Here in PR the test is quite easy, except the fact we must drive different than in reality. For instance, we seldom stop on merges, don't stop before the stop line, park close to the curb (even new streets here are narrow), etc. etc... Here's something more complete about driving in PR: http://arlenerios.tripod.com/drivingpr.html
Parallel parking is a necessity in PR metro area. Where I lived I had to parallel park outside. It was not only crowded, it was in a curve - making more difficult measuring. And my car didn't have power steering - impossible to parallel park with one hand! I think it took me a month or two to get comfortable with it. In PR there is one car for every three adults, so there it is necessary to park anywhere there's a space.
I think in PR people with enough money would buy the system, at least for their wives with their huge SUV's or minivans. I havent's seen a Prius in PR. Gas is cheaper than in the US, and the goverment don't offer incentives.
A game console? It's an almost off-the-shelf, less than a PC, More than a DVR, Media Player. It's like the Nokia nGage, it's a Nokia phone with only propietary MMC's.
Computer to consoles failures:
- Commodore 64GS (Commodore 64)
- Amiga CD32 (Amiga 500 + CD)
- Apple/Bandai Pippin (PowerMac 66)
- Atari XE Game System (Atari 8 bit)
Successful computer to console:
- Let's say that the Atari 5200 is an Atari 400 with some slight modifications...
(I got a lot of info from darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com )
I remember when I compared Novell Netware 4 against Windows NT 3.51 back in 1995. Netware destroyed NT hands-down.
It was incredibly faster. And it was until Win2K they finally added Directory services. OpenGL screen savers on NT 3.51 Server almost slowed down everything to a halt. (NT3 ran video drivers in Ring 3). Netware ran in any 386 PC - NT had very very high memory and CPU requirements. Netware salvage (undelete) even supported multiple versions of the same file. NT/2K still manages printers badly.
And with CA Clipper with Clipper Tools I did many nice Netware apps, like one to kill all student accounts at the beginning of a new semester. Just imagine if MS Access had access to NT Users and Groups.
Unfortunately NT3 was prettier, the first Netware client for Win95 was really awful, and, NT was much cheaper. Maybe the final nail in the coffin was IIS for NT4.
The 65816 is just too slow, and it's a bad instruction set for multitasking. Nintendo made the same mistake in the SNES, Gradius III proves it's not fast enough.
Why AppleIIgs? The only great thing about it is the fantastic Ensoniq sound chip. I do admit that it's more efficient than a 4.77 Mhz PC - remember that the 8088 uses an 8 bit memory bus with generic technology.
People have been multitasking OS/9 in the "slower" 8-bit 6809 CoCo 2/3 in the 80's.
I did not mean Amiga's HAM mode.. In the 2600 you can redefine display registers and sprite info at every horizontal retrace, especially palette registers. The 128 color palette isn't really fixed. The C64 has 16 fixed colors - white is always white. NES a 64 color palette. Of course, those systems could display all 16 colors and more than 4 sprites without trickery.
"When I was hacking Pitfall-II I found that there was on-board ram, and also an on-board waveform generator. Every scanline the code was moving a byte from a ROM address to the volume level registers of one of the audio channels. This effectively is sampling at the the horz line rate (15KHz). Kind of cool...
Michael Livesay"
At least the 2600 has a 8x1 hardware sprite (or Player Missile for Atari computer fans) with collision detection, a two channel sound chip (somewhat like the Pokey), and a 128 color palette. Redefining the palette in each hblank did all those beautiful gradient backgrounds. Pitfall II had inside tha cart additional RAM, bankswitch ROM, and it even had something extra to do great music.
The original IBM PC had zero sprites (I lied, the cursor is a 1x10 sprite), no Vblank nor HBlank interrupts, a 1 bit DAC (speaker). At least you could reroute a timer to play a steady sound unlike the CoCo. And that absoultely dreadful CGA card.
The CGA deserves two whole paragraphs to insult it. The text mode is decent, it's a text chip. The characters could be redefined but IBM morons did not provide a way to do so. Graphic modes were a nasty hack redefining characters to simulate a bitmapped screen. (you only noticed that graphic modes were awfully slow). The 320x200 four color screen had predefined palettes of 16 colors in the worst combinations ever.
It didn't provided Horizontal nor Vertical interrupts.. You had to poll it (slow as hell) and it was absolutely needed because when both CPU and the display chip accessed video RAM the screen displayed snow! (like having bad TV reception).
The rest of the game consoles had more sprites, better screens, but they didn't really provide the limited flexibility the 2600 had.
There is one channel (I think is from Chile or Agentina) called Locomotion. It's 50% anime (Bebop, Saber Marionette, etc) and 50% other stuff (South Park, Duckman, Dr Katz, etc.). It might be somewhat censored.
If the ADV channel is not premium, all anime will be instantly censored, edited, and maybe like CN, with constant reruns. Heck, even Fist of the North Star movie was censored in VHS and HBO runs. (the LSD effect when anyone exploded)
There is a lot of fansub on the net, and a Chinese company that distribute region-all anime series. It's not top-notch quality, but at least it's not censored and horriby expensibe. Any american distributed OVA/series is $50-100.. Any entire season of the Simpsons cost much less!
92-99's Honda Civic are quite hackable, but the best is they're almost plug and play between models, including Integra. A friend has a '93 Civic Hatchback with a '92 japanese B16a (a 160hp 1.6 twincam VTec engine, almost just like the 1999 American Civic Si).
Those Civics are relatively easy to work on, and there are a lot of mods out there. The new ones maybe are designed to avoid all that. Anyway new models have a much inferior suspension.
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Here in PR the test is quite easy, except the fact we must drive different than in reality. For instance, we seldom stop on merges, don't stop before the stop line, park close to the curb (even new streets here are narrow), etc. etc... Here's something more complete about driving in PR: http://arlenerios.tripod.com/drivingpr.html
Parallel parking is a necessity in PR metro area. Where I lived I had to parallel park outside. It was not only crowded, it was in a curve - making more difficult measuring. And my car didn't have power steering - impossible to parallel park with one hand! I think it took me a month or two to get comfortable with it. In PR there is one car for every three adults, so there it is necessary to park anywhere there's a space.
I think in PR people with enough money would buy the system, at least for their wives with their huge SUV's or minivans. I havent's seen a Prius in PR. Gas is cheaper than in the US, and the goverment don't offer incentives.
A game console? It's an almost off-the-shelf, less than a PC, More than a DVR, Media Player. It's like the Nokia nGage, it's a Nokia phone with only propietary MMC's. Computer to consoles failures: - Commodore 64GS (Commodore 64) - Amiga CD32 (Amiga 500 + CD) - Apple/Bandai Pippin (PowerMac 66) - Atari XE Game System (Atari 8 bit) Successful computer to console: - Let's say that the Atari 5200 is an Atari 400 with some slight modifications... (I got a lot of info from darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com )
I remember when I compared Novell Netware 4 against Windows NT 3.51 back in 1995. Netware destroyed NT hands-down. It was incredibly faster. And it was until Win2K they finally added Directory services. OpenGL screen savers on NT 3.51 Server almost slowed down everything to a halt. (NT3 ran video drivers in Ring 3). Netware ran in any 386 PC - NT had very very high memory and CPU requirements. Netware salvage (undelete) even supported multiple versions of the same file. NT/2K still manages printers badly. And with CA Clipper with Clipper Tools I did many nice Netware apps, like one to kill all student accounts at the beginning of a new semester. Just imagine if MS Access had access to NT Users and Groups. Unfortunately NT3 was prettier, the first Netware client for Win95 was really awful, and, NT was much cheaper. Maybe the final nail in the coffin was IIS for NT4.
The 65816 is just too slow, and it's a bad instruction set for multitasking. Nintendo made the same mistake in the SNES, Gradius III proves it's not fast enough.
Why AppleIIgs? The only great thing about it is the fantastic Ensoniq sound chip. I do admit that it's more efficient than a 4.77 Mhz PC - remember that the 8088 uses an 8 bit memory bus with generic technology.
People have been multitasking OS/9 in the "slower" 8-bit 6809 CoCo 2/3 in the 80's.
I did not mean Amiga's HAM mode.. In the 2600 you can redefine display registers and sprite info at every horizontal retrace, especially palette registers. The 128 color palette isn't really fixed. The C64 has 16 fixed colors - white is always white. NES a 64 color palette. Of course, those systems could display all 16 colors and more than 4 sprites without trickery. "When I was hacking Pitfall-II I found that there was on-board ram, and also an on-board waveform generator. Every scanline the code was moving a byte from a ROM address to the volume level registers of one of the audio channels. This effectively is sampling at the the horz line rate (15KHz). Kind of cool... Michael Livesay"
At least the 2600 has a 8x1 hardware sprite (or Player Missile for Atari computer fans) with collision detection, a two channel sound chip (somewhat like the Pokey), and a 128 color palette. Redefining the palette in each hblank did all those beautiful gradient backgrounds. Pitfall II had inside tha cart additional RAM, bankswitch ROM, and it even had something extra to do great music.
The original IBM PC had zero sprites (I lied, the cursor is a 1x10 sprite), no Vblank nor HBlank interrupts, a 1 bit DAC (speaker). At least you could reroute a timer to play a steady sound unlike the CoCo. And that absoultely dreadful CGA card.
The CGA deserves two whole paragraphs to insult it. The text mode is decent, it's a text chip. The characters could be redefined but IBM morons did not provide a way to do so. Graphic modes were a nasty hack redefining characters to simulate a bitmapped screen. (you only noticed that graphic modes were awfully slow). The 320x200 four color screen had predefined palettes of 16 colors in the worst combinations ever.
It didn't provided Horizontal nor Vertical interrupts.. You had to poll it (slow as hell) and it was absolutely needed because when both CPU and the display chip accessed video RAM the screen displayed snow! (like having bad TV reception).
The rest of the game consoles had more sprites, better screens, but they didn't really provide the limited flexibility the 2600 had.
There is one channel (I think is from Chile or Agentina) called Locomotion. It's 50% anime (Bebop, Saber Marionette, etc) and 50% other stuff (South Park, Duckman, Dr Katz, etc.). It might be somewhat censored.
If the ADV channel is not premium, all anime will be instantly censored, edited, and maybe like CN, with constant reruns. Heck, even Fist of the North Star movie was censored in VHS and HBO runs. (the LSD effect when anyone exploded)
There is a lot of fansub on the net, and a Chinese company that distribute region-all anime series. It's not top-notch quality, but at least it's not censored and horriby expensibe. Any american distributed OVA/series is $50-100.. Any entire season of the Simpsons cost much less!
92-99's Honda Civic are quite hackable, but the best is they're almost plug and play between models, including Integra. A friend has a '93 Civic Hatchback with a '92 japanese B16a (a 160hp 1.6 twincam VTec engine, almost just like the 1999 American Civic Si).
Those Civics are relatively easy to work on, and there are a lot of mods out there. The new ones maybe are designed to avoid all that. Anyway new models have a much inferior suspension.