Web Server on a Nintendo Wii

(wii.sjmulder.nl)

77 points | by adunk 3 days ago

9 comments

  • bombcar 4 hours ago
    More powerful than a Sun sparkstation 5!
    • giantrobot 4 hours ago
      I appreciate the lack of a reverse proxy in front. While I love the various "website hosted on X" projects they end up in reality just served by CloudFlare. Which is fine since you don't want your C64 or vape pen or whatever to explode. It's just less "hosted on X" and more "single HTML page served by CloudFlare".
      • bombcar 24 minutes ago
        It looks like it's proxied if you come over IPv4 - which the vast majority of "customers" likely do.
        • weird-eye-issue 2 hours ago
          It depends on the cache settings but by default CF doesn't cache HTML
        • tantalor 2 hours ago
          Not to spoil the fun, but is it really still a "Nintendo Wii" if you replace the stock OS?

          The identity of a "Nintendo Wii" is the combination of its enclosure, hardware, and software. To take only the enclosure and hardware and keep calling it the same thing is absurd. Where does it end? What if I keep the enclosure, but replace guts with an Xbox? Is it still a "Nintendo Wii"?

          • s_dev 1 hour ago
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

            You can draw the line wherever you like but for me it is still a Wii even with a different OS. I would draw the line at replacing the hardware inside with XBOX hardware. Others may draw the line at the chassis.

            • john_strinlai 1 hour ago
              i personally consider "running on X" to be accurate if it is still X's hardware
              • mghackerlady 1 hour ago
                no, then it's an xbox in a wii shell. I'd say having two out of three makes it a wii. Plus, there really isn't anything stopping someone from writing a web server for the wii, it's just that running a different os makes this silly task much easier
                • tantalor 55 minutes ago
                  > two out of three makes it a wii

                  So if I stick a modern hardware PC running a Wii emulator inside a Wii shell, then it's still a Wii?

                  • bombcar 25 minutes ago
                    This strikes at the root of the Biggest Controversy™ - if you beat a video game arcade cabinet on an emulator, did you beat it?

                    Things can be named analogously - if I have a machine that plays Wii games for me, and nothing else, I'll call it "the Wii".

                    • mikepurvis 22 minutes ago
                      > if you beat a video game arcade cabinet on an emulator, did you beat it?

                      Yes for the purposes of your own personal sense of achievement, no for the purposes of speedrun records.

                • zen928 34 minutes ago
                  Absolutely not. Ruins the rest of the charade when you say "okay, now let's just step around the hard part and instead replace it with a different OS to make it cookie cutter". Wow, you can run a server on hardware constrained stock BSD ...? ... cool ....
                  • malicka 21 minutes ago
                    I think it’s still cool enough to get the OS running in the first place; and there’s still novelty in using something for a purpose completely unexpected, even if the last few steps are cookie-cutter.
                • mrweasel 2 hours ago
                  Projects like this brings a lot of joy to me, even if it's technically only "I configured NetBSD as a webserver".
                  • phwbikm 3 hours ago
                    Gopher. Shake hands. Glad to see you are still hacking
                    • jofzar 3 hours ago
                      • stevefan1999 3 hours ago
                        I wonder what kind of apps you can run. Matrix certainly won't but IRC server? Probably
                        • bombcar 22 minutes ago
                          The Wii is comparable to a mid-range Pentium III with 64 MB of RAM - so anything that Linux/BSD could run around 2002 can likely run on this.
                        • LoganDark 2 hours ago
                          > I was doing this bit using a capture card and Photo Booth on macOS which doesn’t actually support disabling the image-flip on the video feed

                          I use OBS to monitor my video capture. This essentially lets me use my Mac as a monitor for my headless desktop (which does not have a monitor of its own). Maximum gaming.

                          Deskflow lets me use my Mac as a keyboard over LAN, too. Beats remote desktop for sure. Especially when gaming.

                          • ninjin 2 hours ago
                            My preferred way is ffplay(1). Last time I checked I get lower latencies than OBS at that, at least when I use `-sws_flags fast_bilinear`, which is the same scaling OBS uses by default.
                            • LoganDark 2 hours ago
                              I wouldn't wish bilinear scaling on my worst enemy; 1:N is the only way to go for me. I'll check out ffplay.

                              Edit: ffplay doesn't support cropping the output to fit my display (or if it does, it's far too arcane for me). As composable as ffmpeg is, it's awful UX for me. I'll stick to OBS.

                          • Shalomboy 3 hours ago
                            i used to love httpii for this!