I try not to believe in God (I'm about 99% sure but there are no atheists in foxholes) and to be objective, but I have to admit I -believe- there's extraterrestrial intelligent life 'cos I have no proof. Which is a shame.
Great. Greg advocates PNG, documents it, generally makes the world a richer place, and you have to nitpick terminology. Maybe you have a (trivial) point, but your attitude is what I object to.
Geeks routinely abuse English, and a consensus develops that makes school teachers mad, but you'll find that the geek terms acquire a certain standardisation and add meaning to English it didn't have before.
For example, 3D graphics uses terms like "transparency" meaning [for 8 bit values] that (0 is opaque, 255 is clear), then introduces "opacity" to mean (0 is clear, 255 is opaque), THEN confuses us all by using translucency to mean (something between 0 and 255) - which goes against the dictionary - look it up.
English is a dynamic evolving thing, as are science and technology. Think about that.
I've spent some time trying to avoid using the mouse under X 'cos it aggravates carpal tunnel. Using fvwm2 as my WM it lets me mimic the Alt-Tab behaviour of Windows but based upon expressions that let you (for example) cycle between just your xterms, just your netscape windows or just your XEmacs (sorry:) frames. The fvwm functions to RTFM are "prev" and "next". The aches and pains have improved noticeably since I did this.
I see a few mentions of eye surgery. Please don't let/. or newsgroups be your main source of advice in stuff to do with your eyes, consult a number of patients and surgeons, doctors too.
That aside, FWIW, I have had cataract surgery in both eyes. I have fixed focus but the clarity is little short of a miracle. I know the down side btw.
My point is that enhancing eyesight with "cool" technology shouldn't be done as some sort of geek fashion statement, because messing with the highest bandwidth input to your brain is -risky-. Please, look after your eyes.
I was in a hurry and my machine fell over as I was about to post this interesting link from the nVIDIA site. Lots to learn about therein. Sorry if I posted twice, give me a break.
My post is anecdotal because I don't know how it got into my mind or where it came from and i can't give a reference, I'd appreciate it if anyone knows more.
It seems that operations to cure a squint in children used to be done several months or years after birth, until someone did an experiment on some kittens (shudder). Point is, they proved that it really was essential to fix the squint almost straight after birth and many children benefit.
I'm agreeing with you btw, just thought I'd lob this story in as an example of where the border between good and evil lies - for me. If I've unwittingly perpetuated a myth, I'm sorry.
But the P3 is 128-bit'ish'? Its x86! Has the x86 line secretly gone from 32-bit to 128-bit? So where can I find a 128-bit operating system to take advantage of this? Or a project that's trying? Or are we talking here about a few instructions that store their parameters in enough registers to add up to 128-bit?
Close. The P3 has some 128 bit instructions bolted on. To be fair it has 64 bit data paths so it has to do 128 bit instructions over two cycles, which means it has fun if there's an interrupt in-between. I don't want to think what a Transmeta processor is bit-wise.
For most processors, the instruction size, the data path widths, the addressing range all require different numbers of bits, so using one figure of merit (X is a 43 bit processor) is difficult. As is a 128 bit OS - most folks have no need of 2^128 bit addressing, but being able to use the 128 bit SSE (Intel) or 3D Now! instructions is a real world benefit to lots of us. So attaching "bit-size" labels to complex things like a CPU or an OS is hair-splitting and doesn't inform, which was my point
As regards the US cars, supporting lack of facts (did you look at the processor data sheets) with analogies isn't cricket either.
Go read the data sheets. There's 128 bit-ness in the SH4 and the P3. I wouldn't have commented on your post, but having a pop at the Yanks without getting your facts right lets the side down and isn't cricket.
Wait a hundred years, load the people into computers (Kurzweil), send the computers. If it gets boring drop the clock rate. At the other end loading the computer programs into the people is a bit iffy, but why bother 'cos Earth-format people likely won't make much sense in the new environment. Yes this is wacky, but IMHO it's a lot more plausible than sending bags of jelly around, or FTL. As for pottering around in the Solar System, go ahead.
Since CPU marketing has reduced to saying my clock speed is faster than yours (whether my CPU can do more useful work being irrelevant) what will be the "dumbed down figure of merit" (tm) for systems that don't have clocks?
I've hijacked the slashdot account of my pet cat (Ella) to say that this article has cheered me up immensely. I'm getting old enough to have cataracts, thankfully fixed by cool 21st century cyborg technology, it's my birthday and I was feeling faintly depressed we don't have colonies on Mars like I fully expected for the year 2000 when I was a kid. Solar sails made my day. I'll likely be dead before the world realises it needs to mine the asteroids... (sudden descent into Grandpa Simpson mode here)
I just took another look at the article. The copper sheet is earthed via a wire and a crocodile clip. If anyone here did an electronics course, remember how you never got a square picture of a square wave on the oscilloscope screen until you used the right earthing attachment and calibrated the probe tip? Anything that the copper shield picks up flows back to the case via the inductance of the cable and the mechanical (not soldered) crocodile clip connection, which will ring like crazy at high frequencies.
At least try soldering the copper to all of the SIMM ground pins to get a good earth. Then I would ask if all that extra capacitance isn't loading down the signal traces and slowing down your system.
The more I think about this, it is bull. I do know for sure that getting earthing and shielding to work is as much an art as a science, but the test of science is whether or not this makes a measurable improvement.
I agree about the voodoo. This is offtopic I know, but what I don't understand is why audiophiles go to such extremes as they do without worrying about the effects of static discharge on their expensive electronics. I don't have a business selling gold plated wriststraps and living room sized oxygen free rubber anti-static mats, but I'd get a real sense of satisfaction if I could persuade even one audiophile to take me seriously.
[Sorry about replying to my own stuff but I felt I ought to say this:] It looks like my writing style has become as bad as some of the hype written about the PS2 that I don't like. Also, I've only borrowed the PS2 for a day, so it is hardly fair to be so opinionated. Take what I wrote with a pinch of salt, make your own mind up about PS2, use your own eyes and judgement, don't listen to me.
I've got a PS2 sitting in the living room right now and it is incredibly disappointing. The visuals are underwhelming. I'm looking at Ridge Racer V, Streetfighter 3, Dead or Alive 2, Eternal Ring, and none of it looks as good as SoulCalibur or Shenmue. OK, the Sega needs a VGA adapter to shine and the PS2 is going through an NTSC/PAL converter, but what I'm seeing is fundamentally broken.
There are 4 Mbytes of DRAM. Allocate 2 frame buffers and a Z buffer and there's not much room for textures. It looks like they've shrunk the buffers to the bare minimum to make space for textures, there are huge crawling jaggies, sparkly junk on textures, big blocks of smooth colour (no texture), bleah! BTW, the DVD software went away at random as advertised on Slashdot, never to be seen again, so no opinions about the video.
Now, we all know game developers need time to get the best out of a machine, but Sega play by the same rules and got off the blocks in good shape, whereas doing PS2 must be like running with a ball and chain attached.
Last I heard a PS2 cost $560 to build, a modem and a hard drive will take that up to what, $700? If it sells for $250 that's a lot of title revenue needed to subsidise it. Maybe they can make the modem ($40?) work as a business, because that way lies online games, but what is the hard disk for? They could make a TiVo with it for sure, but bundling doesn't make sense, they should sell it (or the services it enables) as an option instead of carrying the cost for all those kids who use it for games.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't believe articles about PS2 taking over the world anymore.
Games houses are in competition with each other. So they use 100% of the hardware capabilities to the best of their abilities, because it just doesn't make sense to give the competition an edge. Suppose the world of 2003 has both X-Box 2001 and X-Box 2003 variants. Does a games house write for X-Box 2001 or 2003? Either you under utilise the 2003 hardware or you alienate the 2001 owners. Offering better frames per second won't work, because either the 2001 game was jerky or it was playable, if jerky it bombs in the market, if playable 2003 model has only one advantage, marketing specs, but since gamers judge the game not the platform only suits care. Game development takes time and money, there's a certain security in developing for a non-moving target. If you are late on the PC you bust your ass writing to say an 800MHz P3 and everyone has 1200MHz or you aim for 1200MHz and MS slip X-Box 2003 to 2004 'cos 2001 model is selling so well and your game runs slow and/or you don't get the sales. The PC game market is a good thing, the console market is another. The X-Box is trying to be a game console. Now, if you view it as a PC then sure, make it upgradeable. Excuse a cheap underhand trick, but if you'd read where I said Best way to find out is to hit preview... and submit your HTML boo boo could have been avoided:-) Seriously, sorry if I upset you, thanks for reading my post, even if we disagree, we're talking.
This is meant to be funny I assume. Just in case anyone reads this literally (engage mission to inform mode) the whole point of a game console is that the performance stays fixed, developers learn to squeeze performance, games just work and so on. Otherwise it's a PC with all its faults as a game platform (engages critical faculties) have I just fallen hook line and sinker for a troll? Best way to find out is to hit preview... and submit
i emailed this to nvidia as an FYI subject and attached this slashdot discussion, as it reads sort of like an instant petition.:--)
I -really- hope you attached the URL leading to this discussion, not megabytes of text. I've had to live with the consequences of certain thoughtless emails to nVIDIA following Slashdot discussions. I'm hoping that saying so doesn't give some moron ideas which is why I was vague earlier. Why don't people -think- before emailing?
So flame me. Look at my posts, I try to be calm and reasonable, sometimes you have to rant to be heard here. Actually, I started reading Slashdot precisely because someone sent me the previous nVIDIA discussion, so something good can come out of a flame war.
I'm glad I got here early. I recall (can't be bothered to trawl the archives) the debate about nVIDIA and X and Linux getting rather overheated last time. My work was one of the casualties of an idiot negotiation tactic (I'm being vague in case someone tries it again - sigh).
I've been in through the front door of nVIDIA, worked with a couple of their engineers and met a handful of people at various levels. I'm not name dropping or trying to be cool, just maybe trying to establish a modicum of credibility. Most of the folks I met I liked, although the culture gave me a few problems 'cos I'm from Europe.
My point is this: nVIDIA (that's how it's written on my TNT card, wish they'd make their mind up on the capitalisation) is not a monolithic organisation. For all we know 49.5% of them want to do things the Slashdot way, and it might take a just little more polite persuasion to open things up, charm their management, whatever.
Oh please! 3600 fps? For a start, the GeForce does its T&L in (mostly?) hardware, which chews into the 6.2 Gflops. Doing 75 million polys, with all features enabled, even Sony don't claim that much. How will it support higher res with 4 Mbyte of embedded DRAM, it must have a hard enough time paging the textures in and out (yes, go figure) - I hope they compressed their textures like the Dreamcast does, but they're worryingly quiet about that.
Huge kudos to Sony for shipping the beast, especially with the engineering inside the box (awesome) and very well done for an excellent marketing campaign, but, erm, as regards marketing they sort of over-succeeded in your case. Interpreting 3D graphics performance claims meaningfully is one of the harder tasks we're faced with...
Is this "don't capitalise (ize)" rule another SI edict by any chance? I had a teacher who said that SI units should never be used in the plural to avoid confusing or offending people (e.g German speakers) who don't form plurals like English speakers do, with s, so real life is stranger than any joke you could make up... just my two cent (sic) worth.
I have a VGA adapter for Dreamcast and the image quality is much better than TV, but yes, you can see the jagged edges on polygons and creepy crawly textures which (wait for it) I'm told are because some developers -prefer- the effect to the proper texture filtering the hardware can manage. When we've got full scene antialiasing and stable anistropic filtered textures, then there's the whole physics thing to get right, and better lighting, accurate shadows and so on. Even if by say the next generation we are able in theory to paint anything we like, and the renderer will do what we tell it to do, I think we won't fully understand how to instruct it in real time even then.
It is really shitty that PSX2 is not going to be compatible with all PSX-1 games as initially thought. Stupid move on Sony's part. These companies invariably fail to see that good backwards compatibility is key to advancement & not a hinderance as simple economic theory might suggest.
We can't condemn Sony for giving game developers low level PSX2 programming details nor the developers for making use of them to get better performance. That's simple economics, because no-one will give an inch to the competition to safeguard the future. Would anyone slip release 3 months or risk a bad review by avoiding dirty tricks? If everyone stuck to the graphics APIs then engineering back compatibility would be easy, but no-one does because coding to the metal always happens. A thought. if the PSX2 hardware has to emulate every quirk of the PSX, imagine what PSX3 (three) back compatibility requires?
Sony just may be the next company I have to boycott. Oh dear, the Slashdot PSX2 boycott (c) Ella the Cat 2000 has started
Yep. The electron beam can't be deflected very far with enough accuracy (we're talking sub-micron) so the wafer itself has to be -mechanically- scanned with the beam more or less fixed but twitching around under the control of laser interferometers.
Slashdot Mirror
I try not to believe in God (I'm about 99% sure but there are no atheists in foxholes) and to be objective, but I have to admit I -believe- there's extraterrestrial intelligent life 'cos I have no proof. Which is a shame.
Great. Greg advocates PNG, documents it, generally makes the world a richer place, and you have to nitpick terminology. Maybe you have a (trivial) point, but your attitude is what I object to.
Geeks routinely abuse English, and a consensus develops that makes school teachers mad, but you'll find that the geek terms acquire a certain standardisation and add meaning to English it didn't have before.
For example, 3D graphics uses terms like "transparency" meaning [for 8 bit values] that (0 is opaque, 255 is clear), then introduces "opacity" to mean (0 is clear, 255 is opaque), THEN confuses us all by using translucency to mean (something between 0 and 255) - which goes against the dictionary - look it up.
English is a dynamic evolving thing, as are science and technology. Think about that.
nVIDIA Developer site
I've spent some time trying to avoid using the mouse under X 'cos it aggravates carpal tunnel. Using fvwm2 as my WM it lets me mimic the Alt-Tab behaviour of Windows but based upon expressions that let you (for example) cycle between just your xterms, just your netscape windows or just your XEmacs (sorry:) frames. The fvwm functions to RTFM are "prev" and "next". The aches and pains have improved noticeably since I did this.
I see a few mentions of eye surgery. Please don't let /. or newsgroups be your main source of advice in stuff to do with your eyes, consult a number of patients and surgeons, doctors too.
That aside, FWIW, I have had cataract surgery in both eyes. I have fixed focus but the clarity is little short of a miracle. I know the down side btw.
My point is that enhancing eyesight with "cool" technology shouldn't be done as some sort of geek fashion statement, because messing with the highest bandwidth input to your brain is -risky-. Please, look after your eyes.
I was in a hurry and my machine fell over as I was about to post this interesting link from the nVIDIA site. Lots to learn about therein. Sorry if I posted twice, give me a break.
My post is anecdotal because I don't know how it got into my mind or where it came from and i can't give a reference, I'd appreciate it if anyone knows more.
It seems that operations to cure a squint in children used to be done several months or years after birth, until someone did an experiment on some kittens (shudder). Point is, they proved that it really was essential to fix the squint almost straight after birth and many children benefit.
I'm agreeing with you btw, just thought I'd lob this story in as an example of where the border between good and evil lies - for me. If I've unwittingly perpetuated a myth, I'm sorry.
But the P3 is 128-bit'ish'? Its x86! Has the x86 line secretly gone from 32-bit to 128-bit? So where can I find a 128-bit operating system to take advantage of this? Or a project that's trying? Or are we talking here about a few instructions that store their parameters in enough registers to add up to 128-bit?
Close. The P3 has some 128 bit instructions bolted on. To be fair it has 64 bit data paths so it has to do 128 bit instructions over two cycles, which means it has fun if there's an interrupt in-between. I don't want to think what a Transmeta processor is bit-wise.
For most processors, the instruction size, the data path widths, the addressing range all require different numbers of bits, so using one figure of merit (X is a 43 bit processor) is difficult. As is a 128 bit OS - most folks have no need of 2^128 bit addressing, but being able to use the 128 bit SSE (Intel) or 3D Now! instructions is a real world benefit to lots of us. So attaching "bit-size" labels to complex things like a CPU or an OS is hair-splitting and doesn't inform, which was my point
As regards the US cars, supporting lack of facts (did you look at the processor data sheets) with analogies isn't cricket either.
Go read the data sheets. There's 128 bit-ness in the SH4 and the P3. I wouldn't have commented on your post, but having a pop at the Yanks without getting your facts right lets the side down and isn't cricket.
Wait a hundred years, load the people into computers (Kurzweil), send the computers. If it gets boring drop the clock rate. At the other end loading the computer programs into the people is a bit iffy, but why bother 'cos Earth-format people likely won't make much sense in the new environment. Yes this is wacky, but IMHO it's a lot more plausible than sending bags of jelly around, or FTL. As for pottering around in the Solar System, go ahead.
Since CPU marketing has reduced to saying my clock speed is faster than yours (whether my CPU can do more useful work being irrelevant) what will be the "dumbed down figure of merit" (tm) for systems that don't have clocks?
I've hijacked the slashdot account of my pet cat (Ella) to say that this article has cheered me up immensely. I'm getting old enough to have cataracts, thankfully fixed by cool 21st century cyborg technology, it's my birthday and I was feeling faintly depressed we don't have colonies on Mars like I fully expected for the year 2000 when I was a kid. Solar sails made my day. I'll likely be dead before the world realises it needs to mine the asteroids ... (sudden descent into Grandpa Simpson mode here)
I just took another look at the article. The copper sheet is earthed via a wire and a crocodile clip. If anyone here did an electronics course, remember how you never got a square picture of a square wave on the oscilloscope screen until you used the right earthing attachment and calibrated the probe tip? Anything that the copper shield picks up flows back to the case via the inductance of the cable and the mechanical (not soldered) crocodile clip connection, which will ring like crazy at high frequencies.
At least try soldering the copper to all of the SIMM ground pins to get a good earth. Then I would ask if all that extra capacitance isn't loading down the signal traces and slowing down your system.
The more I think about this, it is bull. I do know for sure that getting earthing and shielding to work is as much an art as a science, but the test of science is whether or not this makes a measurable improvement.
I agree about the voodoo. This is offtopic I know, but what I don't understand is why audiophiles go to such extremes as they do without worrying about the effects of static discharge on their expensive electronics. I don't have a business selling gold plated wriststraps and living room sized oxygen free rubber anti-static mats, but I'd get a real sense of satisfaction if I could persuade even one audiophile to take me seriously.
[Sorry about replying to my own stuff but I felt I ought to say this:] It looks like my writing style has become as bad as some of the hype written about the PS2 that I don't like. Also, I've only borrowed the PS2 for a day, so it is hardly fair to be so opinionated. Take what I wrote with a pinch of salt, make your own mind up about PS2, use your own eyes and judgement, don't listen to me.
I've got a PS2 sitting in the living room right now and it is incredibly disappointing. The visuals are underwhelming. I'm looking at Ridge Racer V, Streetfighter 3, Dead or Alive 2, Eternal Ring, and none of it looks as good as SoulCalibur or Shenmue. OK, the Sega needs a VGA adapter to shine and the PS2 is going through an NTSC/PAL converter, but what I'm seeing is fundamentally broken.
There are 4 Mbytes of DRAM. Allocate 2 frame buffers and a Z buffer and there's not much room for textures. It looks like they've shrunk the buffers to the bare minimum to make space for textures, there are huge crawling jaggies, sparkly junk on textures, big blocks of smooth colour (no texture), bleah! BTW, the DVD software went away at random as advertised on Slashdot, never to be seen again, so no opinions about the video.
Now, we all know game developers need time to get the best out of a machine, but Sega play by the same rules and got off the blocks in good shape, whereas doing PS2 must be like running with a ball and chain attached.
Last I heard a PS2 cost $560 to build, a modem and a hard drive will take that up to what, $700? If it sells for $250 that's a lot of title revenue needed to subsidise it. Maybe they can make the modem ($40?) work as a business, because that way lies online games, but what is the hard disk for? They could make a TiVo with it for sure, but bundling doesn't make sense, they should sell it (or the services it enables) as an option instead of carrying the cost for all those kids who use it for games.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't believe articles about PS2 taking over the world anymore.
Games houses are in competition with each other. So they use 100% of the hardware capabilities to the best of their abilities, because it just doesn't make sense to give the competition an edge. Suppose the world of 2003 has both X-Box 2001 and X-Box 2003 variants. Does a games house write for X-Box 2001 or 2003? Either you under utilise the 2003 hardware or you alienate the 2001 owners. Offering better frames per second won't work, because either the 2001 game was jerky or it was playable, if jerky it bombs in the market, if playable 2003 model has only one advantage, marketing specs, but since gamers judge the game not the platform only suits care. Game development takes time and money, there's a certain security in developing for a non-moving target. If you are late on the PC you bust your ass writing to say an 800MHz P3 and everyone has 1200MHz or you aim for 1200MHz and MS slip X-Box 2003 to 2004 'cos 2001 model is selling so well and your game runs slow and/or you don't get the sales. The PC game market is a good thing, the console market is another. The X-Box is trying to be a game console. Now, if you view it as a PC then sure, make it upgradeable. Excuse a cheap underhand trick, but if you'd read where I said Best way to find out is to hit preview ... and submit your HTML boo boo could have been avoided :-) Seriously, sorry if I upset you, thanks for reading my post, even if we disagree, we're talking.
This is meant to be funny I assume. Just in case anyone reads this literally (engage mission to inform mode) the whole point of a game console is that the performance stays fixed, developers learn to squeeze performance, games just work and so on. Otherwise it's a PC with all its faults as a game platform (engages critical faculties) have I just fallen hook line and sinker for a troll? Best way to find out is to hit preview ... and submit
i emailed this to nvidia as an FYI subject and attached this slashdot discussion, as it reads sort of like an instant petition. :--)
I -really- hope you attached the URL leading to this discussion, not megabytes of text. I've had to live with the consequences of certain thoughtless emails to nVIDIA following Slashdot discussions. I'm hoping that saying so doesn't give some moron ideas which is why I was vague earlier. Why don't people -think- before emailing?
So flame me. Look at my posts, I try to be calm and reasonable, sometimes you have to rant to be heard here. Actually, I started reading Slashdot precisely because someone sent me the previous nVIDIA discussion, so something good can come out of a flame war.
I'm glad I got here early. I recall (can't be bothered to trawl the archives) the debate about nVIDIA and X and Linux getting rather overheated last time. My work was one of the casualties of an idiot negotiation tactic (I'm being vague in case someone tries it again - sigh).
I've been in through the front door of nVIDIA, worked with a couple of their engineers and met a handful of people at various levels. I'm not name dropping or trying to be cool, just maybe trying to establish a modicum of credibility. Most of the folks I met I liked, although the culture gave me a few problems 'cos I'm from Europe.
My point is this: nVIDIA (that's how it's written on my TNT card, wish they'd make their mind up on the capitalisation) is not a monolithic organisation. For all we know 49.5% of them want to do things the Slashdot way, and it might take a just little more polite persuasion to open things up, charm their management, whatever.
Oh please! 3600 fps? For a start, the GeForce does its T&L in (mostly?) hardware, which chews into the 6.2 Gflops. Doing 75 million polys, with all features enabled, even Sony don't claim that much. How will it support higher res with 4 Mbyte of embedded DRAM, it must have a hard enough time paging the textures in and out (yes, go figure) - I hope they compressed their textures like the Dreamcast does, but they're worryingly quiet about that.
Huge kudos to Sony for shipping the beast, especially with the engineering inside the box (awesome) and very well done for an excellent marketing campaign, but, erm, as regards marketing they sort of over-succeeded in your case. Interpreting 3D graphics performance claims meaningfully is one of the harder tasks we're faced with ...
Is this "don't capitalise (ize)" rule another SI edict by any chance? I had a teacher who said that SI units should never be used in the plural to avoid confusing or offending people (e.g German speakers) who don't form plurals like English speakers do, with s, so real life is stranger than any joke you could make up ... just my two cent (sic) worth.
I have a VGA adapter for Dreamcast and the image quality is much better than TV, but yes, you can see the jagged edges on polygons and creepy crawly textures which (wait for it) I'm told are because some developers -prefer- the effect to the proper texture filtering the hardware can manage. When we've got full scene antialiasing and stable anistropic filtered textures, then there's the whole physics thing to get right, and better lighting, accurate shadows and so on. Even if by say the next generation we are able in theory to paint anything we like, and the renderer will do what we tell it to do, I think we won't fully understand how to instruct it in real time even then.
It is really shitty that PSX2 is not going to be compatible with all PSX-1 games as initially thought. Stupid move on Sony's part. These companies invariably fail to see that good backwards compatibility is key to advancement & not a hinderance as simple economic theory might suggest.
We can't condemn Sony for giving game developers low level PSX2 programming details nor the developers for making use of them to get better performance. That's simple economics, because no-one will give an inch to the competition to safeguard the future. Would anyone slip release 3 months or risk a bad review by avoiding dirty tricks? If everyone stuck to the graphics APIs then engineering back compatibility would be easy, but no-one does because coding to the metal always happens. A thought. if the PSX2 hardware has to emulate every quirk of the PSX, imagine what PSX3 (three) back compatibility requires?
Sony just may be the next company I have to boycott. Oh dear, the Slashdot PSX2 boycott (c) Ella the Cat 2000 has started
Yep. The electron beam can't be deflected very far with enough accuracy (we're talking sub-micron) so the wafer itself has to be -mechanically- scanned with the beam more or less fixed but twitching around under the control of laser interferometers.