Dusting off Dreamcast Linux

http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/02/dusting-off-dreamcast-linux.html

by todsacerdoti • 3 years ago

191 93 3 years ago

oldvcr.blogspot.com

hnlmorg8• 3 years ago

I remember playing around with Linux of the Dreamcast back in the day. I think my plan back then was to use it as a media centre (that was before XBMC) but even back then, the lack of an Ethernet adapter as standard made Linux rather pointless. Though it didn’t help that I also didn’t have a keyboard either.

The modem did work surprisingly well for online gaming though and routers with Ethernet sockets weren’t (yet) common in most homes so I don’t disagree with Sega’s decision not to ship Ethernet as standard. It’s just a pity those Ethernet adapters are now in such short supply.

I still play on my Dreamcast a lot. It is a great console that, in my opinion, is the first of a whole new generation of consoles based around online play. But like a lot of pioneers, it suffered a little from being ahead of its time. Plus the fiasco of the Sega CD, 32x and Saturn (all of which were actually pretty decent in their own right but shouldn’t have existed from a commercial perspective) wouldn’t have helped peoples options of Sega ahead of the Dreamcast launch either.

emodendroket3• 3 years ago

The Sega CD and 32x, sure. But the Saturn shouldn't have existed? Sega might as well have gone home if they weren't going to compete with the N64 or PSX.

hnlmorg8• 3 years ago

I didn’t say Sega shouldn’t have released a console for that generation. I just think the Saturn was architecturally the wrong choice of console.

NovaDudely2• 3 years ago

YouTube channel Video game esoterica actually had a fairly good idea on how should have handled it. Put a little more hardware grunt into the 32x and release the Neptune (Genesis + 32x) while pushing heavy on the software support for this. Use the current user base to hold over enough momentum to slow Sonys progress. Then progress with the then offered to Sega - 3DO M2 hardware which would have launced in 97.

The big thing folks have remember, Sony was not considered a major threat. It was entirely possible it could have just become. another obscure Japanese console from a hifi company. Like the X68000, PcEngine, Pippin & FMtowns Marty.

mtillman3• 3 years ago

I love arcade games so both DC and Saturn are perfect for my use, especially with my MODE upgrades. Saturn team just couldn’t pick a lane. I have a couple of DC Ethernet adapters but they don’t work with most games so the modem+dreampi is good enough for me.

hnlmorg8• 3 years ago

You’re talking about modern gaming now the original servers are down. I used a DreamPi now too. But the DreamPi is a comparatively recent addition as well as being notoriously painful to set up for non-technical gamers (doubly so if you’ve got a PAL Dreamcast).

Whereas I was talking about gaming on the Dreamcast back when it was still supported by Sega.

Nexxxeh• 3 years ago

I'm guessing you already know, but just in case (and for any others reading)...

There was an arcade system based on the Dreamcast hardware called the Atomiswave. Instead of GDROMs, it used solid state storage.

Many (20+) of the Atomiswave games have now been converted to the Dreamcast and work great on the MODE etc.

https://www.retrorgb.com/dreamcast-atomiswave-ports.html

actionfromafar• 3 years ago

With Sega CD it was hard to know, everyone was figuring out what this "CD" thing would mean. In hindsight, it was a bad idea.

netdoll• 3 years ago

The biggest problem with it was simply that it primarily ended up in the hands of Western consumers and dev houses during the height of the FMV craze, the PC Engine CD did much better comparatively speaking because most of the things on it were actual games and it had (within Japan) wide support from nearly all major software development houses.

johnklos3• 3 years ago

Someone should design a modern replacement ethernet interface.

hnlmorg8• 3 years ago

It’s not really needed now because you have the DreamPi. Which is a RaspberryPi powered server for the Dreamcast to dial into and which communicates out over Ethernet.

merpkz2• 3 years ago

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.

And do what exactly then, deploy it's x86/64 Monero miner?

bawolff2• 3 years ago

I mean, the obvious thing to do would be to make it a node in a DDOS for hire botnet.

merpkz2• 3 years ago

I have much doubt that bot could deploy a code capable of executing on this vintage CPU architecture - security through obsolescence.

urbandw311er• 3 years ago

Gain access to other more sensitive machines via your LAN I guess.

justsomehnguy2• 3 years ago

PWNing you in Sonic.

rbanffy2• 3 years ago

The rule here is simple - if you can own my network, you’ll have to manage it.

prmoustache• 3 years ago

a jumphost to all the other nodes in your network.

numpad02• 3 years ago

Can't find the source, but I remember reading a secondhand tale from early 2010s that sets at a CTF convention - a NetBSD/Dreamcast unit becomes the last one standing in it, for no one bothered to `uname -a` on it, and could not figure out why every binary payloads would just segfault. Probably cannot happen today with the likelihood of ARM and RISC-V machines in there...

idontwantthis• 3 years ago

This is delightful. I wonder if anyone there could have done anything if they had known what they were dealing with.

rwmj3• 3 years ago

Back in 1999 there was a similar contest: https://static.lwn.net/1999/0812/bigpage.php3#security

azalemeth• 3 years ago

I once had an IP address connected to an SGI Irix machine (v 6.5!) pass a security audit because the tool automatically scanning it couldn't identify what the hell it was, why none of the standard SSH key exchange algorithms were accepted, and concluded it was likely a honeypot automatically.

jetbalsa• 3 years ago

Those kinds of boxes I always ask for permission to poke at a little more and see what they really can be cracked with. Its good fun poking old shit on the network and seeing how it falls over!

somat• 3 years ago

Which is doubly funny because if I remember correctly irix was not all that secure out of the box. SGI highly recommended you run it behind a firewall. it was very chatty and ran a lot of services.

2000UltraDeluxe• 3 years ago

The most obvious abuse would be to use it as a simple proxy.

haunter• 3 years ago

if you wanted a modern equivalent you could just buy a Raptor POWER9

I admit I didn’t even know you could just buy a mobo with CPUs and pretty much build it like any regular PC https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2B02/intro.html

And you can, more or less, use you PCI GPU too https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/POWER9_Hardware_Compatibility...

There is a prebuilt version too https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/intro.html

On the other hand what’s the use case of a POWER9 desktop system? I’ve only heard about them in supercomputers and mainframes but why would anyone use one as a, daily, desktop PC?

Luc• 3 years ago

On the other hand what’s the use case of a POWER9 desktop system?

Why, it's because they're "increasingly needed to assure safety and compliance with new regulations, such as the EU's GDPR.", according to the 'prebuilt' page you linked to!

numpad02• 3 years ago

Something old, on-premise, important, benefits from multithreading and extra computing power, but okay to be worse than PC? Maybe something aerospace and/or defense?

phaer• 3 years ago

On the other hand what’s the use case of a POWER9 desktop system?

It's pretty much the only platform which can be run without firmware blobs that's somewhat competitive in terms of performance afaik.

BlueTemplar2• 3 years ago

How far is Risc-V yet from that ?

cylinder714• 3 years ago

It's a full-blown workstation. If you're interested, https://www.talospace.com/ is a blog covering developments in the POWER sphere, including reviews of applications, games and OSs running thereon.

apple4ever• 3 years ago

Soooo expensive though

omegacharlie• 3 years ago

The notorious Utopia boot disc got around the obfuscation problem with a pirated Katana SDK and used the same reset technique, letting pirated software load by simply booting Utopia and switching discs when instructed. The Utopia crew flamed out quickly as they were stupid enough to put their photographs on the disc, leading to a knock on the door from German police

Someone know more to this story? (i.e what was exactly on the disc, and what were the legal basis of said police action)

rightbyte• 3 years ago

Dunno but German copyright laws are very authoritarian and also enforced.

Klonoar• 3 years ago

Re: what was on the disc, you'd see a spinning 3D reindeer. I believe I still have one in my basement somewhere...

buildbot• 3 years ago

Huh, interesting fact - eCos is also used as the operating system on Sinar emotion series of digital backs, which use Intel’s ill fated xscale processor. It was used much later than 2002 as well

johnklos3• 3 years ago

Very, very, very cool and informative! It's an excellent reminder of how much we take gobs of memory for granted.

I never knew about issues with ethernet interfaces being too busy, so this finally explains things I saw way back when and never properly understood.

Interestingly, SuperH is one of those architectures that still has good toolchain support even though most people aren't even aware of its existence. The most recent quarter's NetBSD pkgsrc directory for SuperH has 5,900 modern packages, all built on a SuperH system with just 64 megabytes:

https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/sh3el/9.0_...

It's wonderful to see preservation efforts like this. Now I wish I had a Dreamcast!

gyrovorbis5• 3 years ago

It sure freaking does. I just upgraded our toolchains on KallistiOS to use the absolute latest GCC12.2.0 with latest Newlib and Binutils and brought C++20 to the damn thing! I'm using freaking C++ concepts and constraints with meta templates and Objective-C++ craziness on a DC.

https://github.com/KallistiOS/KallistiOS/commit/99c716c8915f...

anthk• 3 years ago

Idk about DC, but XBOX Linux with the 128MB modded XBOX and ZRAM would still be pretty usable as a desktop with IceWM, ROX, Dillo, MPlayer and Siag Office/Magic Point/MuPDF.

zozbot234• 3 years ago

This kind of thing made way more sense back when computing hardware used to be expensive, so it was sensible to repurpose absolutely anything you might have around. Today even something as cheap and potato-sized as a Raspberry Pi Zero will run circles around any Dreamcast-era hardware, and waste a lot less energy in the process.

allenrb• 3 years ago

It's called "Hacker News" for a reason.

We get to be all practical and stuff at our jobs.

jrmg• 3 years ago

It really didn’t make any ‘sense’ back then either - no-one ran read-only linux on their TV for actual work. It was always really just for fun and challenge of it.

eska• 3 years ago

Writing an OS, graphics and sound drivers, network stack and game engine prototype for the DC made me a better programmer forever. That’s why people write for this thing. It forces you to really learn how the hardware works.

For example on a modern PC you can write terrible code to access files, on poor hardware you really start worrying about file layout (i.e. file packs), access patterns, streaming, async (DC has DMA, even to VRAM), preprocessing before deploying and the tooling for that, asymmetric compression to improve CD read speeds, locality, file caching, etc.

The CPU also only has 1 level of cache and it is directly mapped, so you’re forced to learn about data oriented programming (SOA/AOS, hot/cold data, DC has some SIMD), tiling loops, CPU cache invalidation management, etc.

Nowadays I write software that blows the performance of the competition out of the water before I even start optimizing. It’s great fun in a challenging way and sharpens your skills. You should try it sometime.

gyrovorbis5• 3 years ago

Amen! Well-said! I grew up in the Dreamcast homebrew scene, and am a pretty accomplished developer academically and professionally, and it all started on the Dreamcast when I was 13. lol.

rwmj3• 3 years ago

That version of Linux should have an NBD client (nbd.ko + nbd-client), so either swapping on NBD or using an external NBD device as a filesystem would be an option. He will need the corresponding oldstyle NBD server, eg: 'nbdkit --oldstyle memory 1G' to create a 1 gig RAM disk on the server side on port 10809.

classichasclass• 3 years ago

(author) An interesting idea but the only `nbd*` I can find in the tree is `./usr/include/linux/nbd.h`; there's no kernel module or client pre-built. Also, I'm not sure this wouldn't exacerbate the issues with the Realtek just as badly as swap-over-NFS would, so the kernel upgrade would make more sense first.

rwmj3• 3 years ago

Oh that's a shame. NBD definitely existed in 2001, but they must have decided not to include the module in the build :-(

I agree that NBD would be heavy on the network and would probably trigger the "20 times" bug in that useless Realtek driver.

the_generalist• 3 years ago

Dusting off blogspot too, I see. The amount of dust must be incredible.

bobajeff• 3 years ago

Arguably the rampant piracy that resulted was one of the causes of the Dreamcast's decline...

I see this narrative parroted a lot but more than likely Dreamcast (and it's piracy) had very little to do with sega's exit from the hardware market.

Sega, the company, was already hanging on by the thread by a time the Dreamcast launched since they'd already been in massive debt at that point from previously launching and abandoning hardware projects in quick succession such as the Sega CD that 32x and the Saturn. Also, If I remember correctly this was during a recession in Japan. Around this time Sega was already looking at several companies to sell to.

rtpg• 3 years ago

I get that argument but it’s not like the Dreamcast was the Saturn. There was lots of third party support, I feel like lots of units moved… the timing with the PS2 was messy but…

I don’t remember the story but I do remember reading something about how Sega US was pretty hype to continue with the Dreamcast and got a bit blindsided by the decision to stop.

Fun aside: I only learned about pirating on Dreamcast thanks to an article in Tips&Tricks talking about it being a problem. As a kid I did not grok that maybe illegally downloading games is no bueno

ac2u2• 3 years ago

Good third party support but crucially EA didn't want to release sports games on it, reportedly because of SEGA's first-party efforts here.

patwolf• 3 years ago

I too am skeptical that piracy was their biggest problem.

I was a Sega fan, but I had no interest in the Dreamcast because I had been burned by the Saturn. When they did eventually decide to discontinue the Dreamcast, they had a fire sale to get rid of them. I, and a bunch of my friends, did end up getting Dreamcasts at that point since they were dirt cheap and there was a fantastic library of games that were easy to pirate. But had piracy been the key issue from the start, Sega wouldn't have been sitting on a glut of unsold consoles to begin with.

ekianjo2• 3 years ago

This is correct. The DC was already dead on arrival because Sega s finances were already deep in the red.

bena• 3 years ago

I forget what the numbers were, but the Dreamcast needed every single console owner to buy something like 4 controllers each with their own rumble pack and VMU and then about a dozen games.

But then Sega had to go full fucking Sega and the Dreamcast had a fishing controller, a microphone, keyboard, mouse, light gun, and fucking maracas.

YeahNO• 3 years ago

Yeah, SEGA gotta SEGA. The fishing controller was great, wasn't it? I still occasionally drag out my old system just to play SEGA Bass Fishing 2 with the rod controller.

tadfisher• 3 years ago

I seem to recall every Japanese console of that era having options for fishing, kb/mouse, and shooting. You have a point with maracas, but please never forget the congo drums for the GameCube/Wii and the Guitar Hero controller for literally everything with a video output.

anotherhue• 3 years ago

Peter Moore, then the head of Sega US doesn't even mention piracy as a factor [0]. But then Tony Chen who designed the Xbox 360 security system says it was a major factor [1]. Note that Moore was head of Xbox at that time.

0: https://youtu.be/0ZBR4uHec_k

1: https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo

stonemetal12• 3 years ago

The person with the job to fix a particular problem claims problem is super important. I'm sure you can imagine my surprise.

myrmi• 3 years ago

It's a nice story, but you're right to say it's not true. If easy-piracy was the cause, you'd expect the attach rate (games-sold-per-console-sold) to be much lower than other contemporary consoles, because pirated games still needed legitimate Dreamcasts to be sold. But it just wasn't [1]. They simply didn't sell enough Dreamcasts for the reasons you say, and others.

[1] https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Software_tie_ratio

nextaccountic2• 3 years ago

Also, PS1 and PS2 was easy to pirate too, and it thrived

dole• 3 years ago

Early PS1 and 2 piracy weren’t nearly as easy or widespread as the DC, IIRC both required hardware modchip installations before disc swap soft methods were discovered, where the DC’s only major hardware piracy hurdle was having a CD-R writer capable of burning the DC’s format.

DC piracy flourished because of easier to find ISOs and a faster internet than the PS1 gen of consoles. PS2 had piracy issues at the same time of the DC, but PS2 piracy was much tougher to do due to the larger game disc sizes transferring over the wire and subsequent uncompressed video and code developers didn’t have to optimize for and pirates had to compress or cut to compensate.

throwawaaarrgh• 3 years ago

The good old days. I had the BBA, so cross compiling apps was a fun way to learn more about embedded systems. I'd wait patiently for hardware hackers to write drivers to new peripherals, as I was too much of a n00b to myself.

Maybe I missed it, but why didn't he use the hard drive adapter? One of these arbitrary restrictions like not using SH-boot? I think the hard drive mod was first discovered in 2002

gyrovorbis5• 3 years ago

He's also not using the 32MB double RAM mod we now support. My buddy built NetBSD with it the other day.

eggsome• 3 years ago

Here is a modern implementation of the SuperH CPU for Linux:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVD1Yws__v0

gyrovorbis5• 3 years ago

Dreamcast indie developer here. Be sure to check out the 32MB RAM mod. We fully support it in KallistIOS,and it will probably substantially improve the experience you have with running Linux and doing this kind of stuff with it.

zoklet-enjoyer• 3 years ago

Dreamcast was watch introduced me to homebrew games. Those burnt discs with homebrew stuff and emulators of old computers just blew my mind as a kid.

ganoushoreilly• 3 years ago

The Bleem! and Bleemcast! Emulators to play PSX games was awesome at the time to. The fact there was a commercial release was even cooler to me. I still have two copies of each and a couple of the variants (bleempacks) too.

It's ironic that Sony suing them closed them down, only for the original developers to go to work at Sony. My guess is they received nice pay packages in exchange.

The late 90's early 2k's was a really great time for tech.

Dusting off Dreamcast Linux

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