Slashdot Mirror
Probing the Guts Of the Consoles
Max Entropy writes "Finally, an in-depth article of the technologies within the GameCube, PS2, and Xbox. The article covers architectures, processor/memory silicon, I/O, expandability, and storage among a host of other topics." If you are wondering what makes each system distinctive (Besides
the fact that one has about a hundred times as many games, one overheats,
and another has Luigi) this might be worth a read.
The article claims that the PS2 cannot play DVDs without the remote control, which is not true. It can play them just fine without. The XBox, however, cannot. It's not that bad of an article, just not objective enough.
boy, guess someone's bias against microsoft runs real deep, doesn't it .. i've had my xbox on since nov 15th practically, not one GSOD, not one crash, and no overheating.
and that whole harddrive/memory card thing is a great idea, imo.
If by "one" you mean the XBOX, then you are either a liar or an idiot. I purchased an XBOX and have not yet turned it off, indeed I have hardly stopped playing it (that includes 18 straight hours of Halo, during which I beat the game), and it has yet to overheat. In fact, the box itself is not uncomfortably cool (although it is noticeably warm to the touch), but the gameplay does not slow down. Only someone with 17 fans on their Athlon would think the XBOX overheats. Perhaps you editors should only post what you know, rather than whatever might make people think that Microsoft looks bad. Your propaganda battle is pointless, because you're preaching to the choir, who largely don't matter.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Wow, I've found quite the opposite. A friend of mine has an N64 and now a Game Cube, and while there's a lot of kiddie games, there's a whole lot of what I'd call "social games." Games that are genuinely fun, with decent graphics, that are best played with at least three or four people.
These are the games that are actually fun, and aren't the kind that you only play locked up in a dark room all night by yourself. Of course, knowing slashdot, there are probably very few people here who would actually agree that being social is a good thing.
- j
If your Xbox is overheating, the green light around the "eject" button will turn orange. When that happens, I'd turn the thing off. ;)
God knows why that's not documented in the manual...
I would recommend those that want a deeper analysis of why the xbox is the graphics gaming console of the future (verses these other boxes) to have a good look at what DX8 brought us. Hint: vertex shading and pixel shading.
Hmm... Actually vertex shaders and pixel shaders are nothing new - it's just that we've finally slapped a standard name on them. Even the Nintendo64 had a "colour-combiner" which could apply two passes of linear equations to the various different colour sources - no, it wasn't a fully programmable pixel shader, but then neither is DX8's most of the time, given the various hardware limitations. I believe the GameCube has a much more sophisticated colour-combiner step - capable of doing pretty much anything the XBox can do with its pixel shader.
As for vertex shaders - gimme a break! The N64 had completely updateable microcode - you could use the RSP for whatever you wanted, and perform whatever calculations you liked at the vertex transform/shading level.
DX8 didn't bring us either of these technologies. You would do well to examine the actual meanings of these terms, and look at the capabilities of the competing hardware rather than blindly accepting the hype.
FWIW the DVD remote for the X-box is exactly the same as for the RCA5215 DVD player. The only difference is colors of the button and the fact that the power button on the RCA = the "Display" button on X-box.
Of course, you still need the little receiver to plug into one of the controller ports on the X-boxy, but this could be useful to know if you want to use a universal remote on the X-box for some reason.
And I'd have to think twice before buying an X-10 module after those damned camera ads.
X-10 the company has nothing to do with X-10 the home automation protocol. Even IBM makes X-10 equipment.
For a non-obnoxious place to get X-10 gear, try Smarthome.
But I'm still strapped for ideas on what to use a game console for in controlling X-10 modules.
Maybe if you could control your neighbor's modules? "Eyup, the lights are flashing, the sprinkler's on, and goldie just turned tits-up in her tank. I guess Bob's on the final level." "I'll git the shotgun."
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I have no bias because I never owned a game console except for an atari when I was about 6. I work at a Target so I get to see all three and talk to customers about how they feel. X Box is the worst customer reaction. I don't know if it is overheating but a lot of them have just frozen up (power gone for no reason), causing the customer to have to send the box back to microsoft after sitting on the Microsoft customer service line for in one case, 2 hours. The freezing of the box made them loose the game because they can't open it without power unless they risk damaging it by prying it open thus voiding any warrente. Its not easy to get the game back once you ship it to Microsoft to fix. Playstation had some problems too when it first came out but people are generally more happy with that and Game cube has few complaints.
Each strand of Aki Ross' "hair," for example, reportedly contained hundreds of polygons, and each movie frame took 90 minutes to render on a Sun workstation farm.
Sorry, no. Aki Ross' har wasn't made up of polygons. Polygons may be popular in the game world, but in the pro CG and SFX world, they're about as popular as that math-nerd girl you sat next to in class, whereas NURBS et al would be the sexy cheerleader by comparison.
And no Sun Microsystems computers were used. SGI machines, because of their monstrous memory bandwidth, were used as workstations for the modelling, animating, compositing, and editing, and also as servers for setting up the batch renders and divying up render jobs among the render farm. The render farm itself was 900+ Pentium III powered PCs w/768MB RAM each, all running Linux.
I hardly need to mention that the SGI machines were most likely running IRIX.
IBM sold their X10 rights awhile ago, and have since left the game. Even while they were still playing, it was the -same stuff- as X10 Corporation sold, rebranded IBM. Differences? The IBM-branded products were sometimes cheaper, and might've had different software.
Same thing with RCA's X10 stuff, RadioShack's X10 stuff, Magnavox's X10 stuff, and, well, almost everything X10 except the hideously expensive Leviton X10 stuff and a few other high-end, high-dollar items.
X10 Corp has almost -everything- to do with X10 the home automation protocol.
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Kid-proof tablet..
cube.ign.com has a great interview with two of the designers of the chip, and it's really informative. Part 2 is even better, where they talk about the competition's chips :)
The interviews really shed some light onto the chip's functionality; it's engineered for gaming and a far cry from the off-the-shelf XBox CPU. Additionally, they mention that IBM detailed the chips at Hot Chips and the Embedded Processor Forum. Can anyone dig that info up?
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Read "there has still been some COMMERCIAL development." As far as a Dreamcast hacking/development community goes, that's where the real action's gonna be for DC in the future.
The beauty of the DC is this:
Someone's gotta step up to the plate and build a reverse-engineered Broadband Adapter. There are too many DCs out there and too much demand, particularly amongst geeks, for that not to happen. The v90 dialup modem that comes with the box is pretty damn good as dialup modems go, btw.
It is more than likely that there will be DC development going on for years into the future. Buy a DC now, and it will indeed have a future. Also RIGHT NOW it has Unreal Tournament, Quake III, Soul Calibur 2 and on and on.
Don't take my word for it...drop in at these sites and see what's going on for yourself:
http://mc.pp.se/dc/
http://www.fivemouse.com/dclinux.html
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.