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Wacky port of BSD to Dreamcast set top box
roadrash writes "So, if the hardware itself wasn't enough to get your sorry butt down to Toys 'r' Rus so you can get on the Dreamcast waiting list it appears now some guys with way too much time on their hands have ported BSD to the Super Hitachi chip that runs the thing. I wonder if they will bundle some games with that distro. " I have visions of my Dreamcast server farm.
Cool! When can I see some KDE running on the Dreamcast? That would be impressive...
Knowing how console manufacturers make their money you'd think that a lot of the information these guys need are considered trade secrets, and only released under NDA. IMO like with emulators either someone will have to reverse engineer the information, or break NDA... they seem to be asking for someone to do the second. (I dont think a development license would help them much anyway, I doubt they could use it for an opensource release)
(I'm guessing romfs works OK on CDs, but maybe not...?)
Rock on kyle, just hope you dont get slashdoted too bad!!!! your bud, Luke ps: No this is not off topic, softrare.com is my friend kyles server, he is also one of the porters
agreed, this site is very linux-biased.
i don't see the difference between this and microsoft's news, its all narrow-minded propoganda.
doesn't linux run on the nintendo 64? the n64 will only ever be used for games, while the DC may one day be more than that. Porting linux to the n64 is "too much free time"
-bugg
Sega and Nintendo have consistently lost ground to Sony. The playstation rocks, not because of its graphics, but because it has good games. I think, for the most part, people don't want to play games with goofy hedge-hogs and mario now that something closer to reality is possible.
I have an N64 and the only good game: Zelda 64. Does anyone know of any others that are playable?
How about linux on Nintendo's current project dolphin (still under development). It's based on a modified PPC, and I heard that they were able to boot a modified beos kernel that they burnt onto a cdrom...
More Caffeine. NOW
Dude take a chill pill...i think it was a tounge in cheek comment. da kow
No, creating a web page with a doctored screen shot of an N64 running Linux as an April Fool's joke is "too much free time".
OTOH, that many people are still falling for the joke, some three (?) years later, indicates that maybe it was worth the time invested ...
>people don't want to play games with goofy hedge-hogs and mario now that something closer to reality is possible.
;)
People who say things like that obviously haven't played VF3, Sega Rally2 and all the other, nearly photorealistic, high frame rate, no clipping, and no poly distorting games Dreamcast has to offer.
Odd how you think people arn't happy with Sonic and Mario (which are both platformers basically) but they're happy enough with Tomb Raider++.
I guess it's the chest.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
Well, granted I haven't had my mitts on an N64 for over a year (extened borrow from a friend :) :P
But my favourites were Turok, Mario 64 and Mario Kart (yeah, shut up!) and GoldenEye.
Bomberman 64 was OK, but the framerates in multiplayer were inexplicably BAD.
The single-player adventure was kinda fun.
Just my own take. I didn't own it so I wasn't about to buy any games for it.
Though Ballbuster took enough from me in rentals, I coulda bought GoldenEye.
I was addicted, I know
pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Now if they can get Berlin to run on the Dreamcast's 3D hardware...
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"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?"
If it weren't for the fact that (I believe) a form of Windows CE is being used as the Dreamcast's OS. One more place for Linux to try and compete, I suppose. :)
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Can the Dreamcast talk to any storage devices or do I have to burn my root filesystem onto a CDR?
How would you run this? would you have to burn it onto a cd? theres no harddrive, so how would you load programs?
bout time a console machine could do something useful
you can say what you want, but console games just suck with their lack of controls
im gonna stick with my dynamic binds in q2 and all:P
but now dreamcast is a cool option
Forget about the Dreamcast, what about Handheld PCs based on the SH4! The Compaq Aero 8000 comes to mind right away and many of the next generation CE machines will also run the SH4.
Imagine being able to break free from Windows on your workstation, PDA, AND console game machine.
How sweet it is.
PDA Buzz Guy
What the heck is a "server farm"?
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
i can put BSD on my Dreamcast now! too bad the DC doesn't have an ethernet adapter.. i wonder if i can get the Windows CE from sega just in case i do want to wipe it out in favor of BSD..
i've never seen it first hand..
i'm just repeating what i heard in some linux channels.
whatever.
-bugg
A Dreamcast is comparable to the theoretical power of the Voodoo2 and it maxes out at a rendering rate of 3 million polygon's a second with all effects on. I guess if a developer were to cheapen the effects, and limit himself to flatshading, the polygon count would probably increase.
:) (And not to mention, a few patches released so that gamers with obscure hardware configurations can have the chance to actually boot the game... ie, read, people with sub-400 machines :)
The difference between console and PC's are that the hardware on a console is identical from machine to machine (making beta testing and such much easier than PC testing) and the hardware is usually pushed to the limits, while with PC's, developers usually keep on jumping to faster and faster chips and don't bother with extreme optimizations.
And haven't you learned by now that looks (usually) don't correlate to great gameplay? There are a lot of crappy, but pretty games out there in the market...
these machines were supposed to carry the WinCE OS on their game CDs instead of having it embedded into the machine. That certainly makes it easier for a replacement OS to get loaded. Almost makes me wish I didn't get hooked on the $99 Playstation deal...
1) Dreamcast does not run WinCe as its default operating system. If a developer wishes to use WinCe for a game, it is included on the games GD-ROM. Hence new versions of the "OS" can be shipped without replacing any sort of ROM. When the game disk that uses WinCe is inserted, Dreamcast first loads WinCe then loads the game. Most games so far are written at a much lower level.
2) Yes I said GD-ROM. Sega uses a propreity optical disk that is formatted to roughly 1GB. It can still read CD's.
3) The internet option for Dreamcast can use any standard PPP dial-up account. And no you don't get AT&T ISP free, just a free keyboard if you sign up with them.
I believe I heard that the playstation 2 uses unix for the development enviro, that should make it easy to port games to unix. I think everybody should wait for PSX2. I'm not giving M$ any money
If you read the specs it can accept pcmcia... I don't know if dreamcast has these ports built in or not but the system is capabale... this would give you a lot of expansion options (SCSI,10/100 Enet,modem,etc)
When they get this ironed out wouldn't it be a great demo system for BSD? Just give someone the cd, they pop it in their Dreamcast and get a simple demo of BSD and an oppurtunity to try some apps.
I really only like games that you can play against another player. My favorite for N64 is Mace. Very cool fighting game.
Sega also says that you'll eventually be able to upgrade their GD-ROM Drive (custom 1GB CDs) to an actual DVD-ROM drive, but I don't know how they would go about it.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Minus the bottlenecks.
- -----
If you want to see the true graphical power of DC, have a look at these screens. All are generated by the DC at a constant 60fps.
In-game character model from Soul Calibur. In-game effects include coloured lighting on the characters (both ambient and from weapon flashes), dynamic shadows, particle weather systems
Dead or Alive 2; Full 3D backdrop, and note the clothing flowing around the bodies.
Shenmue face demos; just wait till you see them animated (individual hair strands move, reflections in the eyeballs, skin streches realistically).
--------------------------------
--------------------------------------
"I have never been happier than I am now; a fact which depresses me immensel
You forget. There's already a port of Linux to the SH4.
Silly *BSDer.
dreamcast comes with a 56k modem, and a NIC will be coming soon (it is currently in testing).
gameplay will be through a heat.net type client (developed by heat.net), and as far as i know it doesn't cost anything.
you will need a standard internet connection for it to work (aol AFAIK will not work).
Why do you insist on posting that damn Beowulf cluster comment (with very little variation) every time there's a story about some cool new hardware?
"and the toy-OS BSD ran great on the game machine".
The graphics hardware is very powerful, but the CPU lets it down. All transformations have to be done by the CPU, which I'd rate at between a P166 and a P200. (it does have some vector floating point operations, but they don't buy you as much as you'd hope - also, it has no L2 cache.)
In practice we always found that the graphics card could easily handle all the polygons that the CPU could throw at it. However, both the games that I've worked on did involve a fair bit of physics calculations, which took away CPU bandwidth from the vertex transforms.
The best thing about the graphics card is the texture compression, which is very similar to the stuff that S3 uses. It gives you a 4:1 compression ratio, and as long as you don't use it for loading screen etc. you can't tell the difference. Overall the DC has 8Mb of texture memory, and you might lose about 3-4Mb on framebuffers and vertex list scratch space, but that leaves you the equivalent of 16-20Mb of space, which allows you very high detail textures, especially in the kind game (like Soul Calibur) where you only have one smallish scene and a couple of characters.
The graphics in PC's tend to be stunted by the fact that they have to be able to run on lower-spec systems.
cheers,
Tim
A lot of people have gotten the wrong idea about WinCE & DC.
It's important to note that the DC is rendering to a TV screen (640x480, and blurry). Unless a higher-res TV standard takes hold ($7000 for HDTV, anyone?), this will be a hard limit on resolution, regardless of other advances.
We don't need advocacy. If you know what you're doing, and want a fast, stable, *secure* OS, you run BSD. Most people who run BSD have the sense to go look at newsgroups, and mailing archives, as opposed to blindly asking questions to random people. It's more professional. Linux = Script Kiddie BSD = System Administrator
I'm not sure about the rest of the palm/handheld PC world, it wouldn't take much of a shim on my Nino 510 to boot an alternate OS (since all you do is replace a few windows CE binaries in rom with files held in ram)
:)
The main problem would be the fact that it would have to run on top of the normal FS CE uses (fat?). Maybe someone will come up with a nice virtual FS for them so we can run BSD on the road (or linux for the less evolved
http://www.schizo.com/
Funny, I've always seen things like "Hey, screw this expensive specially-made router that can handle up to a terabit per second, let's do it with x86s and make a beowulf, we'll show them" from Linux users.
... "
Please point me to articles where people say "DAH WHY DON'T YOU JUST MAKE IT BSD".
On your point that BSD users whine when people say things about BSD -- read what they're responding to specifically some time.
"BSD is DEAD!!!"
"No, BSD is not dead
"Stop whining, typical BSD user"
From my experiences with the Linux crowd, take previous message and do a s/BSD/Linux/g and it's still pretty much true. Actually, no, it's worse. Because the BSD'ers won't spend an extra 20 minutes bitching about how IP law has prevented growth of the US economy.
Some moderators are sooo biased.
They even go against GNU!!!!
All this was one of the causes of me dropping
linux, and switching to OpenBSD
BTW they say *BSD instead of OpenBSD
when they are so specific about linux distros
I sure am glad you're not a big part of the FreeBSD community!
Your comments are childish and are not representative of any BSD community.
For instance:
Oh, and
Hey -- I'm just trying to be fair.
-Sam
Sam
>a modified beos kernel BeOS, as cool as it is, is closed source. So, you don't have the source in hand to try it out and hack the problems you find. Just because it's PPC doesn't mean it will run. What about its bus, sound subsystem, and graphics subsystem (which will probably follow the root of traditional consoles and be totally custom).
the DVD enabled DreamCasts would be separate units that would have to be bought separately. Sucks huh? Still, I wanna buy one - playing Sonic at my local Hollywood Video store made me drool....it was increadibly fast (60+ fps) and fluid, its just as Sega's designers describe it - traditional Sonic in a 3D world....it makes Mario 64 look weak in comparison.
It would be cool to get the various distributed computing initiatives (d.net's RC5, SETI, OGR, etc.) together onto one CD image to burn and run on Dreamcasts. Just pop the disc in when you're done playing and let it crack/spook/compute... It might be a good first step before tackling getting to the onboard 3D.
Heh, nothing like trying to argue with someone and by doing so, prove their point? 'Nuff said.
(1)OK... is there a port of bleem or a similar Playstation emulator to BSD? Could one be written? Hell! Could one be written for CE? Imagine how cool the Dreamcast would be if it could be made to play Playstation CD's and its own native games.
:-)
(2), this is what I expect to have rocks thrown at me for... how tough would it be to boot Darwin/ MacOS X on this?
The DC can output to vga via optional hardware, if the game supports it.... -K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
Let see, Super Mario, Super Smash Brothers, Banjo-Kazooie, GOldeneye, Mario Kart, Wave Race, World Driver Championship. These games are good even though they are overlly cute.
Thats because the slash crew are mainly linux people. And the 2nd largest group of readers are Linux heads. the 1st largest are windows users. I'm a Linux head, but I view Linux, Open/Net/FreeBSD to be all in the same boat, so I could care less if it was any of those OSes :). Now if it was windows 98/2000, i wouldn't be happy at all.
CE itself is in ROM. Can some wizard comment on the feasibility of replacing the ROM with EPROMs? (No chance of them being socketed, I'd venture.) Maybe they already are EPROMs? I would imagine that some WinCE device mfrs want to preserve their configuration options, if only to upgrade to a later patch level of WinCE. This would open the doors to embedding a certain other more appealing OS.
I think not...(*poof*)
OpenBSD is more open than a cheap drunk whore :) Use NT!!!!!
> Tux is the sexiest penguin
;-)
I agree - the sexiest penguin.
However, the daemon is much cuter
(Doesn't that remind me of some userfriendly cartoon???)
Accually, I think Linux users, and *BSD Users bitch equally. It seems most of the Linux people here are a bid kiddish, and the BSD users try to play "Big Brother" and put them in their place. But the BSD users make an even bigger ass of them selves in the process. I don't know which is worse.
The problem here is that the BSD community is just as friendly and helpful (and far more knowledgable) than the Linux user community. People who say that BSD users are snobs, bastards, etc are merely spreading FUD to keep people from trying BSD.
correction.. Brains did the SH3 port, not a SH4 port. they're merely moving the source over to the next models. And since somebody else did a bunch of the code allready for the SH3 (which is quite similar to the SH4) they are basing on that code. Oh, and hardware isn't universal, just because they made hardware for the MMEYE port, doesn't mean they use the same hardware on the dreamcast. go pick up a book on programming, and stop bashing these guys. They're probably collaberating with the Linux sh3/sh4 guys, did you ever think about that?
I've seen zip drives that plug into the cartridge unit on an N64, so how about getting MIPS Linux to run on these buggers. Then all we have to do is run dongles to hook up a keyboard, mouse, and network cable to 3 of thejoystick lots.
porting an operating system to a different platform takes a little more then plugging a zip drive into it. besides, the n64 isn't hardly as powerful as the dreamcast.
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
Most of those "little sub-400 jobs" won't take a TNT2...at least, not one of the AGP variety (is there even such a thing as a PCI TNT2?). These machines often lack an AGP slot because either (1) they've got some kind of integrated AGP graphics (most Emachines boxen use the ATI Rage IIC, for instance) or (2) they use a chipset (such as the SiS 5598 or (in the near future) Intel 810) that includes (low-end) graphics functionality in the chipset itself. Usually the best you can do with these machines in the way of a graphics upgrade is a Voodoo2, or maybe two of 'em in SLI mode if you have enough PCI slots. (There's also stuff like the Obsidian that did dual-Voodoo2 SLI on one card, but who's gonna stick a $500 card in a $400 computer?)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
why Linux when you have sweet, sexy BSD??
Can you get a Windows refund if you buy a machine shipped with CE, and then wipe CE off of the machine?
----
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Open mind, insert foot.
Actually, it's a general term to describe a cluster of servers networked together.
I guess WinCE is stored in ROM... so where would BSD live? And do the games run on top of WinCE or do you choose between "games mode" and "Windows mode" at startup?
Congratulations! You now own the only Linux box in the world that can be used to build Bison, and then cook it!
Viva la buffalo burgers!
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Sheesh.
Rich
Not quite. The 68k series was still a bit CISCian, while IIRC the SH4 had a smaller, more RISC-like instruction set with a few specialty FP instructions added. [Before this starts another Holy War, let me point out that both RISC and CISC can be used efficiently; CISC is just more difficult to optimize hardware for.] The page referenced in the article contains a link to the SH4 reference manuals; among other things, these contain the instruction set.
I agree that it gets redundant, but this time it might actually be appropriate. A dreamcast makes a relatively cheap and relatively powerful node.
OTOH, it was correctly pointed out that most people don't have any _use_ for a cluster, but it would still be a neat toy if you have the budget.
Comparable. The Dreamcast uses the PowerVR 2 graphics chipset, which is also available as a PC card (go to Sharkey Extreme's archives for the article). The PVR2 card benchmarked at about two thirds the speed of a high-end consumer card, which suggests that the Dreamcast is slightly worse than a PC, but a friend who works in the console gaming industry insists that optimizations in the Dreamcast make up for that.
The same friend insists that the Dreamcast has more than enough processing power to handle all geometry for the card, and I'm inclined to agree. For general-purpose, the SH4 isn't that great, and for double-precision floating-point, it's pretty horrid, but it works amazingly well for single-precision floating-point and vector/matrix computations, due to a specialized instruction set and specialized floating-point hardware heavily optimized for that specific purpose. You can find more information in the spec sheets for it, which are linked from the SH4/BSD article referred to above.
So, I can believe that the Dreamcast would make as good a game machine as a present high-end PC. The main problem is that the PCs will be twice as powerful by Christmas (when 0.18 micron technology has matured), while the Dreamcast will be waiting a while for a successor.
As with the original Playstation, what will make or break it will be the quality of its games, though. The Playstation renders like a first-generation 3D card, but it's still fun.
Yup. You nailed it.
Given this *IS* A Linux cerntric site, I'm supprised the article even made it.
Too bad for all the GNU/Linux rherotric about 'OpenSource', if *ANY OTHER* group does it, its a 'waste of time'.
As if trying to make 32 different linux kernels "easy to install" is *NOT* a waste of time.
And don't forget them then bragging about how much money they've made on Intel, MS, AMD, etc. stock.
The DC has a keyboard that you can buy, it sells for $25 at electronic's boutique(sp?) I would assume that it would be difficult to get the machine to read the cd and boot it without information from sega itself. How about a small unix kernel running say mpg123 on a cd full of 600mb of mp3s to play using a $200 console. If somthing like this happens, the DC will be sitting under my christmas tree this december.
--Celery464(innercircle13@yahoo.com)
I pull the celery from the stalk, give it arms and legs, make it walk.
It's a place where a new breed of agricultural technology is practiced. A woody vine plant (Autopatternalia Siliconus) was interbred with a temperate succulent fruit tree (Systemus Operandium). The resultant hybrid grows in a symbiotic relationship with a nutrient-providing ground fungus (Boot Lotus), and produces fully grown server system at various stages in the growing season.
Picked early, the fruit of this hybrid can be used as a console game systems and handhelds. Although the young, vigorous processing power of this spring harvest is impressive, the display capabilities are frequently of lower resolution due to lack of early-season sunlight. Certain strains of the hybrid produce fruit with gene deficiencies that bear a striking resemblance to the accelerated aging "Werner Syndrome" that occurs in humans. These fruit are typically labeled as Windows CE systems and shipped quickly so as to reduce the risk of the imminent spoilage or failure occurring while still in the vendor's stock. In contrast, however, other early-season fruit can be quite nice. The pea-pod-like UcLinux system (Homunculum Simmsocketii) is surprisingly edible and leaves a sweet aftertaste. Later versions have more well-developed visual processing, and are frequently marketed as 3com "Palm" and sometimes IBM products (Geekus Necessitatium).
When fully-grown, early summer servers show the distinctive markings resembling a black-tristed hydra logo, and are primarliy marketed by Microsoft, a Pacific Northwest grower that makes good use of the fertile valleys of Redmond. However, overproduction and lack of quality control in the Windows NT (Rebootus Idiotboxen) gardens over many years have led some to speculate that the soil lacks the proper nutrients, and that no amount of fertilizer will bring the product up to par.
In the opinion of many, the better options are the more mature mid-season products of organically-grown Linux (Pervasive Torvaldis), xBSD (Stabilus Unappreciatorum), and other related varieties. Widely regarded for their versatility and consistent quality, these products have only market difficulties to overcome. Organically-grown products frequently have visible blemishes that may turn away potential customers, but the quality and nutritional value of the fruit are rarely compromised.
Late-season harvests include the dark-greyish skinned Starfire system (Herkinprocessor Megagbuckus), which shows a distinctive 16-pointed Solaris bloom, and various (Monolithicus Neccesiconsultivus) of the IBM farms. Varietals are available from Hitachi, Fujitsu, SGI/Cray, NEC, and a host of others. Of particular note is the late-harvest Beowolf (Centiprocessorus Gnubiquitous) that can be made into an excellent ice wine.
Hope this helps.
Jon
Fertilizer Consultant
Xenobiotica's Olde-Tyme Server Farms
I think not...(*poof*)
They dont have the connectivity required, ie no 100bT ethernet. To try and run a beowulf system over a null-modem would be utterly insane.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Well, consider the recent bit of tripe posted by ESR about how grand it is that Linux is reuniting the UNIX world. He apparently didn't feel that *BSD is even worth mentioning. Nor do we hear RMS bitch about how it should be "GNU/*BSD" since [Free|Net|Open]BSD ship with the GNU utilities and compilers. Meanwhile some of the largest web and FTP sites quietly churn away running FreeBSD, and OpenBSD enjoys its reputation for extreme security, even while being open source.
someone think about porting freebsd and linux on the new playstation II. No more intel!
"'Nuff said" is an allusion to Stan Lee's famous signoff line in Marvel Comics, which itself is probably an allusion to something older.
Don't do this kind of thing online, okay? It's really a waste of time. I'm wasting time right now. But I'm the exception to the rule. :-P
This posting brought to you
by the number pi and
the letter gamma
[ReidNews]
I started a project to get linux on the SHx chips and we got it booting!!! with a little bit of coding it will run on the dreamcast. by the way, Brains INc. did the bsd port to the shx chips- not those guys.... http://linuxsh3.cjb.net sh3 and sh4 are binairy compatible
I don't know why it keeps getting posted, but I've got a suspiscion.. maybe because you keep responding to it!
I always tought that OpenBSD is the most x86-centered of the xBSD trinity and that the NetBSD crew where the one boldly porting their OS on platform nobody dare to port to before. Just surprising that the port is based on OpenBSD.
Also, the processor spec talk about 32 bit general-purpose register. Can a 64 bit CPU have 32 bit register ? I always tough that data path widht was directly related to register size. Anyway, I don't know much about processor design, maybe I am just misleaded.
:wq
I think calling Dreamcast a set top box is a little rough. It conjours up images of webTV and 3DO.
;)
My dreamcast fits just perfectly underneath my television thank you.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
i have seen the future and it is a blue a hedgehog
correction:
I have seen the future and it is a blue a hedgehog on the end of a little red devil's trident
Having worked with the H8 and 63701 I can say that Hitachi makes some very nice embedded processors. I suspect that the H64's instruction set is similar to Motorola's 68000 only better. Hitachi was also very good about giving out samples with just a call to their sales office. A good start for a true homebuilt BSD computer.
Does anyone know how the internet connection is going to work?
I have heard that AT&T was in talks with Sega to provide free connection to the Dreamcasts, but I am not sure if it happened.
Is it something you are going to have to add on to later?
I think this is the most exciting thing about the new consoles coming out.
How fast are these things? Anyone have numbers from the STREAM benchmark?
Imagine a cheap cluster of 100 of these things. WOW
...both being crushed like a brick by Sony's next mascotless console...
How comparable is the hardware in a Dreamcast to a new PC with a good 3D card?
I mean sure, the thing costs very little money compared to a PC, but if you were to buy one of those little sub-400 jobs and add a TNT2...
Maybe I've been spoiled, but games on console boxes don't look as good as PC games.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
And search a bit around.. You'll find among other things ftp://ftp.m17n.org/pub/super-h/ and a few other Linux ports to these chips.
Someone should proofread Slashdot for tech comments.. Or at least learn to use altavista.