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I have followed this project for quite long time, have even used it once or twice for fun (in floppy days). Makes me wonder why didn't anyone tried to write sim

I have followed this project for quite long time, have even used it once or twice for fun (in floppy days). Makes me wonder why didn't anyone tried to write similar thing for Raspberry, I mean Linux is sometimes too much, this could have spinned off a complete genre of OS for these kind of devices for education as well.

LeoPanthera 9y ago
For the Pi, there is RISC OS. https://www.riscosopen.org/ https://www.riscosopen.org/
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Beat me to it!
userbinator 9y ago
why didn't anyone tried to write similar thing for Raspberry This is close: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7926004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7926004 But the answer to your question could probably be answered in one word: Broadcom. By keeping secret the details of their SoC, it's far harder for "from scratch" projects to appear, despite it being one platform. On the other hand, the PC, while far more diverse, still relies plenty on documented, de-facto standard interfaces and there is no shortage of articles on things like "how to write a bootsector".
- feelin_googley 9y ago
  And yet, as far as I have seen, it is still much easier to run a variety of OS from a RPi than a PC. Simply swap mini SD cards. While PCs can usually boot from USB, I have seen ones that cannot also boot from SD card. (Bias disclosure: For many years I've been compiling own kernels with embedded filesystem and minimal utilties and then running from removable media, even on the PC, so RPi was easy transition. Further I stopped using disk or swap years ago, even on PC, again making RPi transition painless. Finally, I am more interested in non-graphical tasks so I can live without the use of a GPU.) The greatest value to me of the RPi is the ability to run a variety of OS. One can readily find other boards that are better than RPi in many ways, but in each case running the variety OS that using a RPi allows for is not as easy, if it is even possible. Despite the disadvantage of RPi's closed bootloader and GPU, the flexibility to run a variety of OS is great advantage over many alternatives, for me. The way I think about it, user freedom in choosing an OS is actually constrained by "too much choice" in hardware. I reason that this is because it is difficult for OS projects other than Linux to timely add support for each and every different item of hardware coming off the assembly line in each new year. Whereas with the RPi, the "moving target" of hardware support moves less. This IMO opens up possibilities for more OS projects to add support for RPi hardware. Whether this is the reason a variety of OS are suppported on the RPi I do not know. But I am glad that this variety exists.

LeoPanthera 9y ago

For the Pi, there is RISC OS. https://www.riscosopen.org/ https://www.riscosopen.org/

throwaway7645 9y ago
Beat me to it!

userbinator 9y ago

why didn't anyone tried to write similar thing for Raspberry This is close: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7926004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7926004 But the answer to your question could probably be answered in one word: Broadcom. By keeping secret the details of their SoC, it's far harder for "from scratch" projects to appear, despite it being one platform. On the other hand, the PC, while far more diverse, still relies plenty on documented, de-facto standard interfaces and there is no shortage of articles on things like "how to write a bootsector".

feelin_googley 9y ago
And yet, as far as I have seen, it is still much easier to run a variety of OS from a RPi than a PC. Simply swap mini SD cards. While PCs can usually boot from USB, I have seen ones that cannot also boot from SD card. (Bias disclosure: For many years I've been compiling own kernels with embedded filesystem and minimal utilties and then running from removable media, even on the PC, so RPi was easy transition. Further I stopped using disk or swap years ago, even on PC, again making RPi transition painless. Finally, I am more interested in non-graphical tasks so I can live without the use of a GPU.) The greatest value to me of the RPi is the ability to run a variety of OS. One can readily find other boards that are better than RPi in many ways, but in each case running the variety OS that using a RPi allows for is not as easy, if it is even possible. Despite the disadvantage of RPi's closed bootloader and GPU, the flexibility to run a variety of OS is great advantage over many alternatives, for me. The way I think about it, user freedom in choosing an OS is actually constrained by "too much choice" in hardware. I reason that this is because it is difficult for OS projects other than Linux to timely add support for each and every different item of hardware coming off the assembly line in each new year. Whereas with the RPi, the "moving target" of hardware support moves less. This IMO opens up possibilities for more OS projects to add support for RPi hardware. Whether this is the reason a variety of OS are suppported on the RPi I do not know. But I am glad that this variety exists.