Okay, but once you have the controller and the drive, how do you hook them up? You either need to find an expensive drive backplane arrangement, or else you need to buy some expensive T-cards and expensive cables, or else you need to buy a bunch of components and wires and make your own T-cards using your expensive time. And that's just for copper cabling. If you pick up an optical controller, I hope you can find an MIA (media interface adapter) for under $400. I sure haven't seen any.
Actually, as far as internal SCSI connectors go, there's only 3 types: IDC-50, HD-68, and HD-80. And HD-80 doesn't really count, since that type isn't cabled (it's meant only for hot-swap drives that plug into a backplane). Even so, you can take a drive with any one of these connectors and plug it into just about any SCSI controller (using a plug adapter if necessary), and it should work, though it might slow down the bus. But you're right that it probably is much more complicated than it should be (given different grades of cables and terminators).
However, many of the different plug types you mentioned are for external connections. How many different types of external IDE connectors are there?
That's 100 MB/s (MegaBytes per second). However, fibre is also full-duplex, so the theoretical max is double that if you can make use of bidirectional traffic. Plus, most fibre drives are dual-ported. Plus, the upcoming spec doubles the speed. Enough plusses?
Um, no. It has a proprietary digital video port into which you can plug Nintendo's digital to component video cable. Presumably they should release a digital to RGB video cable as well. Perhaps if someone figures out the spec, they could produce a digital to DVI adapter.
Please tell me how! I've got an 8500, and I'm trying to do this exactly, and have thus far been unsuccessful. Sure, the ad print mentions HDTV support, but that's another story. The card can do 1920x1080 progressive, but so far I've had no luck getting an interlaced signal out.
The problem I have with most digital music vault devices is the user interface. My ideal user interface is voice input, of course ("Computer, play something upbeat" or "Computer, play some U2", etc.). Of course, even this needs a supplement, since I need a fast way to see what I have available. My current system is to look at my rack of CDs and scan the titles from the cases, then pick the ones I want. I need a UI that gives me something as easy as that. I can't stand it if I have to constantly press a scroll button and wait for every title to go by. It would be better if I had a scroll wheel, and the listing of titles would move as fast as I turned the wheel (while remaining completely readable at all times). I could spin the wheel, scan the titles, stop it at the ones I wanted, the hit "select" for those. The important thing is that it be fast (and responsive), since I may have lots of titles (of course, there should be lots of selection modes, not necessarily just for titles). Anybody seen any good UI ideas in a good music product lately?
Actually, over the distance of 20 meters, I think a thoroughbred race horse has better acceleration than most types of motor vehicle. At least, I seem to remember that from some documentary comparing a race horse to a sports car.
I've been using one of these for several months now. I had been using a regular mouse for around 10 years with no problems. A couple of years after I started using a mouse with a scroll wheel, I began to have an uncomfortable numbness in my wrist. As a result, I started looking around for better mousing solutions. I tried the "No Hands Mouse" (foot-operated), but found it hard to adapt to. I didn't really like trackpads either, and the pointing stick was also less than ideal.
I saw the Renaissance mouse and decided to give it a try. It did indeed take some getting used to, as moving it around does involve different muscles and different motions. However, it did not take very long for me to adapt to it (perhaps a week or so) and become proficient with it. And it really did eliminate the numbness problem I was having.
The Renaissance mouse does have a middle button (sort of like a trigger for the 2nd or 3rd fingers), and I use this to scroll with. I'd recommend a utility like Coolmouse to make scrolling with one button easier, since the built-in middle-button scroll (in Windows) sucks so much.
I'd guess that it's because many of the embedded applications that people may want to use this computer for still require the "old-fashioned" kind of ports.
The main performance differentiator between the GameCube and X-Box comes from the memory system.
X-Box uses 64MB of conventional DRAM, shared by all the internal processors (think: contention). DRAM has poor latency for random accesses.
GameCube has 24MB of 1T-SRAM for the CPU and for textures (and geometry data), 2MB of 1T-SRAM for frame-buffer, 1MB of 1T-SRAM for texture cache, and 16MB of DRAM for audio (or auxillary use). The 1T-SRAM has very low latency for random accesses.
In summary, the X-Box's very fast processors will spend lots of time waiting on memory, and a small amount of time actually doing something. The GameCube's fast processors will spend most of their time doing something, and a little time waiting on memory.
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Okay, but once you have the controller and the drive, how do you hook them up? You either need to find an expensive drive backplane arrangement, or else you need to buy some expensive T-cards and expensive cables, or else you need to buy a bunch of components and wires and make your own T-cards using your expensive time. And that's just for copper cabling. If you pick up an optical controller, I hope you can find an MIA (media interface adapter) for under $400. I sure haven't seen any.
Actually, as far as internal SCSI connectors go, there's only 3 types: IDC-50, HD-68, and HD-80. And HD-80 doesn't really count, since that type isn't cabled (it's meant only for hot-swap drives that plug into a backplane). Even so, you can take a drive with any one of these connectors and plug it into just about any SCSI controller (using a plug adapter if necessary), and it should work, though it might slow down the bus. But you're right that it probably is much more complicated than it should be (given different grades of cables and terminators).
However, many of the different plug types you mentioned are for external connections. How many different types of external IDE connectors are there?
That's 100 MB/s (MegaBytes per second). However, fibre is also full-duplex, so the theoretical max is double that if you can make use of bidirectional traffic. Plus, most fibre drives are dual-ported. Plus, the upcoming spec doubles the speed. Enough plusses?
Um, no. It has a proprietary digital video port into which you can plug Nintendo's digital to component video cable. Presumably they should release a digital to RGB video cable as well. Perhaps if someone figures out the spec, they could produce a digital to DVI adapter.
"Funny, the Radeon 8500 can do it quite well. :)"
Please tell me how! I've got an 8500, and I'm trying to do this exactly, and have thus far been unsuccessful. Sure, the ad print mentions HDTV support, but that's another story. The card can do 1920x1080 progressive, but so far I've had no luck getting an interlaced signal out.
Oh yeah, RAM used to be valuable! I remember those days...
I was looking at the back panel, and I noticed that port/expansion card layout looks like standard NLX. This is encouraging.
Cool! My top score is 2319 so far. What's yours?
The problem I have with most digital music vault devices is the user interface. My ideal user interface is voice input, of course ("Computer, play something upbeat" or "Computer, play some U2", etc.). Of course, even this needs a supplement, since I need a fast way to see what I have available. My current system is to look at my rack of CDs and scan the titles from the cases, then pick the ones I want. I need a UI that gives me something as easy as that. I can't stand it if I have to constantly press a scroll button and wait for every title to go by. It would be better if I had a scroll wheel, and the listing of titles would move as fast as I turned the wheel (while remaining completely readable at all times). I could spin the wheel, scan the titles, stop it at the ones I wanted, the hit "select" for those. The important thing is that it be fast (and responsive), since I may have lots of titles (of course, there should be lots of selection modes, not necessarily just for titles). Anybody seen any good UI ideas in a good music product lately?
No no, translucent colors is 90's! For the 00's, it's finely brushed metal and glossy white finishes.
Actually, over the distance of 20 meters, I think a thoroughbred race horse has better acceleration than most types of motor vehicle. At least, I seem to remember that from some documentary comparing a race horse to a sports car.
I saw the Renaissance mouse and decided to give it a try. It did indeed take some getting used to, as moving it around does involve different muscles and different motions. However, it did not take very long for me to adapt to it (perhaps a week or so) and become proficient with it. And it really did eliminate the numbness problem I was having.
The Renaissance mouse does have a middle button (sort of like a trigger for the 2nd or 3rd fingers), and I use this to scroll with. I'd recommend a utility like Coolmouse to make scrolling with one button easier, since the built-in middle-button scroll (in Windows) sucks so much.
I'd guess that it's because many of the embedded applications that people may want to use this computer for still require the "old-fashioned" kind of ports.
X-Box uses 64MB of conventional DRAM, shared by all the internal processors (think: contention). DRAM has poor latency for random accesses.
GameCube has 24MB of 1T-SRAM for the CPU and for textures (and geometry data), 2MB of 1T-SRAM for frame-buffer, 1MB of 1T-SRAM for texture cache, and 16MB of DRAM for audio (or auxillary use). The 1T-SRAM has very low latency for random accesses.
In summary, the X-Box's very fast processors will spend lots of time waiting on memory, and a small amount of time actually doing something. The GameCube's fast processors will spend most of their time doing something, and a little time waiting on memory.