Conway’s Law. The idea that your organizational structure will be mirrored in your design (software) structure. Simple in concept and true to my experience, it’s a principle that drives many an organizational planning session.
I’ve been enjoying and porting Johnny Castaway to new systems for many years now. Today though, is the first time I’ve actually added a fundamentally new feature to Johnny.
I’m going to come out and say it. The Oculus Go is my favorite VR headset of 2021, maybe ever. Yes, that Oculus go, the cheap one they don’t sell anymore. I’m currently playing through Magnesium 173 via Steam Streaming to my PC, emulating light gun games in retroarch, and playing Switch games directly through HDMI!
I was working on a follow-up to the previous article on my x86 handheld, when I stumbled upon a technology that totally superseded it.
Y’all probably know, I love games. I’m also way into handheld gaming, portable consoles, processors, embedded systems and retro gaming in a major way. I pick up every cheap chinese handheld I can find, love my switch, and am just a major portable and retro gaming enthusiast. So you can imagine my excitement when the Steam deck was announced. Of course I preordered, hell I’ve bought everything GPD has ever released.
While I was in the process of porting Johnny Castaway over to RetroFW devices, I got to know a bit more about the firmware, and these devices. I realized it would be possible to bridge the static usb debugging networks generated by each device. I show here that even a Raspberry Pi Zero is more than capable of acting as a bridge host for multiple systems.
Johnny Castaway for RetroFW devices is now released! This is the firmware that you’ll find running on all your favorite Chinese handheld devices. Things like the LDK game, RG-300, RS97, etc. It is based on my SDL 1.2 port of the engine, and generally works very well.
Johnny Castaway for the Dreamcast is now released! I like to call it Johnny Dreamcastaway, and it didn’t take me too long to port. It’s working splendidly! A glorious internal 640x480 screen resolution and a rock-solid 60 FPS carry you forward to your private island with “Johnny Dreamcastaway.” Read on for more info and downloads!
Once again, I am reminded of how much the past influences our future, and the choices we make. In my case, it’s a twisty tale that starts simply enough, but ends with Johnny Castaway running natively from a ramdisk on systems with as little as 64mb. Interested? Read on. Want to download it for yourself right now? Skip to the end!
This story starts, as most of my hardware hacking stories do: a stupid impulse purchase. In this case, it’s the Atari mini pong Jr. I’m pretty sure (judging from stock levels) I’m the only one dumb enough to pick this one up. So, I set about to hack the thing. It’s almost disappointing, as this isn’t as much of a ‘hack’ as it is ‘this system is wide open.’ Here’s what I’ve been able to determine/do with zero hardware modification. (TLDR; Everything. Install and run apps, usb devices, adb shell, etc)
