This potato of a laptop fell into my hands recently - an Acer Aspire One D257, running an Atom N455 @ 1.66 GHz with 1GB DDR3 RAM.
I've just popped an SSD in it. I'm thinking about using it only as a MAME machine to run the #Psion SIBO emulation, just for demos.
So... Maybe Debian? Possibly even running 32 bit (it is a 64 bit CPU, but that lack of RAM worries me). A lightweight DE or WM.
I could run Arch, but I really want this to Just Work™.
Any suggestions?
*chuckles with nerdy glee*
@kroc - worked first time, including WiFi!
@ActionRetro - because I know you love a bit of #HaikuOS
So, there's no python2 package for #Haiku anymore, so I can't build #MAME 0.226 from #HaikuPorts using #HaikuPorter. So I thought I'd just try jumping straight in and modifying the recipe to build MAME 0.259.
I've copied the patch file from the 0.226 port, just to see if it would work without modifying it. So the error I'm seeing *might* be because of that.
EDIT: It's *definitely* because of that - git is throwing a wobbly. But I have no idea how to fix it yet. Can I just sha1 the old files?
OK, plan is:
1. Extract another copy of the source files
2. sha1 the files that the patch wants to mod
3. Manually apply the patches
4. If it doesn't work, try to update the patches and try again
5. sha1 the modified files
6. Update the patch file with the new sha1 hashes
7. Try again with HaikuPorter
Well, so far unsuccessful.
Managed to manually patch #MAME 0.259 by modifying the patches for 0.226, but clearly there's something missing. I assume something should be happening before the "no rule to make target" error.
Right now I'm not sure who to ask for help. The MAME devs will probably remind me that #HaikuOS is completely unsupported. The #Haiku devs may not be able to help as it's not really a Haiku problem.
Time to shut down for the night.
I need to spend time on other things today related to $dayjob, but I've posted on the #HaikuOS forum to see if anyone can help.
I've also asked someone I know who works on #MAME to see if he's got any ideas.
It's been a fun/frustrating tangent to work on, that's for sure!
https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/attempting-to-update-the-mame-port-to-0-259/14077
In an attempt to run the latest version of MAME on an old Acer Aspire One D257, I ended up going down a Haiku rabbit hole… The last time I touched a BeOS-like OS was 5 PE back in the 90s, so this has been a learning experience! I’ve made some updates to the mame-0.226 recipe and manually applied the patches, working out the differences as I went. But I’ve hit an issue early on with the build: make is complaining. make: *** No rule to make target 'build/projects/sdl/mame/gmake-haiku/Makefile' n...
Final word: I do love the look of #Haiku. I also love being able to run #Vim on it, as well as Midnight Commander and bat.
Maybe I should have tried to build #NeoVim first, before trying #MAME?
Well, bum.
With the help of a friendly #HaikuOS contributor, we've got a fair way through the compilation of #MAME. I'm currently only compiling the #Psion Series 3a emulation, just so that I can get something working. Then I'll expand out to more Psion machines, and finally all the others.
What am I missing? Which header hasn't been included?
That last issue was fixed, thanks to @mavica_again who pointed out that FreeBSD once had exactly the same issue. One simple patch solved that.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/issues/11271
So, now MAME compiles! YAY!
However, it's not *linking*. So not yay.
So, there's a NEW ISSUE!
Linking the main binary comes up with literally thousands of Lua-related "undefined reference" errors.
I'm pretty sure this is because of a change in #MAME 0.253.
https://www.mamedev.org/?p=523
"MAME now requires Lua compiled as C++ to work correctly."
Haiku's Lua package is C-only.
I'm looking at how Linux distros and the BSDs have solved this issue, then modifying these solutions to do it the #HaikuOS way.
So now I need to compile Lua! Fun times!
@M0CUV In spite of the fact that it does feel like a beta OS, I really am enjoying using it!
There's something about its simplicity in contrast to Linux that really appeals to me. You can see their influences: Obviously BeOS, but also Gentoo and the BSDs.
There's also the hint of nostalgia from my time playing with BeOS 5 PE in the 90s, plus the odd hint of Mac OS 8.
@M0CUV I'm currently running it in VirtualBox. It's not fast (disk access is very slow), but it is convenient: shared clipboard works, as does the graphics driver for resizing. I'm using SSH to transfer files to and from the VM, but there might be a better way.
I'm tempted to try KVM and VMware Workstation to see if it fares better.
The Last Psion | Alex
Matt Gumbley