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New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

lore.kernel.org

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Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#51

Post by Narishma »

userbinator wrote: post #29
weare138 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the N64 only has 4MB of ram, I think a GUI would be beyond it's capabilities. Still a cool project though.

Win3.x would be fine with 4MB of RAM, and it's (just barely) enough for Win95 too. But those OSs were definitely optimised for low resource consumption far more heavily than Linux.

Windows 3.x ran OK with 1MB of RAM if you only used a couple of applications at the same time. It wasn't the fastest thing and swapped a lot but it was usable for Word, Excel and the like, as long as you stuck to contemporary versions, as later ones tended to be more memory-hungry.

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#52

Post by icedchai »

userbinator wrote: post #29
weare138 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the N64 only has 4MB of ram, I think a GUI would be beyond it's capabilities. Still a cool project though.

Win3.x would be fine with 4MB of RAM, and it's (just barely) enough for Win95 too. But those OSs were definitely optimised for low resource consumption far more heavily than Linux.

Linux wasn’t always this bloated. My first Linux system had 3 megs of RAM. This was back in 1993. A 386SX laptop with 1 meg on the motherboard plus a 2 meg expansion. I could barely run X.

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#53

Post by sedatk »

weare138 wrote: post #27
pram wrote: post #12

This completely blows my mind, but also seems a natural fit considering the SGI lineage of the N64. It's like a super budget IRIX workstation ;P

But the N64 only has 4MB of ram, I think a GUI would be beyond it's capabilities. Still a cool project though.

IIRC, X11 ran fine on my 486DX2-66 with 4MB RAM with Linux 1.2.13.

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#54

Post by eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 »

rvz wrote: post #5

> "But why", I hear from the back. Having Linux available makes it easier to port emulators and fb or console games. > Most importantly, because I can. Good. All I can say is at least it is something different to what I keep seeing on HN. (React, Rust, Kubernetes, JAMstack, JavaScript, etc.) Probably present this somewhere in a conference (CCC, FOSDEM, etc). Who knows who could be looking at this.

> and fb or console games.

Btw., what are "fb games"?

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#55

Post by derjames »

laoganmaplz wrote: post #32
weare138 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the N64 only has 4MB of ram, I think a GUI would be beyond it's capabilities. Still a cool project though.

Fascinatingly, quite the opposite! For example, the original Macintosh had only a small fraction of that to work with, at 128 Kilobytes![1] Certainly a modern GUI a la KDE, Gnome and friends would be well outside of its abilities, but a functional GUI is possible on a shockingly small amount of memory! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K

Yes, and also GEOS running in a Commodore 64

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#56

Post by matt-attack »

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #54
rvz wrote: post #5

> "But why", I hear from the back. Having Linux available makes it easier to port emulators and fb or console games. > Most importantly, because I can. Good. All I can say is at least it is something different to what I keep seeing on HN. (React, Rust, Kubernetes, JAMstack, JavaScript, etc.) Probably present this somewhere in a conference (CCC, FOSDEM, etc). Who knows who could be looking at this.

> and fb or console games. Btw., what are "fb games"?

I assume Frame Buffer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framebuffer

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#57

Post by [deleted] »

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #54
rvz wrote: post #5

> "But why", I hear from the back. Having Linux available makes it easier to port emulators and fb or console games. > Most importantly, because I can. Good. All I can say is at least it is something different to what I keep seeing on HN. (React, Rust, Kubernetes, JAMstack, JavaScript, etc.) Probably present this somewhere in a conference (CCC, FOSDEM, etc). Who knows who could be looking at this.

> and fb or console games. Btw., what are "fb games"?

[deleted]

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#58

Post by derjames »

weare138 wrote: post #27
pram wrote: post #12

This completely blows my mind, but also seems a natural fit considering the SGI lineage of the N64. It's like a super budget IRIX workstation ;P

But the N64 only has 4MB of ram, I think a GUI would be beyond it's capabilities. Still a cool project though.

Look around for GEOS from Berkeley Systems. It was a graphical OS for the Commodore 64/128. I was using this thing in 1986.

Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64

#59

Post by core-questions »

basicneo wrote: post #34

+1 to software/hardware necromancy. How does a Linux port make it easier to port emulators or console games? Is this a step towards getting an N64 on a modern (?) stack like qemu+linux?

> How does a Linux port make it easier to port emulators or console games?

It helps emulator development by giving you something to work with inside of your emulator that actually has some tooling to let you look around and test out the system from the inside, unlike trying to get a game working. If Linux-N64 can boot, you can expect that a lot of your code is working properly.

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