ELKS was started in 1995 by Alan Cox, back when there were still tons of pre-386 Intel machines around. It’s amazing it has persisted this long (although without Cox’s involvement in over 20 years)!
I was not aware of that.
What is a little odd to me is that ELKS seems to treat the x86 world as having 2 discontinuous steps:
XT class kit (the 8086 and 8088, and if you’re going to be very inclusive, the NEC V20 and V30 and so on).
16-bit, segmented architecture, no memory management, 1MB address space.
And x86-32.
Whereas actually there are 3:
XT-class: 8088/8086.
AT-class: 80286 and clones, 16-bit, 16GB RAM, protect mode, reasonably capable Unix machines in the 1980s.
ELKS for ’286 could work.
ELKS for 8088 I am amazed does anything at all.
ELKS was started in 1995 by Alan Cox, back when there were still tons of pre-386 Intel machines around. It’s amazing it has persisted this long (although without Cox’s involvement in over 20 years)!
I was not aware of that.
What is a little odd to me is that ELKS seems to treat the x86 world as having 2 discontinuous steps:
XT class kit (the 8086 and 8088, and if you’re going to be very inclusive, the NEC V20 and V30 and so on).
16-bit, segmented architecture, no memory management, 1MB address space.
And x86-32.
Whereas actually there are 3:
XT-class: 8088/8086.
AT-class: 80286 and clones, 16-bit, 16GB RAM, protect mode, reasonably capable Unix machines in the 1980s.
And x86-32.
ELKS for ’286 could work.
ELKS for 8088 I am amazed does anything at all.