We’ve had an awful year and 2020 is definitely coming to an interesting end in the Linux / open source space … Wouldn’t it be weird enough to see Sony provide a new official Linux driver for the their PlayStation 5 DualSense controller for the year ending, then also a new Linux port for the Nintendo 64 game console … Yes, a neat new port for the game console that launched more than two decades ago.
Open source developer Lauri Kasanen added Mesa and the Linux graphics stack to the development of the new Nintendo 64 port and announced it this Christmas day. This is not the first time Linux has been introduced to the N64 but no previous efforts were aimed at building it into the main Linux tree.
Lauri ‘s work is a new port for the Nintendo 64 and is not based on previous efforts. But Lauri noted, “[Request for comments] because I’m not sure if it’s useful that this was put together. Old, niche, and limited platform.”
This new port to the N64 has been partially followed to help port emulators and frame or console buffer games.
Binary of the Linux port is available from Lauri’s GitHub. The binary is a 64-bit MIPS build that can be loaded on the Nintendo 64 with Flashcart.
The port notes that uClibc-ng was broken for MIPS N32 so a Musl C library was used. It is also noted that Linux on the Nintendo 64 is still a big bug and “always flirting with it [out of memory]. ”
The Nintendo 64 is powered by MIPS64 NEC VR4300 at 93.75MHz with SGI Reality Coprocessor graphics clocked at 62.5MHz while only 4MB of RAM. We’ll see if this N64 port ends up going upstream but by acknowledgment the need is somewhat limited more than two decades after the game first played. In any case, this new port is now available in source and binary format if anyone is interested.