[mythtv-users] OT: Mythfrontend on a Wii - ever posible?

Brad Staton brad.staton at gmail.com
Sat Jan 6 02:37:51 UTC 2007


On 1/5/07, Stroller <linux.luser at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> > What about booting linux under the WII as a dedicated linux machine?
>
> Good question, but as Mr Stanton observed, there's not much benefit
> to it (I meant to mention this myself in my previous posting. Honest!).


Staton, with only one 'n' - sorry to nitpick, but people have been trying to
change my name my whole life, and I'm rather attached to the one that my
parents gave me.  :-)

As a "channel", a FE could be run on an existing Wii "installation",
> and the user would be able to switch between games and TV fairly
> seamlessly. For someone who already has a Wii it'd allow the addition
> of MythTV without requiring an additional box plugged into the TV -
> I'm already running out of component-in ports!!


I just upgraded TVs for this very reason - running out of inputs.  I grapped
a display with a VGA input this time around - hopefully more TVs will start
to come with this so that we don't have to sacrific component/DVI ports to
the HTPC.  But then again, component switchers aren't too expensive these
days.

> I know the WII has an IBM Broadway processor, but does the linux
> > kernel support that?
>
> Surely so - as Wikipedia observes "Broadway" is PowerPC based; it's
> made in the same plant (and with the same process?) that fabricated
> G5 processors for Apple. The Wii is sometimes referred to as "an
> overclocked Gamecube" - it runs Gamecube games, and Linux already
> runs on the GC.
>
> I guess there's not as much interest in Linux on the GC as on the
> Xbox, because it doesn't seem as well documented, but you can run
> Linux & mplayer on it. http://www.gc-linux.org/  The advantage of the
> Wii is that it has some built-in flash RAM for persistent storage, so
> you don't always need to boot from a CD / DVD (as you do with the
> GC); but the Xbox has a hard-drive with more storage space than the Wii.


I think interest on the GC was limited by a) the lack of mass storage and b)
the lack of a (readily available) network adapter.  Since the Wii has built
in wifi and USB ports for mass storge (and wired ethernet, an IR reciever,
keyboard, etc), it has a lot more potential than the GC did.

> What I find interesting about the PS3 is that it has EIGHT cores
> > (though one is disabled).
>
> The Wikipedia article described the "eighth [as] disabled to improve
> production yields" - IE: you MAY get a PS3 with one core that is
> merely disabled, but on many Cell processors it is disabled because
> it's a production failure.
>
> > Wow... according to
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3 they already have Linux
> > running on it, but the low 256 ram was a problem.  256 doesn't seem
> > that low to me.
>
> Linux is actually Sony-supported on the PS3. Ummm... I mean, you
> can't phone Sony for help with RPM issues, but Sony have encouraged
> this activity, and offer the tools required for partitioning the h/d.
> One downside of Linux on the PS3 is that it is not (supposed to be)
> possible to use the GPU's hardware acceleration.


Maybe sony/nvidia will see fit to drop drivers on our doorstep at some
point, but I wouldn't hold my breath for an official release on those.

-- 
--Brad Staton
Brad.Staton at gmail.com
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