Linux on the Gamecube? 45
An Anonymous Coward asks: "Previously on Slashdot we have covered the hacking and programming of numerous consoles,- the Xbox, Dreamcast , and of course the Playstation 2. With Linux migrating to all of these platforms as fast as you can blink, why isn't it that I haven't heard anything about the Gamecube.
These little beasts have been promoted by Nintendo as easy to develop for, so are there as yet any open source tools for Gamecube development? Are there any Initiatives to get an alternative OS on these systems? The feature of being able to plug a gameboy advance into one of these units makes them even more hack worthy." There was a Sourceforge project for this, but it's activity stats are fairly flat. What barriers are there in getting Linux to run on this piece of hardware, and how do they compare with the difficulties faced by similar projects on the X-Box?"
Re:The main barrier is obvious... (Score:1, Funny)
Amigas load off floppy! Sega megadrives load off carttridge... ergo I believe there's very little chance of getting things to work!
Plus One fucking insightful!
Look, the disk is just a plain ole' DVD (they didn't invent their own format) with the edges snapped off. It's just like those mini cds. There is nothing special about it.
Please moderators -- just wait a bit, OK? There's no need to blow your load right now.
Re:The main barrier is obvious... (Score:1)
Re:The main barrier is obvious... (Score:1)
More embarrasing is doing meta-moderation and all but one or two comment being rated as Off-Topic, Flame or Troll. The idea behind the rating system is to propagate good articles. Unfortunately there are people that like to try to "clean up" the bad things instead of rewarding the good things.
But it could be worse... no meta-moderation at all, for example
Re:The main barrier is obvious... (Score:1)
It's a boot sector on layer 2 (Score:1)
The spiral is reversed on the disks so unless you wanna mod the drive motor to spin backwards so it can read normal disks.....
Neither the Xbox nor the GameCube spins discs backwards. The fact that their DVDs appear to have a reversed spiral is entirely because their boot sector is on the second physical layer of the disc, which goes from outside to inside, even on a "normal" DVD.
However, somebody may be able to find a loophole to boot mini-CDR's on gcn, possibly put in for debugging purposes a la Dreamcast.
Re:The main barrier is obvious... (Score:2, Insightful)
Moron.
Mod me up as insightful...
Impossible (Score:5, Informative)
You CAN'T make a Gamecube disc without Nintendo's help. It's a small DVD that spins the opposite direction. Nothing you can buy can make one of those.
The Gamecube will have a broadband adapter, but you can't make it boot from that. It also has no hard drive, so where are you going to store all the data? RAM?
The best bet is to explore the possibilities of the GBA link. You can make a GBA game. And you can store some data in the GBA cartridge, but not much. If the Gamecube will run and begin playing from a linked GBA the BEST you could do is have 4 GBAS with 4 different cartridges be your hard drive/boot device. Then use the broadband adapter and your computer to control everything.
All in all, even if you could make a gamecube disc, the cube isn't very useful for anything other than playing gamecube games. And codwarrior will eventually have a dev kit. So if all you want is to make games, I'm sure Nintendo will be happy to make discs if your game is extrememe high quality.
Re:Impossible (Score:2)
Re:Impossible (Score:1)
Re:Impossible (Score:2)
Actually, CW already has a dev kit out for the cube. Unfortunately it's only the software portion that they sell, which is completely useless without a GC dev station (try getting even a picture of one of these!). The only way I can see getting anything but games on the GC is via a modchip which will at least allow booting off of mini-CDRs.
Re:Impossible (Score:2, Interesting)
Like this [amc.com]?
Re:Impossible (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Impossible (Score:2, Interesting)
I see two major possibilities:
* Using either the GBA link cable or the ethernet adaptor to do a buffer overflow, using a small loader stub as the payload. Once you have the loader stub running on the system it would be possible to upload and run whatever you want.
* Taking advantage of the GameShark. Once InterAct finally releases the thing, changing memory on the GameCube live will be much easier. If they add a computer connection port like on the Saturn Pro Action Replay, then Linux on the GameCube will become an exercise in reverse-engineering. Of course, this is easy on the Saturn: the cartridge port exposes the main CPU bus, but.. I'm still hoping...
Re:Impossible (Score:2)
Re:Impossible (Score:1)
Re:Impossible (Score:2)
Metadata ! You don't control the Metadata ! The writer does .. (Checksums start/stop bits on the media )
So even if you reverse your program bit for bit and write it on the disk, the reader won't find itn because the checksums won't work..
Re: imPOSSIBLE (Score:1)
Oh, gee look - we can just make it spin the opposite direction, how painstakingly obvious it is to just reverse the direction of the spinning and viola - normal dvd reading, small form factor. A simple switch on the side and we can change which direction it'll spin. Granted it's a hardware mod, but hardly damaging to the unit itself or particularly difficult (not like soldering an ide header and micromotherboard to the beast just to "get booting" as it were.
Now, if it still uses some fancy proprietary format on top of that we still need to be writing in that format.
Re:Impossible (Score:1)
And you thought that DVD region coding was just a few bits! Do you know how hard it can be to get backwards DVD's sometimes?
Re:Impossible (Score:2)
Compare this to the Dreamcast which used a proprietary "GD-ROM" technology which was considered immune to piracy. Dreamcasts were actually made of stock Yamaha CD-ROM mechanisms. Of course it was cracked about 7 months after the DC's US launch. Hackers just made a program that allowed them to access the program as a normal CD-ROM.
Re:Impossible (Score:2)
Easy? (Score:2, Informative)
Xbox has an OS (Score:1)
Real games systems do not use a real OS.
Xbox games run Windows XB, which is a stripped-down version of Windows 2000. Some Sega Dreamcast games had Windows CE for SH4 on them.
Panasonic Q (Score:3, Interesting)
Who cares about the game cube? (Score:2, Funny)
sourceforge? (Score:2, Funny)
Now I've seen everything!
Hm... know what I'd do if I had a gamecube? (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux on my computer, where it belongs.
Games on my Gamecube, where they belong.
What is the point of anything else?
- A.P.
Re:Hm... know what I'd do if I had a gamecube? (Score:1)
Let me get this straight...
You have a Gamecube, which you've purchased with your hard-earned money, so you can play games on it.
You have a Gamecube so you can play games. Ok, I'm with you so far...
You have a computer, which you've purchased (or, more likely, self-built) with your hard-earned money, so you can run Linux on it.
You have a computer so you can run Linux. Ok, I think I've lost you, here... that's your application? Sure, Linux is fun... but I don't know if that would be the reason I'd have a computer.
Re:Hm... know what I'd do if I had a gamecube? (Score:2)
Re:Hm... know what I'd do if I had a gamecube? (Score:2)
Then again I haven't used Linux in quite some time just becuase I found myself doing nothing but hacking instead of be productive. So don't mind me.
Computers suck. (Score:2)
A GameCube running linux with a read-only boot drive and a cable modem is what most people need for a computer. Used to be called a Network Computer, but went out of fashion because people didn't have cable modems.
Another hacking option (Score:2, Interesting)
Another possibility I've wondered about is just removing the drive and hooking up a drive simulator. Building the hardware to simulate the electrical/data behaviour of the drive would be non-trivial, but probably still possible, no?
Anyone care to comment on that idea?
-Roy
easy peasy (Score:2)
of course the only difficult part will be the media. couldnt you reverse the polarity on the platter motor of the CD burner to make it spin the opposite way while burning? is the data being written dependant on the direction of travel of the disk? i thought it was just a stream of data to the laser and a spinnind disk (horribly simplified, but...). the panasonic Q offers support for full sized media so that shouldnt be to big of a problem.
As it appears to me there was more standing in the way of linux on the DC. GD ROM format wasnt exactly standard.
do i think well see it, i hope so. Do i think we'll have reversed engineered software legaly running on the xbox first, yes.
$.02
Re:easy peasy (Score:1)
Linux for Dreamcast was possible because the Dreamcast also reads and boots from standard data CDs without a problem.
Re:easy peasy (Score:1)
It was a lot more fun and ironic... (Score:1)
it's already been done (Score:1)
Instructions for installing Linux on your very own Xbox can be found at Project: LinuXbox [somethingawful.com].
This isn't too surprising, however, given that the Xbox has been around for centuries. I submit my proof of that fact with Exhibit A [somethingawful.com] and Exhibit B [somethingawful.com]
Re:it's already been done (Score:1)
3iLL G4te5 designed the Xbox to run lunix and staroffice and gmip and gnu and gcc will compile halo for linux on the Xbox.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dev kits (Score:1)