Fungus-inspired Linux hack gives Amiga a Doom-only brain Linux developer Matthew Garrett has taken inspiration from the fungus kingdom to give a classic Commodore Amiga a brain transplant – turning it into a single-minded device that does nothing but run id Software's 1993 classic first-person shooter Doom under a "parasitic Linux" operating system. "There's a lovely device called a …
"enabling a somewhat hidden feature for overlaying ROM contents onto the zeroth address – "poorly documented," Garrett surmises"
only poorly documented if you don't read the documentation.
It's not like virtually every 68k based system has to do this.... oh wait!
still a cool project tho.
This article is all my favourite things combined!!
I'm the (admittedly underperforming) maintainer of Gentoo Linux on m68k with the Amiga being my focus. I also love classic Doom. I have run ADoom on my Amiga, and I made a rather fancy level of my previous office. I have a PiStorm too, although I've sadly never found the time to actually try it. I've even crossed paths with Matthew Garrett, who previously did a little work on Flatcar Linux, my current day job.
This does seem bonkers, and I therefore love it.
Wait, wait, wait. I was running late for work this morning, so I hadn't had a chance to read the original article when I posted the above. You didn't mention he was doing this with a CDTV! I too had one of these rare wonders. I only sold it a couple of years ago, as the drive had sadly died, and neither my wife nor my parents wanted it cluttering their houses.
:(
Shame, the CDTV was one of the best looking Amigas, just as much a shame however that it was equally one of the most limited.
WRT to the drives, 95% of the time its merely the capacitors (I've revived three drives) but they're a unique drive to the CDTV with no other option for replacement. For this very reason I've got an optical drive emulator designed for these (hardware designed and built, it works and I'm part way through writing the software for it) which will also massively expand the usefulness of the CDTV.
The other way is writing better software...
I've seen a lot of Amiga modders attempting to install expensive M68K accelerator boards into their A500s and then this thing turns up which is a RaspberryPi pretending to be an M68K that manages to run ridiculously fast, adds fast ram, bios switcher and an RTG interface. All for about £80 all-in.
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