‘My Business Card Runs Linux’
December 24th, 2019Via: thirtythreeforty:
This is the finished product. It is a complete, minimal ARM computer running my customized Linux firmware built with Buildroot.
It has a USB port in the corner. If you plug it into a computer, it boots in about 6 seconds and shows up over USB as a flash drive and a virtual serial port that you can use to log into the card’s shell. The flash drive has a README file, a copy of my résumé, and some of my photography. The shell has several games and Unix classics such as fortune and rogue, a small 2048, and a small MicroPython interpreter.
All this is accomplished on a very small 8MB flash chip. The bootloader fits in 256KB, the kernel is 1.6MB, and the whole root filesystem is 2.4MB. So, there’s plenty of space for the virtual flash drive. It also includes a writable home directory, on the off chance that anyone creates something they want to keep. This is also saved on the flash chip, which is properly wear leveled with UBI.
The whole thing costs under $3. It’s cheap enough to give away. If you get one from me, I’m probably trying to impress you.
