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.
Received on Mon Dec 08 1997 - 22:35:25 GMT