Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 4th Nov 2007 15:45 UTC
"Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the Minix OS - a cousin of Linux [I beg your pardon?] - running on his homebrew minicomputer, today at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. Magic-1, built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA."
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Member since:
2007-07-24
He did write his own OS. It was only recently that he ported minix.
This project would be no less interesting if he really had just used minix from the beginning. It simply isn't practical to undertake a project at this level of technology without relying on the work of others. Very long chains of specialized skills are needed to design/manufacture/program a working computer, and the particular set of skills that Buzbee synthesized to build this system by himsef is already quite uncommon.
The point of a project like this isn't to show off to the world that one man is a technological island any more than it is to create a fabulous new consumer product. Bill Buzbee is now smarter than he was before he started the project. The machine itself, the software that runs on it, and the opinions of onlookers are just secondary artifacts. One could easily buy a better computer anywhere, but the insight he must have gained can only be earned.