Looking to buy old 68k Mac in Nova Scotia
I have this crazy idea of porting uCLinux to the 68000-based Macs.
Regular Linux won't run on such old hardware because they don't have
memory management hardware, but uCLinux is among other things a patch
that removes the need for an MMU from the linux kernel.
(It also removes memory protection and security, but then the Mac
classic didn't have those either.)
uCLinux runs on the Motorola Dragonball embedded CPU, which uses the 68k
instruction set architecture, so it should run on a Mac if I can write
drivers for its hardware. I haven't tried yet to find specs for any of
it yet.
If you have an old Mac Classic or Mac SE lying around that still works,
I'll pay a fair price for it. But note that the last time I bought an
SE, I paid ten bucks for it, from the Goodwill Bargain Barn in Santa
Cruz, California. It still worked and everything - I dug up some system
floppies and was able to boot and install on the hard drive. I had to
leave it behind when we moved to Canada though, we had way too much stuff.
uCLinux can be found at http://www.uclinux.org/
If you're anywhere near where I live in Truro Nova Scotia, I can come
pick it up. I'll pay shipping from other places if it's not too bad.
It might be hard to convince Customs Canada that a computer is only
worth ten bucks.
I also miss doing 68k assembly code. I used to really enjoy it.
Email me at crawford@goingware.com
Ever Faithful,
Mike Crawford
Read "GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks" at:
http://www.goingware.com/tips/
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