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Games Entertainment

X Windows On Dreamcast 56

Posted by timothy from the bazillions-of-games dept.
Stealth Dave writes: "Remember all the hullabalu back when someone first put Linux on the Dreamcast? At the time you could only get a text console and no source was available. Well, I saw over at DC Emulation that the folks over at m17n.org have screenshots of the Dreamcast running X Windows, X-Mame and PrBoom (a Linux Doom port)! They even have an ftp site with a Dreamcast distribution. What will you do with your $99 Linuxcast?" So now the Dreamcast can run GNU/Linux and BSD, and may get Inferno and Plan 9. Phew -- all for $119 at K-mart.
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X Windows On Dreamcast More

X Windows On Dreamcast

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  • Semantics (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sure, we see the X Window System being called Xwindows, X-Windows, xwin and stuff in help forums, but a slashdot editor like timothy should know better. The X consortium requests that the system be called X Window or X Window System. Headlines like this only end up miseducating the masses.

  • You CAN, but SHOULD you? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think it's really neat/cool/rad/etc that people have found a way to hack the DC and make it do stuff it wasn't designed for. Kudos! However, does it actually have enough horsepower to do anything useful other than play games specifically programmed for that hardware?

    Running linux/X/browser on it seems like fun, but it wouldn't be very fun if it was s-l-o-w. 8-)

    Just curious.

  • Re:X Windows (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Translation: We're scared Microsoft will sue us because they somehow trademarked a common noun used to describe a standard user interface element.

  • Re:X Windows (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Get-A-Life-Loser Consortium requests that the following names be used when referring to people who quote X11(7):

    • anal retentive
    • idiotic
    • fascist
    • totalitarian
    • stupid
    • retarded
    • nerd
    • homosexual
    • dumbass

    Now if the X Windows people would work on providing a decent configuration tool rather than worrying about whether or not their name has an "s" in it, we might actually got somewhere.

  • PS/2's [ibm.com] have been able to run linux for a while. In fact, since 1990.

    I think you mean PS2 [playstation.com].
  • Don't know how either, but <a href=http://www.dealcatcher.com/frame.asp?m=611&am p;c=4876>this screenshot</a> shows eth0 being setup, and grabbing an IP over BOOTP.

    What I want to know, and haven't been able to find on any of the screenshots, is what resolution X runs at!?
  • hehe, ok that was a pretty lame attempt to add a link. Here's a better link to the screenshot [m17n.org].

  • No cheap MP3 player (Score:3)

    by Karpe ( 1147 ) on Sunday June 10, 2001 @09:41AM (#163205) Homepage
    Many people are saying how you could make a mp3 player which would play music coming over NFS, but that is not possible, since sound is not already supported on the Linux dreamcast kernel.

    But it has great hack value, definitely.
  • "Woot! -- We can port Doom.... err instead of buy Doom ;)"

    Except there is no commercial port of DOOM available for Dreamcast. I have, however, seen a port of DoomCE running on Dreamcast; to my untrained eye it looked and sounded exactly like the PC original; I was most impressed.

    MAME is what excites me most about this one though -- although the 9FPS reported by the Pac Man screenshot doesn't look to promising.
    --
  • Since the screenshot is 640x480, my guess is, uh, 640x480. ;-)

    The DC can do 800x600 though. Although it wouldn't be much fun for text on a TV, you can also output to a VGA monitor. $10 each to allow you to use your PC keyboard and mouse, and you're away.
    --
    the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide
  • i know they're useless! but i want to see them anyway. google gives no (relevant) hits. please don't make me buy a dreamcast, keyboard, cd burner, ethernet card, etc just to find this out...
  • I can't anon loginto the FTP server - does anyone have the ISO eslewhere?

    This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U

  • What kind of FPS can it push? How is OpenGL?

    Just wondering.

  • But it does have a network connection, mount a filesystem! (-;
  • Humm, couldnt find the ethernet on segas site, but heres a few links.
    http://linuxdc.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]
    Win2k PPP to DC howto [kinox.org]
    Linux PPP to DC howto [kinox.org]
  • X-mame could be one killer app on the dreamcast. I try to download from the ftp site and no login. Something is a miss, or is it the slashdot effect. When will they mirror this stuff so we can actually get what the articles talk about and not take down every cool project.
  • Completely agree when it comes to a game machine or platform as a turn-key or end product. as a platform for launching into a linux entertainment appliance research design? It's priceless and well worth it, but you need to be a pioneer/developer. as a home user or casual user.... it's as you say. Buy linux games and play them on your PC, it's cheaper and better for you.

    Although I believe that every linux user should buy at least 3 loki titles as a mandatory entrance fee.... hell it's cheaper than the Me upgrade CD.
  • But that would make it a perfect kiosk/web client/static web page server. Anything where you don't want to worry about someone getting in and modifying your files. Just burn your files to CD-ROM boot the DC from it, something goes wrong there's always one solution, reboot. You need to change programs burn a new CD-ROM at current media prices it's a steal.
  • I don't recall the exact figure (and I'm not about to stop playing Skies of Arcadia to find out at the moment) but it was roughly 200.
  • X is not licensed under the GPL, so they don't have to release any changes they made there.

    Of course, for Linux, if they release binaries, they must release source.
  • you seem to forget that the dreamcast does not run on an x86 chip, it runs on an sh4. so except for for lynx and links, good luck recompiling the aforementioned browsers.

    ---
    if you can't figure out how to email me, tough.
    ---
  • I know that X is networkable, but why would you want to do that from a console in the first place. that means having to have your computer on to use your dreamcast, so unless your going to have a room full of these, what's the point. besides, ive experienced web browsing from the dreamcast on a tv, and it isn't very usable at 640x480. AND YES I KNOW that dreamcast has svga out, and again why not just use your computer. It's just geek factor, doing it because you can, that doesn't mean you should.

    ---
    if you can't figure out how to email me, tough.
    ---

  • Nice thing about this. (Score:4)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Sunday June 10, 2001 @06:46AM (#163220) Homepage Journal
    The nice thing about the Dreamcast, Keyboard, Mouse, Ethernet combination is the ability to use the small DC to work as a pc device with all your AV equipment. Being able to SMB or NFS mount your MP3 server and play mp3's in your living room without a power hungry pc eating up shelf space is nice.

    You can also load up a bunch of your programs you run and hack some of your filesystem to saves over NFS or SMB so you can write you own games, run what is ported or just tinker around. I'm i'm in my computer room i can set my xdisplay to my pc and change the music playing in my living room.

    You can also hack up your own infared receiver to the controller port so you can use a remote to watch VCD's, play MP3's or navigate a simple gui.

    I'm currently working on Gamex (gamex.sourceforge.com) to boot X86, PS2, PPC, DC games via linux only utilizing the CDROM and floppy (or memory card on consoles) to load games. Making one consistent OS for all platforms based on linus.

    For the DC i'm setting up a channel guide as well that snarfs your my.yahoo.com and will update what is coming on tv as well as a small description.

    If java could be ported over, maybe one of the open source versions this would be a killer java platform as well.

    Another interesting project i'm working on is porting the PalmOS emulator to the dc and enabling the DC to NFS mount my drive with a bunch of palm apps that could be ran and viewed from the tv.

    The DC is one of the most impressive 99.00 pieces of hardware you or anyone can get there hands on! Buy one today!

    More interesting DC hacks are people yanking the dc out of the shell and installing it in minivans to play games, mp3's and stuff like that. I'll be setting up a website shortly with links to cash for the most intriguing DC hacks around. Info will be posted on gamex.sourceforge.com as i get time to do so. (working out of town currently)

  • If you dont care if some anonymous idiot steals your slashdot account go a head and click on that link. Nice try.

    For those who aren't so l33t it changes your password to 01234567 and then changes your real email address to robertmalda@hotmail.com
  • As you can see it runs via a framebuffer. Sure the Xserver plays all sorts of nice tricks to accelerate the process, but when it comes down to actually drawing anything it's the xserver drawing inside a dump framebuffer.

    How uncool is that? Here you have a gaming machine with a pretty fast gfx chip and then it is used in framebuffer mode.

    Theres only one company to blame: The one who made the gfx chip.

    No specs = no hardware acceleration = no performance. Gotta love cirrus logic or SiS in that respect. They figured out that they would have less problems just releasing the specs on everything they have made, which actually makes sense if you think about it :)
  • A USB adapter might be more useful, though not as fast.
  • Keyboards and mice are pretty cheap, but the ethernet adapters (Broadband adaptor is what they call them) are 50-70.

    I know ebworld.com has them, but I'm sure you can find them elsewhere cheaper if you look.

    ---GEEK CODE---
    Ver: 3.12
    GCS/S d- s++: a-- C++++ UBCL+++ P+ L++
    W+++ PS+ Y+ R+ b+++ h+(++) r++ y+

  • Nonsense. This is the X Window System, not windows. You don't need to recompile a browser for the dreamcast - you just need to compile a working X system for it and run the browser on your x86 box.

    Has slashdot really devolved to the point neither of you posters realised this, and no one else corrected you? I would have earlier, but I was away from my computer. *sigh* X is a really wonderful system, you really should research it a little.


    "That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."

  • If you don't have one, it's no ones fault but your own. All of the best browsers are available for linux. Netscape Navigator 4.7 is fast and stable on even my smallest box (K6 w/ 32megs ram,) Opera, the best (and fastest) graphical browser out there, is available on linux, konquerer rocks, and of course if you are serious about speed lynx and links are both available, and both are fast enough to run very nicely on any machine that will run linux.

    I'm never sure if posts like yours (and Timothy's article, for that matter - "X Windows?" Please...) are trolls, FUD, or just ignorant. But if we assume you are neither trollig nor shilling, then one can only conclude neither you nor Timothy has a clue what you are talking about.


    "That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."

  • Re:Nice touch (Score:3)

    by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <nokrog>> on Sunday June 10, 2001 @06:04AM (#163228)
    More like these could act as terminals. With the ethernet adapter, the keyboard, and mouse they could make a smallish distro just for doing X. These could be the cheap xterminals we are looking for.
  • Lesse....

    Cheap X-terminal (with broadband adapter, keyboard and mouse).

    Linux Booting games....(just modify the startup scripts to load the game).

    PERFECT Xmame machine

    Cheap webserver (with no logging...no wait you can nfs mount a /var directory for that even!)

    Custom disk with MP3's on it too to use XMMS to play MP3(or you can just use the Dreamcast MP3 player.)

    My point is this is a cool machine and it only costs 100 bucks, and you most likely already have a TV to plug it in for the display. What else could you ask for?? I am waiting for when they do this to the PS/2! :)

  • Maybe by using this [videogamereview.com]



    ---
  • That's a VERY interesting idea... make changes to the configuration, burn to CD, boot on dreamcast, login via XDMCP on another host... BAM, terminal.

    Sounds like a cheap competitor to Sun's Sunray terminals =)

  • This is a powerVR chip.
    And specs ARE available. I'm not going to do your searching for you, but check out libdream and KOS. They are bsd licensed dev libraries/OS kernel that allow use of the pvr Tile Accelerator.

    The people doing the porting just wanted to get it working i'm sure, and it'd be good if they look at the docs/etc to make the next release fast.

    XMAME at 9fps with 8frameskip is NOT really usable :P
  • You can order an ethernet adapter that replaces the 56k modem it comes with. I have one, i set it to DHCP, stuck it behind my router, and don't have to tie up my phone line anymore to play PSO. Its very cool. Apparently Sega.com quit selling them though, so ebay is your only option... although lik-sang.com [lik-sang.com] surely has them.

  • Umm.. Look at the subject that this was posted under.. Linux on DREAMCAST. You cannot just run x86 binaries on a SH4 based Dreamcast box.

    With a significant effort, the open source browsers could be ported to this platform. It would be interesting to see if Mozilla could work within the memory constraints of the Dreamcast (16MB).

    If someone could do this, it would be a huge hit with the DC Broadband users. Because Sega never released a WWW browser for the Dreamcast, and appear to have completely abandoned any effort to release one.

  • I was able to burn an image that booted. I get the Ecos/Redhat boot images, it grabs a BOOTP address & I can telnet into it. But, when it tries to load the kernel image, I get Unrecognized image type: 4328e3ff Anyone have more luck?
  • For $150, you could get...

    1. Dreamcast: $100 USD

    2. Keyboard: $30 USD [link] [ebgames.com]

      Mouse: $20 USD [link] [ebgames.com]

    Alternatively, for less $, you could get a boat load of current and classic titles for Linux at $10 a pop from EBgames.com [ebgames.com]

    ... or, better yet, hop over to TuxGames [tuxgames.com] and pick up some new titles like Tribes 2,and Alpha Centuri [tuxgames.com], Mindrover [tuxgames.com], and Jagged Alliance 2 [tuxgames.com] and still have some money left over.

    No doubt, the hack prospects of the Dreamcast do make it tempting addition to an entertainment system. In 6 months, this should be sweet...yet, will it be selling in 6 months? (Really Curious!)

  • Heck, I'd buy a few of these if someone did that. Anyone know if this distro they've got up now can act as a xterminal? BTW, how much is a DC keyboard, mouse, and ethernet? This could be perfect for the network I've been planning to do...

    -antipop
  • Does that mean that RMS pisses you off with everything he says? That's the way it sounds. I don't know what X windows is, but I suspect what it's supposed to be. I agree with the original poster in this thread that such sloppy use of terminology discredits whatever the article is about. In fact, I haven't a clue what the meat of the article is, but I doubt very much that it's about some new thing called X windows.

  • All we need now is a fast browser on linux, then ill just plug this thing into my lounge room and network thru my wall. Surfing the web should be done in the comfort of a lounge chair i think...
  • Don't forget that several companies make VGA adapters for the Dreamcast, so you don't have to use a tv. Using VGA improves the graphics of regular old Dreamcast games a lot too. I don't remember the names of the companies, but a couple of the models have switchable inputs so you can have the Dreamcast share the monitor you're viewing right now. Sega makes a VGA adapter itself, but my recollection is that a couple of the competing models had more features for the same money (~$40).
  • Not so. I do believe that support for Microchannel took a little longer to appear for linux. :)

  • Theres only one company to blame: The one who made the gfx chip. No specs = no hardware acceleration = no performance. Gotta love cirrus logic or SiS in that respect.

    1) Why should the company release specs for the graphics chip of a console? Getting X ported to the Dreamcast is a neat hack, but hardly helps the graphics chip manufacturer in any substantial way.

    2) The Dreamcast uses a modified version of NEC's PVR chips, which are fairly well documented. So, the ones to blame would be the people that ported this, as they just took the easiest possible approach (note: I don't blame them for this..I think its cool that it runs at all...I'm just disagreeing with the parent post).

  • X Windows (Score:3)

    by Sven Tuerpe ( 265795 ) <{sven} {at} {gaos.org}> on Sunday June 10, 2001 @04:29AM (#163243) Homepage
    Quoting X11(7):

    "The X Consortium requests that the following names be used
    when referring to this software:

    X
    X Window System
    X Version 11
    X Window System, Version 11
    X11

    X Window System is a trademark of X Consortium, Inc."
  • What ever happened to the ZIP drive SEGA promised? Was it ever released? If DCLinux had support for this it would be worthwhile using then. Even better (but highly unlikely) would be to see someone hack together an IDE adapter for the DC that plugs into the modem/ broadband expansion bay thing. Well they've took things this far so why not all the way? tRANSELEMENt- Beach Boys harmonies with Sonic Youth guitars, Kraftwerk beats and Faust weirdness! http://mp3.com/elementuk/
  • I wonder how many terminals this can serve, it's cheaper than most PCs, after all.


    --

    Two witches watch two watches.
  • I've been wondering exactly what acceleration the PowerVR chip could offer to a windowing system. It seems to me that the 'straight forward' implementation would not fit in all that well with the "3d only" acceleration provided by the PVR CLX2 chip, but it would be possible to use the 3D features in a clever ways

    One possibility would be to associate a texture with each window and to draw each as a polygon with the "depth" coordinate set to the overlap order. Moving windows around would then be virtually instaneous as the hidden portions of windows would all be handled by the standard hidden surface removal algorithm.

    Another idea would be to handle text as a texture, say using punch-through or, better still, true alpha textures which would give 'antialiased' fonts. Each letter would be done as a quad poly. The output could then be captured into an offscreen buffer and turned back into a texture for subsequent display.

    Simon
    (speaking only for myself etc etc)
  • Actually, the Dreamcast has several web browsers. I believe the newest one supports Flash, MPEG decoding, and the dreamcast keyboard and mouse...

    The American web browsers were developed by PlanetWeb. Someone else did the Euro/Japanese browsers (called DreamKey) and they are actually decent.

    Unfortunately, none of the American web browsers (as far as I know) support the Broadband Adapter (ethernet card).

  • I burned a copy with almost no trouble; the problem is, my Dreamcast won't boot it; it treats it like a music CD and displays the ROM CD playing app. My Dreamcast is pretty new, though, and I've heard that Sega changed the ROM last November to disallow games copied using CD-R disks; has anyone booted this distro with a Dreamcast bought this year?
  • ...it would seem to be the benefits are limited. You'd have to burn every progra, you want to run.
  • ...but how do you even connect an Ethernet card to the dreamcast? I know, I'm an ignorant lamer.

  • FTP server is now allowing anon logins & downloads of the software... Can someone provide a mirror before we all blow it off the face of the earth?
  • At first I saw some screenshots of a game... then I thought "Wow.. great graphics... this will be awesome to load on the dreamcast." Then I realized that the screenshot was for a game released on the Dreamcast... then I thought " Ohh yea.. the dreamcast is a gaming machine. ."
    Woot! -- We can port Doom.... err instead of buy Doom ;)

  • Who da thought? (Score:4)

    by opnotic ( 458165 ) on Sunday June 10, 2001 @04:19AM (#163253) Homepage
    Wow... the Dreamcast can run games ?!?!? -- Lets hurry up and port some so we can play em ;)

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