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Minimum RAM for ELKS?

DISCUSSION Dave Mills 3 participants 4 messages May 15, 2006 – May 17, 2006

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Dave Mills

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#0 lore raw

Hi,

I'm planning to fiddle with ELKS on an 8086 system at some time in the near future. The system has very minimal RAM (~200k). Does anyone have any idea (or even better, experience) about ELKS in such a low RAM configuration? I realise that I'll probably not get much more than the kernel booting, as other software running will require more RAM than I have.

Getting to the stage where ELKS boots and my application prints "I'm alive!" over the serial port is my first target.

cheers,
Dave

#1 lore raw

Hey Dave
Use Bochs emulator. Set the RAM to how much ever your target machine has, and use an elks image and see if it works. iF it works on this setting, it should work on your target hardware as well.

Vikas

Quoted 18 lines · Dave Mills

Hi,

I'm planning to fiddle with ELKS on an 8086 system at some time in the near future. The system has very minimal RAM (~200k). Does anyone have any idea (or even better, experience) about ELKS in such a low RAM configuration? I realise that I'll probably not get much more than the kernel booting, as other software running will require more RAM than I have.

Getting to the stage where ELKS boots and my application prints "I'm alive!" over the serial port is my first target.

cheers,
Dave
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#2 lore raw
Quoted 9 lines · --- Vikas Kumar

Hey Dave
Use Bochs emulator. Set the RAM to how much ever your target machine
has, and use an elks image and see if it works. iF it works on this
setting, it should work on your target hardware as well.

Vikas

I remember there being an option in the ELKS configuration about how many 64 KB memory pages were necessary, and the minimum was 4 (256 KB). Also, I've noticed that even on a modern system with the full 640 KB possible, the ash and rc shells don't run (if sash isn't linked to /bin/sh, it crashes on bootup).

Quoted 23 lines · Dave Mills
Quoted 3 lines

Hi,

I'm planning to fiddle with ELKS on an 8086 system

at some time in the

Quoted 1 line

near future. The system has very minimal RAM

(~200k). Does anyone have

Quoted 1 line

any idea (or even better, experience) about ELKS

in such a low RAM

Quoted 1 line

configuration? I realise that I'll probably not

get much more than the

Quoted 1 line

kernel booting, as other software running will

require more RAM than I have.

Quoted 2 lines

Getting to the stage where ELKS boots and my

application prints "I'm

Quoted 6 lines

alive!" over the serial port is my first target.

cheers,
Dave
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line

Quoted 19 lines

"unsubscribe linux-8086" in

Quoted 2 lines

the body of a message to [email protected] More majordomo info at

http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Quoted 1 line
Signature · 10 lines
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to
help my uncle Jack
off a horse.." and "I had to help my uncle jack off
a horse.."
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author
#3 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Tom McCabe
Quoted 8 lines · --- Vikas Kumar

Hey Dave
Use Bochs emulator. Set the RAM to how much ever your target machine
has, and use an elks image and see if it works. iF it works on this
setting, it should work on your target hardware as well.

Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 1 line

Vikas

I remember there being an option in the ELKS configuration about how many 64 KB memory pages were necessary, and the minimum was 4 (256 KB). Also, I've noticed that even on a modern system with the full 640 KB possible, the ash and rc shells don't run (if sash isn't linked to /bin/sh, it crashes on bootup).

Thanks Vikas & Tom. I'll give the bochs idea a try. I'm really just trying to get the smallest kernel running that I can.

cheers,
Dave