THE POTATO - CDDA on a 486DX

Mantar · 2017-10-04T00:44:55.000Z

Treah:

And compiling on a 486 is not alot of fun…

That’s why you don’t do that, cross-compile on a fast machine instead. For my own potato I installed a second copy of Basic Linux in a VM on my main machine, and just used it to compile with --march=i486 so I’d have 486 binaries linked to all the old libraries and stuff.
Sadly my potato’s case busted at the hinge, and getting a replacement case for an IBM Thinkpad 701c (butterfly) is not easy. (Attaching the hinges directly to the ruggedized plastic case probably seemed like an okay idea at the time, but after a couple of decades the rubber in the plastic shrinks and its once mighty surface gets brittle as all heck.)

Litppunk · 2017-10-04T02:38:46.000Z

sounds like you need to custom build a case.

Mantar · 2017-10-05T00:24:16.000Z

Pretty cool, but I’m rather inept when it comes to small-scale mechanical stuff. I wonder if I could get a new case 3d printed somehow?

Adragis029 · 2017-10-10T18:32:42.000Z

I was looking at your screenshots and I think I know why you’re having issues.

Treah · 2018-05-21T01:24:48.630Z

FINALLY!!! after so long I was able to finally get this working. I have compiled and loaded the game sucessuflly on the potato and was able to launch the game. However it will not load a game world, even one previously generated. Not sure what the issue is as its not ram as it was doing this on the VM i created as well. Anyway here are the screenshot of it finally working, along with the error.

20180520_175021.jpg2189×2918 2.2 MB

20180520_173147.jpg2189×2918 1.76 MB

Treah · 2018-05-21T01:51:22.522Z

So I had to do some really hacky shit to get this working on Debian Etch. My next try will be to build a full gentoo or LFS on the system and see if I am able to load it. The error im getting might be related to the tons of errors ldconfig gives me when loading new libraries.

Mantar · 2018-05-21T19:44:35.816Z

Ldconfig errors sounds likely to be involved there. Can’t wait to see what happens when you try Gentoo or LFS.

Treah · 2018-05-21T19:51:38.436Z

Yeah I very much suspect thats whats going on, I am actually working on getting a gentoo up and going. Looks like they have a i486 build which greatly simplifies things and I should have just started there… Ohh well lesson learned.

Treah · 2018-05-30T05:54:24.864Z

Success!
Looks like the recompile with Gentoo seams to have fixed the weird error i was getting when trying to load a world. However now that it is using Gentoo the system seams to run a order of magnitude slower… Probably some option I need to enable in the kernel or something I suspect. But I did get it working. I took a short video of it going though some of the main menu options and starting to load a world. Its actually still loading right now as I type this and I suspect its going to be a long while before the game world actually loads up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmIMMT_DvSQ

Zhilkin · 2018-05-30T06:37:32.925Z

Haha. Potato rendering IS slow.

Treah · 2018-05-30T14:57:31.659Z

Indeed it is. I left it running overnight and was about half way done loading the game when I left it. I am going to check it when I get home today and make another video hopefully in the actual game

TheZoneWizard · 2018-05-30T23:36:45.100Z

Speaking of potatoes…how the frig does one fail to make “seed potatoes”??? I cut one and failed…losing my raw potato!! >_<

Treah · 2018-05-31T02:44:25.440Z

You cut it in half and it was all rotten inside.

Treah · 2018-05-31T03:22:17.124Z

Was finally able to get a world loaded and was able to play in the game world on the potato. Below is the video, enjoy :). Even tho I have accomplished what I had set out to do originally I do plan on trying increase the performance a little bit. I think some of the slowness is due to some missing kernel option or because the access to the CF card is very slow. Most of the memory being used for the game is being housed on the CF card in a swap file so that does cause a lot of slowdown. It would be interesting to see how well the game would perform if the swap file was located on a spinning 7400rpm drive.

TheZoneWizard · 2018-05-31T17:57:15.968Z

Ya know…that is a reasonable response. I like it. Thanks =D

Mantar · 2018-05-31T18:45:35.862Z

That is pretty awesome, and surprisingly playable – I played BBS door games that were about that responsive back in the day.

If you suspect it’s a kernel thing that’s slowing it down, you could copy debian’s kernel config from its kernel sources, and drop it in the gentoo kernel directory, and use it when you recompile. It would guarantee all the options were the same.

Treah · 2018-05-31T18:52:19.378Z

Well that probably wouldn’t work since the .config for Debian is all module based with an initrd which I am not doing with the new one due to lack of space for the initrd in memory. It also would be problematic as the .config for that kernel is for a older kernel 2.4 i think. I was thinking of loading up etch again tho and listing the mods in use to try and determined which drivers are being loaded. And like you suggested checkout out the .config file to see what options they used.

Zhilkin · 2018-05-31T19:39:28.298Z

Moving into this bench is slow. Lol, we see that it IS slow!

Litppunk · 2018-06-04T01:39:00.087Z

wow, watching those screens load… makes cata FEEL like an old game.

Treah · 2018-06-04T22:34:48.991Z

It actually a lot slower on the newer kernels than I think it should be. I suspect this is due to the new kernels using everything though the sata interface which I am sure is eating shitloads of cycles emulating on this box. I am going to try some older kernels on the system and see if it improves. Not sure how old I can go tho before shit starts to break.