9 ms·

ELKS: Linux for 16-bit Intel Processors

213 points by emersonrsantos 2y ago

marcodiego 2y ago
What would be really interesting: porting DOSEMU 1.4.0 to it. This would give us a maintained unix-like OS combined with a huge abandonware dos library turning those old machines into something fun and maybe useful.
- devit 2y ago
  That makes no sense, since DOSEMU is based on virtual 8086 mode, which requires a 80386, while ELKS is for 8086-286 CPUs. You can just run MS-DOS or FreeDOS directly on those machines, that's what the machines were made for.
  - anthk 2y ago
    This. I literally rebuild DOSEMU yesterday after years of not using it. It used that mode extensively. A good thing about DOSEMU against DOSBOX is that the first could run high end DOS game at amazing speeds as the environment was more like Wine than emulating the whole machine, so you could run Tomb Raider, Need For Speed, Duke Nukem 3D... on a Pentium II while 'simulating' a Pentium MMX or a Pentium 90-like speeds, if not more, being far closer to the performance you got under W95/W98. And, as you said, booting SvarDOS either from a floppy or from an IDE->CF card it's straightforward.
- duskwuff 2y ago
  Computers which use 16-bit Intel processors (80286 or earlier) are quite rare nowadays - most of them are 30-40 years old, and are more valuable to collectors than newer and more capable hardware would be. If you want something "useful", this isn't where you'd find it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  I don't know that it's really Unix like, but I feel like freedos covers that use?
forinti 2y ago
Wait, "ROM-based systems"? Were there such x86 micros and is this saying you could run Linux from ROM? That's super interesting.
- retrac 2y ago
  The 8086 and 8088 etc. were relatively popular for embedded devices. For example some early 90s Apple printers used an 80186 as the controller. Such designs were often incompatible with the IBM PC; 8086 doesn't necessarily mean PC compatible.
- snerbles 2y ago
  The Tandy 1000 SL/2 I grew up with had DOS 3.3 in ROM, mounted on D:\
  - dfe 2y ago
    Sort of. It’s merely a ROM drive implemented in the BIOS. Drive 8 is used. There’s also an INT 18h hook that operates by simply booting drive 8. This is the fallback bootstrap hook. No disks? No problem. Boots to DOS vs. IBM which booted BASIC or everyone else who just prints an error. On one of these Tandy’s, DOS is really running from RAM, it is merely loaded from ROM, and even then it’s just a virtual disk. I wrote a little tool to make the ROM drive accessible on non-Tandy DOS: https://github.com/dfelliott/tandy1000-romdrive https://github.com/dfelliott/tandy1000-romdrive There are versions of DOS that can be run directly from ROM, but this isn’t one of them. Curiously, Deskmate runs from ROM for real. Meaning the code is actually running in the Exxx segment backed by the actual ROM chip. The Deskmate files on the ROM drive are relatively small and are only a small part. The bulk of the code runs direct from ROM.
- EvanAnderson 2y ago
  I've never seen a fully ROM-based PC, but I have worked with ISA NE2000 NICs with boot ROMs that allowed them to diskless boot into a DOS-based Novell NetWare client. It wouldn't surprise me if there were ROM-based local boot environments on ISA cards. The Cisco PIX firewall, in it's original incarnation, booted from non-volatile memory (I don't know if it was EEPROM or flash) an ISA card.
jvanderbot 2y ago
They mention "SBC"s. Is this something that is intended also for modern 16bit SBCs?
- snvzz 2y ago
  Yes absolutely. There are success stories with it on 8088 book, pocket 8086 and similar such hardware.
IgorPartola 2y ago
I do wonder in today’s landscape of single board computers what the right bit width is. A 64-bit system with like 1-2GB or RAM doesn’t make a ton of sense since your program size and data structure size grows by quite a bit but you don’t need it to since you don’t get to have more than 4GB of RAM. On the other hand there you do have SBCs with 8-16GBs of RAM but that’s a far cry from needing full 64 bits. Would an optimal bit width be 48 bits? 40?
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Yes, this already happens. Address bus width is usually different from register width due to cost. I found this, old CPU's address bus only getting to 44 bits wide on Itanium. https://www.tech-faq.com/address-bus.html https://www.tech-faq.com/address-bus.html My newish AMD laptop: `grep 'address sizes' /proc/cpuinfo` address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual Looks like 36 bits wide is already plenty for anything typical, up to 68 GB: >>> f'{2**32:>30_}' ' 4_294_967_296' >>> f'{2**36:>30_}' ' 68_719_476_736' >>> f'{2**40:>30_}' ' 1_099_511_627_776' >>> f'{2**48:>30_}' ' 281_474_976_710_656' >>> f'{2**64:>30_}' ' 18_446_744_073_709_551_616'
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    I guess no point wasting hardware supporting things that will never be possible for the lifetime of the processor.
    - p_l 2y ago
      AMD64 mandates 48bit virtual addressing minimum, with the rest sign-extended unless certain optional features are enabled.
- Retr0id 2y ago
  Many "64-bit" systems only have ~48 bits of virtual address space, and while canonical pointers have all the high bits equal, you can put the otherwise-wasted bits to work by storing metadata. If you're writing really space-optimised code, you can pack pointers closer together.
tialaramex 2y ago
Cool. A quarter of a century ago a friend of mine worked on this and you can still see his name in some copyright notices (Alistair Riddoch) Most recently Al was learning Rust because he needs that for his current role, it might be fun to see whether you can write an ELKS target for Rust.
- ghaerr 2y ago
  Is Alistair Riddoch still around? I've been wondering about him, his name is all over the early dev86 and ELKS C library code :)
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    Well I mean, he's a friend and in fact hosted the NYE party I was at so, in that sense he's still around. I might see him later this week and if so I'll try to remember to mention that ELKS is still going.
    - alriddoch 2y ago
      Hi! I'm not really doing much in the Free Software space any more, mostly due to inflexible employment situations, but I'm delighted to see ELKS still ticking along.
tmzt 2y ago
Does anybody have the archive of the original ELKS site with the quote from Linus that Linux is not suitable for anything but 486 or higher or something like that?
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  How recent was the quote? Anywhere near 486 through Pentium, and the quote makes absolute sense. He wouldn’t have been optimizing for smaller architectures. Since then, some (many?) contributors have supplied support for smaller systems.
- mepian 2y ago
  Linux started on the 386. “It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.”
- gregw2 2y ago
  Couldnt find that quote on the 2001 version of the site. https://web.archive.org/web/20010626233912/http://www.elks.ecs.soton.ac.uk/faq-1.php3#1.2 https://web.archive.org/web/20010626233912/http://www.elks.e... Not sure if you are confusing that with the original Linux/Linus announcement post: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/dlNtH7RRrGA/m/SwRavCzVE7gJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/dlNtH7RRrGA/m/Sw...
  - tmzt 2y ago
    I searched archive a while ago and couldn't find it. It's probably referencing the announcement but I clearly remember a pull quote on the ELKS site, probably the same one quoted above. I happened upon the site when first playing with a (z80) Gameboy compiler (probably SDCC) and wanting to port Linux to it. I fully admit i could be imagining it. Yes, I should have said 386.
garaetjjte 2y ago
I'm confused what relation this has with Linux.
- pm215 2y ago
  The "getting started" doc briefly mentions the history: it began in 1995 as a fork of the standard Linux kernel (initially named Linux-8086), by Linux kernel developers Alan Cox and Chad Page. So it does share both code roots and some initial community with the "real" mainline Linux.
- lproven 2y ago
  What isn't explained by the name? ELKS: Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset. It'a a subset of the Linux kernel, which is suitable for embedded systems. Meaning, "don't expect this to be a usable desktop OS."
nh2 2y ago
Could somebody with a good understanding of microchip production economics explain what the price difference would be if all 8-bit chips (such as the Atmega328) were replaced by otherwise equivalent 32-bit or 64-bit chops tomorrow (that is, same production capacity and unit counts sold)? How much would it cost, in cents, to just have those extra bits?
- omeid2 2y ago
  Supply-chains are more complicated than merely the unit price. Things like existing stock, talent, software, product design, certifications (both chip and products based on chip), and hundreds of other things play just as substantial role.
- LeFantome 2y ago
  Probably more about ecosystem compatibility at this point. There are already RISC-V chips that sell for less than a 6502.
  - anthk 2y ago
    I doudbt about that stance, you can have 6502's on every keybard at ridiculous prices.
- Palomides 2y ago
  a cheap 32 bit RISC-V chip like the CH32V003 goes for about $0.10, and the cheapest MCU I've heard of (PMS150C, barely useful for anything) goes for around $0.03 there's little real point in 8 bit chips anymore
- fulafel 2y ago
  Even without special knowledgeon production economics, I dare say there would be a race to produce replacement compatible 8-bit microcontrollers to get people's stuff working again.
vkoskiv 2y ago
I recently added dual screen support to the ELKS console-direct driver, so if your system has both MDA and CGA cards, you enable CONFIG_CONSOLE_DUAL in your kernel config and select runlevel 5 in /bootopts, it will allocate 4 ttys, with one of them on the MDA display. You can see this setup running on my hardware in this pic in the README: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ghaerr/elks/refs/heads/master/Screenshots/ELKS_Matrix.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ghaerr/elks/refs/heads/mas... I could use some help testing it on EGA and VGA hardware, as I don’t have any 8 bit cards for those in my collection.
LeFantome 2y ago
We are removing 32 bit support from the Linux kernel because nobody uses that hardware anymore. Yet, this 16 bit version has commits from today.
- happycube 2y ago
  It's a hobby, not big and professional like GNU^H^H^HLinux. Seriously, I haven't worked on this in a long time (I'm Chad) and I'm very impressed by the changelog! Wouldn't have ever thought it'd run DOOM. ;) (and the use of OS/2 for medium model is clever too)
- userbinator 2y ago
  Tons of embedded stuff use 32-bit Linux.
  - grishka 2y ago
    But that stuff is usually not x86.
    - PhilipRoman 2y ago
      Embedded projects where intel was involved often use something like Atom.
      - rurban 2y ago
        Yes, but this is being replaced by meaty Intel UpSquared boards
- philistine 2y ago
  There is a temporal element to your statement. 32-bit support is being removed from the kernel of today. No one uses that hardware for a modern OS anymore. But a small band of hobbyists use old OSes with old machines.
- pantalaimon 2y ago
  Nobody is removing 32 bit support from the kernel.
snvzz 2y ago
Tangentially related, DOS is a popular choice in this category of hardware. Freedos has released 1.4rc1 recently, thus 1.4 is close. Svardos switched to EDR-DOS kernel, which is derived from DR-DOS. That's a very nice kernel, written in assembly. Notably, Windows 3.1 works with it, including protected mode.
- lproven 2y ago
  Yup. I wrote about it: https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/23/svardos_drdos_reborn/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/23/svardos_drdos_reborn/ I have built a hobby project around it: https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos
ghaerr 2y ago
Thanks for the comments! ELKS will run on an 8088, but also runs on any x86 PC using the legacy "real mode" which runs in 16-bit segmented architecture without an MMU or any hardware protection. It can be fun to boot a PC and see a close resemblance to Linux, but run the way things used to be, using only 16-bits. It'll also run in ROM, e.g. using a 8018x CPU w/onboard PIT and PIC. The point of ELKS today is about "small is beautiful" and seeing what can be done when limited to 64k code and 64k data, and 640k RAM. It's based on a very old fork of Linux and many of the internal structures are similar to what was found in Linux 2.0, without the changes for SMP support. We just recently got a native C compiler/assembler/linker toolchain up and running. I must say making that happen provided some vivid comparisons of what programmers had to go through in decades past in both slower speeds and small executable file sizes, versus what we all have and expect today at our fingertips.
- helf 2y ago
  [dead]
- ikari_pl 2y ago
  This is what I've been looking for! Can you fit a workable version on a 1.44 floppy?
  - cricalix 2y ago
    Around 1996/97 timeframe, you could fit a kernel and userspace. I remember building a 1.44 setup that booted a compressed kernel and had enough user space tooling to bring up telnet, ftp, and the radio stack to drive the long haul radio cards (we were replacing JNOS [0] IIRC at an ISP ). Even had writable space at the end of the floppy (the kernel etc were readonly) to write overrides of the config; poor man's overlay I think, but it is rather a long time ago. Given we were working with 286 era hardware (maybe 386?), I'd be surprised if ELKS doesn't fit on a 1.44. Indeed, simply looking at the downloads page linked from the original link would have answered your question.. [1] 0 - https://www.langelaar.net/jnos2/documents/about.html https://www.langelaar.net/jnos2/documents/about.html 1 - https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/releases https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/releases
accrual 2y ago
My oldest working systems are now a 386/DX40 and 486/DX2-66, but I never had a chance to run Linux on them back then. Did anybody here have a favorite distro for such early 90s hardware? When I find a 286 or earlier I'd love to give ELKS a try.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Slackware was the distro I started on, back around then.
  - gregw2 2y ago
    This
fulafel 2y ago
Sounds optimal for microservices.
squarefoot 2y ago
The memories. I had it run ("installed" would be a big word ona 2 flopppy and no hard drive system) on a super cute Carry-1 8088 computer ages ago, which I stupidly sold on Ebay shortly after as I had no use for it. Here's one of the very rare photos online. http://vintagescan.blogspot.com/2015/12/flytech-carry-i-1990.html http://vintagescan.blogspot.com/2015/12/flytech-carry-i-1990...
cloudsec9 2y ago
Another operating system that deserves mention for 286 class machines is Coherent. This was an Unix like OS you could buy for $99, and it had all of the various Unix utilities and came with a HUGE manual to help you learn it. They had a 386 version as well, but went all in on getting X-windows and graphics working, and ignored TCP/networking just as the Internet started to gain a lot of traction. Still an interesting OS to look at!
- lproven 2y ago
  The final version of Coherent is FOSS now: https://github.com/gspu/Coherent https://github.com/gspu/Coherent
knorker 2y ago
I used elks back when I was too poor to buy a real laptop. My laptop was a 286 (old even then), with a shot battery. So I used elks and lugged around a lead acid motorcycle battery. It was great for my circumstances, but I wouldn't say I miss it compared to my many cores and gigs laptop.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
chriscappuccio 2y ago
There was a version of KA9Q NOS with multitasking that could serve telnet, ftp, smtp, bbs, convers, and more plus give you multiple switchable terminals for telnet, ftp, all at the same time on an 8088 and connect to a packet driver for modem, ethernet, or AX25. It was a port of BSD networking with its own multitasking capability. Also PC/MIX was pretty cool.
incanus77 2y ago
I had tried to get some version of Linux running on my 386SX / 25MHz / 8MB RAM but only succeeded in getting BasicLinux[1] running bootstrapped from a DOS boot first. Somehow I had never found ELKS! But I was just able to trivially make a floppy and boot the system[2]. Amazing. Looking forward to playing with this. [1] https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ [2] https://mastodon.social/@incanus/113777573079528868 https://mastodon.social/@incanus/113777573079528868
- anthk 2y ago
  If you can compile and install TCC you might compiler further useful software and games. Also, check delicate linux: http://delicate-linux.net/ http://delicate-linux.net/ Do not try X under Delicate Linux, it will run dog slow with 8MB of RAM. If you can upgrade it to 16MB and some 486, X would be fine, with icewm set to a light plain theme, no desktop icons.
  - incanus77 2y ago
    I've been able to cross-compile from Linux (in Docker on my Mac; things didn't work well on macOS) to make binaries that run on the 386 under ELKS. Just had to juggle a few stock games to grab a couple dozen KB on the floppy to make room.
hudecekdev 2y ago
I don't know exactly why, but this makes me happy.

What would be really interesting: porting DOSEMU 1.4.0 to it. This would give us a maintained unix-like OS combined with a huge abandonware dos library turning those old machines into something fun and maybe useful.

devit 2y ago
That makes no sense, since DOSEMU is based on virtual 8086 mode, which requires a 80386, while ELKS is for 8086-286 CPUs. You can just run MS-DOS or FreeDOS directly on those machines, that's what the machines were made for.
- anthk 2y ago
  This. I literally rebuild DOSEMU yesterday after years of not using it. It used that mode extensively. A good thing about DOSEMU against DOSBOX is that the first could run high end DOS game at amazing speeds as the environment was more like Wine than emulating the whole machine, so you could run Tomb Raider, Need For Speed, Duke Nukem 3D... on a Pentium II while 'simulating' a Pentium MMX or a Pentium 90-like speeds, if not more, being far closer to the performance you got under W95/W98. And, as you said, booting SvarDOS either from a floppy or from an IDE->CF card it's straightforward.
duskwuff 2y ago
Computers which use 16-bit Intel processors (80286 or earlier) are quite rare nowadays - most of them are 30-40 years old, and are more valuable to collectors than newer and more capable hardware would be. If you want something "useful", this isn't where you'd find it.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
I don't know that it's really Unix like, but I feel like freedos covers that use?

forinti 2y ago

Wait, "ROM-based systems"? Were there such x86 micros and is this saying you could run Linux from ROM? That's super interesting.

retrac 2y ago
The 8086 and 8088 etc. were relatively popular for embedded devices. For example some early 90s Apple printers used an 80186 as the controller. Such designs were often incompatible with the IBM PC; 8086 doesn't necessarily mean PC compatible.
snerbles 2y ago
The Tandy 1000 SL/2 I grew up with had DOS 3.3 in ROM, mounted on D:\
- dfe 2y ago
  Sort of. It’s merely a ROM drive implemented in the BIOS. Drive 8 is used. There’s also an INT 18h hook that operates by simply booting drive 8. This is the fallback bootstrap hook. No disks? No problem. Boots to DOS vs. IBM which booted BASIC or everyone else who just prints an error. On one of these Tandy’s, DOS is really running from RAM, it is merely loaded from ROM, and even then it’s just a virtual disk. I wrote a little tool to make the ROM drive accessible on non-Tandy DOS: https://github.com/dfelliott/tandy1000-romdrive https://github.com/dfelliott/tandy1000-romdrive There are versions of DOS that can be run directly from ROM, but this isn’t one of them. Curiously, Deskmate runs from ROM for real. Meaning the code is actually running in the Exxx segment backed by the actual ROM chip. The Deskmate files on the ROM drive are relatively small and are only a small part. The bulk of the code runs direct from ROM.
EvanAnderson 2y ago
I've never seen a fully ROM-based PC, but I have worked with ISA NE2000 NICs with boot ROMs that allowed them to diskless boot into a DOS-based Novell NetWare client. It wouldn't surprise me if there were ROM-based local boot environments on ISA cards. The Cisco PIX firewall, in it's original incarnation, booted from non-volatile memory (I don't know if it was EEPROM or flash) an ISA card.

jvanderbot 2y ago

They mention "SBC"s. Is this something that is intended also for modern 16bit SBCs?

snvzz 2y ago
Yes absolutely. There are success stories with it on 8088 book, pocket 8086 and similar such hardware.

IgorPartola 2y ago

I do wonder in today’s landscape of single board computers what the right bit width is. A 64-bit system with like 1-2GB or RAM doesn’t make a ton of sense since your program size and data structure size grows by quite a bit but you don’t need it to since you don’t get to have more than 4GB of RAM. On the other hand there you do have SBCs with 8-16GBs of RAM but that’s a far cry from needing full 64 bits. Would an optimal bit width be 48 bits? 40?

mixmastamyk 2y ago
Yes, this already happens. Address bus width is usually different from register width due to cost. I found this, old CPU's address bus only getting to 44 bits wide on Itanium. https://www.tech-faq.com/address-bus.html https://www.tech-faq.com/address-bus.html My newish AMD laptop: `grep 'address sizes' /proc/cpuinfo` address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual Looks like 36 bits wide is already plenty for anything typical, up to 68 GB: >>> f'{2**32:>30_}' ' 4_294_967_296' >>> f'{2**36:>30_}' ' 68_719_476_736' >>> f'{2**40:>30_}' ' 1_099_511_627_776' >>> f'{2**48:>30_}' ' 281_474_976_710_656' >>> f'{2**64:>30_}' ' 18_446_744_073_709_551_616'
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  I guess no point wasting hardware supporting things that will never be possible for the lifetime of the processor.
  - p_l 2y ago
    AMD64 mandates 48bit virtual addressing minimum, with the rest sign-extended unless certain optional features are enabled.
Retr0id 2y ago
Many "64-bit" systems only have ~48 bits of virtual address space, and while canonical pointers have all the high bits equal, you can put the otherwise-wasted bits to work by storing metadata. If you're writing really space-optimised code, you can pack pointers closer together.

tialaramex 2y ago

Cool. A quarter of a century ago a friend of mine worked on this and you can still see his name in some copyright notices (Alistair Riddoch) Most recently Al was learning Rust because he needs that for his current role, it might be fun to see whether you can write an ELKS target for Rust.

ghaerr 2y ago
Is Alistair Riddoch still around? I've been wondering about him, his name is all over the early dev86 and ELKS C library code :)
- tialaramex 2y ago
  Well I mean, he's a friend and in fact hosted the NYE party I was at so, in that sense he's still around. I might see him later this week and if so I'll try to remember to mention that ELKS is still going.
  - alriddoch 2y ago
    Hi! I'm not really doing much in the Free Software space any more, mostly due to inflexible employment situations, but I'm delighted to see ELKS still ticking along.

tmzt 2y ago

Does anybody have the archive of the original ELKS site with the quote from Linus that Linux is not suitable for anything but 486 or higher or something like that?

jagged-chisel 2y ago
How recent was the quote? Anywhere near 486 through Pentium, and the quote makes absolute sense. He wouldn’t have been optimizing for smaller architectures. Since then, some (many?) contributors have supplied support for smaller systems.
mepian 2y ago
Linux started on the 386. “It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.”
gregw2 2y ago
Couldnt find that quote on the 2001 version of the site. https://web.archive.org/web/20010626233912/http://www.elks.ecs.soton.ac.uk/faq-1.php3#1.2 https://web.archive.org/web/20010626233912/http://www.elks.e... Not sure if you are confusing that with the original Linux/Linus announcement post: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/dlNtH7RRrGA/m/SwRavCzVE7gJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/dlNtH7RRrGA/m/Sw...
- tmzt 2y ago
  I searched archive a while ago and couldn't find it. It's probably referencing the announcement but I clearly remember a pull quote on the ELKS site, probably the same one quoted above. I happened upon the site when first playing with a (z80) Gameboy compiler (probably SDCC) and wanting to port Linux to it. I fully admit i could be imagining it. Yes, I should have said 386.

garaetjjte 2y ago

I'm confused what relation this has with Linux.

pm215 2y ago
The "getting started" doc briefly mentions the history: it began in 1995 as a fork of the standard Linux kernel (initially named Linux-8086), by Linux kernel developers Alan Cox and Chad Page. So it does share both code roots and some initial community with the "real" mainline Linux.
lproven 2y ago
What isn't explained by the name? ELKS: Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset. It'a a subset of the Linux kernel, which is suitable for embedded systems. Meaning, "don't expect this to be a usable desktop OS."

nh2 2y ago

Could somebody with a good understanding of microchip production economics explain what the price difference would be if all 8-bit chips (such as the Atmega328) were replaced by otherwise equivalent 32-bit or 64-bit chops tomorrow (that is, same production capacity and unit counts sold)? How much would it cost, in cents, to just have those extra bits?

omeid2 2y ago
Supply-chains are more complicated than merely the unit price. Things like existing stock, talent, software, product design, certifications (both chip and products based on chip), and hundreds of other things play just as substantial role.
LeFantome 2y ago
Probably more about ecosystem compatibility at this point. There are already RISC-V chips that sell for less than a 6502.
- anthk 2y ago
  I doudbt about that stance, you can have 6502's on every keybard at ridiculous prices.
Palomides 2y ago
a cheap 32 bit RISC-V chip like the CH32V003 goes for about $0.10, and the cheapest MCU I've heard of (PMS150C, barely useful for anything) goes for around $0.03 there's little real point in 8 bit chips anymore
fulafel 2y ago
Even without special knowledgeon production economics, I dare say there would be a race to produce replacement compatible 8-bit microcontrollers to get people's stuff working again.

vkoskiv 2y ago

I recently added dual screen support to the ELKS console-direct driver, so if your system has both MDA and CGA cards, you enable CONFIG_CONSOLE_DUAL in your kernel config and select runlevel 5 in /bootopts, it will allocate 4 ttys, with one of them on the MDA display. You can see this setup running on my hardware in this pic in the README: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ghaerr/elks/refs/heads/master/Screenshots/ELKS_Matrix.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ghaerr/elks/refs/heads/mas... I could use some help testing it on EGA and VGA hardware, as I don’t have any 8 bit cards for those in my collection.

LeFantome 2y ago

We are removing 32 bit support from the Linux kernel because nobody uses that hardware anymore. Yet, this 16 bit version has commits from today.

happycube 2y ago
It's a hobby, not big and professional like GNU^H^H^HLinux. Seriously, I haven't worked on this in a long time (I'm Chad) and I'm very impressed by the changelog! Wouldn't have ever thought it'd run DOOM. ;) (and the use of OS/2 for medium model is clever too)
userbinator 2y ago
Tons of embedded stuff use 32-bit Linux.
- grishka 2y ago
  But that stuff is usually not x86.
  - PhilipRoman 2y ago
    Embedded projects where intel was involved often use something like Atom.
    - rurban 2y ago
      Yes, but this is being replaced by meaty Intel UpSquared boards
philistine 2y ago
There is a temporal element to your statement. 32-bit support is being removed from the kernel of today. No one uses that hardware for a modern OS anymore. But a small band of hobbyists use old OSes with old machines.
pantalaimon 2y ago
Nobody is removing 32 bit support from the kernel.

snvzz 2y ago

Tangentially related, DOS is a popular choice in this category of hardware. Freedos has released 1.4rc1 recently, thus 1.4 is close. Svardos switched to EDR-DOS kernel, which is derived from DR-DOS. That's a very nice kernel, written in assembly. Notably, Windows 3.1 works with it, including protected mode.

lproven 2y ago
Yup. I wrote about it: https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/23/svardos_drdos_reborn/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/23/svardos_drdos_reborn/ I have built a hobby project around it: https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos

ghaerr 2y ago

Thanks for the comments! ELKS will run on an 8088, but also runs on any x86 PC using the legacy "real mode" which runs in 16-bit segmented architecture without an MMU or any hardware protection. It can be fun to boot a PC and see a close resemblance to Linux, but run the way things used to be, using only 16-bits. It'll also run in ROM, e.g. using a 8018x CPU w/onboard PIT and PIC. The point of ELKS today is about "small is beautiful" and seeing what can be done when limited to 64k code and 64k data, and 640k RAM. It's based on a very old fork of Linux and many of the internal structures are similar to what was found in Linux 2.0, without the changes for SMP support. We just recently got a native C compiler/assembler/linker toolchain up and running. I must say making that happen provided some vivid comparisons of what programmers had to go through in decades past in both slower speeds and small executable file sizes, versus what we all have and expect today at our fingertips.

helf 2y ago
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ikari_pl 2y ago
This is what I've been looking for! Can you fit a workable version on a 1.44 floppy?
- cricalix 2y ago
  Around 1996/97 timeframe, you could fit a kernel and userspace. I remember building a 1.44 setup that booted a compressed kernel and had enough user space tooling to bring up telnet, ftp, and the radio stack to drive the long haul radio cards (we were replacing JNOS [0] IIRC at an ISP ). Even had writable space at the end of the floppy (the kernel etc were readonly) to write overrides of the config; poor man's overlay I think, but it is rather a long time ago. Given we were working with 286 era hardware (maybe 386?), I'd be surprised if ELKS doesn't fit on a 1.44. Indeed, simply looking at the downloads page linked from the original link would have answered your question.. [1] 0 - https://www.langelaar.net/jnos2/documents/about.html https://www.langelaar.net/jnos2/documents/about.html 1 - https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/releases https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/releases

accrual 2y ago

My oldest working systems are now a 386/DX40 and 486/DX2-66, but I never had a chance to run Linux on them back then. Did anybody here have a favorite distro for such early 90s hardware? When I find a 286 or earlier I'd love to give ELKS a try.

fragmede 2y ago
Slackware was the distro I started on, back around then.
- gregw2 2y ago
  This

fulafel 2y ago

Sounds optimal for microservices.

squarefoot 2y ago

The memories. I had it run ("installed" would be a big word ona 2 flopppy and no hard drive system) on a super cute Carry-1 8088 computer ages ago, which I stupidly sold on Ebay shortly after as I had no use for it. Here's one of the very rare photos online. http://vintagescan.blogspot.com/2015/12/flytech-carry-i-1990.html http://vintagescan.blogspot.com/2015/12/flytech-carry-i-1990...

cloudsec9 2y ago

Another operating system that deserves mention for 286 class machines is Coherent. This was an Unix like OS you could buy for $99, and it had all of the various Unix utilities and came with a HUGE manual to help you learn it. They had a 386 version as well, but went all in on getting X-windows and graphics working, and ignored TCP/networking just as the Internet started to gain a lot of traction. Still an interesting OS to look at!

lproven 2y ago
The final version of Coherent is FOSS now: https://github.com/gspu/Coherent https://github.com/gspu/Coherent

knorker 2y ago

I used elks back when I was too poor to buy a real laptop. My laptop was a 286 (old even then), with a shot battery. So I used elks and lugged around a lead acid motorcycle battery. It was great for my circumstances, but I wouldn't say I miss it compared to my many cores and gigs laptop.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

chriscappuccio 2y ago

There was a version of KA9Q NOS with multitasking that could serve telnet, ftp, smtp, bbs, convers, and more plus give you multiple switchable terminals for telnet, ftp, all at the same time on an 8088 and connect to a packet driver for modem, ethernet, or AX25. It was a port of BSD networking with its own multitasking capability. Also PC/MIX was pretty cool.

incanus77 2y ago

I had tried to get some version of Linux running on my 386SX / 25MHz / 8MB RAM but only succeeded in getting BasicLinux[1] running bootstrapped from a DOS boot first. Somehow I had never found ELKS! But I was just able to trivially make a floppy and boot the system[2]. Amazing. Looking forward to playing with this. [1] https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ [2] https://mastodon.social/@incanus/113777573079528868 https://mastodon.social/@incanus/113777573079528868

anthk 2y ago
If you can compile and install TCC you might compiler further useful software and games. Also, check delicate linux: http://delicate-linux.net/ http://delicate-linux.net/ Do not try X under Delicate Linux, it will run dog slow with 8MB of RAM. If you can upgrade it to 16MB and some 486, X would be fine, with icewm set to a light plain theme, no desktop icons.
- incanus77 2y ago
  I've been able to cross-compile from Linux (in Docker on my Mac; things didn't work well on macOS) to make binaries that run on the 386 under ELKS. Just had to juggle a few stock games to grab a couple dozen KB on the floppy to make room.

hudecekdev 2y ago

I don't know exactly why, but this makes me happy.