I design USB3 H/W....what. a. piece. of. shit. I have truly given up hope of engineering anything that will ever work universally, even Intels interfaces which you would like to believe would be a model reference design look like crap when you plug them into a gizillion dollar Agilent USB3 analyzer. Should I be be surprised? Probably not, USB has never exactly been the premium interface has it? Firewire didn't go away because USB was technically superior thats for sure. Thunderbolt just friggin' works, day in, day out, incredible and reliable performance. Sure cables are expensive, they have all sorts of clever active electronics...because...thats what it takes to make 10G in a consumer application work...not a $1.99 piece of injection molded crap from god knows what Asian hell chemical works. In fact Thunderbolts worst problem is....Intel.....who seem to have a bizarre attitude towards people who want to buy components from them to make peripherals...I honestly don't get it.
I can relate. The USB 3.0 spec is a committee beast. It is difficult to read it and understand very clearly how you are supposed to put it into practice, and that's a problem for someone like me who is writing an implementation from the ground up.
Probably the biggest gripe is the compliance tests. The idea is that every manufacturer goes to the USB Implementers Forum and runs standardized tests on their widget so they can say "hey, it passed the tests, it's ready for the market.". But in real life, the tests are woefully lacking. I suspect they were designed that way on purpose.
One of the big players selling verification equipment (Lecroy) actually went out and cooked up their OWN compliance tests that you run in addition to the USBIF's -- and they're far more useful. I was passing the USBIF tests mostly but failing the Lecroy tests.
I have not seen 1 shipping device that actually passes all the tests. Intel, NEC, Renesas, VLI, whatever host or device chip you pick, they all fail some of the tests. And they don't always play nice together. The protocol is structured in a such a way that it's very, very, hard to conclusively test an implementation and say "yup, it works". Instead you have to go probing and test for tons of odd and random occurences, and if they don't happen, then it must be working.
To get my core working I've already been investigating fudges.. yes, all shipping devices have them. You wouldn't believe all the kludges that've accumulated in something like the Windows USB stack. Luckily I dont have to worry about that, working on the hardware:)
I recognize this place, made some boards there:)
US based PCB fab is more expensive, but quicker and QUALITY.
Chinese houses like pcbcart? 6/15 of my boards made with them failed. I even stayed away from their spec limits quite a bit. Half of those that failed did so within a few heat/cool cycles of running (they have FPGA and SDRAM on them, so not THAT much heat). The rest developed electrical shorts that were still there even after I'd completely depopulated the boards.
Advanced Circuits? Never have they failed. Even the PCBs I abused with a rework station never lifted any traces. Even the 0.5mm SMD pads that lifted like paper off the PCBcart boards, they are STILL THERE on the 4pcb/advanced circuits prototype.
I just reworked my design into 4 layers and did another proto from them. No problems either.
If you are a student, you can get on board their 33each (2 layer) and 66each (4layer). Note their shipping charges are a tad high so it works out to about $48 and $88, respectively.
Oh yeah, I wasn't paid by them either, I just am a happy customer. Started using them in high school (thanks Forrest) and now near the end of college they have never let me down.
This article seems to miss the point that the N64 introduced a number of new things that Sony shamelessly copied - take the Rumble Pak and analog stick for example.
The games are different from the PSX - Mostly "meh" titles, and maybe a dozen games that were to die for.
I'm currently developing homebrew for the N64, and from a hardware standpoint, the design is very forward-looking. The RCP 3d coproccessor was fully upgradable - the game transferred microcode to the RCP to tell it how to draw polygons, for example. This was a very sensible design choice - as Nintendo optimized their Fast3D microcode, you got better speed in the game you were developing. Unfortunately, Nintendo neutralized that advantage by not making microcode tools available until it was too late - some developers did some amazing things by writing their own microcode (Boss Games, and Rare for example) It was a pretty solid design, the only glaring limitation I can think of is the small (4KB) texture cache and high memory latency (making the N64 fill rate limited, instead of polygon limited.)
It's a shame Nintendo didn't make it easier to develop for - it seems they kinda pulled a Sega with it, and lost some 3rd party support. In any case, it's quite an adventure to learn about.
1. This is a concept. A neat one at that, but a concept.
2. This has been tried before, called the onHand Wrist PC. It was developed by Seiko and released in Japan, and later in USA to less fanfare. It was ultimately a failure, little more than a novelty. Fossil also tried a Palm-based watch. It flopped.
3. What is the benefit of clamping a PC to your wrist, risking damage to it when you can put a Palm/Pocket PC in your shirt / pants pocket?
Lots of neat ideas but little practicality. How does this offer a huge leap forward past Palm/Pocket PCs?
This delay may afford Nintendo some ground to get a head start, but if the PS3 will be the killer machine Sony is "making" it out to be, it won't matter.
On the other hand, it could be a good thing, supposedly allowing Sony time to refine their console, unlike the 360.
It's a tough situation for the government. Once something happens (terrorist attack) the government *has* to do something about it, even if it doesn't seem to work, so the people won't get mad at the government for "not doing anything."
Basically, people are going to whine and complain about the government, saying they should be doing the opposite of what they are doing. I'm not saying the government is a perfect, flawless entity (it's nowhere close) but consider the mentality of the people.
Will Wright? He was just a small indie developing for the C64 IIRC. He made a game back then that was unconventional, where there wasn't a goal except to run a city. That game was called SimCity, and look how it's grown today.
Never underestimate the ideas that indie developers can come up with.
I am beginning to see some interesting parallels between the game industry now and the game industry back in 1983.
1. We are seeing more and more games that are rehashes of earlier titles... remember all the crap titles for the 2600?
2. The game industry has reached a point where people are going to college just to write games, and end up mediocre programmers. Much like the ones that got hired in 1983.
3. Do you see much heart go into the games today? Reminds me of Atari 2600 Pacman. The programmer was able to make it a great game but didn't have any spirit for the game. So, it sucked.
I predict an explosion of the game industry as we know it - and the Nintendo Revolution may be the one sole survivor (or pioneer, as it was back in 1985 with the NES.)
Good thing my Pentium machine is running on a motherboard so old you can't flash the BIOS...
I, for one, welcome our new BIOS-munging rootkit overlords.
Perhaps this is an indication that Intel has finally realized that their strangehold on the CPU market may be threatened by AMD? And that they will have to optimize and trim the fat off their products?
Competition is good.
You may be right in that sex has existed in MUDs to an extent - but are they easy to access for younger teenage boys? This is where I see the game's downfall.
Anyone feel like playing a game overrun by hormonally supercharged teenagers? I suppose detailed graphics and potentially quick notoriety won't really support this game well, but I may probably be proved wrong.
Just imagine how bad their typing will be... it's already bad enough but then you add the fact that they're typing it one handed and probably with quite a good deal of physical movement on their part. Ghastly!
"Discovery" in the Discovery Channel? Looks like it's just about gone..
Regarding MythBusters, while they can't possibly get all their facts straight, you have to reason they do do a reasonable job, considering the extremely wide breadth of subjects they cover.
This brings up a good point of the problem with shows that focus on such a wide range of topics that they aren't able to focus on one single topic with much amount of detail.
Are these shows educational? No. Can it be a feasible starting point for answers to nagging questions? Possibly.
I think you could compare this show to Wikipedia (various factual errors, inconsistent detail etc), but it is nevertheless a possible source of inspiration for a lot of us.
60 days? I thought my school was crazy, my friend got a week OSS for doing a simple "Hi All" netsend.
It seems most of the public that has little or no knowledge about technology, either by apathy or igorance, has a great tendency to fear what they do not know about... in this case giving this kid 60 days for something most admins would shrug at.
Educating the public is hard... but the worst enemy is apathy.
I hope they will implement some sort of re-sending method... just to receive a text message, takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes.
Just imagine, buying a ticket online 20 mins before you go to the theater, and still be waiting for it by the time you get there?
Looks like building a risky enterprise on a relatively new and unreliable technology. After all, doesn't SMS seem to be an afterthough with most cell networks?
Now, with this device people can see they will get cancer, and accordingly spend more money on 'medicines' over a longer period of time until they die...
No offense intended at those who have been affected by cancer (I have) but it really aggravates me to see doctors come up with more plans to make off with your money... although that's a lot of what they seem to do anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to the "Ball of hurt".
I design USB3 H/W....what. a. piece. of. shit. I have truly given up hope of engineering anything that will ever work universally, even Intels interfaces which you would like to believe would be a model reference design look like crap when you plug them into a gizillion dollar Agilent USB3 analyzer. Should I be be surprised? Probably not, USB has never exactly been the premium interface has it? Firewire didn't go away because USB was technically superior thats for sure. Thunderbolt just friggin' works, day in, day out, incredible and reliable performance. Sure cables are expensive, they have all sorts of clever active electronics...because...thats what it takes to make 10G in a consumer application work...not a $1.99 piece of injection molded crap from god knows what Asian hell chemical works. In fact Thunderbolts worst problem is ....Intel.....who seem to have a bizarre attitude towards people who want to buy components from them to make peripherals...I honestly don't get it.
I can relate. The USB 3.0 spec is a committee beast. It is difficult to read it and understand very clearly how you are supposed to put it into practice, and that's a problem for someone like me who is writing an implementation from the ground up.
:)
Probably the biggest gripe is the compliance tests. The idea is that every manufacturer goes to the USB Implementers Forum and runs standardized tests on their widget so they can say "hey, it passed the tests, it's ready for the market.". But in real life, the tests are woefully lacking. I suspect they were designed that way on purpose.
One of the big players selling verification equipment (Lecroy) actually went out and cooked up their OWN compliance tests that you run in addition to the USBIF's -- and they're far more useful. I was passing the USBIF tests mostly but failing the Lecroy tests.
I have not seen 1 shipping device that actually passes all the tests. Intel, NEC, Renesas, VLI, whatever host or device chip you pick, they all fail some of the tests. And they don't always play nice together. The protocol is structured in a such a way that it's very, very, hard to conclusively test an implementation and say "yup, it works". Instead you have to go probing and test for tons of odd and random occurences, and if they don't happen, then it must be working.
To get my core working I've already been investigating fudges.. yes, all shipping devices have them. You wouldn't believe all the kludges that've accumulated in something like the Windows USB stack. Luckily I dont have to worry about that, working on the hardware
I recognize this place, made some boards there :)
US based PCB fab is more expensive, but quicker and QUALITY.
Chinese houses like pcbcart? 6/15 of my boards made with them failed. I even stayed away from their spec limits quite a bit. Half of those that failed did so within a few heat/cool cycles of running (they have FPGA and SDRAM on them, so not THAT much heat). The rest developed electrical shorts that were still there even after I'd completely depopulated the boards.
Advanced Circuits? Never have they failed. Even the PCBs I abused with a rework station never lifted any traces. Even the 0.5mm SMD pads that lifted like paper off the PCBcart boards, they are STILL THERE on the 4pcb/advanced circuits prototype.
I just reworked my design into 4 layers and did another proto from them. No problems either.
If you are a student, you can get on board their 33each (2 layer) and 66each (4layer). Note their shipping charges are a tad high so it works out to about $48 and $88, respectively.
Oh yeah, I wasn't paid by them either, I just am a happy customer. Started using them in high school (thanks Forrest) and now near the end of college they have never let me down.
I logged in for the first time in about 5 years just to say bravo, you really hit the nail on the head.
This article seems to miss the point that the N64 introduced a number of new things that Sony shamelessly copied - take the Rumble Pak and analog stick for example.
The games are different from the PSX - Mostly "meh" titles, and maybe a dozen games that were to die for.
I'm currently developing homebrew for the N64, and from a hardware standpoint, the design is very forward-looking. The RCP 3d coproccessor was fully upgradable - the game transferred microcode to the RCP to tell it how to draw polygons, for example. This was a very sensible design choice - as Nintendo optimized their Fast3D microcode, you got better speed in the game you were developing.
Unfortunately, Nintendo neutralized that advantage by not making microcode tools available until it was too late - some developers did some amazing things by writing their own microcode (Boss Games, and Rare for example)
It was a pretty solid design, the only glaring limitation I can think of is the small (4KB) texture cache and high memory latency (making the N64 fill rate limited, instead of polygon limited.)
It's a shame Nintendo didn't make it easier to develop for - it seems they kinda pulled a Sega with it, and lost some 3rd party support. In any case, it's quite an adventure to learn about.
"alleging EA created exhausting work schedules"
Go to Japan, look at their insane schedules and crunch times, and tell me this isn't better.
Most people haven't seen the half of what Japanese game programmers endure. Yet they don't complain.
Wait, does this mean the lump on the side of my head isn't from my cell phone? Oh, shi....
Nobody wants another 3DO, but it is quite possible... (The 3D0 was about $500-700)
1. This is a concept. A neat one at that, but a concept.
2. This has been tried before, called the onHand Wrist PC. It was developed by Seiko and released in Japan, and later in USA to less fanfare. It was ultimately a failure, little more than a novelty. Fossil also tried a Palm-based watch. It flopped. 3. What is the benefit of clamping a PC to your wrist, risking damage to it when you can put a Palm/Pocket PC in your shirt / pants pocket? Lots of neat ideas but little practicality. How does this offer a huge leap forward past Palm/Pocket PCs?
This delay may afford Nintendo some ground to get a head start, but if the PS3 will be the killer machine Sony is "making" it out to be, it won't matter.
On the other hand, it could be a good thing, supposedly allowing Sony time to refine their console, unlike the 360.
It's a tough situation for the government. Once something happens (terrorist attack) the government *has* to do something about it, even if it doesn't seem to work, so the people won't get mad at the government for "not doing anything." Basically, people are going to whine and complain about the government, saying they should be doing the opposite of what they are doing. I'm not saying the government is a perfect, flawless entity (it's nowhere close) but consider the mentality of the people.
Will Wright? He was just a small indie developing for the C64 IIRC. He made a game back then that was unconventional, where there wasn't a goal except to run a city. That game was called SimCity, and look how it's grown today.
Never underestimate the ideas that indie developers can come up with.
Finally, an example of the dangers of 'security by obscurity'.
Windows took that route, and it looks like Mac OSX could be headed there if they're not careful.
I am beginning to see some interesting parallels between the game industry now and the game industry back in 1983.
1. We are seeing more and more games that are rehashes of earlier titles... remember all the crap titles for the 2600?
2. The game industry has reached a point where people are going to college just to write games, and end up mediocre programmers. Much like the ones that got hired in 1983.
3. Do you see much heart go into the games today? Reminds me of Atari 2600 Pacman. The programmer was able to make it a great game but didn't have any spirit for the game. So, it sucked.
I predict an explosion of the game industry as we know it - and the Nintendo Revolution may be the one sole survivor (or pioneer, as it was back in 1985 with the NES.)
Good thing my Pentium machine is running on a motherboard so old you can't flash the BIOS... I, for one, welcome our new BIOS-munging rootkit overlords.
Perhaps this is an indication that Intel has finally realized that their strangehold on the CPU market may be threatened by AMD? And that they will have to optimize and trim the fat off their products? Competition is good.
You may be right in that sex has existed in MUDs to an extent - but are they easy to access for younger teenage boys? This is where I see the game's downfall.
Anyone feel like playing a game overrun by hormonally supercharged teenagers? I suppose detailed graphics and potentially quick notoriety won't really support this game well, but I may probably be proved wrong.
Just imagine how bad their typing will be... it's already bad enough but then you add the fact that they're typing it one handed and probably with quite a good deal of physical movement on their part. Ghastly!
"Discovery" in the Discovery Channel? Looks like it's just about gone..
Regarding MythBusters, while they can't possibly get all their facts straight, you have to reason they do do a reasonable job, considering the extremely wide breadth of subjects they cover.
This brings up a good point of the problem with shows that focus on such a wide range of topics that they aren't able to focus on one single topic with much amount of detail.
Are these shows educational? No. Can it be a feasible starting point for answers to nagging questions? Possibly.
I think you could compare this show to Wikipedia (various factual errors, inconsistent detail etc), but it is nevertheless a possible source of inspiration for a lot of us.
60 days? I thought my school was crazy, my friend got a week OSS for doing a simple "Hi All" netsend.
It seems most of the public that has little or no knowledge about technology, either by apathy or igorance, has a great tendency to fear what they do not know about... in this case giving this kid 60 days for something most admins would shrug at.
Educating the public is hard... but the worst enemy is apathy.
I hope they will implement some sort of re-sending method... just to receive a text message, takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes.
Just imagine, buying a ticket online 20 mins before you go to the theater, and still be waiting for it by the time you get there?
Looks like building a risky enterprise on a relatively new and unreliable technology. After all, doesn't SMS seem to be an afterthough with most cell networks?
Now, with this device people can see they will get cancer, and accordingly spend more money on 'medicines' over a longer period of time until they die... No offense intended at those who have been affected by cancer (I have) but it really aggravates me to see doctors come up with more plans to make off with your money... although that's a lot of what they seem to do anyway.