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• Dreamcast Operating Systems

  16 septembre 2010, par Multimedia Mike — Sega Dreamcast

  The Sega Dreamcast was famously emblazoned with a logo proudly announcing that it was compatible with Windows CE :

  
  
  

  It’s quite confusing. The console certainly doesn’t boot into some version of Windows to launch games. Apparently, there was a special version of CE developed for the DC and game companies had the option to leverage it. I do recall that some game startup screens would similarly advertise Windows CE.

  Once the homebrew community got ahold of the device, the sky was the limit. I think NetBSD was the first alternative OS to support the Dreamcast. Meanwhile, I have recollections of DC Linux and LinuxDC projects along with more generic Linux-SH and SH-Linux projects.

  
  
  

  DC Evolution hosts a disc image available for download with an unofficial version of DC Linux, assembled by one Adrian O’Grady. I figured out how to burn the disc (burning DC discs is a blog post of its own) and got it working in the console.

  It’s possible to log in directly via the physical keyboard or through a serial terminal provided that you have a coder’s cable. That reminds me– my local Fry’s had a selection of USB-to-serial cables. I think this is another area that is sufficiently commoditized that just about any cable ought to work with Linux out of the box. Or maybe I’m just extrapolating from the experience of having the cheapest cable in the selection (made by io connect) plug and play with Linux.

  
  
  

  Look ! No messy converter box in the middle as in the Belkin case. The reason I went with this cable is that the packaging claimed it was capable of up to 500 Kbits/sec. Most of the cables advertised a max of 115200 bps. I distinctly recall being able to use the DC coder’s cable at 230400 bps a long time ago. Alas, 115200 seems to be the speed limit, even with this new USB cable.

  Anyway, the distribution is based on a 2.4.5 kernel circa 2001. I tried to make PPP work over the serial cable but the kernel doesn’t have support. If you’re interested, here is some basic information about the machine from Linux’s perspective, gleaned from some simple commands. This helps remind us of a simpler time when Linux was able to run comfortably on a computer with 16 MB of RAM.

  Debian GNU/Linux testing/unstable dreamcast ttsc/1
  dreamcast login : root
  
  Linux dreamcast 2.4.5 #27 Thu May 31 07:06:51 JST 2001 sh4 unknown
  Most of the programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are
  
  freely redistributable ; the exact distribution terms for each program
  
  are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright
  Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
  
  permitted by applicable law.
  dreamcast : # uname -a
  
  Linux dreamcast 2.4.5 #27 Thu May 31 07:06:51 JST 2001 sh4 unknown
  dreamcast : # cat /proc/cpuinfo 
  
  cpu family : SH-4
  
  cache size : 8K-byte/16K-byte
  
  bogomips : 199.47
  Machine : dreamcast
  
  CPU clock : 200.00MHz
  
  Bus clock : 100.00MHz
  
  Peripheral module clock : 50.00MHz
  dreamcast : # top -b
   09:14:54 up 14 min,  1 user,  load average : 0.04, 0.03, 0.03
  
  15 processes : 14 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
  
  CPU states :   1.1% user,   5.8% system,   0.0% nice,  93.1% idle
  
  Mem :     14616K total,    11316K used,     3300K free,     2296K buffers
  
  Swap :        0K total,        0K used,        0K free,     5556K cached
    PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
  
    219 root      18   0  1072 1068   868 R     5.6  7.3   0:00 top
  
      1 root       9   0   596  596   512 S     0.0  4.0   0:01 init
  
      2 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 keventd
  
      3 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 kswapd
  
      4 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 kreclaimd
  
      5 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 bdflush
  
      6 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 kupdated
  
      7 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 kmapled
  
     39 root       9   0   900  900   668 S     0.0  6.1   0:00 devfsd
  
     91 root       8   0   652  652   556 S     0.0  4.4   0:00 pump
  
     96 daemon     9   0   524  524   420 S     0.0  3.5   0:00 portmap
  
    149 root       9   0   944  944   796 S     0.0  6.4   0:00 syslogd
  
    152 root       9   0   604  604   456 S     0.0  4.1   0:00 klogd
  
    187 root       9   0   540  540   456 S     0.0  3.6   0:00 getty
  
    201 root       9   0  1380 1376  1112 S     0.0  9.4   0:01 bash
  

  Note that at this point I had shutdown both gpm and inetd. The rest of the processes, save for bash, are default. The above stats only report about 14 MB of RAM ; where are the other 2 MB ?

  dreamcast : # df -h
  Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
  /dev/rd/1             2.0M  560k  1.4M  28% /
  

• HTML5 Video Presentations at LCA 2011

  26 janvier 2011, par silvia

  Working in the WHAT WG and the W3C HTML WG, you sometimes forget that all the things that are being discussed so heatedly for standardization are actually leading to some really exciting new technologies that not many outside have really taken note of yet. This week, during the Australian Linux (...)

• I Really Like My New EeePC

  29 août 2010, par Multimedia Mike — General

  Fair warning : I’m just going to use this post to blather disconnectedly about a new-ish toy.

  I really like my new EeePC. I was rather enamored with the original EeePC 701 from late 2007, a little box with a tiny 7″ screen that is credited with kicking off the netbook revolution. Since then, Asus has created about a hundred new EeePC models.

  Since I’m spending so much time on a train these days, I finally took the plunge to get a better netbook. I decided to stay loyal to Asus and their Eee lineage and got the highest end EeePC they presently offer (which was still under US$500)– the EeePC 1201PN. The ’12′ in the model number represents a 12″ screen size and the rest of the specs are commensurately as large. Indeed, it sort of blurs the line between netbook and full-blown laptop.

  
  
  

  Incidentally, after I placed the order for the 1201PN nearly 2 months ago, and I mean the very literal next moment, this Engadget headline came across announcing the EeePC 1215N. My new high-end (such as it is) computer purchase was immediately obsoleted ; I thought that only happened in parody. (As of this writing, the 1215N still doesn’t appear to be shipping, though.)

  It’s a sore point among Linux aficionados that Linux was used to help kickstart the netbook trend but that now it’s pretty much impossible to find Linux pre-installed on a netbook. So it is in this case. This 1201PN comes with Windows 7 Home Premium installed. This is a notable differentiator from most netbooks which only have Windows 7 Home Starter, a.k.a., the Windows 7 version so crippled that it doesn’t even allow the user to change the background image.

  I wished to preserve the Windows 7 installation (you never know when it will come in handy) and dual boot Linux. I thought I would have to use the Windows partition tool to divide work some magic. Fortunately, the default installation already carved the 250 GB HD in half ; I was able to reformat the second partition and install Linux. The details are a little blurry, but I’m pretty sure one of those external USB optical drives shown in my last post actually performed successfully for this task. Lucky break.

  
  
  The EeePC 1201PN, EeePC 701, Belco Alpha-400, and even a comparatively gargantuan Sony Vaio full laptop– all of the portable computers in the household
  

  So I got Ubuntu 10.04 Linux installed in short order. This feels like something of a homecoming for me. You see, I used Linux full-time at home from 1999-2006. In 2007, I switched to using Windows XP full-time, mostly because my home use-case switched to playing a lot of old, bad computer games. By the end of 2008, I had transitioned to using the Mac Mini that I had originally purchased earlier that year for running FATE cycles. That Mac served as my main home computer until I purchased the 1201PN 2 months ago.

  Mostly, I have this overriding desire for computers to just work, at least in their basic functions. And that’s why I’m so roundly impressed with the way Linux handles right out of the box. Nearly everything on the 1201PN works in Linux. The video, the audio, the wireless networking, the webcam, it all works out of the box. I had to do the extra installation step to get the binary nVidia drivers installed but even that’s relatively seamless, especially compared to “the way things used to be” (drop to a prompt, run some binary installer from the prompt as root, watch it fail in arcane ways because the thing is only certified to run on one version of one Linux distribution). The 1201PN, with its nVidia Ion2 graphics, is able to drive both its own 1366×768 screen simultaneously with an external monitor running at up on 2560×1600.

  The only weird hiccup in the whole process was that I had a little trouble with the special volume keys on the keyboard (specifically, the volume up/down/mute keys didn’t do anything). But I quickly learned that I had to install some package related to ACPI and they magically started to do the right thing. Now I get to encounter the Linux Flash Player bug where modifying volume via those special keys forces fullscreen mode to exit. Adobe really should fix that.

  Also, trackpad multitouch gestures don’t work right away. Based on my reading, it is possible to set those up in Linux. But it’s largely a preference thing– I don’t care much for multitouch. This creates a disparity when I use Windows 7 on the 1201PN which is configured per default to use multitouch.

  
  
  The same 4 laptops stacked up
  

  So, in short, I’m really happy with this little machine. Traditionally, I have had absolutely no affinity for laptops/notebooks/portable computers at all even if everyone around was always completely enamored with the devices. What changed for me ? Well for starters, as a long-time Linux user, I was used to having to invest in very specific, carefully-researched hardware lest I not be able to use it under the Linux OS. This was always a major problem in the laptop field which typically reign supreme in custom, proprietary hardware components. These days, not so much, and these netbooks seem to contain well-supported hardware. Then there’s the fact that laptops always cost so much more than similarly capable desktop systems and that I had no real reason for taking a computer with me when I left home. So my use case changed, as did the price point for relatively low-power laptops/netbooks.

  Data I/O geek note : The 1201PN is capable of wireless-N networking — as many netbooks seem to have — but only 100 Mbit ethernet. I wondered why it didn’t have gigabit ethernet. Then I remembered that 100 Mbit ethernet provides 11-11.5 Mbytes/sec of transfer speed which, in my empirical experience, is approximately the maximum write speed of a 5400 RPM hard drive– which is what the 1201PN possesses.