rHXN - Linux for the Sega MegaDrive

sp8 - 2 hours ago

I have such fond memories of my time back in the day owning a MegaDrive. It wasn't my first or last games console, but it was my formative one. It was a time in my life when I was into video games (Sonic 2 being the only game I ever played to completion). It pleases me to realise there's still a community around the MegaDrive and - as others has said - this is so crazy but wonderful to see!

HerbManic - 4 hours ago

Very cool to see, so pointless it just had to be done.

I was wondering how it was squeezed into 64KB of RAM but it uses the 4MB on the Everdrive cart. With that it makes sense, considering Linux can run on an N64 with 4MB of RAM.

matheusmoreira - 2 hours ago

Genesis does what Nintendon't.

> The lowly 68000 in the Sega doesn’t have a memory management unit required for the full Linux experience, so what’s really running here is a kernel compiled with the -nommu option.

Huh... I thought Linux actually required MMUs. I was under the impression it'd never run on these old consoles because of that. Learned something new today.

> A QEMU fork that emulates enough of the MegaDrive and the EverDrive to play with this without the real hardware is included.

That's seriously impressive.

cjd8 - 1 hour ago

>Huh... I thought Linux actually required MMUs. I was under the impression it'd never run on these old consoles because of that. Learned something new today.

There have been variants of the kernel around for some time that can run on microcontrollers without an MMU (mainly uCLinux).

aussieguy1234 - 5 hours ago

It runs Doom, now it runs Linux

SequoiaHope - 1 hour ago

My oscilloscope does both!

bitwize - 5 hours ago

Absolutely nuts and squirrels.

Then again, I did know that the Mega Drive's CPU loadout (68000 and Z80) is the same as the first Unix machine I ever used (a TRS-80 Model 16), so running some form of Unix on it was therefore, theoretically, possible...

walrus01 - 4 hours ago

If this runs on a megadrive (Genesis), would this also boot on a Sega Nomad, the portable version of a genesis?

mikepavone - 3 hours ago

It should. There are some small differences between the Nomad and a normal Gen/MD, but nothing that should impact something like this

HardwareLust - 20 hours ago

Original title: It’s Linux, On A Sega Megadrive

dang - 6 hours ago

It's a cool project! but best to use the original title and original source - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I've changed the title and URL to match https://github.com/LinuxMD/linuxmd and put the other URL in the toptext so people can look at it too.

msephton - 18 hours ago

Really odd decision for it to be changed away from this original title.

And if I'm being pedantic (and I am) it's Sega Mega Drive.

Repo, which says Sega MegaDrive, is at: https://github.com/LinuxMD/linuxmd

dormento - 15 hours ago

(Disclaimer: I'm partial to "Mega Drive" myself.)

Wikipedia has this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mega_Drive_vs_Genesis.gif

blue = Mega Drive, red = Genesis

Linked here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vid...

(didn't find the sales numbers, for those wondering. Sorry!)

croes - 6 hours ago

I guess parent is pedantic about Megadrive instead of Mega Drive

nommuenjoyer - 13 hours ago

And it really is on a MegaDrive as I only tested this stuff on a Japanese MegaDrive.