Linux for the Sega MegaDrive • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux for the Sega MegaDrive

#71

Post by nommuenjoyer » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 8:56 AM UTC

pram wrote: post #60

Why is the Genesis so slow? I've used Linux on other m68k "workstations" and it seemed ok.

The 68000 isn't very fast to start with and: To get the code to fit into memory the kernel is compiled with -Os and GCC makes some poor inlining choices (keeping a call to a function that writes a value to an address in a register instead of just writing to the register, ~5 instructions vs 1), the Mega Drive only has vblank for interrupts, and so on.

Re: Linux for the Sega MegaDrive

#72

Post by HardwareLust » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

tndata wrote: post #49

What a Wow, this brings back memories from my own Sega Mega Drive hacking days. About 35 years ago I built my own hardware development kit from scratch as a way to learn more about the hardware. I documented the project here if anyone is curious: https://nestenius.se/hardware/how-i-built-my-own-sega-mega-d... It's really fun to see Linux running on the Mega Drive. I never would have expected that back then.

That's really cool!

Re: Linux for the Sega MegaDrive

#73

Post by HardwareLust » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

_nickwhite wrote: post #46

For my American friends who may not know this: The Sega MegaDrive console from the late 80's early 90's is what we call the Sega Genesis. When I saw this post, I assumed it was some kind of optical drive or the later released Sega CD (which the rest of the world called Mega-CD). We had a lot of good times playing Street Fighter II and Sonic on this system back in the day.

Yeah I had originally titled this as "Linux on the Sega Genesis" because I thought more people would be familiar with the Genesis name as I was, but of course I was chastised for changing it and dang changed it back lol.