Slashdot Mirror
Do-It-Yourself-Game-Console
DrCarbonite writes "Andre' LaMothe is releasing a brand new game console, the XGAMESTATION which may fulfill the fantasies of Slashdot readers everywhere. 16-bit Motorola CPU with a graphics architecture "similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II". Its an electronics kit being marketed as a game system that wants to be hacked/modded/rebuilt. It supports homebrew everything-- joystick adapters, displays, software, roms, the whole nine yards."
"a brand new game console, the XGAMESTATION which may fulfill the fantasies of Slashdot readers everywhere"
Does it come with a girlfriend?
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
I thought the whole point of hacking and modding was making the hardware do something it wasn't designed to do.
And this is cool because lots of people have these machines and can recognise the hack.
A machine which is designed to be hacked and modded, that almost nobody will buy (compared to ps2/Gamecube/Xbox)?
Excuse me while I go and 'mod' my Amiga 500...
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
...which may fulfill the fantasies of Slashdot readers everywhere. 16-bit Motorola CPU with a graphics architecture "similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II" ...as long as your fantasy isn't to run GTA3: Vice City.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
A nice, hackable, homebrew-friendly system with a game library slightly bigger than the Mac.
Ñ'
You know the last three stories have been kinda iffy at best. Is it april fools day already?
16-bit Motorola CPU with a graphics architecture "similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II"
;)
;)
:)
Heh.. obviously the majority of Slashdot readers don't have particularly high expectations for games consoles then
If you think the Commodore 64 was good, you guys are REALLY gonna be bowled over by the Nintendo NES! And hey, they take the in-game graphics off Sega Megadrive games and put em STRAIGHT into the movies
Sorry - just a bit of sarcasm for the afternoon
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
...those old systems could also be fitted with your own joystick, mods, etc., as well.
Except they've already got a software base. This, on the other hand, does not.
Hrm.... would I rather mod out my C=64 (heh, already did, oops) with thousands of software titles freely available online and from the massive boxes of disks in my basement....
Or will I pay a good chunk of my paycheque for a system limited in both hardware capabilities and developer base?
Great strategy guys. Really. You'll make millions.
Urban Detail
I can't wait for the new XGameStation category to show up on sourceforge/freshmeat/download.com. Maybe now it the time for companies like RedHat to come out with their own gaming accessories. They'll just have to be careful, though... SCO will probably find a way to sue them, too.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
I remember buying one of those silly "Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days" books by this guy. I was like 12 at the time, and barely knew what QBasic was. I didn't care, I just wanted to make games because it sounded cool.
To my dismay, I didn't understand the C code. I recently opened the pages of this book and read it. It was surprisingly coherent and well written (and up-to-date for its time).
This sounds like a pretty neat thing and sounds like another plug for Andre to get another book deal, even if there's an eBook included (or it could be because someone wanted to play frogger and thought it'd be cool to get Andre's name on the console).
How does one transfer the software to the cartrige though? I don't see a programmer included in the hardware details on the about page, nor do I see that the console can be used to program the card.
This will be fun, though. As I'm only 19, I'm not old enough to remember the bringing out of the Atari 2600 (and other similar systems), but I have played games on it. I hope this brings out the games of "yesteryear" and encourages developers to write some cool games.
Any inside specs on the prices yet?
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
This sounds great and all and just about anything LaMothe does turns to gold in the eyes of video game developers but it seems to me that the technology is just too old to be interesting for the hacking community.
Now in the realm of education... low powered, fairly simplistic systems like these are used for things such as early electronic engineering courses, introductory assembly programming courses and the like. It would be nice for students to be able to do something cool in these courses besides light up LEDs and flip switches attached to an ancient Motorola 68k. If only the academic community didn't shun anything with 'game' in the title and the site actually had information besides "please call later" in the Education section.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Modders please check parent comment for nonsense (the so called dupes are no dupes) and mod down
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
While this sounds like a really nice idea, a 16-bit processor sounds a bit underpowered, especially seeing as 32-bit chips are hella cheap nowadays.
Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
uh... no. check the links, mods and metamods.
As far as I can tell, only one of those articles is about the Xgamestation. Were you hoping you could get modded up without anyone bothering to check your links?
Then again, it worked, didn't it?
How about a new cpu? Because the one that comes with it is a piece of crap.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I found a link with more information...Here
It's to a site call "slashdot" I wonder if anybody else has heard of it?
It's kind of old, the date on the page says it was written August 7th 2003.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Specs are on par with the original playstation.
WTF? Why not use the latest from ATI or nVidia combined with a decent CPU instead of a 25 MHz ancient motorola?
Just wait until somebody builds a Beowolf cluster with them
It's one of my dreams - having a do-it-yourself-mobile-phone. Packaged with full GPL-ed source code CD, data cable and IDE for developing it's software. A have-it-as-you-want-it phone. You like Nokia menu? Build it yourslef. Like command line interface - bash is your choice :)
A an intelligent and open device made for geeks.
Has anyone seen something like it? :)
Perhaps Andre doesn't quite understand how logic synthesis differs from procedural coding. He hasn't even prototyped the FPGA version as far as one can see on the site, and his XGS schematics are unreadable.
If your fantasies run in this direction (as mine do) you'd be much better off buying a Xilinx/XESS prototyping board. They're available now, they work great with free toolchains, and they're a lot less expensive than anything Andre will bring to market in the next two to three years. Plus you can read their schematics and design your own (as I've done) if you don't have $149 handy.
Head on over to your local Wal-Mart/Target/Sears/K-Mart and pick up an Xbox for $179 + tax.
;)
Then go to http://www.xbox-scene.com and find out how you can mod it with just 007:Agent Under Fire or Mechassault, a soldering iron, a memory card and a homebuilt cable to connect the joystick to your USB port.
Of course, you could always try to port Xbox Media Player to this system...
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Great, but how long until we see a port of Contiki?
Didn't RTFA, but "16-bit Motorola" CPU sounds like a reference to the 68000.
68000 isn't really a 16-bit processor, any more than the 80386SX is. It's a 32-bit CPU internally.
And let's face it, the Apple ]['s video hardware was teh sux (I had to write emulation for that b*stard, and MY code was a fscking nightmare), so I don't see why anyone would want to emulate it (it was basically a braindead monochrome CGA, and faked color). C64 tho I can see, a little better.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Nice! And good timing. I've been trying to think what present I would give to a guy who's just turning 30.
This could probably make him happy, what do you think? He doesn't have any hobbies and has way too much time in his hands, this could probably be a good hobby.
It is really hard to figure what niche this is made to fill. If you are desperate to develop on a platform from the 80s can't you just develop for MAME and avoid yet another box on your shelf? If you want to muck about in clunky hardware there are plenty of places that will sell you the original 80s hardware and cartages. And speaking of cartages why is this thing using them and not going for a cheap CD-Rom drive for storing games. If the price point is way low it may take off a bit, but I just don't see it.
apparently they combined the names of the xbox, gamecube, and playstation for the name. :D other than that, this seems kinda cool. wish it were more powerful, but this could be somethihg good for ROMs.
Heh.. obviously the majority of Slashdot readers don't have particularly high expectations for games consoles then ;)
There are plenty of awesome games that were nowhere to be found on the NES. Many, in fact, were exclusive to home computer systems, or the non-Nintendo consoles (!) of that era.
Where was Robotron 2084 for the NES? The original Boulder Dash (Apple II had it in 1981, NES didn't get it until 1990)? Ballblazer? Night Mission Pinball? Galaxian? Swashbuckler? Battlezone? Sargon III (way before NES had chess)? Joust (not until 1988)? Hard Hat Mack? Defender? Montezuma's Revenge? Miner 2049er?
I still have my Apple II Plus, and am able to play all of the above.
The coolest voice ever.
Confused parents and grand parents will pick up the XGameStation for their kids. Wow, I thought the X thing was $200, but this one was half off! Little Jimmy will be thrilled!
It's more powerful and there's lots of emulators already ported to it.
Here's a link from Google to one reseller.
If they actually release the vector graphics module that is described on the webpage, I will definately buy one.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Unless I completely misread the article it is like those kits you can buy to make youre own radio. Sure for the same money you can usually buy an already finished ones. That is not the point!
Sure you can do this with existing platforms like the C64 mentioned but you will then have to do an awfull lot of research youreself. Here you get in one package everything you need to learn and thinker with a computer.
Oh and for those wining about the power of the processor, do you perhaps think this could have something to do with A: price B: power C: Documentation D: Cooling? How about all of the above?
This could be a nice learning tool for those not already familiar with how computers work. Now all of it is going to depend on the following things.
Nice to see someone dare to create a hacker learning tool. Pity most /. have their head so far up their ass they can't see the fun of a product like this.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The web site says that they are using a Motorola 68HCS12. This is a descendant of the 8-bit Motorola 6800, optimized for microcontroller applications. Think of it as a fast 8-bit processor with lots of integrated gadgets.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It would be
- Cheaper
- Faster
- More modern
- Compatible with PC games
- Easily use CDs and DVDs to store games
- Could be much more accessable to a broader range of people
Sure, anyone can create a MAME machine from a PC, but no one has done so in a large scale manufacturing and marketting business.The only downside I see is that it will encourage people to use the same bloated tools they are using now, rather than encouraging them to at least take a cursory glance at assembly, and gain experience in writing their own device drivers.
But then, most people won't want to touch either of those anyway (and they wouldn't have to on either platform).
There are always going to be more game programmers than driver programmers.
Besides, it'll give people an excuse to take a harder look at a few of the OS projects that are all assembly, or micro sized. Eventually someone will even come out with a cartidge that will play DVDs on these lower end systems, which doesn't happen now under windows because of the innefficiency of so many software and driver layers.
Honestly, unless the entire development kit including book is under $60, then it simply isn't worth it except to those few who want to learn a particular 16 bit uProcessor code and tinker.
Oh, and you three who will work to port NetBSD and Linux to it.
-Adam
Certainly the walk-up-and-use simplicity of the C64 and other 8-bit BASIC systems has never quite been seen again. I'm also reasonably impressed that the web site is holding up under the traffic, and frankly the web site is so pretty that it makes me want to spend money on the thing, no matter what it does. Excellent job: someone has understood how to market to geeks.
But... where is the simple programming language? I mean, I could make a stupid game in 10 lines of C64 BASIC. I don't want to have to work in C/C++ to do this today, or I'd just stick to a PC.
Give me a high-level audio and video API that does nice things from a simple interpreted language, something I can give to my kids to let them learn programming, and something that is easy to extend with bits and pieces of random hardware... that was the real magic of the 8-bit systems, and that does not quite seem to be all here yet.
Or maybe I've just missed it somewhere.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Erm, I think this product is aimed at an older crowd who grew up hanging out in arcades and playing games on Atari, Apple II series, and Commodore 64 computers.
Not the slack-jawed retards going through puberty these days who have done little more than play the Doom-derivative-of-the-month on whatever processor Intel tells them speeds up the internet this week.
a bad, sick joke....
Spread the RC luvin'
Wouldn't a single board computer be better in almost every respect? Take a lower end mini-itx board, develop a wall plug silent power supply for it, and all you'd then have to make are compact flash adaptors and joystick adaptors.
[...]The only downside I see is that it will encourage people to use the same bloated tools they are using now, rather than encouraging them to at least take a cursory glance at assembly, and gain experience in writing their own device drivers.
I think this is exactly the point: have a computer with lots of ready-to-use-software, OS, libraries, and you don't learn nearly as much as if you need to write all those nifty things yourself. And let a beginner use somethink like OpenGL/DirectX8 and they won't understand simple basics like "How do I draw a 3D cube on a 2D display?"
While I think the choice of CPU was not the best (I'd gone for a 16 or 32 bit microcontroller like NEC VR or Motorola Coldfire or IBM small PPCs), having a simple system do simple games makes you understand games (or any task) much better than buying or just installing a new program.
I for example had a Color Genie while every one else had a C64. Everyone except me knew lots of games. Me learned how to program.
In this light, the chosen CPU might be a good idea after all. 32 bit microcrontrollers with their PCI bus, memory configuration etc. are clearly more tricky to handle than a (fast) 8 bit type with no such things. And given all the power of a fast 32 bit CPU, you'd want to create very complex games, which will be more difficult for most beginners than they can handle.
Bad style to reply to myself. But the 68HCS12 is not a (fast) 8 bit microcontroller, but instead a (bit fast) 16 bit microcontroller.
They use some funky codec from Microsoft-land that apparently doesn't ship with Quicktime 6.0 for Mac OS X.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I'm giving Andre full support on this idea and hardware. He seems to know what he is doing and judging by the details of this hardware, it is PERFECT for anyone wanting to program, design, and engineer their own game system, even a computer if they want. I'm going to be ordering at least 3 of these things and I will promote his product as long as it's around. I respect Andre's decision and I will stand up to my word and help him as much as I can. So please stop bashing his work, I doubt any of you have a clue what a 7474 TTL Flip Flop does anyway :-).
The one you fear is fear itself.
So I can hack and play those 16 bit games on my 32 bit AMD-based PC.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
This is vaporware. Those pictures are 3d rendered, not photos.
~ valvano/index.html
From their descriptions, this is just a simple board with an off-the-shelf Motorola 68HC12 microcontroller. These are used in many universities, such as UT Austin for embedded systems interfacing and programming courses. True, there are a fair amount of students out there that might be capable of writing games, but I don't see this creating a business demand. The graphics are handled by an Altera FPGA. This looks amazingly like some reference boards I've seen used by universities as well.
Here's a good HC12 programming resource if you want to get an idea of HC12 features/programming:
http://www.ece.utexas.edu/
I believe you're referring to the XXXGAMESTATION.
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
This thing will be the rage in education fairly quickly. This thing ups the ante from 1970s tech and would be great for teaching how computer archetecture works. Plus, it will be fun to see what people create.
I've often wondered why someone doesn't buy rights to the old Amiga or Atari ST and make an digital electronics trainer out of them...
-- $G
similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II
The Apple II just had a big, dumb frame buffer, plus a static character mode. The C64 and Atari 800 had raster interrupts, redefinable characters, sprites, hardware collision detection of sprites, etc. The Atari 800 was even further out there, with direct hardware support things that needed ugly graphic hacks on the C64 (like mixing graphics modes in arbitrary ways and multiplexing sprites).
From the "About" page:
Before 1994, the idea of walking into a bookstore and seeing entire shelves of books on real-time graphics and game programming was almost unheard of. The very techniques and sciences driving the games that were already making billions of dollars for the Ataris and Nintendos of the world were still well-guarded secrets. That all changed, however, with the release of Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus by computer scientist Andre' LaMothe, and within only a few years, an entirely new genre of technical books had seemingly taken over the world.
Uh, I hate to mention it Andre, but this simply isn't true. There were dozens of books about graphics and game programming on 8-bit home computers. COMPUTE! had a whole line of them, for example. You could pick up at least two magazines for each make of computer that included source code listings for games written assembly language and making full use of the hardware. Heck, you could buy the hardware reference manual and even the full operating system source code from Atari. Even the source code to Atari DOS, with full commentary. was available in a $12 book. The source code to Chris Crawfords' award winning Eastern Front, widely considered one of the most advanced commercial games of its time, was also available for purchase. In a number of ways, things were more open and free back then.
"I think this is exactly the point: have a computer with lots of ready-to-use-software, OS, libraries, and you don't learn nearly as much as if you need to write all those nifty things yourself. And let a beginner use somethink like OpenGL/DirectX8 and they won't understand simple basics like "How do I draw a 3D cube on a 2D display?""
As a learning tool for testing low level theory I can see some value. However, they are targetting a very, very small niche market.
I can't see this being successful (selling more than a few thousand units) since you can learn all of that on a regular PC, and if you wanted to do assembly you can choose one of dozens of CPUs that are easily emulatable on any given PC.
The only advantage is you get to see your code work on actual low level hardware. It's good training if you want to learn low level stuff (including direct hardware interaction and potential pitfalls) and if you want to learn how to produce small, efficient code.
Again, neither of those things are really applicable to the vast majority of today's programmers, and since the hardware platform, unless very cheap ($10-$50), is not viable as a commercial product in and of itself, I simply cannot see it becoming much more than a puff of smoke, lasting maybe two years tops, and selling fewer than a thousand units.
But then, I've been wrong before, and I'll do it again - probably sooner rather than later.
-Adam
Many have died that deserve life - can you give it to them? Be not so hasty to deal out death.
from the but-i-just-wanna-play-doa dept.
If DOA stands for Dupe Of Article, then I think you're already playing that game.
By the way, I am the proud owner of an actual Super ELF SBC from 1977 with a 1802 CPU and two whole K of RAM. It's also an ultimate hacker toy, but it's so useful and I played with it so often that I finally had it framed so I can at least enjoy looking at it.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Oh those old Compute Magazines were GREAT.
They talked quite in depth about how the hardware worked for the Atari and Commodore 64 computers and Vic 20, etc. They published short games for each, which was obviously the source code and people used to TYPE THEM IN.
And if that wasn't enough, there was INSIDE ATARI, which went through the sound, video and joystick hardware all in depth, how to hook the vertical blanking interrupt, how to change the color registers on a horizontal blank interrupt. There was all sorts of stuff that one could do.
But then VGA came out and PCs were better, so f--- it.
This is my sig.
actually, know you do not need the soldering iron, etc.
I recently hacked my xbox without opening it once, using the 007 hack which launches Evox, I then FTP into the xbox and install 2 hacked font files on the hard drive, along with the 'Phoenix Bios Loader' which proceeds to load whatever 3rd party or hacked retail BIOS I choose.
this of course allows me full access to my xbox, as if I had a modchip, but never having opened the box. I can run backed up games from dvd or the hard drive, and I can run homebrew software (Xbox Media Player is awesome), emulators for whatever gaming old console or whatever handheld gaming sytem you want..
and its all free! 'cept for the game backups of course.. but the only game i play is halo (bought the day it came out with the xbox) I have too much fun with Gentoo Linux and homebrew software
As a geek, I'm disappointed that you cannot even copy paste from the character map... eaeiica
...less interesting on the software side. You can already do development using MAME, various 8-bit computer emulators, and the Game Boy (and the GBA).
But the primary advantage of this system is to understand how the hardware works. That's something you rarely ever see. Even back in the 8-bit days, almost no one really understood machines like the Apple II and Atari 800 on a hardware level. For example, no one ever attempted to redesign Atari's ANTIC chip, because that info just wasn't available. This hasn't changed at all over the last 20 years. FPGAs are cheap and widespread, but not the info about designing graphics hardware.
Back to the software. If you're into game design, and you design and implement a game for MAME (say, on the Williams' 6808-based hardware), then that game is runnable on any PC or Mac right away. Not so with this new system.
Overall, LaMothe has always been very much into writing and teaching about game programming, but he's always completely avoided game design. He develops and writes about lackluster knockoffs of existing games, and offers little to advance the medium. In it's own way, for teaching purposes, that's a good thing. But the last thing we need is everyone to build this new system, then start writing versions of Tetris and Asteroids and old Commodore 64 games for it. If you want to move forward in design, you can do it for existing "hardware."
From their FAQ:"The processing power of the XGameStation is approximately 10x that of the Super Nintendo (SNES), and it's graphical capabilities are approximately 50-200% more advanced than the SNES."
Now, assuming that this isn't advertising doublespeak (I'm curious if that means it can handle Mode-7 equivilent equivilent graphics and what the exact specs on the output are), doesn't that sound reasonable? If this is a box for hobbyists and amateur enthusiasts, can you really conceive of much more power being necessary? Once you get past the SNES era, you start REALLY needing lots of people to use the console effectively. And for (according to the site) less than $100 for the entire package?
This sounds like a great idea, and if the geeks embrace it could be one of the hot toys for gamers who want to get away from the Microsoft-Sony-Nintendo trifecta. But ultimately that's going to decide it, how much the people embrace the system. It sounds like the specs are fine for those of us with fond memories of Bionic Commando and Sonic the Hedgehog. The question is whether anyone will pick up on this and make it worth having.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
"Anything you make with our tools is yours, but the tools themselves remain ours."
Want what?
They want someone to talk to them in PostScript. (Otherwise they feel lonely.) I bet these platforms would be keen for both people on earth who might be eager to write games in PostScript. Y'spose?
Even if we don't use "Adobe's brand name", it seems to me that the folks who gave us various printer control languages (which are useful to convert things to vectors that lasers inside laser printers like) would be keen on this kind of thing. Then again, I would suppose that (A) an extra chip or two and (B) the kind of assembly language programming that even I can do should be able to convert back and forth, raster versus vector, most of all if there is some kind of "nearly instruction level" programming interface to write directly to video RAM when necessary.
Hmm... Ok. IIRC, Sun has done stuff to make graphics happy in general purpose circumstances... Yup. Hey. Kill two birds with one stone. Sun's for-geeks literature has bragged up how flexible the low end Sparc chips are vis a vis hardware memory architectures. I bet we could kill two birds with one stone here. Toss the weak processor of this XGameStation-or-whatever, and put in a low end (but VIS-ready) low power Sparc of some sort. The only drawback I can think of is the crowded namespace. Let's call it a Shirkstation! Yeah. finallyHasANickname has "prior art"ed ya. :-p
Boy, Sun would be eating crow if that happened. Imagine The Register with headline,
The capitalism is growing stronger at Slashdot.
I hope the decide to give this some decent coin-op support, or maybe a good coin-op module. It is a bit primitive, but there could certainly be some interesting things done with it. Be it commercial games, or 'customized games for people', or your homebrew arcade cabinet kind of thing.
BTW... that Asteroids looked decidedly low-resolution for vector. Like an equiv 640x480 resolution, verses a typical 1024x768 equiv vector resolution. Is there a hardware limitation in the vector DACs, or what is the story here?
That's unfair to OpenGL (I can't speak for DirectX, I've never used it but I know it has its fans). Sure you could draw a cube on a screen using any random API, (BASIC?), and your first cube might appear quicker than if you tried using OpenGL, but getting your head around 3D graphics requires -work-, and OpenGL is a good way to get from a cube to something more because it is a well thought out abstraction. Incidentally, that's why I applaud nVIDIA against all the "everything must be available as source code" folks - you can play with OpenGL under Linux for peanuts compared to the cost of an SGI ten years ago.
Didn't RTFA, but "16-bit Motorola" CPU sounds like a reference to the 68000.
68000 isn't really a 16-bit processor, any more than the 80386SX is. It's a 32-bit CPU internally.
And let's face it, the Apple ]['s video hardware was teh sux (I had to write emulation for that b*stard, and MY code was a fscking nightmare), so I don't see why anyone would want to emulate it (it was basically a braindead monochrome CGA, and faked color). C64 tho I can see, a little better.
The spellchecker doesn't even work on it or even on an 68000 emulator...
How much will this thing cost, and how much does it cost today to get a development board which is similar to this thing's specs? In particular I would like LCD control and a 32 bit processor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"which may fulfill the fantasies of Slashdot readers everywhere. 16-bit Motorola CPU with a graphics architecture "similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II"
Doesn't this stike anybody as a tad underpowered to fullfill anybodies fantasies, let alone the average Slashdotter..?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
They give me a copy of Duke Nukem Forever to play around with.
I can't tell you how many of his books I've got on my shelf right now. Now he's whipping up fun hardware to play with too?
Can sainthood be far behind?
It says it's 5-10x the speed of the Super Nintendo, with 2-4x the graphic power. That's better than the current Gameboy Advance!
Are you sure? The Super NES had a 3.6 MHz 65c816 processor, essentially a 6502 with 16-bit registers and a 24-bit address bus. The sound side of the system had a Sony SPC700 processor at 2 MHz, which was in essence a 6502 with a reshuffled instruction set encoding. The GBA, on the other hand, has a 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI processor with a halfway modern RISC design. This XGameStation has a "Third-generation Motorola 68HCS12 16-bit processor @ 25 MHz" according to the spec sheet. A speed rating in MHz is relevant only when combined with operations per clock, but because a couple minutes of Google searching didn't tell me whether or not the 68HCS12 is pipelined (the 6809 wasn't, and neither was the 68000), I can't guess an operations-per-clock value for the 68HCS12.
Also, it's projected to be $99.
Yeah, but the GBA is only $99 ($70 for the GBA and $29 for the coder's cable), and it's a handheld.
Will I retire or break 10K?
along with the 'Phoenix Bios Loader' which proceeds to load whatever 3rd party or hacked retail BIOS I choose.
LAWSUIT! Phoenix makes BIOS programs for PCs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Get yourself an last ganeration ATI and play with OpenGL all you want without having an unfree system.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Where can I pick up an affordable oscilloscope?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If I know Andre LaMothe, then the submission and at least half of the supporting posts originated from inside his secret lair, wherever Xtreme Games LLC is located.
[o]_O
silly. I mean, if you really want to make your own ShefBoy with lcd and your latest version of Smasteroids coded in LL Huegly Basic for Cool People, that's fine. But this is just so much money, and really, the only real use I see for this is commercial.IE personally constructed amusements/arcade machines with no hardware licencing attatched. That could be interesting.
Many Thanks,
Luke
When will someone start up the emulator project for this?
Sure its not for everybody ,but look at the specs, motorola compatible, even an expansion slot for the same CPU that powers the old trusty snes, even fpga programable, it means that you are not emulating your genesis or Snes you are re implementing it, just wonderfull for me ,as I think todays games are crap, notable excpetion... ,this game is way to good....
,with linux of course...
knights of the old republic for X$uX
but im drifting here, back to the topic...
posibilities are not limitless, but quite a broad spectrum of posibilities, what about puting on a keyboard , a FDD, serial and parallel port...
el cheapo computer
what makes current pc's and consoles sostrong in the graphics department isnt the cpu but rahter the GPU, the chip thats is designed only to handle graphics. i wodner how long it will take before there is a plugin chip to help in the graphics department...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Half the morons here seem to think that it's a competitive commercial game console, designed to beat up Microsoft and Sony. It's not. So the graphics hardware isn't great. Big deal.
It's here so that somebody can learn to program, or to play with hardware. I personally would like to see a repeat of the C64-style "walk up and code" system; kids today have little to no experience with programming and as such have resorted to just playing games and poking around in the warez translation of RPG Maker.
XGAMESTATION? As opposed to the XCube Station 2?
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Its an electronics kit being marketed as a game system that wants to be hacked/modded/rebuilt. It supports homebrew everything-- joystick adapters, displays, software, roms, the whole nine yards." In other words, it's a PC.
Well, somebody had to say it...
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
You can slap a 32-bit MCU with enough ram, flash and maybe a geforcefx go or ATI embedded chip to create a high performance handheld game device, and with some community effort even a simple software SDK for it.
The real problem is standardizing ROMs so game companies could develop and sell for such a platform. It would be interesting if the free software community develops a handheld game ROM standard that runs on many manufacturers' handhelds. Any geek could select his chips (ati/nvidia/fujitsu) and his flash and ram, and plug in the CF game card and start playing. A new cottage industry would be born. How hard the larger companies would work to block this.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It also sounds like it (XGamestation) is positioned as a 'razor' and will take the profit back by selling 'blades'....
Either way, it sounds good (a configurable multi-game unit platform) but I'm more interested in the C-One myself.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
16 bits cannot compare to the 32 and 64 bit consoles already out there. Also the game carts don't hold more than 64K, and this is how games are to be delivered? Can't even run Doom 1.0 on a 64K cart, so what kinds of games are they going to have for this system?
Wake me up when they get the IDE module for CD-ROM, DVD, and hard drive interfaces. Maybe then you can load some real modern games on it?
16 bit CPU is limited, can't even do a Playstation emulation and you know that there are many Playstation emulators out on the market for Windows, Linux etc.
The only benefit I can really see with this console is an educational one. Learning how to write simple games for a limited environment.
I imagine it won't be long before someone writes a n XGameStation emulator for the various operating systems out there. Then this console box will be toast.
Now if someone else picked up where Indrema left off and build a Linux game console kit, that could be better. Use an AMD Duron at 1.0 Ghz, 256M of RAM, DVD-ROM drive, and a NVIDIA chipset with a decent sound chipset and you could be talking a serious XBox/PS2/Gamecube killer here.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The Vectrex mentioned on their vector graphics module page is from the early 80s (1981-1984), not the late 80s.
Since most people can get it for free nowadays, why not allow for 72 pin EDO simms, instead of using more modern RAM? If the CPU isn't going to be that fast to begin with, and you aren't going anywhere more complex than a 16 bit graphics system, then having high speed RAM that you have to pay for, if it makes no difference?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I mean, I have several C64s, a 128, amigas coming out my ears and a couple of old ataris. they're damn cheap. I buy them off a local auction website because most families are throwing them out and want to see them go to a good home for $5.
I've always been an amiga nut, but now I'm startng to like the C64s because of their hackability and limitations..
and there is SO MUCH out there for coding on the c64 that you have lots to learn from. including literally 2 decades of some of the best game and demo coders in history.
don't get me wrong, if this xgamestation isn't vapourware, I'll buy one because I'm a freak like that, but people should know that getting into cheap games dev on low end architecture is possible now and has been for so long.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
The name of the thing sounds familiar.. Xbox, Gamecube, PlayStation XGameStation Wait, no, I don't see anything.
If this guy manages to sell any at all in the retail stores, then maybe. Odds are that this won't sell simply because it's not a mass-marketable item. It's a niche. 1% of the population that plays video games actually goes out and produces one, and even if they did, there are far more powerful platforms, such as a hacked XBox or PS2. This is simply a waste of time/money.
http://retro.icequake.net/commodore_64_design_case _history
Hope this is of some interest to the sort of people who would be interested in the XGameStation.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
(the truly "ancient" machine at my school was the old PDP8 that we used in one class by entering hand-assembled programs in with flip switches)
sounds like an electronic prostitute
Andre. So we meet again.
It's a shame you couldn't possibly manage to use your "innovative" abilities to publish anything more than the same game 10 times in a row before the lawsuits start coming in. That whole business with "donate to help out poor Xtreme Games, LLC" was total bullshit and you loved every moment of it.
Moral turpitude aside, you knew the "Prima Game Development Series" was a complete joke. Nobody takes it seriously, and you know it. You can't write your way out of a wet paper bag, much less do half your job as an editor (senior or otherwise). You put your name all over complete crap, Andre, and I'm here to tell you that you're not fooling anyone, not even the starry-eyed adolescent youth market you sell yourself to.
I remember sitting in Borders in early June '95 and getting more and more disgusted at you. "Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days" was a ripoff title, using ripped-off game designs and code, incoherent writing and no fundamental understanding of the material as presented. I may only have been 14, but I was just as pissed as I am right now. This is what you reap by calling yourself "a really cool guy" on the back of a poorly-written book that didn't give proper credit where it was due.
And now this. It exposes itself as a bad idea even without muckraking.
You see, Andre, home computers weren't "just there" for hoots and hollers; for years, the C64 and then the Amiga were top-of-the-line gear. It's despicable that you connect "console" with 8-/16-bit home computers. Furthermore, it's somehow worse that you imagine "mods and hacks" as being somehow connected with monkey-level soldering and manual-lookup style reference. Why not just get a C64 off of Ebay and play with that instead?
I wonder... why do you even try anymore? Why don't you pick up your carpetbag and go make XBox games like every other bullshit artist? Is it that eastern european blood in your veins? Is it that ol' something-for-nothing American Pride crap? Is there some sadistic need you have that's only fulfilled by ripping off eager fools? If I left a freshly-slaughtered pig in your driveway and a hex on your door, would you even notice?
Shame on you, LaMothe. Shame and guilt.
PS: Here's the secret to long life and prosperity for the rest of you: don't publish ANYTHING remotely informative online. If you do, this vulture will snatch it up and slap his name on it. Plagiarism may have gotten him kicked out of school, but it didn't keep him out of print.
Lying about his past doesn't make "Lord Necron's Resume of Darkness" look any less ridiculous. Nor does this quote: "Atari stole ALL their games from other games, like Space War, first-generation TV consoles from Magnavox, etc." I bet that's news to Dave Theurer and Ed Logg. And Jeff Minter.
The cost (according to the faq) is ~99 US dollars. It is to include all the hardware, the ebook with tons of documentation on the systems hardware and software capabilities, and a programmable cartridge. Basically everything you will need to make and play a game.
"Each GameStation memory cartridge contains 8K/16K/32K/64K "Blocks" of memory. Most games will fit on the 8/16K block carts, but heavy graphics and sound games may need more."
I fail to see how a 25MHz CPU with graphics capabilities 10x that of the SNES...has 64K rom cartridges. You couldn't emulate NES successfully on it, like they claim, because *most* good NES games are 64k or more. They went up to a meg even, sometimes.
And that was NES games. 64K simply ISN'T enough space to take advantage of all that power, I am sorry! And he tries to pass of the ability to plug a 65816 (16-bit variant of 6502 that is technically but not totally code-compatible due to fixed bugs) as a boon to emulation. ...how? Unless *all* the processor's I/O is done through the 25MHz 65k core...
Sorry, but this doesn't seem nearly as nice as it looks.
This is EXACTLY the device for it, they give you a basic and open platform for ANYONE to hack (extend!) to their liking. In every sense of the word. Controllers, software, hardware, etc ..
Really really tired of people always putting a negative spin on the "hacking" terminology .. It's like people HAVE to bust open an XBox because Microsoft doesn't want them to. That's not the point, people want to bust it open and change it to what they want, REGARDLESS if it was meant to or not.
Being able to work with hardware in a nice simple fun environment is a great learning tool.
People want to work on games. The end result of this need combined with the learned skills could very easily be put to other uses.
This is a great tool. I plan on getting one.
Blogging because I can...
While universities may have this hardware in there courses, is it available to everyone at cheap, with manuals?
This would be great for controlling homebrew robotics and devices, or a home automation system, it has tonnes of prospects, it's like a big electronics work board from RadioShack, but with programming, try being positive.
I have the full intenting of buying one of these, and all you nay-sayers be dammed
This looks cool in a retro sort of way, except it's not retro enough. It's like selling a crystal radio kit that uses preassembled coils wired to a germanium diode detector and an op-amp headphone driver.
Really, it doesn't even make sense. Why use a stupid 6812? You can fit an entire Sinclair ZX81 "clone" - Z80 CPU and all - on a single, relatively small, FPGA. You can stuck an ARM core on a midrange FPGA and still have 70% of the resources to devote to stuff like graphics accelerators and USB connectors. Using a "real" CPU seems to me to defeat half the (limited) power you already have there. Stick the code for the FPGA in the damn game cartridge and then people can use just about ANY CPU they want. Hell, you could make an ultra-MAME product that ran the actual arcade hardware IN HARDWARE!
Too much of one thing, not enough of the other. It's a $99 junk drawer stuffer.
This is cool. Obviously, the people who are bagging it Just Don't Get It.
Modern OS's don't let you touch the hardware... they do a lot of the work for you. With oldskool stuff you had to talk to the hardware, play with it, whip it, etc. to do stuff. Really the most fun way to code!
This could actually turn out to be a dandy little platform for demos... especially with that FPGA graphics chip.
I think I'll have to buy one.
So there were some things it could do better, e.g. 3d games. The most stupid thing about the C64 is that it could be so much better with that level of technology if they simply added a double buffer for the colour RAM, and full 9 bit/8 bit registers for the scroll (instead of 3 bit/3 bit). That would have meant games not spending most of their time blitting stuff around instead of doing something useful. Oh and some people say they should have hooked up the I/O chips properly to the I/O ports, increasing the disk drive transfer rate by a factor of 25 or so (with the screen turned on).
I used to take advantage of that in my software. I think it was three 16-bits words. If you could make your loop fit inside the buffer, the CPU would execute the instructions out of the buffer rather than fetching them from main memory.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
A 68000 costs $3. That's too much for a mass-produced toy, but not much for a homebrew kit. And with that you get something powerful enough to run C. But maybe that's the point of the kit - teach kids assembly rather than lazing away with high level languages.
Magazines such as "computer and video games" were available in little bookshops in the villages where I grew up and had full type-in listings of games. The populist books were available from shops that sold home computers, and some were around in general bookshops also.
Hah, I know a good book... hmm finally there is 1 used copy on amazon.com so I'm bidding for it. Can't tell you what it is but it was published in 1983. :-)
As others have pointed out, this misses the point. The idea, as it seems to me, is to design something that will give a new generation of aspiring programmers the functional equivalent of the C64's and Apple IIs of our day -- something to learn programming and computer engineering on simultaneously. Programming an SBC through a HAL like DirectX simply isn't the same as seeing the whole computer and knowing precisely why the code you're writing is doing what it does.
If you gaze at the FAQ, the list price for the whole thing is $99. That seems to me to be a reasonable price for what is, in essence, the "100-in-1 Electronics Kit" of the future.
While I must agree that the CPU of this system is underpowered, I like the idea of a software programmable graphics chip. Your game needs hardware sprites? vector processing? 3d graphics pipelines? If the FPGA is large enough, you can do it.
p owervr.com/Release.asp?ID=38
It has been done.
http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/21019
www.
It will run at much lower speeds than a real chip though.
This sounds interesting and all, but what about the players for such a console? And games? My interest would be peaked more if I could expect SNES graphics.. but even then... So how does this market work? Step 1:Buy lots of hardware, hook it up. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!
While I realise this is somewhat anti-geek, is this really nessasary any more? A few years ago, everyone had to learn assembler. Now I feel there is no need (other than interest) to actually know any assembler at all.
Also of course how you draw a 3d cube on a 2d display in (very old) software and how it is done in hardware are so different I don't think you would really learn much anyway.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Why would they not just put analog filters after the DACs? Low-res shouldn't necessary mean jaggy lines.
We are a very specialised society at the moment, but learning a teensy bit about hardware (via FPGAs) should be part of every rounded programmers diet, just as many basic algorithms (e.g. how to multiply two numbers in binary) or data structures (e.g. that a float contains a sign, exponent, mantissa) should be lurking in the back of your head. Now if only I had time to follow that advice and write some cores :-) (I was tempted to get a standard FPGA kit but this and the commodore one both appeal instead).
just go buy a computer, you fart sniffers.
I think I bought that book too when I was 12 or so. But when I saw I needed to learn C programming and whatnot, I shit a brick and brought it back, and used the money to buy that Klick 'N Play game creation suite thing, it was pretty neat but extremely limited. You could make some neat 2D space shooters if you put the effort into it, but that was about all it was good for. Anyone else remember that?
Flash forward to 1997, I download the Doom source and pretty much teach myself C programming by looking at that, which came as a great help in my college freshman computer science classes.
As a current 20-year old, I've been thinking lately that if I was born about 10-15 years earlier and grew up with the fabled Apple IIe and so forth, I might have had a better chance of becoming some kind of code prodigy, as opposed to a college-trained Computer Scientist as I am now headed.