Developer successfully ports Linux to 1994 Sega 32X — Genesis and MegaDrive expansion runs open-source OS on paltry 23MHz processors and 256KB of RAM

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Developer successfully ports Linux to 1994 Sega 32X — Genesis and MegaDrive expansion runs open-source OS on paltry 23MHz processors and 256KB of RAM

In today’s employment market, the dev reckons this port and their earlier Linux for Atari Jaguar effort will help improve their job hunting prospects.

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Compared to its Genesis host, the Sega 32X was incredibly muscular. The Genesis had relied on the capable but long-in-the-tooth Motorola 68000 (7 MHz) for years, but the 32X add-on boosted that with a pair of Hitachi SuperH SH2s (SH7604) CPUs (23 MHz). It also ramped up system RAM from the base 64KB by adding 256KB of its own. Sega’s expansion offered more than just speed; the console’s color palette was ramped up from 64 to 32,000 simultaneous colors on screen, and it was powerful enough to introduce hitherto unachievable 3D graphics elements to mainstream console gaming.

As with cakehonolulu’s tale of Linux wrangling on the old Jag, the above-linked blog talks through a long list of hurdles that needed to be leapt to get the Linux kernel booted and running BusyBox. This time around, particularly steely roadblocks included: the even more constrained RAM situation, the lack of hardware synchronization primitives, the desire to get SMP working across the pair of SH2 CPUs , no direct UART access from the 32X, and scheduler bugs, among other things.

On the positive side, smoothing the development process along were access to Chilly Willy’s 32X devkit, the linuxmd project, the Krikzz FPGA-based flash cart with ROM – RAM mapping tools, and existing SH2 documentation and sample projects. Please check through the linked blog for far more technical details from cakehonolulu.

As you can see, cakehonolulu was successful again. So, what’s the next stop for this adventurous dev – the Sega Saturn ? Whatever the project may be, it was interesting to read that works like this are basically forming a portfolio for the Spanish dev, which they hope will help them with job hunting.

Dev ports Linux to Atari's notorious Jaguar console from 1993

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