Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook. Wow, four people guessed (or trolled) framebuffer. Interesting.
Facebook makes absolutely zero sense in the context of the sentence.
One could argue Facebook makes zero sense in any context.
New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
91–100 of 205 posts
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#92Here's the patch series presented more nicely. Lacks the intro email, though: https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-mips/list/?series...
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I don't see why a modern gui should be impossible. It's not like flat design with rounded corners is amazingly complicated. One issue could be high-res assets, but with some codegolfed vector graphics I think you could get something nice looking.
> codegolfed vector graphics
IIRC the Haiku folks had a format for that[1].
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#94To be clear, this is a tech demo; we're long past the point where running anything useful on a system with graphics and 4MB (8MB with expansion) of RAM under Linux is reasonable. You can barely get the kernel itself that small. There's a reason why even cheapo consumer routers have at least 64MB of RAM.
So it's for fun; you won't be able to run any existing "normal" Linux emulators and you'd be better off porting stuff to run on bare metal than trying to squeeze it in under Linux on an N64. Cool project, fun, great that it's getting upstreamed... just keep in mind it's not really useful for end users for anything (unlike, say, Wii Linux, where with ~80MB of RAM you can actually get somewhere, though still with many limitations).
OTOH, as other people have mentioned, it makes a good test case for N64 emulators. If they can run this, that's good validation.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I love seeing this stuff over the standard JavaScript lib of the month.
It feels like most of the Founder-type people are taking a break from what they usually do at work -- which probably includes checking hacker news. So it's left room for the more interesting things to surface over the "What happened to " or "How to raise your yearly gains by five dollars" or whatever. edit: Interesting is a personal taste, and while I have noticed articles on hacker news becoming more repetitive late…
Former founder checking in. Guess I'm still interested in tech, even on holidays.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#96How do these sort of ports for niche systems get made?
Manuals for the system and it’s processor exist. The Linux kernel is pretty agnostic towards what it’s running on, as long as it supports the C Language. The difficult part is filling in the system specific blanks in the kernels’ source code, which is big work. See here: https://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Linux/MIPS_Porting_Guide
Simple ports to small systems are actually very easy. To run Linux all that you strictly need is a timer driver and an interrupt controller driver, assuming the CPU architecture is already supported and there is a compatible MMU. On small systems, those drivers can be very simple.
I was bored one evening and ported Linux to run on the Wii's IO/security processor (not the main CPU, that's Wii Linux). It only took a few hours to get the kernel booting to userspace.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and fb or console games. Btw., what are "fb games"?
Facebook. Wow, four people guessed (or trolled) framebuffer. Interesting.
It's absolutely framebuffer here. Games that draw directly to the framebuffer. I assume they meant sprite-based games that don't require 3D drivers, for example.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#98Earlier 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.
The machine can render 3d worlds but a simple GUI is too much?
a large operating system kernel + GUI is too much. You're not loading NintenDOS with Mario 64.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#99Finally! Been waiting for this for 24 years.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#100What does this mean exactly? Linux capable of running on N64? A Linux distro that can do what N64 does? A combination? Something else?