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Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Sun May 15, 2022 6:54 am
by Cyber
When you develop a game (or any other software) for some system you usually have two ways to do it.
1. Develop it on target system itself;
2. Develop (and compile) it on external system, and use target system only to run the result.
Some systems allow you to do development in any way, but when developing for game consoles you usually have to use external system to do all the development.
Have you seen examples, when somebody modified some game system changing it into a self-sufficient computer, so you can develop on it directly?
I would be most interested in Atari, NES/Famicon, Sega, but any other game consoles are also of interest.
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Sun May 15, 2022 5:50 pm
by SlithyMatt
Just saw this yesterday:
And I've seen many people turn the OG XBox into a Windows XP desktop. I don't know how well they work as development systems, but they both have USB and ethernet connectivity, so you have a lot of expandability options.
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Sun May 15, 2022 10:47 pm
by John Chow Seymour
I haven't watched the video above yet, but the last time I read about this, converting your PS2 to a Linux box meant that it could never play PS2 games again.
You couldn't really develop "for the console, on that console" in that case, then.
But, I guess you could develop for PS2 Linux on PS2 Linux!
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 3:09 am
by SlithyMatt
On 5/15/2022 at 6:47 PM, John Chow Seymour said:
converting your PS2 to a Linux box meant that it could never play PS2 games again.
This isn't a conversion. It is just an alternate boot. You can go right back to playing PS2 games if you reboot with a game disc. The guy in the video goes a step further to make it work for different monitors and be able to boot from an internal SSD.
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 1:33 pm
by Tatwi
The Colour Maximite systems are effectively this concept. One system that is both the programming and execution platform. They also boot to directly to a unified programming and execution environment. Bonus: Said environment uses the BASIC language at roughly the speed of native C64 machine language.
Really bummed out that wasn't able to get either.
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 6:04 pm
by TomXP411
The Atari 2600 VCS actually had a BASIC cartridge and keyboard. It was kind of horrible to use, though, since the VCS has a super-low resolution.
There was also a keyboard + BASIC interpreter for the NES, called Family BASIC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_BASIC The Playstation 3 could boot to Linux in the first two major versions of the firmware, but Sony removed that ability later. Still, while it was available, it was possible to develop and play PS games in Linux on the console.
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 7:19 pm
by Strider
I know you can run Linux on an original XBox, maybe later units as well, I don't follow any of that anymore. If you Google XBox Linux, you'll find all you need.
A buddy of mine did that several years ago, he was running some form of servers on them, I can't recall now. Still, it worked, and it worked well at mimicking a basic desktop for the time.
On the Atari front, forgive me my memory isn't what it used to be, but I do recall the VCS being used as basically just a video source, like
@TomXP411 said, there was an external cart or something that did everything else. I wish I could remember where I was reading about that. It wasn't all that long ago...
Stupid memory.
?
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 7:51 pm
by Cyber
Thank you for your thoughts. But that is quiet not what I meant. I know about Maximite (I even have two of them). I also know about Famicom Basic. I think I did not asked my question clear enough.
I want to be able to use NES like say C64 or VIC-20. On Commodore machines I can talk to bare metal anyway I want. I also can write assembly, and develop a program that talks to kernal and to hardware. I want to have same experience on NES. I want to monitor RAM, talk to PPU, write assembly directly on hardware itself. I understand that NES was not designed to allow this. I'm not even sure it is possible to modify NES to be able to do this. FPGA solution might be more realistic.
I know I can get what I want on a PC. There are great environments to write and debug NES programs. But I am curious if anybody built system with such environment as a stand alone self-sufficient solution.
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 10:46 pm
by Tatwi
Game console as self-sufficient computer
Posted: Tue May 17, 2022 6:39 am
by TomXP411
On 5/16/2022 at 12:51 PM, Cyber said:
Thank you for your thoughts. But that is quiet not what I meant. I know about Maximite (I even have two of them). I also know about Famicom Basic. I think I did not asked my question clear enough.
I want to be able to use NES like say C64 or VIC-20. On Commodore machines I can talk to bare metal anyway I want. I also can write assembly, and develop a program that talks to kernal and to hardware. I want to have same experience on NES. I want to monitor RAM, talk to PPU, write assembly directly on hardware itself. I understand that NES was not designed to allow this. I'm not even sure it is possible to modify NES to be able to do this. FPGA solution might be more realistic.
I know I can get what I want on a PC. There are great environments to write and debug NES programs. But I am curious if anybody built system with such environment as a stand alone self-sufficient solution.
It's theoretically possible - you can write a game cartridge that acts like a text UI, load a machine monitor and maybe even a BASIC interpreter on it. That's just all software. The only hard part would be getting keyboard input. You'd either have to put some sort of PIO chip, use the expansion connector (on an NES that has one), or hack a keyboard into one of the controller ports (probably with an Arduino.)
I've also thought of doing this, but it would be pretty low resolution and probably look like a VIC-20 in terms of text size.