MAME Ported to (Chipped) Xbox

metallik writes: "A version of MAME for the Xbox game console has just been released. This release will only run on Xbox consoles equipped with a mod chip. MAME is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, one of the more successful open source projects out there. It emulates over 3800 arcade machines, from Space Invaders to Mortal Kombat III, many of them perfectly. This is probably only the first of many such PC software projects to be ported to modded Xboxes. At $199 (plus modchip), the Xbox will soon be an extremely attractive set-top box (if not for the reasons Microsoft wanted it to be...)" A while ago, we posted about getting MAME to run on a developer-kit Xbox, but since mod chips are now available, this sounds like a more practical approach. Update: 06/23 18:40 GMT by T : Note: Thanks to Santeri Saarimaa for a note that the project is now hosted here instead.

Comments

This is just amazing.

[Anonymous Coward]

This news is the ability to play most arcade games on a TV (illegally).

Re:This is just amazing.

[Snover]

Just as it's not illegal to play copies of games you own (if the original cd gets scratched, for example), it's not illegal to play arcade games you own (albeit the number of people using MAME that actually own the arcade, err, box(?) is RARE.)

Mod Chip prices?

[tweakt]

...and how much does a mod chip cost currently?

Re:Mod Chip prices?

[Oily Tuna]

$65

Re:Mod Chip prices?

[mathfreak]

$69 at lik sang

Re:Mod Chip prices?

[aGeMo]

Got my Enigmah for $55 including shipping from http://qualitymods.com/xboxmods.html

Re:Mod Chip prices?

[Fulg0re-]

One can also consider the option of making your own "homebrew" modchip as well. Considering that the information and tutorials are now in the public domain, it may be a worthwhile endeavor.

For further information: http://members.rogers.com/xboxmods/

Re:Mod Chip prices?

[JohnHegarty]

Xtender Xbox Mod Chip
Usually ships within 24 hours Third Party 79.00 USD (~54.23 GBP)

Enigmah-X - Xbox Mod Chip
Usually ships within 24 hours China-Enigmah 69.00 USD (~47.37 GBP)

XBox (US version) with Enigmah pre-modified
Usually ships within 1 week Microsoft 339.00 USD (~232.72 GBP)

You can get all of these at :www.lik-sang.com

For your MAME box?

[sammy.lost-angel.com]

My mame box has been running linux hooked up to a TV on an old PII. The problem is, there is no good interface for people viewing it on a TV. This leads me to believe that mame for the x-box might be a practical solution. My only question is, is it compatable with the i-pac (USB keyboard interface thing)?

Re:For your MAME box?

[zapf]

X-Box's controllers are a modified form of USB. You can't physically plug a USB device into the X-Box's controller port because of the design, and you can't use a simple adapter because of a voltage difference. There may be ways around this, but I don't know of any.

What Mod chip?

[gcshaw2nd]

Tell me more about the mod chip! I haven't heard about it. Where is there more information? What functionality does it allow? Does it just bypass the usual boot sequence, or can you also boot to a command line? There must be a some sort of console built into the box for development purposes. Perhaps now's a good time actually pick up one of these XBox's.

Re:What Mod chip?

[Oily Tuna]

Tell me more

Re:What Mod chip?

[ddstreet]

I ususally think of modchip.com. They've got a good selection.

TiVO?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about TiVO software on a chipped Xbox? Anybody know if there are projects to create such a beast, because I'm sure it would multiply Xbox sales several-fold.

Re:TiVO?

[Anonymous Coward]

XBox software on a chipped Tivo would be better.

Re:TiVO?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see MAMA software running on anything

Re:TiVO?

[Erasmus Darwin]

Does the Xbox even have the hardware necessary to do the Tivo thing? Assuming that Microsoft already has a TV tuner and a means of encoding/decoding the television stream, you'd still need to worry about the 10 gig harddrive -- that sucks by PVR standards.

And then there's still getting programming data (which I suppose you could scrape from an online television guide site), writing all the software, and having to worry about having your Xbox on (and not playing games) when you want to record a show.

Re:TiVO?

[detect]

ok.. the Tivo is only a 50Mhz PPC processor system running linux with a 4800rpm drive (30 gig) so the xbox hardware is more than capable of performing the task (tivo quality). There also seems to be an audio/video input at the back of the xbox (although I've read that it might not accept video input) and if you look on the motherboard there seems to be a chip (similar to the t1 4600) which seems capable of video capture. There are also rumours of a tool called xbmovie in the Dev kit which allows for video capture. The modchips allow for running of customised code so it is possible someone could write the software needed if all the above is true.

Re:TiVO?

[Anonymous Coward]

The TiVo has a fairly powerful hardware MPEG encoder along side that PPC chip.

Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long it will be before an unscrupulous arcade operator puts a JAMMA connector on a chipped X-BOX and runs it in his arcade :-(.

That sort of thing is what will destroy the arcade games industry :-(

Re:Arcade operators

[galaga79]

It would be rather ironic too, considering consoles are killing the arcade games industry as far as I understand. Years ago arcade machines had better games and hardware than consoles, now it is the other way round so there is less reason to play arcade games.

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I prefer to buy modern arcade games, and play them on my JAMMA test rig, rather than spend the money on a console.

Everybody who visits says something like, "you could have bought an XYZ console for the price you paid for that one board!", and then I tell them how it's much better because the controls don't wear out in 5 minutes, and that you can try before you buy, by playing the exact same game in the arcade before you spend a few hundered quid, (I'm in the UK), on the board :-).

Plus, although I never sell on boards that I buy, they hold their value a lot more than consoles do, I'm sure. A bit like when I swapped a 100 MB hard disk for a Gameboy(tm) about 10 years ago. At the time everybody laughed at me, but the Gamebody(tm) is still worth 20 quid. The 100 MB hard disk is probably not :-)

Re:Arcade operators

[Sabalon]

I dunno...I think it's the fact that almost all arcade games seem to be clones that are killing it. Like the 2600 days, in the 80s, games had limited graphics, so you had to have decent "plots" and gameplay.

Now, it's all who can remember 50 joystick/button combos to dismember the opponent. So what...big deal...seen it once, seen it all. How about some originality.

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree - I wish some of my local arcades would buy games like this:

http://www.klov.com/D/Dancing_Stage.html

Instead of more of the same games.

You could always try talking to the operators, and suggesting future purchases :-). At the end of the day, they want to make money, so they should be interested in which machines will be more profitable.

Re:Arcade operators

[Fred IV]

That sort of thing is what will destroy the arcade games industry :-(

Sorry, you can't kill something that's already dead. If anything, such a move would help your local arcade by making it easy for them to put some of the classics in front of people again.

...MAME is nice but this is not enough of an incentive for me to throw more money at Microsoft. Death to the X-Box!.

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

Woh there Rip Van Winkle. The arcade business has been dead for 15 years.

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never been to Dave and Buster's. The future (and present) of arcade games is not a cabinet you stand in front of and move a joystick. It is a fully interactive machine you stand on, or sit on, or strap yourself into; motorcycles, race cars, planes, snow boards, etc. Some of these machines rival commercial airline simulators. These won't be in the home any time soon.

Re:Arcade operators

[gimpboy]

if you get the xbox and dont purchase any games you are costing microsoft money. if you can serve some of your own needs at the same time (dvd player, playing mame games, playing burned xbox games, etc.) then i would think people with distain for microsoft would be all for it.

Re:Arcade operators

[aljskfd]

One thing that could save the arcade industry is if DDR really catches on in the arcade. Sure, if you do walk into the arcade, most of the games now are crap that isn't really any better than the stuff on the home systems. But there is no way to get a true DDR experience at home (becuase all the home pads are alright at best.) If anything, that is the only thing that keeps me going back to the arcades...just so much fun to play with friends.

Re:Arcade operators

[innocent_white_lamb]

I wonder how long it will be before an unscrupulous arcade operator puts a JAMMA connector on a chipped X-BOX and runs it in his arcade

How would this differ from an unscrupulous arcade operator putting a computer into a cabinet and running regular MAME on it?

I've never seen one personally but I have seen many reports of the word "MAME" showing up on supposedly-genuine arcade machines in various bars and so on.

Many people use MAME in a stand-up arcade box for their own personal amusement (check here and here for information on how to build them and many examples of completed and in-progress projects. It's when folks put them into their businesses to collect quarters that things become a bit dodgy, in my opinion, but that has been going on long before the xbox was even thought of.

Re:Arcade operators

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Given that it'd probably be be cheaper to just buy say, an Ultracade conversion kit than it would be to deal with trying to put an Xbox into a Jamma Rig? plus there's the hassle of getting the Xbox controller worked into a JAMMA rig...
I don't see that happening in the near future.
Then again I never saw myself playing a computerized version of Simon at an arcade either...

Re:Arcade operators

[Imperial Tacohead]

Ever played Para Para Paradise? I just saw that game the other day for the first time. Simply incredible. I'd like one of those sensor devices for use with my home computer, just to play pretend Johnny Mnmemonic. ;-)

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote:Arcade operators (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 23, @10:56AM (#3752369)
I wonder how long it will be before an unscrupulous arcade operator puts a JAMMA connector on a chipped X-BOX and runs it in his arcade :-(.
That sort of thing is what will destroy the arcade games industry :-(
End Quote

You must not have a clue what Mame is. Mame has been out for years. And the vast majority of games that it emulates haven't seen an arcade for 10 plus years. Trust me, Mame will not be the downfall of arcades.

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

> You must not have a clue what Mame is.

Err, no I do actually.

My point is that Mame on the X-BOX (tm), makes it *easy* for unscrupulous arcade operators to run illegal copies of games, instead of buying new games.

Also, games that are 10+ years old are still making money, but not generally in the big arcades. I bet at least one fish and chip shop in your area is operating an Outrun (tm) machine.

At the end of the day, playing videogames in an arcade is more fun than playing them at home, because it's more sociable.

Instead of wasting my money on *any* console, to play inferior copies of arcade games, I buy, (modern), arcade games, and play them at home - the same version of the game as I've played in the arcade for the last few months to see if I like it or not.

Oh, by the way, going to trade shows is a great way to play the latest games free of charge :-)

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ever played Para Para Paradise?

No, but it looks excellent! Was it released in Europe? If so, does anybody know an arcade in S.E. England that has it? :-)

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one at the Namco Station in London. Or at least, there was one last time I was there. If you're far away from London, why not book a place and go see theGame On exhibition to avoid disappointment if they've removed ppp since :)

Re:Arcade operators

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking of going to Game On, it looks quite good. I wonder whether they have a Computerspace (tm) machine there that's playable?

I'm on the S.E. London/Kent border, by the way.

Re:Arcade operators

[qurob]

Sorry...I find those games to cost $2-3 a pop.

I hate paying 50 cents for 5 minutes worth of carnage.

Does this violate the EULA?

[JanusFury]

I don't own an XBox so I can't check the EULA... but it seems to me like chipping your XBox, or running uncertified games, would be outlawed in the EULA. If so, that would mean Microsoft could sue XBox owners who chip their boxes.

Anyone with an XBox care to paste part of the eula or anything?

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[WildBeast]

No, but if you run uncertified games, well then your warranty is no longer valid and if your XBox breaks, MS will offer you no support at all.

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[volsung]

Well, (assuming it does violate the EULA) this would be a lot like suing individuals who have MP3s they got from a friend. It would be perfectly within the IP owner's legal rights to sue and a public relations disaster if they did. (Yes, I realize that copyright and EULA enforcement are two different beasts, but in this case would look very similar to an outside observer.)

Any company that tries to sue a kid for taking a soldering iron to their Xbox is going to look like a big mean ogre to the public. Instead, expect that Microsoft will agressively prosecute the modchip distributors/manufacturers. No one has any sympathy for businesses, so they are safe to target (and more efficient too).

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[ImaLamer]

The problem is that even though they won't sue kids if they did they could play it off.

Headlines:

"Dirty Nasty Pirates Stopped Playing With Xbox Contents"
"Pirates in Court Over Soldering Irons"

Everyone would get on the Microsoft side because they would use the word 'pirate' a million times.

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[jago25_98]

Microsoft already look like a big mean ogre anyway and they don't seem to care much either! :)

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[0xdeadbeef]

MS will offer you no support at all.

In other words, there are no consequences to chipping an X-Box?

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[Cynikal]

so?

i'm pretty sure that not paying homage to bill gates before and after meals violates the MS EULA, so whats your worry?

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[handsomepete]

The more important question is: does it violate the MAME license? It appears so. No sources makes mamedev very sad. Of course, I had to learn this from the forums on mame.net seeing as the d/l link was subjected to the /. effect almost immediately.

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what the EULA says. It's an illegal "circumvention device", thank you very much DMCA...

Back in the day, Sony tried to sue mod-chip makers. They couldn't beat them. Now there's a DMCA. Surely they can. :(

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[Chris Canfield]

Dear god I hope so!

If Microsoft claims it will support X-boxes that have been opened, soldered repeatedly, closed, and used to play burned copies of games over an abstraction layer over the OS, all by amatuer end users, then Microsoft must have taken a turn for Seattle's finest Irish coffee.

As for wheter or not they can sue you... The pervasive argument during the early PSX chip days is that it was your box, and you could do basically whatever you want with it assuming you understand that it releases the other party from any liability at all. The EULA was viewed as a liability arrangement, not as a force of law. Now, of course, they can sue you under the DMCA, but Microsoft isn't the copyright holder on any of the software that you may be modifying and putting on your box. It's been a while since I checked the relative values of software piracy suits, but I believe each emulated cartridge manufacturer can sue you for 10 times the value of the goods you copied... Any Lawyers lurking that could clarify the potential losses if everyone that could sue you, did?

Of course, the chance that Microsoft would sue individuals is nonexistent... That would be hideous press for what is an expendable fluff toy traded on positive feelings. They are far more likely to sue the creaters of X MAME, the hosting company that puts them up, Sourceforge (You just know they want to sue sourceforge), 2600, slashdot...

Sigh... Why does it feel like we're rolling a large boulder up a steep hill?

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[innocent_white_lamb]

No sources makes mamedev very sad.

Source code is now available for download here.

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[innocent_white_lamb]

sue the creaters of X MAME,

The first of many confused people I think.

XMAME is the Unix/Linux version of MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. MAME-X is the xbox version of MAME.

Re:Does this violate the EULA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone really care about breaking the EULA? how would they find out short of showing up and checking on what your doing anyway?

www.mame.dk

[Tha_Zanthrax]

This isn't very usefull since http://www.mame.dk/ doensn't offers downloads anymore.

Re:www.mame.dk

[FyRE666]

I've got a few on my machine on my ADSL line. Take what you like ;-)

Re:www.mame.dk

[jandrese]

I was wondering why your site was still up 15 minutes after posting this, then I discovered that the MAME links all 404.

Re:www.mame.dk

[handsomepete]

Oh, for crying out loud. Every time an emulation topic comes up someone bemoans the loss of mame.dk. It's not and never was the end all of places dedicated to the acquisition of games. Here:
Miss Mame Roms Resources

Go there. Even if you can't manipulate the pages to find the same things that mame.dk had (which you should be able to), you can at least find the mame burners website which is completely valid.

Google is a useful tool. It will help if you just ask.

Besides, there's always newsgroups.

Re:www.mame.dk

[Anonymous Coward]

403 - FOrbidden. Check ur website ;-)

Kiddies, try:
http://www.arcadeathome.com/

Re:www.mame.dk

[FyRE666]

:-) Er yeah, I just remembered that it might be a good idea to allow directory listings on the ROMs directory!

DOH!!

Should work now...

Re:www.mame.dk

[Anonymous Coward]

MAME is fun. I like MAME. I think that everybody should use MAME.

Re:www.mame.dk

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally and with all due respect, I think this post needs to be modded back down. Sounds nice, but in practice, less than useful.

I challenge anyone to find a single USEFUL(still active and able to complete downloads) site with a non-trivial amount of roms (let's say, more than 100) by searching Google. It can't be done. The couple of sites that are still around are hopelessly overloaded. Most of the other sites seem to be dead.

The mame rom scene on the web is dead. The mame rom scene on the p2p nets (kazaa, etc) hasn't really developed in a useful manner. It's apparently still alive on the newsgroups, but that sucks with those of us without access to the binaries groups.

Re:www.mame.dk

[handsomepete]

There is a list of seven FTP servers on that burner web site which all work. Mix cron and wget (they're not *always* available) and you'll have everything in a day or two. If you're looking for some pretty looking point-and-click-and-give-me-roms site, then yes. They're more or less dead. I know I sure wouldn't be able to afford that massive bandwidth drain, so I understand why no else does either. You didn't expect it to be spoon fed to everyone forever, did you? I mean, this *is* something that video game companies really don't care for. But you really can't do much better than working ftp sites with full sets directly linked off of a website (which is indeed findable with google - the Miss Mame site is 9th down the list when you search for mame roms. It also has the FTP links). Come on, did you even go to the sites I linked?

By the way, I believe that a couple folks from the Kaillera forums are working on a P2P system just for emulation. That should make life easy.

I really didn't want to get into a rom file discussion in this thread.

Re:www.mame.dk

[innocent_white_lamb]

you can at least find the mame burners [tombstones.org.uk] website which is completely valid.

Make that WAS completely valid.

Tombstones has suspended the cd burning program within the past couple of days due to certain problems. It was brought to a head by someone attemption to sell the URL for the tombstones site, believe it or not. "I don't sell you the actual CD's but I do sell you the information on where you can get the CD's from absolutely free. So send $30 by PayPal for the information."

Therefore, the burning program has been suspended, either teomporarily or permanently; that decision is still under discussion.

However, MAME roms are still posted regularly in alt.binaries.emulators.misc and alt.binaries.emulators.mame so there's really no insurmountable barrier to obtaining the roms either way.

Re:www.mame.dk

[Anonymous Coward]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my @mamelist = `../mamepp -ll`;
my (@myroms, @fulllist);

@myroms = glob "*.zip";

foreach (@mamelist) {
@line = split;
next if /^Name:/;
push (@fulllist, "$line[0]\.zip");
}

my %ihave=();

foreach $rom (@myroms) {
$ihave{$rom} =1;
}

@fulllist = sort(@fulllist);

my $romcount = 0;
foreach $rom (@fulllist) {
if (!$ihave{$rom}) {
$romcount += 1;
print "$rom\n";
}
}
print "\n$romcount roms left to yoink...\n\n";
print "Beginning ROM downloads in 5 seconds...\n";

sleep 5;

foreach $rom (@fulllist) {
if (!$ihave{$rom}) {
system("wget -T 10 http://www.romsite.com/path/$rom");
sleep 30;
}
}

If only

[Apreche]

the XBox had a decent controller. Sure I could say emulate Street Fighter 2 on it. But without a stick and 6 buttons, it's worthless. There is a smaller controller available, but it's not that much better.

Re:If only

[WildBeast]

You mean something like this?

Re:If only

[Emil Brink]

Smaller? Hello... You need a bigger controller, of course! :D It does seem that the promised console adapters for this lovely-looking piece of joystickery still aren't available, but if they through some fluke of nature actually appear, this looks like a solid enough stick. I know I want one. And a suitable TV-ized box to MAME on. Oh, and a living room to put it all in. And, perhaps, a job with enough of a salary to pay for it, too. Darn.

Re:If only

[aGeMo]

How about something like this?

Re:If only

[Dimensio]

I've always believed that the Sony Playstation/Playstaion 2 had the most comfortable and versatile controller available (though that's just my opinion). When the standard gamepad controller doesn't work (I cannot use it in fighting games), I have durable arcade-layout style joystick from ASCII (Unfortunately I'm not sure that the model is available anymore). That's why I got PSX->PC and PSX/PS2->GameCube controller adapters, and if I had an XBox I would certainly get a PSX/PS2->XBox controller adapter.

Re:If only

[speedfreak_5]

If I remember correctly, the controller ports on the xbox are USB based.

Better Idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not dance on the evil company's grave instead?

Re:Better Idea!

[wheany]

What do you mean?

Please don't say "Microsoft loses money on every console sold."

EULA != Law

[Anonymous Coward]

In the country where I live, law is stronger than EULA. This means that EULA isn't valid when it contradicts the law (it can't take away your rights provided by the law).

I'm not aware of any law which outlaws running "uncertifed games on Xbox", therefore EULA isn't valid here and you can do anything with hardware you own.

Re:EULA != Law

[debrain]

You are missing a step:

Is there a legal guarantee that you can do whatever you want please hardware you purchase? Or another legal recourse of equivalent purpose and weight?

If not, then there may be no reason why the EULA wouldn't have grounds for civil cases. Perhaps not criminal cases, but then again, perhaps - if your laws guarantee EULA's legal authority like the proposed American SSSCA (or it's brethren).

Re:EULA != Law

[Hektor_Troy]

The Danish copyright law only prohibits certain types of reverse engineering of software, and it explicitly allows you to reverse engineer code to obtain interoperability, except when the information needed for interoperability has been easily and quickly/readily available to the licensee.

And the law also states that this right cannot be "abdicated" by license.

In which case, I would say this to Microsoft:
Sue me!

Not that I own an X-Box

Usenet

[Oily Tuna]

Since the download is /.ed, there is something claiming to be this alt.binaries.cd.image.xbox

Get a Dreamcast

[JK Flip Flop]

You can run MAME on a dreamcast without a chip plus the DC is only 50 bucks and not ugly.

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[Fulg0re-]

Sure we can run MAME on the Dreamcast, but considering the difference in hardware, the Xbox is much better suited to being able to run MAME. In fact, with MAME-X, you can load ROM's which are much larger (29MB vs. 5MB). So in consequence, you can play a lot more games with it as compared to the Dreamcast version. Also, considering that the Xbox hardware is much more powerful, games will likely be running at more optimal speeds.

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[Anonymous Coward]

...but as far as I can tell none of them are maintained, so they're pretty much a dead end. I could only find two. Does anyone know of a current one? Here's what I found:

mamedc
mamed

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually base my console purchasing decisions on whether the box is ugly or not.

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[fldvm]

Dreamcast $50 ... Broadband Adaptor for a Sega Dreamcast $80-100 ... I think I will get a xbox

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[nEoN nOoDlE]

except MAME and every other emulator - even the NES one runs as slow as crap on a DC... I don't know how well the emulator runs on the XBox, but it's not a viable solution to run it on the DC.

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[Milican]

Well I agree with your choice on the XBox, but don't forget to figure in the cost of the modchip for the XBox @ $65.

JOhn

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can make your MODCHIP or flash the Xbox BIOS yourself!! *gasp gasp*

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[00_NOP]

As you can run Linux on your DC you will have no problem with MAME.

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[bleak sky]

Yes, most emulators on the Dreamcast suck still. But for the old NES games, NesterDC (official site, condensed download site, bootable CD-R's on Dreamcast) works perfectly. The games play just like they do on the original NES, which I guess isn't really saying much, considering the hardware difference between the NES and DC. But to say that the Dreamcast can't even handle NES is really inaccurate.

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[racketboynick]

I love the Dreamcast too, but the current releases of MAME for the DC can only run older games at regular speed. Apparently the X-Box does a much better job

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[Neph]

plus the DC is only 50 bucks and not ugly

It also has controllers that fit human hands

Re:Get a Dreamcast

[zhensel]

Ability to use XBox to play games online $50/year (or whatever it is)

Kazaa, edonkey, DirectConnect, IRC, etc. (nt)

[athmanb]

bla

Re:DIE XBOX DIE

[inkfox]

DIE XBOX DIE

Flamebait? Oh ho - no no no, that's German! "The" XBox, "Theee!"

Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[day of ire]

I don't know why the DC Emulation scene seemingly gets no respect or credit in the "geek" community, considering the amazingly amount of work that's been put into various types of emulation. Granted, it's considered a "dead" system, but the technology is still there and still relatively current. At present, a $50 Dreamcast can successfully emulate MAME, NES (the best console emulation i've ever seen), Master System, Gameboy, amongst others. DreamSNES is working on SNES games, and is making some serious headway (they're running at about 88% speed, now), and there are still other emulation projects on the horizon, plus a batch of decent-and-getting-better homebrew games.

I think that person would be ill-advised to acquire and Xbox for $200, spend however much on a modchip, in the process voiding their warrenty, in order that they play MAME, when a console that can be picked up for $50 and under can do the same thing. i recommend anyone visit DC Emulation if they are interested.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[kryptkpr]

This is a shameless self-plug, but oh well...
If you're new to the whole DC Emulation scene and just want to try out a couple of emulators, check out DCFactory, trully the easiest way to burn yourself emulator+roms CDs for the DreamCast.

Also, DCFacory's sucessor, DMU CD Creator, although still in beta, provides a way to combine multiple emulators (and demos, and homebrew games, of which there are many) onto 1 CD, for those who are low on blanks.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[The Step Child]

NESterDC is great and all (obvious understatement :) but I think the all the fuss about emulation on the Xbox has to do with that it's got quite a bit more power to handle the more demanding games emulated in MAME. With a little bit of tweeking, the newer Midway games, CPS2, and Stun Runner to name a few might run at a good (full?) speed, whereas on the Dreamcast that might not be possible (maybe, but requiring a lot more work).

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[epukinsk]

I think that person would be ill-advised to acquire and Xbox for $200, spend however much on a modchip, in the process voiding their warrenty, in order that they play MAME, when a console that can be picked up for $50 and under can do the same thing.

XBox console: $200
Modchip: $100
MAME download: $0

Forcing Microsoft eat a $150 loss for every XBox you buy: priceless

-Erik

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Anonymous Coward]

the $150 loss is urban legend. god only knows why so many of you fuckwits refuse to believe that companies know how to make money on both sides of the deal.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[alvi]

Does anyone know whether it is possible to burn a Dreamcast bootable CD on linux? All these DC rom images come in a format which (as far as I know) is only understandable by a Windows CD recording program. (I think the format is called 'cdi'.)

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[t0qer]

I can't believe all these "Poor sega, poor Dreamcasts" Post i'm seeing. Now i'm not going into a flame here, I just want to point out some facts.

Fact #1
Sega has no consumer loyaltee because they discontinued every system they ever released in the past as soon as a competetor released a better system. We saw sega drop the master system when 8bit Nintendo came out. We saw them drop the Genesis, and 32x when the Super nintendo and XF chip(starfox) came out. We saw them really run away with their Saturn when Sony made the Playstation. Their last coup de gra was the dreamcast, which after just the announcement of the N64, Xbox, and PS2 was dropped. I don't support companies that drop support of their systems at a drop of a hat.

Fact #2
The DC mame emulation is SEVERELY limited. I know the author of mamedc (Christophe Thibult of kaillera fame http://www.kaillera.com) hasn't got a lot of time to work on it because of his work constraints (-C if your reading this, kick ass on WA3!!) Anyways your point is moot because the mamedc only supports 11 games. 11 GAMES! While mamex supports the entire mame romset!

You sound to me like many of my other friends that went out and bought a DC and fell victum to sega's chicken shit tactics. No DC is not that great IMHO and running 11 mame games isn't enough reason for me to spend 50 bucks. Check your facts before you post this bleeding heart (towards sega) bullshit.

--toq

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[EGSonikku]

Replace 'FACT #1' with 'OPINION'

Sega did everything right with the DC. Free included modem, great price, great games. Its not thier fault Sony blitzes the minds of the average MTV watcher with ads every 2 seconds. The DC was discontinued due to bad sales, not bad technology or games.

I think you'll fine over 90% of people who purchased DC's were quite happy with it. I know I *am* :-)

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[t0qer]

How about I throw that kind of logic back at you?

Sega did everything WRONG with the DC. Free included modem(But you had to shell out an arm and a leg for a POS NIC), great price(isn't the reason it's $50 now because it's discontinued?Wasn't it $250@release?), great games(PS2,XboX,N64 have em). Its thier fault (for not doing what) Sony (did),blitzes the minds of the average MTV watcher with ads every 2 seconds. The DC was discontinued due to bad sales(and horrible marketing), not bad technology or games(If you actually READ my post, you would see I was crapping on their marketing the whole time).

Hope you get modded DOWN. They need a new mod type of "Replier didn't read parent comment"

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I'd buy an XBox! Each one that every one of us buys (and doesn't buy any regular X-Box games for), costs M$ money and takes away one more piece out of inventory that could potentially get them game sales. As long as they don't have an updated console model on the market, if we were to buy them all up, they'd be forced to up the price or get the new version on the market or punt.

As an owner of a PS2 with Linux where I'm contemplating building some stuff, I'm waiting for the Linux port for XBox to come out and then will jump in. Probably the only M$ purchase I'll make this year... :)

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[wheany]

Forcing Microsoft to lose even more money by not buying the Xboxes they have already made: free.

Please see this post.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[The Pi-Guy]

"Amen." Most definately - I am an active member of the DCDev scene - it is truly an amazing console. And if emulation isn't your "thing", and you have something morally against ROMs, those aren't the only things on DreamCast. There's my Snake3D port, which is currently pretty ugly, but works, there's c99's 3D Pong clone, and Dan's Feet of Fury. Plus, there's Linux and NetBSD, not ot mention the homebrew KallistiOS. And all for free... Also available at DCEmu.

--joshua

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[tuffy]

Sega has no consumer loyaltee because they discontinued every system they ever released in the past as soon as a competetor released a better system. We saw sega drop the master system when 8bit Nintendo came out. We saw them drop the Genesis, and 32x when the Super nintendo and XF chip(starfox) came out. We saw them really run away with their Saturn when Sony made the Playstation. Their last coup de gra was the dreamcast, which after just the announcement of the N64, Xbox, and PS2 was dropped. I don't support companies that drop support of their systems at a drop of a hat.

This is 100% bullshit, really. The Sega Master System came out *after* the NES and was highly successful in europe. In the US it proved less successful, due in no small part to Nintendo's strong-arm tactics (such as, no retailer got NES games if they sold games for other systems).

The Genesis was supported all the way up to the Saturn's launch (and the 32X, Sega's attempt to prolong the life of the Genesis, was launched long after Starfox and Nintendo's FX chip). But the Megadrive was such a flop in Japan that Sega of Japan released the Saturn - which proved highly successful across the Pacific.

In spite of its failure in the US, all the money Sega made in Japan with the Saturn funded development of the Dreamcast (launched long after the N64, btw) - which turned out to be the fastest selling console in history in the US at launch. And, Sega supported the Dreamcast until the cash to subsidize selling the consoles ran out. At which point Sega abandoned the hardware business to focus on software.

If you don't like Sega, that's fine. But let's cut out the revisionist history bullshit just this once...

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't anything that comes in only in .cdi format only except for commercial games. I'm pretty sure everything at dcemulation.com, boob.co.uk, and dcvision.com have alternate formats for everything. .cdi files can only be burned with Disc Juggler, and it's only for Windows, but I believe there is something called "cdirip" or something to extract those images into something you can burn with tools like cdrecord. This page tells you how to burn things in for Dreamcast in unix/linux with cdrecord.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[colenski]

P-II 300 in my basement doing nothing: $0 Mame download: $0 Watching /.ers get all horny over spending a bunch of cash and time modding an xbox, while I play Defender: priceless

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Wog]

Offtopic, yeah, but don't mod me down for being helpful. :-)

A DC disc is a multisession disc, the first track holding at least 3 seconds of data ("This is a game, not music, you dolt" or something) and the second being a plain ol data session. There are several files which the DC looks for, but have been pulled from commercial DC games. There's a very detailed explanation on dcemulation.com.

You might want to check there. Again, I don't have the specifics, but if you can do a mixed audio/data disc, you should be perfectly capable of doing this with the "plain files" most authors make available.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Imperial Tacohead]

Yeah, but that doesn't really hold. If you don't buy the console, and they have a lot of unsold extras, they get to write it off on their taxes. As I'm no expert at tax law, I can't tell which is worse for MS, but it's just not that clear-cut.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[wheany]

I'm pretty sure Microsoft will still lose more money on unsold hardware than what they gain from paying a little less taxes.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are full of shit.

#1: NES came out in '85 in the US, the SMS came out in 86. They supported it all the way up till '92. The genesis came out before the SNES, and they supported that till '96. The 32X never should have left the prototype lab, i'll give you that, but everything else you said here is bullshit.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL! Urban legend my ass!

EVERY hardware company that has released a game system in the past DECADE has sold the hardware at a loss, if only initially. (to whit, after successive hardware revisions the PS was sold at cost of parts + labor but without any profit to make up for the engineering of initial hardware + successive revisions. The list goes onfrom there, SNES had a good 20 hardware revs, Genesis had at least 10... the ultimate aim of which was to keep their _loss_ on every console sale at the minimum)

To state otherwise is to only show your ignorance of how the industry works. An industry that I'm a part of. And, since I am a part of it, I know people who WORK for MS, who are & were part of the XBox project (not as difficult as it sounds since it sucked virtually all resources in their entire entertainment division), and they readily admit that they're doing the exact same thing as everyone else. Just don't quote them.

And, to whit, when MICROSOFT states that the unit is being sold at a loss, if only to investors & stock analysts (who gladly report this information to the business rags, which make articles by the boatload, sitting out there, beckoning for you to read them and be enlightened), the depth of your ignorance is compounded.

In other words, get bent, you're either a nimrod or a troll.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that $150 in the hole, with no way of making it back on controllers, games, and similar extras, will hurt them much, much more.

Oh, wait, let me guess. You're one of the guys who bought the MS line about how they're making a PROFIT on game systems, right?

Funny how nobody else is breaking even, but somehow Microsoft has done it. Even though we know them to be so damned incompetant. Even though they're hurting SO badly from hardware losses that they're putting NVidia over hot coals to get the price down on their chip (which, at ~$30, is too low for them already).

Right. Uh huh. Suuuure.

Myself, I've been contemplating buying an XBox and smashing it into smithereens, particularly since MS lowered the price of the XB $100 to match the PS2, even though they'd only gotten $50 or so closer to profitability due to hardware revs.

(Psst. That means they're now losing around $200 on every unit)

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[wheany]

I'm pretty sure that $150 in the hole, with no way of making it back [...], will hurt them much, much more.

Are you saying that a person who has not bought an Xbox is going to buy all those accessories or games?

Oh, wait, let me guess. You're one of the guys who bought the MS line about how they're making a PROFIT on game systems, right?

I am not saying Microsoft is making profit, that is your own strawman. What I am saying that it will hurt Microsoft more if you don't buy a console.

Myself, I've been contemplating buying an XBox and smashing it into smithereens

Hey, it's your money, do whatever you want with it. Alternatively you could send the money to me, and pretend you bought an Xbox and smashed it.

Microsoft gets money from royalties. Why would a developer want to make games for Xbox? Because they have sold so many units. Do you really think that they have a database somewhere that tells them how many Xboxes they have sold to people who have never bought a single game or accessory? The closest they have is a bunch of statistics that tell them x games and y accessories have been sold compared to the number of consoles.

And think about this: Can you really, and I mean really, resist buying any games for the Xbox. I mean, you already have a console, and MS supposedly has lost $100 when you bought it. It's not like Microsoft is profiting if you buy just one game, they don't even cost that much.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[mongoks]

I agree with your point however unless you have an X-arcade stick and some good TV out capabilities, you are stuck playing with PC controllers on a small screen. The consoles make great MAME emulators because you can play them on any TV and they already four controller ports. Try getting 4 people playing Gauntlet 2 on a PC.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[alanh]

I know the parent is just a joke, but if you don't buy the console in the first place, isn't Microsoft eating a $350 loss instead of just $150?

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[amokk]

I know the parent is just a joke, but if you don't buy the console in the first place, isn't Microsoft eating a $350 loss instead of just $150?

With that kind of logic, you should seriously consider a career at the RIAA.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Anonymous Coward]

how about forcing Microsoft to eat a $350 loss for every XBox you don't buy?!

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[howardholton]

To tell if your dreamcast will play backups - those made before November 2000 should play backups, afterwards Sega changed the firmware and it becomes difficult.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[wheany]

Please explain.

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[alanh]

The RIAA isn't charging $20 each for a CD that cost them $35 each to produce. They're charging $20 for a CD that cost them pennies to produce.

Tax write-offs from unsold inventory would probably help MS though...

Re:Dreamcast Gets No Love, As Always.

[Imperial Tacohead]

You might be right, but there should be a balance. I mean, are we really out to screw MS at all costs, here? Maybe you are, and that's fine by me, but I take a more measured approach in my hatred of Microsoft.

Let's look at it this way: say MS sells their console for $200, and loses $100 on every 'Box sold. Meanwhile, if they end up with a bunch of unmovable 'Boxes (which is really the dream here), they write the whole thing off as a loss. Without knowing a damn thing about the tax code, it seems to me from years of reading the business page that MS might be able to deduct, say, $50 from their taxes for every XBox that they've decided they can't sell. (This figure may well be inflated, but it also may be less than Microsoft's tax wizards could manage.) So in the case of a sale, MS loses $100, while in the case of a non-sale, MS loses $150. Am I willing to forgo making MS lose an extra $50 in order to play a ton of fine arcade games on my television? I (might) say yes. It's really an individual choice -- having agreed that Microsoft should suffer for its crimes, the question is how much good stuff we're willing to give up in order to screw 'em.

Pretty damn funny isn't it.....

[byran lei]

That the Xbox crowd is pretty much trying to sell the Xbox as *EVERYTHING* but a GAME CONSOLE these days. Is this the same machine that was going to *BURY* the PS2 and it's "inferior" games and technology less than a year ago?

M$ should have embraced the amatuer from the start

[spongebob]

It's very interesting how hard companies try to hold on to thier respective IP. When there are true hackers seeking knowledge and ways to expand technology's usage like this. I think that Microsoft should have take a different route with the indie/residential developer. If they had opened up and released a development environment like Sony with PS2 Linux, then they would be embracing this rather than feeling threatened.

To be honest, this and similar applications might be another reason for me to actually buy and X-Box and they need the sales and the press of people actually doing anything with the thing.

SHINE XBOX(tm) SHINE

[Anonymous Coward]

Think Japanese :-)

Re:SHINE XBOX(tm) SHINE

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

There's no 'di' syllable in Japanese. It'd be more of Jie, or jii if you "Thought Japanese"

Dai Xbox Dai, pronounced phonetically would be Big Xbox (dai) the last dai probably wouldn't mean much. But that would be true. =)

not until it doesn't require a mod

[blueworm]

The X-Box will not be popular as an inexpensive PC until it doesn't require a modification. Even then I'm unsure. It would depend on whether you could install the normal version of Windows on it like any other PC.

Re:not until it doesn't require a mod

[Anonymous Coward]

And why would you want to install ANY version of Windows on it?

Re:not until it doesn't require a mod

[wheany]

See, that's because it has an Intel processor and an Nvidia graphics chipset. Not to mention that it's made by Microsoft (Micro$oft to you slashbots out there). That means it has to be a PC.

Oh my god how we need an xboxmythsguy on Slashdot, kind of like losenotlooseguy

Re:not until it doesn't require a mod

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... I don't know? Maybe it's because emulators on other operating systems are horse shit.

MAME for Arcades has been available for a while

[mookoz]

Ultracade from Hyperware has been out for a few years already, and emulates (LEGALLY), games from Williams, Midway, Atari, Jaleco, Stern, Capcom, Taito, and some others:

http://www.ultracade.com/

It's a bit pricey, though.

xbox mod and purchase information

[mlrtime]

xbox-scene is a great website for xbox hacking and mod chip information. It even has a comparison of all the xbox mod chips available.


kmart has the Xbox : $180 (item# 981320) can't beat that price. (10% off)

Re:xbox mod and purchase information

[mlrtime]

here it is for those too lazy to find it. This is the cheapest on the internet now. AFAIK

MS will love this

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously... just another reason to buy one and improve their stranglehold on the market.

Why MS would fight MAME

[theMightyE]

I can't remember exactly where I read this, but I read that the XBox business model was set up such that MS actually loses money every time they sell a unit. They plan to make the cash back via a license fee attached to all games sold by major developers. For example, if they sell for $50 under cost initally, then get $10 for every title you buy they are in the black as of the 6th game you purchase.

Now think of what happens if someone MAMEs the XBox, mods it to be a cheap PC, or otherwise does something that causes the user to treat it as something other than a dedicated system for 'legal' gaming. In this case MS is just paying part of your equipment costs and not getting the return they expected. Modding the XBox to be a Linux machine just adds insult to injury in their eyes.

I think this answers some of the questions brought up in posts where people wonder why MS is fighting this kind of use. I'd expect MS to continue to fight this one tooth and nail, and with their history you know they will.

P.S. I did a (very cursory) google search to try to find the article outlining how the XBox business model works - if anyone knows where to find it and could post it in a reply it'd be cool.

Re:Why MS would fight MAME

[Anonymous Coward]

So... in other words: buy an Xbox - screw Microsoft out of $50. I'll take 20 of them, please.

Just think... I could have a cluster of cheap, powerfull x86 machines and screw MS out of money at the same time! Go Xbox Linux.

Re:Why MS would fight MAME

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent! All we need to do is buy 800 million Xboxes, and then Microsoft's $40 billion cash reserve is wiped out!

Re:Why MS would fight MAME

[wheany]

Why the fuck won't this myth die!?

Microsoft loses money on each console made. They get some of that money back with every console sold.

So if you want to screw Microsoft, do not buy an Xbox. It's a lot cheaper too.

Re:Why MS would fight MAME

[megauni]

Wow... that means that once we only need to buy 800 million XBoxs and we can put microsoft out of business...

Re:Why MS would fight MAME

[Shaheen]

Well duh... You make it sound like Microsoft is the only one doing it that way. The console games industry has always used this business model ever since NES.

Re:Why MS would fight MAME

[macshit]

Why the fuck won't this myth die!?

Well, if you wish it to, how about some evidence that it's wrong? Otherwise there's no reason to value your statement over common wisdom, which is that MS is losing a buttload of money on the xbox hardware.

Re:Why MS would fight MAME

[wheany]

Yes, but they are losing (buttload-the price of an Xbox) if you buy one. Microsoft will make more consoles whether you buy one to hurt them, or not. All you are doing is increase the sales numbers to make developing for Xbox seem more profitable, thus driving more developers to paying royalties to Microsoft.

Re:M$ should have embraced the amatuer from the st

[Cynikal]

they try to keep it a closed system cause they're losing money on each console sale

so if they make their console easy to run free software that anybody can write, basicaly in the end all they are doing is making a really inexpensive PC, and if they cant even force you to run their own software (and ONLY their software) they wont make a cent.. and to microsoft, even the suggestion of doing something that may bite into their profits is a sacrilige and a punishable offence.. what are all those black vans doing parked outside your house all of a sudden?

Re:M$ should have embraced the amatuer from the st

[puto]

You know when I read your comment the old noggin started buzzing.

I think Microsoft did intend the thing to be heavily hackable for the general public.

M$ probably realized the majority of the gaming community and *nix people would look on the X_box EULA and the actual XBOX itself as a severe challenge. LEts all hack the box to how M$ fucked up this time and make it do all sorts of crap M$ never designed it do.

Ye olde reverse psychology. Now you got an article every couple a three days on the xbox and most of the comments are positive. Well, we ain't admitting that M$ did something decent for a change(which they kinda did considering it is their first console).

So i think we played into Bill's hands. He is getting all the air time here. I am actually thinking about buying one and so are you.

And what better "indie/residential developer, hacker, challenge" is there than the X-box and it's dislaimer.

Puto

Re:M$ should have embraced the amatuer from the st

[Cynikal]

embraced and extended the amatuer maybe?

Kinda sad, in a way

[Junks Jerzey]

I'm always sad to see that the excitement among hobbyist developers always seems to involve porting emulators for old arcade games. Yeah, I love those old games too, but I'd much rather see some kind of real grassroots game development movement emerge. The stuff posted to linuxgames.com is depressing for the most part. Here we have a powerful, free operating system and development tools, something thousands of times more powerful than what early game designers had in 1980, and yet all we can do is write emulators for those games.

Re:Kinda sad, in a way

[stipe42]

If I had mod points, I'd put them down right here. Even long running projects like FreeCiv are extremely disappointing compared to the slick status of KDE and Gnome. If I wanted to play 10 year old games I'd just get an SNES+games off of ebay.
stipe42

Re:Kinda sad, in a way

[andi75]

There's a reason for this. Writing games is abismally hard. You need a whole team of people (programmer, game designer, texture artist, modeller, sound artist, musician) *from the beginning*. Otherwise your game won't catch any interest.

Also, don't expect your users to provide any support from the programming side. You'll have to be very lucky to get any usable patches.

I know a bit about what I'm talking, I've written a fairly successful game (though it's rather limited in gameplay). I was lucky in a way that the art I use in the game was either easy to replace by users (textures) or was already lying around (people had already built 3d models of tron vehicles) so that was only a matter of integration. However, obtaining decent sound effects has proven to be much much harder, and I'm still not happy with the currect state of affairs.

Nonetheless, writing games can be very rewarding (I get a lot of fan mail), so don't let that stop you.

- Andreas

Re:Kinda sad, in a way

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Well, I think the reasons for that are two-fold. One, there are no good artists willing to work on a freeware project so the game they will create is guaranteed to fail among the common audience, and two, creating games is like a common ground in programming. It's not as simple as creating a basic MP3 player to test out your coding skills and it's not as hard as creating a homebrewed OS that programmers want to try to challenge.

Re:Kinda sad, in a way

[tuffy]

This isn't just a hobbyist-only phenomenon. Coming up with a new and/or original game concept is *hard* and actually developing something people would consider professional nowadays requires a large staff of artists that open source software efforts simply don't have. In the olden days, a single person could do the design, art, audio and programming and the result could still be state-of-the-art; but those days are long gone.

And besides, so many *new* games are "safe" re-hashes of old concepts (in the hopes that the title won't flop and cost the developer millions) that playing emulated classics is sometimes preferable to shelling out for much of the latest stuff.

Re:Kinda sad, in a way

[MrFredBloggs]

"You need a whole team of people (programmer, game designer, texture artist, modeller, sound artist, musician) *from the beginning*. "

I`m not sure this is true. Perhaps if you want to write a game which is like all the other polished turds which are currently floating in the computer market, but who wants to play those? Been there, dont that?

Have you seen any Dogme films? You dont have to make something which is identical to everyone elses offerings to produce something playable and fun. Just create a simple, fun game. Worry about how pretty the graphics are later. Just use a good music cd as a soundtrack (first thing i do when playing a game is turn off the music, leaving just the sound effects, and play my own stuff.

Dreamcast CD-R support?

[dstone]

Are there any issues with getting a Dreamcast to play burned CD-Rs? I went to the site you suggested and this article leads me to believe some Dreamcasts may not play CD-Rs. Is there a non-black-magic way to tell if the Dreamcast I'm gonna drop $50 on will work?

Re:Dreamcast CD-R support?

[Dimensio]

I checked the dcemulation site...they reported that further testing showed that all DCs worked with CD-Rs.

Mine certainly has no problems with CD-R media (I've been using Verbatim).

Re:Dreamcast CD-R support?

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked the dcemulation site...they reported that further testing showed that all DCs worked with CD-Rs.

The previous poster cited a page on [dcemulation] that clearly says not all Dreamcasts read CD-Rs. Please cite the "further report" you've read. Enquiring minds want to know!

Re:Dreamcast CD-R support?

[Mike the Mac Geek]

Some models made after October 2000 have trouble booting from standard CD's. They will only boot from GD-ROM. Check your system.

Sure. Port to M$'s XBox. They lose money on each.

[crovira]

I'm ambivalent about buying an XBox. I have a life, a wife and a very private walled-in garden. What do I need a computer to play games for?

But as long as each sale (now don't go and buy their games too,) loses money for M$, its got to be a good thing, right?

And in other news:

[wiresquire]

A press release from Microsoft stated that game developers were flocking to XBox. Xbox now has 3802 games.

It's cool, but not my first pick for a mame box.

[Anonymous Coward]

The xbox's 733Mhz Celeron isn't powerful enough o drive a lot of the games MAME can emulate and more cpu intensive games are always on the way.

"As a data point, an AMD Athlon 1900 XP is able to do all current Mame32 games [.58] at greater than 100% fps at a resolution of 1600x1200x32 using RGB effects [the most stressful Mame32 settings]." -http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa/help/mame32 _support.htm

Two words: Netpliance iOpener

[alienmole]

... the XBox business model was set up such that MS actually loses money every time they sell a unit. They plan to make the cash back via a license fee attached to all games sold by major developers

That model has been tried before.

Actually, other game consoles have used this business model to varying degrees. However, the difference today is that the consoles are much more powerful computing platforms, and therefore much more attractive for hacking. Hence the iOpener comparison.

The problem Microsoft is going to have in fighting this, is that it will now be fighting its customers directly, rather than competitors. The downsides of squashing (or acquiring) a competitor only become apparent when the U.S. Justice Department sues you. The downsides of fighting with your own customers are much more serious and direct; and the legal footing is much weaker.

Suing individual XBox owners in court isn't likely to happen, or have much effect if it does (unless the courts happen to rule against MS). Certainly, Adobe-style DMCA tactics against companies selling mod chips and the like may be possible, within the U.S. at least, but that's unlikely to act as much of a barrier against hacking.

The bottom line is that companies need to start taking the realities of this sort of thing into account. They can't just sit in their conference rooms surrounded by lawyers and wail and gnash their teeth. Their notion of intellectual property ownership and control is simply at odds with reality, and if they don't recognize that, reality will do it for them, in the form of profits and their stock price.

If you turn the effects off

[Anonymous Coward]

And leave the games displayed as intended I've found even a lowly PIII-550 (underclocked PIII-733) is enough power to play virtually every game...

Re:If you turn the effects off

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh? What's your average frame rate running hard drivn'?

Re:Sure. Port to M$'s XBox. They lose money on eac

[agentZ]

Well, yes!

"The weapon of the enemy is a gift, let us use it against him!"

X-Arcade Video Game Controller

[L3WKW4RM]

This looks interesting. Doesn't look like an XBox adapter exists yet though...

MAME-X site moved..

[Gridle]

It's located at xbox.mame.net now. We can handle the slashdot effect. Bring it on.

There will be a new version and source code release shortly.

"Successful"?

[rherbert]

One of the more open source projects? You're putting it in the league of Apache, Mozilla, Samba, and Squid? Come on.

Re:"Successful"?

[metallik]

Well let's see.. It's been around for over 5 years, has dozens (hundreds?) of developers, has been ported to nearly every device capable of running it (PC, mac, camera, dreamcast, xbox, amiga, etc), it emulates nearly every CPU and boardset used in arcades for the past 25 years... (the technical info gleaned from the source alone is amazing)..

Yep, I'd say successful is a good term.

Re:"Successful"?

[EGSonikku]

Well, an open source project consisting of hundreds of developers worldwide thats been around for several years, dozens of ports (not to mention being included in quite a few linux distro's), yea I would say quite succesfull.

Re:"Successful"?

[rherbert]

Well, that's what I wanted to hear, then. :) I hadn't heard of it, so I just wanted some supporting evidence. I still wouldn't say that it's in the same league as the projects I mentioned, but I'll buy that it's very successful.

other features.

[gimpboy]

other than emulation features the modded xbox offers some other neat stuff:
http://www.psreporter.com/xbox_mod_chip.ht ml


The Xbox Mod Chip of those people making the videos mentioned above is officially called Xtender . The Xtender Xbox mod chip works on ALL Xbox models from ALL regions and plays every Xbox game including originals, import originals and all backups. It is reported to work with any CD-RW media, any DVD-R media, any DVD-RW media. The Xtender Xbox mod-chip claims to be very easy to solder and requires only basic soldering skills. A special feature is the ability to run unsigned code, as well as patched or modified files, opening the door for amateur development of Xbox software. Latest news confirm that the Xtender mod chip disables DVD Macrovision.

since i dont participate in the modding of game consoles, i really dont know if the dream cast supports all of the above features. i think the ability to play dvd's, play new games (and copies of those games), as well as the other features would be well worth the extra $150.

given the hardware and the likelyhood of the xbox staying around, i think the extramoney is well spent because more mods are likely.

Damn Straight!

[Greyfox]

If the coin op industry had more than 3 distinct games on the market, maybe they'd see more players. Walk into any arcade and you see a bunch of racing games, a bunch of fighting games and a bunch of shooting games. All geared so that no matter how good you get at them, you still get killed and have to put more money in after 2 minutes. And most arcades charge at least 50 cents these days.

Oh sure, there are a couple of unique titles on the market but many arcades don't carry them and it's nothing like the options you had starting in the early '80's and ending in the early '90's.

I'll stick with my PS2, where at least I have some diversity.

Re:M$ should have embraced the amatuer from the st

[gimpboy]

So i think we played into Bill's hands. He is getting all the air time here. I am actually thinking about buying one and so are you.

yeah but if you dont buy any games for it then you will be hurting them. this is based on the assumption that they are loosing money on the console and expecting to make it back on the games.

if i purchased one it would be to play dvd's and the mame stuff since i have no interest in newer console games. while i might be in the minority with respect to console games, those who like the newer games might not be purchasing them either*. if you read about the mod chip you would see that it allows you to play copies of games.

so now i can buy this console+modchip for $270 and do everything with it someone without the mod chip can do and alot more. not to mention that with the mod chip i can play bootlegged cd's*.

is this a real threat? heck i dont know. what can microsoft do? i think online services to encourage people to purchase the software might work. similar to what id did with quake 3 arena.

im sure you can see how this _could_ work out bad for microsoft.

*A Xbox Mod Chip would not only make it possible to play Backups and Imports, but would also open a complete new era in videogame console development.

Bleeding Greenbacks

[David Off]

The BBC reported that Microsoft was losing 100 UKP on each X-Box sale when the X-Box was at 299 UKP. I think it is now at 199 UKP. As sales costs are higher in Europe than in the US I would figure they are losing $200 on each X/Box.

Mickey$oft recently shut an Eastern European (Hungarian) production plant because they are haemoraging so much money on the eX-Box... but according to this week's Economist they are in this war for the long term and see the PS/3 vs. X-Box II as the mother of all battles in 2005 as make or break for the company. They are building their own Internet (now where have we heard that before?) to facilitate on-line gaming and will tax every bit that travels over it.

So there you have it, geeks, get Linux running on the X/Box and Micro$not are toast. You've got 3 years.

Death to the Demon, Bill Gates!

David

Re:Bleeding Greenbacks

[theMightyE]

I'm sure you're right about MS being in this for the long term - you don't need to be much of a history buff to notice that they have been more than willing to eat an upfront cost for a time while they gain a stranglehold on a technology and then when 90% market share has been achieved they begin the heavy cash cow milking.

I'd guess that deep inside the neurons in BillyG's head the fantasy goes like this: Lose some money on the initial sale, get some of it back from software royalties, build your own 'internet', gain market share, release XBox2.0, gain more market share, get back more from royalties (of course, at increased rates your bigger installed base lets you command), and finally add new revenue streams by making anyone who wants to play HALO online pony up a $10 per month access fee for the only network that the unmodded XBox will connect to. (Damn, that was a long sentence.)

So in the end, Dave's right - it comes down to either breaking the model early with mods that don't pay Redmond or waiting 5 years until MS controls the console gaming universe and we gotta cough up monthly fees or go outside and get a life. Assuming, of course, that Nintendo/PS/whatever doesn't interfere too much wiht the 'gain more market share' parts. Should be an intersting thing to watch...

Re:M$ should have embraced the amatuer from the st

[NanoGator]

"It's very interesting how hard companies try to hold on to thier respective IP."

Slashdotting the info on mod-chips and emulators will certainly expedite us finding out how extreme they'll get.

Why does it need a mod-chip?

[DarkEdgeX]

I'm mostly just curious here, but what does the mod-chip enable that the X-Box disables? If you have a DVD-R burner and the file, what does the X-Box detect (or NOT detect) on your burned disc that commercial discs don't contain?

If someone had the XDK, what's stopping them from putting it all together and putting it out? Any links to articles discussing the issue would also be most appreciated!

Re:Why does it need a mod-chip?

[EGSonikku]

The XBox does media checks to determine if the disc is recordable media and has the proper security signing. The mod chips override this and tell the XBox it is a legit disc.

Normally, all games need to have a MS authorised digital signature or the XBox won't touch it. The modchips allow 'unsigned' code to run.

Re:It's cool, but not my first pick for a mame box

[yasth]

Well you wouldn't run it at even half that resolution. You are outputing to a tv not a high end monitor. So think 640x480.

You fail to mention....

[EGSonikku]

The DC has a 200Mhz processor and 16mb ram, no hdd
XBox has a 733MHz PIII, 64MB RAM, and an 8 - 10GB HDD
So your DC can only really handle the older/slower/smaller games while the XBox can churn out NeoGeo and Capcom CPS1/CPS2 hardware.

I love Dreamcast but I would hate to see someone rush out and buy one as a MAME box and then be stuck playing, say, Xevious and Gauntlet only ;-)

Re:You fail to mention....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if you have gauntlet, then what else do really need, huh? :)

Re:Sure. Port to M$'s XBox. They lose money on eac

[Have Blue]

But as long as each sale (now don't go and buy their games too,) loses money for M$, its got to be a good thing, right?

Actually, you are increasing their installed base and giving MS larger audience figures to show to developers, thereby making the console more attractive.

Re:It's cool, but not my first pick for a mame box

[Anonymous Coward]

I get 15-20fps in game on my 800MHz Athlon
running at 640x480. Hard drivin's native resolution is 512x384. Like the guy said, you need a decently fast cpu for a lot of the games in mame, and it's not all because of video.

Xtender vs. Messiah vs. Enigmah

[jcsehak]

Which mod chip to get? Anyone have any experience intalling them? Anyone care to do (or point to) a comparison?

Re:Xtender vs. Messiah vs. Enigmah

[Anonymous Coward]

Heres a link to Xbox mods comparison http://www.xbox-scene.com/modchips.php

Think ill wait for the openbox modchip as its flashable with a pc and printer lead/port, and has a switch to revert back to the origonal xbox bios.

And it should be legal to sell as it comes with no microsoft code ie:bios/modded bios.

Re:Xtender vs. Messiah vs. Enigmah

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the .nfo's on isonews, most of the release groups are backing the xtender.

Will Microsoft really mind (I mean unofficially)?

[still_sick]

Ok sure, every XBox sold makes M$ lose however much money. But after that you'll still own an XBox. This will be a genuine Bad Thing(tm) if that person only ever plays MAME on it, or only ever uses burned games (if you have MAME, you have a modchip); but how many people won't "Just" go pick up HALO? Or "Just" go pick up Gotham Racing? (I can't think of any other games at the moment.) I'd guess that the number of people who could resist "just one" game would be the minority. And what happens (if/when) they start putting out more than a just few good games, and people who already have the system because of MAME start buying "just a few more". ... I don't think this is as bad for Microsoft as some of us would like to believe.

Spooky predictions

[Rogerborg]

• Microsoft will claim that modding an Xbox is a DMCA violation.
• They'll spend a fortune on lawyers and publicity and on an "education" campaign to convince purchasers that they are stealing from the mouths of hungry developers.
• The net effect will be that a lot of lawyers and PR people will be able to make a deposit on a BMW, and that clued up gamers who want to mod their Xbox and play with it will go ahead and do it anyway.
• Someone (let's say me) will point out that Microsoft could license some of the abandonware titles that MAME supports and sell (yes, sell) a MAME collection, thereby keeping money out of the hands of lawyers and keeping gamers happy.
• Microsoft (if they deign to acknowlege this suggestion) will snort derisively and ask why anyone would want to run MAME on the Xbox. When they have it pointed out that they are spending millions on pursuing DMCA suits to have it stopped, they will shift uncomfortably in their seats and ask for the name and home address of the questioner, their family and their little dog too.

You know, one day we'll wake up in a world where suppliers have remembered that you make money by supplying the demand that's out there, not by trying to control it. It didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it sure isn't going to work in the USA.

I dunno....

[Chemical]

Like the 2600 days, in the 80s, games had limited graphics, so you had to have decent "plots" and gameplay

I dunno about 80s games having decent plots. These days every game has some kind of plot and some dialog, and the plots of modern games are much more involved (not to mention better translated). Games in the 80s may have had one sentence at the very beginning letting you know what is going on ("Now is beginning of a fantastic story"). These days, you will hardly find a game that doesn't have CGI cutscenes explaining in great detail the current scenario. Genres that were previously notorious for not having plots are now much more likely to have one. Think about old FPS games like Doom. It did indeed have a plot (in the instruction manual), but that plot was barely reflected in the game. Newer FPS games like Halo have cutscenes, dialog, and an involved story (not just one printed in the manual for good measure). Even arcade games, games that are played for 15 minutes at a time, are starting to contain more detailed storylines. You hardly ever saw that in the 80's.

We have come a long way since "All your base are belong to us". True, games in the 80's may have had more original gameplay, but when it comes to storyline and involvement, those games can't compare to what we have today.

Re:I dunno....

[Sabalon]

Yeah...plot was a bad choice of words. Hadn't had my caffine yet :)

I guess you could substitute originality, differing goals, levels, moods, etc. YEAH - plot should have been left out.

While some of the old games were the same thing with different sprites or just faster, at least in Donkey Kong you had 4 different screens. All the games I see it seems that you are two fighters standing on a floor and the only thing that changes from match to match is difficulty and the backdrop.

Re:Sure. Port to M$'s XBox. They lose money on eac

[wheany]

Please see this comment.

This is my opinion.

[rice_burners_suck]

I prefer to purchase products from Microsoft's competitors.

not killing them - on the contrary

[Tom]

Even if it's true that M$ loses $150 on every xbox sold, they won't care much. They've calculated losses of a few billion over the first four or so years of xbox business, so they're definitely in it for the long run.

Now, what helps you most in the long run? Market share. What will hacking the xbox so that mame runs on it do? Hm, how about raise it's market share because a couple thousand /.'ers run out and buy one?

M$ lost money on windos piracy, too. They didn't give a damn until they had the monopoly, then they started cracking down on people with the BSA squad.

They won't attack the mod chips or the mame porters. Not just now and not for a while. Once there's an xbox in every house, then the gloves will come off.

Re:not killing them - on the contrary

[SuperCal]

I keep wondering if this is a tax thing. I know from a few buisness cases that there are situations in which companies lose money on certain projects for tax breaks/and writeoffs.

Re:not killing them - on the contrary

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's a model that works, and works well, for this industry. So well, in fact, it's been done for well over a decade.

Essentially the model works like this: Sell the console with a minimum amount of goodies to the consumer at a deflated price so they will buy one.

This negative amount of money is made up every time they buy any product.

Buy a game? Licensing fees + duplication fees (Sony duplicates all PS2 games) + development fees make for a fair amount going back into the coffers. Chock up more profits if the title was developed internally (hence the requirement on some retailers to sell MS-developed titles on launch day).

Buy a controller? License fee for third parties, full profits for OEM controller.

Buy a multitap, video cable, etc.? Same as a controller.

Provided the consumer buys more than a game or two, the profits start rolling in, and quick.

The funny thing is that the beast (game industry) feeds itself for a large part. I have a collection of over ten thousand Mac games, a few hundred PC games (I try not to feed the beast, and most titles I'm interested in get ported sooner or later), and a good hundred or so PS2 + GameCube games. Virtually everyone I know who's been in the industry for as long as I have is in the same boat.

Sometimes I wonder just how many "core gamers" work outside the industry...

To my knowledge "losses" aren't written off on taxes to any major extent (obligatory exclusions for E.T. and similar horrendous flops), simply because this is more of a marketing expense than anythign else and the IRS would grill them over hot coals for it.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if MS writes everything off, being litigious SOBs who will walk any line to make a buck.

Re:not killing them - on the contrary

[ivan256]

Now, what helps you most in the long run? Market share.

You mean that MS finally read those business books from 1997? If market share is what really helps you in the long run, explain to me what happened to companies like egghead, and bigstar, and DrKoop, and (Insert your favorite failed .com here)...

The platform that sells software wins. Period.

(Console software sales statisitcs for Q1 2002)

Re:not killing them - on the contrary

[Tom]

explain to me what happened to companies like egghead, and bigstar, and DrKoop, and (Insert your favorite failed .com here)

I didn't say that market share alone is a magic lamp. However, if anyone than M$ has realized just how much money a monopoly position is worth. They have a history of giving stuff away (free or selling it very cheaply) until their market share dominates. Why would they change an effective business strategy?

Re:not killing them - on the contrary

[Anonymous Coward]

This time they're playing the game with a companies that can take the heat. Nothing that Microsoft can do with the Xbox will destroy Sony or Nintendo. They can each stand on their own, and support their consoles as long as Microsoft can suport the Xbox. Marketshare domination will not help Microsoft here, unless they get the software sales to back up their position.

Make your own modchip

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have an EEPRom programmer, you could just make one yourself for about $20.

Otherwise, you can flash a flashrom with an old motherboard.

Re:DIE XBOX DIE

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who speaks German can't be an evil man.

REFERAL Don't Click!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just type the thing into your address bar! Don't give this guy any money by tricking you!

and you thought M$ is losing...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah sure, buy an Xbox for MAME emulation (which is cool BTW), but eventually you WILL buy a game out of curiosity or something else (e.g. Halo). so in the end M$ won, and YOU lose because in the end you DID supported something which you don't like.

Here's a thought, PC for you MAME needs, PS2 or GAMECUBE for you console needs. Xbox? pffft.

DOP: Denial Of Profit

[Anonymous Coward]

But buying an Xbox and misusing it prevents someone else from buying that box and using it in a way that profits Microsoft.

Re:DOP: Denial Of Profit

[wheany]

Oh yes, and "someone else" will not buy another Xbox?

Do you think that someone at Microsoft will one day just decide that "I know the sales are going well, but I think we have sold enough Xboxes, let's stop making more"

What you do by buying an Xbox is
1. Give some of the money that MS loses on making an Xbox back to them.
2. Increase Xbox sales, so that MS can tell to developers buying devkits (verry profitable), that they have a potential market of (x+y) users, where x is the number of people that have bought an Xbox to play official games on it, and y is the people who have bought it to "Deny profits" from Microsoft.

So: if you want to hurt Microsoft, do not buy an Xbox.

too much hype

[ibaboon]

i my self would like to see this on the ps2 seeing that its such a better machine... i dont get the hype over the xbox when clearly the only thing better is the video the ps2 is a better console it would just be nice if rockstar or anyone to push it to its limits

MicroSoft will lock people from Online Gaming.

[Viewsonic]

Just a guess that software will actively look to see if your machine is modded or not and lock you out if it is since they cant verify if you actually bought the software or not.

Mame on PS2

[Anonymous Coward]

is underway, for owners of the PS2 Linux kit.
I believe a number of other emulators (NES, Msx etc) also run under ps2 linux.

Re:Will Microsoft really mind (I mean unofficially

[Anonymous Coward]

If the X-Box has been modded for MAME I'd prefer to think these people would lay hands on a clone of HALO or whatever. Less money for the M$ Beast!

Homebrew modchips

[DrJAKing]

www.modshack.co.uk have details of how to make your own modchip, even using a mobo or network adaptor to do the programming.

Think the *other way around*

[DuranDuran]

I see most posts are mentioning one of:

(a) Microsoft will be unhappy about this
(b) This could be good for the Xbox as people will start flocking to XboxMame
(c) Discussion about the modchippers.

What about thinking the *other* way. Who do you think is an easier target: the modchippers who can fly by night, or Nicola Salmoria whose name is plastered across heaps of websites?

Wouldn't it be a shame if this proved not to be a triumph over Microsoft of modchip technology, but rather the demise of MAME?

DD

If you want MS to lose money...

[Bazman]

...note that MS loses even *more* money when you *dont* by a unit!

I just wish I could afford to not buy 1,000 Xboxes...

Baz

Re:Arcade operators -- Already happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is at least one company that sells a MAME-based multi-game system for arcades. The ROMS are licensed, and it's completely legit.

Quite frankly, I doubt any significant number of arcade operators would go to the trouble of rolling their own.

What a bunch of maroons

[darianx]

Yeah, I'd drop a few hundred to play ancient games that are repetitive and look like shit just to say "I did it on an Xbox". What a sorry bunch of losers who think this is exciting. For being such a "technically advanced" bunch of folks, I can't imagine why you'd rather play something from 20 years ago rather than something modern that does amazing things. Idiots, pure and simple.

Re:DIE XBOX DIE

[Anonymous Coward]

Nein, das ist Deutsch, du altes Sackgesicht!