Hi,
does someone know if a uClinux poritng exist on 6502 processor?
I tried to find it on internet but it seems that nothing exist.

Tnanks of any suggestions/indications.

Pipettas

I haven't heard of anybody trying it. The closest I've heard is somebody writing a Unix-like part-of-an-operating-system for the Apple IIgs called GNO/ME.

I doubt that you'd be able to fit any sort of Unix on a 6502. They got away with astonishingly small amounts of RAM, back in The Day, but they still had an MMU so that they could swap with. I also don't think that most bits of even ucLinux would be too happy with 16 bit pointers; Unix System 7 might have better results.

A 65816 would require some work because it's very different from the usual crop of processors ucLinux has been called to run upon. So possible, but it's going to require a LOT of work.

See, I don't think it's entirely worth the trouble. A 68000, Dragonball, or CPU32 is only midly more complicated than a 65816 but can run ucLinux with no problems. And a 68000 comes in a DIP format for point-to-point wiring, even. So, really, the only thing that porting it to the 65816 is good for is getting on slashdot.

I don't know what the requirements are for Unix, but the '816 does a little better than the 68000 in the sieve benchmark, and runs circles around the 68000 in interrupt performance.

Hallo pipettas,

> does someone know if a uClinux poritng exist on 6502 processor?

Never heard of uClinux before. Should I be ashamed now? www.uclinux.org and ...net cannot be found? But I guess it is Linux especially for small system and/ or based on the 680x0.

Anyway, there exists a Unix for the C64: http://lng.sourceforge.net/
Maybe interesting enough to port. I can give you C64 specific info if needed.

_________________

Guys,
thanks for your opinions.

Of course, no business intentions behind my question

It was just for technical interest and curiosity. I'm a 6502 funs I have 6502 based machines, VIC20 was my first computer.

I fully agree that uClinux porting on 6502 can't be easy. In the mean time I also realized that there is no GCC compiler for 6502 (correct?) and probably also the GNU assembler is missing (GNU tools are mandatory for uClinux).
BTW, any 6502 funs should agree that this kind of work would be really a challange and an achievment, just because not easy.

I tried to run LUnix on my C64 but is seems really poor, of course we can't expect nothing of special with only 64Kbyte of RAM but expanding with a MMU or using 65GZ032 ......

About 65GZ032, I would appreciate any indications about how to recover technical specifications.

Other comments/inputs are always welcome.

Pipettas

Hallo Pipettas,

> About 65GZ032, I would appreciate any indications about how to
> recover technical specifications.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/65gz032/ and join the group.
You're asked to send an email to the moderator. Please do that. That is my or Gideons trigger to find out if it isn't a spamrobot trying to fool us.
Once a member the docs are available.

_________________

Hi.

GNU binutils package at least seems to compile asm for 65c816 cpu( ./configure --target=w65816), haven't had too much luck yet to get the gdb compiled with same target (and gcc is lightyears away from me).
Another option besides uCLinux would perhaps be ELKS (http://elks.sf.net) but it'd require loads of assembly porting from 8086 to 'our' arch and I don't really think 6502 could pull that either, maybe with '816 though.
If you have spare time and resources to waste, you might try out kegs (http://kegs.sf.net) mac IIgs, w65c816 based apple emulator for the elks or other similar projects. You still need to obtain the rom image for the machine to boot to basic/ML monitor but should help you pretty nicely.

Regards:
Bor_Ed