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Linux on the Gamecube?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "Previously on Slashdot we have covered the hacking and programming of numerous consoles,- the Xbox, Dreamcast , and of course the Playstation 2. With Linux migrating to all of these platforms as fast as you can blink, why isn't it that I haven't heard anything about the Gamecube.
These little beasts have been promoted by Nintendo as easy to develop for, so are there as yet any open source tools for Gamecube development? Are there any Initiatives to get an alternative OS on these systems? The feature of being able to plug a gameboy advance into one of these units makes them even more hack worthy." There was a Sourceforge project for this, but it's activity stats are fairly flat. What barriers are there in getting Linux to run on this piece of hardware, and how do they compare with the difficulties faced by similar projects on the X-Box?"
How can you burn a Linux CD-R that'll fit in the smaller drive of the Gamecube? Unless there's some way to hack the broadband adapter (is it out yet?) so that the machine can boot from a network image, there's very little chance of getting things to work.
It is 99% impossible to get software you wrote to run on the gamecube. The problem is that Nintendo, being smart to avoid piracy, always uses a proprietary media format to put games on. The Gamecube's OS doesn't do much but run games. It looks for discs and runs them.
You CAN'T make a Gamecube disc without Nintendo's help. It's a small DVD that spins the opposite direction. Nothing you can buy can make one of those.
The Gamecube will have a broadband adapter, but you can't make it boot from that. It also has no hard drive, so where are you going to store all the data? RAM?
The best bet is to explore the possibilities of the GBA link. You can make a GBA game. And you can store some data in the GBA cartridge, but not much. If the Gamecube will run and begin playing from a linked GBA the BEST you could do is have 4 GBAS with 4 different cartridges be your hard drive/boot device. Then use the broadband adapter and your computer to control everything.
All in all, even if you could make a gamecube disc, the cube isn't very useful for anything other than playing gamecube games. And codwarrior will eventually have a dev kit. So if all you want is to make games, I'm sure Nintendo will be happy to make discs if your game is extrememe high quality.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Yes, I have heard that the Gamecube is easier to develop for, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be easy to port Linux. It just means that the Gamecube has a nice API sitting on top of whatever OS they have running it, which makes programming games nice. Since the hardware is proprietary and documentation is not widely available I would imagine it is damned difficult to port Linux to the Gamecube.
Speaking of using strange media, Panasonic has licensed the gamescube engine from nintendo, and created something called the "Panasonic Q" (this has been covered on slashdot), that seconds as a DVD player. This is probably the best place to start seeing as how you can get fullsize cds and dvd into the drive. As for the part about the gamecube discs spinning backwards, that's a bit more difficult to address.
hardware wise, that is. does it have a PPC CPU?
What I want to know is has anyone hacked that damn Volvo and got Linux running on it?
A SourceForge project without any activity?
Now I've seen everything!
I'd probably just play games with it.
Linux on my computer, where it belongs.
Games on my Gamecube, where they belong.
What is the point of anything else?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Another possibility I've wondered about is just removing the drive and hooking up a drive simulator. Building the hardware to simulate the electrical/data behaviour of the drive would be non-trivial, but probably still possible, no?
Anyone care to comment on that idea?
-Roy
of course the only difficult part will be the media. couldnt you reverse the polarity on the platter motor of the CD burner to make it spin the opposite way while burning? is the data being written dependant on the direction of travel of the disk? i thought it was just a stream of data to the laser and a spinnind disk (horribly simplified, but...). the panasonic Q offers support for full sized media so that shouldnt be to big of a problem.
As it appears to me there was more standing in the way of linux on the DC. GD ROM format wasnt exactly standard.
do i think well see it, i hope so. Do i think we'll have reversed engineered software legaly running on the xbox first, yes.
$.02
I want 2D games back.
Real games systems do not use a real OS. Just a lib to link to.
to put something Microsoft hates on their own systems. Sony doesn't have any reason to hate open source tools, and is therefore cooperative.
Rich, "Lowtax" Kyanka and The SA LinuXbox Team has acquired the proverbial powerup and won the game. Now, the SA LinuXbox team is eagerly awaiting their $200,000 paycheck for their monumental achievement.
Instructions for installing Linux on your very own Xbox can be found at Project: LinuXbox.
This isn't too surprising, however, given that the Xbox has been around for centuries. I submit my proof of that fact with Exhibit A and Exhibit B
Really, they cause all kinds of problems, and if the disk is writable, it will eventually be hosed by the user.
A GameCube running linux with a read-only boot drive and a cable modem is what most people need for a computer. Used to be called a Network Computer, but went out of fashion because people didn't have cable modems.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The spiral is reversed on the disks so unless you wanna mod the drive motor to spin backwards so it can read normal disks.....
Neither the Xbox nor the GameCube spins discs backwards. The fact that their DVDs appear to have a reversed spiral is entirely because their boot sector is on the second physical layer of the disc, which goes from outside to inside, even on a "normal" DVD.
However, somebody may be able to find a loophole to boot mini-CDR's on gcn, possibly put in for debugging purposes a la Dreamcast.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Real games systems do not use a real OS.
Xbox games run Windows XB, which is a stripped-down version of Windows 2000. Some Sega Dreamcast games had Windows CE for SH4 on them.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I believe the development kits that many developers have recieved contain gamecubes with cartridges, because they cannot burn their own discs to test them. Maybe a cart gamecube could be built that we can use.