I've been looking for a small platform for MP3s, DivX, etc. It seems that the 800MHz C3 is almost powerful enough for me.
All the reviews I've read seem to indicate the same thing:
On default settings, all video is VERY jumpy and out of sync, with both Media Player and The Player 2.0. However, when I lowered the DIVX quality settings (Start-Programs-DivX-DivX Pro Codec-Decoder Configuration) to the minimum, all playback was perfect.
The EPIA M (for Multimedia) boards debut in October. I'm hoping they'll use a somewhat more powerful processor in those.
It's not a mini sparc (nor a P3, for that matter). Read the link: "recycles a SparcStation IPX from 40 Mhz Sparc to 800 Mhz Via C3." That is - he used an old SparcStation for the case and put an (x86) Via CPU in.
Try reading the linked articles! They were given press passes but the passes were revoked after Apple changed its mind and decided they didn't want people from those sites coming. The passes were even confirmed, then taken away.
Yep. Win95 sucked ass, 98 slightly less so - so there was a big reason to upgrade. Win2k is actually a somewhat reasonable and reliable operating system, so there's much less incentive to follow along with Microsoft's forced upgrade plans.
(checking it out...) It's hosted by some no-name company ("worldcom exchange"). Who cares what it runs. It's just a crappy site put together by some irrelevant company.
You'll notice page 16 is also blank. My guess: they printed the questions out on both sides of the paper. By making each question 2 pages long the contest pack could be separated into individual questions.
Some sources define a megabit to mean 1,048,576 (that is, 220 ) bits. Although the bit is a unit of the binary number system, bits in data communications are discrete signal pulses and have historically been counted using the decimal number system. For example, 28.8 kilobits per second (Kbps ) is 28,800 bits per second. Because of computer architecture and memory address boundaries, bytes are always some multiple or exponent of two. See kilobyte, etc.
So what's that mean? An ISDN 64Kbps B channel is, in fact, 64000 bits per second. A typical 115.2Kbps maximum rate on a PC's serial port is 115200 bits per second.
Hard drives are also measured using SI definitions. The power-of-2 definitions come from memory. Memory devices often inherently have power-of-two sizes, since the n address bits going into a memory provide 2^n addressable cells. Hard drives have no inherent reason to be a power-of-2 size so SI units make much more sense.
That's exactly what I tought when I found the TINI. Just to avoid any confusion, I haven't had anything to do with the MP3elf other than being impressed with its design. One of the developers has already commented on this thread.
Their ver. 1 design uses a FIFO and another 8051 uC acting as a serial to parallel converter. The ver. 2 design actually bit-bangs the serial interface to the MP3 decoder!
That being said, I'm quite impressed with the SliMP3 as well, and it's quite a nice and attractive package. I'm more interested in the MP3elf though because I'd really like to do something myself. My player will have a TINI and the basics of the elf at its core; I'm not sure what else I'm going to add to it just yet. The cool thing is the TINI takes care of all of the input side, so I only have to worry about the MP3 decoder and DAC.
There's a virtual petition against the proposed media levy increases at Sycorp. They collected more than 25000 "signatures" when the levy was first proposed; there's 572 on the list as I write this.
Fellow Canadians, head over and have a look, and sign it if you want to communicate your "strong disapproval with the levy on blank recording media."
$50.00 USD gets you 512KB of SRAM and 512KB of Flash; for an extra $17.00 you get 1MB of SRAM. I wanted to build my own ethernet+flash+sram+microcontroller board, but the TINI is so cheap it wasn't worth it to spend the time rolling my own. Unfortunately they're so popular they've got about a 2 month lead time.
Here's a link to Dallas/Maxim's TINI info, and pricing info is available at their online store.
It is the ONLY completely open-source player, and the ONLY one to use a high quality vacuum fluorescent display instead of a tiny backlit LCD.
Have you seen the mp3elf? It's completely open source, including the hardware design. It uses the TINI from Dallas / Maxim to handle the ethernet / TCP/IP side of things. I've ordered a couple of TINIs since they seem really cool and cheap, too - as soon as mine comes in I'm going to put a mp3elf together.
I've got a string of LED Christmas lights. They were on sale for about $5 CAD last January and I just couldn't refuse.
You certainly can notice the flicker, especially if you or the lights are moving. Since they are diodes, they only conduct in one direction; they're off for half the time.
A regular bulb doesn't flicker much at all since the filament basically stays hot continuously. A fluorescent light flickers, but at 120Hz; there's two zero-crossings (and hence two periods where it's not producing light) per cycle. These flicker at 60Hz and I can definately notice it.
I bought a string of 60 outdoor LED lights at Walmart last January when they were dumping all their Christmas stuff. It was about $5.00 Canadian, regular price $16.95.
They are Noma "Forever Bright" lights and they're neat because the LEDs have a little plastic sphere molded over them to make them look like bulbs. The 60Hz flicker is annoying though.
Your gas pedal really does not control gas flow directly; instead it is a potentiometer that sends a signal to a computer.
That's not completely true, at least in every car I'm aware of. While it is true that the "gas" pedal doesn't actually control the flow of gas, the "gas" pedal isn't just an input to a computer.
The way the "gas" pedal normally works is there's a cable running from the pedal to the air intake valve on the throttle body. When you step on the "gas" pedal, you're really opening up the air intake. This is the same way older, non-computerized cars worked.
With fuel injection, the computer looks at a number of inputs, including the throttle position sensor (i.e. how hard you're pressing the "gas" pedal) and sensors in the exhaust stream to decide how much gas to squirt in.
In my opinion, fitting either of an Ethernet driver or (especially!) a FAT32 IDE driver into an 8 bit processor with less than 1K of ram is quite an accomplishment!
I like the waste-their-time approach when I've got time to spare, otherwise the don't call list is best.
My favourite is to tell them I need to put them on hold. They either hang up right away, or I put the phone down and see how long they hang on. I had one wait for about ten minutes!
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All the reviews I've read seem to indicate the same thing:
The EPIA M (for Multimedia) boards debut in October. I'm hoping they'll use a somewhat more powerful processor in those.
Better DOS than DOS, you know.
Better Windows than Windows.
That's OS/2 v2.0
Not much, really; you'd just be slowing down some open relay in China.
Here's a nice list from FreeBSD. Some of those are products that can be used with FreeBSD and some are products based on FreeBSD.
Or it could be the French judge... :)
(checking it out...) It's hosted by some no-name company ("worldcom exchange"). Who cares what it runs. It's just a crappy site put together by some irrelevant company.
Read this:
So what's that mean? An ISDN 64Kbps B channel is, in fact, 64000 bits per second. A typical 115.2Kbps maximum rate on a PC's serial port is 115200 bits per second.
Hard drives are also measured using SI definitions. The power-of-2 definitions come from memory. Memory devices often inherently have power-of-two sizes, since the n address bits going into a memory provide 2^n addressable cells. Hard drives have no inherent reason to be a power-of-2 size so SI units make much more sense.
Or check out the MP3 project liast at mp3projects.com.
Their ver. 1 design uses a FIFO and another 8051 uC acting as a serial to parallel converter. The ver. 2 design actually bit-bangs the serial interface to the MP3 decoder!
That being said, I'm quite impressed with the SliMP3 as well, and it's quite a nice and attractive package. I'm more interested in the MP3elf though because I'd really like to do something myself. My player will have a TINI and the basics of the elf at its core; I'm not sure what else I'm going to add to it just yet. The cool thing is the TINI takes care of all of the input side, so I only have to worry about the MP3 decoder and DAC.
Fellow Canadians, head over and have a look, and sign it if you want to communicate your "strong disapproval with the levy on blank recording media."
Here's a link to Dallas/Maxim's TINI info, and pricing info is available at their online store.
Have you seen the mp3elf? It's completely open source, including the hardware design. It uses the TINI from Dallas / Maxim to handle the ethernet / TCP/IP side of things. I've ordered a couple of TINIs since they seem really cool and cheap, too - as soon as mine comes in I'm going to put a mp3elf together.
Of course, the Tent of Doom page lives on at jwz.org.
You certainly can notice the flicker, especially if you or the lights are moving. Since they are diodes, they only conduct in one direction; they're off for half the time.
A regular bulb doesn't flicker much at all since the filament basically stays hot continuously. A fluorescent light flickers, but at 120Hz; there's two zero-crossings (and hence two periods where it's not producing light) per cycle. These flicker at 60Hz and I can definately notice it.
They are Noma "Forever Bright" lights and they're neat because the LEDs have a little plastic sphere molded over them to make them look like bulbs. The 60Hz flicker is annoying though.
That's not completely true, at least in every car I'm aware of. While it is true that the "gas" pedal doesn't actually control the flow of gas, the "gas" pedal isn't just an input to a computer.
The way the "gas" pedal normally works is there's a cable running from the pedal to the air intake valve on the throttle body. When you step on the "gas" pedal, you're really opening up the air intake. This is the same way older, non-computerized cars worked.
With fuel injection, the computer looks at a number of inputs, including the throttle position sensor (i.e. how hard you're pressing the "gas" pedal) and sensors in the exhaust stream to decide how much gas to squirt in.
What's the big deal with that? Micronas has had their MAS3507D MP3 decoder available for several years!
Some cool real DIY MP3 projects are Mike Neufield's Ethernet-based remote audio player using an Atmel 8 bit 8535 processor, and Pieter Conradie's FAT32 Hard-drive-based MP3 Player with 512 bytes of SRAM. Both of these were entries to Circuit Cellar's recent design contest.
In my opinion, fitting either of an Ethernet driver or (especially!) a FAT32 IDE driver into an 8 bit processor with less than 1K of ram is quite an accomplishment!
My favourite is to tell them I need to put them on hold. They either hang up right away, or I put the phone down and see how long they hang on. I had one wait for about ten minutes!