Re: Market space for a 16-bit linux product?
On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Alan Cox wrote: 11K with tcp/ip - I've not seen that. 11K core oh and its 30K for TCP minimum but we didnt tell you until you asked I have seen ;) Have you seen WebACE? http://world.std.com/~fwhite/ace/ It does bit-banging-serial, SLIP, TCP, IP, ICMP, HTTP, dynamically generated web pages, and controlling an external port based on the URL submitted to it in 454 instructions on an 8 pin microcontroller! Okay, so it's not exactly a general purpose OS with a TCP/IP stack, and the stack is far from RFC compliant (there isn't enough RAM for that), but it's very cool just the same (and it isn't a joke either- I have the source code). --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Linux for a really old computer
On Tue, 2 May 2000, Jan Dobrucki wrote: I have a little problem. I got an Amstrad PC1640 HD20. Real old. I don't even know how much RAM it has. So tell me, any hope for porting Lunux to The answer's in the question. It has 640KB of RAM and was sold with a 20MB hard drive. I think the processor was an 8086 and it was one of those "just about" PC compatible clones that were popular for a while. You've no chance of getting Lunux [sic] to run on it, but there's a fair chance ELKS will work. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. ------ : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Microwindows runs on X11
On Sat, 13 Nov 1999, Greg Haerr wrote: I will be including these additions in the next cut, as well as getting a CVS repository up. Thanks for the contributions, this project seems to be gaining momentum... I think this is probably a good time to announce that I am resigning my role in the NanoGUI project and handing it on to Greg. Greg has been pretty much coordinating the project on his own for the past few months anyway, and has proven himself easily capable of the job. The mailing list will continue to reside on linuxhacker.org, and ftp.linuxhacker.org will continue to mirror the the ftp repository (and the contents of the ftp area are also accessible via http at the same URL), however the official website will be moving to either microwindows.censoft.com or www.nanogui.org depending on the outcome of negotiations between Greg and I, and Stormix who have registered the nanogui.org and nanogui.net domain names. Similarly, the CVS area will be moving to either cvs.nanogui.org or another repository at Greg's discretion. I would like to take this oppurtunity to wish Greg good luck in his new role as manager of the NanoGUI project; good luck Greg! --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Request for comments - Microwindows
On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Bradley D. LaRonde wrote: Why give up your right to release source code? Why not tell that vendor "I'll sign and NDA, but only with the condition that I can release my work open-source." I have. That's what we usually try. If you're only a small company making less than a few thousand units, it often doesn't work. There's also the situation of large closed source software systems too- for example you can license the code to decent voice recognition software... You can't easily reverse engineer something like that- it's easier to spend a few months or years writing it again. In the case of a company, it's much cheaper to spend say $2 licensing some closed source code than it is to have a team of developers spend a year or so rewriting it from scratch. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. ------ : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: Request for comments - Microwindows
On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Louis P. Santillan wrote: A few more logs for the flame (err...thread), BSD and Dave's original license? Maybe even a NASM type license, short and sweet, with restrictions against those who would like to use the code for commercial purposes. IMHO, the GPL and LGPL are too detailed and too restrictive. What kind of restrictions? People who enjoy the code should use the code. Maybe those who have evil commercial purposes should be punished, but they should not be completely prejudiced against. I think the intent is to make the Nano/Micro series a standard for small systems. I also like Allegro's gift society type license though it may not be restrictive enough for some. The latest version of Allegro is now fully Public Domain. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Request for comments - Microwindows
On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Alan Cox wrote: This is going on far too long and round in circles. Greg and Alex - pick something, stick a license on it all , say so publically and be done. It does more harm now than whichever is picked Right, I vote for MPL with a "convert to GPL/LGPL" option, with David's original code retaining it's current Public Domain license. Vidar has already said he's happy with that. Greg? --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. ------ : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Licensing summary
On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Greg Haerr wrote: Yes. I think I agree. But I want to be completely clear on David's code. His original code retains his original PDL license. The code that's included in nano-X and/or MicroWindows is a derivative work, and is not subject to any terms other than his original terms: leave the copyright notice intact. That's the reason I thought we'd have to move David's code into seperate files- because his code wants to go into files with his Public Domain license on them, and the new code wants to go into files with the MPL on them. What are the semantics of a "conversion", anyway? You just redistribute everything under the new license. It would have to be a total conversion though, because the GPL wouldn't allow some GPL parts and some MPL parts, and I don't think it, or any improvements made to the GPLed version could be converted back to MPL without explicit permission of the author of the changes. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. ------ : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: Licensing summary
On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Greg Haerr wrote: No - this is specifically what we _dont_ want to do. David's license allows us to create derivative works and do what we want with it, providing that we leave his copyright notice intact. Ok. Does this mean that the tree would split at this point? I plan Only if the person who converted his copy to GPL decided to maintain a seperate, GPLed tree. The tree could also split for technical rather than license issues. Basically we only really want the GPL clause so that people who want to use parts of Nano-X in a GPLed project can convert those parts to GPL, but there's nothing stopping somebody who really hated the MPL for some reason from maintaining a seperate, GPL only tree of their own. This isn't likely to happen if the main MPLed tree continues to develop at a decent pace (the GPL tree maintainer would have to spend a lot of his time back-porting changes from the MPL tree to his GPL tree rather than working on new code). --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: Request for comments - Microwindows
On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Louis P. Santillan wrote: The restrictions of not being able to produce a binary w/o code/obj files has already been mentioned as a restriction. BSD is an attractive way of getting around it. As far as I know, Allegro has never been truly PD. Formally Swapware or at least give me a copy of your autoexec.bat and now Giftware or add something to the code base if you use it and if you can. In a sense, Allegro is PD...but not completely free. As I said, it is now. Get the latest version (3.12), read the license. I believe Shawn decided to abandon the original "swapware" license as it was needlessly preventing Allegro's use in some situations. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. ------ : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Request for comments - Microwindows
On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Greg Haerr wrote: License under LGPL. All of the code I've written, which includes all of microwindows and all the enhancements to mini-X, can be easily licensed this way. But the nano-X project has a large core of GrXXX routines that were originally written by David Bell, and his license is completely unrestrictive, except that his copyright notice must still be included. So we can't downgrade his license to LGPL. This means that his code can't be used if this project goes strictly MPL or LGPL. One idea is to contact David, another is to rewrite it as Xlib. As has already been discussed (at great length) at least twice before, David has already agreed to let us license his code under either the LGPL or the GPL, but not the MPL (he wouldn't say why he didn't like the MPL). I would prefer the MPL myself (with a convert-one-way-to-GPL option) so that commercial applications in linked in mode and drivers for hardware that the specs for had to be obtained under NDA could be used. In this way, the MicroWindows project goal could become "A micro-reimplementation of the Xlib and Win32 api's, catering to small size and speed of porting, on Linux[CE,86] platforms." Only Linux86 and LinuxCE? What about the thousands of other embedded systems, palmtops, etc. it is useful for... --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. ------ : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Request for comments - Microwindows
On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Bradley D. LaRonde wrote: This is an idea, but why? Doesn't MPL completely kill any GPL benefit? Why would someone choose to use it under GPL when they can use it under MPL? Because they want to borrow some of our code, but are stuck with code which is GPLed (you can't mix MPLed code in with GPLed code because of the restrictive nature of the GPL). --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Request for comments - Microwindows
On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Bradley D. LaRonde wrote: It's both less restrictive and designed to apply to anything; not just a library with a well defined interface API. This is a library we are talking about here, right? No, a graphics server application. So I get to grant who, Greg, you, who? the right to use my improvements in their own proprietary Micro*. Doesn't sound good to me. And I get to have Proprietory in what way? Because they can sell it? You can sell GPLed programs too, and the GPLed code and any changes made to it remain available in the same way that MPLed code and any changes made to it remain available. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: your mail
On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Alistair Riddoch wrote: Hmm.. I think a mono card costs about $7 now... Can't get them here for love or money as far as I can tell. I will be on the lookout for one though. I have four. Three of them unused and in original packaging with manuals (they were going for a couple of quid each at a surplus sale and I couldn't resist). Unfortunately I only have one mono monitor, and have never seen one for sale ever (the one I have came with an old 386 I rescued from being thrown away a few years ago). If you can manage to find a mono monitor or work out some way to connect it to a composite video monitor (unfortunately these cards don't have a direct composite output), I can send you a card... --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: Re Z80-8088, was: Linux on TI?
On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, Hessel Schut wrote: IIRC the Zilog was founded by some of the developers of the Intel 8080, and I recall the Z80 resembled that chip. The 8080 is the ancestor of the 8086/ 88. Yep, the Z80 was designed by ex-Intel 8080 engineers, and it was backwards compatible (in code) with the 8080, but was quite a bit faster and had some additional instructions, registers, addressing modes, etc. which let people who had designed a system using an 8080 but who needed more speed to upgrade to it without too much pain. The 8086 is exactly the same as the 8088 except for the fact that the 8088 has an 8 bit external data bus (but 16 bit internal- it does two operations to access each word). ISTR that the 8088 was produced mainly at the request of IBM, who thought that the 8086 was too expensive for a Personal Computer (TM). The Nec V20 and V30 that somebody else mentioned were pin compatible clones of the 8088 and 8086 respectively. They had a couple of new instructions (which nobody ever really used), were more efficient (required less clocks per instruction), could run at twice the clock speed, and consumed less power. A lot of people upgraded their XTs by replacing the 8088 with a V20 and doubling the clock frequency. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: herc microwin support
On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, Greg Haerr wrote: Well - you've got a good point - an 8086 is probably *way* too slow to run graphics programs of any merit. However, I would like to add I had a friend who used a DOS based graphical desktop publishing program on his 8088 with a hercules graphics card, 640KB of RAM, and a 20MB hard disk, and it was snappier than MS Word on a Pentium. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: SV: herc microwin support
On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, Thor Harald Johansen wrote: : I had a friend who used a DOS based graphical desktop publishing program : on his 8088 with a hercules graphics card, 640KB of RAM, and a 20MB hard : disk, and it was snappier than MS Word on a Pentium. Let me guess. It was for GEM desktop! ;) No, it was a standalone application running on DOS. I can't remember what it was called, but it was pretty usable. The only real problem with it was that it worked with fairly low resolution bitmaps instead of vectors, so anything you printed out looked a bit naff. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
Re: Recent kernel updates
On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Alistair Riddoch wrote: but it is impossible to get debugging output out of the kernel when the console is in graphics mode! Can't you just dump to a serial port? I've used that before when debugging a framebuffer driver on Big Linux... --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: Capabilities
On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Greg Haerr wrote: On Thursday, June 03, 1999 1:36 PM, Alex Holden [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: : On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Alan Cox wrote: : Keep networking mostly in user space. That btw is also the model things like : the early networking work on V7 unix took. : I was wondering if KA9Q NOS might be used as a basis for ELKS TCP/IP, : rather than starting again from scratch... That's a potentially very good idea. KA9Q is big, though, and needs compiler mods for bcc in order to fit in 64k. The individual parts are pretty compact. It's actually a multitasking kernel with TCP/IP, AX25, and SMTP, telnet, etc. all integrated together. If you could split it up into bits, it would probably fit within the limits. Though as Alan pointed out, the license is pretty restrictive (I had always thought it was without any restriction at all :). --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: Capabilities
On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Darran D. Rimron wrote: Her in the UK Demon Internet, http://www.demon.net/ distribute it free as their default connection method for DOS, unsure if it's the same Cool, I didn't realise that. It must be a bit modified from the amateur radio one to be more useful for general Internet access. One problem with it is IIRC, NOS itself doesn't have a http server or browser, but several of the derivatives like JNOS do, which you could probably port back. KA9Q, if it's [free|share]ware or what, but that may be work investigating... I'm failry sure that there's a copy at ftp://ftp.demon.net/ for download (I could get exact info. if required) It wouldn't let me log in. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: ROMable ELKS
On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, Simon Wood wrote: This sort of thing could also be applied to a RAM only system, for example the Psion 3a - which I'm doing some work on. I've got a keyboard scanning working and some basic screen stuff, but I need Wow, cool- I look forward to trying it. Will it work with my lowly 512KB machine though? to find a 'free' bit mapped font to use (probably want 8*13 bits per character to make it readable, would be really flash if it was anti-aliased Have you looked at the fonts in the Big Linux kernel distribution? --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
RE: nanoGui development
On Tue, 4 May 1999, Greg Haerr wrote: I've got the nanoGui project moved up quite a bit. It now runs the sample programs pretty well. As Alan mentioned, I'll be checking all this stuff in shortly. ^ Alex o A mouse driver (this is more of a pain, we could still leave it out of the kernel) If you don't want to use GPM, there was some simple MS and PS2 protocol stuff in there before which didn't work. You could try getting that working as a compile time option. o Nanogui uses ANSI prototypes that won't compile with bcc, unless someone wants my ansi modifications, I'm thinking of releasing it myself. Oops. Mini-X was KR, but I changed it all to ANSI because I thought no sane compiler didn't do ANSI these days ;) What's bcc anyway? Currently, NanoGui implements a decent subset of low-level X primitives, although they're renamed. Window creation, GC manipulation and text routines work. We still need some better low-level drawcode support. For instance, XOR drawing isn't done yet. I wouldn't mind renaming them all to get them closer to X. --- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -- : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : http://www.linuxhacker.org/
