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Portables (Games) Software Hardware Hacking Linux

Linux on Nintendo DS, Update 208

Posted by timothy from the make-ready-the-whine-cannon dept.
fdevliegher writes "Trying to port Linux to various portable devices is hot nowadays. One project is porting Linux to the Nintendo DS, and is making big progress lately. Right after the DSLinux guys had a working bootable 2.6 kernel, they have put lots of effort in making the sash shell work, in which they also succeeded. The latest feature added is the touchscreen keyboard. It allows users to tap in the commands, providing a much easier input method than before (when only the buttons could be used to input text). Only the basics are being worked on for now, but the future uses of Linux on the Nintendo DS are practically unlimited. In other words, it might become a cheap alternative for a PDA, an emulator, movie viewer, maybe even internet browser, who knows."
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Linux on Nintendo DS, Update More

Linux on Nintendo DS, Update

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  • Next Up- (Score:3, Funny)

    by jmkgh ( 787409 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @07:21PM (#12868125) Journal
    Linux for NES
    • Funny, or Interesting?

      I have no idea how this shit works. I don't really understand how you put Linux on all these devices; do you rewrite it with a totally new machine language set? Or just create new libraries? What do you have to have, in the first place? How does all this work?

      Is there some reason that Linux for NES is technically infeasabale?

      • Re:Next Up- (Score:3, Informative)

        by bhtooefr ( 649901 )
        You would recompile it for the processor.

        Often, new libraries have to be written for weird devices like this, because there isn't support for things like the graphics chip, the touchscreen, the wireless, etc.

        Linux on the NES is infeasible because there isn't NEAR enough RAM, for starters. Also, the CPU is 8-bits - I don't know of any Linux variant that runs on less than a 32-bit CPU (except for ELKS, but that's getting a bit far away from Linux).
        • Well there is Lunix [sourceforge.net]. Also far away from Linux :)
          • ELKS at least makes an attempt to be compatible with Unix.

            Lunix appears to just be a *nix lookalike, but it isn't at all POSIX compliant - AFAICT, you can't recompile a POSIX app for Lunix, it only runs Lunix apps. That's why I didn't mention it at all.

  • Yup. (Score:5, Funny)

    by rackhamh ( 217889 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @07:23PM (#12868135)
    Trying to port Linux to various portable devices is hot nowadays.

    So hot. You should see the look on my girlfriend's face when I tell her, "Time to compile the kernel on this bad boy."

    Gets 'em every time, baby.
  • Fully usable Linux distro with Opie/GPE on the Dell Axim or on the DS? Either way, everyone wins. Finally, functional mobile Linux computers, cheaper and more easily obtained than any of the Sharp Zaurus PDA's. The biggest problem right now is third party support compared to Palms/Pocket PC's, but more Linux-enabled devices should hopefully pull in more developers and ports of desktop apps.

  • Graffiti-Style Input? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adavies42 ( 746183 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @07:33PM (#12868203)
    How about text recognition as an input method? I can do Palm Graffiti fine with my finger, so it should be eminently doable on a DS. Are there any similar open source projects out there?
    • Bah. How about voice-to-text instead? Yay! Portable speakwrites!
      • Because you love annoying everyone around you by talking to your damn PDA? Or because you love giving anyone nearby buisness data and contact information of all your friends?
    • Interestingly, the new Japanese-English dictionary released for the DS supports written text input. It works better for inputting Japanese hiragana, since those characters have a set stroke order, but it does Roman letters too. Anyhow, it proves that it can be done, which is interesting in itself. My question is if the next version of Pictochat or whatever will incorporate this code.
    • There are two that I'm familiar with: XScibble [handhelds.org] and XStroke [xstroke.org].
      I used to use these on my Stylistic 1200 (120 MHz Pentium tablet). I liked the alphabet xstroke used over the one in xscribble, plus it had a nice full screen capability (no special window to write in).

  • What are the real uses? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OutOfMemory ( 879817 ) * on Monday June 20, 2005 @07:34PM (#12868205)
    This post mentioned several possible uses for linux on the DS, but what real uses are there? This is a neat trick, but only demonstrates what everyone already knows, the linux kernel is small. I would like to see one of these projects produce something that is actually usefull as something other than an academic exercise.
    • The DS happens to have a good formfactor and the right capabilities (wireless, stereo sound, TOUCHSCREEN) to make a great multimedia or general purpose PDA for less money than most Pocket PCs or Palms. The DS equipped with Linux, a decent DE, and some 3rd party support would be a very usable mobile computer, with better gaming capabilities than any PDA out there since it would be able to also boot DS games.
    • The hacks done to the x-box proves the utility of throwing custom software onto inexpensive custom hardware.

      You'd be suprised what a couple smart hackers can do, given a consistent form factor and an entire console to play around with.
    • Like they said, as a PDA. Compare the price of a DS and iPaq

  • I don't know... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by neurokaotix ( 892464 )
    I've personally grown tired of hearing about how an electronic device, based on the same basic computing laws as any PC, can run Linux. It was cool when Dreamcast ran Linux and then it basically stopped there. Here's a spoiler: if it computes, it runs Linux :)

  • The two things I want (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Monday June 20, 2005 @07:34PM (#12868213) Homepage
    A PDA I think would be great - the hard part would be letting me sync it to iCal or something, but that would be excellent for me.

    The other would be a Game Boy Color emulator. Yes, I know that the DS can play Game Boy Advance games, but there's still 4 Game Boy games I haven't finished yet (two Zelda games, "Dragon Warrior III" (almost done), and "Metal Gear Solid GBC"). I just want to have the ability to play them all on one device, and then I won't have to keep the GBA SP around all the time.

    Not sure if it can do the latter - the processor might not be powerful enough for emulating the GBC, but the datebook might be good.

    It makes me wonder why Palm hasn't tried to sell a Palm OS cartridge - I know I'd buy one, and even if it was Palm Light (let you sync up, maybe enter some things, but no major app support) it would almost be worth $50 - $60.

    Just my opinion, of course. Congrats to the Linux on DS team, either way!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The original gameboy had a 4MHz processor, the DS has two processors, a 66MHz and a 33MHz. If you could offload the audio processing to the slower one, there is certainly enough grunt to emulate the game boy. (Remember a 100MHz Pentium could emulate a SNES)
      • ahem... the original GBA can emulate a NES just fine ;-)

        It's all about table lookup decodes. The z80 has all at most 256 instructions. The real tricky part is emulating the MMCs [memory map controllers] and audio/timer hardware in sync.

        Actually emulating the cpu isn't so hard.

        Tom
        • the nes was 6502 based iirc which did indeed have less than 256 instructions

          the Z80 (as used in the gameboy and gameboy color) on the other hand has the main instructions and then it has a prefix byte which selects another set giving the possibility of just under 512 instructions total (i dunno off hand how many of them it actually uses)
          • I'm fairly certain the Z80 only had 8-bit opcodes. You can have multi-byte instructions but the actual opcode is 1 byte.

            Even if it did have 512 instructions [which I don't think it does] that's still not hard to handle.

            Again, the actual challenge is the timing of sound/video/timers. Since they have to be in sync for gameplay to be enjoyable...

            Tom
            • yeah i agree that the main issue isn't emulating the CPU itself its emulating the whole system to cycle perfect timing. especially when a lot of the docs on the internet are flat out wrong. The gameboy actually has a fairly small selection of memory bank controllers in use. the nes otoh has an insanely large number of the things.

              link is probablly the biggest nightmare in gameboy emulation. the only way to do it well is to emulate two gameboys in the same process with lock-step timing. few emulators seem to
              • " was just pointing out that it was an error to say that the Z80 only had 256 instructions thats all..."

                You're right it had a bit more than 256 instructions. The basic opcode was 8-bits but there were "shift" opcode bytes that would change the meaning of the next byte. So roughly there are at most around 1024 instructions though not all shifted opcodes are valid [or documented].

                Tom
      • Remember: Megahertz is not processing speed. You can't compare the 4 MHz z80 inside the original game boy to the new ARM7 and ARM9 cores. They're totally different beasts, with thousands of man-years of research and development separating them. If you could somehow crank up a z80 to 66 MHz, it would still be blown away (in terms of performance) by the ARM cores in the DS.

        Thus, yes, we can probably assume that the DS has enough processing power to emulate the game boy.

    • Well the rumor as of a few months ago http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7 6 01/ [palminfocenter.com] was that Nintendo either licensing the Palm OS or some apps and/or technology.

      Personally I think this would be a wonderful move on Nintendo's part. With the competition between NDS and the PSP so close why not take full advantage of the DS's trump card: input! The DS may never be the pr0n machine that Sony has turned out but surely it would be trivial to throw on a few hundred dollars worth of functionality with a

    • The other would be a Game Boy Color emulator. Yes, I know that the DS can play Game Boy Advance games, but there's still 4 Game Boy games I haven't finished yet (two Zelda games, "Dragon Warrior III" (almost done), and "Metal Gear Solid GBC"). I just want to have the ability to play them all on one device, and then I won't have to keep the GBA SP around all the time.

      There seems to be work in progress [oddigytitanium.com] on this front.

    • Syncing with iCal - the DS has got WiFi, and I'll bet that your Mac does, too. It could be as easy as standing by your computer and waking your DS from sleep mode.
    • As I recall, the GBA, while equipped with a z80, also had enough power to emulate a GBC, and someone wrote an emulator for that purpose. It's a lot easier to slap all the GBC games on one GBA Flashcart and carry them than keep track of your older carts. ::Googling...::

      Ah, here. [gbafan.com] http://www.gbafan.com/game_boy.html [gbafan.com]
      There's a list of GB emulators, although proper GBC support may not be there. It's as good a start as I've got, though.
  • Having a stable linux distribution running on portable handheld console could very well mean the difference between high sales or a a total failure.

    with the psp linux project, the gadget has had a huge amount of added features aincluding the ability to emulate other platforms (famicon/snes/gameboy).

    The nintendo ds isnt very exciting or sexy as a handheld. The added feature of various linux hacks (eg a media player) could very well make the ds a more attractive toy.

    • you are wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Corngood ( 736783 )
      It won't have even a tiny effect on sales. Look how few people use linux on the desktop, and you can quite easily install that without any hacking.

    • Re:feel free to say i'm wrong (Score:5, Informative)

      by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @09:51PM (#12869009)
      OK, so the PSP currently has homebrew apps running on either the 1.0 bios or through a swap exploit on 1.5 bios - but not on the currently shipping bios. The emulation scene is in a very early state for those that can actually run the software. PSP Linux has hardly any progress.
      Now you probably don't know about emulation, homebrew, movie playback etc. on the Gameboy Advance or Gameboy. It does exist in a considerably more advanced state than on the PSP. The main difference is that in order to take advantage of it, you need a flash memory cart for the GBA or DS. A good example is the Super Card [modwhiz.com] which allows you to plug a compact flash card into the DS. It also plays GB, NES, PCEngine and Sega GameGear games out of the box. It has both movie and music playback features as well and supports homebrew GBA apps. There are other cards available that will allow you to play DS bootleg or homebrew games as well.
    • Yep, sorry, you are wrong. The gaming scene has far more users than Linux on computer, and the difference between getting a handheld or not to the average Joe isn't whether it can run a version of Linux or not. It may make it slightly more attractive for some, but saying that it would be the difference between 'high sales' and 'total failure', when the DS has already sold millions and millions without this so far, is ludicrous.

      Even on home consoles, mod-chip users are in the vast minority. Although a conso
    • You're kidding right?

      Please explain then why the DS is currently killing the psp in japan right now.

      I'll tell you the reason. A must have game!(nintendogs)
      Not Linux, not bsd, not emulation.

      The average consumer hasn't even heard of linux.
  • Whats the point of keeping the keys in the same layout as a keyboard? You cant type with it, by its very nature its a search and peck typing, so why not place the keys in ABC order. I think a much more logical layout would be:
    [ esc ][ FKEYS ]
    [ tab ][ NUMBERS ]
    [ ctl ][ LETTERS ]
    [ alt ][ LETTERS ]
    [ sft ][ LETTERS ]
    [ *** ][ NONLETTERS ]
    [ SPACE ][enter]

    The *** key, would be whatever that penguin one did. The row of special keys on

    • The reason for maintaining a standard QWERTY or Davork(sic?) layout is because it allows the user to subconciously know where the keys are because that is what he is used to.

      At the same time though, providing the user the ability to design his own keyboard layout would be a nice feature and likely wouldn't be too hard to provide since they are already having to code a keyboard program for the touch screen. This may be something that they will choose to implement once they get a stable port working on the D

    • IBM SHARK/ATOMIK (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pkhuong ( 686673 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @07:45PM (#12868282) Homepage
      Big Blue has spent R&D money thinking about this for us :)

      http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/atomik [ibm.com] is a layout for tapping. I used it on my m105, and it's pretty good. Definitely better than graffiti if you're standing still and don,t haveto pay attention to your surroundings, and somewhat better than qwerty or alphabetic (I used paper overlays on the graffiti area).

      http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/sharktext [ibm.com] uses the same layout in an ingenious way, where you trace a line between the letters of the word. You quickly remember the shape of frequent words, and it works surprisingly well (I'm using the java demo almost as often as the built-in TIP on my tablet PC).
    • Most people who can handle a keyboard know the QWERTY layout better than the ABC layout. There is no need to learn two layouts. Most people know ABC in 1D and QWERTY in 2D, so you still have to learn ABC in 2D.
    • There is no good reason to make the key layout match a standard keyboard.

      No...there is. Most people can pick it up and have a good idea where the letters are. It might be search and peck for you but I'd bet a good number of people know where the keys are on a standard layout.

      Everyone who uses your ABC keyboard layout would have to spend time learning it.

      • looking at the replies it would seem that I am the only one that is slow with a qwerty keyboard when I try to search and peck. I type rather fast when I have both my hands on a keyboard but for whatever reason that typing speed doesnt translate for me into actually knowing where the keys are.

    • Re:Keyboard layout (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      When I built a simple homebrew OS for the GBA, I used the FITALY layout, which worked REALLY well. I could type quickly on it just using the d-pad, I imagine it would be much faster with a stylus.

      http://www.fitaly.com/fitaly/transopt.htm [fitaly.com]

  • Boring (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    who cares. We all know you can put linux on anything and do nothing with it. YAY!
  • As soon as the DS is running an X server, DHCP and the touchscreen works then the DS can be used in any restaurant, in any bar, in any drive-thru, in any parking lot, as a point of sale or ordering device. The app runs on a $200 mini-itx computer that boots from compact flash and is connected to a wireless access point serving up DHCP.
  • This might be one of the things Nintendo might have been referring to when they said "innovation." XD

  • Newb (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by jdavidb ( 449077 )

    Trying to port Linux to various portable devices is hot nowadays.

    You're new here, aren't you?

  • The site has not gone down yet. :)

    X is going to be tough, only 4mb of RAM for the whole system.

    If they can just get the wifi to work, then this would be worth having on slashdot.
    • I think that nano-X X server easily fits in that space. And the only app that the DS has to run is the X server, serving up the display portion of the application that is running remote to it, even on a distributed supercomputing cluster with terabytes of storage.
  • How about a port of Linux for the Commodore 64?

    Someone here said, "if it computes, it can run Linux". OK, the gauntlet has been thrown down... anyone wanna pick it up? Can it be done in just 64K?

  • These little personal devices are great multimedia servers, too. They're cheap, battery-backed up, no moving parts. Their tiny UI is too limited for anything but selecting modes, for everyone but dedicated enthusiasts (gamers and geeks). But telnet into them, plug in speakers/mic, and they're already great for audio multimedia (music, voice, alarms). And some can actually output video, either builtin or in a cartridge. They are the stinging suckers on Linux's tentacles, slowly wrapping around every multimed
  • I have not looked at the site yet...but im wondering. Will this effect normal DS gaming on the unit. Pardon me for my stupidity :)

  • Nethack (Score:4, Funny)

    by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @08:35PM (#12868557) Journal
    The Nintendo DS is the perfect platform for playing Nethack. It's dual screen means that all of the various nethack commands and options can be put on the bottom touch screen (perhaps even stats), while the top can be left exclusivly for the game display. That it is a portable platform means that you can play Nethack anywhere (important to the millions additcted to the game...)

    I understand that simply having Linux on the DS doesn't mean Nethack would be trivial to port, but it is a step in the right direction IMHO. I'm holding my breath.
  • I've heard that the handhelds [handhelds.org] guys are trying to port Linux to the Nokia 770.
    -russ

  • Nintendo Already licensed Palm OS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by marcybots ( 473417 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @08:52PM (#12868667)
    With how powerful the Nintendo DS hardware is compared to the original (and still useful) old Palm pilots I am not surprised it could be a PDA, but it seems Nintendo already thought of that.

    Nintendo had recently licensed Palm OS based PDA software without any details on why they had done it. Nintendo sources have now revealed that the V-Pocket patent filed by Nintendo a few days ago concerns this licensing. E3 2005 will be the first witness of the Nintendo V-Pocket suite: a complete line of personal organizer tools for the Nintendo DS. Nintendo believes PDA software coupled with the already existing touch screen of the DS will put it above its high profiled rival, the PSP.
    • personally a palm, nintendo, apple cooperation would be really cool. A little cooperation and they could each keep their markets.. while making their cooperation better. The absolute coolest would be to play Nintendo games on your PC.. ie via firewire to control it. or like other posters said, Palm on a DS for quick PDA stuff.. Then you'd only have to carry an iPod & DS.. pretty cool!

  • I think its cool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dr_leviathan ( 653441 ) on Monday June 20, 2005 @09:01PM (#12868719)
    I think Linux on the DS is cool. I can think of a few neat applications and I'm sure the creative hackers out there can think up some fun projects for LinuxDS.

    There is a company called Charmed Labs that makes a programmable robot cartridge for the old GBA. They're probably working on a similar add on for the DS right now. But with Linux on the DS you don't even need to robot cartridge to have fun, or you could probably by the cartridge for extras like easily accessible ADC/DAC lines. You could make a little hand-held oscilliscope or something.

    GBA's were being used as information accessories for some car races. The cartridges that you could rent had wireless units that would get realtime info from the race.

    Someone else was using GBA's as little hand-held real-time engine information units. You could tap into your car's microprocessor and get some info out.

    Stuff like that would just be easier to do with Linux on the DS. It's all good.

    I'd buy a DS just to get Linux running on it. Now if I could only find the time to play with a project like that -- I already work too hard :-(
  • ...does it run Windows?
  • XP on DS then???
  • If someone put the time and effort in, the touch screen and portability of this would make it a wonderful electronic instrument to perform with. How about wifi control of midi devices (with an external box converting info to midi) with a step sequencer controlled by the touch screen? or a DS based LSDJ like tracker? sample editing on the bottom screen, tracker on the top...
  • ...is to be able to run Linux on my Roomba.
  • The DS has WiFi, a headphone jack and a mic. Where's the Skype cartridge?

    Hey, I bey Skype could make some money by making a really small libSkype and licensing it to DS developers to provide voice chat in game. "You don't have to run a server like with TeamSpeak - our network does all of the work for you!"
  • Let's see, you get a 67 Mhz ARM and a 33 MHz ARM and 4M RAM and a couple of low resolution displays for $150. This doesn't seem particularly inexpensive to me, not when you can get a 206 MHz StrongARM or 300-400 MHz XScale, along with 32-64M RAM and a high resolution touch-screen for less than that with a remaindered Pocket PC. And there's already a variety of Linux-on-Pocket-PC-hardware projects to choose from.

    No, this one is purely a matter of the hack value... the DS hardware is no bargain.
  • Much of the utility of Linux on a DS would come from its network connection ability. Given that that is currently not well understood, it may be helpful to donate to the DS Wi-Fi Bounty [slashdot.org]. (Disclaimer: I am running that bounty.)

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