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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.
Operating Systems Software Unix Portables Portables (Games) Entertainment Games Hardware
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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  • From the web site:

    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

  • Wow, that's great ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by evslin (612024) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @07:53AM (#10188028)
    ... but that guy better watch out. It'll be a race between Nintendo and SCO to see who can sue him first! ;)

    • Re:Wow, that's great ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spellraiser (764337) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:08AM (#10188135) Journal
      Actually, it's less of a joke than you might think. Here's an interesting bit from the article:

      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.

  • Slashdotted already... alas, I can find no google cache.

    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]
  • Hey, my wife has been trying for a year now to convince me to buy her a gameboy...

  • SCO (Score:3, Funny)

    by tuxter (809927) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @07:56AM (#10188053) Journal
    If they aren't careful, Darl will start sueing Nintendo for runnning unlicensed code.
    • Naw, not unless he is already a Unix licensee. Darl seems to only sue his existing customer base.

      That said, I can't wait for the emulator for the Unix GB so you can actually play GameBoy games on it after booting in to Unix.

  • Old but funny (Score:5, Funny)

    by barcodez (580516) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @07:56AM (#10188058)
    Whenever I see stories like this I am reminded of Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. [strangehorizons.com]

  • NetBSD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by martin (1336) <maxsecNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday September 08 2004, @07:59AM (#10188072) Journal
    NO, not Unix 5th Edition, should have used NetBSD, mind you probably already been done so....

    checks site.....

    hmm apparently not, but lots of ARM ports should be doable..
    • Read the article... SIHM [trailing-edge.com] is used to emulate a PDP-11... do you know how much power a PDP-11 has? NetBSD appears to need a little Oomph behind it.

      • Re:NetBSD (Score:3, Interesting)

        by martin (1336)
        In comparision to the Gameboy, probably not that much....

        looking at the relevant page of the FAQ [village.org] the last model (PDP-11/94) got above 18mhz...which was approx 4x the original speed.

        Looking the specs [kernelthread.com] on the link mentioned in the article the GBA has a 16.76 mhz ARM processor (no memory management or cache in this model) *and* a 4mhz or 8mhz Z80 to run the old GB games.

        As to your point about NetBSD, the arm port26 [netbsd.org] runs on the very earliest commericial ARM machines so I see no reason why it couldn't run on a
      • I hate replying to myself, but I obviously got a troll (probably from the grandparent posing as an Anonymous Coward), because I am apparently unclear.

        SIHM is used to simulate/emulate a PDP-11 so that this old crusty version of Unix can run. Running NetBSD on this would require actual Kernel Porting and some toolchain tweaking. All this little project needed was SIHM at the core, which needed ever so little help to run on the GBA. From there, Unix Version 5 just needed some compiling for the PDP-11.
        • yeah I think the clever bit was the SIHM bit just worked (after some small tweaking).

          Surpised NetBSD hasn't been ported to this though - everything seems to run NetBSD!! :-)

  • april fool ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sgumby (730231) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:01AM (#10188082)
    it reminds me some odd april fool [slashdot.org]

  • Please... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Black Parrot (19622) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:01AM (#10188084)

    ...try not to mention "ancient eunuchs" and "gameboys" in the same sentence.

  • The Great Wall Tycoon.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Himring (646324) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:04AM (#10188107) Homepage Journal
    Nintendo has been in the gaming business since 1889.

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder if... with a little work, this could be used as a 2004 presidential voting machine?
    • I wonder if... with a little work, this could be used as a 2004 presidential voting machine?

      In other news, Nintendo saw sales of its GBA drop as people realized that the previously cool device would be used for the decidedly uncool task of voting.

  • Input (Score:4, Informative)

    by lachlan76 (770870) <lachlan.gunn@nospAm.internode.on.net> on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:06AM (#10188123)
    I don't have a GBA, but how easy would it be to input commands into one?

    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.

    • Re:Input (Score:3, Interesting)

      by evslin (612024)
      I bet if you worked at it long enough you could get a keyboard running through the GBA link port.

  • GBA RAM packs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Guitar Wizard (775433) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:08AM (#10188128) Homepage Journal
    You can actually use the GBA for a lot more than just UNIX -- one can import flash RAM packs and then put whatever they want on it. Check out some options [flash2advance.com].

    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 /. to expose the world to the many functions of the GBA(?)!

  • Old style gameboy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by webgit (805155) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:08AM (#10188132)
    When I first read the headline I thought it was refering to the original gameboy with the tiny black and white screen and I didn't really see the point of doing it.

    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!
    • A couple of years ago there were an article about using a Sega Dreamcast as hacking station. You hide the Dreamcast, plug it into the network, boot it with a special CD, and let it go. The Dreamcast would probe the network until it found a way out. Once it did it would hit a website, determined by you, with network's setup information; you could execute commands on your Dreamcast node and effect the network.

      The same could be done here. Upload your ROM in to you host GBA; do this so that when the batter

  • Yes.. But (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:08AM (#10188133)
    can it run a gameboy emulator??

  • Gameboy TCP/IP stack and Web server (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Peter Cooper (660482) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:10AM (#10188142) Journal
    It's a couple of years old now, but Adrian O'Grady developed a TCP/IP stack and Web server for the GameBoy Advance [fivemouse.com] as part of his degree project. Source code, tips, and a pretty interesting development diary are there.

  • 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 now ... not to write a full OS , but just enough to play Pong :)
  • Nethack GBA! *Runsaway and feeds a kitten!*

  • OT: Workboy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ImaLamer (260199) <john DOT lamar AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:18AM (#10188192) Homepage Journal
    This kinda reminds me of a Gameboy add-on called the "Workboy". As a computer nerd I wanted this thing so bad because it basically turned your Gameboy into a PDA type of device. Ok, maybe I didn't have that many appointments at 12, but I was a computer nerd still.

    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]

    /. "what happens when you cook your palm pilot" [slashdot.org]

    The first link says they are "rare" too bad, I still want one.

    • That sort of thing will be much more interesting and useful when the DS comes out. The GBA lacks any kind of non-crappy input method. Who wants to put in text with the game pad? Even if you made it a chorded keyboard you'd need multiple keystrokes to generate one character. However, with a stylus coming, the DS might actually make a decent PDA. It certainly has enough screen area...
  • After reading this, the first thing that sprung to mind was portable rogue and nethack on something i wouldnt actually mind toting around.
    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 08 2004, @08:46AM (#10188375)
    Control-Alt-Delete has been replaced by Up-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A

  • All fine and well... but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mad Ogre (564694) <ogre@NOsPAM.madogre.com> on Wednesday September 08 2004, @09:24AM (#10188658) Homepage
    What can you do with it? I'm not impressed with Linux on an iPod or Unix in the game boy or Linux in the XboX things... If you can't DO anything productive with it, It's useless. I don't care if you can put Linux in my digital watch.
    • Not impressed with Linux on the XBOX!? What's the matter with you!? How about converting your xbox into a full PVR that you can access via the web to start and stop recording, or hell that you can access via ssh or telnet!

      Linux on the XBOX is freakin' cool! It's basically a full linux PC for 200 bucks.
  • I'm glad to see more interest in Real Unix instead of Linux! Maybe it's a sign of things to come!

  • Does this mean?..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by cbiltcliffe (186293) on Wednesday September 08 2004, @11:38AM (#10190761) Homepage Journal
    Does this mean we'll soon see pages proudly displaying at the bottom:

    "This page hosted on a 1997 Nintendo Game Boy."
    I think I'd rather see a potato-powered [d116.com] server....
      • But does it run Linux?

        Sadly, the GameBoy Advance doesn't have a MMU. Otherwise, I'm sure someone would be trying to port Linux to it already...

        • sorry but I run linux on MMU less processors every day.

          info [embedded.com]

          oh and here as well as the thousands more sites about it indexed on www.google.com..

          Linux can run on MMU-less processors quite well, and has done so for a long time now.

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