[svlug] Coin box / Linux arcade games

[Ira Abramov]

On Sat, 16 Mar 2002, Jay Link wrote:

> Next, and entirely unrelated, has anyone wired an arcade-style coin box to
> an X86 motherboard running Linux? What sort of interface do you use? What
> are we talking about in regard to drivers?

depends on what the box gives out, or you buy a ready-made one where the
manufacturer built you a serial or parallel interface.

> Or, forget a shell -- could the kernel be hacked to just start the game at
> the end of the code at init/main.c ? The last lines look like this:
>
> execve("/sbin/init",argv_init,envp_init);

far from it. it looks also for /etc/init and all sorts of other places,
all overriden by the init= kernel commandline. and what's wrong with an
inittab line that will run your game? that will let you continue running
a serial console for service of the machine. why cripple a perfectly
good multiprocess kernel?

> Could you execve() a program (i.e., your game) instead? Would it then just
> run until the game is unplugged?

ofcourse. next time your machine won't start in single luser mode or you
forget the roopass, just boot it with init=/bin/bash and see.


-- 
Original sinner
Ira Abramov

http://ira.abramov.org/email/