From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Alfonso Subject: is ELKS a toy or... what? Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 15:26:58 +0100 Sender: linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <200302031519.33989.a.martone@retepnet.it> Reply-To: a.martone@retepnet.it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Return-path: List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: linux-8086@vger.kernel.org Hi!! ELKS is a funny thing. Someone may think that is a sort of DOS substitute for old machines. These are just my humble opinions. Since I don't see anything of them treated in the ELKS documentation, I write them here waiting for some comments. I do *not* want to change the ELKS project developing phylosophy: I just try to know what is going on and -perhaps- suggest some ideas to get ELKS installed everywhere...! =:-) Why ELKS instead of DOS? I would answer: - multitasking (DOS would require rewriting of applications). This is already done. DOS style was "an application using, for code and data, all remaining memory"; ELKS allows at least "small (upto 64k+64k) applications running concurrently". This is great for embedded machines, for learning how to program, and a lot of other things... - sockets, tcp/ip, etc (DOS has no standard tcpip libs, no sockets, indecent pipe support, etc). This is still in development. A "slow" modem (14400) can be easily fitted also on a slow machine with a slow RS232 port. A simple server (http, telnet, etc) on a serial port doesn't always need a P4/2666 machine...! Think of an embedded system in your pocket. Or a ham-radio task like a KISS packet-radio router. Or a lightweight wearable computer. Or a home devices controller working 24h for your washing machine, alarm system, and lights and other (shut down the TV system if you got asleep while watching a catch match). Or a data-collector in the garage that you query from home or office using an old 2400 baud modem... - shared libs (DOS has no standard shared-libs support). This has been at least announced somewhere. I think it will require some hard work, and it'll be hardly feasible for floppydrive-only systems. This will be needed only on systems with lots of executable files. A filesystem with only few dozens binaries does not need great shared lib support. - ROMable kernel (very hard to do with MS/PCDOS), still in development. Great for embedded machines, but maybe useful also for experimenting something for more fun (diskless XT motherboards, single-applications boards, etc). A friend of mine planned to use an old XT motherboard in his car to control lights, speed, etc (to get statistics on a little screen), and (perhaps) a serial-driven GPS. The hard part wasn't the power supply, but the floppy drives to get at least 500k read-only storage for DOS and applications! Yes, he needs an ELKS eprom! - native long filenames, and different filesystems (DOS would require extra drivers and hard work; actual DOS existing applications can't - or shouldn't - use long filenames). And, even more important, you can develop and test on a Linux platform...! - '286 machines finally will become true multitasking - the expanded memory of a classic 1Mb RAM 286 machine was always used only as disk cache... and 2Mb RAM 286 machines were of too little use with a "windowed" system (remember that those "operating" systems, after years and years, still have their bluescreens and bugs!! remember that the most common multitasker, DESQview, worked only in "8086 real mode"!). - finally, a tool where experiment and learn. If you need a system with decent security, go get a 4Mb 386 machine with Linux. But if you want to play with assembler routines and old DOS sources, you're welcome :-) You get tcp/ip and multitasking and much more on a machine with limited memory and almost no security check...! A nice toy, yes, but very nice. Let's see if you can implement an SQL engine on a 256k machine. Let's see if you are able to get to IRC with it. Let's see how many relais and sensors you can control and packetize data towards your home/office tcp/ip network... Oh, well, these are only some initial ideas. If you think ELKS is "only" a "Linux for 8086", you are probably censoring the fun part (great part!) of its applications range... :-) alf