Re: Where does ELKS need to go? (was: ELKS links broken)

The world's changed a lot since 1995 (almost half my life ago?  dang.)
 when I started playing with ELKS.  The Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone
Black are both much more powerful than any desktop, old or new, I
could possibly buy then, and so much cheaper!

Also, UNIX v6 is now truly free and has been ported to x86-32.

If I were to start today, I would probably look at a Cortex M3
microcontroller, which has very limited memory, but quite a bit of CPU
power relative to an 8088.  (But I probably would have taken up a
different project altogether, probably a usable lightweight Linux
distro/userspace for Pentium III's or some such.  But probably I'd
tilt a completely different windmill altogether.)

The solutions leading to getting something that looks vaguely UNIXy
working on an M3/M4 might be quite interesting in general, I suspect a
new C compiler/runtime with memory guarding built in would be needed.
And even with the overhead of run-time checking - or even executing
bytecode - it could still be faster than an 8088!

I'll have to think about this... there *is* an answer to "Where does
ELKS fit into the 2014 world?" but I don't have it yet.

On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Jody Bruchon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/18/2014 3:26 PM, Edoardo Liverani wrote:
>>
>> I'd really like to help this project as I'm going to use it a little,
>> and I would enjoy to help hosting a website with updated links, to
>> generate updated and working precompiled images, istructions etc.
>> I have a shared hosting plan I can use, whom should I ask to get
>> current website sources and the permission to update a little and
>> re-publish them?
>> My question is particularly for @Jody cause he is the latest who
>> managed to maintain the project sources.
>
>
> I am still here to maintain the project. Unfortunately, I've run into a
> couple of major issues with it that make its future questionable.
>
> * I'll happily move and clean up the website to my own hosting if there is
> renewed interest in the project. I'll overhaul it while I'm at it.
>
> * The compiler we use, bcc, suffers from some serious limitations and
> misbehavior. In particular, nothing can require more than 64K of code,
> including the kernel. The compiler needs some work or we need a new
> compiler. As I would like to see ELKS target other classic CPUs (65816,
> 68000, maybe 6809, etc.) a compiler change may be the best option. The
> compiler is the biggest obstacle.
>
> * What can/does ELKS offer compared to other small OSes such as NuttX?
>
> * The hardware ELKS is made to work on is (to my limited knowledge) becoming
> rare. Quite a few 8086/88 machines have by now suffered capacitor failures
> that have rendered them inoperable and probably junked. Most PCs going in
> the garbage now are Pentium II/III/4 systems, all of which enjoy Linux
> compatibility and are far more capable under Linux than under ELKS, even if
> they only have 16MB of RAM.
>
> * The "E" in ELKS means "embedded" and yet the only platform it was ever
> developed for was 8086/88 PCs and the Psion SIBO. The 808x target made more
> sense 10 years ago, but embedded and low-power computers today are dominated
> by 32-bit ARM and MIPS cores that happily run Linux (if they have enough
> RAM, that is.) What should ELKS be targeting today?
>
> * The project has no active real-hardware testers to call upon. No one has
> real hardware AND time for the project AND wants to test changes. I
> personally have no 8086/80286 hardware but have a plethora of functioning
> Compaq 486 and Toshiba Pentium laptops, all of which have Linux on them.
> Without real hardware and a skilled, willing owner that can test ELKS on it,
> there can be no proper development. I can use emulators but they don't
> emulate the many various quirks and "just non-standard enough to piss you
> off" hardware of the early IBM PC era (I'm thinking about you, Tandy.)
>
> * I have a TRS-80 CoCo and an Apple IIgs. Maybe we should port ELKS to
> those. ;-)
>
> I would like to hear what anyone reading thinks. Please reply either to me
> OR the ELKS list since I (obviously) subscribe to it and prefer not to
> receive duplicate messages.
>
> -Jody
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