[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Larry McVoy]

I must be the only guy here who browses reddit (or I missed someone
else posting this).

This dude ported 5th edition to a game boy.  I'll admit my non coolness
by saying I don't know what a game boy is but I'm guessing it's some
video game thingy.

http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/gbaunix/

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Larry McVoy]

So I just saw the title and posted, now I'm reading it, this guy is
pretty cool, he seems to know a lot.  I would vote for inviting him
to this list.

On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 08:30:42PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> I must be the only guy here who browses reddit (or I missed someone
> else posting this).
> 
> This dude ported 5th edition to a game boy.  I'll admit my non coolness
> by saying I don't know what a game boy is but I'm guessing it's some
> video game thingy.
> 
> http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/gbaunix/

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sat, 26 Dec 2015, Larry McVoy wrote:

> This dude ported 5th edition to a game boy.  I'll admit my non coolness 
> by saying I don't know what a game boy is but I'm guessing it's some 
> video game thingy.

Pretty much, yeah, along with PS/2 (and/or whatever).  I'm surprised that 
they chose Ed5, as Penguin/OS is normally the choice for weird devices.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Steve Nickolas]

On Sun, 27 Dec 2015, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Dec 2015, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
>> This dude ported 5th edition to a game boy.  I'll admit my non coolness
>> by saying I don't know what a game boy is but I'm guessing it's some
>> video game thingy.
>
> Pretty much, yeah, along with PS/2 (and/or whatever).  I'm surprised that
> they chose Ed5, as Penguin/OS is normally the choice for weird devices.

Well, if it's what I remember, it's a Game Boy Advance, which has an ARM 
CPU along with the nerfed Z80 of the original Game Boy.  Bit more 
Unix-friendly than an actual Game Boy. ;)

Though, the DS, which was its successor, does have a Linux port.

-uso.

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sun, 27 Dec 2015, Steve Nickolas wrote:

> Well, if it's what I remember, it's a Game Boy Advance, which has an ARM 
> CPU along with the nerfed Z80 of the original Game Boy.  Bit more 
> Unix-friendly than an actual Game Boy. ;)
> 
> Though, the DS, which was its successor, does have a Linux port.

All the same, I'd probably go for either NetBSD or DragonFly.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[John Cowan]

Dave Horsfall scripsit:
>
> On Sun, 27 Dec 2015, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> 
> > Well, if it's what I remember, it's a Game Boy Advance, which has an ARM 
> > CPU along with the nerfed Z80 of the original Game Boy.  Bit more 
> > Unix-friendly than an actual Game Boy. ;)

Just so.

> All the same, I'd probably go for either NetBSD or DragonFly.

The constraints are pretty tight.  The GBA has 32K of on-chip RAM and 256K
of off-chip RAM.  Cartridges have 32M of ROM, so the system disk is stored
in ROM with a shadow overlay in RAM.  In any case there is no keyboard
or other character input device: all it can do is run a preprogrammed
set of commands in the shell.  So running an ancyent Unixe on SIMH makes
a lot of sense, since the device can never be anything practical.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Assent may be registered by a signature, a handshake, or a click of a computer
mouse transmitted across the invisible ether of the Internet. Formality
is not a requisite; any sign, symbol or action, or even willful inaction,
as long as it is unequivocally referable to the promise, may create a contract.
       --Specht v. Netscape

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Dan Cross]

To be fair, it's not so much a port of 5th Edition to the game boy, but
rather a port of a stripped down older version of SIMH's PDP-11 emulator
that is running a PDP 5th ed. It's still a great hack, of course....

On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 11:40 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Dec 2015, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> > This dude ported 5th edition to a game boy.  I'll admit my non coolness
> > by saying I don't know what a game boy is but I'm guessing it's some
> > video game thingy.
>
> Pretty much, yeah, along with PS/2 (and/or whatever).  I'm surprised that
> they chose Ed5, as Penguin/OS is normally the choice for weird devices.
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."
>
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[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Brad Spencer]

   On Sat, 26 Dec 2015, Larry McVoy wrote:

   > This dude ported 5th edition to a game boy.  I'll admit my non coolness 
   > by saying I don't know what a game boy is but I'm guessing it's some 
   > video game thingy.

   Pretty much, yeah, along with PS/2 (and/or whatever).  I'm surprised that 
   they chose Ed5, as Penguin/OS is normally the choice for weird devices.

   -- 
   Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."



It is running V5 in SIMH on the Gameboy.  Pretty nifty, however, the ARM
processor varient does not have a memory manager, so I suspect that it had
to be something simpler then one of the modern systems.  This wasn't a
bare iron port.

If you go to the page, he does not one of the early BSD systems running in
SIMH on it too.




-- 
Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS
http://anduin.eldar.org  - & -  http://anduin.ipv6.eldar.org [IPv6 only]

[TUHS] Unix on a game boy

[Norman Wilson]

The real question: has anyone connected an RK05 to
a Game Boy?

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(Know what both of those are, have ever used only one)