Got ELKS working on Sigmarion 3!

So, I was looking at an old magazine called Mobile Press in Japanese and there was an article on it running ELKS using XT-CE. So I tried it out on my Sigmarion 3 with Pocket DOS instead, and it is working like a charm!

This floppy image worked. (fd1440.img)
https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/releases/tag/v0.6.0

Definition of ELKS according to Wikipedia:
"The Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset (ELKS), formerly known as Linux-8086, is a Linux-like operating system kernel. It is a subset of the Linux kernel, intended for 16-bit computers with limited processor and memory resources such as machines powered by Intel 8086 and compatible microprocessors not supported by 32-bit Linux."

Higher resolution image on my X (twitter) post.
https://twitter.com/_stingraze/status/1732407791820980595

Edited by stingraze 2023-12-06 3:03 PM








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Bravo, @stingraze. Now that you're up and running, what apps are you trying out?

Jake

That is great.

From time to time, I bet you can find some interesting Windows CE magazines in the used book stores of Japan.

I think I will have to edit the floppy disk image first, or try to make a HDD image that works with Pocket DOS that has ELKS inside. I have to probably use some sort of utilities found here in this Japanese site?
https://www.vector.co.jp/vpack/filearea/dos/util/disk/image/

Then probably add a really small program that will compile or run on ELKS.

This is the first time I've used ELKS properly, so I hope I can get more progress.

Thanks!

Actually, I bought 30 Mobile Press magazines off Yahoo Auction for only $9.41 + shipping for the whole thing the other day. I only had several which I bought long time ago, which I truly enjoyed.

Edited by stingraze 2023-12-06 11:05 PM

For a minute there I thought the Best People On Earth had a Windows CE app . . .





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@CE Geek

I don't quite follow. Is it Santa Claus related?

EDIT: Oh.. ELK... lol
It also seems elks.org is inaccessible from here in Japan. Maybe I will try it out later with my VPN.

Edited by stingraze 2023-12-07 7:54 AM

+1 !

This is great, will be good to hear if you can get any usable apps running.

If I'm not mistaken, there are not many apps for ELKS, but maybe I'm mistaken.


Mark

Thank you. Will have to see if I have a way to put gcc in the floppy image or have the bigger .hdd run in Pocket DOS. I think I might have to convert hard disk .img (Available in the ELKS GitHub) to .hdd so I can run it on Pocket DOS.

After I get gcc working, I can compile simple programs.

-stingraze

Edited by stingraze 2023-12-09 10:53 PM

I could cross compile a hello world program using Ubuntu 22.04 with a tool set called gcc-ia16 (https://github.com/tkchia/gcc-ia16).

The installation of gcc-ia16 went fine in Ubuntu 22.04 using this method:
https://launchpad.net/%7Etkchia/+archive/ubuntu/build-ia16/

I could make a executable by cross compiling under Ubuntu 22.04 and adding it to the floppy image using a tool called DiskExplorer 1.65E / EDITDISK.exe.
(fd1440-fat.img found here: https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/releases)

After testing it on PocketDOS running the edited fd1440-fat.img, it outputted error something to do with "(".
Not sure what's wrong, as I checked the source code online to see if it runs correctly and it did. I think it may have to do with not setting the option to "small" output for smaller RAM devices (512KB?). Also, the libs for ia16 might not be installed correctly.

I will test again soon and report back.



Edited by stingraze 2023-12-10 7:55 AM

Some good progress, stingraze.....

Look forward to more....

Thanks!
I will try to make an old environment compile this project called dev86, which seems to be able to build for 186 processor ELKS.

https://github.com/jbruchon/dev86

So, I had this idea today on how to compile. Since getting proper cross compile environment is a little difficult, I will try to see if I can get a HDD image with gcc already inside, and compile it in a DOS emulator, then take out the compiled executable from the HDD image into a floppy image.

-stingraze

So, I was looking more into this, and seems like I can use bcc instead of gcc to compile (cross compile, I think) for ELKS. It's also that bcc has been unmaintained for a long time though. I also need to hex edit some of the bcc created executable.

Some more info here:
Application programs compiled with bcc do not run
https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/issues/366

Also relevant information:
C compiler #1443
https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/issues/1443

-stingraze

Edited by stingraze 2023-12-31 12:37 AM