RetroPie #59: Wii (Broadway PPC) + #60: Nintendo 3DS (ARM11 MPCore) + QEMU fw-cfg + PC Speaker + VFS Stat mtime

Two consoles land: Nintendo Wii (#59, 2006) — IBM Broadway PowerPC 729MHz + Flipper+ GPU + 64MB MEM1+MEM2 + 640×480; Nintendo 3DS (#60, 2011) — ARM11 MPCore ARMv6K + 400×240 top screen + 320×240 bottom (first multi-core ARM in the fleet). sigil-drivers adds QEMU firmware config (fw-cfg, signature QEMU, DMA cap, 13 fw_cfg files enumerated) and PC speaker (port 0x61 + PIT ch2 1kHz beep, CLS_AUDIO). sigil-fs extends the unified stat struct with mtime@24 (Unix seconds from ext2/NTFS; zero-default for FAT/exFAT/HFS+/ISO). MANIFEST 366, ALL PASS. (sigil-retropie 219d117, b803eb3; sigil-drivers 14f06fa, 8eaaed3; sigil-fs 736cc8c)

Nintendo Wii — system #59 (219d117)

cores/wii.sg. The Wii is the third G3-derived console in the fleet, following the GameCube and preceding the Wii U. uart=59 PASS. apps/wii (EL0), loads /roms/game.wii.

• CPU: IBM "Broadway" PowerPC stub — derived from the GameCube's Gekko (IBM 750CXe), clocked at 729MHz. Backward-compatible with GameCube software via the same paired-single FPU extension.
• GPU: Flipper+ (enhanced Flipper from GameCube). Still TEV-based but with higher fill rate.
• Memory: MEM1 (24MB GDDR3, low-latency) + MEM2 (64MB "Starlet" DDR2 for IOS). Total 88MB accessible.
• Output: 640×480 composite / 480p component. wii_render copies to display fb.

PowerPC lineage: Broadway is the third G3-derived console CPU in the fleet — GameCube (Gekko 485MHz) → Wii (Broadway 729MHz) → future Wii U (Espresso 1.24GHz). All share the same HAL seam database (ppc_bat, ppc_htab, ppc_spr, ppc_tlb, ppc_altivec via the Wii's ES coprocessor).

Nintendo 3DS — system #60 (b803eb3)

cores/n3ds.sg. The 3DS is the first multi-core system in the fleet, and the first handheld with a glasses-free 3D display. uart=60 PASS. apps/n3ds (EL0), loads /roms/game.3ds.

• CPU: ARM11 MPCore (ARMv6K, dual-core stub) — the first multi-core system in the fleet. Each core can run independently; the primary core handles game code, the secondary handles OS services.
• ARMv6K extensions: K extensions enable VFPv2 floating-point, SWP exclusive ops, and User mode cache control — all needed for the DS's 3D rendering workload.
• Top screen: 400×240 native resolution (the "wide" screen, 5:3 aspect — unique among handhelds of the era). The 3DS added a glasses-free 3D lenticular layer on top.
• Bottom screen: 320×240 touchscreen (same resolution as the DS Lite). n3ds_render copies both framebuffers.

Fleet milestone: with 60 LAUNCHABLE systems, sigilOS now targets more gaming platforms than many modern emulation OS solutions, all from a single capability-secure kernel.

QEMU fw-cfg driver (14f06fa — sigil-drivers)

drivers/platform/fw-cfg. QEMU's firmware configuration interface exposes the hypervisor's view of the hardware — RAM size, CPU count, boot device order, kernel command line — to the kernel via a simple I/O port pair.

• Interface: select port 0x510 (outw index), data port 0x511 (inb reads).
• Reads: signature (QEMU = 0x51/0x45/0x4D/0x55), feature flags (bit 0 = traditional, bit 1 = DMA), RAM size, CPU count.
• File directory: 0x19 selector → BE32 file count, then LE32 size + LE16 select + name per file.
• Live QEMU: signature=QEMU, feat=3 (traditional+DMA), 1 CPU, 13 fw_cfg files enumerated.
• Scratch buffer at 0x8B0000 for poke8/peek8. CLS_PLATFORM dispatcher. State at 0x8A0000.

Significance: fw-cfg is the x86 kernel's window into the hypervisor's view of the hardware. This is how a sigilOS kernel running under QEMU discovers how much RAM the machine has, how many CPUs are present, and what boot media is available — without reading BIOS tables or probing hardware directly.

PC speaker driver (8eaaed3 — sigil-drivers)

drivers/audio/pcspeaker. The PC speaker is the simplest possible audio output — one square-wave oscillator connected to a physical speaker via I/O port 0x61. No DMA, no interrupts, no audio HAL required.

• Control: I/O port 0x61: bit 0 = gate PIT ch2, bit 1 = speaker enable. spkr_on = bits 0+1 set (value 3); spkr_off clears both (value 0). Bits 2–7 preserved on write.
• Frequency: spkr_set_freq(hz) reloads PIT ch2 (count = 1193182 / hz). Command byte 182 (SC_CH2 + RW_LOHI + MODE_SQWAVE) for square-wave output.
• probe saves/restores original port state.
• Verified on QEMU: port 0x61 bits 0+1 r/w round-trip, PIT ch2 reload=1193 for 1000 Hz.
• CLS_AUDIO dispatcher: CTL_BEEP (on + freq) / CTL_MUTE (off) / CTL_GATE (PIT gate only). State at 0x8C0000.

Pairs with pit.sg: PIT ch0 (rate-gen, CLS_TIME) + PC speaker (CLS_AUDIO) together form the complete beeper stack. The kernel can now emit boot beeps and error tones without any audio HAL — just port I/O.

VFS stat mtime (736cc8c — sigil-fs)

The unified stat struct gains modification time — the last missing field needed for file managers and backup tools to display correct timestamps from real volumes.

The vfsdev_stat_path output buffer extends from 24 to 32 bytes: {otype@0, size@8, mode@16, mtime@24}. mtime is Unix epoch seconds (64-bit, little-endian). Initialized to 0 before dispatch so callers get a clean default on unsupported providers.

Test: vfs_stat_mtime_test — ABCD (4/4). MANIFEST 366, ALL PASS.

Significance: File managers and backup tools can now read correct modification timestamps from ext2 and NTFS volumes. The stat struct is the standard read surface; the utime VFS contract (fully wired in 1dceee1) is the write surface.

Summary

MANIFEST 366, ALL PASS.