Getting A Console And Quake II Running On A Raspberry Pi

Those Raspberry Pi boards are flying into the mailboxes of tinkerers all around the globe, so our tip line is currently awash in a deluge of Raspi hacks. Here’s two that came in over the weekend:

First up is [reefab]’s port of Quake II for the Raspberry Pi. The build is based of Yamagi Quake II and is mostly playable. The Quake III port for the Raspberry Pi is old hat, but we’re happy to relive the pulse-pounding action of Quake II any day.

Next up is [Joonas]’ take on getting a serial console up and running with the Raspi. The Raspberry Pi has a UART serial console on its 26-pin header, but you can’t just connect those pins to a serial port. To shift the +/- 12V down to the 3.3 Volts the Raspi can understand, [Joonas] used a MAX3232 – the 3.3 Volt version of everyone’s favorite RS-232 transceiver. With a breadboard and a couple of caps, it’s easy to connect your Raspi to a serial console. Neat.

14 thoughts on “Getting A Console And Quake II Running On A Raspberry Pi

  1. I love the raspberry pi, but I question their nonprofit incentive to build the market up with these things. I want to see computers like this in bestbuy or walmart!

    1. The point is that they license other companies to use their design.

      That way a company like “bestbuy or walmart” could produce and sell these themselves.

      So basically what you are saying is that you question the inventory of these stores, not the RasPi nonprofit incentive.

  2. I Love My Pi Just been having some power issues using a blackberry Supply seems to cause the capacitor to over heat and a drop of Voltage after about 15 mins of use

  3. Everytime I see a RasPi Post/Hack I’m getting depressed that mine will take 2 months to ship (by the end of August if the shipment is on time, so it might reach September if things got crazy).

  4. Seriously Hackaday?

    The whole “hack” was connecting an rs232 level translator on a breadboard and then running that through a serialUSB adapter to a PC. If this is new to you, you should have your HAD membership card revoked. A max232 on a breadboard and separate usb adapter? Sparkfun has the FTDI boards for 15 bucks! USB included.

    Please resist diluting the content of your site just because someone stuck “Raspberry Pi” in their title.

    1. Using MAX3232 to enable “normal” USB to serial to be used with RaspPi may not be a very “hardcore” hack, but I wrote the article hoping that it might help people who are not yet too comfortable with circuits & datasheets but would like to get their “feet wet” with the GPIO and some simple project. It might even give them confidence to try something innovative themselves after that.

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