4 ms·
It's easy. There seems to be nothing directly support i386 (I mean: real 386 chip) with latest supported kernel version (as I know) and newest busybox. i386 do
by marmolak 4y ago
It's easy. There seems to be nothing directly support i386 (I mean: real 386 chip) with latest supported kernel version (as I know) and newest busybox.
i386 doesn't support cmpxchg instruction for example and I'm not able (maybe someone can help) to force gcc 12 not to emit these instructions. So I added some kind of emulation of cmpxchg (code is very straightforward and stupid. Only few combinations are supported because it just works for me now).
And linux itself it's another story. 3.7.10 should be last with real i386 support, but it's not that much true :). Because I wasn't able to compile 3.7 kernel without some hacks.
Main goals were:
1) use as newest software as possible
2) be able to boot from network with 4 MB RAM (8 MB RAM is much better) on real hardware.
Also, this distro can be used to bootstrap machines with prepared dos images or other operatin systems. Don't get me wrong. I love floppy disks however I'm too lazy to install systems from them.
- contingencies 4y agoOK, I see the general approach. Some sort of hack to get modern code to run on CPUs without the normally assumed instruction set present. Perhaps consider writing "what problem does this solve" and "how does it solve it" and "why is this approach a good one" at the top of your repo. It would help to generate interest.
- marmolak 4y agoGood point. Thanks. Note to my TODO added.