vm-display-fbdev on Aarch64/RasPi

 
Greetings,

While I like the idea of SqueakNOS (Squeak on Bare Metal), having a
short life I prefer to work on value added.

The (old) idea being to use a "shim" OS which takes care of memory,
networking, USB drivers and which I do not have to support.

I basically develop on aarch64/arm64 chips, so naturally took a look at
revitalizing the framebuffer display: vm-display-fbdev.

Progress so far:
   I can run both Cuis and Squeak images on Rasperry Pi 3 under Alpine
Linux, which is a very slim Linux using MUSL (vs libc) and busybox (vs
many separate commands).  Both stack and Cog VMs run.

The VM _is_ the window system.  You will need to build the VM.

If any intrepid explorers out there wish to help out or just take a
look, I have a repository with instructions and the fb-display-fbdev
code:
   https://github.com/KenDickey/FBDevVM

Also, the complete build tree for aarch64+MUSL+libevdev with updated
mvm's:
   https://github.com/KenDickey/opensmalltalk-vm

Bug reports (or better yet, fixes!) and help cleaning up the C code is
very much appreciated!

Enjoy!
-KenD

PS: Yes, the cursor looks funny.  Early days..

 
Hi Ken,

Super cool!  Looking forward to using this on Mankato with console login.

>
> The VM _is_ the window system.  You will need to build the VM.

And so one could launch squeak instead of X11 and post boot get straight there?  Fab!

Commiting should be like voting, early and often :-). Looking forward to integrating this.  Thx!!!

Eliot
_,,,^..^,,,_ (phone)

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