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Running Ancient UNIX On Nintendo Gameboy

Posted by timothy on from the does-it-play-space-travel dept.

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!"

14 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Great web site and a good read by erick99 · · Score: 2, Funny
    From the web site:

    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/
  2. Wow, that's great ... by evslin · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... but that guy better watch out. It'll be a race between Nintendo and SCO to see who can sue him first! ;)

  3. SCO by tuxter · · Score: 3, Funny

    If they aren't careful, Darl will start sueing Nintendo for runnning unlicensed code.

    1. Re:SCO by wo1verin3 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Naw, not unless he is already a Unix licensee. Darl seems to only sue his existing customer base.

      That said, I can't wait for the emulator for the Unix GB so you can actually play GameBoy games on it after booting in to Unix.

  4. Old but funny by barcodez · · Score: 5, Funny

    Whenever I see stories like this I am reminded of Installing Linux on a Dead Badger.

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  5. Please... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...try not to mention "ancient eunuchs" and "gameboys" in the same sentence.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  6. The Great Wall Tycoon.... by Himring · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  7. I wonder.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder if... with a little work, this could be used as a 2004 presidential voting machine?

  8. Yes.. But by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    can it run a gameboy emulator??

  9. Re:Cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Hey, my wife has been trying for a year now to convince me to buy her a gameboy...

    Stop calling your right-hand your "wife"! That's just SICK!

  10. Hard coded commands mean I can't code on this ? by Gopal.V · · Score: 4, Funny

    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 now ... not to write a full OS , but just enough to play Pong :)
    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
  11. Re:Actually it was playing cards... by AndroidCat · · Score: 2, Funny
    I wonder what card games the Yakuza are playing these days? Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh?

    "I summon Goons of Leg-Breaking!"
    ".. I've never seen that card ..?"
    "What card?"
    "oh."

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  12. How to reboot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Control-Alt-Delete has been replaced by Up-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A

  13. Does this mean?..... by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 3, Funny

    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......