Also my bet is that these machines will only be deployed in very high traffic areas inside high profit machines; not at the the gumball machine beside a bus stop in the middle of nowhere.
This and because it is also a massive animated billboard when people aren't using it.
They're just saying it may potentially enter the consumer market just for something to say. The fact it has general purpose IO lines on it means it is aimed specifically at the embedded device market like SBCs.
The connector is physically bigger than the equivalent one in a mini PCI Express system. Manufacturers aren't going to switch to this new interface if it means allocating more space inside their laptop/tablet/netbook. It doesn't add anything extra that would be useful in those situations.
I have no complaints about the LCD. It's not a "really nice" LCD that you would see on such things as laptops, gameboys, PSP's, pocket PC's, etc.. However, it's not bad either. It's a nice size and resolution, supports a good range of color, and refreshes plenty fast for any game. Because of its smaller size, games look better on it than they would on a large CRT.
I said it looks like it is interlaced because of how it is being refreshed which you can adjust using "CPU/LCD-Tweaker" by "god_at_hell, Hermes/PS2Reality, Robster, Vimacs". I never mentioned the size, resolution or colour which in my opinion are all fine. This may be because you're running a different firmware version as the latest is 1.1.0 and it lists LCD tweaks as one of the things they've done.
That's an absolute load of rubbish. Yes, it's made of plastic--show me a console that isn't. The finish is just as good as any other handheld.
Okay. Maybe I was overly harsh when saying it was poorly finished. It isn't the worst finish in the world and neither is it the best. I've personally got various Game Boys, a PSP and a DS. All of them feel nicer than the GP2X.
Things that I would judge to be poorly finished: The below mentioned sharp edges. The sharpish edges of the joystick. The rubber bungs that don't quite fit into the ports properly and of which, the USB/DC one fell off.
The price of a GP2X is between that of a DS and a PSP so you can't argue that they're aimed at different markets or price points.
The edges on the shoulder buttons are rounded and not sharp at all. The console is a very nice size and easy to hold. It looks and feels sturdy, and is very comfortable.
No. Not the shoulder buttons themselves.
Look at the logo on the top right side of the GP2X. Left of the line that says "PERSONAL ENTERTAINMENT PLAYER" is the gap I am referring to. The corners on the bottom half are sharp.
It is easy to brick the unit since there is no way to save yourself after improperly flashing the firmware, but provided you don't do that, you won't have a problem.
I am judging this on reports on the various forums about people who have applied the firmware upgrade and it has killed their device. I've tried to do the normal method myself and it just failed but the GP2X was still fine afterwards. Repeating it also made it fail. The only way I could get it to upgrade the firmware was using Rob Brown's utility.
I'm not a Windows user, and I assume that these problems have to do with some software you're using on your PC. I have a card reader and I load everything onto the card, which does indeed need to be formatted. No problems with this.
Yes. I use a card reader to load it on as using it via USB doesn't work for me. I've tried it on multiple PCs and it just doesn't work properly. There have been reports of odd interactions with certain USB2 controllers which may be the cause of this however, I've not had the time to investigate.
This is another load of rubbish. The battery compartment sticks out only a tiny bit, and it doesn't affect how easily you can handle the device. Sure, it's not totally flat on the back, but I can't see why this even matters.
The way I hold the GP2x means my fingers are against the side of the battery lump. It matters because it gets uncomfortable. You may hold your GP2x differently, this is how I hold mine. Other people I've shown the GP2X have remarked about the battery lump so it appears to be fairly noticeable.
In my experience, the biggest flaw is the joystick, which is not necessarily that large of a flaw. The problem is that it is not an analog stick, which can make handling difficult sometimes; I believe they should have just used a d-pad.
Agreed that they should have used a D pad of some kind.
I was given a GP2X for Christmas so I've not had too much time to use it. There are certain flaws which are evident though.
1. The LCD screen has a problem with refresh rates as it appears to be interlaced. This apparently can be tweaked by running some third party utilities which adjust the clock speed of the CPU and the LCD timing but it isn't perfect. You either get a washed out screen or a flickery interlaced screen. Alledgely a future firmware upgrade will fix it...
2. The unit is very plasticy and poorly finished. The edges around the shoulder buttons are quite sharp.
3. It is very easy to brick the unit as the firmware upgrade system is very unreliable. The safest way appears to be using a third party utility.
4. How it appears as a USB device is odd. It tells the computer that is a HD instead of a removable disk. This means that your PC expects the SD card to be formatted with a partition table.
5. The unit is quite fat. They never show you a side profile view or the back for a reason and that is because there is a lump where you put the 2xAAs.
I've tried the Megadrive/Genesis and SNES emulators so far and they both work quite well apart from the lack of sound in the SNES emulator. Playing DiVX files also works but I've had some problems where it crashes and required you to turn the unit on and off. Both of these problems should be fixable with new firmware.
Basically, if you want a games console then buy a DS or a PSP. If you want to run your own stuff or that the idea of a games console running Linux appeals then get a GP2X.
Made good? It'd be better for Star Messenger to be taken outside and destroyed. Star Messenger is a thinly disguised attempt at infecting you with adware.
From StarMessenger/core/miranda.c:
int StartAdware(void) { //if (RegDateCheck()==DO_NOT_RUN_ADWARE) return 0;
You got the necessary huge sack of money then?
on
A Private GSM Cell?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Sure. You can do what you want but the hardware is incredibly expensive and you'd need a license to operate as a telecoms provider which also is incredibly expensive. If you're looking for a way to reduce your cell phone bills then this isn't it.
Since you're going to be operating a transmitter it's not going to be too hard to find out where that rogue cell signal is coming from either.
Don't think that they won't notice because you're up in the moutains. People are employed to drive around with a pile equipement and do site surveys. There was an article with pics about it recently.
If you try to come up with USB 3, however, and specify that it should supply more power, the problem will be that maybe the computer can't supply that much due to its power supply and requirements, etc. Which brings me to the next point: USB 3 should have some sort of specification that says a computer can decide how much power to supply through USB, based on factors like its own power usage. Then, when you plug in a device, it would automatically figure out if it has enough power or not, and perhaps a message could pop up on the computer, telling you that you're trying to overload the USB power supply.
Uh. USB does this already. It keeps track of how much everything has requested and how much it's got available.
It's more complicated to use USB power as you're supposed to tell the hub how much power you're going to draw before suddenly trying to suck down anything.
The current USB charger cables out there are just a bit of wire with a USB plug on one end and whatever plug you need at the other end. It assumes that the laptop/computer will always supply power and be capable of supplying everything it needs. If you plug in your T68i on a bus powered hub then you'll get some interesting problems.
I did read your post but you're not getting the point of mine (or I'm not getting yours)
At the moment you've got this:
Graphics Card Hardware specific drivers OpenGL/DirectX abstraction layer Games
The OpenGL/DirectX abstraction layer is part of the big driver bundle you download from nVidia or ATI. You still need the lower level driver which actually talks to the hardware itself. The Radeon 9800 does not talk OpenGL natively.
Saying you'll have OpenGL on your CD is good and all but you still need something to talk to the hardware.
The PS2 HDD isn't even used for storing save games and. Unless you've got the Linux kit, BBN or Final Fantasy it's not even used at all. I've personally got a XBox and PS2 with HDD. I've also got the required pile of high priced memory cards.
Can you say "I've got a perfectly good hard disk in my PC"? You might as well buy a XBox/PS2/GameCube/Whatever
Right... so lets say I've bought the latest whizzbang card from nVidia... I want to play my game from last year which unfortunately doesn't support my new card. What do I do now?
Okay, fair enough, we'll make them backwards compatible. Does this mean we'll be forever locked into a particular hardware platform? Will hardware manufacturers be forever forced to insert huge pieces of compatibility logic which aren't actually needed?
How about if I'm some new graphics chipset company and I've got some amazing design which beats ATI and nVidia. What do I do? Absolutely nothing would support my chipset unless I license a hardware interface off ATI or nVidia.
ATI and nVidia both have released many versions of their video card drivers. There have been significant performance improvements due to improved code paths.
Oh I know... Let's have an abstraction layer between the game CD and the bare metal... I'll call it an OS...
It's been done before as evident by this review at DansData. That package does come with an addon card but it's just a crap PCI video card and nothing special. It's all software driven.
Chances are that there isn't any special hardware component on the Jetway motherboards but just that the drivers check for a BIOS signature.
There are two MIPS processors in the PS2. The main CPU is the Emotion Engine which is based on a MIPS R5900 core and the IO processor which is based on a MIPS R3000 core.
Making a USB HID device isn't that complicated. The EZ-USB chips from Cypress would be able to do it easily. It would involve learning how to use the EZ-USB chips though and probably buying the devkit.
As for the trackpoint, yeah that won't be easy to do. You'd have to do a lot of stuff on calibrating it and then detecting how hard you're pushing etc...
I've got a InnoVISION DigiVision box and it works quite nicely. It maxs out at 1024x768 and can handle NTSC, PAL and SECAM (alledgely, I've not got anything that outputs SECAM). I can only speak for the UK spec but it's got a broadcast tuner, S-Video input, composite input and a VGA bypass.
The TV picture quality is quite good but still not up to a real TV. There's no noticeable delay so it's usable with a console. I've plugged my PS2 and XBox into it without any problems at all.
I've not noticed any signal degradation but I've not had a close look. I'm running it with a LCD and the picture looks fine to me.
I've got an EyeToy and it's okay. I've only got the basic disc that comes with the EyeToy though. There is an add on disc that is one of the bundled games (the dancing one) but expanded more but I don't have that.
The EyeToy is innovative anyway. The actual games you play with it are quite basic but are quite enjoyable if you've got a few friends around. If you play it by yourself then it'd be really boring after the first few goes.
It's basically a reasonable webcam with audio support really and some fancy software. As to whether this is a gimmick or a good product is personal opinion really. Some people love it and others think it is the most pointless thing ever. You could say this about most things though so *shrug*
The bundled disc that comes with the EyeToy has a basic video message function in it. You don't upload them to a server however, it saves onto memory cards. It records quite fuzzy video and audio together. What Datel have done is bolt on broadband functionaility onto something similar they made in house it seems.
Yeah. You could be right. I've seen pictures of where the CPU only was immersed in liquid nitrogen and one of where some guy used Fluorinert (sp?) which was chilled with liquid nitrogen.
Low temperatures actually improves data retention in SRAM when it's unpowered, I know it's not Flash but they both do rely on storing charge.
The fact crazy people have previously immersed their PC in liquid nitrogen and still had a functional PC at the end shows that it shouldn't damage most electronics.
So assuming the low temperature didn't crack the PCB or chip leads and the moisture didn't short anything then it's not too surprising that it survived.
Slashdot Mirror
Also my bet is that these machines will only be deployed in very high traffic areas inside high profit machines; not at the the gumball machine beside a bus stop in the middle of nowhere.
This and because it is also a massive animated billboard when people aren't using it.
It is a trick so they can get rid of their stocks of a drink that is almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea.
They're just saying it may potentially enter the consumer market just for something to say. The fact it has general purpose IO lines on it means it is aimed specifically at the embedded device market like SBCs.
The connector is physically bigger than the equivalent one in a mini PCI Express system. Manufacturers aren't going to switch to this new interface if it means allocating more space inside their laptop/tablet/netbook. It doesn't add anything extra that would be useful in those situations.
Its just a small SBC in a box. You can see the place to fit the PC/104 connector. Nothing amazing...
I said it looks like it is interlaced because of how it is being refreshed which you can adjust using "CPU/LCD-Tweaker" by "god_at_hell, Hermes/PS2Reality, Robster, Vimacs". I never mentioned the size, resolution or colour which in my opinion are all fine. This may be because you're running a different firmware version as the latest is 1.1.0 and it lists LCD tweaks as one of the things they've done.
Okay. Maybe I was overly harsh when saying it was poorly finished. It isn't the worst finish in the world and neither is it the best. I've personally got various Game Boys, a PSP and a DS. All of them feel nicer than the GP2X.
Things that I would judge to be poorly finished: The below mentioned sharp edges. The sharpish edges of the joystick. The rubber bungs that don't quite fit into the ports properly and of which, the USB/DC one fell off.
The price of a GP2X is between that of a DS and a PSP so you can't argue that they're aimed at different markets or price points.
No. Not the shoulder buttons themselves.
Look at the logo on the top right side of the GP2X. Left of the line that says "PERSONAL ENTERTAINMENT PLAYER" is the gap I am referring to. The corners on the bottom half are sharp.
I am judging this on reports on the various forums about people who have applied the firmware upgrade and it has killed their device. I've tried to do the normal method myself and it just failed but the GP2X was still fine afterwards. Repeating it also made it fail. The only way I could get it to upgrade the firmware was using Rob Brown's utility.
Yes. I use a card reader to load it on as using it via USB doesn't work for me. I've tried it on multiple PCs and it just doesn't work properly. There have been reports of odd interactions with certain USB2 controllers which may be the cause of this however, I've not had the time to investigate.
The way I hold the GP2x means my fingers are against the side of the battery lump. It matters because it gets uncomfortable. You may hold your GP2x differently, this is how I hold mine. Other people I've shown the GP2X have remarked about the battery lump so it appears to be fairly noticeable.
Agreed that they should have used a D pad of some kind.
I was given a GP2X for Christmas so I've not had too much time to use it. There are certain flaws which are evident though.
1. The LCD screen has a problem with refresh rates as it appears to be interlaced. This apparently can be tweaked by running some third party utilities which adjust the clock speed of the CPU and the LCD timing but it isn't perfect. You either get a washed out screen or a flickery interlaced screen. Alledgely a future firmware upgrade will fix it...
2. The unit is very plasticy and poorly finished. The edges around the shoulder buttons are quite sharp.
3. It is very easy to brick the unit as the firmware upgrade system is very unreliable. The safest way appears to be using a third party utility.
4. How it appears as a USB device is odd. It tells the computer that is a HD instead of a removable disk. This means that your PC expects the SD card to be formatted with a partition table.
5. The unit is quite fat. They never show you a side profile view or the back for a reason and that is because there is a lump where you put the 2xAAs.
I've tried the Megadrive/Genesis and SNES emulators so far and they both work quite well apart from the lack of sound in the SNES emulator. Playing DiVX files also works but I've had some problems where it crashes and required you to turn the unit on and off. Both of these problems should be fixable with new firmware.
Basically, if you want a games console then buy a DS or a PSP. If you want to run your own stuff or that the idea of a games console running Linux appeals then get a GP2X.
Nah. That's the Gizmondo.
From StarMessenger/core/miranda.c:Mmm... Enjoy that adware goodness...
Sure. You can do what you want but the hardware is incredibly expensive and you'd need a license to operate as a telecoms provider which also is incredibly expensive. If you're looking for a way to reduce your cell phone bills then this isn't it.
Since you're going to be operating a transmitter it's not going to be too hard to find out where that rogue cell signal is coming from either.
Don't think that they won't notice because you're up in the moutains. People are employed to drive around with a pile equipement and do site surveys. There was an article with pics about it recently.
Uh. USB does this already. It keeps track of how much everything has requested and how much it's got available.
It's more complicated to use USB power as you're supposed to tell the hub how much power you're going to draw before suddenly trying to suck down anything.
The current USB charger cables out there are just a bit of wire with a USB plug on one end and whatever plug you need at the other end. It assumes that the laptop/computer will always supply power and be capable of supplying everything it needs. If you plug in your T68i on a bus powered hub then you'll get some interesting problems.
Knowing Windows, it's probably some obscure undocumented registry key somewhere which you need to twiddle... Fun :)
Meh. I'm British so I was technically wrong in the subject :)
Aren't laserdiscs actually analogue?
The best option would be to find a player with RGB output and then hook it into a capture card that accepts RGB.
Didn't see the other post but fair enough, having two dongles would work.
I did read your post but you're not getting the point of mine (or I'm not getting yours)
At the moment you've got this:
Graphics Card Hardware specific drivers OpenGL/DirectX abstraction layer Games
The OpenGL/DirectX abstraction layer is part of the big driver bundle you download from nVidia or ATI. You still need the lower level driver which actually talks to the hardware itself. The Radeon 9800 does not talk OpenGL natively.
Saying you'll have OpenGL on your CD is good and all but you still need something to talk to the hardware.
The PS2 HDD isn't even used for storing save games and. Unless you've got the Linux kit, BBN or Final Fantasy it's not even used at all. I've personally got a XBox and PS2 with HDD. I've also got the required pile of high priced memory cards.
Can you say "I've got a perfectly good hard disk in my PC"? You might as well buy a XBox/PS2/GameCube/Whatever
Right... so lets say I've bought the latest whizzbang card from nVidia... I want to play my game from last year which unfortunately doesn't support my new card. What do I do now?
Okay, fair enough, we'll make them backwards compatible. Does this mean we'll be forever locked into a particular hardware platform? Will hardware manufacturers be forever forced to insert huge pieces of compatibility logic which aren't actually needed?
How about if I'm some new graphics chipset company and I've got some amazing design which beats ATI and nVidia. What do I do? Absolutely nothing would support my chipset unless I license a hardware interface off ATI or nVidia.
ATI and nVidia both have released many versions of their video card drivers. There have been significant performance improvements due to improved code paths.
Oh I know... Let's have an abstraction layer between the game CD and the bare metal... I'll call it an OS...
It's been done before as evident by this review at DansData. That package does come with an addon card but it's just a crap PCI video card and nothing special. It's all software driven.
Chances are that there isn't any special hardware component on the Jetway motherboards but just that the drivers check for a BIOS signature.
Works fine and with a reasonable refresh rate on my P4 3.2GHz, Radeon 9800Pro and 1GB memory on XP SP1. Takes a while to load though.
There are two MIPS processors in the PS2. The main CPU is the Emotion Engine which is based on a MIPS R5900 core and the IO processor which is based on a MIPS R3000 core.
Making a USB HID device isn't that complicated. The EZ-USB chips from Cypress would be able to do it easily. It would involve learning how to use the EZ-USB chips though and probably buying the devkit.
As for the trackpoint, yeah that won't be easy to do. You'd have to do a lot of stuff on calibrating it and then detecting how hard you're pushing etc...
I've got a InnoVISION DigiVision box and it works quite nicely. It maxs out at 1024x768 and can handle NTSC, PAL and SECAM (alledgely, I've not got anything that outputs SECAM). I can only speak for the UK spec but it's got a broadcast tuner, S-Video input, composite input and a VGA bypass.
The TV picture quality is quite good but still not up to a real TV. There's no noticeable delay so it's usable with a console. I've plugged my PS2 and XBox into it without any problems at all.
I've not noticed any signal degradation but I've not had a close look. I'm running it with a LCD and the picture looks fine to me.
I've got an EyeToy and it's okay. I've only got the basic disc that comes with the EyeToy though. There is an add on disc that is one of the bundled games (the dancing one) but expanded more but I don't have that.
The EyeToy is innovative anyway. The actual games you play with it are quite basic but are quite enjoyable if you've got a few friends around. If you play it by yourself then it'd be really boring after the first few goes.
It's basically a reasonable webcam with audio support really and some fancy software. As to whether this is a gimmick or a good product is personal opinion really. Some people love it and others think it is the most pointless thing ever. You could say this about most things though so *shrug*
The bundled disc that comes with the EyeToy has a basic video message function in it. You don't upload them to a server however, it saves onto memory cards. It records quite fuzzy video and audio together. What Datel have done is bolt on broadband functionaility onto something similar they made in house it seems.
Yeah. You could be right. I've seen pictures of where the CPU only was immersed in liquid nitrogen and one of where some guy used Fluorinert (sp?) which was chilled with liquid nitrogen.
Low temperatures actually improves data retention in SRAM when it's unpowered, I know it's not Flash but they both do rely on storing charge.
The fact crazy people have previously immersed their PC in liquid nitrogen and still had a functional PC at the end shows that it shouldn't damage most electronics.
So assuming the low temperature didn't crack the PCB or chip leads and the moisture didn't short anything then it's not too surprising that it survived.