Top all-time · #473
Dmitry
Personal blog · dmitry.gr · on HN as dmitrygrhardwaresystems
Dmitry's personal blog at dmitry.gr covers hardware and systems. Since 2013, 121 different Hacker News readers have linked it 204 times, most often “Linux on an 8-Bit Micro? (2012)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Dmitry's retro and embedded hacking write-ups, especially his Linux-on-an-8-bit-AVR emulation project and his Palm OS and LinuxCard projects. Commenters find them fun, inspiring and worth reading.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called fun to read, inspiring, worth visiting and a good read; one RP2350 write-up was a bright spot.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Dmitry.GR: Dmitry.GR: Projects
Most-linked posts?
- Linux on an 8-Bit Micro? (2012)14 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2019-06-06
- Linux on an 8-bit micro13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2013-04-20
- RePalm – Hardware Emulation of PalmOS9 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2019-04-26
- Linux on an 8-Bit Micro? (2012)9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2017-12-04
- My business card runs Linux8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-07-11
- Linux/4004: booting Linux on Intel 4004 for fun, art, and no profit6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-09-20
- rePalm: Towards the first unauthorized PalmOS port5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-11-04
- Linux on an 8-bit micro? (2012)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-09-20
- Hacking eInk Price Tags (2021)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-03-25
- Linux on an 8-bit micro?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-12-26
What Hacker News says?
How about some physics about this? Here is some... http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=01.%20Hyper...
Comment linking /index.php?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=01.%20Hyperloop
on “Hyperloop”Submitted I got almost all of my wishes granted with RP2350 as a story · 700 points
HN discussionUsing QSPI RAM with RP2040's SSI in read-write mode http://dmitry.gr/?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=10.%20RomRam
Comment linking /?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=10.%20RomRam
on “MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5”Submitted Linux/4004: booting Linux on Intel 4004 for fun, art, and no profit as a story · 572 points
HN discussionrePalm still http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm https://www.reddit.com/r/Palm/comments/fk26qv/respring_first...
Comment linking /?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm
on “Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?”Submitted An interactive-speed Linux computer made of only 3 8-pin chips as a story · 441 points
HN discussionThe Z80 can't run Linux due to the lack of an MMU. (Though it's possible to get around that through emulation: see http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit for example.)
Comment linking /?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit
on “Collapse OS”Submitted Linux on an 8-bit micro as a story · 436 points
HN discussionI felt old when I realized that someone had put my first "big boy" unix computer, a decstation 3100 with 24 mb of ram, onto a business card. https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=33.%20LinuxCard
Comment linking /?r=05.Projects&proj=33.%20LinuxCard
on “What Sun got wrong”Submitted My business card runs Linux as a story · 433 points
HN discussionre: #4 Watch out for a few things: 1. Refreshes are much slower on 3-color eInk panels than on monochrome ones (eg: 20 sec vs 2) 2. Partial refresh on 3-color panels is rare and quickly gets messy around the edges. Partial refresh on monochrome panels is a relatively simple thing to do. 3. Greyscale on a 3-color eInk screen is VERY VERY VERY hard! Officially it is not supported at all. By any 3-color panel. I made i…
Comment linking /?r=05.Projects&proj=29.%20eInk%20Price%20Tags
on “E-Ink Magic Calendar that runs off a battery powered Raspberry Pi”Submitted Reverse Engineering an Unknown Microcontroller as a story · 326 points
HN discussionCorrect. There are a few cases where the operands don't fit into a single machine word, the most notable being many cryptographic operations. Particularly RSA and ECC, which involve multiple-precision arithmetic. There are also non-Linux cases, mostly microcontrollers. EG the Arm Cortex M0 doesn't have a hardware multiplier, the M0+ does. And then there's that one guy who got Linux running on an 8-bit AVR by emulati…
Comment linking /?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit
on “Linux Rust Support”Submitted Documenting Sony Memory Stick as a story · 216 points
HN discussionYeah when somebody says something like 'deeply embedded' the platform that comes to my mind is the Dreamcast VMU, which has a cpu that doesn't (AFAICT) yet even have a C compiler. ("C compiler....the idea was abandoned."-- https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=25.%20VMU%20Hacking ) I doubt something written in Rust would be adequate for such a CPU.
Comment linking /?r=05.Projects&proj=25.%20VMU%20Hacking
on “Hubris – A small operating system for deeply-embedded computer systems”Submitted PalmOS on FisherPrice Pixter Toy as a story · 195 points
HN discussionI used it to make this PWA work well on iPhones: http://dmitry.gr/89
Comment linking /89
on “We analyzed 425k favicons”Submitted Updating my plane’s very old GPS data in a very modern way as a story · 195 points
HN discussionI did that with PalmOS - a card that you insert into the original Pilot (16MHz 68k) and it takes over, runs PalmOS5 on a 200MHz ARM chip, using the pilot as a display and touch panel. Also did it using memory stick IO protocol too (Ctrl+F for "MSIO") https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm
Comment linking /?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm
on “Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges”Submitted My business card runs Linux and Ultrix (2022) as a story · 192 points
HN discussionThis is Dmitry Grinberg[1] some of whose absolutely amazing projects (like, running Palm OS on other devices) have recently gotten some traction here on HN. (In particular, he managed to get Palm OS running on the badges in question ). If there's one person whose credibility I wouldn't doubt on those matters, it's him. [1] https://dmitry.gr
Comment linking /
on “Defcon stiffs badge HW vendor, drags FW author offstage during talk”Submitted Linux on an 8-Bit Micro? (2012) as a story · 192 points
HN discussionMan. I've never been to defcon, but it's been more than a passing curiosity ever since the first real announcement[0] crossed my BBS in '93. And recently I've had a string of bad, unalterable, and irrevocably-permanent events occur in my life. And yet, I'm very pleased to say that your write-up on your experiences with the RP2350[1] presented a small but meaningfully-positive thing for me to look forward to. Please…
Comment linking /?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=11.%20RP2350
on “Defcon stiffs badge HW vendor, drags FW author offstage during talk”Submitted RePalm – Hardware Emulation of PalmOS as a story · 175 points
HN discussionI am continually amazed by how often something mentioned on Hacker News comes within an unreasonable proximity to something that I have done recently. I couldn't get something like that done one-shot with Claude. On the other hand, Claude did give me a lot of assistance at writing this https://gist.github.com/Lerc/43540d8d581b2be8155a6a4e6e85c94... Which is a Micropython setup of a ST7789 SPI display on a RP2350 usi…
Comment linking /?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=09.ComplexPioMachines
on “An LLM is a lossy encyclopedia”Submitted Linux on an 8-bit microcontroller as a story · 172 points
HN discussion1) Your program to run is the operating system. This board has USB bootloader but probably can be erased. 2) Sometimes open, sometimes shared source or sometimes supplied as binary blobs. 3) No, there's not enough RAM, nor there is DRAM interface, nor it has MMU with hardware physical-virtual memory translation that Linux requires. Dmitry Grinberg's "uARM" ARMv5TE emulator[0] might still work if it is absolutely nec…
Comment linking /index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit
on “Raspberry Pi Pico and RP2040 Microcontroller”Submitted My business card runs Linux and Ultrix (2022) as a story · 155 points
HN discussionThe most frustrating thing when reading about keyboard vendors implementing such insecure protocols is knowing that the nRF24LE1 chip Microsoft uses has all it needs for security: hardware accelerated support for AES , as well as a hardware random number generator [1]. Some comments here suggest using public/private crypto as a fix, but it would not even be necessary. During manufacturing they could simply generate…
Comment linking /index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=11.%20Bluetooth%20LE%20fakery
on “KeySweeper – Arduino-based passive wireless keyboard sniffer”Submitted Linux on an 8-bit micro? (2012) as a story · 152 points
HN discussion
