I host my personal web server on a P120 running Linux 2.2 on some version of RH (doesn't really matter now with all of the other upgrades on the box). It only has 32megs of RAM, but it's happily serving web pages, a SSH server, a MySQL database, and all of the other services that I use from the inside of my network (telnet, ftp, atalk, etc).
It's been running for years now without any problems -- it could probally use a bit more memory, but then again, swap space hasn't even been touched at this point.
All in all, a very good box -- especially considering all of the power outages/brownouts that I've had the past few years. This box just keeps on going.
Only this much: There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content.
So, those 250 million CDRs must all be used for copying music illegally, right? Not one single one is being used for legal copies of music that they already own? Not one is being used by an artist who is recording their own material? Not one is being used by someone making a backup of files on their computer? Not one is being used to burn an ISO of a Linux distro? Not one is being used to make a backup of a software package that they own?
I think they've equated blank CDRs with lost sales when this is clearly wrong. No wonder they are so intense about fighting piracy -- they've based their whole strategy on a faulty assumption.
Now let's get back to the pscychology of buying a unit and not buying games with it: You're screwing yourself out of $200 that way.
What? I don't get it -- I can think of a number of reasons to buy the X-Box without games -- and none of them involve "screwing over MS":
DVD Playback
DiVX Playback
Emulators
Homebrew Games
I think that I can get $200 worth of use out of the X-Box without even buying one game. If the functionality provided by the X-Box meets your needs and is worth the $200, then go for it. The games you buy at Toys R Us and Wal-Mart aren't the only things that make it useful.
It sounds as if Microsoft is pissed because their SDK was used. I don't have an Xbox SDK, but I'd imagine that there is some pretty hefty licensing requirements that disallow posting any code built with it on the net.
Now, if someone manages to build Xbox binaries with other tools (gcc) and without the libraries and headers that come with Microsofts SDKs, I don't think Microsoft will be able to do anything about that.
Take a look at the GameBoy Advance scene -- there are at least two non-Nintendo compiler chains that you can use to build GBA binaries. Plenty of people have their own sets of header files available for use (I have a heavily modified set of my own). Nintendo realises that they can't stop them. But, if any of the offical GBA SDK shows up on the net, better believe it that Nintendo's lawyers are working to quickly get it offline.
So, this doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft's poor business model and everything to do with protecting their intellectual property.
When did this get implemented? As far as I can tell, my mac.com address is still the target of way too much spam... this morning, I had at least 10 emails that I would consider SPAM. Previously, this had been as high as 30...
So it appears that Apple needs to look at this spam filtering system -- anything that removes DNS renewal notices but not the mountains of real spam needs to be fixed.
I'm sitting down and writing this guy a letter -- what a coincidence, he happens to be my rep.
Not only has there not been an accident of this sort in Mass, the area he represents doesn't have any rollercoasters worth mentioning, if at all.
What I don't understand is that he is elected to represent my area -- how does spearheading a bill that's trying to reduce the chances of something thats safer than walking across the street and isn't even a problem at all in my area represent me and the people who are also in this district?
No wonder we have problems -- these guys don't even know what their job is...
I know it's a crusoe, and Linus is obviously working on Linux support -- but, how good is it? I was thinking of something like this as a nice little portable linux box, with GNOME or KDE running on it -- is this box up to it? How does it compare to other machines?
I was also thinking that this could be a nice little box for a network admin -- with the builtin networking, Linux, and the right tools, you can take this with you into those closets and troubleshoot on the spot. And when it's not being used, into the pocket it goes.
So, anyone have any feedback on the Crusoe and Linux in general -- or even better, Linux and this little puppy together?
Actually, it's a ARM 9 series instead of the 7 series in the GBA -- but, I don't know what the differences are.
As far as emulation, it appears that the GP32 has a framebuffer for the video, and no tile modes, sprites, scalling, etc, etc, that allow the GBA to do such really cool stuff with only 16mhz.
The GP32 might be able to do GBA quality games, but not through emulation -- even partial emulation. The GBA hardware is just really really powerful.
I'd imagine that the quality of the games for both of these machines is going to be about the same, with the GBA probally having the upper hand. The GBA has a slower processor, but more advanced graphics capabilities. The GP32 traded the advanced graphics for a faster CPU. Both approaches are valid, and for a company with limited resources, the approach taken with the GP32 is going to be cheaper. With the GBA, Nintendo wanted to make a machine that not only was an advanced handheld, it also had to be reasonably compatible with the SNES and the GB/GBC line. The GBA handles both of those requirements just fine. The GP32 doesn't.
I've also seen people on here talking about MAME ports, and so on -- I don't think that MAME is reasonable for a limited machine. But, since this thing only has a framebuffer, it might be a good start. With the GBA, it has a tile mode that is very similar to a lot of the early hardware that's being emulated -- which makes it real easy to emulate the graphics.
Any emulator for either of these machines should be re-written to take advantage of any capabilities the machines have... in the GP32's case, though, it doesn't appear to have any more capabilities than at souped up PC from the early 90s.:(
I may still get one of these, though. If it proves that emulation on this thing can be done reasonably well (anyone seen PocketNES and Foon on the GBA yet? That's impressive, but they both take advantage of the tile mode the GBA has), this may be fun to have in the bag along with the GBA for long trips. But, not being able to stop into a local store for new games is a definite disadvantage.
Oh, and as far as programming the GBA goes, you haven't really had fun programming until you try programming for the GBA -- things that take lots of coding on the PC (sprites, paralax scrolling, rotation, scaling) are all available in hardware on the GBA. You can make a small program to move a sprite around quite easily. And if assembly language is something you are interested in, you can't get a better platform to learn on than the ARM -- it's a joy to program for compared to the x86 or even other RISC processors like the PPC.
So, to sum up my long rant, if you're interested programming for consoles, and want to get in cheaply, it looks like the GBA or the GP32 would be a nice start, with the GBA being a better (IMHO) platform to start with. The GBA has much more support in the homebrew community already, with gcc already targeting the GBA, and tons of source code available for use. I can't imagine that the tools for the GP32 are too far behind, being based on the same CPU family, and standard interfaces like SMC and USB. But, even still, the GBA has the leg up, especially if you want it for something more than just playing homebrew games and a handful of games in Korean.
Either way you go, programming for a console is very fun -- you have complete control of the machine, with no OS to get in your way. You have a blank slate, so go write what you want.
The other advantage is that Disneys own systems could authorize the sale over the Disney card instead of having to send out to a Visa/MC/AmEx authorizer off site-- it would be considerably faster that way (since the system could be built up front to support the average # of visitors on site), especially during holiday seasons...
And cheaper as well... by combining all of those credit transactions into a single transaction at the end of the stay or the day, they can save some of the merchant fees as well.
I think they already do this to a degree -- as I recall from two years ago, you could have some things charged to your room if you stayed in one of their resorts. This could just be an extension of that.
It says this covers 47 square miles... that's the entire Disney World property -- including the resorts. They might check your bags coming into the parks, but they sure ain't going to be checking all of your baggage for laptops -- especially since laptops aren't banned!
But, it does make it a bit easier to find you, doesn't it, if you're sitting in your hotel room with a laptop?
Of course, the impression I got after all of this, was that if I couldn't vote against them in an upcoming election, they didn't care about my opinion.
As it should be. I don't want to elect someone to represent you... I want to elect someone to represent me.
What do you need the slots for? Is it for the video card? The iMac already has it. Is it for a Firewire card? Already built in. Wireless access? Already there. Ethernet? Modem? There and there.
Most people don't need the slots. If you do, more power to you. But, if you really don't need it, why pay for it?
Have you really used Mozilla for any amount of time?
On a Celeron 700mhz Dell laptop, Mozilla.9.3 felt just as fast as IE, if not faster at times (when going back to a previous page, etc.). With the fast start feature, it's just as easy to start Mozilla as IE. On my iBook (366mhz, 320mb RAM), Mozilla is again as fast as IE on the same box.
I'm using.9.4 right now, and I'm pretty impressed. If 1.0 is optimized and relatively bug-free, then IE is going to be left behind (technical not market). This browser has given me some new hope in what was Netscape.
I went with the BEFSR41. It has 4 ports, which in theory, should be plenty for me... though, at times, I do have to swap out one of the ports for the work laptop (damn).
Anyway, why did I go with this? Well, originally, I had a 486 with Linux Router running. This worked great. Boots off a floppy, and works like a champ. Drawbacks? Well, there is a few:
- hard to configure at first. Once configured, though, I didn't have to mess with it.
- Loud fan. With 4 other machines in the office, another fan was something I didn't need.
- IPSec. There is IPSec support, but to get it, I had to reconfigure the kernel, and setup some ipchains. I could never get it to work right for limiting it for one machine without exposing my network, so it was highly annoying.
- ISA Bus. I had two 3c509 cards that had really bad latency for network games. Bandwidth wasn't a problem. If all you are doing is downloading off the web, then it's not an issue. But, playing Starcraft was just about impossible.
After I had already had the Linux router setup, I planned to buy the Linksys 4 port router + wireless access point. But, when I bought one early this year, I had too many problems with it. I ended up exchanging it for a WAP11 model which was just the access point. I'm glad I did, because I was able to get the WAP11 for 100 bucks off, and with the greater range of the WAP11, it's worth it.
So, back to the router. Since I had the WAP11, and all of the drawbacks above, I purchased the BEFSR41. This has worked great. It stacks right on top of the WAP11, and one of the 4 ports connects straight to it. The drawback of course is that I had to spend a bit more than the combo model and I now have two boxes and one less port (the combo model has 4 ports as well).
Since then, Linksys has upgraded the firmware on the combo model. If you are looking for wireless access and a router, go with it. Otherwise, go with one of the Linksys router only boxes. There are a few to choose from.
Anyway, it could be argued that while there are usually two successful boxes, there is usually a dominant box... Sega wasn't really successful with the SMS, they just hung on to second place... which gave them the opportunity to work on the Genesis and beat Nintendo to the 16-bit era. Not that it really helped.
In the 32/64 bit era (the 3rd wave... actually, the 4th wave... you forgot the early consoles), the 64 played second to sony. Sony was the hard core gaming machine, even though it was 32 bit and the graphics couldn't compare to the 64. The 64 was the kids machine... but, the 64 never had the range of games that the PSX had... and that can be blamed on the fact that Nintendo went with carts instead of CD-ROMS and Nintendo's licensing policy.
So, in the 5th wave, we already have the PSX2 and Dreamcast... we already know the Dreamcast is out. I still haven't seen a lot with the PSX2 that impresses the heck out of me, but, with it's library of PSX games, it's going to be hard to knock down.
Nintendo has strength with the GameCube, but it has to face a number of problems:
- Nintendo's licensing -- until the GameCube is dying off, you won't see a rush of so-so games that attract a lot of sales because they are so cheap. Until then, you'll get great games, but a limited number of them, therefore, early adopters will be disappointed by the lack of games. (Anyone remember the N64 launch?)
- The XBox is based on off-the-shelf PC hardware. There is a lot of developers who know NOW how to get great performance out of this box. Plus, it should be easy to port the constant stream of games over. I don't know how Microsoft's licensing is going to be, but if it's any bit more lax than Nintendo's, there will be a ton of games for it by Christmas.
- Backwards compatibility. The PSX2 is backwards compatible to the PSX... and it plays DVDs.... this is all most families need to justify going PSX2 over the GameCube or XBox.
Sony is on the right track... they are following the same trail blazed by Nintendo in the handheld market -- get the machine out there with tons of games... when you upgrade it, make sure it still plays the old game. Too bad Nintendo didn't use the same logic with the consoles.
This is great, in my opinion. Faster processor, with backward compatibility. And no sacrificing the easy to use PalmOS. At least if Palm does it right:)
The ARM has a number of advantages over the Dragonball/68k line. One of which is that it is designed to be used in battery powered devices such as the Palm and the GameBoy Advance. The current Palms run between 16-33mhz. You can even overclock them (in software!) to run faster. The ARM chip in the Palm should be running at 200mhz.
Why such a jump? Well, there are a couple of reasons:
- 68k emulation. To run the old dragonball apps, you'll need to emulate a 68k. I'm going to guess here, and say that instead of using something like POSE running under a new OS, they will instead go the same route Apple did. The core OS will be written in ARM, and the 68k code when calling a trap, will run code natively on the ARM. i.e, OS routines will run at full speed.
- Multimedia. I don't think that the Palm will be ready to run very much in the line of movies, but MP3 playback becomes very practical. Along with other things such as dictation, telephony, etc, etc. The extra boost of speed will definetly help here.
- OS functions. I currently have a Visor Deluxe, with about 800k free. And the thing is slow at times. If I go to check info, delete an app, whatever, it takes 10-15 seconds just to get the list. After that, it's cached so it appears instantly, but the initial time it's slow. And once another app is started, the cache is gone. In addition, the Find function isn't exactly the fastest thing in the world. The extra speed will help here.
As far as the PalmOS goes, I think that the ARM version will be an evolution of the current version. I'm sure we'll see Palm push different screen sizes, we already have some variations on the market now (Sony's Clie - 320x320, for one). 160x160 will probally become the minimum size.
I think another thing that will happen is that Palm tosses out the current kernel they use, and use another kernel that they can actually expose to the developer. This will allow things like MP3 playback to continue in the background while other applications continue to run -- a kernel thread would handle it. I don't see Palm getting rid of the single application running scheme -- it just works so well, and prevents things like out-of-memory errors from occuring because you have 20 programs open (WinCE/PocketPC).
Palm knows what they need to do. I think they want to make the transition to ARM as seemless as can be. This means making source code compatible (as much as possible) between the Dragonball and ARM version. If programming an ARM version of the Palm is completely different than the 68k version, developers may just get up and move to WinCE.
On the other hand, I would imagine that most developers could write 68k version and allow the emulation to handle running it under the ARM. For most apps, you don't need the power of the ARM. And on the ARM, those apps would benefit from the faster CPU (for OS functions).
Palm has a lot of ex-Apple employees (or at least they did:) working for them, so I'm sure they are studying the 68k->PPC transition that Apple pulled off. Don't expect the radical (completely new OS) on this, but expect a smooth transition... they have way too much investment built around the 68k Palm (both in binaries and source code) to just throw it away for a different CPU.
This is going to be an exciting time for both Palm users and developers. I personally can't wait until I can buy a ARM based Palm of the shelf at the local computer store.
While I would prefer that there was downloadable SDKs available on Nintendo's website, complete with examples and sniplets of code, you probally won't see it.
Why?
Nintendo wants their products to have a complete pollished look to them... something that most non-professional (notice, I said most... ) software lacks. Granted, some of the professional titles are pretty shoddy looking as well...
Anyway, if Nintendo officially endorsed it, you would have 200 Tetris clones in a week... and maybe 1 or 2 would look as nice as the Tetris that originally came with the Game Boy 12 years ago.
So, what does that leave? Well, there are a number of websites that have been documenting the AGB, as well as the CGB and more. There is a large community of developers working to figure out the AGB. In addition to game writers, there are emulator writers, and developer tool writers as well.
Currently, the development environment is a bit, well, on the slim side... but, you can already use gcc to write code for the AGB. There is even work on a cable that would allow you to download code to the AGB through the link port from your PC... no flash card needed. Even Nintendo doesn't offer that (yet).
Anyway, I think it's much more interesting to go about developing for the AGB this way... it's like early Linux kernel development. Lot's of unknowns, and everyday brings a new piece of knowledge. Pretty cool!
If anyone wants more info, go to http://www.devrs.com/
I would've posted this to the article's forum, but it looks like it would get drowned out with all the mumbling about be (side note to be fans: Get Over It).
Anyway, it would be interesting to hear about what steps Kurt had to go through to bootstrap to OS to a usable state. Was initial development done under Linux, DOS/Windows, or some other OS? Was there a lot of rebooting going? I've never written my own OS, or even just code that is loaded by the BIOS as an OS would be, even if all the code does is write "Hello World!" to the screen.
Kurt, if you're reading this and you don't mind, a bit of background info would be nice. Thanks in advance.
Just place a machine on your network hosting a porn website, a Napster client with 1000's of songs, and a Hotline server with all of the above, plus VCDs and Warez...
Slashdot Mirror
I host my personal web server on a P120 running Linux 2.2 on some version of RH (doesn't really matter now with all of the other upgrades on the box). It only has 32megs of RAM, but it's happily serving web pages, a SSH server, a MySQL database, and all of the other services that I use from the inside of my network (telnet, ftp, atalk, etc).
It's been running for years now without any problems -- it could probally use a bit more memory, but then again, swap space hasn't even been touched at this point.
All in all, a very good box -- especially considering all of the power outages/brownouts that I've had the past few years. This box just keeps on going.
So, I'd imagine the next version of their software has safeguards for the /. effect :)
From the article:
Only this much: There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content.
So, those 250 million CDRs must all be used for copying music illegally, right? Not one single one is being used for legal copies of music that they already own? Not one is being used by an artist who is recording their own material? Not one is being used by someone making a backup of files on their computer? Not one is being used to burn an ISO of a Linux distro? Not one is being used to make a backup of a software package that they own?
I think they've equated blank CDRs with lost sales when this is clearly wrong. No wonder they are so intense about fighting piracy -- they've based their whole strategy on a faulty assumption.
Now let's get back to the pscychology of buying a unit and not buying games with it: You're screwing yourself out of $200 that way.
What? I don't get it -- I can think of a number of reasons to buy the X-Box without games -- and none of them involve "screwing over MS":
DVD Playback
DiVX Playback
Emulators
Homebrew Games
I think that I can get $200 worth of use out of the X-Box without even buying one game. If the functionality provided by the X-Box meets your needs and is worth the $200, then go for it. The games you buy at Toys R Us and Wal-Mart aren't the only things that make it useful.
according to the article, he sold "a line of 413 pirated video games" -- that's a little more than just selling modchips.
It sounds as if Microsoft is pissed because their SDK was used. I don't have an Xbox SDK, but I'd imagine that there is some pretty hefty licensing requirements that disallow posting any code built with it on the net.
Now, if someone manages to build Xbox binaries with other tools (gcc) and without the libraries and headers that come with Microsofts SDKs, I don't think Microsoft will be able to do anything about that.
Take a look at the GameBoy Advance scene -- there are at least two non-Nintendo compiler chains that you can use to build GBA binaries. Plenty of people have their own sets of header files available for use (I have a heavily modified set of my own). Nintendo realises that they can't stop them. But, if any of the offical GBA SDK shows up on the net, better believe it that Nintendo's lawyers are working to quickly get it offline.
So, this doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft's poor business model and everything to do with protecting their intellectual property.
When did this get implemented? As far as I can tell, my mac.com address is still the target of way too much spam... this morning, I had at least 10 emails that I would consider SPAM. Previously, this had been as high as 30...
So it appears that Apple needs to look at this spam filtering system -- anything that removes DNS renewal notices but not the mountains of real spam needs to be fixed.
I'm sitting down and writing this guy a letter -- what a coincidence, he happens to be my rep.
Not only has there not been an accident of this sort in Mass, the area he represents doesn't have any rollercoasters worth mentioning, if at all.
What I don't understand is that he is elected to represent my area -- how does spearheading a bill that's trying to reduce the chances of something thats safer than walking across the street and isn't even a problem at all in my area represent me and the people who are also in this district?
No wonder we have problems -- these guys don't even know what their job is...
I know it's a crusoe, and Linus is obviously working on Linux support -- but, how good is it? I was thinking of something like this as a nice little portable linux box, with GNOME or KDE running on it -- is this box up to it? How does it compare to other machines?
I was also thinking that this could be a nice little box for a network admin -- with the builtin networking, Linux, and the right tools, you can take this with you into those closets and troubleshoot on the spot. And when it's not being used, into the pocket it goes.
So, anyone have any feedback on the Crusoe and Linux in general -- or even better, Linux and this little puppy together?
Actually, it's a ARM 9 series instead of the 7 series in the GBA -- but, I don't know what the differences are.
:(
As far as emulation, it appears that the GP32 has a framebuffer for the video, and no tile modes, sprites, scalling, etc, etc, that allow the GBA to do such really cool stuff with only 16mhz.
The GP32 might be able to do GBA quality games, but not through emulation -- even partial emulation. The GBA hardware is just really really powerful.
I'd imagine that the quality of the games for both of these machines is going to be about the same, with the GBA probally having the upper hand. The GBA has a slower processor, but more advanced graphics capabilities. The GP32 traded the advanced graphics for a faster CPU. Both approaches are valid, and for a company with limited resources, the approach taken with the GP32 is going to be cheaper. With the GBA, Nintendo wanted to make a machine that not only was an advanced handheld, it also had to be reasonably compatible with the SNES and the GB/GBC line. The GBA handles both of those requirements just fine. The GP32 doesn't.
I've also seen people on here talking about MAME ports, and so on -- I don't think that MAME is reasonable for a limited machine. But, since this thing only has a framebuffer, it might be a good start. With the GBA, it has a tile mode that is very similar to a lot of the early hardware that's being emulated -- which makes it real easy to emulate the graphics.
Any emulator for either of these machines should be re-written to take advantage of any capabilities the machines have... in the GP32's case, though, it doesn't appear to have any more capabilities than at souped up PC from the early 90s.
I may still get one of these, though. If it proves that emulation on this thing can be done reasonably well (anyone seen PocketNES and Foon on the GBA yet? That's impressive, but they both take advantage of the tile mode the GBA has), this may be fun to have in the bag along with the GBA for long trips. But, not being able to stop into a local store for new games is a definite disadvantage.
Oh, and as far as programming the GBA goes, you haven't really had fun programming until you try programming for the GBA -- things that take lots of coding on the PC (sprites, paralax scrolling, rotation, scaling) are all available in hardware on the GBA. You can make a small program to move a sprite around quite easily. And if assembly language is something you are interested in, you can't get a better platform to learn on than the ARM -- it's a joy to program for compared to the x86 or even other RISC processors like the PPC.
So, to sum up my long rant, if you're interested programming for consoles, and want to get in cheaply, it looks like the GBA or the GP32 would be a nice start, with the GBA being a better (IMHO) platform to start with. The GBA has much more support in the homebrew community already, with gcc already targeting the GBA, and tons of source code available for use. I can't imagine that the tools for the GP32 are too far behind, being based on the same CPU family, and standard interfaces like SMC and USB. But, even still, the GBA has the leg up, especially if you want it for something more than just playing homebrew games and a handful of games in Korean.
Either way you go, programming for a console is very fun -- you have complete control of the machine, with no OS to get in your way. You have a blank slate, so go write what you want.
The other advantage is that Disneys own systems could authorize the sale over the Disney card instead of having to send out to a Visa/MC/AmEx authorizer off site-- it would be considerably faster that way (since the system could be built up front to support the average # of visitors on site), especially during holiday seasons...
And cheaper as well... by combining all of those credit transactions into a single transaction at the end of the stay or the day, they can save some of the merchant fees as well.
I think they already do this to a degree -- as I recall from two years ago, you could have some things charged to your room if you stayed in one of their resorts. This could just be an extension of that.
It says this covers 47 square miles... that's the entire Disney World property -- including the resorts. They might check your bags coming into the parks, but they sure ain't going to be checking all of your baggage for laptops -- especially since laptops aren't banned!
But, it does make it a bit easier to find you, doesn't it, if you're sitting in your hotel room with a laptop?
The iPod does have a 5GB drive, not a 10GB. But, it is pretty darn small. :)
The system promises fewer computer crashes and will allow users to delete data from their hard drive.
Of course, the impression I got after all of this, was that if I couldn't vote against them in an upcoming election, they didn't care about my opinion.
As it should be. I don't want to elect someone to represent you ... I want to elect someone to represent me .
May I ask a question?
What do you need the slots for? Is it for the video card? The iMac already has it. Is it for a Firewire card? Already built in. Wireless access? Already there. Ethernet? Modem? There and there.
Most people don't need the slots. If you do, more power to you. But, if you really don't need it, why pay for it?
Have you really used Mozilla for any amount of time?
.9.3 felt just as fast as IE, if not faster at times (when going back to a previous page, etc.). With the fast start feature, it's just as easy to start Mozilla as IE. On my iBook (366mhz, 320mb RAM), Mozilla is again as fast as IE on the same box.
.9.4 right now, and I'm pretty impressed. If 1.0 is optimized and relatively bug-free, then IE is going to be left behind (technical not market). This browser has given me some new hope in what was Netscape.
On a Celeron 700mhz Dell laptop, Mozilla
I'm using
I went with the BEFSR41. It has 4 ports, which in theory, should be plenty for me... though, at times, I do have to swap out one of the ports for the work laptop (damn).
Anyway, why did I go with this? Well, originally, I had a 486 with Linux Router running. This worked great. Boots off a floppy, and works like a champ. Drawbacks? Well, there is a few:
- hard to configure at first. Once configured, though, I didn't have to mess with it.
- Loud fan. With 4 other machines in the office, another fan was something I didn't need.
- IPSec. There is IPSec support, but to get it, I had to reconfigure the kernel, and setup some ipchains. I could never get it to work right for limiting it for one machine without exposing my network, so it was highly annoying.
- ISA Bus. I had two 3c509 cards that had really bad latency for network games. Bandwidth wasn't a problem. If all you are doing is downloading off the web, then it's not an issue. But, playing Starcraft was just about impossible.
After I had already had the Linux router setup, I planned to buy the Linksys 4 port router + wireless access point. But, when I bought one early this year, I had too many problems with it. I ended up exchanging it for a WAP11 model which was just the access point. I'm glad I did, because I was able to get the WAP11 for 100 bucks off, and with the greater range of the WAP11, it's worth it.
So, back to the router. Since I had the WAP11, and all of the drawbacks above, I purchased the BEFSR41. This has worked great. It stacks right on top of the WAP11, and one of the 4 ports connects straight to it. The drawback of course is that I had to spend a bit more than the combo model and I now have two boxes and one less port (the combo model has 4 ports as well).
Since then, Linksys has upgraded the firmware on the combo model. If you are looking for wireless access and a router, go with it. Otherwise, go with one of the Linksys router only boxes. There are a few to choose from.
Where machines suddenly exceed human intelligence and the future becomes completely unpredictable.
It's funny to see someone predicting the future and at the end of their prediction ruling out the possibility of future predictions.
My prediction: That this prediction will end up like the majority of predictions -- wrong.
32-bit: PlayStation, Nintendo 64
What? The N64 is 64-bit... hence the name.
Anyway, it could be argued that while there are usually two successful boxes, there is usually a dominant box... Sega wasn't really successful with the SMS, they just hung on to second place... which gave them the opportunity to work on the Genesis and beat Nintendo to the 16-bit era. Not that it really helped.
In the 32/64 bit era (the 3rd wave... actually, the 4th wave... you forgot the early consoles), the 64 played second to sony. Sony was the hard core gaming machine, even though it was 32 bit and the graphics couldn't compare to the 64. The 64 was the kids machine... but, the 64 never had the range of games that the PSX had... and that can be blamed on the fact that Nintendo went with carts instead of CD-ROMS and Nintendo's licensing policy.
So, in the 5th wave, we already have the PSX2 and Dreamcast... we already know the Dreamcast is out. I still haven't seen a lot with the PSX2 that impresses the heck out of me, but, with it's library of PSX games, it's going to be hard to knock down.
Nintendo has strength with the GameCube, but it has to face a number of problems:
- Nintendo's licensing -- until the GameCube is dying off, you won't see a rush of so-so games that attract a lot of sales because they are so cheap. Until then, you'll get great games, but a limited number of them, therefore, early adopters will be disappointed by the lack of games. (Anyone remember the N64 launch?)
- The XBox is based on off-the-shelf PC hardware. There is a lot of developers who know NOW how to get great performance out of this box. Plus, it should be easy to port the constant stream of games over. I don't know how Microsoft's licensing is going to be, but if it's any bit more lax than Nintendo's, there will be a ton of games for it by Christmas.
- Backwards compatibility. The PSX2 is backwards compatible to the PSX... and it plays DVDs.... this is all most families need to justify going PSX2 over the GameCube or XBox.
Sony is on the right track... they are following the same trail blazed by Nintendo in the handheld market -- get the machine out there with tons of games... when you upgrade it, make sure it still plays the old game. Too bad Nintendo didn't use the same logic with the consoles.
This is great, in my opinion. Faster processor, with backward compatibility. And no sacrificing the easy to use PalmOS. At least if Palm does it right :)
:) working for them, so I'm sure they are studying the 68k->PPC transition that Apple pulled off. Don't expect the radical (completely new OS) on this, but expect a smooth transition... they have way too much investment built around the 68k Palm (both in binaries and source code) to just throw it away for a different CPU.
The ARM has a number of advantages over the Dragonball/68k line. One of which is that it is designed to be used in battery powered devices such as the Palm and the GameBoy Advance. The current Palms run between 16-33mhz. You can even overclock them (in software!) to run faster. The ARM chip in the Palm should be running at 200mhz.
Why such a jump? Well, there are a couple of reasons:
- 68k emulation. To run the old dragonball apps, you'll need to emulate a 68k. I'm going to guess here, and say that instead of using something like POSE running under a new OS, they will instead go the same route Apple did. The core OS will be written in ARM, and the 68k code when calling a trap, will run code natively on the ARM. i.e, OS routines will run at full speed.
- Multimedia. I don't think that the Palm will be ready to run very much in the line of movies, but MP3 playback becomes very practical. Along with other things such as dictation, telephony, etc, etc. The extra boost of speed will definetly help here.
- OS functions. I currently have a Visor Deluxe, with about 800k free. And the thing is slow at times. If I go to check info, delete an app, whatever, it takes 10-15 seconds just to get the list. After that, it's cached so it appears instantly, but the initial time it's slow. And once another app is started, the cache is gone. In addition, the Find function isn't exactly the fastest thing in the world. The extra speed will help here.
As far as the PalmOS goes, I think that the ARM version will be an evolution of the current version. I'm sure we'll see Palm push different screen sizes, we already have some variations on the market now (Sony's Clie - 320x320, for one). 160x160 will probally become the minimum size.
I think another thing that will happen is that Palm tosses out the current kernel they use, and use another kernel that they can actually expose to the developer. This will allow things like MP3 playback to continue in the background while other applications continue to run -- a kernel thread would handle it. I don't see Palm getting rid of the single application running scheme -- it just works so well, and prevents things like out-of-memory errors from occuring because you have 20 programs open (WinCE/PocketPC).
Palm knows what they need to do. I think they want to make the transition to ARM as seemless as can be. This means making source code compatible (as much as possible) between the Dragonball and ARM version. If programming an ARM version of the Palm is completely different than the 68k version, developers may just get up and move to WinCE.
On the other hand, I would imagine that most developers could write 68k version and allow the emulation to handle running it under the ARM. For most apps, you don't need the power of the ARM. And on the ARM, those apps would benefit from the faster CPU (for OS functions).
Palm has a lot of ex-Apple employees (or at least they did
This is going to be an exciting time for both Palm users and developers. I personally can't wait until I can buy a ARM based Palm of the shelf at the local computer store.
(the only trick would be to steal the information slowly enough so that Microsoft wouldn't notice).
You mean like they noticed their source code to Windows being stolen?
While I would prefer that there was downloadable SDKs available on Nintendo's website, complete with examples and sniplets of code, you probally won't see it.
Why?
Nintendo wants their products to have a complete pollished look to them... something that most non-professional (notice, I said most... ) software lacks. Granted, some of the professional titles are pretty shoddy looking as well...
Anyway, if Nintendo officially endorsed it, you would have 200 Tetris clones in a week... and maybe 1 or 2 would look as nice as the Tetris that originally came with the Game Boy 12 years ago.
So, what does that leave? Well, there are a number of websites that have been documenting the AGB, as well as the CGB and more. There is a large community of developers working to figure out the AGB. In addition to game writers, there are emulator writers, and developer tool writers as well.
Currently, the development environment is a bit, well, on the slim side... but, you can already use gcc to write code for the AGB. There is even work on a cable that would allow you to download code to the AGB through the link port from your PC... no flash card needed. Even Nintendo doesn't offer that (yet).
Anyway, I think it's much more interesting to go about developing for the AGB this way... it's like early Linux kernel development. Lot's of unknowns, and everyday brings a new piece of knowledge. Pretty cool!
If anyone wants more info, go to http://www.devrs.com/
I would've posted this to the article's forum, but it looks like it would get drowned out with all the mumbling about be (side note to be fans: Get Over It).
Anyway, it would be interesting to hear about what steps Kurt had to go through to bootstrap to OS to a usable state. Was initial development done under Linux, DOS/Windows, or some other OS? Was there a lot of rebooting going? I've never written my own OS, or even just code that is loaded by the BIOS as an OS would be, even if all the code does is write "Hello World!" to the screen.
Kurt, if you're reading this and you don't mind, a bit of background info would be nice. Thanks in advance.
Just place a machine on your network hosting a porn website, a Napster client with 1000's of songs, and a Hotline server with all of the above, plus VCDs and Warez...
Simple. Your bandwidth is gone.