GameCube-Powered Webserver

Daniel Kolph writes "The GameCube Linux Project has just released, what they call the GameCube Linux Alpha This is an 1 MB busybox-based Linux system that contains screen output, network code, a telnet server and a webserver. They also provide a kernel patch. (Screenshots/Download)"

Comments

How hackable is the hardware?

[steveha]

So far, they are just playing with software. They convince the GameCube to load the software over the network port.

I'm probably not very interested in this unless I can hack the hardware a bit: add a hard drive, add a second network port, etc.

A GameCube would make a sweet firewall/router box if you could get two network ports on it and Linux. The price would be right too.

Note that the optical drive is fairly useless: you cannot burn a disk that will work in a GameCube, not with a conventional CD burner. :-(

steveha

Better than Xbox as a low power server

[Rolman]

The thing about having Linux on a Gamecube as opposed as installing it on an Xbox is the great power consumption savings.

The Xbox is 4-5 times more power-hungry than a Gamecube, but you'd never get anywhere near 4x performance. For a personal server (even media player) the Gamecube's CPU, GPU and memory performance are great, good enough for most tasks and it has component video and digital audio output capabilities (though Nintendo has never released the digital audio adapter, so the only way to do it is using the Panasonic Q and the component cables are not very easy to get).

The machine is also very cheap at $100 and small enough to fit anywhere, at least better than the Xbox. It may not have a Hard Drive but there's an SD Card adaptor that could be used for mass storage. I really prefer to have a smaller, low power alternative. You just can't get a 40W machine with such strong capabilities for that price anywhere else.

The only thing missing is a way to automatically boot into Linux, as you still need the PSOLoad trick. It would be wonderful if some company like Codejunkies released a boot disk like the Freeloader. I'd hate to be forced into manually loading PSO every time there's a power outage.