Running Ancient UNIX On Nintendo Gameboy
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Sep 08, 2004 07:51 AM
from the does-it-play-space-travel dept.
from the does-it-play-space-travel dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Amit Singh has a piece on his site about running the 5th edition UNIX distribution on a Nintendo Gameboy, of all things. Tons of screenshots and source included but what really makes this entertaining and informational in an ubergeekly sort of way is his side stories on UNIX history ... ARM CPU ... compiling and running random programs on the Gameboy, etc. There are even notes on recompiling the original Unix kernel to make it smaller for the GBA!"
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Running Ancient UNIX On Nintendo Gameboy
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Great web site and a good read (Score:2, Funny)
Nintendo has been in the gaming business since 1889
I believe this is when they came out with their first two hits, Horse and Buggy Kong and Prairie Invaders.
On a more serious note, this is well worth the time to read. It is fairly long but well written (other than a few tiny errors as above) and extremely informative. The site is well laid out and easy to follow. The history lesson alone is worth the time spent.
Cheers,
Erick
Re:Great web site and a good read (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo [wikipedia.org]
Re:Great web site and a good read... But FLAW (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.johnjones.me.uk/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 04, @06:34PM)
o 1 the game boy is not running unix
o 2 they dont have a game boy they have the game boy advance
o 3 they simulate a PDP11 on a game boy advance simulator running on a mac/pc
instead why dont you look at howto use uclinux on GBA...
http://wwwhsse.fh-hagenberg.at/Studierende/hse0
regards
John Jones
Actually it was playing cards... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 06 2005, @12:39PM)
So, in a way, Nintendo's empire was built thanks to gangsters.
Re:Actually it was playing cards... (Score:5, Interesting)
(from wikipedia)
Disney.... even worse then yakuza.... brought them to power
Re:Great web site and a good read (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/history.jsp [nintendo.com]
Wow, that's great ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow, that's great ... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 14 2007, @09:49AM)
Note that in order to run 5th edition UNIX with gbaunix, you must have an RK05 disk image of 5th edition UNIX, which is not included in the gbaunix distribution. SCO owns the copyright for the 5th edition (and several others).
Thankfully, Caldera released (under a BSD-style license) this particular UNIX edition, along with some others, shortly before the name change in 2002. Here [tuhs.org] is the license [PDF Alert], if anyone's interested.
linux in bed (Score:2)
If you believe that linux is less bloated and more stable, then it's THE natural OS for embedded systems.
Well, if you want to get your daily fix of "linux has been placed in something else" news... you can always visit linuxdevices.com [linuxdevices.com]
If you want to do-it yourself... ibm embedded. [ibm.com]
Cool (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Friday October 08 2004, @08:51PM)
SCO (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday November 03 2004, @11:44PM)
Old but funny (Score:5, Funny)
NetBSD (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 08, @03:46AM)
checks site.....
hmm apparently not, but lots of ARM ports should be doable..
april fool ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please... (Score:4, Funny)
...try not to mention "ancient eunuchs" and "gameboys" in the same sentence.
The Great Wall Tycoon.... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~Himring/journal/179579 | Last Journal: Saturday August 18, @11:20AM)
His dates are flawed. Nintendo's been making games since 475 B.C. when the first version of "The Great Wall Tycoon" came out. Man, talk about addictive....
I wonder.. (Score:2, Funny)
Input (Score:4, Informative)
I am aware that commands currently need to be selected at compile-time.
It's interesting, but doesn't have a lot of practial uses.
GBA RAM packs (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://zachhobson.no-ip.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 28 2004, @06:56PM)
You can even put different emulators and ROMs all on the same cartridge and then use a shell [obsession.se] to organize and manage everything. I have an NES, SMS adn PC Engine Emulator with some of my favorite games from each system as well as 4 full GBA ROM images.
You can also check out one of my GUI interfaces [no-ip.com] to use with the shell.
I think we're a pretty underground group here (GBA flash RAM users), but who knows -- mabye I just used
Old style gameboy (Score:4, Insightful)
Although, even now I know which one it is I'm still not entirely convinced this is all that useful either!
I'm probably just missing the point, which is something like because I can!
Yes.. But (Score:5, Funny)
Gameboy TCP/IP stack and Web server (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday July 06 2005, @10:01PM)
Hard coded commands mean I can't code on this ? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://t3.dotgnu.info/ | Last Journal: Monday September 26 2005, @06:32AM)
When I first saw it , I wondered how he actually typed in the C code, and then I saw the keyboard buffer code :). It'd have been fun to say, to save in ED, press Down Down , Up Left, X (Mortal Kombat memories).
Lookup Unix Version7 sources [southern-storm.com.au] which have been ported to run on 32 Bit CPUs . With a 50k kernel binary and similarly shrunk libs , it's a nice thing to play around with.
I've been planning to play around with gpsim and gpsim-lcd for sometime nowd'oh (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Sunday February 18 2007, @12:52AM)
Next logical step... (Score:2)
OT: Workboy... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://iheartjesdotus.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday June 05 2005, @05:40PM)
The Workboy had a keyboard, a database management system (?) and more. A Google search for "Workboy" and Gameboy returned like five results, two Slashdot...
Good description, picture won't load [eagb.net]
"Retro Space", picture [terra.com.br] Translation [tinyurl.com]
The first link says they are "rare" too bad, I still want one.
Whoa... (Score:2)
(http://bestpractic.es/)
Im sure thats available on [insert pda here] but I already have a gameboy...
I wonder if he would be able to sell *BSD carts or something of the sort.
How to reboot (Score:5, Funny)
All fine and well... but... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.madogre.com/)
I'm glad to see more interest in Real Unix (Score:2)
(http://www.robert.to/)
SInce it's running SIMH PDP-11... (Score:1)
Wow! (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Monday June 30 2003, @01:45PM)
Kill me.
Does this mean?..... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.cbserviceslondon.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 14 2003, @01:12PM)
"This page hosted on a 1997 Nintendo Game Boy."
I think I'd rather see a potato-powered [d116.com] server....
Mmmm.. Command Line Interface (Score:2)
(http://www.dreamops.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 02 2005, @10:05AM)
Bah (Score:2)
Nice... (Score:1)
Re:More Info (Score:1, Interesting)
(http://albanach.com/)
So we really can/em? imagine a beowoulf cluster of these?
Re:And also ... (Score:1)
Oh, you didn't want a serious reply? ;)
Re:And also ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:And also ... (Score:2, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday August 17, @08:29AM)
Sadly, the GameBoy Advance doesn't have a MMU. Otherwise, I'm sure someone would be trying to port Linux to it already...
Re:More Info (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Monday November 28 2005, @12:21PM)
Re:Perhaps this customer wasn't crazy. (Score:1)
(http://ipod.sourceforge.net/)
Re:Has anyone asked this question? (Score:1)
DON'T CLICK LINK (Score:2)
(http://krenzel.info/)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Title is misleading, change "Gameboy" to "GBA" (Score:1)