GNU/Linux Running On An 8-Bit Processor

Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why?

Re:Why? by ericloewe · 2012-04-02 08:11 · Score: 2

Windows (any version) doesn't run natively on any 8-bit processor. Windows 3.1 is sure to be extremely slow to boot when run from something like this.
Re:Why? by Penguinisto · 2012-04-02 08:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why not?
Seriously... the skills and knowledge can come in handy someday.
Maybe someone desperately needs to retrofit modern code to crappy old equipment? Maybe the ultra low power requirements of an extreme low-end machine makes this a fit somewhere?
Most importantly though, he did it because he could. Doing it puts his skill set far above that of most people, and having that on the resume would get him in good with nearly any semiconductor corp on the planet that needs a software or firmware developer.

--
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Re:Why? by CanHasDIY · 2012-04-02 08:19 · Score: 2

Then how did it work back in '93?
Well, since you're the one who claims it did, why not tell us yourself how a 16-bit OS runs natively on an 8-bit system?

--
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Re:Why? by SJHillman · 2012-04-02 08:19 · Score: 1

You managed to run a 16 bit OS on an 8 bit processor? I'm impressed it worked that well.
Re:Why? by wagnerrp · 2012-04-02 08:19 · Score: 1

Windows 3.1 will run on an 8-bit processor?
Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:21 · Score: 1

Because back in '93 then knew the difference between the numbers 8 and 16. For example: The ATmega1284p is an 8-bit processor while the 8086 is a 16-bit processor. It is very similar to how 6.5 kHz involves a different number from 5 MHz.
Re:Why? by BigFire · 2012-04-02 08:23 · Score: 1

It would come in handy when we decided to retroactively upgrade that space probe we send out 30 years ago. Failure to upgrade the OS on that baby will result in the end of Earth as we know it. Hey, it could happen.
Re:Why? by GNUALMAFUERTE · 2012-04-02 08:24 · Score: 1, Redundant

First of all, 3.1 Wasn't an OS, it was a GUI and some multitasking hacks to DOS.
Overall, it was a 16bit OS, and it run on 16 bit computers such as the 286. There was a hack you could add to take some advantage of 32 bit processors, such as the 386.

--
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Re:Why? by Captain+Spam · 2012-04-02 08:25 · Score: 4, Informative

You are aware that the 80386 processor (what Windows 3.1 was designed for), which was 32-bit, was first released in '85, right?
Note to a specific age group of Slashdot readers: You are aware exactly how old that fact I just presented makes us feel, right? *sigh*

--
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Re:Why? by JoeMerchant · 2012-04-02 08:26 · Score: 1

6.5KHz, I am impressed, boot times should be..... glacial.
Re:Why? by GmExtremacy · 2012-04-02 08:28 · Score: 1

But is there ridicule in your voice?
Re:Why? by SomePgmr · 2012-04-02 08:28 · Score: 4, Funny

Just ignore the trolls. ;)
"Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?"
"Because it's there" ~ George Mallory
Re:Why? by jhoegl · 2012-04-02 08:30 · Score: 1

Uh oh, someone was wrong on Slashdot... and the lynch-mods got em'.
Re:Why? by war4peace · 2012-04-02 08:33 · Score: 1, Interesting

Most importantly though, he did it because he could.
That's the same reason dogs have when licking their balls.
Just sayin'...

--
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Re:Why? by nurb432 · 2012-04-02 08:34 · Score: 2

I can think of several reasons for 'why not'.
The most obvious is that for a processor of that caliber, there are much better operating systems available that exist today. Spending time with one of those would be a far more valuable use of time.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Re:Why? by unixisc · 2012-04-02 08:35 · Score: 1

That may be, but DOS was 16-bit, as was Windows 3.0 and 3.1. Until OS/2 2.0 and Windows 95, there was no particular need for a 386 - a 286 would have worked just fine. In fact, the minimum one needed was an 8086. However, for an 8-bit 8085, CP/M and CCP/M were the OSs, but DOS didn't run on that. So the right comparison would be Ubuntu 9.04 on this 8-bit ARM to CP/M on an 8085.
Incidentally, why are they running Ubuntu on this? They could have taken Minix, which was originally written for 16 bit CPUs, and tried compiling it on this one. That's the smallest Unix that would run on an 8-bit CPU. Incidentally, how many bit addressing does this CPU support - is it a mux'ed address/data architecture or something similar?
Re:Why? by X0563511 · 2012-04-02 08:41 · Score: 1

So? For a proper comparison you should be trying to boot Windows 2000 or newer on said 8-bit processor. Not going to work so well.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:Why? by jd · 2012-04-02 08:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Alternatively, someone might want to design a new 8-bit CPU for certain embedded tasks where it's essential for there to be low power consumption and a high-end sophisticated OS. There are plenty of extremely slow mechanical operations (combine harvesting, for example) where millisecond responses are not going to be useful but where the complexity of the problem (varying evenness of the ground, varying field shapes, etc) mean you do want to be able to handle many different types of sensor, sophisticated algorithms, etc, within something that needs to be extremely cheap to build/replace and extremely low power to run to be more cost-efficient than having a farmhand (who is likely to be earning minimum wage or below).
Another option is a System-on-a-Chip. At present, SoC runs into all kinds of problems because of the compromises you have to make to fit everything into one die. If you can reduce the transistors of the CPU component, you can increase the transistors somewhere else, which means this knowledge increases your flexibility in such systems. That's extremely valuable to know, even if you never go to this extreme.
For deep space probes, radiation is a major concern. Well, for anything in space it's a major concern, but the deeper you go into space the nastier the radiation. It's why the highest-end space-rated CPUs are so primitive compared to commercial CPUs. Being able to reduce the complexity of the CPU and utilize the extra space for redundancy, without reducing the sort of complexity of software the CPU will run, is great news for anyone wanting to rival the Pioneer 10 & 11/Voyager 1 & 2 missions in terms of longevity whilst equally wanting to match Deep Space 1 or the Mars Rovers in terms of flexibility. Knowing that you don't strictly need a 32-bit architecture to run Linux and that you can slice out huge chunks of the architecture gives you tremendous power.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:Why? by Guy+Harris · 2012-04-02 08:43 · Score: 1

On one level this shows just how clever Dmitry is and it shows excellent problem solving skills. However, I would be more impressed if he could do something interesting with more modern technology. The technical challenges of booting a modern OS on dinosaur hardware are amazing and if he could take his innovation ability and apply it to state of the art technology, image what he could achieve.
If you're curious what he does and has done in his day jobs, see my response to your other post on this topic (I may have incorrectly assumed you weren't just trolling on this topic, as it's not hard to find his "Work" pages if you actually follow the link to TFA, and I suspect most Slashdot readers have at least enough familiarity with the world to be familiar with the concept of a "hobby").
Re:Why? by Shetan · 2012-04-02 09:03 · Score: 2

That may be, but DOS was 16-bit, as was Windows 3.0 and 3.1. Until OS/2 2.0 and Windows 95, there was no particular need for a 386 - a 286 would have worked just fine.
A 386 provided Virtual 86 mode which was needed to multitask DOS applications.
Re:Why? by dmitrygr · 2012-04-02 09:05 · Score: 5, Informative

I was bored :)

--
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law

Choose any two.
Re:Why? by dmitrygr · 2012-04-02 09:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

It's up to 10 KHz now that i've optimized RAM access (new code up later today)

--
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law

Choose any two.
Re:Why? by avsa242 · 2012-04-02 09:10 · Score: 1

That's the very same answer I gave to a friend when he asked me, "You know why they do that right?". Then he said, "No, it's because they can't make a fist." X-D
Re:Why? by ThePeices · 2012-04-02 09:12 · Score: 1

"Why?"
Because.
No more reason needed.
Re:Why? by vlm · 2012-04-02 09:17 · Score: 2

Incidentally, why are they running Ubuntu on this? They could have taken Minix, which was originally written for 16 bit CPUs, and tried compiling it on this one. That's the smallest Unix that would run on an 8-bit CPU.
The problem is the native processor has very little memory and storage... I ran minix on a 8-bit Tandy machine with 640K ram as an experiment and that has several orders of magnitude more storage both disk and ram than this processor.. As seen above he interfaced a simm as memory but that won't work natively, so he has to emulate...

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Re:Why? by icebraining · 2012-04-02 09:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

There's an objective valuation of time that I'm not aware of? Or are you just saying that because you don't find it a valuable use of time?

--
Dilbert RSS feed
Re:Why? by Pseudonym · 2012-04-02 09:23 · Score: 1

Also to use Windows 3.x effectively.

--
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Re:Why? by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2012-04-02 09:28 · Score: 1

The choice would have made to much sense for this project. They chose Ubuntu, because no one actually uses Minix. :-)

--
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 09:41 · Score: 1

That's the same reason dogs have when licking their balls.
Just sayin'...
And they do look happy when doing it, don't they?
That is a good enough reason for anyone.
Re:Why? by zlives · 2012-04-02 09:47 · Score: 1

"For deep space probes"
that was my thought as well, where a instruction that takes a minute to execute may be ok in certain situations.
Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 10:22 · Score: 1

That's inaccurate. Getting your balls licked by a big wet dog tongue just feels nice no matter how you look at it. No further explanation needed.
Re:Why? by batkiwi · 2012-04-02 10:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

The question is not "why make an 8-bit cpu and run stuff on it". The question is "why load linux on an 8-bit cpu where it's unusable?".
There are tons of embedded 8 bit processors, and all can run very complex software written in c/c++/etc.
I think this is cool, but the answer is simply "as a challenge." The microcontroller problem, and making it either powerful or easy to use, has been solved for years and is evolving. Running linux on them was never what was holding them back.
Re:Why? by jcdr · 2012-04-02 10:40 · Score: 1

The Atmel 8 bit processor actually emulate a 32 bit ARM processor on a simple PXA255 system. By emulating a 80386 on a basic PC system with the same Atmel 8 bit processor, booting Windows is probably doable, but certainly a bigger work.
Re:Why? by marcosdumay · 2012-04-02 10:44 · Score: 2

Alternatively, someone might want to design a new 8-bit CPU for certain embedded tasks where it's essential for there to be low power consumption and a high-end sophisticated OS.
The one thing you don't put in a system with a tight power envelope is an emulation layer. I doubt that has any practical application, but it is cool.

--
Rethinking email
Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 10:53 · Score: 1

Alternatively, someone might want to design a new 8-bit CPU for certain embedded tasks where it's essential for there to be low power consumption and a high-end sophisticated OS
The smart money would be to go with VxWorks (which powers the Mars rovers, btw) or QNX, which are actually designed for operation on this sort of hardware, and have a few decades of development, refinement and mission-critical use behind them.

Knowing that you don't strictly need a 32-bit architecture to run Linux and that you can slice out huge chunks of the architecture gives you tremendous power.
Did you even finish reading TFS? Linux is running on a custom 32-bit ARM emulator, which in turn runs on an 8-bit microcontroller. You can't fit Linux (neither Linux the OS, nor Linux the kernel) within the confines of the limitations imposed by the hardware, you're generally not going to fit _any_ kind of monolithic kernel on these sorts of devices. You're not actually slicing out anything, you're just emulating what the hardware is missing, and you're adding orders of magnitude more storage and memory that will be present on these kinds of devices.
And you're certainly not going to rival the Mars Rovers with this setup, not in terms of flexibility, nor in terms of functionality., and beyond that it's just completely unfit for the task unless it does hard (as in not soft) real-time. It takes 4 hours to boot, and has a response delay measured in minutes, I somehow doubt its ability to enforce strict deadlines.
the saddest part is the amount of comments here acting like the use of 8-bit microcontrollers is some sort of bizzarre fringe case, when this is exactly what people who know what they're talking about mean when they talk of "embedded systems" and "embedded realtime systems", the Zilog z-80 for example, continues to be the single most deployed architecture in existence.
This is little more than a "because I can" kind of thing, like running Linux on a toaster, it has zero real world utility and probably doesn't even toast bread properly, but has that it's-kinda-cool appeal to it.
Re:Why? by mrmeval · 2012-04-02 11:33 · Score: 1

Pity it's not free software. I'll go play with the 10 other toys for that processor that are free software.

--
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Re:Why? by TheRealMindChild · 2012-04-02 11:37 · Score: 1

And DOS was just a bunch of software interrupts on top of the BIOS

--

"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Re:Why? by hamster_nz · 2012-04-02 12:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think your project is really great.
You will have learnt so much about the ARM architecture, and have a really good view of how things really work. I'm pretty sure that if you got your hands on an FPGA board you now have the skills to make your own ARM processor.
This puts you head and shoulder above lot of the 'ubergeeks' that lurk on Slashdot discussing how they can get another 1% from their shiny purple Corsair RAM - they just don't get it!
Re:Why? by hamster_nz · 2012-04-02 12:28 · Score: 4, Funny

He was waiting for his Raspberry Pi to arrive, so had time to kill.
Re:Why? by pspahn · 2012-04-02 12:48 · Score: 2

And you know how when a V of geese flies overhead, there is often a side that is longer than the other?
It's because there's more geese on that side.
Sometimes things don't need explanation.

--
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Re:Why? by Trogre · 2012-04-02 13:01 · Score: 1

Because he can.
There need be no other reason.

--
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Re:Why? by hairyfeet · 2012-04-02 13:10 · Score: 1

How can the "knowledge' of making Linux run so slow it takes 4 and a half hours to boot according to TFA, how can that possibly be helpful? Isn't there smaller distros or software that would be more interesting than 'LOL I made it run on a toaster LOL", seriously? Surely it can't be THAT slow a news day in Linux land right now, can it?

--
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:Why? by martas · 2012-04-02 13:52 · Score: 4, Funny

And waiting for 4 hours for ubuntu to boot solved that? ;)
Interesting project, BTW.

--
weinersmith
Re:Why? by Farmer+Tim · 2012-04-02 14:40 · Score: 2

As long as we don't run out of humpback whales we're fine.

--
Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
Re:Why? by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 16:33 · Score: 1

Why not?

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Re:Why? by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 16:40 · Score: 1

The last 8 bit processor in a computer was the 8086/8088. The first Windows version (1.0) was for 16-bit MS-DOS in 1985.
32-bit processors were becoming normal back in 1993.

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Re:Why? by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 16:43 · Score: 1

And DOS was just a bunch of software interrupts on top of the BIOS
Thus, a Disk Operating System. That's basically all computers were (and still are, mostly), just a bunch of switches flipped in the right sequence. Interrupts aren't as bad as they used to be thankfully, with technical updates to the hardware.

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Re:Why? by benthurston27 · 2012-04-02 17:07 · Score: 1

It might depend on as they're flying if they're flying in a slightly curved to the left or the right pattern.
Re:Why? by broken_chaos · 2012-04-02 17:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's a societal thing. We're essentially indoctrinated to believe that anything which doesn't make someone money is a waste of time.
Re:Why? by wwwgregcom · 2012-04-02 17:29 · Score: 1

It's funny, I would never think to ask why. All I thought that this was supremely awesome.

--
What signature defines me as a person?
Re:Why? by pclminion · 2012-04-02 17:34 · Score: 2

The last 8 bit processor in a computer was the 8086/8088.
Those are both 16-bit processors. The 8088 had an 8-bit memory bus but was unquestionably a 16-bit CPU.
Re:Why? by Plunky · 2012-04-02 18:37 · Score: 1

There are plenty of extremely slow mechanical operations (combine harvesting, for example)
I'm just going to point out that any mechanical operation involving an internal combustion engine has abundant power available for the use of a microprocessor based controller, which is significantly zero compared to the power required to move a couple of tons of machinery around, light the area and run the air conditioning and/or filtration in the cab.
Re:Why? by gl4ss · 2012-04-02 18:42 · Score: 1

yet waste of time is exactly what we actually need in the modern world.
food is plentiful but not everyone is required for making it. thus, waste of time is what's most people actually do 24/7.

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:Why? by Kevlar_Sindome · 2012-04-02 18:48 · Score: 1

I've got a job which pays six digits a year for him. That's why.

--
If this sig is witty, it was probably borrowed from someone else's sig.
Re:Why? by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 19:25 · Score: 1

We can't discount Windows for Workgroups 3.11. It did have a 32bit layer in specific .DLL files so 32-bit WfW apps could go that route.

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Re:Why? by crutchy · 2012-04-02 20:57 · Score: 1

that's just defeatist... i prefer "because i wanted to fuck that puppy good and proper"
Re:Why? by crutchy · 2012-04-02 21:02 · Score: 1

except bugtracker would get the odd kernel panic that was fixed ten years before
Re:Why? by crutchy · 2012-04-02 21:06 · Score: 1

where do i purchase one of these toasters?
Re:Why? by crutchy · 2012-04-02 21:42 · Score: 1

I guess the same could be said for going to the moon, which was a fairly pointless goal except to "LOL we made it to the moon LOL" at the Russians, but luckily there were a few positive technological spinoffs.

To me TFA highlights that while its nice to be able to run Linux on an i7, you don't technically *need* to. The achievement may inspire others to push the envelope and refine the results; it may have taken 4 and a half hours to boot this time, but who says the next time the system can't be modified to boot in 3 hours, etc (maybe with a bit of tweaking of the kernel even). The mainline kernel developers may benefit from the experience gained in these forays to help refine performance or reduce power consumption. Embedded applications (such as routers and set top boxes) could surely benefit from squeezing the most out of limited hardware because manufacturers are always trying to cram more and more features into these devices.

Its also funny how every new version of Windows seems to perpetually require more and more grunty hardware, all the while not really adding much in the way of performance or value except maybe some slightly different eye candy. I would personally love to see the day when I can get 20 years+ out of a motherboard while still benefiting from the latest software security updates and being able to use the latest graphics software or play the latest games. If an OS developer merely develops for next generation hardware, they will never deliver efficient software (which is probably why Microsoft sucks so bad with anything but next generation hardware). I know new hardware is cheap, but only because of the exorbitant consumption and waste brought on by continual outmoding and upgrading forced on consumers by tech giants.
Re:Why? by Haley's+Comet · 2012-04-02 22:02 · Score: 1

The 8088 was a 16-bit CPU with 8-bit bus, and the 8086 was a true 16-bit (I still own a Compaq 251 Deskpro w/8086). (proof that higher numbers doesn't always mean better) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8088 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086

--
The Illuminati would kill me, but I'm not rich enough to take notice of.
Re:Why? by priceslasher · 2012-04-02 22:39 · Score: 1

There is code that allows you to perform 32-bit emulation on an 8-bit processor, but does it really work? Now we know.
Well, why would you run 32-bit code on an 8-bit processor? Maybe so you don't have to write code on an 8-bit processor - you know those things can't add past 256.. so if you have some code and just want to use it without wrapping your head around everything that tests it's limits you can safely do this now.
Honestly, I don't even know why I'm explaining this on slashdot of all the places.
Re:Why? by AmiMoJo · 2012-04-02 23:33 · Score: 2

Try looking at the parts rather than the whole. He has a working ARM emulator with MMU. The AVR is connected to a large SD RAM module. Enough hardware is emulated to allow Linux to boot.
Getting to the moon turned out not to be a particularly useful capability but many of the component parts developed to do it were well worth having.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Why? by tepples · 2012-04-03 00:53 · Score: 1

someone might want to design a new 8-bit CPU for certain embedded tasks where it's essential for there to be low power consumption and a high-end sophisticated OS.
Contiki is designed for such applications.
Re:Why? by tomlouie · 2012-04-03 00:57 · Score: 1

Dmitry, go man, go!
I've had the pleasure of using many of your Palm OS utilities, and just wanted to chime in and say thank you!
Tom
Re:Why? by Hognoxious · 2012-04-03 01:36 · Score: 1

"I wish I could do that"
"Give him a biscuit and he might let you!"

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Why? by tehcyder · 2012-04-03 03:11 · Score: 1

There is nothing that doesn't need explanation except god. And he doesn't exist.

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:Why? by tehcyder · 2012-04-03 03:16 · Score: 1

Re your sig:
You don't need to enjoy your job, you don't need to make lots of money and working within the law is a matter of self preservation.

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:Why? by ccanucs · 2012-04-03 04:06 · Score: 1

Yup. Cranked up Minix from 5 1/4" dual floppys in 640k of memory. Worked great.
Re:Why? by Provocateur · 2012-04-03 04:42 · Score: 1

Most importantly though, he did it because he could. Doing it puts his skill set far above that of most people, and having that on the resume would get him in good with nearly any semiconductor corp on the planet that needs a software or firmware developer.
Man, I hope he smoked a cigarette afterwards...

--
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Re:Why? by DemonGenius · 2012-04-03 06:03 · Score: 1

** slowly backs away from AC **
** runs **
Re:Why? by Linuxmonger · 2012-04-03 06:11 · Score: 1

a processor of that caliber
My toaster uses that processor! I really can run Linux on it! Now I can use SNMP to check how raw my toast is, it's a beautiful thing.
Re:Why? by Yunzil · 2012-04-03 06:13 · Score: 1

One of these things is a remarkable achievement of human endurance.
The other is goofing off in the basement.
Re:Why? by dgux69 · 2012-04-03 09:27 · Score: 1

I'm a radio amateur and sometimes I use a digital modulation called PSK31 which transfers data in a "chat-like" way at 31 baud.
The normal reaction when I state this is "but you know that we have a worldwide spanning network called Internet where you can transfer data at megabit rates, why you do that ?"
Because I can !
Re:Why? by hairyfeet · 2012-04-03 13:09 · Score: 1

Uhhh...haven't run windows in many years I take it? Win 7 runs just fine on a circa 2004 Sempron with 1.5Gb of RAM, I know this because i'm running it. it don't have aero but then again you ain't getting the bling bling on a Linux system with a lousy IGP.
But hey if you want to waste your time reading about a guy that made Linux run like hammered shit on a VCR remote, that's cool, but frankly articles like this does NOT make Linux look good, it makes it look like a toy for geekers to fiddle with. i mean I can post youtube Videos of a guy getting Win 7 to run on a Pentium II but seriously who cares? Hell there is even a guy who managed to upgrade every single version of Windows from 1.0 to Win 7 and the thing actually runs but again kinda pointless.

--
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:Why? by crutchy · 2012-04-03 19:28 · Score: 1

Win 7 runs just fine on a circa 2004 Sempron with 1.5Gb of RAM
yeah, maybe on its own with nothing else running, and whoopy-fucking-do i run the latest debian on a p4 with 512 Mb ram. your ego trip doesn't really do much for windows, because your "circa 2004" hardware isn't really that bad. i have win7 on my workstation at work with aero disabled, and it still gobbles up 2 gb+ of the 16 Gb ram available.

regarding TFA, just cos you don't see the point doesn't mean others don't. if anything it makes you appear rather shortsighted, imho; maybe you see a tree as a tree, but others see a tree as something that could be used to build a house

how do you think set top boxes and routers come about in the first place? someone had to figure out how to get something running on three-fifths of fuck all, and we're not talking the linux kernel from 15 years ago. is there any wonder why there aren't set top boxes and routers with the windows logo?
Re:Why? by tolkienfan · 2012-04-04 10:23 · Score: 1

There already exist various space rated processors at least up to 16 bit. Plus it makes no sense to use an emulator when you could run software directly on the chip. Also 6khz is pointless when much faster more capable hardware exists. A 16 bit core takes so few transistors these days that you could put many of them on a single die.
It's a nice hack, but let's not pretend it has practical use.
Re:Why? by hairyfeet · 2012-04-04 15:43 · Score: 1

Actually runs just fine, complete with Avast, 3 tabs open in dragon AND downloading a video, next FUD? And I would argue a 2004 Sempron is even worse than a P4 because the Athlon arch is MUCH more sensitive to lack of cache than the P4, only the Cedar mill Celerons perform worse and those are REALLY cache gimped.
Oh and as i've heard so much on the Linux forums if Win 7 is gobbling 2+ Gb? Then "Ur doin it wrong" because even on my 6 core with all the bling cranked it only sucks 1.5Gb and that's including having over a half a dozen apps in the taskbar including steam. Maybe they run shitty apps like Norton at work?
And just FYI but "set tops and routers" are made by actual corps that aren't gonna give a rat's ass what some guy cooked up in his basement, and I'd say a good 99% of the population ain't gonna give a rat's ass if you can run linux on your router. You see most of us actually buy a product that does what we want it to so we DON'T have to spend hours fucking with the damned thing! i know its a concept, but surprisingly it works.
Again just another article that makes linux look like a tinker toy for geeks with nothing to do on a Saturday night. Hell if y'all find that so damned interesting maybe i should post the videos of the guy running Win 7 on a PII or the guy that managed to upgrade from 1.0-7, obviously that is just amazing!

--
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:Why? by crutchy · 2012-04-04 22:14 · Score: 1

Ur doin it wrong
actually, "ur" full of shit

corps that aren't gonna give a rat's ass what some guy cooked up in his basement
yeah you're right i'm totally mistaken! also, why would router manufacturers give a rats about some hobby OS that some finnish student cooked up in his basement. jeez i must be totally retarded or something :)

99% of the population ain't gonna give a rat's ass if you can run linux on your router
oh but they do, because if linux didn't run on routers we wouldn't have routers with the same capabilities. if suddenly every linux-powered router was taken off the shelves tomorrow, what would fill the void? would the population care? of course they would, because while they don't need know about linux, they do know that they can get routers that do what they want, and if all of a sudden they couldn't, they would care.

Again just another article that makes linux look like a tinker toy for geeks with nothing to do on a Saturday night
yeah you're probably right, but then maybe your just a microsoft douchebag who's pissy that windows can't make it past consumer and sme because linux is guarding the doors to all the corporate datacenters, not to mention windows sucks at smartphones, and doesn't even really exist in embedded. all the while, linux is still gradually making headway on the desktop, even with microsoft's dirty business practices, fud and legal threats.

actually a guy running win7 on a p2 would be newsworthy, though i guess he probably waits 4 hours for bootup too. poor sucker.
Re:Why? by avsa242 · 2012-04-05 09:13 · Score: 1

lol

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:06 · Score: 4, Funny

You mean, you bought the latest nokia?

Reminder: this is /. , all people will want to know is: but does it run linux. Since your nokia apparently is unable to do so, this article proves the 8-bit processor superior.

Have a nice day.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by BanHammor · 2012-04-02 08:06 · Score: 1

I think that would be Haiku on Sega Saturn, but that would be way easier.

Another step by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:07 · Score: 1

And the law of "linux runs on everything and if it doesn't, it will" persists.

Re:Another step by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2012-04-02 08:21 · Score: 1

I thought that was the NetBSD law ...

--
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Re:Another step by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:27 · Score: 1

You said it right - "was". Linux took NetBSD's ported-to-many-platforms-crown several years ago.
Re:Another step by unixisc · 2012-04-02 08:43 · Score: 1

Well, NetBSD doesn't run on Itanic. But the above law is a good one.

Sometime tomorrow... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:07 · Score: 5, Funny

They'll submit "FIRST POST"

We could ... by PPH · 2012-04-02 08:07 · Score: 4, Funny

... build a Beowulf cluster of these!

--
Have gnu, will travel.

Re:We could ... by should_be_linear · 2012-04-02 08:35 · Score: 1

or even better, Vista cluster of these, emulated on top of JavaScript-based VM.

--
839*929
Re:We could ... by jd · 2012-04-02 08:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

Already done. One of the earliest supercomputer-grade clusters was a gigantic mesh of 65C02 processors. You'll need to come up with something better.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:We could ... by gstoddart · 2012-04-02 08:55 · Score: 1

Already done. One of the earliest supercomputer-grade clusters was a gigantic mesh of 65C02 processors.
I'm curious to know what "gigantic" would have been in this context.
By todays standards, probably less than the average watch. :-P

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:We could ... by X0563511 · 2012-04-02 09:04 · Score: 1

Calling it a joke (no matter the age) is doing it too much credit.

--
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:We could ... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 10:09 · Score: 1

I would like to learn more about this super computer. Got a link?
Re:We could ... by hamster_nz · 2012-04-02 13:30 · Score: 1

It may not be the project referred to, but have a look at "Ciarcia's circuit cellar, Volume 7" - it has the full design, including schematics.
It is based around Intel 8751 or and 8031 CPU - 64 of them. It was about 20x as fast as an IBM PC AT.
A 640x400 fractal took 1.7 minutes to draw. A current AMD CPU is about 6000 times faster than this 'supercomputer
.
Re:We could ... by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 16:50 · Score: 1

You're right, it's beyond a joke now. It's reached immortal status as a meme.

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Re:We could ... by jones_supa · 2012-04-03 00:07 · Score: 1

And inside the OS, we could run Flash, Minecraft and the Slashdot commenting system.

Next: Emulate the 8-bit processor in Minecraft by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:08 · Score: 1

Boot time: 17 days

Re:Next: Emulate the 8-bit processor in Minecraft by gmhowell · 2012-04-02 11:05 · Score: 1

Boot time: 17 days
17 days?! Hey man, I don't wanna rain on your parade, but we're not gonna last seventeen *hours!* Those things are gonna come in here just like they did before. And they're gonna come in here...
Sorry. Just having a flashback to my time in the service.

--
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Re:Next: Emulate the 8-bit processor in Minecraft by Savantissimo · 2012-04-02 15:34 · Score: 1

Or maybe the other way around.

--
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry

I'm almost scared to ask by crazyjj · 2012-04-02 08:08 · Score: 1

But was there a point to this?

--
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?

Re:I'm almost scared to ask by getto+man+d · 2012-04-02 08:11 · Score: 1

You can ask the same of most hobbies. I would assume it's mainly for personal enjoyment.
Re:I'm almost scared to ask by fliptout · 2012-04-02 08:44 · Score: 4, Funny

If your hobby is 'waiting for stuff to happen', then this is a great project to undertake.

--
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Re:I'm almost scared to ask by billcopc · 2012-04-02 08:51 · Score: 1, Informative

Well, I hope the guy got plenty of "personal enjoyment" because I think it's a lame hack. He didn't actually get Linux working on an 8-bit processor. He got it working in an emulator, which apparently he DID write. At no point did he port the Linux kernel to a new platform. This is right up there with booting Linux on a GP2X console via Bochs.
So, to recaption this article:
"ARMv5 emu for underpowered and rarely used AVR chip. ATmega community baffled and bewildered. Oh, and it boots Linux in half a day."

--
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Re:I'm almost scared to ask by jd · 2012-04-02 08:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

To this project or to this discovery? To the project, probably no. Well, other than being excellent practice in problem-solving. To the discovery, probably yes. There have long been arguments over the minimum complexity requirements for a general-purpose OS, which is an important problem to solve as complexity is a governor of many things (cost, durability, power requirements, heat generation, etc). We already know from Turing that any CPU can run any software for any other CPU, provided the memory is available and the CPUs are Turing Machine equivalents. What we've been less clear on is what this means in practice, how to exploit it, and whether architectural limitations violate the Turing Machine equivalency requirement. We now have numbers to work with, a case study, and a proof by example that equivalency is satisfied.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:I'm almost scared to ask by hamster_nz · 2012-04-02 12:31 · Score: 1

I am sure if I was ask you and him a question about the ARM architecture I know who's answer will be correct....
Re:I'm almost scared to ask by benthurston27 · 2012-04-02 17:18 · Score: 1

You start to watch paint dry or grass grow just to see some action.

My 0.02 by DaMattster · 2012-04-02 08:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

On one level this shows just how clever Dmitry is and it shows excellent problem solving skills. However, I would be more impressed if he could do something interesting with more modern technology. The technical challenges of booting a modern OS on dinosaur hardware are amazing and if he could take his innovation ability and apply it to state of the art technology, image what he could achieve.

Re:My 0.02 by Guy+Harris · 2012-04-02 08:39 · Score: 1

On one level this shows just how clever Dmitry is and it shows excellent problem solving skills. However, I would be more impressed if he could do something interesting with more modern technology. The technical challenges of booting a modern OS on dinosaur hardware are amazing and if he could take his innovation ability and apply it to state of the art technology, image what he could achieve.
It's called a "hobby project"; you might have heard the term "hobby" on occasion - people occasionally do not-necessarily-useful-in-the-Real-World(TM) things as hobbies, such as getting old {radios, cars, airplanes, computers, etc.} to work, because it's fun for them.
If you're curious what he achieves when he's not working on his hobbies, you might want to check his work pages, which are linked to from the sidebar on the site to which the article refers.
Re:My 0.02 by dmitrygr · 2012-04-02 09:22 · Score: 4, Funny

I do plenty of other things (flying planes, collecting speeding tickets, etc). This was just for fun. And it was quite fun. I never expected it to be fast enough to use, and am still quite amazed that it is usable (for some definitions of "usable")

--
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law

Choose any two.
Re:My 0.02 by dasqua · 2012-04-02 15:58 · Score: 1

Seriously, this is a cool project and anyone who has a problem with this kind of thing should have their slashdot account suspended pending a review of their nerd status. I myself made a simple 31 bit processor with FORTH as the OS. It taught me a lot. This is what hobbies are all about. A safe place to experiment with ideas and try something out. I've used that experience to do other things that I wouldn't have even otherwise tried. Supposed "silly" projects can make "serious" projects possible - even if only to broaden your perspective. Might even get you a different job.
Emulation of 32 bit on 8 bit: its guaranteed to be slow in the first few releases due to various bottlenecks... but hey, optimise the data i/o and you could actually make something of this. People used to bitch about how slow serial ports were.

--
tihs isg mead fmro rcecydle tpyos
Re:My 0.02 by Ogi_UnixNut · 2012-04-02 19:28 · Score: 1

Out of Curiosity, do you enjoy your job? :P
Congratulations on the project as well! Pretty cool! :)
Re:My 0.02 by dmitrygr · 2012-04-02 21:18 · Score: 1

Google is a cool place to work. I like it (joined jan3, 2012). It's not on my site yet (keep forgetting to put it up there)

--
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law

Choose any two.
Re:My 0.02 by BeardedChimp · 2012-04-02 22:00 · Score: 1

1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law

For me I consider this much more challenging, as often the law is just plain wrong.
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within your morals
Re:My 0.02 by Provocateur · 2012-04-03 04:58 · Score: 1

It's not on my site yet (keep forgetting to put it up there)
lol! There are more important* things to do, right?
*(as in more fun)

--
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Re:My 0.02 by Ogi_UnixNut · 2012-04-03 06:23 · Score: 1

Congratulations! Google offered me a job as well, but I turned it down for the time being, as I enjoy my current job and co-workers (plus it would have entailed a pay cut), but nice!
I still wonder if I've made the right choice, what is it like working for Google? So far?
Well, I guess I've found out which of the other 2 you decided upon :D (I worked out you make lots of money, as flying aircraft and accruing speeding tickets are sports for the well off :P ). Considering starting to fly myself, but am not sure when I will get round to that.

Geoworks by Daniel+Phillips · 2012-04-02 08:10 · Score: 5, Informative

Nice trick. However, let me point out that in 1990 Geoworks GEOS was capable of running a preemptive multitasking GUI looking much like QT but with better automatic widget layout, on an 8 MHz 8088. I will just heave a great sigh in the name of the lost art of tight coding. No, Linux is not tightly coded. I should know. The best you can say about it is, the other guys are worse.

--
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?

Re:Geoworks by Ichijo · 2012-04-02 08:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

No, Linux is not tightly coded. I should know. The best you can say about it is, the other guys are worse.

Not MenuetOS. It's an operating system with a graphical UI, pre-emptive multitasking, and USB and TCP/IP stacks that boots from a single floppy.

--
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Re:Geoworks by jellomizer · 2012-04-02 08:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

My old stuff works so much better then my new stuff...%#@&*&(@+++ NO CARRIER Sorry Computer crashed. Because old software was so optimized... $#@%^^++ NO CARRIER For the old equipment. The only trade off was fault tolerance.

You will not believe how much Computing power goes to making sure your computer doesn't crash every day.

Back in the old days computers crashed much more then it does now. And it isn't that they are better programmers but more to the fact that there was a trade off on how much code in the back end needed to be done to protect the system.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Geoworks by kimvette · 2012-04-02 08:26 · Score: 3, Informative

Nice trick with Geoworks, but the 8088 is a 16-bit processor on an 8-bit bus.
Now, GEOS (the predecessor to Geoworks) did run on 8-bit procesors in the '80s, but it was in no way multitasking.

--
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Re:Geoworks by jeffmeden · 2012-04-02 08:31 · Score: 2

Nice trick. However, let me point out that in 1990 Geoworks GEOS was capable of running a preemptive multitasking GUI looking much like QT but with better automatic widget layout, on an 8 MHz 8088. I will just heave a great sigh in the name of the lost art of tight coding. No, Linux is not tightly coded. I should know. The best you can say about it is, the other guys are worse.
"better automatic widget layout" - this made my day. I remember using GEOS as a boy, on a C64. It was a lot of fun going from text menus to an actual mouse-relevant UI, but sophisticated it was NOT. Automatic widget layout? There were 8 icons per window and if you didn't like where they were you could (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.
Re:Geoworks by nuckfuts · 2012-04-02 08:39 · Score: 1

My first and lasting impression of GEOS was how fast it felt. Everything I clicked on seemed instantaenous. Despite the massive advances in technology, I've yet to experience another GUI as responsive as that.
Re:Geoworks by cpu6502 · 2012-04-02 08:45 · Score: 2

That was a limitation of the C64 video chip. Only 2 colors were allowed per 8x8 square, so any attempt to move the icons would have led to a graphical mess (like macroblocking in heavy-compressed video).
In order to avoid that mess, GEOS assigned every icon to a fixed location. It was intended to fit inside just 0.06 meg of RAM, not to be fancy. (For contrast the Mac OS ran in 0.5 meg of RAM.)

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:Geoworks by edwdig · 2012-04-02 09:23 · Score: 1

"better automatic widget layout" - this made my day. I remember using GEOS as a boy, on a C64. It was a lot of fun going from text menus to an actual mouse-relevant UI, but sophisticated it was NOT. Automatic widget layout? There were 8 icons per window and if you didn't like where they were you could (a)bort, (r)etry, (i)gnore.
He was talking about the PC version of GEOS. You're talking about the C64 version. The only similarities between the two products are the name and some members of the development teams.
The PC version had a really sophisticated UI for the time. It was all multi-threaded with automatic control layout similar to how modern UI toolkits work. I found it a pleasure to code for. 15 years ago I was creating UIs much faster than I am today with modern tools.
Re:Geoworks by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 09:25 · Score: 1

Have played with menuetOS in VirtualBox. Blew my freaking mind with what was available off of a 1.5MB bootable file!
I highly recommend Everyone take a short look at it. You might just second guess the majority of all available programming currently in use.
Re:Geoworks by Daniel+Phillips · 2012-04-02 10:08 · Score: 1

I wonder what would be involved in getting that code base free. I suspect that a good number of devs have fond memories and would be more than willing to work on it, just for fun.

--
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Re:Geoworks by adavies42 · 2012-04-02 10:38 · Score: 1

reminds me of pre-OS X Macs--on the extremely rare occasions i have to boot OS 9 on bare metal, I'm always amazed by how much more responsive it is, on a single 300MHz core, than Snow Leopard is on 16 3GHz+ cores with more RAM than that box has disk space. (right up to the Type 2 bomb, failed attempt at typing "g finder" into the interrupt box, and four-minute reboot....)

--
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Re:Geoworks by david.given · 2012-04-02 11:07 · Score: 4, Informative

I wrote some code for it: see here (including a Linux86 execution environment, that would allow you to directly run Linux86 binaries from GEOS, that I was really rather proud of).
I can sum up the coding experience with the phrase: THE HORROR, THE HORROR.
In order to write code for GEOS you needed a monster, badly written and badly documented SDK and a copy of Borland C. The actual code you wrote was in a C superset called GOC, which was compiled via a buggy preprocessor into incredibly cryptic C, which was then compiled with Borland and linked with a custom linker. Alternatively, if C wasn't your thing, there was an object-oriented dialect of 8086 assembler available. The OO system was bizarre, and allowed for classes to have unspecified superclasses, where the superclass was determined at run time: the system used this to great effect in the UI, where the app author's generic UI was turned into a specific UI implementation for the device. The C bindings were full of bugs, too, including function calls which didn't save all the registers properly...
The actual architecture exploited the hell out of the 8086 segmentation architecture. Memory was organised as a set of relocatable blocks which were referred to by handles (which, under the hood, were usually segment descriptors). To dereference the memory, you had to lock the block, do your manipulation, then mark the block as dirty if you had changed it, and unlock it. The lock/unlock procedure allowed the system to ensure that the block was in memory, by paging it in if necessary, either from EMS RAM or disk. It was incredibly, utterly, un-Posix, and a complete pain to do anything in. The learning curve was insane.
Where GEOS really did well was the application stack, which was subtle and elegant. There was a mechanism to allow you to use a file as a heap backing store (using a very similar but annoyingly different API to the block API described above, but that's not really important). The system automagically loaded and saved data from the file as you locked and unlocked blocks. There were standard components for everything up to and including a complete bitmap paint package, a vector drawing package, and a word processor --- and these all used these file heaps as storage. And, of course, you could have multiple components in the same file. OLE! But done right.
By today's standards, of course, it's all a huge pile of incomprehensible, unmaintainable cruft, all inextricably linked to 16-bit 8086 code. It wasn't just utter mismarketing that killed GEOS: it was the inexorable march of time. It was simply unable to adapt to the 32-bit world. All the clever tricks they did to get decent performance out of an 8086 were liabilities on more modern hardware.
That said, towards the end, when Geoworks was in its death spiral, they did produce two different attempts to rewrite GEOS for 32-bit RISC processors: GEOS-SE and GEOS-SC. I know absolutely nothing about these other than on the wikipedia page, and if anyone has any info, I'd be fascinated to hear about it.
Re:Geoworks by mlosh · 2012-04-02 12:01 · Score: 1

I used both the C64 version and the PC version. I didn't find the C64 very useful. Cute, yes, but not useful in a productive way for me. I liked the PC version a lot. I used the WYSIWYG word processor to do some light desktop publishing in the mid 90's... worked as well on my old 386 as did the Windows stuff did then on a fast 486 or the then-new Pentium PCs. I never wrote code for it, but as a dev I can appreciate good, tight code when I see it.
Re:Geoworks by BlueScreenO'Life · 2012-04-02 13:31 · Score: 1

Nice trick with Geoworks, but the 8088 is a 16-bit processor on an 8-bit bus.
And much slower than the ATmega1284p RISC featured here, regardless of "how many bits".
Re:Geoworks by Daniel+Phillips · 2012-04-02 16:12 · Score: 2

Interesting. I did a little bit of coding to the GEOS API as well, not much more than building their hello world application, whatever that was. I noticed that the SDK itself would tend to crash if you looked at it sideways. I think the SDK ran on a Sun 1, I could be wrong about that.
As far as the segment architecture goes, I did a similar thing myself with the 8086 segment architecture, which extended to the 286 protected mode model nicely, and also worked fine on 386, still using the 286 memory model but with 32 bit instruction escapes. Even mapping the segments to disk as you describe, it is interesting how my own parallel work is similar in that respect. The 286 version of it provided a very satifactory level of protection and system robustness, as each segment was protected from each other unless you go an explicitly do something nasty to a segment register. A considerably more robust development model than the everything-mashed-together-in-one-protection-domain Unix model. With the protected, segmented model, my kernel could easy suffer internal segfaults and rarely go down. Just great for maximum hacking gain with minimum pain.
Well, I don't think the low level machinery is all that important, it is actually quite easy to rebuild. It is the object oriented architecture that seemed to have some kind of special magic. "Sending out methods" as they quaintly called it. I don't quite get your point about the unspecified superclasses. It sounds interesting. Something about GEOS allowed a small team to accomplish more in less time than other teams many times their size. And some of that work has not been equaled to this day. It remains interesting.

--
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Re:Geoworks by bill_mcgonigle · 2012-04-02 17:06 · Score: 1

Now, GEOS (the predecessor to Geoworks) did run on 8-bit procesors in the '80s, but it was in no way multitasking.
Not preemtively, but it aimed to give that impression. IIRC I could switch between the word processor and the paint program. I think the whole environment loaded in less than 5 minutes on the C=64.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Re:Geoworks by hawk · 2012-04-02 17:23 · Score: 1

Which is an impressive feat for a machine with .125 meg of ram and .25 meg of rom . . .
hawk
Re:Geoworks by jawtheshark · 2012-04-02 18:49 · Score: 1

You have a Mac with 16 cores? Even the Mac Pro currently only features up to 12.

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Re:Geoworks by david.given · 2012-04-02 23:16 · Score: 1

The 8086/286 memory management was actually quite elegant, in a twisted kind of way, and is best thought of as object oriented memory: a segment descriptor refers to an object, and you then indirect via an offset into that object. I once met a 286 Smalltalk implementation that used the 286 MMU like this. It worked rather well.
Of course, with 16-bit segment handles it totally fails to scale to modern systems, and it's completely incompatible with any modern coding practices.
The GEOS SDK is actually available as a free download (although I notice that some of the zipfile links with the documentation in it are broken. Sigh. It's available, you just have to hunt for it). That's the DOS-hosted version. To use the incomprehensible and bug-ridden debugger you'll need a second PC and a serial cable (or virtual versions thereof).
It would actually be interesting to see the source code. I suspect that far too much of it is written in 8086 assembler to be of any use these days, although quite a lot of the platform-specific bits could just be discarded --- block locking is irrelevant these days, for example. But I suspect it won't happen. GEOS had too much licensed third-party code in it...
(I got a job offer from Geoworks once. I turned them down. Probably a wise move.)
Re:Geoworks by adavies42 · 2012-04-03 01:35 · Score: 1

my mistake, i have a pro with 8 hyper-threaded cores.

--
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Re:Geoworks by jawtheshark · 2012-04-03 02:20 · Score: 1

That's what I assumed. Many people have a serious problem with understanding the hypethread concept. Still a lot of cores, though ;-)

--
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Re:Geoworks by cpu6502 · 2012-04-03 03:03 · Score: 1

You mean the Thin Mac with 128k?
That was discontinued in mere months, because the OS didn't fit (many programs flat-out refused to run). In other words Apple made a mistake. But they quickly discontinued that mistake, and replaced it with the new Fat Mac at 512k. That's how much the Mac OS really needed to run the various word processing, database, accounting programs of 1984. (It probably could have worked on just 256k but we'll never know for sure.)

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:Geoworks by hawk · 2012-04-03 03:53 · Score: 1

I mean the Macintosh, whupich some would later dub "thin". It was the only model while it shipped; any program refusing to run was shipped after its time. I had one at the time (still have it, in fact, although little brother upgraded it to a 512ke), and the available programs most definitely functioned. hawk

How much more... by jzuccaro · 2012-04-02 08:12 · Score: 1

...until we get a joke about running Java on it.

Re:How much more... by alexru · 2012-04-02 08:18 · Score: 1

Funny, but the same guy promised to release full-blown JVM running on the same platform :)
Re:How much more... by dmitrygr · 2012-04-02 09:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

I don't use a SIMM for the JVM project - but I am going to release a fully working(threads, synchronization, exceptions, interfaces, all the datatypes, etc) JVM for AVRs soon

--
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law

Choose any two.

Actually, cool! by blind+biker · 2012-04-02 08:12 · Score: 1

This whole project, while seemingly pointless, seems pretty damn interesting to me.

Question for Linux hackers: is there a reason why the Linux kernel would not be portable to an Atmel AVR microcontroller?

--
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.

Re:Actually, cool! by alexru · 2012-04-02 08:22 · Score: 2

Question for Linux hackers: is there a reason why the Linux kernel would not be portable to an Atmel AVR microcontroller?
Linux requires MMU and AVRs don't have it. Memory limitations will kick in as well (the most powerful AVR has 256 kB of flash ans 32 kB of RAM, so external storage will be required)
Re:Actually, cool! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:26 · Score: 1, Informative

uC Linux does not require an MMU.
Re:Actually, cool! by blind+biker · 2012-04-02 08:29 · Score: 1

Thanks. I understand now :/
The Flash you're seeing in an AVR is just for storing programs, while the work memory (SRAM) is separate. It's not a Von Neumann machine.

--
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Re:Actually, cool! by Lennie · 2012-04-03 01:53 · Score: 1

I would have said the same, but on Wikipedia it says:
Since version 2.5.46 of the Linux kernel, the major parts of Clinux have been integrated with the main line kernel for a number of processor architectures.
The project continues to develop patches and supporting tools for using Linux on microcontrollers.
So I think Linux does not require an MMU. Ubuntu (including their ARM version) does.

--
New things are always on the horizon

Re:75 MHz 286 by ewanm89 · 2012-04-02 08:15 · Score: 1

286 is 16bit I believe? I believe this is the first time anyone has actually run the linux kernel on less than 16bit which is the base the first linux was designed to run on.

turtles all the way down by ChipMonk · 2012-04-02 08:16 · Score: 1

An ARM emulator running on an 8-bit microcontroller.

Alan Turing strikes again!

Re:turtles all the way down by uncle+brad · 2012-04-02 08:24 · Score: 1

Now to get that 8-bit microcontroller emulated on a Turing machine.
Re:turtles all the way down by Robotbeat · 2012-04-02 15:36 · Score: 1

Reminds me of http://xkcd.com/505/

No it won't. by pavon · 2012-04-02 08:16 · Score: 5, Informative

No version of windows ever ran on an 8-bit processor. Windows 1.0-3.0 would run on an 8086, but that is still 16-bit, and Windows 3.1 won't even run on that, it needs a 286 or higher.

Re:No it won't. by swillden · 2012-04-02 09:23 · Score: 2

No version of windows ever ran on an 8-bit processor. Windows 1.0-3.0 would run on an 8086, but that is still 16-bit, and Windows 3.1 won't even run on that, it needs a 286 or higher.
But you could run Windows on an 8-bit processor the same way this guy ran Linux on one -- write an 8-bit emulator for the 32-bit platform you want to run. Except that I don't think you could get any semi-modern Windows to run in 16 MB of RAM.

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:No it won't. by FaxeTheCat · 2012-04-02 09:33 · Score: 1

I have actually installed and used (well...) Windows 1.0 on a standard IBM PC/XT which uses an 8088.
It was useless, but it (sort of) worked.
It was quicker than the reported speed of Ubuntu on 8 bit (closing a OK/Cancel dialog box only took like 20 seconds), but it was still painful even as a test.
Re:No it won't. by root_42 · 2012-04-02 09:42 · Score: 2

An 8088 is still a 16 bit machine. It has 16 bit registers and supports arithmetic operations on 16 bit values. Just the data bus is 8 bit and hence pushing those 16 bit values around the system takes more time...

--
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Re:No it won't. by scharkalvin · 2012-04-02 09:54 · Score: 2

Intel sold the 8088 CPU as an 8 bit processor. It really was a 16 bit machine inside, but with an 8 bit data bus that could use all the 8 bit parts that worked with the 8085 CPU. So many people are confused and think windows ran on an 8 bit machine. BTW windows vers 1 and 2 could run on a 16 bit 8088 PC XT machine. Version 3 and 3.1 dropped the XT support but continued to run on 286 AT machines.
Re:No it won't. by HBI · 2012-04-02 11:22 · Score: 2

Good memory, you are correct. It had "real mode" (640k) for XT/8086/8088 clones, "standard mode" (16mb/286 prot mode) for AT/286 class machines and "386 Enhanced mode" which gave you virtual 8086 DOS multitasking along with Windows proper.in a 64 megabyte address space. No one had more than 8mb in a 386 at the time anyway.

--
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Re:No it won't. by BlueScreenO'Life · 2012-04-02 13:05 · Score: 1

To be fair one could argue the number of "bits" of a CPU is conventionally the width of the data bus. The Z80 also supports, in addition to the 8-bit operations, 16-bit arithmetic operations and 16-bit registers (okay, usually those were pairs of 8-bit registers, but 16-bit register implementations do exist), yet nobody would call that thing a 16-bit CPU. Similarly nobody would call an i7 a 128-bit CPU just because it features 128-bit registers and 128-bit operations.
Re:No it won't. by spauldo · 2012-04-02 15:09 · Score: 1

You could run Windows 3.0 on one of those. I've done it, and it worked all right.
As far as being useless, well, it really depends on what you're using it for. I mostly used it as a dumb terminal hooked to a Linux box, and my girlfriend at the time played DOS games on it. It worked well enough. I can't say speed was much of an issue for playing solitaire or old DOS games - it was more responsive than you'd think for an XT.
Granted, this was around '97 or so, so our expectations for speed were a lot different back then (2.0.30 kernel compiled on my 133MHz Cyrix box in about thirty minutes, for instance).

--
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Re:No it won't. by toddestan · 2012-04-02 15:20 · Score: 3, Informative

You can get Windows XP to boot on as little as 18 MB of ram:
Source.
Re:No it won't. by dasqua · 2012-04-02 15:49 · Score: 1

Never really ran on anything until it got onto 386. Everything before that was pure pain.

--
tihs isg mead fmro rcecydle tpyos
Re:No it won't. by FaxeTheCat · 2012-04-02 19:37 · Score: 1

The 8088 may be in the grey area between 8 and 16 bit, but I have to agree that it is more a 16 bit than an 8 bit processor.
I was a bit confused by the statement that Windows 1.0 required an 8086, which it did not.
Re:No it won't. by FaxeTheCat · 2012-04-02 19:42 · Score: 1

I very much doubt that you ran Windows 3.0 on a PC/XT. Closing a dialog box took 20 seconds to a minute. Really.
Windows 3.0 was usable on an PC/AT (80286), and I used that for a few years, but no version of Windows was usable on a PC/XT.
Re:No it won't. by unixisc · 2012-04-03 02:05 · Score: 2

The 'bitness' is the #bits in the ALU - the width of inputs to and outputs from the ALU. If that number is 8, it's an 8-bit CPU, no matter what the data bus is. However, if the registers of a CPU are 128 bit and the operations are 128 bit e.g. you can add 2 128-bit numbers, then it's a 128 bit CPU.

Windows 98ME by rullywowr · 2012-04-02 08:21 · Score: 1

So what the article is basically saying is that this runs better than Windows 98ME?

Re:75 MHz 286 by kwark · 2012-04-02 08:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

What 286 ran at 75Mhz? Only 486 cpus ran at those speeds. And AFAIK Debian never had a kernel for non 386 80x86 CPUs.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by wagnerrp · 2012-04-02 08:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

That's simply not true. Those little 8-bit microcontrollers are used all over the place. You probably have several in your desktop, some in your monitor, more in your TV, a whole bunch in your car. You just never see anyone trying to run one as the primary CPU on an interactive computer these days.

Re:75 MHz 286 by wagnerrp · 2012-04-02 08:24 · Score: 1

Wasn't that a pretty typical system back when Debian first came out? And just where in the hell did you get a 75MHz 286?

But does it run... by Qubit · 2012-04-02 08:25 · Score: 4, Funny

...oh wait, I see what you did there.

--

coding is life /* the rest is */

DMV by j00r0m4nc3r · 2012-04-02 08:26 · Score: 4, Funny

Let me guess, the DMV ordered 1000 copies..?

2 Hours? That is fast! by DarthVain · 2012-04-02 08:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

"slowest Linux Computer running"...

I beat that score by a large margin. Years ago I took an old 386 Laptop that ran at 25Mhz, I don't recall how much ram it had, but I am going to go with "not much", and booted DSL (Damn Small Linux) in just over 21 hours. Which is over 10x as slow as the one in the article! So technically I think I had the "slowest Linux computer".

Why did it boot so slow? Well it was also the reason I used DSL, because it was less than 50MB, and I could fit it on a Zip drive. Attached via a parallel cable. It did work, and it did eventually boot, however I had to leave it over night (I thought it would eventually just crash), but it worked its way through. Also on a fun note, when typing and executing commands it was like telneting to the moon, there was like a 4-5 second delay between typing any command hitting execute, and any sort of result. I really just wanted to see if it was possible to install and run an OS on a zip drive connected via a parallel port. The answer is yes, but not very well.

Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by DarthVain · 2012-04-02 08:34 · Score: 2

Now that I think about it, I think the laptops hard drive was also so small that even DSL was much too large for it. It probably only had a 20MB hard dive in the thing, which would have made it necessary to try the zip drive thing at all if I wanted to use it as a linux machine. I think that necessity is what gave me the idea. Had a useless piece of hardware sitting around that I thought might be useful for something if I could get Linux on it. Turns out I was wrong... Still useless... :)
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by shippers · 2012-04-02 08:38 · Score: 1

It reminds me of using PCTask on the Amiga, watching it draw the windows, pixel by pixel, line by line... zzzzz...
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by dbraden · 2012-04-02 08:52 · Score: 1

Keep in mind that the one in the article is a "8 bit micro machine with 6.5 KHz CPU". KHz, not MHz. I'm just guessing, but I would attribute you system's slowness to your IO system :)
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by agw · 2012-04-02 08:59 · Score: 1

Maybe your 386 had its brakes on, not running at 25Mhz?
Booting Linux on a 25Mhz 68030 didn't take more than a few minutes and one of these small Linux distributions I recently tried on a 75Mhz 486 also booted within a couple of minutes.
So I guess you were doing something wrong. It's not like nobody was using UNIX on 386 productively.
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by Scoth · 2012-04-02 09:10 · Score: 1

I wonder why it was so slow. I did something similar with my old Toshiba T3200SX, which is a 386SX-16 with 9 megs of RAM. I got both Win95 and a couple Linux varieties booted off a zip drive and a parallel "backpack" CD-ROM drive with some effort. They were both very slow and took forever get booted, but not on the level of 21 hours. Maybe twenty minutes at most for the Linux, which was some variety of Knoppix IIRC.
I wonder if SPP vs. EPP/ECP modes on parallel ports would made a difference.
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by vlm · 2012-04-02 09:31 · Score: 1

I only had 40 meg HD on my first SLS install back in 93. 20 megs should have been OK if you used something a little more... vintage, like SLS.
SLS was only something like "two boxes of 3.5 floppy disks" in total, so a completely loaded install should have easily fit in 20... I don't remember the details.
See a /. post like this, is where the 6 digit and larger UIDs start talking smack about stuff the 5 digit UIDs actually did only two decades ago.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by scharkalvin · 2012-04-02 09:58 · Score: 1

You want to talk slow? Any DEC fans out there? Do you remember DEC TAPE II? This was a 3m tape cart that emulated a standard DEC TAPE which itself emulated a floppy disk. Had one of those hooked to an LSI II running RT-11 and the Dungeon (ZORK) game. Now that was slow!
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by JSBiff · 2012-04-02 14:22 · Score: 1

Yeah, something seems odd about the GP post . . . the first computer I tried Linux on was a 386-SX (the SX was, IIRC, the stripped-down "economy" version), running at 16Mhz with 4M of RAM. I installed a version of slackware from floppies onto the 40M hard drive.
That was slow, but still booted in like 5 minutes from the floppies, and maybe 2 minutes from the HD.
I suppose that, perhaps, the main difference is that DSL, while small compared to Ubuntu or Red Hat, is still huge compared to that 1995-ish version of Slackware.
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by Nethead · 2012-04-02 15:17 · Score: 1

Yeah, I was going to say my first linux box was a 486sx with 4 MB RAM and something like a 40 MB drive. I sure didn't try X on it but it made a fine box for mail, muds and whatnot.
The really trick one was the SWTPC 6800 running UniFLEX. Fully multi-user "unix" like 8 bit system that would run SAGE (think dBase.) There was a guy in my home town that made a nice little business setting up various companies with those boxes. This was mid-late 80s. The server had 256k of RAM, two 8" floppies, and a honkin' 80MB hard drive. And to be honest when you did the things it was designed to do, it felt about as quick as a 386 running SCO.

--
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by spauldo · 2012-04-02 15:33 · Score: 2

The 386 SX used a 16 bit bus.
It was designed much for the same reasons the 8088 was designed - motherboards and the relevant chipsets were all 16 bit, so a company could save a bit of cash and development time and get an SX out there faster and cheaper than a DX.
Neither the SX nor the DX had a coprocessor. You could buy one and install it, if the board supported it - I never actually saw an Intel 80387 chip, but I saw a few clones.
The whole SX/DX thing got more confusing with the 486, since it didn't mean the same thing (SX chips were the same as DX but with the coprocessor disabled).

--
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by wwwgregcom · 2012-04-02 17:26 · Score: 1

When I was in elementary school, I installed windows 3.1 (I think) on a zip drive on a hard driveless ibm pc that my school had lying around. Was slow, but not that slow though.

--
What signature defines me as a person?
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by hawk · 2012-04-02 17:41 · Score: 1

But such things can be found running then-current hardware, too.
MacBSD, the Mac 68030 & similar strain of NetBSD, was thought to only work with an FPU (there were 68020 and 68LC040 Mac models with no FPU), and not with FPU emulation (hmm, I guess it was X, and not MacBSD itself).
And then one week, someone booted, got interrupted, and came back a couple of days later to his system in X . . .
And it made a world of difference in those days to run a font-server, as X was single-threaded, even on a 16-40 MHz '030 . . .
hawk
Re:2 Hours? That is fast! by DarthVain · 2012-04-03 01:17 · Score: 1

Heh, yeah I had one of those "X2" "backback" parallel CD-ROM drives as well through work. I always loved how all those parallel devices came with pass through cables, so you could just keep attaching stuff indefinitely...
Yeah I have no idea why it took so long, possibly I did something wrong. Your setup sounds about the same. Perhaps mine was an older slower zip drive (it was one of the first)... The only reason I say that, is that I don't think Win95 or any other varieties of Linux other than DSL would fit on mine which had a max capacity of 50MB.

Cool by jd2112 · 2012-04-02 08:28 · Score: 1

When can I expect a Commodore 64 port?

--
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

My first linux box by Cito · 2012-04-02 08:28 · Score: 2

Was a Packard Bell Legend 70 CD Supreme (haha)

was a 75 mhz, 8 meg ram, had a 4x cdrom (hence the cd supreme) it came with windows 3.11 on it and used trumpet winsock to get online.

I formatted it and installed Slackware Linux I got from a CD inside a book at "Waldenbooks" store I had bought on linux. I think it was somewhere around 2.0.20 - 2.0.29 era linux kernel.

Anyhow slackware on a 75mhz/8 meg ram was much much more fun and easier getting online than dealing with win 3.11 and trumpet winsock. I was shocked that slackware recognized the on board modem and the cdrom since the cdrom in that thing connected to a funky riser card.

Dmitry... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 08:29 · Score: 1

Tsk... you're doing it wrong, son!

Use Tiny Core, not Ubuntu.

What's with people these days? Complaining Linux is heavy because Ubuntu is heavy... what gives?

Re:75 MHz 286 by MickyTheIdiot · 2012-04-02 08:29 · Score: 1

Back in the days of dial-up and time-outs I had a co-worker running linux on two stripped down 386 machines. They didn't do anything but run ping periodically to keep the connection open. Still... it's nice to know you can still do it if you have such a limited needs as that.

Re:75 MHz 286 by bipbop · 2012-04-02 08:31 · Score: 1

I think you mean 486.

Re:75 MHz 286 by Zak3056 · 2012-04-02 08:32 · Score: 1

286 is 16bit I believe? I believe this is the first time anyone has actually run the linux kernel on less than 16bit which is the base the first linux was designed to run on.

From the summary, Linux is actually running on an emulated 32-bit ARM, it just so happens that the emulator is running on an 8-bit CPU.

--
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?

GNU/Linux on a homebrew microcoded ARM processor by Guy+Harris · 2012-04-02 08:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's how this is best thought of. In effect, he used an AVR chip as the microengine for a vertically-microcoded implementation of ARMv5, with some extensions. It's not as if Linux is running natively on an 8-bit architecture; that's be like saying, for example, that when OS/360 was running on a 90-bit-instruction/32-bit data VLIWish Harvard architecture machine when it's running on a System/360 Model 50.

Re:MS Windows was 4-bit by Joe+U · 2012-04-02 08:34 · Score: 1

You forgot to add M$, most of the people in 1995 wrote this with M$.

Business as usual by taniwha · 2012-04-02 08:36 · Score: 1

I've worked as a logic monkey building CPUs in the past - this is SOP in our world - we'd boot linux on our hardware on the verilog simulator as part of our QA - 2 hours is nothing .....

It's not even a new idea 20 years ago I used to port Unix for a living (no linux yet), when the early RISCs came out they came with architectural simulators, while waiting for real silicon we'd spend the time bringing the kernel (and compiler) up

If it runs on such an old system... by ebinrock · 2012-04-02 08:38 · Score: 1

Dang! Wonder what it would do on my AMD quad-core FX system with 8GB?

Yes, but by Hillgiant · 2012-04-02 08:43 · Score: 1

Does it run netBSD?

--
-

Next: 1-bit processor by unixisc · 2012-04-02 08:45 · Score: 1

Next will be a single-bit CPU running Linux 3.4, just to show off its capabilities. Boot time - 1 month.

Re:75 MHz 286 by unixisc · 2012-04-02 08:48 · Score: 1

Next goal - make Linux run on an 8085 or an 8051.

did anyone read what he did? by Inigo+Montoya · 2012-04-02 08:51 · Score: 1

He built an ARMv5 emulator for an 8-bit AVR.

OK, it's tedious, and a lot of work, but it's not the amazing feat that everyone here seems to think it is... he didn't port Linux to run on an 8-bit micro. He instead built a PXA255 SOC system emulator, that runs on AVR.

A skilled programmer can build an emulator for any architecture they are intimately familiar with.

OK, it's an amazing feat. Dimity, certainly has the skills.

But if I knew ARM as well as he does (which I don't) then I can write an ARM emulator for my Altair 8800b. (Yes, I still have one). After that, my Altair can run Linux too. What I am familiar with is SPARC v8, MIPs, and POWERPC. I developed on SPARC processors in the 90's, and I have written a PPC emulator myself, and I have been part of the PearPC project too in it's past. So perhaps from my background I am less impressed than most others here seem to be.

However, good on him.. :) It's still an accomplished feat. I just think that everyone here is praising too much, and perhaps its not what they think it is.

And yes, I admit I'm a little jelly because I don't blog about what I do now or what I have accomplished in the past, but I see myself on the same or better skill level than those who do blog and get all the coverage. :) I'm old school.. I don't blog anything.

-- cheers!

Re:did anyone read what he did? by codepigeon · 2012-04-02 09:46 · Score: 1

Jesus. Why don't you break out the tape measure too.
Re:did anyone read what he did? by gmhowell · 2012-04-02 11:10 · Score: 1

Jesus. Why don't you break out the tape measure too.
I think in his case, he might use a micrometer.

--
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Re:did anyone read what he did? by bytesex · 2012-04-02 22:22 · Score: 1

Funny, I had the opposite reaction: I thought, when I first read it: Oh no - he won't actually have ported Linux to 8-bit now, will he? and then I read about his solution and I thought - yeah, that's actually the best way to go about it. Elegant, clever, portable.

--
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.

Re:75 MHz 286 by jd · 2012-04-02 08:53 · Score: 1

That's not hard, if you're living on Titan.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)

Re:GNU/Linux on a homebrew microcoded ARM processo by Guy+Harris · 2012-04-02 08:56 · Score: 1

Emulators are not microcode.

So how exactly is a processor running a program to implement another instruction set architecture, with the main memory used by the implemented ISA being accessed by special operations, and with the program and its internal data existing in a separate block of memory, different from, say, a (vertical) microcode engine, running microcode to implement another instruction set architecture, with the main memory used by the implemented ISA being accessed by special microcode operations, and with the microprogram and its internal data existing in a separate block of memory?

Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by ArcadeNut · 2012-04-02 09:10 · Score: 1

No wonder it took so long to boot. Did they actually mean 6.5 MHz? Hell the Vic-20 was 1Mhz.

And what 8 bit processor can address 16MB of RAM? An 8 bit processor can only address 64K at a time, unless they had some bank switching going on..

I would RTFA, but it's slashdotted...

--
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com

Re:Um.... ok. by icebraining · 2012-04-02 09:22 · Score: 1

Unlike posting on /., which is obviously Serious Business (tm).

--
Dilbert RSS feed

Re:75 MHz 286 by Meeni · 2012-04-02 09:22 · Score: 1

I have somewhere a Toshiba laptop with a 25Mhz 386, that runs Slackware 4.0 with X and stuffs. It worked surprisingly well and was very usable as a devel machine (not for browsing the web though).

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Dzimas · 2012-04-02 09:24 · Score: 4, Funny

I design musical synthesizers using Atmega MCUs. They work really well as controllers in price-sensitive consumer applications, but booting linux on one is about as sensible as fixing your car with a spoon.

Re:75 MHz 286 by vlm · 2012-04-02 09:27 · Score: 1

Probably a pentium 75, which was fairly popular and 16 megs sounds about right for the mid/late 90s.

In the early 90s I ran SLS on a 386dx/40 with 4 megs of ram, squeezing in another meg using 4 256K sims cut the kernel compile time by something like a factor of 5. Also it enabled the use of early x windows. Well, early on linux, it was "old stuff" in on the sunos (not yet solaris) boxes at school.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by makomk · 2012-04-02 09:30 · Score: 1

I wonder how many people are using them in new designs, though? 32-bit ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers seem to be around the same price these days and obviously have a lot more compute power.

Misleading title by johanwanderer · 2012-04-02 09:35 · Score: 1

What was done (from the summary) was to run an ARMv5 (32-bit) emulator on the 8-bit processor. Then run Ubuntu on the emulator. Not to take anything away from the accomplishment, but that is not the same as porting / running Ubuntu on the same processor.

Re:Misleading title by Xtifr · 2012-04-02 09:57 · Score: 1

Misleading perhaps, but not technically incorrect. For Slashdot, that's a case of "better than it often is". On top of that, the important distinction is clarified by reading the summary--you don't even need to RTFA to figure out what's going on. For Slashdot, that's definitely better than usual. :)

Re:How hard would native AVR be? by makomk · 2012-04-02 09:36 · Score: 1

The AVR architecture is Harvard rather than von Neumann - it has completely seperate address spaces for code and data, and the address space for code generally doesn't contain any RAM into which you can load programs. So there's really no way to run Linux on one without emulation.

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by vlm · 2012-04-02 09:36 · Score: 1

And what 8 bit processor can address 16MB of RAM? An 8 bit processor can only address 64K at a time, unless they had some bank switching going on..

We had MMUs ... very old concept you know. Back in 87 I had a 6809 box with 512K of ram and a MMU running OS-9 level 2 with a serial terminal hooked up to it and everything. Excellent basic, pretty good c compiler... It was 1993 before I had software and OS that technologically advanced on a IBM PC.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Zardus · 2012-04-02 09:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

You mean we're supposed to use a fork??

--
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by dmitrygr · 2012-04-02 09:42 · Score: 4, Informative

1. the emulated cpu *effective clockspeed* averages 6.5 KHz in released code (10KHz with better RAM code, that i am releasing later today)
2. Site is still up (it occasionally hic-ups with a 4xx ot 5xx HTTP error, but mostly it is still up
3. the linux ram is a 30-pin SIMM of 16MB capacity, the interface to which (incl. refresh) I bit-banged using 3 8-bit IO ports. The AVR's internal RAM is used for emulator SoC state, AVR stack, and the icache

--
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law

Choose any two.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Moheeheeko · 2012-04-02 09:51 · Score: 1

I prefer elephant miles, but that works to

Re:75 MHz 286 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 09:51 · Score: 1

486 came in a DX model which ran at 33/66Mhz. The 1st Pentiums came in at 75Mhz. The only 286 i remember was a Unisys 8 or 10Mhz. I'm just sayin.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by cheater512 · 2012-04-02 09:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

An awful lot of stuff doesn't need that kind of compute power.

And AVR chips actually pack a massive amount of power. 24mhz is faster than a 486 and when you are reading sensors and similar things thats tons.
Its only 6.5khz if you try emulating a ARM chip on it.

Re:How hard would native AVR be? by makapuf · 2012-04-02 10:06 · Score: 1

Wrong, you can write a program to flash from a program. Any bootloader does that. Arduino, by example, is based on this.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by danomac · 2012-04-02 10:15 · Score: 1

No, no... a spork!

Remember when you used to be able to... by rnturn · 2012-04-02 10:16 · Score: 2

... install Linux on a '486 system with a mere 16MB of RAM? I still recall how POed I was when I needed to borrow RAM frmo another system to install Red Hat because the new Anaconda required 32MB. (Because, you know, all that additional memory was required for that slide show showing you all the cool features that you were probably going to be too lazy to read about.)

--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M

Re:Remember when you used to be able to... by luther349 · 2012-04-02 11:54 · Score: 1

heh the 486 is probably the most common pc out there.still widely used in businesses. the cash systems in pizza hut and toco bell are 486dx machines running Linux..
Re:Remember when you used to be able to... by gl4ss · 2012-04-02 19:57 · Score: 1

upgrading from 8 to 16 was great. with 8 x felt too futile.

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.

Re:75 MHz 286 by batkiwi · 2012-04-02 10:28 · Score: 2

You're forgetting about 486 DX4 75mhz. Clock trippled baby.

Re:75 MHz 286 by Frohboy · 2012-04-02 10:30 · Score: 3, Informative

486 came in a DX model which ran at 33/66Mhz. The 1st Pentiums came in at 75Mhz. The only 286 i remember was a Unisys 8 or 10Mhz. I'm just sayin.

The 486DX4s ran at 75Mhz (with a 25Mhz bus, since despite the name, they only had a 3x multiplier. The DX4-100 had a 33Mhz FSB.). The first Pentiums were 60 or 66Mhz, with no multiplier (i.e. the CPU and FSB were clocked the same). The 75Mhz Pentiums came a year later and ran on a 50Mhz FSB (at 1.5x), and were cheaper (or at least the same price) compared to the 66Mhz model (since you had a faster CPU, but slower bus), if I recall correctly.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by teslafreak · 2012-04-02 10:37 · Score: 2

Also of note, AVR and PIC chips are available in a lot of prototype and home lab friendly packages. Many (most?) of the ARM chips are in xQFP, and you can use those at home, but it's quite imposing.

Re:75 MHz 286 by Janek+Kozicki · 2012-04-02 11:01 · Score: 1

sorry, my bad. I got those specs wrong. Though I am too lazy to dig it out from the closet and check. I'm sure it had 16MB RAM. And very likely it had 75 MHz. But indeed it couldn't be 286. So probably 386 or 486.

--
# #\ @ ? Colonize Mars #

Re:75 MHz 286 by gmhowell · 2012-04-02 11:06 · Score: 1

486 came in a DX model which ran at 33/66Mhz. The 1st Pentiums came in at 60Mhz. The only 286 i remember was a Unisys 8 or 10Mhz. I'm just sayin.

FTFY

--
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon

Re:75 MHz 286 by Pathwalker · 2012-04-02 11:21 · Score: 1

ELKS is a subset of the Linux kernel that can run on 286 chips.
http://elks.sourceforge.net/

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by unkiereamus · 2012-04-02 11:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

I actually have fixed a car with a fork once.

Main engine fuse blew out, I was 60 miles from anywhere, and for whatever reason, had a cheap ass fork in my car. Bent up the middle two tines, shoved the outer tines in the fuse holder, taped the hell out of it to prevent shorting and away I went.

Also, don't try this at home, if the fuse blew, there's probably a reason, etc, etc, etc.

--
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-02 11:47 · Score: 1

Many 486s ran faster than that, like 33mhz, and performed 32 bit operations (and even 16 bit operations), where the AVR mostly only works on byte operands. Which, as you probably know, require more clocks to scale up to multibyte data.
The comparison is not so cut and dried. It depends on the application, really.

Re:75 MHz 286 by BlacKat · 2012-04-02 11:57 · Score: 1

First Pentiums came in at 60 and 66 MHz actually, not 75 MHz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_microprocessors#P5_based_Pentiums

I know this because I had a 66 MHz processor with the infamous FDIV floating point bug!

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

Imagine... by inode_buddha · 2012-04-02 12:13 · Score: 1

Imagine... a whole Beowulf cluster of these !!!

--
C|N>K

Unix on a Gameboy by inode_buddha · 2012-04-02 12:19 · Score: 1

A few years back, some uber-geek crammed UNIX v5 onto a Gameboy. Guess he got bored or something. Slashdot article here: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/04/09/08/1225208/running-ancient-unix-on-nintendo-gameboy

--
C|N>K

Re:GNU/Linux on a homebrew microcoded ARM processo by Lothsahn · 2012-04-02 14:07 · Score: 2

So how exactly is a processor running a program to implement another instruction set architecture, with the main memory used by the implemented ISA being accessed by special operations, and with the program and its internal data existing in a separate block of memory, different from, say, a (vertical) microcode engine, running microcode to implement another instruction set architecture, with the main memory used by the implemented ISA being accessed by special microcode operations, and with the microprogram and its internal data existing in a separate block of memory?

Each would be granted a separate patent?

--
-=Lothsahn=-

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by toddestan · 2012-04-02 15:15 · Score: 1

Probably anyone who cares about things like power usage - for example something that's expected to run for a while on a pair of AA batteries.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Savantissimo · 2012-04-02 15:20 · Score: 1, Interesting

Back in the mid-90s I loaded Linux (Yggdrasil or Slackware, IIRC) on a 40MHz 386. I got Xwindows running in 8MB of RAM, which is half what the guy in the article needed. It was pretty useless.

Every couple of years I try Linux again, and it never seems to get any better - bad documentation, crappy programming, 20 different alternative programs for anything one might want to do, none of which works right. It's gotten prettier over the years, but ever more bloated and irritating. If you want to actually get some work done on a desktop or laptop instead of screwing around forever with drivers and configuration and sadistically incompetent interfaces, Linux is not competitive.

--
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry

Re:75 MHz 286 by toddestan · 2012-04-02 15:26 · Score: 1

It's probably a Pentium, if anything. Never was a 75Mhz 386, and while there was a 75Mhz 486DX4 those were pretty rare. The Pentium 75 was an extremely common chip back in the day.

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by Nethead · 2012-04-02 15:44 · Score: 1

So, was that a SWTPC? I remember loading BASIC on one of those via Kansas City Format (14 minutes.) It had both A$ and B$! Not that there were any string operations, but you could input and print them.

It was still better than the high school "computer", a DECwriter II with a 300 baud acoustic modem to the uni computer on the other side of the state. Ah, the days of making obscene teletype calls.

--
-- I have a private email server in my basement.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by SpazmodeusG · 2012-04-02 16:03 · Score: 1

My Nokia N900 does run Linux actually.

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by Hadlock · 2012-04-02 16:22 · Score: 1

So are you down to a 2.6hr boot time? Or there-abouts?

--
moox. for a new generation.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 16:31 · Score: 2

I feel ya there. I started using Linux for the first time on my brand new 386dx/40 with 5MB ram. (Slackware, 1994 I think)
I remember X/Window (without the s...) being such a memory hog and requiring 8MB of memory which I didn't have. I learned Linux the right way then, because of that memory problem. Remember, Linux had a target of being a server platform back then. X/Window was never meant to be a point-and-click interface, it was meant to be a GUI interface for graphical context. (or just multiple terminals open at once)

Nowadays, nearly everything is just 'pop the disk in, let it run, pop it out, reboot, do what you need to do'.

Linux is competitive in what it's for, being a server platform with an optional GUI attached. What I do is just pop 'wmaker' into the .xinitrc after I install WindowMaker and I'm done. Oh, and changing the /etc/inittab to make the default runlevel "3" so X/Window doesn't pop up.

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!

MacGyver?? by maroberts · 2012-04-02 17:06 · Score: 1

Main engine fuse blew out, I was 60 miles from anywhere, and for whatever reason, had a cheap ass fork in my car. Bent up the middle two tines, shoved the outer tines in the fuse holder, taped the hell out of it to prevent shorting and away I went.

Also, don't try this at home, if the fuse blew, there's probably a reason, etc, etc, etc.

I never knew you had Slashdot UID!

--

Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by fnj · 2012-04-02 18:21 · Score: 1

How do you figure an AVR at 24 MHz is faster than a 486 when the latter was offered at 20, 25, 33, 40, 50, 66, 75, 90, and 100 MHz, and I don't think the 20's were sold in any major numbers.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Jack+Malmostoso · 2012-04-02 18:33 · Score: 1

As does my N9.

Re:WTF Is GNU/Linux? by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 19:21 · Score: 1

Well, technically it's a a combination of GNU software with the Linux kernel.
Realize that Linux is just a kernel, and the GNU packages create the distribution in whatever iteration that distribution manufacturer puts them together.

I realize you were trying to be a douche, but I had to toss that out there.

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!

Re:Not pointless by arkane1234 · 2012-04-02 19:24 · Score: 1

So what you're really saying is Linux IS cross-platform.

--
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!

impressive by pbjones · 2012-04-02 19:33 · Score: 1

from a generation that hand built their own computers, I am truly impressed that you tried, and succeeded.

--
There was an unknown error in the submission.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by Savantissimo · 2012-04-02 19:36 · Score: 1

Yeah, for servers, it can be good, though I found the Sun/Naviscore stuff nicer for big network management.
(Big, as in: "don't click that - you'll take down Florida".
"But I suppose there's a downside?"
"Hmm, I see what you mean, but yes, for YOU there would be a downside".).

--
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by TheRaven64 · 2012-04-02 20:36 · Score: 1

It doesn't actually run Linux though, it runs a (very slow!) ARM emulator and then boots the ARM version of Linux. I saw a much more impressive demo a few months ago - a guy in Cambridge had ported 2BSD to run on a 32-bit PIC with 128KB of RAM. It was responsive and ran things like man very fast. It had enough memory to run the C preprocessor and the assembler, but he hadn't quite managed to fit the compiler on, so it wasn't quite self hosting (although a version with 256KB of RAM would have been).

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by TheRaven64 · 2012-04-02 20:40 · Score: 1

Clock speed is not an accurate measure when comparing different architectures, or even different generations. I don't know about AVR, but a modern ARM core at 24MHz will easily outperform a 66MHz 486 and probably a 100MHz one. Especially if you're doing anything that can take advantage of NEON - the vector unit in the ARM chip will trample all over the 487 in terms of floating point performance.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News

Re:75 MHz 286 by BeardedChimp · 2012-04-02 21:57 · Score: 1

I have run linux from scratch on a vortex 386sx, and let me tell you that is painful. The lack of the math co-processor rules out debian or pretty much anything else you didn't hand roll. Never again.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by phiwum · 2012-04-02 23:17 · Score: 1

Back in the mid-90s I loaded Linux (Yggdrasil or Slackware, IIRC) on a 40MHz 386. I got Xwindows running in 8MB of RAM, which is half what the guy in the article needed. It was pretty useless.

In 1996, I installed Slackware on a similar machine. Far from useless, it was liberating. Finally, I had a UNIX-like operating system on my home machine.

To each his own, I guess, but I made the switch from DOS/Win 3.1 to Linux and never looked back. (I had some experience with a then-girlfriend's Windows 95, but it didn't tempt me in the least.)

--
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.

now run a virtualized windows 7 on it... by steve.cri · 2012-04-03 00:27 · Score: 1

... and try to play a round of crysis 2. that will be a useful setup.

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by dak664 · 2012-04-03 01:29 · Score: 1

If you can get the java working on your 1284p you could run Avora to simulate an internal 1284p. It's faster than real time because it goes by events rather than single cycle emulation, on my desktop it is actually 5x faster. Run your system on the simulated MCU and you're up to 50KHz. A couple more iterations of Avrora might give over a MHz! Probably would hit a memory limitation at some point though...

I understand by Sqreater · 2012-04-03 01:39 · Score: 1

And I hold in high regard anyone who would spend so much of his lifetime bringing computing to the autistic.

--
E Proelio Veritas.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by erikscott · 2012-04-03 02:17 · Score: 1

No, a fork(2).

April 1st was yesterday by tehcyder · 2012-04-03 02:31 · Score: 1

So this is a bit late.

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by tibit · 2012-04-03 02:41 · Score: 1

I've used two Parallax Propellers, working in lockstep, to speak directly (via general purporse I/O -- GPIO pins) to gigabyte DDR3 sticks. The latter run fine even if you clock them at a couple MHz. The Prop cannot really "address" anything besides the built-in cog and hub memories! You don't have to use the CPU's native bus to address memory -- heck, many MCUs these days do not expose internal busses at all, the pins are only GPIO. The Propeller has 512 32-bit words of cog memory, and 64 kbytes of hub memory (half ROM, half RAM). I've found that when designing for consumer RAM, it pays to use the most recent spec -- it's usually the cheapest.

--
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.

License the patents how? by tepples · 2012-04-03 02:48 · Score: 1

you now have the skills to make your own ARM processor.

Yeah, except the key skill of negotiating with ARM for a patent license.

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by vlm · 2012-04-03 03:34 · Score: 1

You could do better than that with a Tandy color computer and BASIC09. for a BASIC, it was pretty nice..

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by ccanucs · 2012-04-03 03:47 · Score: 1

Hmm, in 1993 I had Linux running on a 386SX25 with 6Mb of memory and a 128MB Hard drive. Works fine still... Just booted it :-) in 20s and to X11 in 35. Runs X11 just fine - with twm. Crawled running 3.11fWg. Regards W.

Does it run .... wait! by siri_kan · 2012-04-03 03:49 · Score: 1

The first thing that came to my mind before I read the headline fully.

Re:75 MHz 286 by phorm · 2012-04-03 04:03 · Score: 1

I have one that was labelled as a 486VX.
I'm not really sure how a "VX" compared to an SX (no math-co) or DX (math-co), but it was clocked @ 100Mhz.

It ran "Doom" quite nicely. It even ran Quake... sorta (if I turned the screen size down to a very small window and set the detail level to crap)

Fastest 286 I saw was about 33Mhz... with a turbo button. Sometimes I miss the turbo button

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by marcansoft · 2012-04-03 12:00 · Score: 1

So you expect a virtual AVR running on Java running on a real ARM to be a 5x speedup over native code, even though your massively more powerful PC could barely manage 5x real time speed emulating the same AVR?

Sorry, that's not how it works.

Although it is theoretically possible for a very optimized emulator/dynamic translator to be faster at running poorly optimized native code on the same CPU than the actual CPU itself (by optimizing it), I'm not aware of any circumstances where something like this has actually been used in practice and been useful. And certainly not anything written in Java. The closest thing I've heard of were x86 emulators for Itanium beating the Itanium's built-in x86 support, but the emulators were of course translating to IA64, not to x86, so it doesn't count.

printk timing information by SignOfZeta · 2012-04-03 13:05 · Score: 1

Why is the kernel timing information wrong? The numbers prepended to every line by printk() should show the seconds/microseconds since the machine was booted, but after two hours, the machine has only counted a couple of seconds. Does the emulator not emulate an RTC at actual speed?

Crysis by freezway · 2012-04-03 13:22 · Score: 1

But can it run crysis?

Re:Funky specs... 6.5KHz? Really that slow? by Nethead · 2012-04-03 14:15 · Score: 1

This was a few years before the COCO, even before the TRS-80 Model I.

--
-- I have a private email server in my basement.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by fnj · 2012-04-03 14:28 · Score: 1

An AVR is not to be seriously compared to an ARM.

Re:Ultimate tech hipsters by phiwum · 2012-04-03 23:17 · Score: 1

I have no idea how you keep old hardware running. My experience is that when I put a box or laptop aside for several months and then start it again, something goes wrong.

--
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.

Slashdot Mirror

GNU/Linux Running On An 8-Bit Processor

269 of 361 comments (clear)