The Contiki operating system is a multi-tasking operating system with full TCP/IP support. Contiki is designed for memory contrained devices ranging from tiny 8-bit embedded microcontrollers to old 8-bit homecomputers like the Commodore 64. Here is a screenshot of Contiki rendering the mobile/text-mode version of OSNews (double sized, C64 only does 320×200 in this mode).The 1.2-devel0 release contains packages for the Commodore 64 and the Atmel AVR microcontroller. The Contiki demo server is up and running the 1.2-devel0 release on this Ethernut board.
The 1.2-devel0 release brings two forms of multi-threading to Contiki: traditional stack-based threads and a new kind of lightweight stackless threads called protothreads. The kernel has been rewritten with a cleaner API and with support for dynamically loadable and unloadable services such as file systems or GUI drivers. Additionally, and FTP client and an IRC client have been written and are included in the 1.2-devel0 release.
To be honest I can’t see all that much point in making an OS for old computers like the C64 and Apple 2; but I have to admit it’s pretty impressive!
It’s a shame that there wasn’t an OS like Contiki produced for the 8bit computers back when they were popular home PCs. Back in the 80s I imagine that there would have been a lot of commercial software support for an OS like Contiki. It would have made the 8bit computers more powerful than early Macs in some ways, Mac OS didn’t really have multitasking until multifinder.
but as said, for *embedded* devices. those are like “old computers”, you know. low powered and so on
It is also like something “look, it can be done”, and do do such an efford you need know-how and good programming skills.
It is a good reference to the programmers to be able to put a whole operating system with modern features into a c64.
maby you all miss the point of this OS..? It’s designed to connect your cigaret lighter to the internet!
The most sage advice I’ve ever learned from /. is:
If you have to ask “Why?”, then you’re not part of the target audience.
There’s no ,,why” while we’re talking about C-OS. Just because. Because it’s possible.
Look at Contiki, see what it can do on a lowly C64.
Now just imagine if a group of programmers where to do an OS as optimized and clean in code for computers that we have today…. Wow…
That’s exactly what I think, but it also shows how crappy OS’s and technologies are today (IMHO the only one who does a nice 21th century job is MacOSX)..with all those 2,3 ghz cpus and look Microsoft XP!!!!! its like a joke.
Let me ask a question to all of you out there..
who’s to blame?
Regards.
“who’s to blame?”
It’s probably those damm users, wanting more than telnet, a text editor, a text web browser, a calculator and a process list.
> IMHO the only one who does a nice 21th century job is MacOSX
IMHO there are a few other OSes who do a whole lot better 21th century job than Apple’s Mac OS X.
,,It’s probably those damm users, wanting more than telnet”
You’re sooo right. Not to mention multitasking, image & video editing, ritch text editors, 3D games. :->
i’ve still a cute 386 booksize pc (sx16, 4MB Ram) at home which i would like to re-activate 🙂
Less lines of code –> less bugs, better security, much faster…
Maybe Bill was right after all. 640 KB IS ENOUGH for anybody 🙂
get that up to 8mb of ram and get an ne2000 compatible isa NIC and load up the qnx demo floppy and get online
I have my 386sx-25mhz with 12mb of ram online using that wonderful floppy.
full gui and everything
Where can I get a link for the floppy of QNX. All the downloads on their site seem to need a host OS. I have none on a machine that just won’t accept DOS or windows. I’d love to give QNX a try.
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Now just imagine if a group of programmers where to do an OS as optimized and clean in code for computers that we have today…. Wow…
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Wasn’t that called BeOS?!
I looked into it in the past, looking for an OS that wuld support my NES…. but back then, it didn’t support any inputs. Let me check it out now…….
http://qnx.projektas.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm
that site has some screen shots and a download for the network demo disk.
http://cjmatsel.dyndns.org/ftp/qnx_demo/
This site has the img files for the network disk and the dialup disk.
give it a try
works on a 386 and up and atleast 8mb of ram.
Contiki is actually designed for any kind of system where memory is constrained and where IP networking is of interest. While Contiki started out as a small hobby project of mine, it from the start built on technology from the embedded world, including my uIP IP stack for small embedded systems. Contiki has matured quite a lot since then and is today starting to see use in embedded networked systems. And like someone pointed out, old computers and modern embedded systems of the “smallish” kind have many similarities so the same techniques can readily be used on either type of system.
Regarding the bloatedness of modern software, I can only agree with the people that said that the reason for modern software size often can be traced back to the amount of features. Contiki clearly has so incredibly much fewer features than any OS for “large” systems.
I know there is work going on towards bringing Contiki to the very low-end x86 computers (8086/80286 and similar), but I don’t know the status of these ports. For a powerful beast like the 386 with megabytes of memory, QNX is probably a much better choice anyway 🙂 Remember that Contiki is designed for systems where RAM is counted in tens of kilobytes or less.