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'
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!!"
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
no, this is Slashdot building up a stock of spoof stories to dupe on April 1st
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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".
I've been looking through the S12CPUV2 Reference Manual (downloadable from Motorola's web site). The CPU architecture looks very much like an MC6800 with 16-bit extensions. It has two 8-bit accumulators (A & B) that can be paired into a 16-bit accumulator (D). It has two 16-bit index registers (X & Y), a 16-bit stack pointer, a 16-bit program counter, and an 8-bit condition code register. Most instructions can use A, B or D. It can do 16-bit arithmetic but some instructions, such as boolean logic, are limited to 8-bit operands. I'd describe it as a 16-bit superset of the 8-bit MC6800.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
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.
...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.
Who cares about software base, etc. This is meant as a project. It's this same attitude that makes it impossible for me to run to Radio Shack every time I need a component when I have the urge to build something. Yes, there are other alternatives that may be better, like modding a C64 or whatever, but it's still a neat idea. Especially for educational purposes. For $99 you can have everything you need to build your own gaming console and make your own games? Complete with documentation? When I was in school, I spent more than that on crappy programming textbooks every semester. If you want to get students to enjoy their programming classes, instead of teaching them ways to optimize their "Hello, World!" code, teach them that stuff on the XGameStation. I know I would have enjoyed school more.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
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?
What about schools that teach QBasic? Or MS Visual C++/Basic/Java/C#/whatever? Isn't that the same thing? Besides, the programming can be done in C on the XGameStation. C is C, whether it be on the XGameStation, a PC, a Mac, whatever. The XGameStation is no more "proprietary" than any other system they may program on.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
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?
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.
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