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The 1991 "X-Box"
Jim Hall writes "Back in college (1991), I wondered why no one had bothered to make a DOS-based game console.
One day, in the back of a notebook, I made some notes about how you might go about creating a DOS-based game console. (I even called it an "X-Box", but really the "X" was there because I didn't know what else to call it. Microsoft's current "XBox" console is completely different, and I don't claim any rights to the "X-Box" name.)
I've posted some scans of my notes, and a discussion about how you would create a DOS-based game console."
1.Write down XBox years before M$ release a console of the same name. 2.??? 3.Profit!
I call shenanigans on this one. YARR
0 posts and the site is already /.'d.
Full text below.
... my then-girlfriend's (now, wife's) brother had two of them. And of course, I had an Atari 2600 when I was growing up.
.BIN ... can we hack to use different extension?) which is the game. If audio CD, runs music player program.
...) We could create an SDK that turns those into "P1_UP", and so on.
... a 386SX-40. Yeah, no mathco, but still a nice box. I think I had a whopping 4MB of memory, too. I played a lot of DOS games on this 386, and was the first box that ran Commander Keen.
... at the time, I was a big Microsoft junkie. (I'm much better now, thank you.) And a ton of games were being written for MS-DOS, so what better platform to build a game console?
... in fact, you find a lot of games at the time specified a minimum of MS-DOS 3.3. So we're okay there.
... those are the cheesy "bleep bloop" sounds you probably remember so well.
... something about how a similar PC-based game console might be built. Basically, it's given me a huge insight to why Microsoft built their XBox the way they did. I understand why they implemented digitally signed media. It's the only way to make $$ on these consoles. You need to be able to guarantee that what runs on the XBox was compiled against your SDK, and then you license the SDK.
The 1991 X-Box
I went to college in the fall of 1990, and by Spring semester 1991, I was enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. I lived in the dorms, and in hanging out with my other friends I began to notice the popularity of game consoles. It seemed like every third dorm room in my building had a Nintendo in it. I'd seen consoles before
But my game interests were with DOS-based games of the time, such as Commander Keen. Even Commander Keen 1 was better than most of the games available for the Nintendo, at least as far as I could see. So I wondered why no one had bothered to make a DOS-based game console.
One day, in the back of a notebook, I made some notes about how you might go about creating a DOS-based game console. (I even called it an "X-Box", but really the "X" was there because I didn't know what else to call it. Microsoft's current "XBox" console is completely different, and I don't claim any rights to the "X-Box" name.)
Page 1 (1299x1712, 136k)
Shows a diagram of a controller, with 4 directional buttons + 4 game buttons (A, B, L, R) + 2 system buttons ("Opt" and "Start").
Sends events to console using keyboard events. (What about using 2 Gravis game pads on the game port?)
Game saves: 1.44MB floppy
System boot: flash memory system (C:) - 2MB?
Games: CD-ROM (also plays music)
2 controllers enter system through keyboard combinator. (Looks like keyboard.)
Always boots from C: (never from A: or D:). After boot, DOS displays some game system logo, then waits for CD-ROM event. At CD-ROM load, checks for certain directory structure to determine if game disk. Then exec's XBOX.EXE (or
SDK defines P1 and P2 input [the controllers], and game exit chains exec back to main system program. SDK's init should determine if this is a game system.
Need program to format floppy.
Page 2 (1299x1712, 268k)
Diagrams of how to assemble and organize the console hardware, including an inventive way to install the peripheral cards at an angle to save vertical space.
Page 3 (1299x1712, 244k)
SDK:
Save game files should always be in the format game ID.001 (iterate).
What can we do to enforce this? API to list, save, and delete save games? Maybe only list/save, and only allow delete from the main program?
init() will check that this is a game system, and chain back via exit() if not.
SDK has #define's for keys: P1_UP, P1_DOWN, P1_LEFT, P1_RIGHT, P1_A, P1_B, P1_L, P1_R, P1_OPT, P1_SEL, and again for P2.
How to keep people from running just any DOS program from the game console?
My friend Larry and I had planned this out. Larry had a huge interest in electronics and had the idea of the keyboard "combinator" device. It solved a lot of problems. In addition to sending one "keystroke" to the output at a time (emulating a keyboard) you were free to use non-keyboard input, and the combinator would be able to translate that into keyboard output. As long as the output was a key from a keyboard, it didn't matter ("A", "$", "9", "Keypad_3",
Shortly after that, I dropped the idea. I was pretty busy in classes at the time, and didn't have a lot of time to devote to thinking about such side projects. But could such a design have actually worked? More to the point, could you build it at a reasonable price? And if you did build it, would people buy it?
CPU
First, you have to start with the microprocessor. In 1982, Intel released the 286 Microprocessor. The 286, also known as the 80286, was the first Intel processor that could run all the software written for its predecessor. This software compatibility remains a hallmark of Intel's family of microprocessors. Within 6 years of it release, there were an estimated 15 million 286-based personal computers installed around the world. What hamstrung the 286, though, was that they messed up multi-tasking. Really, they implemented a nice task-swapping feature, but hardly the same as true multi-tasking.
In 1985, Intel sold the 386 Microprocessor. The Intel386 microprocessor featured 275,000 transistors--more than 100times as many as the original 4004. It was a 32-bit chip and was "multi tasking," meaning it could run multiple programs at the same time. That's what I had in my PC
In 1989, Intel released the 486DX CPU Microprocessor The 486 processor generation really meant you go from a command-level computer into point-and-click computing. The Intel486 processor was the first to offer a built-in math coprocessor, which speeds up computing because it offloads complex math functions from the central processor. That was the fastest-available CPU that you could get in 1991.
If you were going to build a DOS-based game console in 1991, you might try to build a 486 system at a cheap price. Although at the time, a 386 system might have been less expensive, and as a startup game company the 386 is probably more realistic. Let's assume a 386.
DOS
I hadn't created FreeDOS yet, although you can guess that I was pretty "into" DOS. MS-DOS was the flavor to run
By 1990, MS-DOS would have been ROMable, so you could have had MS-DOS boot from a ROM on a console system, the same as MS-DOS booted from ROM on certain laptops. The recent timeline for MS-DOS at the time looked something like this: Version Date Description
3.30 PC-DOS April 1987 For PS/2 series, 1.44 meg support, multiple DOS partition support, code page switching, improved foreign language support, some new function calls, support for the AT's CMOS clock.
3.31 MS-DOS November 1987 Over-32 meg DOS partitions. Different versions from different OEMs (not Micro$oft). Compaq and Wyse are most common.
3.40 PC-DOS - 1988 Internal IBM - not released (4.0 development).
2.11R MS-DOS - 1988 Bootable ROM DOS for Tandy machines.
4.00 PC-DOS August 1988 32mb disk limit officially broken, minor EMS support, more new function calls, enhanced network support for external commands. PCjr support dropped.
4.01 MS-DOS December 1988 Micro$oft version with some bugfixes.
3.21R MS-DOS September 1989 DOS in ROM, Flash File System for laptops.
3.3R MS-DOS - 1990 DOS in ROM, introduced for TI laptops.
5.00 MS-DOS June 1991 High memory support, uses up to 8 hard disks, command line editor and aliasing, 2.88 floppies, ROMable OEM kit available.
So while MS-DOS 5 was on desktops everywhere by Summer 1991, the easiest way to put MS-DOS in a game console was to burn it to ROM. So for this DOS-based game console, we'll have to use MS-DOS 3.3R. But DOS games still run great on MS-DOS 3.3
Video
Any game console is worthless unless you can pipe the output to your television set. Most normal GUI environments of the time (think MS-Windows) would do 640x480, or even 800x600 if you had a good system. Unfortunately, you can't expect your television to show the same quality as a VGA monitor. Your television can do only about 320x240.
Also, you have the problem that your television doesn't do VGA. It uses NTSC. By its nature, NTSC is a single wire transmision system. It minimaly has luminance (brightness) information for black and white. It has a fixed horizontal frequency of about 15.7khz with a vertical of 60hz. VGA cards just cannot do this. VGA controllers seem to have a low limit of arround 30khz for hsync. For color NTSC things get tricky. The RGB is encoded as 2 subcarriers in quadrature to eachother each 3.58mhz above baseband. There is additional 3.58mhz signal that must occur during sync. This is called the "burst". To prevent beat frequency artifacts on the screen you should adjust the vertical to the color standard of 59.94hz.
So, would a DOS-based game console been impossible? Not really. These days, it's pretty easy to find a video card that supports TV-out. But in 1991, such video cards weren't so common. Or were they?
I didn't investigate it at the time, but with the USENET archives on Google I was able to do some research. In 1995, video cards that supported TV-out were high-end cards like: S3 ViRGE, Rage All in Wonder, Rage Fury, Canopus, 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000, and G400 Max.
So one solution is to supply the game console with one of these cards. That might be expensive, though. The cheapest ISA card I was able to find was a "Multi-Mode EGA/CGA/MDA(TTL) / NTSC (RCA/composite)" for $50. And EGA is right about where we want to be, to match the resolution of a television set.
Is there another way to get NTSC video at higher resolutions? Yes, but it would have cost more.
At the time, there was a gadget called "Game Blaster", which you could pick up at places like Egghead for about $150 (???). It seems to convert VGA to NTSC video. That's just what our system needs.
Also available was a device called "PC2TV". It was $189 and well worth the money. It will also output to S-VHS (the Game Blaster will too) which makes a huge difference in picture quality and contrast. It also needs no driver under 640x480 at 60hz. PC2TV is also true color, and the Game Blaster is not. It will also do 800x600 with some ET400 cards.
So I guess the answer is: yes, you could have had a VGA to NTSC converter at low res (acceptable for DOS games) for less than $150. But the DOS games available in 1991 were typically EGA, so a first-generation game console would be better off to stick with EGA, and let the next-generation console extend into VGA.
Sound
Sound is important. Even the Atari 2600 had very basic sound
From Google newsgroups, the earliest mention of the Soundblaster card was Sep 25 1990, and in 1992 the SB was sold for $75. So in 1991, you should have been able to get a sound card for a reasonable price.
Games
No game console can succeed unless it has games to support it. At the time, I don't think I realized the importance to a console maker of having game exclusives. But ah well. Let's at least look at what DOS games we had around 1991.
The first-person shooter titled Wolfenstein 3D was originally released for DOS in 1992 by ID Software. So this would have been a good title to run on a DOS game console, but that's too late for our system.
Let's just look at it for a moment, though. Would Wolfenstein 3D have been a good console title? Oh yeah - There was also a Super Nintendo version of Wolfenstein 3D released; it was a cross between the PC and Mac versions. For example, the flamethrower and rocket launcher from the Mac version are present as is the ability to sneak up on enemies from the PC version. Unfortunately, it was extremely censored through the changing of the guard dogs into rats and removal of the Nazi symbols. But if you had the uncensored game available for a game console, it would have been kick-ass!
So what would have been the killer game to release on a DOS-based game console? I've already mentioned it: Commander Keen. On December 14, 1990, Episode 1 of Commander Keen forever changed PC computing. Commander Keen was id Software's first big game, and along with the original Duke Nukem (released in 1991), Apogee Software was recognized as the place to go to for hot, shareware games.
Even better, all of the 7 Keen games out there are EGA titles, and Keens 4-6 also had a separate additional CGA version produced. Although CGA looked like purple shit.
Price
So, let's take a moment to add up the components that we've assembled so far: Item Price
Intel 386 CPU + motherboard $399
IDE/floppy/serial controller $70
1MB memory $5
1.44MB floppy drive $30
CD-ROM drive ??
Flash ROM C: drive $20
MS-DOS 3.3R runtime license ??
Multi-Mode EGA/CGA/MDA(TTL) / NTSC (RCA/composite) video card $50
Soundblaster card $75
Of course, these are estimates, but they seem to be pretty good ones.
The Competition
Could such a DOS-based system have been competitive with other game consoles of the era. It's kind of late now to think of "might have beens" but this is an interesting one. Let's compare this "X-Box" to the other consoles of the time:
In 1985, Nintendo started to sell the U.S. version of Family Computer Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in America. The system included R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) and the games Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. Mario and Luigi became as big a hit as the NES. However, in 1989, Sega stepped in to take their piece of the pie. They released Sega Genesis, a system with a 16bit computer that could produce better graphics than the NES.
So in 1991, Nintendo introduced the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) along with Super Mario World and released it in the U.S. The SNES was one of the most powerful 16-bit consoles. The SNES used an extremely powerful graphics coprocessor able of generating real-time effects like scaling and transparency. The SNES immediately it raised the bar for video game designers around the globe. Featuring true stereo sound, multiple scrolling backgrounds and almost twice the internal memory as its competition, the SNES was home to the biggest, baddest games of its day. The original SNES set, with two controllers and Super Mario World, sold for $200 when it was first released. In a few months, the price dropped, as all console systems' prices do after initial release, to $150.
To be a player, this "X-Box" game console would have had to retail for $200 or less. The price list above has a total retail price of $650. But that's retail. How much would you have been able to buy all that at wholesale price? I don't really know, but in cases like this the "rule of 2" seems to get me pretty far. So we'll assume wholesale would be roughly half the cost: about $325. And that doesn't even cover the cost of the game controllers and the R&D work to create the combinator circuit and custom "A/V out" cabling.
And you have the MS-DOS license fees. I don't have a price for MS-DOS in 1991, but Digital Research Inc. released DR-DOS 6.0 in 1991 for $100. So you might assume MS-DOS was around the same price, since DR-DOS needed to stay competitive. If you use the "rule of 2" you may have been able to license MS-DOS for an embedded system for $50 or less since this would be sold in high volume, not a few at a time.
But the game console business is pretty cutthroat. Even today, game consoles almost never pay for themselves. You sell the system at a loss, and make up for it from SDK license fees. I even saw that back in 1991. So to sell this X-Box at $200 would mean a loss of at least $125 per box. That's pretty steep. You'd have to become an overnight success to justify that kind of loss. With launch titles such as an "X-Box" exclusive full version of Commander Keen, and some other hot DOS titles, you would have had a fair chance. With id's release of Wolfenstein 3D a year later, a DOS-based game console would have been the killer system. But it's still a huge gamble.
On top of that, PC hardware is very expensive if you need the specs to remain completely static over a long run. Game consoles like the Nintendo and today's PlayStation are able to absorb their R&D costs over a long product lifecycle. Basically, because they control the technology behind the system, the consoles actually become less expensive to produce after a few years. Now let's jump back to this "X-Box". When the Pentium is released, try asking Intel to still produce 386 hardware in quantity. If you don't have the same speed CPU in there, games that work well on the original "X-Box" might become unplayable when the CPU speed doubles. You might offset that, though, by running a TSR that slowed the system down to compare to the 386 CPU. Just don't interfere with the games. In any case, that adds up to extra cost, whether you get Intel to continue producing 386 CPUs or if you use software. This "X-Box" becomes more expensive to produce after a few years.
So it's probably a good thing I never went any further with this "X-Box" idea.
Building it today
(note done yet)
I went to Pricewatch this morning, and vaguely looked at some current prices to build a decent game console today. Comparitive prices have come down quite a lot since 1991. But I didn't really do a full pricing on the thing. Maybe I'll look into it later.
One thing I didn't mention in my page (but maybe I should add it?) was that if you're going to build a game console, the case really can't be any bigger than a VCR. I think Tivo is about the size of a VCR. If it's any bigger than that, people will think it's too much like a PC stuck on top of your TV, and they won't buy it. The Morex Cubid 2699 looks about the right size, but of course it wouldn't have been available in 1991. See also the ATC-600 case.
Microsoft's XBox
(not done yet)
Since putting up this web page, I've been thinking about writing a related article
Microsoft did make a mistake on the XBox controllers, though. They made huge controllers, probably designed by someone with huge hands. Their controllers are about as big as a grizzly bear.
The Intel486 processor was the first to offer a built-in math coprocessor, which speeds up computing because it offloads complex math functions from the central processor.
I'm pretty sure the 386DX (with a built-in math copro) came out before the 486.
1.)make notes on how to build xbox in 1990
2.)??
3.) profit
http://saveie6.com/
Does it have the ability to play Nethack in fullscreen colors?
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
This guy says that according to USENET archives, the Voodoo 3 was available in 1995? umm no
I see my ideas brought to market by other people all the time. I also get lots of email from people who see my work, which start with "I've been thinking about doing exactly this for several years...."
Boo hoo. There are only so many hours in a day. An idea isn't valuable per se. The only thing that's impressive is an idea, plus the willpower and dedication to bring it to reality.
It's always nice to play "woulda-coulda-shoulda" in the computer industry, but we may as well be postulating how the civil war would have gone if the Confederacy had nuclear weapons if you ignore history.
I won't even validate this by saying its an elaborate hoax, which it is clearly not even close. Just because he decided to write into his notes ``(c. 1991)'' that is the entire proving point that he came up with the idea of an xbox before MS? Please, I'm even lead to question whether shoulder buttons on the controlers were even in use at the time only because the SNES was the first significant system to use that configuration and it did not come out in the US until I believe late 1991? My memory tends to fail me at the moment, someone help me out here. The only interest I have in this is making my futilre attempt to disprove it's validity. Pathetic really, the article should have never been posted. and no, i didn't read the entire peice, i stoped at the end of the first scanned page.
I hate all sigs, even this one.
But I'd like to see some scans of the original pages from back in 1991.
:)
What can I say, I'm a skeptic
In the notes, he says "Always boots from C: (never from A: or D:)". An if you look at the history of the El Torito spec, it mentions that they began thinking about the possibilities of a bootable CD-ROM in 1993.
Does anyone know if DOS supported booting from CD-ROM in 1991?
What's the big deal, really? It's basically a computer in a small case that plays DOS games.
http://robotiq.com/content/1.html
1. Create fake story about "inventing" X-Box
2. ???
3. Profit!
Maybe no one bothered with a DOS-based console at the time, because of the cooling and power requirements (big fans and power suppies) as well as the form factor? If something were to be competitive with Nintendo, it would not only have to be as cheap, but also as small and quiet...
Didn't anyone notice the striking similarity to an SNES controller? Most of the games I remember playing back in pre-VGA standard days didn't require 2 buttons, none-the-less six. Methinks this is a poor hoax.
Correct me if I'm wrong (like there is any doubt about that HERE), but wasn't EGA the cream of the crop (except for a few high-end boards like TARGA and whatnot) in 1991? With most of us still suffering through on Hercules mono, or god-forbid the brave souls who had CGA. (I swear it has more than just brown, blue and white colors. It has 16 man, you're just blind).
And... Were ball-point pens invented yet in 1991? I remember having to write everything down with pencils, only after chewing the end to a point... Case closed :)
Ligaguinggligagiggagoogoogwillgo
"Back in college (1991), I wondered why no one had bothered to make a DOS-based game console."
Because DOS sucks! My God, they dont even have tab-completion (Natively, at least)
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
In 1991 no Intel box could even come close the the Amiga.
IIRC the CD32 came out that year, which was like a PS2. It had the AGA chipset, and had quite a few games releaced for it. I had a A3000, and later the A4000. I remember the huge difference in lemmings on it vs. my 486/dos computer.
Worst episode -er- article ever!
Ligaguinggligagiggagoogoogwillgo
Sure, it looks like an SNES, but that's because in that same year the SNES came out. He probably heard about it and wanted to make his own.
So in 1991, the inclusion of a CD-ROM on this device was intended as either: 1) A very expensive cup holder. 2) A device a waaay ahead of its time. Or 3) A hoax.
While in 1991(ish) there were the failed initiatives of Commodore (CDTV) and Philips (CDI) to make CD-ROM based "Edutainment" consoles, the huge advantage of using a PC as the innards of the device would be lost because of the relative obscurity of CD-ROM media on the PC platform.
-JE
Computer, destruct sequence one, code one, one A.
...that thought this was bollocks.
To give an opinion from the other side of the gaming spectrum, I don't think Commander Keen I could be better than Super Mario Bros, Excitebike, Double Dragon, Ninja Gaiden, Rivercity Ransom, Dragon Quest[Warrior], Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, et cetera...could anybody who did both PC and console gaming during this time give an opinion on the matter?
Ligaguinggligagiggagoogoogwillgo
but really the "X" was there because I didn't know what else to call it.
Its exactly the same reason why M$ used the X, the difference is that M$ spends millions a year in marketing and still cant be any more creative than that 8)
For being about 14 years old already...after sitting in a basement or shoebox for 14 years, most paper doesn't look new anymore...especially notebook paper..
First, the XBox name he explained away. Alright, I can buy that.
But that controller on the first scanned page? That's an SNES controller. The NES did not have L and R buttons, nor did any system before it. The combination of these two things makes this smell like a hoax. I might be wrong - I haven't had the change to read much of it - but I have my doubts as to his claim that he wrote this in 1991.
Total crap. I normally don't whine about my /. submissions that don't get posted, and then something like this comes along and manages to really hack me off. For God's sake /. editors...do some fact checking.
I did some Google'ing and in under a minute had RAM prices...sales no less...from news groups (remember when everyting was bought and sold online via news groups). I even managed to dig up an old thread from 1991 when I too was a freshman in college looking to buy a 1MB flash memory card for my Atari Portfolio (man I wish I still had that). Anyway I also found a listing of the average prices for memory. 1MB "generic" memory volume pricing "dropped to an average price of $40 each in 1991 from $289 each in 1989". Various sale ads for memory from 1991 are plentiful...see for yourself at Google. That is all.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Seriously. 1991 XBox with PC technology would be absurd. Commodore, however, did this with the Amiga--it actually shares many similarities to the XBox/PC relationship.
Over 200,000 CD32 units were sold worldwide (100,000 in UK alone) - as compared to 3DO, which only sold a bit over 100,000 worldwide. It took some balls for Amiga to move on that, but unfortunately Commodore went under not too long afterwards. It sold for $399 in the US when it was released.
http://www.cd32.com/
Commodore Amiga CD32 Press Release Follows:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Commodore Business Machines, Inc.
Marketing and PR Department
(610) 431-9478
--== Amiga CD32® Launched in U.S. at Intermedia ==--
(San Jose, CA - March 1, 1994) Commodore Business Machines, Inc. today
announced at Intermedia the availability of the Amiga CD32 game machine
in the United States
"The CD32 will be available this spring at mall-based software stores,
regional electronics stores, and Amiga dealers throughout the US," says
John DiLullo, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Commordore
Business Machines, Inc. "We are bundling three excellant games with
the CD32: Pinball Fantasies by 21st Century, Wing Commander by Electronic
Arts, and Oscar from Microvalue Flair," DiLullo added," and offering a
special price on Psygnosis' Microcosm."
First launched in Europe this past fall, Commodore reports to have sold
over 100,000 units in Europe in just three months prior to Christmas. By
outselling Sega four to one and claiming 38 market share of all CD ROM
drives sold in the UK (according to the Gallup Weekly Report), the Amiga
CD32 has established itself as the undisputed leader of the 32 bit
machines.
Electronic Gaming Monthly agrees by rating the CD32 higher than Sega CD,
3DO or Jaguar. At a suggested retail price of just $399, the Amiga CD32
features an unbeatable combination of power and affordability.
"We challenge anyone to show us a better multimedia player at a better
price," says Lew Eggebrecht, Vice President of Engineering for Commodore
International.
"With 50 titles available today and 100 expected by first ship in the
U.S., the Amiga CD32 has wide support among the software development
community," says John Campbell, Director of Applications and Technical
Support for Commodore International. "The success we have had in Europe
has convinced publishers to invest in creating revolutionary new titles
for the Amiga CD32," Campbell added.
The Amiga CD32 features a 32 bit Motorola 68EC020 Microprocessor with
2MB of memory, 16.7 million colors, and a double speed CD ROM drive built
in. The CD32 will play audio CDs, most CDTV discs, and CD32 discs. With
the addition of an optional MPEG-1 full motion video module, the CD32 can
play MPEG VideoCDs, MovieCDs and Karaoke CDs with up to 74 minytes of
better-than-VHS quality video and CD quality audio on a single disc.
The suggested retail price of the MPEG module is $249.
"The CD ROM drive in the CD32 is a fully multisession compatible Mode 1,
Mode 2 Form 1, and Mode 2 Form 2 drive," says Jeffrey Porter, Director,
Advanced Technology for Commodore International. "With optional
software, the CD32 can read Kodak® PhotoCD discs," Porter added.
Commodore Business Machines, Inc. based in West Chester, PA is the U.S.
subsidary of Commodore Internatrinal Limited. The company manufactures
and markets a complete line of Amiga computers and peripherals for the
business, consumer, educational, and vertical markets. The company's
worldwide installed user base of Amiga computers is approximately 5
million units.
It's a pity so many /.ers think posting old schematics is not relevant. /. forum finds out anyhow.
I think it actually is. For example, the ATARI 2600 console has chip schematics here. And I would love to find designs for the early Space Invaders, or Galaga systems. Why ? Because the average multimedia PC today is maybe a 1000X more powerful than those older systems, yet playability of all those new games has not increased by the same amount. Video Game Archeology can teach me.
By the way - even if those scans are fake, the
Come now, surely a true DOS gamer from back in the day would know that the SoundBlaster was not the first PC sound card!
No, the original SoundBlaster boards were cheap knock-offs of the AdLib, one of which a friend of mine had in his 286 box back around 1988. Back then, all consumer-level cards were "AdLib compatible", and the SB was one of these.
IIRC, there were also higher-end cards already on the market as well, like those from Turtle Beach and (I believe) the GUS, which was a favorite of the tracker/demo crowd.
So by 1991, you should have been able to get an older AdLib card for cheap (and, again, AdLib was the gold standard at the time and SB was cheap crap.)
Posted with Mozilla
Sound is important. Even the Atari 2600 had very basic sound ... those are the cheesy "bleep bloop" sounds you probably remember so well.
From Google newsgroups, the earliest mention of the SoundBlaster card was Sep 25 1990, and in 1992 the SB was sold for $75. So in 1991, you should have been able to get a sound card for a reasonable price.
Humm..... I have a Game Blaster. I bought it in the early '90's for about $60US. It's a sound card from Creative Labs. It was the precursor to the SoundBlaster. This dude can't even keep the simple stuff straight.
I guess the /. crew pushed this one on through for laughs. HaHa!
Phear The Phat Penguin
did you see his specs with the cdrom drive. i was there was a reason he couldnt find prices for cdrom drives were just getting popular. most of the computers built in 91 didnt have cdrom drives because most applications, i cannot think of many besides groliers, came on floppy disk. the drives that did exsist either had scsi interfaces, or other propritary interfaces from companies like panasonic, sony (had at least two different ones i remember), matsushita.
But in 1991, such video cards [with tv out] weren't so common. Or were they?
incase he is still wondering: no they were not.
i agree. i think this dork made this crap up.
-- john
Was this the first time that a slashdot story itself was a troll? Or has this happened before?
CD driver were incredibly expensive, going for $500 to $1500 dollars. Here's an example.
VGA card (what they were called back then) to composite video: $600-$1500 Example.
-dameron
And as everyone else has pointed out, most people don't usually stamp the year on notes they scrible. Also, I think the "aged" effect on the scans looks fake somehow. Most notebooks I've seen will yellow at least a little with age, where as this looks perfectly white.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
You just did this guy a huge favor by converting the scans to a readable format! I don't think he could even read those chicken scratches himself!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I really find it hard to believe that someone would have gone to this much trouble just to play Richard and Alan's Escape From Hell or Hillsfar.
But as for your suggestion for using an Atari or Calico -- there was no Bard's Tale for the Calicovision, nor Space Quest. For DOS, however, we had Wing Commander, and a whole series of Leisure Suit Larry. By 1991, we had the original BattleTech and BattleTech II, not that wierd MechWarrior similator thing.
Hmm...I wonder what I did with the scratch and sniff card from Leather Goddesses of Phobos?
Hmm...it's times like this when I'm glad there's places like emulation.net so I can find something interesting to play with.
(yes, this is partly sarcasm...it's up to you to determine what part)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
The FM Towns Marty had a 386 processor and based off a previous japanese computer. Check it out here:
:)
http://www.vgmuseum.com/systems/marty
Was even released in 1991
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
One of the guys that worked on the X-Box had a presentation here at Texas A&M and mentioned something to the effect of the X-Box originally being an idea that someone found on the internet and would have a lot more functionality, i.e. tivo-like capabilities, etc in addition to gameplay. I wonder if this was published earlier on..
This is sad. /. continues to lose credibility points with me. Daily.
:) But lately it's not much better than FOX news. I'm really disappointed.
For years, I have trusted it as a relatively accurate source of industry info (though not always balanced.
The terrorists have won.
At work, I always date my notes with month, day, year, and also include which project the notes are for.
Not for IP, lawsuit, or policy reasons, just to remove the "WTF" that will come up when I look at the notes after four or five years. Or in case I get hit by a minivan again; I may not be so lucky next time!
I'm not saying that this guy did or didn't do that... I'm just saying that it's not that unusual.
I do NOT generally write any kind of copyright info on any of my notes, though. Whether this is good, bad, or indifferent is an exercise for the reader.
The internet almost crumbles ... and this is the only news we can come up with today? Some kid's 10-minute idea that happens to have the same name as another product?
... ... Stuff that matters ...
Slashdot
News for Nerds
I guess 1 out of 2 isn't bad...
Makes you think why the notes are relativly so neat for what they were suppose to be.
[alk]
Wait... A, B, L, R, OPT and START ... ...
where are CTRL, ALT and DEL? Seems to me you'd need those on any console running DOS...
[insert witty comment here]
Actually, you're wrong.
As we all know, Microsoft didn't develop DOS on its own. It bought DOS from the original developer. Therefore, the need for CTRL-ALT-DEL on a regular basis wouldn't be present in DOS. This feature didn't come along until much later, in Windows.
Scoring:
+1 Slashdot-esque attempt at humor, ala Microsoft
-1 Lack of fact checking
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Its called the X-Box, it denies me service all the time. wtf
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Ever seen a page from a spiral notebook look so clean after 12 years? I don't think this is from 1991 like he said. 2001 is more likely.
SVGA, oddly enough.
"The '1991' on the front page is his BirthDate."
Please don't say that! I feel old enough already!
Get out of my yard, you damn kids!
MS-DOS is an operating system. Since no Atari system has ever run it, nor did the Colecovision (correct spelling), those systems aren't DOS systems.
Pedantic perhaps, but in the interests of accuracy I should point out that Atari did have a line of IBM PC-compatibles that ran DOS. Here's an example of one.
Commodore, another name know primarily for its proprietary systems also made its share of PC clones.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Would that be a DDOS X-box?
;)
(D for Distributed and Disk dummy
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I can't believe that no one remembers these, the VIS.
Radio Shack sold a Microsoft powered console n 1992 - it was a 286 pc, in a console format, powered by a very stripped down version of Windows. It was made by Memorex, and it just generally sucked. The article at the link above mentions a 32-bit system, but I'm very sure it had a 286 inside (a 286 is 32-bit, kind of, right?)
The funny thing was that the system had a lot of software, but it was all straight ports of PC software at the time. Which meant that it was usually impossible to read text in the games, since PC games makers of the time never had to deal with NTSC issues much.
I used one for a day, and it was just aweful. The CD-ROM drive was single speed, and just terribly slow, and the software was not optimized for it anyway - you'd wait a long time for anything to apppear on screen. The 286 in the box was just overwhelmed by the software, and stuff ran poorly.
This thing might be forgotten now, but Microsoft was big enough at the time that people in related industries were really scared that this thing would wipe out CD-I, Amiga, 3DO, whatever. Once it failed, however, they just dropped it - they didn't have the total monopoly and $40 billion in the bank just yet.
Bleck, 1.44mb floppies for game saves? Can you say frustration? =P (Ok, I just spent about 2 hours at a friends house going through about 20+ floppies trying to make a single boot disk, so maybe I'm biased against them now) Thank god USB Drives!
i invented the phone before bell. i also invented the pc before ibm and i went to the moon before nasa.
Fujitsu did it. It was called the FM-Towns Marty and was only in Japan. Powered by a 386, and later a 486. Had a healthy collection of Hentai Games. You can even run Linux on it!
Did anybody else notice that this is wide ruled paper? I wish I could use wide ruled paper in college. It makes it so much easier to fill up a page when you have to write out an essay or something, but alas, my college (and my high school for that matter) insists on college ruled paper.
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
A DOS-based game console is like a kerosine-based beverage.
Repeal the DMCA!
....I invented the question mark.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Yet more proof that a script is picking these stories based on keywords, not live people who actually read the content presented to them...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
There are tons of games that are fantastic (just for starters: Master of Orion 1, Starcon 1) that don't run so well on Win2k, and usually without sound, and its hard to get a joystick working without the game port.
Drop a 500MHz Pentium 3 with 32 MB Ram, a small disc, CD-ROM, game port, highly SB-compatible vanilla sound, and you could probably sell the good ole games, and I might buy the sucker.
Companies could sell their games cheap but profitably, PC manus could make hardware bucks. The ironic thing about DOS abandonware is that most old consoles run their software thru emulators better than abandoware does on "backward-compatible" modern hardware.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
(I even called it an "X-Box", but really the "X" was there because I didn't know what else to call it.)
Seems like you where not the only one.
He claimed to have a 386SX-40 in 1991
Fastest 386SX chip at that time would have been 20 Mhz.
IIRC, there was a company making some network gear (?) who actually had the "Xbox" trademark. I remember there was a brief but passionate period of discussion on this, soon after MS unveiled the Xbox... people predicting MS would even have to change or modify the console's name. Never heard of the dispute again. I expect somebody somewhere smiled all the way to the bank ;-)
Anybody remember this? Couldn't Google it up. (Surprise. Probably could find it in the forum archives of some HW/3D/gaming site.)
How about making a Linux based console. Who cares that you can get Linux on an Xbox. It still says Microsoft. How about the GNUbox!
technology and culture, from the trenches
Microsoft's "X-Box" name came about the same way. When they were developing their ultra-secret game console, they called it X-Box before they had to worry about a name (GameCube was called Dolphin), but when they were almost done.. the gaming public was so used to the term X-Box that MS just stuck with it. Good thing they didn't call it Microsoft Console. We'd be having MS Console '98, ME, XP, NT, Lite, Plus, Professional, Small Business, and more.
Also it was a long time until PCs managed to catch up to the smoothness of the C64 in scrolling, let alone current consoles.
CGA = 640*200 mono or 320*200 4 colours (two choices of palette)
EGA = 640*350 16 colours (from palette of 64)
VGA = 640*480 16 colours or 320*200 256 colours or ModeX. (From 18 bit palette).
Sound cards: AdLib (FM sound?) preceded SoundBlaster (8 bit DAC) by some time.
As for SNES vs Genesis, from the technical point of view I come down firmly on the SNES side; the genesis had a faster and cleaner processor to be sure, but the SNES had better palette, background layers, graphics limits, "mode 7", sound (8 channels of samples+FIR filters). A decent processor would have helped, sure, as Argonaut proved with StarFox and the SuperFX chip. But it was not until 3d games became the norm that processor speed was more important than decent hardware support for chars and sprites.
As for gamers, well each generation of gamers argues about the image of their machines as they are told by the television adverts. When I saw Sonic being previewed at a trade show, I thought "cool, someone's made a Felix the Cat game" :-) not "Wow, I bet the TV adverts that will come out for this game will be really edgy".
For the people tearing this apart and nitpicking, this isn't just some random slashdot reader. I think guy does know his stuff. Besides, what would he have to gain for making a hoax like this? He already said he definately does not claim any rights to the name.
Sheeeesh...
The 486 SLC was made by Cyrix, and it plugged into a 386SX socket -- or was surface-mounted at the mobo plant for cheapie '486' boards. So, 16-bit FSB. There was also a 486 DLC, which had a 32-bit front-side bus. I don't think that was available as an SMT part (certainly never saw any), but I had one in my old 386 DX motherboard, running at 40MHz. Hotter than hell; but Norton Sysinfo benched it as 42% faster than with the AMD 386-40 in that slot.
Cyrix also made a "clip on" product of some kind that was meant to clip on to SMT 386s, not sure how that worked, I never bought one (just saw 'em in mags).
I don't think they ever made a pin-for-pin replacement for the 286, it would have been entertaining trying to wedge a 386 into a 40-pin DIP. But it's possible.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You're thinking of the "Disney Sound System". It was basically a DAC connected to the output lines of your serial port -- DAC301 was the model of the chip, IIRC.
.MOD files out of a bunch of resistors [poor man's DAC!]. Worked fantastically well.
I build one of these in 1992 for playing
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
He's probably thinking that Adlib was the "Gold Standard" because of the release of the amazingly expensive piece of crap, the "Adlib Gold" card. This came out around the same time as the Sound Blaster Pro.
Your memory is correct. FWIW, the UART on those cards was the Roland MPU-401. The FM synthesis, IIRC, was Yamaha OPL2 chips on the Adlib/SB and Yamaha OPL3 on the later products.
The SB Pro also added one excellent feature -- a CD-ROM controller for Panasonic single and double speed drives (remember the CR-562?).
Shortly after the SB Pro came out, ATI came out of with a nice card, it had a Mitsumi single speed controller, MPU 401 UART, game port, and Yamaha OPL3 chips. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, though.. ATI AudioPro or something?
Later cards, like the SB-16 (1994?), included various CD-ROM controllers, depending on which bundle you bought (and when). The best one, IMHO, was the SB16-CD, which had *unamplified* out (better quality) as well as the regular output, plus three CD-ROM controllers; Mitsumi single speed, Panasonic single/double speed, and Sony single speed (34-pin.. for the CDU-34, I think).
Even later, the SB16 Value Edition had an onboard IDE controller, which could be configured as the tertiary or quaternary IDE controller in a modern system.
One card you missed was the SB WaveBlaster -- wave table synthesizer. An SB16 + a Wave Blaster was basically as good as the early AWE32, and connected to an SB16 via the 28-pin expansion connector on the card. In stock form, it played pretty good MIDI samples, but you could add up to 8MB of RAM (2x4MB 30-pin SIMMs) which would let you download samples into it. It still didn't sound as good a Gravis UltraSound, but support for it was much more prevalent in games, since it could be controlled by software the same as a General MIDI device plugged into the SB16s MPU 401.
Wow, that was a long time ago. Don't ask me about anything modern, though -- the last time I was a serious gamer, DOOM was fresh and the Diamond Viper was the card to have.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Even if this guys site es a hox didn't we all think of doing this. I mean I was only 11 back then but I was working on a Super mario clone as soon as I saw Mario World. Shure it was crappy since I was making in in one of thows game studios that were avalable every where fora a while.
Asd I don't know about the rest of you folks but I had a 2meg VGA card then. So stop your wineing.
On an ather note what would have been kool is a consol that had a tape backup syset so that it could have plaid huge games for cheap.
I was in high-school and I didn't have very much money.
If I recall, it ran me roughly the following:
Buying the stuff new would have cost significantly more. A floppy drive would have definately cost me at least $70 or so.
Around that time, I got my hands on some TSX distribution which I believe was an ancient Linux. I was nowhere near the minimum system requirements though. Why bother when I had everything I needed with Windows 3.0 and DOS 4. I could play solitaire, minesweeper, and it even had truetype fonts... except for the fact that it was painfully slow :-)
I downloaded TSX with a 2400 baud modem. 2400 was so fast that text would scroll by faster than you could read it. I couldn't even afford a proper cable to plug my modem in, so I ran the 25-pin ribbon cable with the connector from the motherboard straight to the external modem.
In early 1993, I upgraded to an integrated 386DX40 motherboard w. 2MB of RAM. The board ran at least $150CDN. I think I paid $70CDN for the 2MB, but only because it was used and I was going on the cheap with low-end 32pin 256k SIMMs. RAM around that time was ~$70-$80 for a 1MB SIMM, and you needed them in sets of four.
The composite out on the EGA card was sorely and horridly disappointing. When they say composite out, I figured out that they meant for those little green or amber composite monitors. The output signal wasn't colour.
I got a really bad 8-bit Zoltrix sound card for $120CDN in a bundle with speakers, a joystick and some other stuff. I think that was in 1993. I vaguely recall being impressed that with a sound card you could hear the guards yell in Wolfienstein.
It wasn't until late 1994 that I put 5MB of RAM in my machine and I met the minimum requirements for TSX... in the summer of '95 I found Slackware though. I had to partition my 65MB drive to install it :-)
My point is, that like everyone else said, this guy is full of it. If you wanted to create a video-game console in 1991, you would have been better off gutting and repackaging a C=64. It had better sound, better video and better graphics than most PCs out there.
Why didn't everyone just get C=64s if they were so much better?
A C=64 had terrible printers, awfully expensive floppy drives, the text wasn't sharp, it wasn't 80 columns and it had no good wordprocessors or spreadsheets. An 8088 with 256k of RAM and a mono monitor was a FAR better business machine.. and in it's heyday... FAR more expensive too. IIRC, the C=64 was cheap and well in decline in 91.
NOtice the hole punches and binder paper tears on the second scan - after 10+ years that kind of cheap paper would be starting to go yellow, and those hole puches would be flat, as whoever had that piece of paper would have had to store it somewhere, which would have over time flattened the bumps in the paper. Cute though.. heh :)
To see this guy suggest using a CDROM in a console back in 1991 brings me a lot of doubt. Perhaps this guy had a innovative mind, perhaps not. I hate to do it, but IMO, this story has 'hoax' written all over it.
Not quite. In 1991, I was a physics student, not a CS student. My friend Larry & I would often sit around after late-night physics homework and do "what if" scenarios. We didn't have to worry about whether/not the thing was technically easy to do, but whether or not it was possible.
"Could you store data on a CDROM?" "Oh yes, you can get CDROM drives for a computer. CS has them." "If you could run them with DOS, maybe you could use that for games."
"How do you boot the system?" "Well, I suppose you could do a ROM for that?"
Stuff like this was just a "what if", so we didn't take it much further than that. If it wasn't something you could get cheaply, that didn't bother us.
The only reason I made these notes in the first place was because I thought I'd write down some ideas that we had. The most interesting ideas that Larry & I had were often jotted down in the back of a notebook, and we'd go back to them later.
-jh
Not to flaimbait.... but what's up with MM/DD/YY-dating?
I really don't get it why americans [and everyone else] insist on using that dating-format. YY/MM/DD-date formating make a lot more sense. Expecially when it comes to sorting. Every yy/mm/dd "record" will came after one another in chronological order; while in mm/dd/yy sorting you are going to mix two seperate years [or how many years your sorting] with one another by first month, then date, then year......talk about undermining the whole concept of "sorting".
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
... source code that would be exchanged with anyone who want it back in 1989. I used to be on an Atari 16/32 bit forum on the old Cleveland Freenet and had some interesting conversations with other people about making an alternate OS for the Atari that would be freely distributable and completely open since that seeme dot be a good idea at the time. I even chatted with some guys from Helsinki. :) Nothing ever came of it though.
Same as this guy, a lot of people come up with ideas and jot them down every day. Although they may never follow through, it's not impossible. This guy isn't claiming that he invented the XBox, he just had an idea for a PC based game system. Not too far out for 1990. I think this guy is legit and the whiners here are jealous.
I have a ton of concepts that I've written up over the years but have never gotten back to. Maybe one day...
Un-news
Yeah, for the bazillionth time, I mixed up EGA and CGA.
Still, though, the whole thing seems just a little too convenient.
I think everyone is ignoring who this is from... If J. Hall, the creator of FreeDOS, says it's true, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I think everyone is being far too cynical if they aren't willing to do the same.
If anyone who was generally better known (eg. rms, esr, CmdrTaco) said they'd done this, who here would have said they were full of !#$%^&*? Think of the source.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
While Slashdot editors were born yesterday...