In article <e11d6fdc4b.rowledge at goldskin.attbi.com>,
Tim Rowledge  <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org> wrote:
>Cees de Groot <cg at cdegroot.com> wrote:
>
>> My reaction on the Squeak Xbox port: way cool.

>Nah, it's merely a linux VM compiled on Mandarke-whatever running on a
>modified Xbox. Buy the box, a few parts, do a little cutting and
>soldering and Robert is your parent's brother. Even I could do it if I
>had $150 to spare for a second hand xbox and what, $50 ?, for the
>mod-chip.

You may want to take a look here as well:

    http://www.shadowflux.com/xbox.html

This is the page of a guy who bought three X-Boxen on which to do
parallel computing.  He concludes that it's cheaper to just buy
WalMart OS-less PCs and install Linux on them[1].  

I don't see the X-Box being a practical Squeak platform unless you can
just insert the CD and run it.  Hmmm.  Maybe somebody could get MS to
give us a signed Squeak VM?  I mean, it's not like it's going to cut
into their market share or anything.

Actually, I'm surprised nobody's tried porting Squeak to the Sega
Dreamcast.  The things are really cheap these days and you can get a
mouse and keyboard easily enough.   I actually have a copy of the
Linux port and it runs X just fine, so Squeak for Linux should port to
it easily enough.

Interestingly, the linuxDC folks at http://linuxdc.sourceforge.net/
seem to have written a driver for the memory cards so saving images
may now be possible.

Also, there's the Playstation 2 Linux kit, but that suffers even more
cost and hassle problems than the X-Box.



[stuff about freedom to tinker elided]

>One day, when soldering guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have
>soldering guns.

And when you pry my soldering gun out of my cold, dead, fingers, make
sure it's unplugged or you'll get burned.



                              --Chris



[1] Of course, I'm not sure whether he included the time spent modding
    the consoles in that or not.  If so, and if you have lots of free
    time, going with the X-Box may still be slightly cheaper.
-- 
Chris Reuter                           http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~cgreuter
"'Vertical-niche'?  That's far too polite a way of saying 'plunging straight 
 down a narrow chasm into the FIRES OF HELL'."
           --Anthony de Boer