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Linux Port for N64?
Mr. Roboto writes "The tales of a guy trying to port Linux to his N-64. This page has source code and technical data, which should make lots of you happy." Not really, now I have to go out and buy one.
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when i read this i just heard that videotape of nancy kerrigan in my head (the one right after tonya's boyfriend whacked her), "whhhhyyyyyyy!!!??"
Why do you want a keyboard for the N64, if it interfaces with the PC you don't need this. That being said can you imagine a N64 as a controller for your Linux box. The N64 controller is one of the best and most egonamic controller around. I would love to play Q3A with that.
Nate Custer.
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
Imagine writing an ERP system for the Nintendo, this is cool stuff. So let's do a PostGresSQL DB on the Nintendo, it rocks! :)
Bizar technology?
I hate to say this, but this is very very old. As in, May of '98.
"Last Updated: 5.30.98"
I'm assuming he hasn't gotten very far. Oh well.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
The Dreamcast is probably a more interesting target for a Linux port. If it can run WinCE it should have room for Linux. You might even run Emacs on it (shudder. . .)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Ray, his professor, wanted to know "whether porting Linux to the N64 was feasible."
The author of the page determined it was not (or that he does not have enough time to do it), so instead he sets a simpler goal for himself:
My end goal is to develop a cable and interface a PC and the N64. For example, I want to have the N64 be able to browse a HD, or a PC issue simple commands, such as changing the color on the monitor.
I really think the lead-in for this article is misleading. He's not porting Linux to his N64.
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
i was thinking about porting linux to n64 awhile back. too much hardware hacking for me. anyway if you like hacking around with N64 platform, Dextrose.com is THE site...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
You don't need an HDD, or even a keyboard, to run Linux on a games console. What you *do* need is a small readonly filesystem on whatever the machine's native medium is, and some sort of access to a network (where there could be a telnet client, and an NFS mountable /usr, /var and /home.
The Dreamcast is ideal for this of course, because it has a modem already (not as ideal as Ethernet, but workable).
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This has been on my projects list for years...
.ru has a design to roll your own roms.
What has happened:
1) Gcc makes code for the beast
2) its well documented. (and it runs a mips CPU)
3) its got a damn fast coprocessor (that no one is using in any game)
4) bung makes a device that lets you copy code to its "rom" image. A guy in
5) www.dextrose.com exists
What needs to happen:
1) someone needs to build a decent memory card for the silly thing. It uses rambus. hint take a Pelican expansion pack (it uses 2 2mb devices) and replace its rdram with ones out of Nintendos rampack and fix the heat problem)
2) a decent HOWTO to build gcc for this thing.
3) undo the nintendo lawsuit against Bung who makes a device to run your own code on the box.
4) write a network driver to talk over the controller ports
5) someone with more time and a bit of interest
should check out a simple page with some notes about coding on the N64
Keep in mind that at upto 200m instructions per sec the thing isn't a slow box for its price.
Think the B-word and a room full of N64's...
Do they have a higher voltage than, say, my Powerbook G3 or PowerTower Pro?
If the people here can poke around in their own boxen without worry, what's the problem with a video game console (assuming it's not plugged in)?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I think the Dreamcast controllers are the worst ones ever made. Who is the retard who thought it would be a good idea to have the cable come out of the _bottom_ of the controller? It constantly hits your fingers and is just a pain in the arse all around. Why couldn't they just run it out of the top of the controller like everyone else does?
I wish that there was a decent N64 style controller for my PC. I use the original Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad, which works well. But the original N64 controllers are my favorite. I dug out the SNES last weekend for a few games of Street Fighter II Turbo, my hand was cramping up after about 15 minutes of play with those old controllers.
Oh, the original NES Advantage gets props from me for being an excellent controller also. Mine was pretty durable, and when I finally did break it, my local "Authorized Nintendo Repair Center" replaced the broken part for free.
Worst controller of all time? The old NES Max controller. That thing was plain unusable, I don't know anyone who liked them. They had this wheel/directional pad combination that was incredibly touchy and impossible to control.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
My response to the "why port Linux" posts? How about:
1) As a educational exercise.
2) To develop a version of Linux suited for embedded environments based on the N64's processor.
3) For fun.
4) For the same reason people waste time posting redundant "why"s about 18-month-dead projects mentioned on Slashdot.
See: Linux for Nintendo 64.
It's sufficiently near to technically feasible as to make it imaginable, but you'd really need to add a few MB of RAM and an NIC in order for this to be feasible for getting any actual work done. And it's a sufficiently tightly proprietary design as to make that unrealistic.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
``Here's a story about this guy trying to port Linux to...''
And, immediately following...
``Hey, how about a Beowulf cluster of these things???''
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
I wish I had the link, but I've already seen X on an N64.
:-) -- All you're doing is writing a ROM image. You do *not* need to rip the thing apart to run Linux on the pig. All the info (hell you can even get detalled info / memory maps / etc on the hardware) is available from dextrose or #n64dev on efnet. All this scope tracing / etc is bullshit if you want to really program it / port Linux to it.
:-)
And why's this guy taking everything apart to learn? dextrose has compilers, assemblers, disassemblers and all manner of documentation on programming this fscker.
Get yourself a Doctor V64 or, what I use, a Z64 and start programming. I like the latter because it's smaller, doesn't use CDs or take up a parallel port and (upon taking it apart) is an embedded 386. The V64 is a 6809 (IIRC) machine with a lot more custom circuitry.
My goal for it is to hook up a network card to it's internal PC/104 slot and get rid of the need for a Zip drive altogether. Boot via BOOTP, grab games from my server via TFTP. The source for the BIOS is available on the 'net and all it is ATM just OpenDOS with some custom executable to run the embedded PC <-- N64 part.
There's no need for custom hardware. Hell a simple ROM emulator would work. There *are* tricks to doing it in hardware (they have a lock chip on each cart IIRC) but if you got one of those V64jr units you could hack it and put a ROM emulator on that if you *really* felt you needed to. (the V64jr lets you read/write to its onboard memory with a parallel port so a ROM emulator is not necessary, but most good ROM emulators let you have breakpoints and other good things for development). From what this guy's website said, he was using custom hardware to read/write to N64 memory. Waste of time / energy / effort! Proprietary interface!
My brother already programs for the N64 (just simple stuff but his time is limited too
Mind you now, if he was the curious sort like myself, he'd have done it just for fun.
The N64 is a far-from-ideal platform for Linux - no keyboard, no networking, and almost no ram - but this could let hundreds of kids that have never used a "real" computer outside of a classroom get a feel for Linux - which is a reasonable end in itself :+)
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-=DaveHowe=-
The N64's ram is expandible, and the raw processing power of the beast is not to be toyed with (consider its cost). Ever opened up the beast and played with the memory expansion card? (I have)..
Use an ISA or PCI card that connects to the plugin, and you can use your PC's ram and HD space as memory for the thing, as the design allows the cartidges (or, in this case, computer) to contain things like expansion ram, and extra processors. You may see it as limited, but it is very expenadible, and hackable.
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