Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget the many ways in which Machine Learning will revolutionize X.
Could it finally revolutionize porting Linux to new architectures?
machine-learning powered linux ports?
New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
41–50 of 205 posts
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#42Earlier 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
It was IRIX, not Linux, but UNIX GUI’s were memory hungry (more than their windows counterparts).
The SGI Indy which could be had with an R4000 CPU came with 16MB base
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
The expansion pak would double the effective memory from 4MB to 8. But, there is no separate memory for textures to take advantage of. Just a 4k cache that textures were loaded into from main RAM one at a time while rendering. There were some games that manually implemented their own virtual memory paging system to map the cartridge ROM to RAM address space. But, in general a feature that distinguished the N64 from t…
In theory there is 1MB of hidden ram, used exclusively by GPU (9th bit). Wiki describes it: > Differing memory countings are due to the 9th bit only being available to the RCP for tasks such as anti-aliasing or Z-buffering. afaik there is no way of manually using this ram, its hardwired to fixed function pipeline stages of RCP.
I think you can very slowly peek and poke those hidden bits through the RDRAM test registers. Half the MMIO seems to be intended for board test via the CPU's A/D bus being twiddled via it's boundary scan.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#44Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#45This 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.
That's more than plenty.
(It won't be running Gtk4 or Qt6 of course.)
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#46I never had a relationship with the N64. After the Super Nintendo I was deep into computers and programming. The place I used to go to rent video games also started to rent CD ROMS. I went down there one time to rent a CD ROM and saw the N64. Back then video games stores also worked as an arcade, where you could play a system for 30 minutes paying a small fee. So I decided to try this new system, the N64. The game I…
Had similar experiences with games and gaming. Until now however; La Noire Outer Wilds Command and Conquer Remastered Broken Sword And so on What a time to be alive
Psst, if you like the investigative aspect of Outer Wilds, do check out Return of Obra Dinn.
And Disco Elysium, though that is a bit more RPG-y. (no combat though, but it has stats and "character progression")
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#47+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?
Linux has debuggers and such and people (like me) are way more familiar with its stack than whatever they had back in the day. Software development would be way easier with all of that a support infrastructure.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#48Waiting for the Vulkan backend and the dolphin port.
Screw doom64. Time to port chocolate doom.
Re: New Linux port for the Nintendo 64
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Expansion Pak is regular RAM both to this and the normal games. The texture memory would be difficult to use as RAM though since it's not directly addressable.
texture memory would be difficult to use because n64 doesnt have any, its unified memory arch.
Not sure what you mean by “any” it certainly has texture ram but to a fault too little so n64 textures are notoriously crumby.