They were bought out by VIA a while back. The Cyrix technology has eventually been recycled in the form of the EPIA mini-itx boards, and is currently enjoying somewhat of a renaissance.
Check this out for more info, or look at one of the endless "Someone put a PC into a toaster/NES/Chair/TeddyBear/Baby's Head" posts that Slashdot provides.
I quite fancy making a little DivX player to sit atop my TV. Sofa-based Civ3 would be neat, too.
Cloney
Most of the speculation here has already been covered on the GBA Dev boards at GBA Emu. See here for linkage to the below. A few of the facts:
Emulation - Thus far, the GBA can emulate the following near perfectly:
NES - PocketNES
ZX Spectrum - Foon
Chip-8 - Various
Currently in development, and playable:
Sega Master System - PocketSMS
Amstrad CPC 6128 - PACO
Gameboy Classic - GBonGBA
In development, but unreleased:
Commodore 64 - SPLAM
Various Arcade - Arcade Advance
Atari 2600 - Unknown
The GBA does NOT have the power to emulate the SNES, or even the Megadrive. Porting a ROM would be impossible without the source-code, so that's out too. The GBA has a -really- paltry amount of RAM, so most ambitious projects aren't achievable.
Porting games simply by copying the design does work, however - I've spent the last week or so playing a port of the Gollop Bros ZX Spectrum classic, Chaos, so stuff like Nethack is feasible. I believe there's also a FROTZ interpreter, for Interactive Fiction fans.
Other interesting stuff has been done - there's an MP3 player, an MPG player, MOD and NSF players, and a complete shell system that integrates games launching with text files, music and other stuff. It's a good laugh, but not cheap.
One last thing - the ISDA is right to be worried, the flash carts can be used for software piracy. Just pop a ROM in there (some need patching) and it's go. One cart can hold up to eight or so commercial games. While they're marketed as amateur dev-kits, they're basically being designed with piracy in mind these days. US residents will have a bugger of a time trying to import them.
I read this book a while ago (it's been out in the UK for over a year). It's certainly a good read, but I didn't feel that it had the impact of the culture novels. Throughout my reading I got the impression that something was about to happen... the writing style seemed anticipatory at times. But nothing really does, or at least nothing big. I've got nothing against books set entirely around one or two locations, but this seemed somehow too static. The Protector character also reminded me somewhat of Cheradenine Zakalwe, from the superior Use Of Weapons. Somehow, after Excession, it was a dissapointment. Still a great book, though. If anyone here wants to get into Banks' sci-fi work, pick up The Player Of Games, or check out the short stories in The State Of The Art. H-Clone Official Salted Snack
Coming up in Q2 of this year, Creative are releasing the Nomad Jukebox, a 6GB Digital Music Player. Note digital music, not MP3. This thing is supposed to have a DSP chip in it with changeable codecs. It'll play MP3 and WAV as standard... but I want a 6GB VQF portable. Then I can laugh at the technology curve. Check Nomadworld for the info. I want one already. VQF. Mmm.
Slashdot Mirror
They were bought out by VIA a while back. The Cyrix technology has eventually been recycled in the form of the EPIA mini-itx boards, and is currently enjoying somewhat of a renaissance.
Check this out for more info, or look at one of the endless "Someone put a PC into a toaster/NES/Chair/TeddyBear/Baby's Head" posts that Slashdot provides.
I quite fancy making a little DivX player to sit atop my TV. Sofa-based Civ3 would be neat, too. Cloney
Emulation - Thus far, the GBA can emulate the following near perfectly:
NES - PocketNES
ZX Spectrum - Foon
Chip-8 - Various
Currently in development, and playable:
Sega Master System - PocketSMS
Amstrad CPC 6128 - PACO
Gameboy Classic - GBonGBA
In development, but unreleased:
Commodore 64 - SPLAM
Various Arcade - Arcade Advance
Atari 2600 - Unknown
The GBA does NOT have the power to emulate the SNES, or even the Megadrive. Porting a ROM would be impossible without the source-code, so that's out too. The GBA has a -really- paltry amount of RAM, so most ambitious projects aren't achievable.
Porting games simply by copying the design does work, however - I've spent the last week or so playing a port of the Gollop Bros ZX Spectrum classic, Chaos, so stuff like Nethack is feasible. I believe there's also a FROTZ interpreter, for Interactive Fiction fans.
Other interesting stuff has been done - there's an MP3 player, an MPG player, MOD and NSF players, and a complete shell system that integrates games launching with text files, music and other stuff. It's a good laugh, but not cheap.
One last thing - the ISDA is right to be worried, the flash carts can be used for software piracy. Just pop a ROM in there (some need patching) and it's go. One cart can hold up to eight or so commercial games. While they're marketed as amateur dev-kits, they're basically being designed with piracy in mind these days. US residents will have a bugger of a time trying to import them.
I read this book a while ago (it's been out in the UK for over a year). It's certainly a good read, but I didn't feel that it had the impact of the culture novels. Throughout my reading I got the impression that something was about to happen... the writing style seemed anticipatory at times. But nothing really does, or at least nothing big. I've got nothing against books set entirely around one or two locations, but this seemed somehow too static. The Protector character also reminded me somewhat of Cheradenine Zakalwe, from the superior Use Of Weapons. Somehow, after Excession, it was a dissapointment. Still a great book, though. If anyone here wants to get into Banks' sci-fi work, pick up The Player Of Games, or check out the short stories in The State Of The Art. H-Clone Official Salted Snack
Coming up in Q2 of this year, Creative are releasing the Nomad Jukebox, a 6GB Digital Music Player. Note digital music, not MP3. This thing is supposed to have a DSP chip in it with changeable codecs. It'll play MP3 and WAV as standard... but I want a 6GB VQF portable. Then I can laugh at the technology curve. Check Nomadworld for the info. I want one already. VQF. Mmm.