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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!"

14 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Actually it was playing cards... by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Actually it was playing cards... by imsabbel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In 1950, Hiroshi Yamauchi, great-great-grandson of Fusajiro and future president of Nintendo, made a deal with Disney to produce playing cards featuring Disney characters, when Nintendo came to make western-style playing cards as well as hanafuda at that period. Even from its early history it was clear that Nintendo was focused on making entertainment for children. These cards sold millions of packs, and made Nintendo enough money to move into other ventures, particularly toys.

      (from wikipedia)
      Disney.... even worse then yakuza.... brought them to power :)

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
  2. NetBSD by martin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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..

    1. Re:NetBSD by martin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In comparision to the Gameboy, probably not that much....

      looking at the relevant page of the FAQ the last model (PDP-11/94) got above 18mhz...which was approx 4x the original speed.

      Looking the specs on the link mentioned in the article the GBA has a 16.76 mhz ARM processor (no memory management or cache in this model) *and* a 4mhz or 8mhz Z80 to run the old GB games.

      As to your point about NetBSD, the arm port26 runs on the very earliest commericial ARM machines so I see no reason why it couldn't run on a GBA........

      ooh now I do, the arm26 port needs 8MB ram.....only 256k on a GBA........but if you can use gampak ram that will give you plenty..

  3. Re:More Info by Albanach · · Score: 1, Interesting
    There is a follow up article over at Tech News Live. Apparently they managed to find a way to use the link port as a serial device to communicate with other Gameboys running the same OS

    So we really can/em? imagine a beowoulf cluster of these?

  4. april fool ? by sgumby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    it reminds me some odd april fool

  5. GBA RAM packs by Guitar+Wizard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    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 /. to expose the world to the many functions of the GBA(?)!

    --
    Two freaks, no foes. It takes absolutely nothing to make some people angry.
  6. Re:Wow, that's great ... by spellraiser · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Actually, it's less of a joke than you might think. Here's an interesting bit from the article:

    Note that in order to run 5th edition UNIX with gbaunix, you must have an RK05 disk image of 5th edition UNIX, which is not included in the gbaunix distribution. SCO owns the copyright for the 5th edition (and several others).

    Thankfully, Caldera released (under a BSD-style license) this particular UNIX edition, along with some others, shortly before the name change in 2002. Here is the license [PDF Alert], if anyone's interested.

    --
    I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
  7. Gameboy TCP/IP stack and Web server by Peter+Cooper · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:Input by evslin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bet if you worked at it long enough you could get a keyboard running through the GBA link port.

  9. OT: Workboy... by ImaLamer · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This kinda reminds me of a Gameboy add-on called the "Workboy". As a computer nerd I wanted this thing so bad because it basically turned your Gameboy into a PDA type of device. Ok, maybe I didn't have that many appointments at 12, but I was a computer nerd still.

    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

    /. "what happens when you cook your palm pilot"

    The first link says they are "rare" too bad, I still want one.

  10. Re:And also ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You're a tool. Thanks for playing "How Wrong Can A Slashdot Poster Be?" You win a punch in the groin!

  11. Slashdot's Selectors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  12. Uses for a GBA with Unix by randomErr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?