My business card runs Linux and Ultrix (2022)(dmitry.gr)
dmitry.gr
My business card runs Linux and Ultrix (2022)
http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=33.%20LinuxCard
64 comments
I remember these! And they weren't exactly circle CD-ROMs either, they had round sides but then straight top and bottom, so you could fit them in a business card holder / wallet. I always thought these were pretty cool.
I remember seeing a few of these too. For reference, this is what they typically looked like from my experience.
https://mediaduplication.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
https://mediaduplication.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
Any drive that wasn't one where you insert the CD could read those, including portable music players of the time. You could buy mini CD'R's and burn all kinds of mini distros to it.
They came in all sorts of shapes. I distinctly recall jars of peanut butter having shirt-shaped ones in the lid for a while. Something like this[0]. As I understand it since CDs are written from the inside-out, you can make them roughly any shape you like as long as it's more or less balanced. You'll just lose capacity.
[0] http://www.dvdreplication.co.nz/packaging/dvd-cases/mini_sha...
[0] http://www.dvdreplication.co.nz/packaging/dvd-cases/mini_sha...
I had pokemon TCG on one of those disks. Those were the days.
They were cool, until you loaded them into a 4 cd autoloader and they got stuck. Not that I ever did that... :)
It's a 32bit 48Mhz CPU, clocked to 90Mhz. I used to run a major EFnet server on Linux on a 25Mhz 386 in about 1996.
If you'd given me this business card in the mid-90s, it would have been useable as my primary desktop.
If you'd given me this business card in the mid-90s, it would have been useable as my primary desktop.
It's software emulated though. The actual speed is equivalent to around 1MHz.
Intrestingly the tiny Cortex M0+ is has about 4x the coremark per MHz of 386 (and twice 486).
See https://www.eembc.org/coremark/scores.php and https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/coremark-mhz
Intrestingly the tiny Cortex M0+ is has about 4x the coremark per MHz of 386 (and twice 486).
See https://www.eembc.org/coremark/scores.php and https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/coremark-mhz
Here's one with 533MHz ARM926EJ core, 32 megs of RAM and 8 megs of Flash. No emulation here.
https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/my-business-c...
Ah, that's the one I remember. That's wild. People mention they bought that CPU for 60 cents. That was five years ago.
I think I'd maxed my 386 server out with 8MB of RAM.
That chip is the stuff of a madman's dreams in 1996.
I think I'd maxed my 386 server out with 8MB of RAM.
That chip is the stuff of a madman's dreams in 1996.
If I could make my eMachine run Linux, this thing would have been a breeze!
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The PCB edge connector to USB-C is a nice trick. I need to steal that one for my next project.
I'm confused about that part. He said he used a 0.8mm thick board. But the repo he linked said the board should be 0.6mm.
https://github.com/Pinuct/Eagle_PCB_USB_connectors
https://github.com/Pinuct/Eagle_PCB_USB_connectors
0.6 is too thin and makes poor contact. 0.7 is best but no board house makes it. 0.8 works.
That Atmel chip sounds like quite a heck to work with... the DMA section alone. Also related, 'Improving RAM bandwidth' section.
The author's final conclusion about the chip... "Thanks for nothing, Atmel."
I wonder if there are better options available today, but I fear anything useful might involve BGA or similar surface mount techniques.
The author's final conclusion about the chip... "Thanks for nothing, Atmel."
I wonder if there are better options available today, but I fear anything useful might involve BGA or similar surface mount techniques.
> I wonder if there are better options available today
Rp2350. That’s what I’m basing my next revision of this project on
Rp2350. That’s what I’m basing my next revision of this project on
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/
0.5MB RAM and 4MB of flash might not sound like a lot, but that's plenty for many micro computer system environments.
0.5MB RAM and 4MB of flash might not sound like a lot, but that's plenty for many micro computer system environments.
It supports QSPI PSRAM natively. So it’ll be a lot faster than doing in manually on ATSAMD21
Also M33 vs M0 and higher clock - should be 2-3x faster. And maybe you can do something with the second core.
Im super impressed you got this to work! The memories of the SAMD clocks... Shudders.
Im super impressed you got this to work! The memories of the SAMD clocks... Shudders.
I found an older HN thread from about a month ago while trying to learn more about the RP2350
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41214307
It seems that it didn't get much coverage at the time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41214307
It seems that it didn't get much coverage at the time.
Maybe I missed something, but what does this cost?
under $15 ea to build in small quantities, less for more
That’s cheaper than I thought.
I nominate "ultrix" as the most ironic name ever for a piece of software. Not only was it not the last, it turned out to be one of the first!
Did it derive from ultimate, or ultra (beyond unix)? I assumed the latter.
Regardless, it seems like bad branding in retrospect.
Cool, imagine after a collapse of civilization, last survivors dig out this, as the cornerstone to rebuild the old-time industry.
This card has such a sci-fi taste.
This card has such a sci-fi taste.
this is amazing! the one sin you've committed is not running neofetch / fetch lol. I want to learn a lot more about booting in this aspect. It seems pretty neat that all it really does is load a couple of addresses that then look for an ELF binary vmlinux that is parsed and ran. Seems fairly simple all things considered.
Just from the schematic, it took me longer than necessary to figure out the leftmost symbol was for USB-C
I must say, I love the tagline
“creating order out of chaos (or reverse if needed)”
“creating order out of chaos (or reverse if needed)”
The tenacity if this guy is insane.
Very Cool!
very cool
Very impressive! Thanks for sharing.
No PalmOS, Dmitry?
Lol, I kid, this is awesome.
Lol, I kid, this is awesome.
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sys_64738(2)
dools(1)
everyone acting like they can’t just reach out to a recruiter for a quarter million dollar job and need these standout things
Most CD-ROM drives in PCs had a small inner ring that could hold "mini CDs" with a smaller diameter than a full CD, and a truncated version of this could be a business card CD (which we did not invent; it was commercially available from CD duplicating companies). So, if you had a machine that was broken in some way or you just wanted an ephemeral Linux system, you could take our live CD out of your wallet and boot it in the machine's CD-ROM drive. (Since optical drives are no longer common, nowadays people would use a "live USB" instead of "live CD" for this.)
It's so cool that about 20 years of technological progress has taken us from "your business card can be a tiny optical storage medium containing a usable OS image" to "your business card can be a tiny computer containing a usable OS image" (giving a totally new meaning to "bootable business card").