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Dreamcast Could Pick Up Inferno And Plan 9

Posted by timothy on from the that's-right-just-ninety-nine-dollars dept.

woggo writes: "I just got the Vita Nuova newsletter for February. It appears that they are planning a port of Plan 9 and Inferno (the recently open-sourced operating systems from Bell Labs) to the Hitachi SH3 and SH4. I quote: "It would be good to hear from readers that have a suitable board to target for a reference port. Failing that, we have got our own ideas!)" Guess it's time to vote for everyone's favorite $99 MIPS computer...." According to the Vita Nuova site, "First, we are working on a port of the compiler suite to generate code for the SH series [of Hitachi chips]. Once that is done, we can start on an Inferno port (it being easier to port Inferno than Plan 9)." Update: 02/07 04:15 PM by T : Mitch Davis of the Linux on SuperH team wrote:"[this] article called the DreamCast "everyone's favorite $99 MIPS computer". Just so you know, the DreamCast is powered by a Hitachi SuperH processor, not a MIPS." Thanks for the correction, Mitch.

4 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. What are SH-3/4's used in? by CarrotLord · · Score: 4
    Seriously, they must have a better business reason to be thinking about porting it to SH-3/4 than old dreamcasts... surely? Who would want Inferno or Plan 9 on a Dreamcast anyway? Surely the esoteric-OS and Dreamcast markets are almost entirely separate? What are they really targetting here?

    rr

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    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
    1. Re:What are SH-3/4's used in? by fatphil · · Score: 3

      SH3 is fairly common in the embedded telecomms world as a general purpose processor. (Nowhere near the variaous ARMs and Moto processors though, and I'm not talking about the DSP side either - Moto and TI and AD have that side sown up).

      FP.
      -- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards

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      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
  2. Kinda neat by Sc00ter · · Score: 4
    The dreamcast would make a wonderful settop box. It's got a keyboard, modem, ethernet.. what more could you want? NFS mount you mp3 drive off your linux box and it's an MP3 player too. NFS mount all your videos and play mpegs on your TV.

    I think this is all very cool, once they get a good set top suite going for it it would be worth it. Put in your CD and surf the web, check your email... save all your settings (ip address and whatnot) on the VMU and you're good to go...


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  3. Cheap X-terminal + game console by deno · · Score: 3
    I do not really care about Plan 9 (then again, why not), but a cheap game console with integrated network card, which could also be used as an X-terminal would have my full attention.

    Even an console which would just offer me ssh-shell would be interesting, since most of the time I just use pine. X would be better though.