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Linux on the Gamecube?

Posted by Cliff on from the pengiuns-apes-and-jumping-marios dept.

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?"

4 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Panasonic Q by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:Impossible by ianpatt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The gameboy link isn't that helpful either. The GameCube doesn't actually boot from the GBA, it just uses the link cable to send data back and forth.

    I see two major possibilities:
    * Using either the GBA link cable or the ethernet adaptor to do a buffer overflow, using a small loader stub as the payload. Once you have the loader stub running on the system it would be possible to upload and run whatever you want.

    * Taking advantage of the GameShark. Once InterAct finally releases the thing, changing memory on the GameCube live will be much easier. If they add a computer connection port like on the Saturn Pro Action Replay, then Linux on the GameCube will become an exercise in reverse-engineering. Of course, this is easy on the Saturn: the cartridge port exposes the main CPU bus, but.. I'm still hoping...

  3. Re:Impossible by ianpatt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > try getting even a picture of one of these

    Like this?

  4. Another hacking option by rrwood · · Score: 2, Interesting
    A couple people have pointed out that the GameCube media is highly proprietary (size, data format, rotational direction), and that the likelihood of creating one of these disks without Nintendo's support is pretty slim.

    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