Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

A good choice for older Hardwear

While newer puppies run well on old hardware sometimes games have hardware requirements which prohibits there use on some older hardware. Puppy arcade was developed for older versions of puppy (Puppy Arcade (Slacko 5.9.2, Warry 5.5) and as a consequence I would expect it to have less stringent hardware requirements then would be the case on newer hardware

Maybe run in a chroot with a newer version of puppy as the host

As an example, I have an older PC running dpup buster CE. Dpup buster run well on this machine but the machine doesn't meet the hardware requirement for tuxcart. Additionally, this machine has limited memory and is running of a USB stick in ram. The chroot system could run directly off the optical media and the OS would cache any files in ram that it needs. Additionally, since the chroot system is an older OS it is less likely to have hardware limitations for the software.

Info from the old forum
Puppy Arcade 11
a retro gaming live cd

Plays games from the following systems:

Amiga (500, 1000, 2000, CD32, CDTV), Apple (68k, 128k, 512k, SE, MacOS, Plus), Atari (400, 400 XL, 800, 800XL, 130XE, 5200, Falcon, Lynx, ST, others), Amstrad (CPC, Plus, VEB, others), Arcades (many), Colecovision, Commodore (64, 128, VIC20, PET, others), Doom, GameBoys (GB, GBC, GBA), GameGear, Genesis/MegaDrive, Intellivision, Master System, MS DOS, MSX, MSX2, N64, NDS, NeoGeo, NeoGeo Pocket, NeoGeo CD, NES/Famicom, PC Engine/TurboGrafix, PC-FX, PlayStation, PSP, ScummVM, SNES, Wonderswan, Virtual Boy, ZX Spectrum (16k, 48k, 128k, +2, +2A, +3) and more!
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=92414

...

Summary:

- includes Rom-Loader, a multi-emulator frontend and rom browser
- includes a ROM info database with over 18,000 games supported
- includes detailed descriptions for most of the 18,000 supported games
- Rom-Loader can download and display box art for each of your ROMs
- choose your preferred emulator for each system in Rom-Loader
- Rom-Loader supports joypad-only rom-browsing and playing for both players 1 and 2
- Rom-Loader supports custom emulators and emulator settings per ROM
- users can customise the layout and themes of Rom-Loader per system
- simple keyboard controls for nearly all emulators setup by default
- ATI, Nvidia and MESA/Xorg75 driver packages available in the package manager
- most emulators can be accessed directly in Menu->Fun->[emulator]
- nearly all emulators updated, many other changes from the previous version
- Dreamcast, PS2, Saturn, Gamecube emulators (and others) available here , or here

Releases

Puppy Arcade 11, k3.4.94
http://akita.scottjarvis.tk/slacko_arcade.iso
Based on Slacko 5.9.3 beta (slackware 14.1), kernel 3.4.94
(md5: 509e44e512f35cce97537a8d20f883a8, size: 266mb)

Summary:

- Added Nintendo DS (desmume) and Sony PSP (ppsspp) support to Rom-Loader
- added xboxdrv (but you must set it up yourselves)
- Emulator bios installer fixed, some small Rom-Loader GUI updates
- Based on Slacko 5.9.3 beta
- To compile, get the devx: devx_slacko_5.9.2.sfs
- Built using Slackware 14.1 packages, kernel 3.4.94
- All kernel modules and firmware in a 'zdrive' file (can swap kernels more easily)
- Everything else is pretty much the same as other Puppy Arcade 11 versions

For older hardware (~2008):

Puppy Arcade 11, k2.6.25.16:
http://akita.scottjarvis.tk/puppy-arcade-11-k2.6.25.16.iso
Kernel 2.6.25.16, from Puppy 4.2, 2008
(md5: 13dfecb18315a89f6368f01edcaec80d, size: 179mb)

NOTES:

About installing BIOS files and other stuff:

Generally do this before creating a save file, as it will work faster, until I update the package manager. Also, BIOS files seem to download (wrongly) to /root after a save file has been created - so go there to install them..

About not finding save files:

I have noticed that you need to remove the 'pmedia=usbflash' option from the menu.lst GRUB boot menu file, to get Puppy to recognise the save file...

Not so old hardware (~2011 - 2013):

Puppy Arcade 11, kernel 2.6.32-smp:
http://akita.scottjarvis.tk/puppy-arcade-11-k2.6.32-smp.iso
SMP Kernel 2.6.32-smp, from Wary 5.1.4.1, 2011
(md5: 8cb58b2108e69c9e6ff7c15334d16b38, size: 192mb)

Puppy Arcade 11, k2.6.32.59:
http://akita.scottjarvis.tk/puppy-arcade-11-k2.6.32.59.iso
Kernel 2.6.32.59, from Wary 5.5, 2013
(md5: d07681679598c90a6da84da7d7f2d3b9, size: 187mb)

NOTES: for these versions, you must rename the savefile to 'warysave' after it is created.

Test builds (issues may need fixing):

Puppy Arcade 11, k3.2.13:
http://akita.scottjarvis.tk/puppy-arcad ... -alpha.iso
This one needs audio/ALSA fixed!
Kernel 3.2.13, from Carolina, 2014
(md5: 506a010e35ed4e4af1732de0ac8ac442, size: 185mb)]

Above links were modified from sc0ttman post on the old forum, to use archive.org links:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161015120 ... age105.htm

Puppy 4.2

Ally has also uploaded the 4.2 version o puppy arcade to archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_Puppy_Arcade

I'm probably going to try the warry version but I still find it interesting that this also comes in a 4.2 version. Some 4.2 versions of puppy (not arcade) include:
- Puppylinux 4.2 (official, aka Tubopup) -- archive.org
- Turbopup Xtreme v1.0 (non official mod of puppy 4.2 (turo pup) (old forum)
- Anitaos Forked from Puppy Linux 412/4.31 (sourcefordge)
- Legacy OS 4 Mini -- (wikka, sourcefordge)
More info on pupppy 4:
http://wikka.puppylinux.com/Puppy4

Non official spins

There is also a non-official tharpup spin of puppy arcade ninotix:

https://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linu ... arcade.iso
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 503#984503

As a side note, like any puppy you can run puppy arcade in a chroot. I've packaged the Slacko version of puppy arcade with my psandbox script, and this is available to download via dropbox:

slacko_arcade_sandbox.cpio

While, my script might seem like overkill for this application, it will allow you to do things like mount multiple sfs files in the chroot. So for instance, perhaps you want to load devX. The archive is downloadable via the above dropbox link and can be extracted via uextract. I chose the cpio format because it was easier to build and extract this way per the setup I'm working on where the sandbox code can be like symbolicly linked to several diffeent sandbox folders (see post).

Some notes:

0. The psandbox code currently requires you to press enter to continue a few times. This was done for debugging purposes. In the future, these will be removed unless someone is doing something abnormal.
1. If the prompt doesn't say "sandbox" then do the chroot command again that was shown in the "psandbox" output, either in the same terminal or a different one. I've only noticed this issue on dpup buster CE
2. For better isolation you can use the sandbox as a chroot folder in the an ssh server. I will eventually build this into the psandbox code. This works fast if the xserver does it's own networking, rather than tunneling through ssh.
3. For a gui ap to start in the chroot, it needs it's own pid (process id). For rox, you can do this with the the "-n" option when starting rox.
4. After starting rox with the "-n" option, then navigate to the /usr/share/applications folder and double click on the desktop file to start an ap. For instance, you might want to start rom-loader.

I actually don't know how to add roms to puppy arcade yet but will read up on it.

Warning

This is preliminary, code and it works. However, it is very alpha due to a large number of changes and in this process I've temporarily, removed code to clean up the mounts. The mount cleanup code has been modified to accommodate new features (see thread). The new cleanup features, are checks to make sure it is safe to unmount or delete a folder before doing so. The mechanism is similar to IPTABLES but still needs work. One reason that I added this flexibility was to experiment in the future with things like loading a save file after boot (see post) and moving a mount point.

The psandbox code is provided as is without warranties.

More Info About psandbox.sh

"psandbox.sh - Mount a puppy in a chroot"
For more info about psandbox see the following thread:

viewtopic.php?f=53&t=1397