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.

Comments

I ported Linux to my microwave oven.

[Wakko Warner]

I'm gonna buy 500 microwave ovens and play quake real fast d00d. Make loads of popcorn too. It will rule.

- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Re:If they can put bsd on a dream cast...

[Stephen Williams]

How about linux on Nintendo's current project dolphin (still under development). It's based on a modified PPC

Yeah, Unix/Linux for Nintendo! Anyone think that "Pikachunix" would be a good name? :-)

When are they going to port it to the Game Boy? :-)

Some Dreamcast Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Windows CE Refund

[Gleef]

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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lex/yacc, flex/bison

[cje]

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!

"...too much time on their hands..."

[RichN]

Sure. When the BSD guys make headway into virgin territory, they have too much time on their hands. If this was a Linux story, everybody would be screaming "Way to go! Linux Rules! We support another platform! Woohoo!"

Sheesh.

SH4 instruction set

[Christopher Thomas]

I suspect that the H64's instruction set is similar to Motorola's 68000 only better.

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.

Re:Imagine a Beowolf cluster

[Christopher Thomas]

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?

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.

Re:Dreamcast Hardware

[Christopher Thomas]

How comparable is the hardware in a Dreamcast to a new PC with a good 3D card?

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.

Re:I have seen the future and it is a blue a hedge

[phray01]

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

Dreamcast Hardware

[Jordy]

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.

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