[linuxsh-dev] Re: [linux-sh:01343] Re: Debian GNU/Linux on Dreamcast

[YAEGASHI T. <yae...@ma...>]

Hello all,

Sorry for late and short reply.  It costs me so long time to
write in English. :->

In the article <Pin...@al...>,
"M. R. Brown" <ma...@uw...> wrote:

> Marcus Comstedt (http://mc.pp.se/dc/), Dan Potter (from this list) and
> others on the dcdev list (at egroups) have exposed a lot of the
> information necessary to write kernel drivers for various DC subsystems.
> Info is available for:
>   - Video modes: 320x240 565, 640x480 565, and 640x480 888.  That means a
>     decent (albeit slow?) framebuffer can be constructed.
>   - CD-ROM subsystem support.
>   - Audio: I was thinking maybe a "generic" AICA firmware to emulate OSS
>     or else a DC-specific audio spec.
>   - Input: The DC's maple bus is spec'd, meaning keyboards, mice,
>     controllers, VMUs are all avail.  The keyboard+fb is especially
>     enticing.
>   - Dan Potter has done some work regarding 2D-acceleration on the NEC
>     PVR.  I haven't gotten a chance to really investigate this, but he
>     suggested an accelerated framebuffer.
>
> This is more than enough for us "hobbyists" to get started, other things
> that could come later would be the expansion port (which gives us modem
> and ethernet - eventually), better 3D support, etc.

Yes, their works are really great.  But I think they're
insufficient for writing kernel drivers.  I need specs of
hardware registers, not BIOS calls.  Specs of interrupt and DMA
handling are particularly important.


> It's cool that a licensed DC developer has ported Linux, but IMHO it would
> benefit the community if hobbyists undertook this and got the kernel
> stable on DC.  I'm very interested in pursuing this, anyone else up for
> the challenge? :)

Oh yes.  I would release my port as soon as possible if I was
not an employee of NAMCO.

Actually, I'm nothing more than one of the hobbyist developers.
My business has nothing to do with Dreamcast, I've never seen
Dreamcast's SDK.

--
YAEGASHI Takeshi <yae...@ma...>