8 Dec
1997
8 Dec
'97
10:35 p.m.
Allison J Parent wrote:
<>I'd not heard of Elks, as I no longer stay on the "Bleeding Edge"
of Linux
ELKS is Embedded Linux Kernal System. It's a very small memory model of
linux to fit on say an 8086/8 (xt) system.
It's earlier unix cousin for z80 was UZI...
<Or... dare I say it... linux on a TRS-80 Model 100/102/200??? :)
No way, UZI is fairly tight and minimal V7 and want 32k for itself and 32k
for apps and a disk (hard disk) to implement total swapping of the swapable
sections of the app or UZI.
UNIX and varients are a relatively large system OS and doesn't fit well
on most 8bit cpus especially if written in C due to code inefficentcy
from a lack of a full indexed/indirect addressing modes that C expects.
(common on PDP11 and other minis). The 8086 is a bit better but the
segmentation makes it messy again.
Intel/Zilog addressing was poorly done, which is why the best *ix for
"8-bit" cpus ran on Motorola 6809, OS-9 from Microware. Though the
MC6809 was really more "16-bit" than the 8088. But the OS-9 kernel was
indeed done in assembly rather than C, since even though it had the
tightest C compiler in history, that wasn't _quite_ tight enough. Close
though -- the later OSK kernels as I recall were done in C, since there
was more RAM available.
--
Ward Griffiths
Two thousand yeare since Bethlehem and still we hear the lie,
that after years of hopes and fears the best part's when we die.