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BSD Operating Systems Hardware

NetBSD Progress On Sega's Dreamcast 78

Posted by timothy from the utter-practicality dept.
Nearly a year ago, hemos posted the news that the indefatigable NetBSD project had ported NetBSD to the Hitachi Super-H microprocessor which powers the Dreamcast. Now, hubertf writes: "The port of the NetBSD operating system to Sega's Dreamcast game console is reaching a state where it's near to single user mode. Utilizing the NetBSD/evbsh3 port's simple structure and the fact that it supports both big and little endian architectures as well as the general clean design of the NetBSD operating system helped for this port. Device drivers for the game pad, keyboard, etc. are next on the to-do list of Saitoh Masanobu, who works on this port.

See below for a sample dmesg output,

Please stay tuned for more information!

- Hubert Feyrer, The NetBSD Project

Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000
The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

NetBSD 1.5_ALPHA (DREAMCAST) #8: Fri Jul 14 01:42:14 JST 2000

msaitoh@vslock.xxx.yyy:/var/sources/src/sys/arch/evbsh3/compile/DREAMCAST
total memory = 16384 KB
avail memory = 12988 KB
using 230 buffers containing 920 KB of memory
mainbus0 (root)
shb0 at mainbus0
scif0 at shb0 port 0xffe80000-0xffe8000f irq 12
scif0: console
biomask c0000000 netmask c0000000 ttymask e0000000
md0: internal 1440K image area
rn_init: radix functions require max_keylen be set
boot device: root on md0a dumps on md0b
cannot mount root, error = 22
root device (default md0a):"

Of course, what you do with a Dreamcast running NetBSD is up to you. Errr ... just what could you do with a Dreamcast running NetBSD?
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NetBSD progress on Sega's Dreamcast More

NetBSD progress on Sega's Dreamcast

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  • Dreamcast emulator (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now all we need is a Dreamcast emulator running on NetBSD running Dreamcast :)

  • Re:The Point (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, I *could* build a mountain of mashed potatoes and call it Mount Spudmore, but is that a good reason to do it? Hell no.

  • Slow day on /.; get a haiku. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You port bee-es-dee
    to another game console.
    Now go get a life.

  • um... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • opensource beginners tool (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16, 2000 @04:40AM (#930111)
    A netbsd port to dreamcast would be ideal for people to learn *nix and open source really easy.
    It'd be *nix for dummies.
    Just pop in the netbsd CD (dreamcast does run on CD's does it ? I don't know for sure) and you're off. The users could mess with the system all they'd want. On the next reboot of the dreamcast you'd have a fresh install again.
    And I know you could do this with a PC too. But then you'd have to build a VERY generic kernel, or several ones depending on the PC config. The single dreamcast platform is so much simpler to make a distro for.

  • Reporter: "What do you think of Western Civilisation?" M.K. Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."

    Gandhi drank urine every morning and was obsessed with feces -- is he really the expert to be quoted on when it comes to civilization??

    --
    Irina Romanov

  • Dreamcast (Score:4)

    by drwiii ( 434 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @05:47AM (#930113) Homepage
    I've been following this closely since word of the successful port got out a few days ago.

    NetBSD was able to get their code bootstrapped due to a programming backdoor left in by Sega which lets the console be started from the second session of a standard CDROM, as opposed to sega's proprietary GDROM [min.net] format. This was the same method used by the Gameshark CDX disc. Unfortunately, due to recent innovations [dcisos.com] using this boot method, Sega is rumored to be phasing out the backdoor in the newest releases of the Dreamcast to keep third-party developers happy.

    Anyway, I hope Sega gets themselves in gear and releases the Dreamcast NIC [min.net] sometime soon. Then all we need is a NetBSD-based distributed.net client disc.. ;>

    Check out Marcus Comstedt [mangakai.org]'s site for more tasty tidbits about Dreamcast programming.

  • With Debian, [debian.org] you merely need to download install disks, and then can install the remainder via whatever network connection you prefer...

    Not that this is likely to work too well with a DreamCast unit; I suspect they don't do DSL...

  • While it's a cool hack, the "game console" hardware is not designed with expandability in mind. What would be nice would be to:
    • Add in a 10BaseT NIC, or, better still, a 100BaseT NIC;
    • Add another 64MB of RAM.

    Those factors would likely make such a unit pretty useful as a "cheap terminal," rather like the $200 Think NIC [thinknic.com] units.

    Unfortunately, I suspect the cost and effort would outweigh the cost of a Think NIC, meaning that while the concept is still a "cool hack," it's not a terribly practical one...

  • It appears that adding some additional hardware to Dreamcast to make it "more generally usable" may become possible. I gather that there may be USB support, which actually provides an actual "somewhat standardized" bus to work with.

    Unfortunately, more hardware costs more money, so that the Dreamcast + NIC + more RAM (of some form) is liable to put the pricetag way past that of the rather similar Think NIC that already has the "more RAM" and the NIC.

  • Of course, what you do with a Dreamcast running NetBSD is up to you. Errr ... just what could you do with a Dreamcast running NetBSD?

    Nethack.

    Xpilot...
    --

  • Re:render farm (Score:3)

    by stripes ( 3681 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @08:48AM (#930118) Homepage Journal
    At least with dreamcast you won't need a custom cartrage but at least with a custom cart, there is room for a fast I/O device.

    The DC controler ports are pretty fast. I had a thery that they were USB, but after reading more I don't think they are, they are "only" around 3Mbits/sec each. The modem module can be remoed, and an ethernet can be pluged in (if they ever start selling it) which might make the DC a useful MP3 player. A Zip drive (with USB ports) can also be hooked up (I'm unclear on how).

    So it's a bit limited as a Unix box, but not toatally worthless.

    Besides with NetBSD on it I could play nethack on it, which somehow appeals to me :-)

  • Re:Overly paranoid Import/Export controls? (Score:5)

    by imp ( 7585 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @08:16AM (#930119) Homepage
    where the Playstation 2 is now under restrictive export controls

    This is not true. I travelled to Japan in Early June. I asked the customs officer if the Sony Playstation 2 had any export controls on it, since I was thinking of buying a few to bring back to the US. He told me that no, there were no export controls on it. That the whole thing was some confusion at central government and was cleared up within two days. He also told me that I'd only have to worry about import issues on the country I was bringing them into.

    He didn't come out and say it, but some of my Japanese friends did. It was just a ploy by Sony to make the playstation sound really cool.

    Oh, there is one last issue with taking a PS2 out of Japan. Sony will not honor the warantees on these units outside of Japan. At least that's what I was told by my Japenese friends. That was a deal killer for me.

    ObOnTopic: I think that the port to dreamcast is way cool. Look at how useful the NetBSD/hpcmips port is for the WindowsCE machines that are now being dumped on the market cheaply.

  • I'd love to see some proof of this. An url would be nice.
  • Let me comment on the export ban by the Japanese government on the PS2 by stating categorically that it was a move planned at SOny and only incidentally carried out by the government. It had nothing to do with whether the PS2 could be used for a weapons system and everything to do with whether third parties could export it independently to the US and other countries for resale. F'chrissakes, they allowed people to take a maximum of one out of the country; how many do terrorists using that kind of technology (if there are any) need to reverse engineer it?
    One other thing: It's a well-known fact in Japan that the ban will be lifted just a little earlier than the US release of the PS2.
  • dude that is a serial port
  • precisely...dude needs to lay off the cnn/c-span
  • Text that is normal-sized and easy to read on a desktop monitor will become incomprehensible on the average TV.
    You can get a VGA adaptor for the Dreamcast for little expense, perhaps about $20/£10.

  • Haiklue (Score:2)

    by Jerf ( 17166 )
    I think you meant to say "get a haiklue".

    (Now that word I like!)

  • It's about a cool hack for the hell of it. I already bought the thing so that I could play games. The only people who would do this are hackers anyhow. You wanna cheap terminal? Go get an old VTxxx and a long serial cable.

  • It already runs Linux (Score:3)

    by Oliver ( 19269 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @04:57AM (#930128) Homepage Journal
    Linux running on the Dreamcast was demoed at a recent LinuxUserGroup meeting in the Tokyo area.
    Though there was no shell yet, but the kernel booted and could be manipulated via the VS. communication cable. Quite impressive.
  • Slightly offtopic, but Tucows opened a BSD section now. Find it here [tucows.com].

    Just in case...

  • Only thing is, some other human being didn't put the mountain there...
  • With Debian, you merely need to download install disks, and then can install the remainder via whatever network connection you prefer...
    Not that this is likely to work too well with a DreamCast unit; I suspect they don't do DSL...


    I don't know why this isn't posted as Clueless Newbie, because that was retarded.

    This may be the stupidest, most clueless post in recent memory. I pray it's a joke, because this guy has lots of other good posts in recent weeks (barring the bizarre Hitler one). I mean which stupid thought in this post do you attack first? The idea that Debian will run on this thing? Or the question of where one might stick floppies? And as for the DSL bit - of course not, the thing doesn't even have NIC and you know it from your earlier post. Or maybe the joke is the retarded, blind Linux advocacy - "Honey, the toaster is broken!" "Oh, did you try loading RedHat on it?" Or maybe "Dr., I have an itching, burning sensation when I urinate." "Try open source. It's the community model you know - cathedral and the bazaar and all that. Good for the kidneys."

    This must be a joke. But a bizarre and poorly executed one.

  • There is the doom/ps util. Allows graphical "admin" of a box. Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting your wogin shell...

    Check it out. [unm.edu]

    Of course a BSD port of a more modern game would be needed, but I think a few Internet-Enabled-Rocket-Launcher applications could be very popular...

  • Sega is working on a NIC adapter for the Dreamcast. It should be out later this year I believe.
  • I've been doing a bit of work putting linux on the N64 because they are the cheapest platform I can find. Most of the hard work is done since GCC for it is here [50megs.com] but there is lots to do. I want to get the thigns to talk to each other over their high speed serial controller interface but I don't have any docs and all the sample code just isn't abuseing the hardware that way.

    I figured that a cost of about AU$200 (thats about US $130) per machine, you could build a large cluster of 64 bit machines.

    At least with dreamcast you won't need a custom cartrage but at least with a custom cart, there is room for a fast I/O device.
  • Well, I *could* build a mountain of mashed potatoes and call it Mount Spudmore, but is that a good reason to do it? Hell no.

    _I'd_ check it out, if you took some snapshots and put it up on the web. And you could probably make slashdot quickies with something like that.

    Heck, if you were Canadian, there'd probably be some sort of Can-Con art grant you could get, and tons of PEI farmers would donate the 'materials'.

    [/me gets to thinking]
  • Yes, you too can join in with your sega and NetBSD to kill off those pesky daemons... Ahh, heck with it - what can you do with NetBSD on a Dreamcast?

    Adam

    ChainSaw Linux [chainsawlinux.com]

  • I know it's late, but here's a couple of answers:

    I've heard that Linux on SH is further along in terms of booting to console then NetBSD is. I also have a Linux bias, but I'm willing to try out NetBSD when I get my stuff together. I've been wanting to try out FreeBSD as a devel. platform for a while now, just haven't had the time or motivation ;P.

    SDL is the Simple Direct media Library at libsdl.org [libsdl.org]. It's a small, low-level (but it sits over X, the frame buffer, GGI, DirectX, etc.) multimedia library that is responsible for most of Loki's ports to Linux.

    Marcus

  • Why this port is good... (Score:4)

    by mrossbrown ( 70015 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @07:50AM (#930138) Homepage
    I am currently in the process of getting the tools necessary to do homebrew development on the Dreamcast. I'm building the DCPC serial cable on Marcus' site [mangakai.org], and I also have access to a burner so I can make bootable discs.

    I don't really agree with some of the other posts which say this is limited to serving content or security, I see the advantages of this is increasing the ability to port *nix games and to be able to develop for multiple platforms at once.

    I'm pushing for Linux to be ported to the DC, because then we can have a port of OpenGL (I hear the PowerVR2 supports it natively), and SDL (which AFAIK has been ported to FreeBSD) among other things. Just porting OpenGL and/or SDL would allow QuakeForge to be compiled for DC with probably little to no modifications. With a ppp driver in the kernel (or on a ramdisk if you prefer) you will have netplay for these types of games with a *minimum* of porting effort. Any linux games that don't require X (unless you want to port X, but why??) could be ported, off the top of my head I can think of xmame, lsdldoom, just to name some obvious ones.

    Here's what I thought needed to be done:

    Get the linux kernel up and running with a console on the serial port.

    Allow the kernel to load a ramdisk from a CDR.

    Write an accel. frame buffer to access the DC's frame buffer.

    Impose certain constraints on the dev. system since this is a *console* and not an athalon w/ 128MB ram. One constraint would be instead of porting glibc, use newlib instead (is this even possible?). This would eliminate the majority of command-line Linux utils, but why would you want these anyway?

    Port SDL using the frame buffer, I have no clue about OpenGL though.

    This would replace WinCE as a devel. system, and allow broke college students such as myself to go nuts with the DC. Third-party developers might even be interested in this.

    Marcus

  • The problem with farms (Score:3)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @07:29AM (#930139)
    All of the game consoles are heavily price subsidized by their manufacturers. They take a loss on the console and expect to make it up on the royalities from game sales.

    If a substantial portion of people/companies go out and buy 100+ machines each for their own compute farms, the manufacturers are going to eventually notice that the ratio of games bought to consoles sold is declining. At some point they will attempt to prevent non-game (or really, non-royalty generating uses of their hardware. Kind of like the whole i-opener fiasco.

    However, there is probably a point up to which the manufacturers are happy to have unix ported because it will increase their raw sales figures, and act as an incentive for game development companies, whose suits would never conceive of the idea that a console might be used for something other than gaming, to port to the console.

  • As long as it's mostly bored hackers who are buying the systems, rather than Industrial Light & Magic, the manufacturers would be sensible to encourage the trend. After all, who is going to buy a Dreamcast and then *not* play games on it?
    Unfortunately I don't really expect console manufacturers to have such an enlightened attitude to intellectual property - their paranoia will probably lead them to lock down the platform even though a little bit of openness could encourage a disproportionate amount of interest from hacker types.
  • I give up...

    A few months ago I hoped that one day I will have at least one machine of every port NetBSD runs on (except pc532 wich is just too rare), but they are too fast for me. :-(
  • You're right, it is less than "amazingly" useful, but consider...

    If one could replace the modem module (which is replaceable) with a pair of USB ports, you could then add a USB ethernet port or modem, a keyboard, mouse, and hard-drive. Then you'd have an open-source web-TV/email box, or an open-source game development platform, or drop it in a kiosk with a touch-screen for a cheap, public web-browser, or etc...

    Granted, not as good or powerful as a full computer system, but pretty slick in a dedicated application.

    Which brings up the question, does anyone have the pinout for the internal modem connector?
  • By the way, how soon after the introduction of the PS2 will we be seeing network cards for them?

    Don't need'em. PS2 has USB and firewire ports. Just plug in a USB ethernet adaptor or modem. When PS2 will support ethernet or a modem is a different question.
  • turn any TV into a desktop, you don't even need a VGA monitor.

    An intriguing idea, what about the resolution issue? Text that is normal-sized and easy to read on a desktop monitor will become incomprehensible on the average TV.
    -J
  • I am always impressed when NetBSD makes it to another platform.

    It is the sole reason that a number of hardware platforms are still viable.

    Good work, guys!

    --
    Max V.
  • It's not really about productivity, it's like the mountain climber: "because it's there." That, I think, is the real motivation behind the entire NetBSD project.

    --
    Max V.


  • Hmmm... That smelled of poo. Did you happen to just pull that out of your ass?


    purefizz friend #1:"Hey, we're short on time AND hardware. What are we going to do?"

    purefizz friend #2:"Heck, instead of ordering more computers from SGI's overstocked warehouse of intel hardware, why don't we spend a few thousand hours porting our rendering app to the DreamCast along with adding distributed processing hooks to the WinCE OS?"

    purefizz friend #1:"Considering that the graphics hardware pumps out 320 X 240, it will look absolutely spectacular when the film is projected onto a 70 ft. wide screen! Audiences will be mesmerized."

    purefizz friend #2: "Probably the best part of this plan is that we're going to get less resolution, but the same number of polygons as any off-the-shelf PC graphics card. It just feels so right."

    purefizz friend #1: "Think we should send a press release to Wired or something? It might help attract attention to our movie."

    purefizz friend #2:Naw, just call purfizz. He'll post something on SlashDot about it, get modded up to the top, and Sega will be calling us in no time with job offers."



    Seth
  • Actually it was George Mallory, an Englishman, who said that in 1924,before starting off his ultimately fatal expedition in 1926.

    That was 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing.

  • Now that they've managed to get NetBSD running on a originally games platform such as the Dreamcast, wouldn't the next step be porting other BSD/*nixes such as OpenBSD and Linux? But then this would probably raise more paranoid concerns for the import/export departments of a few governments, most notably Japan, where the Playstation 2 is now under restrictive export controls [slashdot.org] due to the outrageous and overly paranoid concerns that its massive computing power may be converted into a weapons flight/launch control system. Just curious, is the Dreamcast under any export controls?

    Now back to porting OpenBSD to a games platform...so consider this overtly paranoid scenario that might just scare the pants off export authorities:

    Games platform with massive graphics processing power + OpenBSD = Massively secure and un-crackable* encrypted system for controlling nuclear weapons from so-called rogue states!

    (*some may argue that OpenBSD merely creates this illusion)

    Now wouldn't that be an amusing thought!

  • Have you seen Dextrose [dextrose.com] for the N64? great place to find assemblers, compilers, and sources for writing stuff for the N64.

    kick some CAD [cadfu.com]
  • uhhh... ever heard of software rendering?! Ever heard of the renderman [pixar.com] specification? If you don't know anything about distributed rendering technologies, maybe you should read and research before opening your mouth. You might stick your foot in it!

    kick some CAD [cadfu.com]

  • render farm (Score:3)

    by purefizz ( 114470 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @05:10AM (#930152) Homepage
    What strikes me as amazing is that I know a couple of guys who ran out of machines and where running out of time during a render for a film production. These little boxes just happened to be a cheap way to get renders kicking! Now, nothing like seeing a render farm of dreamcasts?!

    kick some CAD [cadfu.com]
  • You can do that with RedHat :) You can install over NFS, FTP, or HTTP (maybe others). BTW, you will love FreeBSD (my OS of choice) as soon as you work out its differences. In FreeBSD there are man pages for everything including kernel modules. I have a USB mouse that I couldn't get working at first, I got frustrated looking for HOW-TOs (as I would in linux) then typed `man usb' and voila, up came how to get it working, then a `man ums' for the specifics of usb mice.


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man

  • "How can this be useful?" - Reply (Score:3)

    by Tralfamadorian ( 115732 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @06:10AM (#930154) Homepage
    People are typing that this cannot be useful in any way, but I say that is completely false! Obviously the reson to port BSD to the dreamcast is so that they can then port Nethack to that platform. The NetBSD folks realize that the Dreamcast is a gaming platform, and they will treat it as such.... why with fortune, nethack, and hunt on there (for the multiplayer experiece) this could be sold as dreamcast software in stores.


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
  • Think about what porting an open BSD or Linux over to a closed, proprietary console system does:

    It opens the console.

    All of a sudden, you've got an open, cheap, extensible platform. It's got sound, it's got video output to TV or VGA, it's got a CD-ROM drive, it's got a modem, it's got a keyboard, and it's got the possibility for further expansion through the serial port, as well as swapping out the modem for an ethernet card in the future.

    You could port VNC to it under GGI or SVGALIB or even plain old X, and turn any TV into a desktop, you don't even need a VGA monitor.

    Take it one step further, and now it's a cheap network computer or thin client, with a light word processing app, web browser, and solitaire game on a free ISP like NetZero or whatever.

    Or maybe it's an MP3 player stereo component with an on-screen interface and cool visualization options. Hell, it'd fit great in your car.

    Or let's take this as far as you can go. Why not port something really massive to it? Say, something like the Unreal engine. There are projects out there like Digitalo [digitalo.com]'s Virtual Reality Notre Dame Project [vrndproject.com], where you can tour giant heritage structures like the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral in full 3D, led around by a virtual tour guide, and teach kids things they'd never otherwise learn. Porting the engine to the Dreamcast (there's already an x86 Linux and PSX2 port) would give you a $199 learning console that plugs right into the TVs most schools already have (moreso than computers), and suddenly gives them classroom access to more power and technology than any PC initiative ever did. From light web browsing to 3D learning applications, a BSD port to the Dreamcast could make dreams of computers in the classroom real.

    Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm an engine licensee, producing 3D tours using the engine with my Unrealty [unrealty.net] product. But I want to see a cheap platform for them as much as any teacher who's seen the potential for such a thing.

    --Vito
  • 1. mountain
    2. you'll be able to pick 'em up for $30 soon enough
    3. you need inspiration

    .oO0Oo.
  • Although cool, I cant really see the point of doing this. Too much bloat for no real improvement in overall performance and the security aspects are pretty much mute.
  • You forgot one more category:

    6. Seasoned Sysadmins These users have grown up and do not feel it necessary to pigeonhole the rest of the users on the networks and servers they administer. They do not feel compelled to quote the jargon file or write in threeleet-speak in order to impress their peers.

  • I have read many above questioning porting NetBSD for the Dreamcast. If nothing else, would the developers 'selfish intrests' in an excellent computer science exercise justify their actions?

    Quit the bitching!

    Kyle Gibbons
  • Had someone ported linux to the dreamcast people would be spouting off about its new million and one uses. Since NetBSD has been ported its like "oh well BSD is ported to another arch".
  • Of course, what you do with a Dreamcast running NetBSD is up to you. Errr ... just what could you do with a Dreamcast running NetBSD?

    Nethack.
  • Yeah, the shitty dreamcast broswer could be replaced
    with mozilla on NetBSD.
  • FYI, the Japanese (at lest the original ones) have 33.6 kbps modems. The US ones have 56kbps modems.
  • There's an upcoming 10/100 Ethernet NIC for DC coming soon.
  • While a port of NetBSD to the Dreamcast platform seems frivolous right now, in a few years, when it has been replaced by the next generation of gaming consoles, instead of adding it to the local landfill, the owner will be able to set it up as an Internet console or low volume web server or any of several other tasks it would suited for.

    But perhaps the best reason of all for porting an OS to an unconventional hardware platform is because they could.

    I call it 'mountain climber' logic.

    Knunov

  • It doesn't have a network card (only a 33.6 kbps modem).

    One is coming out by the end of summer. They have already said it will be DSL and cable-modem compatible.

    Josh Sisk
  • If Sega come up with a easy way to add 10baseT to the system then NFS and another server turns it into a quite interesting.

    There is a NIC coming out, release date is somewhere near the end of summer.

    I agree the playstation 2 makes a much more capable target, particularly with USB and PCMCIA.

    I believe they have dropped the PCMIA slot to make room for the drive bay. I'm not 100% sure of this, however.

    Josh Sisk
  • Is anyone else as impressed by how much time this guy spends posting all this stuff? What a loser.

    Get of the computer man, and step outside. See that bright, yellow light? That's the sun.

    Josh Sisk
  • I've dreamed about having a PS2, loading Linux, X, Word Perfect, Call 2 Power, all from a CD (or a DVD-rom disk, whatever you prefer), without any hardware hacking. Maybe Dreamcast, although IMHO it does not look very cool.

    The hardest question is what are you going to do with such a machine? Beowolves? Internetting? Or play? But then, playing is much better from it's Original OS, isn't it?

    Thus, what has been proven once again about the NetBSD and all the *nix community:

    1. It CAN be ported to Dreamcast

    2. It is not very useful, when ported.

    Conclusion: Once a game machine, always a game machine. End of story.

  • Yes, Dreamcast could make a nice terminal, although working with a TV on low resolution can be rather unpretty. If used for research purposes only, it could make some students happy. From the marketing point of view, Dreamcast platform has much less to offer then a PS2. If you get a PS2 with usb network card, keyboard, boot it up with a linux port - voala, there you have a very powerful machine, ready to go online with your cable modem or ADSL. Giving people a fully working Linux box would bring all those crazy gamers in the world of Unix. And if the PS2 distro has minimum bugs, they'll love it!
  • Or maybe a NES emulator written for the Playstation running on Bleem ported to NetBSD running on Dreamcast.
  • Mute??? What the hell are you talking about. I think you mean "moot".
  • More than slightly. This has already been covered, my friend:

    http://slashdot.org/a rticle.pl?sid=00/06/29/1542258&mode=thread [slashdot.org]

  • I'd think that for such a system with such limited appeal it would be best if the developer were to consentrate on one system, and get that working properly.

    Personally, I'm not going to run out and get myself one until they get X working on it.
  • I was thinking once it's network card came out, that it could be used as a diskless X machine with staroffice and Netscape, saving (StarOffice) files onto the VMU so they can be copied to your friend's DreamCasts.

    In short, turn it into a useful computer, which can "dual boot" to play games.

  • "Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?"

    "Because it is there" - Sir Edmund Hillary first man to climb, Mt. Everest

  • this is really cool.
    now I'm gonna have to get
    a friggin' dreamcast!
  • Yeah, and I really believe you never do anything without a good reason.

    For example: was there any good reason for your post? Hell no.
  • So porting *BSD doesn't count as OSS innovation? What does, then? Writing apps *primarily* for Linux?

    Come on. Part of the OSS spirit is doing something "because we can." That's why you see systems like Linux and *BSD being ported to hardware that, generally, makes no sense from a practical point of view. Can there be a point to this? I dunno; I'd have to get a look at a Dreamcast and at what you can do with this *BSD before I say "sure." But it sounds like a fun project, that's for sure.
  • Whats this got to do with porting to the DC? Its clear from your posting you have NO IDEA what open source software and MP3.com are about. MP3.com is a place where unsigned or little- known artists ( such as www.mp3.com/elementuk ) can get free promotion for their band by giving away songs on the site. There is absoloutely NO pirate music on their (unlike Napster/ Gnutella). Open Source software is the way it is because people feel generous and want to give back something to the free software community or think there room for improvement in the code which other people could deal with. Research before you post about things you have no idea about in the future please!
  • LOL, was waiting for someone to say that!
  • Just curious - but why not run OpenGL and SDL directly under NetBSD? I've run Mesa-GLX on a couple of NetBSD boxes. (Apologies for now being particularly familar with the OpenGL world)

    Given that NetBSD is pretty much assured to be ported to just about any platform, its investing in a system that will have the widest hardware coverage from a single source tree.

    Being able to reliably swap over NFS would give you the option to run more VM hungry apps during development (assuming you have some form of reasonably fast IP running I/O :)

    Would you have any references to SDL?

  • But if you have a Dreamcast already and you'd like to hook it up and play with NetBSD on it you shouldn't be able to?

    You may jest about watches, but if they progress to the level of power needed to run NetBSD, it will be ported. NetBSD already runs on a wide range of mips based windows CE devices, and that gives mobile unix with exceptional battery life.

    What is impressive is not that it runs on the Dreamcast, but how little Dreamcast specific changes were needed to the NetBSD tree to get it to this point.

    Besides, some people find it cool :)
  • The Dreamcast shares many of the same interface and resource limitations as set top boxes, embedded devices and palmtop devices (each to differing extents). NetBSD was ported to the arm32 based shark, which was DEC's reference network computer platform (later killed due to pressure from Microsoft), but Network computing and others released systems based both on the hardware and on the NetBSD distribution. If it helps you can think of the Dreamcast as a low cost reference platform on which to experiment with interfaces, limited resources and (to a very limited extent) unusual video acceleration, but its also a good way to show to many people that all the world is not a PC, and that they have hardware around the house that could run unix. It was also interesting to see how few Dreamcast specific changes were needed to the NetBSD tree in order to get it to this point. If I had a Dreamcast then I would probably get a keyboard and a CD with ssh, lynx, pppd and a bunch of other tools. If Sega come up with a easy way to add 10baseT to the system then NFS and another server turns it into a quite interesting X and web browsing terminal. I agree the playstation 2 makes a much more capable target, particularly with USB and PCMCIA.

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