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KDE Running On A GameCube
Bruno_me writes "Some of the folks at the GameCube Linux project have gotten KDE to run on a GameCube. There's a screenshot of what it actually looks like and what it should look like. This is the first real 'GameKube.' And of course, here is the original frame buffer (dd if=/dev/fb0 of=./kde.fbdump)."
Does KDE run smoothly on a 486Mhz PowerPC with 40mb of RAM?
So, the first screenshot is when you are sober and the second one is when you are on acid?
On the keypad there is only A, B, C, and D, what about the rest? How do you type on this?
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Scratch out the "C" and replace it with a "K"
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Unlike the Xbox or the PS2, there are no mod-chips for the gamecube. Nintendo did one hell of a job constructing this little machine.
:^).
The way to hack the Gamecube is somewhat interesting. Back in the days of the Sega Dreamcast, there was a game known as "Phantasy Star Online", which attempted to connect to a remote server to get and execute whatever code it got from the remote server.... grin
When Sega ported the game to the GameCube, the exploit came with it. So what folks do is they load up Phantasy Star Online 1+11, run a "loader" on their computer (linux or windows). And have the loader on their computer send the gamecube whatever they want (home games, illegal rips, the linux kernel, etc).
This has been over-simplified greatly.
And note: some of you might be thinking about using this to play illegal copies of games. Don't bother. You end up needing to use a bazillion different loaders to load whatever game, and the network port of the Gamecube is limited to 10mbps, which makes many games unplayable.
Sunny Dubey
It's a dump of the framebuffer console. To view it, you've got to run Linux with vesafb, for example. Just "cat kde.fbdump > /dev/fb0". You need to use the right bit depth and resolution for it to work though, and it's not specified.
From all reports yes it booted but the color map was broken on the x server so it didn't look really great. Here is what it looks like. I think it took slightly less long than expected, only four and a half days.
:). That image is of the Centris display, but it's my Athlon's PearPC session merely using X11 on the Centris.
:).
nooooo. no no no.
The boot failed due to a byte-order issue with drive images made on PCs, and failed at the four and a half day mark. I'm not sure where you got the URL for the image, I can only presume once it was pasted on IRC it spreads everywhere
I'll have it booting sometime soon, just not this week
It's official, Linux does run on everything, toasters, xbox, gamecube, your grandmother, robot cheney...
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
The first screenshot is what KDE looks like when the Predator is using it.
Unlike the Xbox or the PS2, there are no mod-chips for the gamecube. Nintendo did one hell of a job constructing this little machine.
The problem has never been the mod chips, it's been the fact that Nintendo uses a custom media disc, not the CDs/DVDs that the PS2 uses, or the DVDs that the Xbox uses.
If the GCN could take commodity media, then I'm sure a mod chip would be forthcoming. However, Nintendo stopped you from getting to the point where a mod chip would be useful.
You do have to admire the fact that they, unlike Microsoft or Sony, managed to beat the piracy problem on the cube.
Mplayer works fine, and you can see some more useless screenshots here. Snes9x has also been ported, as well as a couple other emulators (MAME and some neogeo emulator for example). Other than that I haven't found much use for it except for the geek-factor, the memory is too limited to do anything heavy... But playing SNES games on the cube is pretty sweet though.
Give me a job. Please?
Just open it as a 'raw' image file, 640x480x16bpp. You say you'll have to write a program specifically for this? Sounds like you are a true /. geek! :-)
:-)
Oh crap. I win the 'Geek' prize, then.
I wrote a really poor PHP program to do it - and ended up with a fairly uninteresting screenshot.
Okay, so KDE on a Gamecube is pretty useless, but it does show that the cross-compiler is working on complex software (even if it is just for a PowerPC), and that pretty resource-intensive software will work on the machine. Plus, I bet the people doing it have learned a lot in porting this stuff to work on an unfamiliar, undocumented hardware platform.
Now, port Linux to run on any generic Postscript printer!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
"You do have to admire the fact that they, unlike Microsoft or Sony, managed to beat the piracy problem on the cube."
And it answers the age-old argument that gets posed back and forth. You know, the "I wouldn't pirate games if they were cheaper...Games would be cheaper if you didn't pirate them"
Apparently the industry lied and games aren't made any cheaper even when they aren't pirated.