this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 64 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

I don't think the Spartan 6 can, it's an fpga with no arm, the zynq can, there's a lot of other arm chips that I assume can run some type of Linux, but the blurry ones are throwing me off

Edit, top left is a 286 CPU, and the Intel one has an earlier date, so they MIGHT be able to ~~run~~walk it, it'll be not good

[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Not only could mainline Linux never run on a 286, it also definitely doesn't count as an "SoC" to begin with. It needed a separate co-processor just to do floating-point math, let alone to manage all the I/O that a SoC does on-die.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago

You guys are the best. I reply in what I think is a bit nerdy way, and I'm outdone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

It needed a separate co-processor

Such a great time to be alive. 🥲

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

286 Protected Mode is very different from 386 PM and there is no way Linux will would run on it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There is a project looking to do this kind of, known as elks that has images for 80286 chips. I have no idea why you’d want to do that to yourself though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Interesting. Reminds me of PC/IX, and it probably similarly doesn't even enter pm, judging from it running also on an 8086.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

this is extra tricky because they did not specify the exact kernel. mainline could be any of the kernels tagged as stable that you can build from linus' git tree. i know that in the past you could run a mainline linux on intel 368 chips but today you probably can not because official support was dropped a while ago.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Part of me wishes I still had my families old 386 or commodore knock-off. Read some of the terrible short stories I wrote, play tanks. I remember when my Mom's friend came over with a stack of 5~1/4~ floppies and installed a program that played the Loonie Toons theme song with their logo and Buggs Bunny captioned saying "That's all folks." It blew my mind, video (sort of) on a computer, how was that even possible. I wondered how they got it to connect to the cable cause no way a computer could do that. Dang I'm getting old lol.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If posted in the right circles, this might motivate someone to get something on a Spartan 6 that runs Linux.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Damn .. https://numato.com/kb/saturn-microblaze-and-linux-how-run-linux-saturn-spartan-6-fpga-module-part-i/ I was hoping to find a comment, maybe, not a complete guide.

Also, didn't know that you could run it in a microblaze instance

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Linux 🤝 DooM

Running on literally fucking anything

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Doom runs without MMU or even MPU. Maybe can run even without context switching.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

You can run a "soft" (semi-hard?) Processor on a Spartan, you could run Linux on that at least.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I guess the blurry Samsung in the center is an ARM?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

it's an fpga with no arm

You can make arm in fpga. Or more realistically RISC-V.