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posted by
LaminatorX
on Friday February 21 2014, @05:33AM
from the I-don't-care,-I'm-still-free.-You-can't-take-the-garage-from-me dept.
from the I-don't-care,-I'm-still-free.-You-can't-take-the-garage-from-me dept.
demonlapin writes:
"Brian Benchoff at Hackaday has an ambitious new project: a homebrew computer based not on a classic 8-bit processor like the Z80 or 6502, but on the 16-bit Motorola 68000. It's a backplane-based machine with wire-wrapped connections planned. His first summary post is here. Blinkenlights are planned."
[ED Note: With so much commercially available hardware getting more and more locked down, projects like this are a good reminder of what is possible for a dedicated enthusiast.]
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Homebrew 68000-based Computer Build
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There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @10:33PM
> I believe Unix needs a MMU to run properly.
As other people have mentioned, uCLinux can run on a 68000 [eetimes.com] without an MMU!
(Score: 1) by darinbob on Saturday February 22 2014, @12:23AM
Yea, but that's not really Unix. And I'm saying that as someone who believes Linux is Unix.
Basically you're left without memory protection; which doesn't really make something non-Linux by itself.
However you are unable to dynamically grow the size of heap or stack for processes. So like Minix you either allocate a standard stack size for everything or you specify a specific stack individually for each process. All memory is shared, everyone presumably allocates from the same heap, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 22 2014, @01:02AM
> Yea, but that's not really Unix. And I'm saying that as someone who believes Linux is Unix.
True. But given the limitations of the 68000, I would rather run something Linux-like than System 7-like. If you can't have memory protection, you might as well have preemptive multitasking!