How I Booted Linux On an Intel 4004 from 1971 (dmitry.gr) 12
Long-time Slashdot reader dmitrygr writes: Debian Linux booted on a 4-bit intel microprocessor from 1971 — the first microprocessor in the world — the 4004. It is not fast, but it is a real Linux kernel with a Debian rootfs on a real board whose only CPU is a real intel 4004 from the 1970s.
There's a detailed blog post about the experiment. (Its title? "Slowly booting full Linux on the intel 4004 for fun, art, and absolutely no profit.")
In the post dmitrygr describes testing speed optimizations with an emulator where "my initial goal was to get the boot time under a week..."
There's a detailed blog post about the experiment. (Its title? "Slowly booting full Linux on the intel 4004 for fun, art, and absolutely no profit.")
In the post dmitrygr describes testing speed optimizations with an emulator where "my initial goal was to get the boot time under a week..."
And the funny thing is (Score:3)
It still feels faster than Windows 11 on a 5 year-old machine.
Seriously, why? (Score:2)
How modified was that kernel to boot on a 4 bit processor? It had 2K of ROM, 320 bytes of RAM - how did they squeeze a kernel into a 2K ROM?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Seriously, why? (Score:2)
So he booted a MIPS3100 kernel on an emulator running on a 4004 chip surrounded by tech from 50 years after the 4004 entered the market?
The kernel code never touched the 4004, the /. Headline is misleading IMHO...
Re: (Score:2)
He wrote a CPU emulator that ran on the 4004, emulating a more modern processor that then was used to boot linux. The article is an interesting read and has lots of details.
I couldn't find the eventual boot time, but he did appear to get it under 5 days.
Re: Os2 warp on 386 (Score:2)
OS/2 had a very productive life in several verticals - insurance and finance, as I recall. It just wasn't WinNT, and (as I recall) needed apps written specifically for it. When the applications were written in-house for internal applications, it was fairly well-regarded. If you hoped to sell your software to others, it was never gonna be successful.
4 bit? (Score:2)
How many bits does the microcontroller in the attached keyboard have?
Re: 4 bit? (Score:2)
At least 8, I suspect...
Cost (Score:2)
Well done, sir (Score:2)
That's awesome! It's hilarious watching the hours blow by on the clock in between each individual notification during the boot sequence.