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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!"

19 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. 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! ;)

    1. 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
  2. Re:Great web site and a good read by Evangelion · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nintendo Corporation, Limited was originally founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda (Japanese playing cards).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo

  3. 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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  4. 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?
  5. 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..

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

    it reminds me some odd april fool

  7. 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
  8. Re:Great web site and a good read by vaderhelmet · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nintendo's Official History
    http://www.nintendo.com/corp/history.jsp

  9. 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
  10. 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.
  11. Old style gameboy by webgit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

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

    can it run a gameboy emulator??

  13. 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.

  14. 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
  15. 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.

    --
    Get your Unix fortune now!
  16. Re:Great web site and a good read... But FLAW by johnjones · · Score: 5, Informative

    their are a couple of flaws

    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/hse02 00 6/uclgba/gba-howto/

    regards

    John Jones

  17. How to reboot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Control-Alt-Delete has been replaced by Up-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A