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Old Vintage Computing Research: Dusting Off Dreamcast Linux

163

> The other problem we need to solve is swap. Linux, or at least not this Linux, won't let you use a swapfile hosted over NFS; swapon will give you an illegal argument error and refuse to enable it.

To my shock, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_block_device says

> The protocol was originally developed for Linux 2.1.55 and released in 1997.

so I wonder if you could use that? It's better suited to swap anyways.

7 months agoby yjftsjthsd-h

And this is how GD-ROMs got ripped. Broadband adapter and the shoot out the data over Ethernet

7 months agoby 486sx33

From all the variants mentioned across the comments, the PS2Linux was the best one, being officially supported by Sony.

Originally they had though as a means to foster indie development, instead people got to use it for emulation, thus PS3 Linux Other OS no longer supported graphics acceleration, and then was completly dropped in a firmware upgrade.

On the PS2, we had official Linux CDs from Sony, a hard drive, connection cables, and a whole development environment, a GL like API, another more low level console like, both with hardware acceleration (although the actual one used on the devkit wasn't exposed).

7 months agoby pjmlp

The XBOX would do it better; but sadly current ports are abandoned.

An XBOX with 128MB of RAM would run Fluxbox or whatever light env with ease, and with Dillo and a PSP user agent you could even post into HN. Gemini and Gopher would do it fine, even with clients written in TCL/Tk. It would be a fine backup PC for either thinkering or rescueing.

With ZRAM you could almost mimic a 192MB of RAM based device, good for maybe a browser like Seamonkey/IceApe if it could be built without SSE2.

7 months agoby anthk

Excellent article, it really takes me back. You can still access the old linux-sh.org website on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20080705101211/http://www.linux-...

7 months agoby wmat

> Never put a console running DC Linux outside of a firewall: it is an intentionally insecure system. Any bot scanning your network will get root immediately.

Yeah, that's really important advice. They'll get root, and then they'll... ummm... they'll... hmmmmm.... ahhh.... Be really confused? Start mining monero? Sideload Crazy Taxi and start playing it on your Dreamcast?

7 months agoby jerf

Crazy to think that we've go the Steam Deck now, as our front-line Linux-based gaming console .. I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find out that the Dreamcast emulator is probably available for SteamOS ...

7 months agoby aa-jv