“I'm standing here at a fast food place, looking at their menu, and I wonder if I can substitute a milk shake for the soda in a combo meal. How can I possibly get the answer? I know! I'll post a question on an internet forum instead of asking the person in front of me that works there!”
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
After banging my head on bizarre MS-DOS driver APIs and lack of coherent documentation for a couple of weeks: progress! My #FujiNet RS232 SYS driver not only is able to automatically set the time on boot, but I can remotely access a 360k disk image from @tschak's TNFS server and run a program from it. (Albeit quite slowly since the disk interface speed is throttled at 9600 for the moment. Still faster than C64 though!)
[#]RetroComputing #VintageComputing #MSDOS #Luggable
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Put an Open Watcom 1.9 "recipe" for building from source into a Dockerfile so that there's at least some kind of documentation for how to do it.
https://github.com/FozzTexx/open-watcom
[#]RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I think I might have figured it out! There’s a completely undocumented tribal knowledge secret you have to know: the libraries aren't part of Open Watcom. You have to get them from the original MS-DOS Watcom C compiler. 🤦🏻♂️
#RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I don't think Open Watcom actually works, at least not if you compile it yourself. That means the only way to use it is a pre-built binary, only available for DOS/Windows, which is not what I'm interested in. This is just a simple hello_world.c and should easily compile, not spew out errors complaining that libraries are missing and there's no main() function (“small_code is an undefined reference”).
[#]RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It seems like build.sh never built the libraries:
Warning! W1008: cannot open clibs.lib : No such file or directory
Warning! W1008: cannot open math87s.lib : No such file or directory
Warning! W1008: cannot open emu87.lib : No such file or directory
If I do a find in the open watcom source tree they definitely aren't there.
[#]RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The instructions for building Open Watcom are pretty sparse. Just say "run build.sh and voila! Everything will just work!" Except that's not the case. #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Fighting with building Open Watcom on Linux & compiling/linking. wcc compiles simple hello world, but wlink errors:
__STK is an undefined reference
printf_ is an undefined reference
cstart is an undefined reference
small_code is an undefined reference
[#]RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
New #Insentricity post: Getting #Linux to boot on a Toshiba T5200, a 386 luggable with only 4MB of RAM. Linux doesn’t love being this RAM-starved, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The biggest challenge? Compatibility: LOADLIN’s supposed bzImage support and getting Linux to work with my impossibly large (for the period) hard drive.
https://www.insentricity.com/a.cl/289/rekernel-linux-on-a-386-again
[#]RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Ran out of episodes of Gilligan's Island so I figured why not watch the cartoon version? All the characters have completely different personalities than they had on the live action show. And the voice actors seem to just be reading lines alone in a studio and later all the different actors were spliced together. There's no real interaction between characters and the line reading is so lifeless.
[#]Cartoons #GilligansIsland
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
After making a couple of small patches to the header files that were borrowed from buildroot, I was able to get GNU make to bootstrap itself with TinyCC (using a Docker container with just the buildroot rootfs). One step closer to Python3 on the 386! #Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
TWO MORE days of fighting with buildroot and TinyCC and finally I can compile a Hello World! And it doesn’t swap itself to death even though it has very little RAM available.
[#]Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
2 days of fighting with buildroot trying to get Tiny C onto the Toshiba by crafting my own package/tcc/tcc.mk. tcc runs and prints help but it didn't install all the rest of the stuff it needs in order to compile. 😖🤦♂️
cc: @nina_kali_nina @bigkrimpin @nanochess @huronbikes @anthk
[#]Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I wonder if I could use this giant RAM card to add more RAM to my Toshiba T5200. Well, more RAM that would be useful for Linux. #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Got a more complete busybox running on T5200! Started with buildroot commit before 386 support was completely removed, hunted down by @jason_duerstock. Fought getting it to compile because of cross-compile issues and slightly incomplete 386 support. Should give me a base to build on top of. Not sure yet if I want to go full "roll your own distro" w/package manager or manually compile things I want to add. Doubt anyone else wants to run Linux on a 386.
#Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> View attached media | View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
What?!? Where's the i386 option, buildroot? #Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Got it to boot on the Toshiba! It’s seriously RAM starved and gray386 doesn’t even have swapon. It looks like I’m probably going to have to roll my own distro just for this computer. Many many tools missing and I need to add modules to the kernel. #Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Got gray386 to load in 4MB! I recompiled the kernel to move PHYS down to 0x100000, extracted the initramfs and put it on an ext2 formatted floppy. Loaded with LINLD and root=/dev/fd0. Can't try this on the Toshiba yet since the Toshiba doesn't have a working floppy drive. #Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
If I bump up the emulated RAM to 8MB then I can also use LINLD to get gray386 to boot and give me a shell.
[#]Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Found LINLD and I'm able to get my own custom v2.4.37 kernel to load on an emulated 386 with 4MB of RAM! I had to put the root filesystem on /dev/fd0 since there's not enough RAM for an initrd.
Not sure where the source for LINLD is, I found a copy of the .COM file here: https://distro.ibiblio.org/slitaz/boot/
#Linux #RetroComputing #VintageComputing
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile with reblog | Go to fozztexx@fozztexx.com account This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini
