz and 20MB RAM can run Win95, and pretty fast as well, why can't we have 100 times faster response with a PentiumIV@ 2.4GHz running WinXP (which is upposed to be faster than Win2K, which in turn is supposed to be faster than Win98 which in turn is supposed to be faster than Win95)
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
This is the FIRST site I can still access, full 15 minutes after a Slashdot article! Maybe a lesson in it for all bloatware.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
And, it seems like the web server is withstanding the Slashdot effect! I remember there was actualy a C64 based web server that was actualy able to hold up based on some pretty impressive TCP hacks that made the connections 'stateless' (by embedding state in the TCP sequence number, IIRC)
:)
:P
That said, I doubt a 14 mhz chip would really have that much of a problem dealing with hits. I think most of the systems that 'go down' when hit by a hit torrent do so because A) They run out of bandwidth, get capped, etc. or B) They are using super-bloated web app code when they really don't need to. You often see things like "MySQL errors" and the like from too many user connections. I think a lot of web developers don't really bother to code for efficiency at all. I mean seriously, the work you need to do to serve a mostly static page is really tiny. An intelligent caching routine should solve most of the problems, but most web-apps it seems get all data out of the DB every run, possibly doing multiple queries. Keep in mind a 386 running Apache can saturate a t1 line. That would have a clock speed of about the same thing, I think the fastest 386 was about 25 mhz. Of course, this is a 32 bit chip, not 8
The way autopr0n works, I have a class system that holds all the data, and gets updated independently of the database whenever new data is entered. I hardly ever need to do a query to get new data out of the system. Unfortunately, this means that it's using code I wrote myself, which is just buggy as hell : P. Oh well. It runs 'well enough'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think most of the slowness comes from lazynes. Designers use DBs for everything, even pages that never change. I honestly belive a lot of web apps out there that use huge-ass systems could easily be run on a normal PC with some good optimization and caching routines.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Microsoft better watch out. Contiki is on its way to running on every platform in the world. Once that has been achieved. He'll release a "killer app" and over take Microsoft's domination.
Keep an eye on the forthcoming IPO!
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
Well if this works on a C64, does that mean if i can get the network thingy that connects the floppy drives together and make a cluster out of these that can withstand a slashdotting?
Almost like David vs. Goliath, except in this case, David has two broken arms, no legs, 3 gunshot wounds center mass, and massive blunt trauma to the head. And Goliath is a hungry T-Rex.
A T-Rex relies on motion to identify possible meat sources. Your David would be completely immobile. (Of course, after a good Slashdotting, so it the average web server.)
Hey, just kidding. :)
We are all evil minions armed with Web Browsers , attacking whoever the Slashdot Mastermind points to.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Seems to be taking the slashdotting perty well. Plus each part of the project been under developement for quite a while and is open sourced.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Since you started the nitpicking, there is strong evidence (size of nasal cavities for one) that indicate the T-Rex hunted/scavenged mainly be smell.
File statistics
Connections
Running processes
http://blogs.lns.kicks-ass.net/moonjihad/
dave
something I've thought about for awhile that I'd like to have is a clock radio that can pull in streaming radio from the net.
wireless would be better, but this is great and would totally work. now if I had any idea how to put this together on my own or could just buy one!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
thems mighty fine T-Rexs, but mah giant squid could tek im oot
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I can hear it now, the colective cry and death of 1000 Contiki webservers being slashdotted.
is what you need
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Nope, your nightmate was real. I recall eagerly going out and buying a copy of this to run on my C64c (had to upgrade from my C64 because I blew out the something or other sound/graphics chip that I do not recall the name of via static electricy thru the joystick port when attaching my favortite Atari 2600 joystick--evidently a common problem on the C64 and hence my first attempt at circuit board IC replacement soldering). It sood for Graphic Environment Operating System. It was very MAC like looking.
I was certain it was going to replace my Kwik-Write word processor. And I remember several late nights writting a term paper in high school that was due the next day--ever the procrastinator. The advantage of it was that for documents it allowed you to change to all sorts of fonts beyond the one native to the printer (C-8050 dot matrix as I think it was...) The fonts were great for making the document longer...larger fonts...
I'm now reminded about a little game I had called "Computer People" or something like that. Especially after having read an aritcle in Wired about "The Sims". This was way pre-Sims...
'nuff said
that thing ran Win95 with 4 megs of ram and no FPU.
Win 3.1 on it was a dream when I first bought it...
Such dear memories
some mods dont suck, i spose... but why is it still offtopic if its been modded back up?
i sell illegal drugs
Comment removed based on user account deletion
or other sound/graphics chip that I do not recall the name of
The sound chip on the C64 was the SID chip, standing for Sound Interface Device. Amazing sound for the time, especially when compared to the tinny beep of the ZX Spectrum.
that's too funny dave -- you, yes you, are stupid
Its a nice little device, but I want something like this for $10 or so. Its about $140, and I can buy a real computer for that much (eg VIA Eden). So ok it uses less power and is smaller, but it is not that compelling at that price.
Already now people have asked "why" and gotten "because we can" as an answer. While this is probably true for this project, I think this is also quite interesting Operating Systems material. Remember, this is a small system that multitasks, is portable, and has some coherent (G?)UI stuff.
;-)
(OK, it's a joke -- or is it? -->) So apart from the multitasking, it's way ahead of *nix
While the 8-bit part may certainly be a little bit too much '80's for many of today's practical purposes, I think this is a hell of a reference system which can be re-used and studied by many people who think MINIX contains too much code already. And all that under an old BSD license (with advertising clause).
Anyway, to get back on my original subject. I've downloaded the 1.0 source code and noticed there was a target "gtksim", as well as a directory "arch/unix-gtk". So I guess this stuff is available under *nix as well -- for demonstration purposes, of course.
The odd thing is that when I wanted to compile that target, it said it required stuff from cc65, an 8-bit C compiler for the Commodore 64. So unless this means that GTK+ is ported to the C64, I wonder what this is all about.
(*nix was already "ported" to the C64, and it's called Lunix Look at for more info, and insert your SCO jokes here.)
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Tell me when the Apple //e version is finally ready, I've got a vested interest.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
> Nope, your nightmate was real
Alas, "nightmates" are NEVER real for slashdotters. They always turn out to be the pillow or some such.
Oh, if you meant "nightmares", you seem to actually have liked GEOS, so how was it a nightmare?
>Tell me when the Apple //e version is finally >ready, I've got a vested interest.
Phew! For a minute I thought you had a vest interest. I was trying to imagine a wearable Contiki being Slashdotted. It would keep you toasty warm in the winter as the server gradually died.
The trouble is that by this time you are going through so many virtual function tables, process switches or whatver to do something basic you are completely screwed over for performance. Oh and given all the DLLs that need dynamic linking with your image when you activate - what chance do you get?
The kernel of Win2K/NT is quite nice. If someone sat down and coded a Linux style API on top of it, it could be serious competition. They tried to do this with their Posix layer. However, they screwed it up in other ways.
If anyone ever gets to meet Dave Cutler, the primary NT architect, just ask him how he feels about performance and memory use now against the days when he wrote an operating system for the PDP-11 (16-bit, 64K and small).
See my journal, I write things there
I had GEOS for my C64, and it really was very impressive for the level of hardware it was running on. It was supposed to be an entire graphical OS written entirely in assembly language (yikes!). It didn't have anything like a TCP/IP stack (neither did anything else in those days!).
And then after your article gets posted, and hundreds and thousands of Slashdotters start visiting your site... change the homepage to redirect them all to goatse.cx!!!
Karma: NaN
Aha! So that's what made those tree-aliens so easy to control by evil ancient hidden code in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep! They were SCrOde-Riders!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I'm shocked - both the webserver and the VNC server are still up and running. The VNC server is -extremely- slow - you can see it redrawing the individual chars on the screen at the rate of maybe a dozen a second - but it's still going.
:c)
What's the matter with you people - has the slashdot effect lost it's teeth to the point where it can't even crash a little embedded system like this? For shame!
I game, therefore I am...
He's probably got a nice internet connection, so it's not going to get /.ed that way. Contiki's stood up to a /.ing before, with TWO VNC servers AND streaming RealAudio (not to mention the webserver) on a Commodore 64. It's kinda slow, but the Ethernut is still up, BTW.
I wrote something kind of similar that streams audio remotely by way of a FM tuner card I have installed in my FreeBSD server at home (ADSL 1.2 Mbps down / 225 upstream). Let the slashdotting begin!
http://zmaster.dyndns.org/fm_radio/
You control the frequency on the FM tuner card remotely, unless of course someone else is listening and changes the channel. The 'stereo' and 'signal' indicators on the radio actually work and are queried from the FM tuner card itself. If anyone knows of a similar project (I haven't seen any so far) please let me know!
I wrote the PHP / Java applet so that my father (an avid HAM radio / RFI hunter) can listen to bootleg radio stations broadcasting here in Miami Florida all the way from his house in Colorado.
Here is the link of audio samples on his site I created (presets are of local pirate radio stations here in Miami):
http://www.aerorfi.org/?page=audio_samples.html
Cheers!
Listen to Live FM Radio
I tried going to the webserver, it started to load then did something else, then each time I refreshed I got a different page. I'm not sure about others, but I wouldn't want my website to show different pages on a refresh.
Oh and the vnc java thing just kinda hung. ANyone know which version of Java does it use?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
The Ethernut code has a full TCP/IP stack and modular GUI?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
dave
Whenever I see anything about these tiny, tiny OS/Server/Browser systems, I ask myself if it would be possible to scale them up to modern systems for a really fast, simple operating system?
It's sorta the opposite of bloatware.
-twb