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Running Ancient UNIX On Nintendo Gameboy
An anonymous reader writes "Amit Singh has a piece on his site about running the 5th edition UNIX distribution on a Nintendo Gameboy, of all things. Tons of screenshots and source included but what really makes this entertaining and informational in an ubergeekly sort of way is his side stories on UNIX history ... ARM CPU ... compiling and running random programs on the Gameboy, etc. There are even notes on recompiling the original Unix kernel to make it smaller for the GBA!"
Nintendo has been in the gaming business since 1889
I believe this is when they came out with their first two hits, Horse and Buggy Kong and Prairie Invaders.
On a more serious note, this is well worth the time to read. It is fairly long but well written (other than a few tiny errors as above) and extremely informative. The site is well laid out and easy to follow. The history lesson alone is worth the time spent.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
... but that guy better watch out. It'll be a race between Nintendo and SCO to see who can sue him first! ;)
Slashdotted already... alas, I can find no google cache.
If you believe that linux is less bloated and more stable, then it's THE natural OS for embedded systems.
Well, if you want to get your daily fix of "linux has been placed in something else" news... you can always visit linuxdevices.com
If you want to do-it yourself... ibm embedded.
Game Boy Advanced! has become Gotten Bored Already?
Hey, my wife has been trying for a year now to convince me to buy her a gameboy...
If they aren't careful, Darl will start sueing Nintendo for runnning unlicensed code.
Whenever I see stories like this I am reminded of Installing Linux on a Dead Badger.
----
Nintendo originally started out selling "Hanafunda" playing cards, 48 card decks that soon became popular with Yakuza for high stakes gambling.
So, in a way, Nintendo's empire was built thanks to gangsters.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
NO, not Unix 5th Edition, should have used NetBSD, mind you probably already been done so....
checks site.....
hmm apparently not, but lots of ARM ports should be doable..
So we really can/em? imagine a beowoulf cluster of these?
it reminds me some odd april fool
...try not to mention "ancient eunuchs" and "gameboys" in the same sentence.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Oh, you didn't want a serious reply? ;)
Nintendo has been in the gaming business since 1889.
His dates are flawed. Nintendo's been making games since 475 B.C. when the first version of "The Great Wall Tycoon" came out. Man, talk about addictive....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I wonder if... with a little work, this could be used as a 2004 presidential voting machine?
I don't have a GBA, but how easy would it be to input commands into one?
I am aware that commands currently need to be selected at compile-time.
It's interesting, but doesn't have a lot of practial uses.
You can actually use the GBA for a lot more than just UNIX -- one can import flash RAM packs and then put whatever they want on it. Check out some options.
/. to expose the world to the many functions of the GBA(?)!
You can even put different emulators and ROMs all on the same cartridge and then use a shell to organize and manage everything. I have an NES, SMS adn PC Engine Emulator with some of my favorite games from each system as well as 4 full GBA ROM images.
You can also check out one of my GUI interfaces to use with the shell.
I think we're a pretty underground group here (GBA flash RAM users), but who knows -- mabye I just used
Two freaks, no foes. It takes absolutely nothing to make some people angry.
When I first read the headline I thought it was refering to the original gameboy with the tiny black and white screen and I didn't really see the point of doing it.
Although, even now I know which one it is I'm still not entirely convinced this is all that useful either!
I'm probably just missing the point, which is something like because I can!
can it run a gameboy emulator??
Nintendo has been in the gaming business since 1889
On a more serious note, this is well worth the time to read. It is fairly long but well written (other than a few tiny errors as above) and extremely informative.
Actually, that was not an error. Nintendo has been in business in the gaming area way before the advent of computer games. They started out as a Hanafuda (traditional Japanese) playing cards company. They also made Mahjong boards, and western style playing cards. In the long history of Nintendo, computer games has been a very recent event, which started when Nintendo first created the "Game Watch" series, and later released the Nintendo in the early (19)80's.
Though i find this project more interesting.
Shall this work on that?
It's a couple of years old now, but Adrian O'Grady developed a TCP/IP stack and Web server for the GameBoy Advance as part of his degree project. Source code, tips, and a pretty interesting development diary are there.
When I first saw it , I wondered how he actually typed in the C code, and then I saw the keyboard buffer code :). It'd have been fun to say, to save in ED, press Down Down , Up Left, X (Mortal Kombat memories).
Lookup Unix Version7 sources which have been ported to run on 32 Bit CPUs . With a 50k kernel binary and similarly shrunk libs , it's a nice thing to play around with.
I've been planning to play around with gpsim and gpsim-lcd for sometime nowQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
dammit, I was hoping this would be about the original Gameboy!
Nethack GBA! *Runsaway and feeds a kitten!*
@Whee
The Workboy had a keyboard, a database management system (?) and more. A Google search for "Workboy" and Gameboy returned like five results, two Slashdot...
Good description, picture won't load
"Retro Space", picture Translation
The first link says they are "rare" too bad, I still want one.
Get your Unix fortune now!
$ /usr/games/fortune
You spend days struggling with text input just for one lousy game of fortune.
their are a couple of flaws
2 00 6/uclgba/gba-howto/
o 1 the game boy is not running unix
o 2 they dont have a game boy they have the game boy advance
o 3 they simulate a PDP11 on a game boy advance simulator running on a mac/pc
instead why dont you look at howto use uclinux on GBA...
http://wwwhsse.fh-hagenberg.at/Studierende/hse0
regards
John Jones
You're a tool. Thanks for playing "How Wrong Can A Slashdot Poster Be?" You win a punch in the groin!
After reading this, the first thing that sprung to mind was portable rogue and nethack on something i wouldnt actually mind toting around.
Im sure thats available on [insert pda here] but I already have a gameboy...
I wonder if he would be able to sell *BSD carts or something of the sort.
699 dollars! I WANT my 699 dollars!
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Sadly, the GameBoy Advance doesn't have a MMU. Otherwise, I'm sure someone would be trying to port Linux to it already...
Control-Alt-Delete has been replaced by Up-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A
"When I was working for a software company, one day I got a call from a customer wondering if we had WordPerfect for the Gameboy. I said "No, but I'll call you when it comes in." Sometimes it's better to go along with the customer and not ask any questions. :)" - Dumb Users
Perhaps he was just "ahead of his time".
Free iPods? Sure. freeipods.com
Can you imagine a future where humans have common access to gene therapy and genome altering? I wonder if Slashdot moderator types in the future will moderate their own angry expressions and emotions to nothingness once they have the ability.
The emotions we experience and express have been hard-wired into our consciousness and reinforced through natural selection. There must be some selective advantage to possessing the capability to become enraged, or to loathe something.
IOW, Nature says: "Anger and loathing are good and useful traits which you possess because of their survival advantages", while Slashdot mods say: "We only find certain expressions of emotion good or useful". Now, who do you think knows best, as far as your own long-term survival is concerned?
Is Slashdot self-selecting members who repress or deny certain emotions? And is that decision based on rationality and willingness to participate in truly open discourse, or is it based on an American, Christian -- nay, Puritan -- outlook on society, culture, survival and the world?
As for the parent post, I found it refreshing -- and fundamentally true. It's odd that the grandparent (at this time of writing) still retains its "5, Funny" ranking while containing a "joke" based entirely on ignorance and/or misinformation - while a candid reply informing the citizens of the nature of the Emperor's clothes is quickly swept under the rug.
Which would you rather be: Puritan, or correct? Which sort of posts would you like to see on Slashdot, ones that meet Puritan moral standards, or ones containing factual information? I know it doesn't normally have to be both - but whereever emotionally-repressed backlashes are concerned, one usually doesn't leave room for the other.
From TFA: "You can try gbaunix either using a Game Boy Advance emulator, or on a real Game Boy Advance. For the latter, you would need, say, a flash-based cartridge and a flash programmer."
But the worst limitation is "gbaunix does not have an input mechanism currently. You can only execute a canned sequence of UNIX shell commands. The sequence must be specified at compile-time as an array of strings in gba/gba_kbd.h in the source. While UNIX is running, pressing the START button feeds the next command line into the TTY's input buffer."
What can you do with it? I'm not impressed with Linux on an iPod or Unix in the game boy or Linux in the XboX things... If you can't DO anything productive with it, It's useless. I don't care if you can put Linux in my digital watch.
MadOgre.com
sorry but I run linux on MMU less processors every day.
info
oh and here as well as the thousands more sites about it indexed on www.google.com..
Linux can run on MMU-less processors quite well, and has done so for a long time now.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
UNQUOTE
The game simulated the motion of certain celestial bodies in the Solaris System. The player's goal was to land a space ship on a planet or a moon. The GE computer's hardware and software were both ill-equipped to run the game, and playing was expensive in terms of CPU time (although the "money" so spent was only theoretical).
QUOTE
Someones Spell checker went overboard here!
Do Gameboys still qualify as 'boxen'?
Or should they be called 'boxen mini'?
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Interesting, but from the headline I thought it was an original GB. That would have been much more impressive.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm glad to see more interest in Real Unix instead of Linux! Maybe it's a sign of things to come!
Best Buy can have you arrested
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
To hell with running UNIX - it looks like it would be trivial to run RSX-11M on this thing...off to the store to buy one...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
WHY? Why the hell do it? To prove you are smart? I got an idea put a lcd on my toaster with a built in jam spreader that runs linux so i can make pop tarts, watch HDnet, all while having my breakfast treats spread with my favorite jams and jellies, oh yeah and run top so i can view how much computing power is being used to complete these tasks. Leave things alone. There was such a beauty to simplicity that people are missing. You know, a one function device that did one thing and did it really well, rather than a multi function device that does none of the 15 things it claims in a barely satisfactory manner. We have become such a make-do society where we are cool when shit breaks because "oh well we'll fix it in the next release", how about just making shit work right the 1st time, so i dont have to spend money to pay for some idiot company's mistake?
Whats the point? Are you really going to run a server from a game boy? If so, what are you going to be able to do with it, nothing!!! Stop modding anything and everything it is useless.
A couple of years ago there were an article about using a Sega Dreamcast as hacking station. You hide the Dreamcast, plug it into the network, boot it with a special CD, and let it go. The Dreamcast would probe the network until it found a way out. Once it did it would hit a website, determined by you, with network's setup information; you could execute commands on your Dreamcast node and effect the network.
The same could be done here. Upload your ROM in to you host GBA; do this so that when the battery dies, so does the evidence. Create a serial connection to a cheap network adaptor or get one of the GBA Bluetooth adapters floating around. Now you have a low cost battery operated hacking machine. For under $200 you could compromise a network and be virtually untraceable.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Its tub girl, or some girl with shit all over her, I closed it too quick to get a good look. DomainSite.com is giving away any *.info domain for free, and up to 25 of them. I did grab one myself just for the hell of it, but be very wary of those links for the next couple months or so.
Regards,
Steve
You had me thinking that someone had a UNIX kernel on the original GB, which I was thinking "that's fucking impossible".
Fix the title pls. Either add "Advance" or change it to "GBA". Otherwise you are misleading the readers.
Is this new game written in basic like that cmu video game class used?
ucLinux is in the process of being ported to the Gameboy Advance, as can be seen here.. It seems like its getting to be quite usable, if your pretty good with a directional contral pad and 4 buttons...
I could imagine that the serial port could be used for some sort of network input like this guy did here.
How useful!
Kill me.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Does this mean we'll soon see pages proudly displaying at the bottom:
"This page hosted on a 1997 Nintendo Game Boy."
I think I'd rather see a potato-powered server....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
... she actually is asking for a *boy-toy*, which is something quite different.
Advise caution.
> a+b+b+a+STARTB+ab+a+STARTAB
You need a FREE iPod Nano
There's allready Rogure
write a morse code driver for the start button
You should never run as root! He should create himself a user for day-to-day operations.
Is there any version of *nix for the Palm Pilot that isn't hopelessly outdated? heh.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
http://www.brolinembedded.se/projects/keyboard/ no need for a terminal, just plug that thing and you got a PDA
Go grab those torrents.
...but can it play NetHack? I've looking for a way to get NetHack working on my GBA since I got the damned thing.
and when will they port Unix to my Casio CFX-9850GB calculator?
Overrated...
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's