S1E22 — Linux on the Sega 32X. Who needs hardware synchronization primitives anyway?

GARY: ...and that's why the Dreamcast — no, wait, sorry, the 32X, the 32X was the one that people bought as an upgrade for a console they already regretted buying —

GARY: Gruner. Stop looking at me like that. I'm Gary.

MAEVE: Maeve.

OBI: Obi.

GRUNER: Gruner.

GARY: Great. Good. We're all still here, apparently, doing this. Real thread tonight. Forty-eight-eight-nine-six-six-hundred. Ninety-four points, twenty-one comments. Guy named cakehonolulu ported Linux onto a Sega 32X.

MAEVE: The failed one.

GARY: The famously failed one, yes, thank you, Maeve, very supportive.

OBI: Everything about that sentence is already funnier than anything Gary's ever shipped.

GARY: I have shipped things.

OBI: You've shipped invoices.

GARY: Can we — can we just read the post. Please.

GARY: Okay. His words. "After testing the waters with a Linux for Jaguar port, I basically set myself to get similar results on the 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis."

MAEVE: He did this twice.

GARY: He did this twice.

OBI: On purpose.

GARY: On purpose. And then — this is the line — "even without hardware synchronization primitives, you can get SMP-ready Linux."

OBI: Say that again.

GARY: No hardware sync primitives. SMP-ready Linux.

OBI: On two CPUs.

GARY: On two CPUs.

OBI: That's not a hobby project, that's a man doing distributed systems on a console with no mutexes, no semaphores, nothing, by hand, in software, for a device that lost to a Sega add-on's own manufacturer's shame. It's impressive, I said it's impressive —

GARY: That's — yeah. Fair.

OBI: Moving on.

MAEVE: This is a moat question, if anyone cares. Two cores, one twice as fast as the other, held together with nothing but discipline — that's not a bug, that's asymmetric information. I would fund this. I would fund this in a heartbeat and I would never tell my LPs why.

GARY: Do you have LPs.

MAEVE: Next.

GARY: There's a reply. Guy named faragon. "Is the SSFv2 mapper supporting memory writes in the MiSTer FPGA, too?"

OBI: Nobody knows that. Nobody in this room, nobody on that thread, possibly nobody alive.

GARY: He's not done. "Now that there's a SH3 core already available" —

MAEVE: The what.

GARY: SH3. Different chip. Better chip, apparently. "It could be mind-blowing having a system with 512 megabytes of RAM on a SH3 at 100 megahertz running Linux."

GRUNER: Five hundred twelve.

GARY: Five hundred twelve megabytes. On an arcade board nobody's used for this. Sitting right there.

MAEVE: That's the whole TAM, right there, unclaimed.

OBI: It's a chip, Maeve, not a market.

MAEVE: Everything's a market if you squint.

GRUNER: Is like — continuous integration. But no build server. Only bloody-mindedness.

GARY: I don't think that's what continuous integration means, Gruner.

GRUNER: I know what it means.

GARY: So the SH3 thing — that's the door. That's the easier, bigger, better path just sitting there in an arcade cabinet.

MAEVE: The road not taken.

GARY: The road not taken.

GARY: Okay, cakehonolulu answers him. "Honestly, no idea if Krikzz's Extended SSFv2 is even implemented on MiSTer" —

OBI: Wonderful. Nobody knows anything tonight.

GARY: — "given its rarity." And then. Then he says: "Porting Linux to SH3 is surely easier than what it has been for SH2, SH7604 more precisely."

GARY: He knew. He knew the easier chip existed. He did the hard one anyway.

OBI: On purpose.

GARY: On purpose. Twice, if you count the Jaguar.

MAEVE: That's not a technical decision. That's a personality disorder.

GARY: I built a vertically‑integrated aluminum supply chain because everyone told me nobody wanted the hard version of anything. Turns out nobody wanted the hard version of that either, but at least he's got a working kernel to show for his stubbornness. I've got a pen plotter and a Series C that never happened.

OBI: There it is.

GARY: There it is. One time. I said I'd only do it once.

MAEVE: And considering it's got 512 megs of ram, "you probably can just get away with a non‑stripped‑to‑the‑bones Linux image."

GARY: He could've had luxury. He chose the mountain with no trail.

OBI: That's the only sane response to that sentence I've heard all night.

MAEVE: Can I say something.

GARY: When has that ever been optional.

MAEVE: This whole thread — one chip, one console, no synchronization primitives, everything held together by will alone — this is RISC‑V versus ARM licensing, structurally. Open silicon versus permissioned silicon. Two systems that were never supposed to talk to each other, forced to cooperate anyway. Which, if you trace it all the way down, is Bretton Woods.

OBI: ...what?

MAEVE: Two currencies pegged to one reserve asset with no enforcement mechanism except everyone agreeing not to look too closely. That's the 32X. That's also 1971.

GARY: Maeve.

MAEVE: The silicon isn't fallen. It's the users who are totally depraved.

GARY: Moving on. Fast.

GARY: Last real one. Guy named msk-lywenn. "Congrats. Any idea why one cpu reports ten bogomips and the other twenty?"

OBI: Say that again.

GARY: Same silicon. Same die, presumably. One core benchmarks at ten, the other at twenty. Identical hardware.

MAEVE: That's not identical hardware, that's a haunted house.

OBI: It's a clocking issue. Has to be. One core's getting gated differently, some wait‑state nonsense on the bus arbitration —

GARY: That's a guess.

OBI: Everything's a guess, that's why it's an argument, Gary, keep up.

GARY: cakehonolulu's answer is — this is the whole answer — "That was something I also noticed."

OBI: That's it?

GARY: That's it. The man built Smp Linux from nothing and the two‑x speed mystery on his own hardware, he just — noticed it. Same as us.

MAEVE: Unresolved.

OBI: It's not unresolved, it's unexplained, there's a difference —

GARY: It's the same thing, Obi —

GARY: — difference, and until somebody actually opens the die shots we're all just —

GRUNER: Field note.

GRUNER: "Two processors. Same silicon. One works twice as hard for reasons nobody will say out loud."

OBI: That an observation or an insult.

GRUNER: (dial) Yes.

MAEVE: Put that on a mug.

GRUNER: One more note.

GARY: Go ahead.

GRUNER: "Subject built working thing for machine nobody uses. Twice. No money. No customer. No — " — he checks the page — "no exit."

GRUNER: He did it because the mountain was there and it was the wrong mountain.

GARY: Chyort.

GRUNER: That's my line.

GARY: Take it. You earned it tonight.

MAEVE: Well. On that note.

OBI: Maeve.

MAEVE: Deal's dead, thesis stands. Obi.

OBI: Nothing on this thread was bullshit. First time all month. Gruner.

GRUNER: Field work continues.

GARY: And I'm Gary. And somewhere out there cakehonolulu's got ninety-four points and a working kernel on a dead console, and I've got a pen plotter that doesn't even print straight anymore, and I would trade every dollar of that Series B for one line of karma with his name on it.

GARY: Goodnight.