potential PPC Amiga REAL CHEAP

[billt]

>If you can put linux on it, you can put AOS 4.

They why'd they tell me it won't happen for an iBook?

[billt]

>You tell me what a GC couldn't do running OS4 that the A1 can/should/will?

It all boils down to the whole "running OS4" bit.

Who's going to pay Amiga or Hyperion or whoever handles such things for the license to port it? Who's going to get the docs from Nintendo so it can be properly supported? (No, I wouldn't ask anyone to reverse-engineer the Linux sources to make AmigaOS drivers for everything in there...) No license, no OS4 for GC. No docs, no drivers, etc...

[Ilwrath]

Why does it sound absurd? You can get a quick, overclockable G3+ PPC computer and excellent 3-d graphics chip and internet access for $99 + a bit more for the Action Replay and Powerboard keyboard and Broadband adapter [...] There are high-speed serial ports on it, analog controllers, digital-capable output, super fast internal memory. 64 channel Dolby II Surround stereo sound chip. Nintendo now sells a microphone with Mario Party 6 so you could add voice to your chat clients...

All of which is very specialized and undocumented hardware.  Besides, outside of Nintendo's own APIs, the GameCube is FAR from a "quick, overclockable G3+ PPC computer."  It's a dog-slow, low-RAM, shared memory architecture, proprietary, undocumented maze of strange components.  It plays games well because Nintendo's official toolkits are highly optimized.  

It makes a really crappy general use computer, though.  Have you even tried running the Linux hack on one?  From everything I've heard, it works much worse than Linux on the PS2 does.  And that's quite a feat, as Linux on the PS2 is easily manhandled by 5+ year old PCs you can find on the scrapheap.

It's not worth the effort of figuring out, and that's not even taking into account the fact that the end product would very likely be ruled illegal under current US law.  (Under the DMCA, releasing a commercial product that loads by bypassing the Nintendo's bootloader protection would be illegal.)

Personally it's a steal over the A1 and has an installed base of 18.8 MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEllion users.

You might as well argue for running AmigaOS 4 on one of these.  I mean, there's millions of them embedded in things all around you.  Oh wait... Actually you'd be BETTER OFF, as at least those are documented...  And, while it'd be insane to run AmigaOS 4 on your anti-lock braking system, it probably wouldn't be illegal.  

You tell me what a GC couldn't do running OS4 that the A1 can/should/will?

Well, nothing, as all hardware in your world is apparently perfectly documented, understood, and interchangable.  :-P

[Argo]

I smell bounty!

[Louis Dias]

adolescent wrote:
No it wouldn't.  The GC is a game machine.  And, as such will never replace a fully functioning computer.  There is a lack of expansion, and the expansions that are available are suitable for games only.  

For example, the Ethernet port has a maximum throughput of ~27Mb/s.  It can't even run 100Mb/s like a $.99 NIC.  There's also the lack of suitable mass storage.

Well considering the internet is at 10Mb/s and 100 is really for LAN, I'd say they are still ahead of the game, also, where did you get that 27 figure?
As far ask expansion...what would you need?  Please specify.  With the high speed serial ports, expansions would come if a market developed around the OS port.  Look at the GBA player for the gamecube...they also have a rumored N64 player in prototype.  there's a mic on the Konga Drums and a mic that plugs into the memory port that comes with Mario Party 6.  Dance mats, steering wheels, keyboard, SD memory card storage...If you are talking about more processing power, if you read the article I posted about the Flipper chip, it alludes to software programmable CPU and bus/Flipper chip and I saw an opened Gamecube with the faster 200+MHz Flipper in it on some website.  Nintendo never posts their true system's power.  I believe it's running at 650MHz and the 203MHz Flipper but early dev kits downgrade it to 485 and 162.5...now we have resident Evil 4 in full force looking better than any other game on the other 2 systems with Zelda yet to come.

[Waccoon]

Is it just me, or are people getting really, really desperate?  :-)

Well considering the internet is at 10Mb/s...

Most broadband modems don't come close to even filling the capacity of 10-Base-T Ethernet.  The absolute best I've ever seen on a cable modem was about 520 kilobytes per second, and I usually get between 240-300.

Keep in mind that with the lack of true ATA, you'd likely have to do lots of storage access over Ethernet.  I can't imagine hacking the GameCube's CD port being all that easy.

[Louis Dias]

Ilwrath wrote:

Why does it sound absurd? You can get a quick, overclockable G3+ PPC computer and excellent 3-d graphics chip and internet access for $99 + a bit more for the Action Replay and Powerboard keyboard and Broadband adapter [...] There are high-speed serial ports on it, analog controllers, digital-capable output, super fast internal memory. 64 channel Dolby II Surround stereo sound chip. Nintendo now sells a microphone with Mario Party 6 so you could add voice to your chat clients...

All of which is very specialized and undocumented hardware.  Besides, outside of Nintendo's own APIs, the GameCube is FAR from a "quick, overclockable G3+ PPC computer."  It's a dog-slow, low-RAM, shared memory architecture, proprietary, undocumented maze of strange components.  It plays games well because Nintendo's official toolkits are highly optimized.  

It makes a really crappy general use computer, though.  Have you even tried running the Linux hack on one?  From everything I've heard, it works much worse than Linux on the PS2 does.  And that's quite a feat, as Linux on the PS2 is easily manhandled by 5+ year old PCs you can find on the scrapheap.

It's not worth the effort of figuring out, and that's not even taking into account the fact that the end product would very likely be ruled illegal under current US law.  (Under the DMCA, releasing a commercial product that loads by bypassing the Nintendo's bootloader protection would be illegal.)

Personally it's a steal over the A1 and has an installed base of 18.8 MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEllion users.

You might as well argue for running AmigaOS 4 on one of these.  I mean, there's millions of them embedded in things all around you.  Oh wait... Actually you'd be BETTER OFF, as at least those are documented...  And, while it'd be insane to run AmigaOS 4 on your anti-lock braking system, it probably wouldn't be illegal.  

You tell me what a GC couldn't do running OS4 that the A1 can/should/will?

Well, nothing, as all hardware in your world is apparently perfectly documented, understood, and interchangable.  :-P

So when you register as a developer for the Nintendo Gamcube and they send you a dev kit, it includes no documentation?  Surely you jest.  A dev kit gives you libraries to use all the system's capabilities.  The GC's graphics uses Open GL...tough to find documentation there.  The CPU is an updated G3 with a higher system bus speed and extra SIMD instructions but I'm sure IBM won't tell you anything about it.

Boy, you got to admire Capcom for making a game like Resident Evil 4 with no documentation at all...truly the 8th wonder of the world.  (Hello, the Gamecube has been touted as having an excellent API for programmers!)

I thought the Amiga was a game machine that they gave an OS to and added a keyboard and disk drive access to.  I thought the Amiga was quick (in it's day) because the graphics chip controlled memory access and memory moves (so does the Flipper in the GameCube, read the ZDnet article I posted please)

Oh and a Gamecube developer's kit is available for CODEWARRIOR to licensed GC developers for $595.  But I guess according to some people, at that price, all you are buying is the Nintendo logo.

Also, there is no bypassing the boot loader, you insert the Action Replay CD and it reads code of the memory card special adapter interface.

And you mention dog-slow shared RAM architecture... WTF?  You can read, right?  Not only does the Flipper have it's own 3MB of internal 20Gb/s bandwidth ram, the GC has 24 Megs of Mosys T-1 which has lower latency that anything else in any gaming platform.  It's system bus speed is 162.5Mhz, what's the A1's?  What's the XBOX's?  And if you read the article it can go to 200+.  Also, that extra 16MB bank of 'slow' (SDRAM, which is what the XBOX and A1 use) can be directly accessed by the sound processor independently of the CPU, it's got it's own bus to it.  Yes, the GC like the Amiga has 2 buses...who would have thunk it.

If anything the GC is what the Amiga could have been.
Oh and Nintendo's next system - Revolution - is supposed to be backwards compatible with the Gamecube software.  It is using the G5 and the latest ATI chipset which incorporates the extra features of the ArtX-developed(before ATI purchased the company) Flipper as stated in the article I posted a link to that you obviously didn't read.

Here's another thing you won't read: http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2002/4559.html and I know you especially won't read the last paragraph.

and another: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1566&p=3 even though this guy says 'XBOX' alot when he should say GameCube.  Let me qupte something here:
"The console does feature two serial ports and a high-speed parallel port for these future add-ons, all of which are driven by the Flipper chip which houses the IO controller for these ports. The two serial ports are proprietary designs (not USB like the Xbox) that can transfer at speeds up to 27Mbps. While this means that the Ethernet adapter will be limited to far below 100Mbps, 27Mbps is more than enough considering you won't be copying large files to anything on the Cube. The bandwidth is more than enough for the forthcoming 56K modem.

The high-speed parallel port is also a custom design capable of transferring data at up to 81MB/s (the same speed as the Cube's internal audio DRAM). This would be more than enough for a hard drive."

yes that was 81 MEGA BYTES, not bits, per second.  and before you say "it's not standard, it's not USB", USB 1.1 did what - 1.5Mb/s...  Anyway, it's all in the Flipper and it IS DOCUMENTED, just ask ATI.  Some info is out of date, the Cube now has up 32x memory cards holding 128MB of ram.  The ethernet adapter has been release so it's not limited to the 56k adapter.

also check out http://gcemu.dcemu.co.uk/ for a mod chip, 256MB memory card, GC emulation and Revoltuion rumors, Gentoo emulation...etc...

[Louis Dias]

Waccoon wrote:
Is it just me, or are people getting really, really desperate?  :-)

Well considering the internet is at 10Mb/s...

Most broadband modems don't come close to even filling the capacity of 10-Base-T Ethernet.  The absolute best I've ever seen on a cable modem was about 520 kilobytes per second, and I usually get between 240-300.

Keep in mind that with the lack of true ATA, you'd likely have to do lots of storage access over Ethernet.  I can't imagine hacking the GameCube's CD port being all that easy.

When I said the internet, I meant the real internet, it's routers and switches across the planet.  They run at 10Mb/s.  You're actually connection to that is much slower obviously but once a packet hits the internet, that's the speed it travels at.  Hence, the Cube's 27Mb/s adapter is more than adequate.  But people need something to complain about...I'm not sure but isn't one of the other console's adapter a 10Mb/s adapter?...again, you'll only notice that during LAN play not slower "online" play...

[the_leander]

And next week I'll be giving a lecture on how to build a BoXer system using only lolypop sticks, sticky backed plastic, and the fluff I found in my belly button this morning.

Face facts, AOS on a gamecube isn't going to happen, the technical challenge alone precludes it, let alone the legal strife anyone without Nintendo's permission would find themselves in.

The hardware although clever is designed for one thing only: Games. Running a full blown OS, even with AOS's legendary scaling would be an uncomfortable experience at best.. Then theres all the extra kit, it isn't just the game cube, is the expansion packs, its the keyboards, adapters and everything else, hell outside of a live CD your chances of actually having a usable OS that lasts more then a few days (because solid state memory cards are sooo reliable) are slim to non, unless you plan to boot off a Nas, by which time you've probably paid for a micro A1 with all the trimmings and then some!

Its a nice idea don't get me wrong, but thats all it will ever be, an idea.

[adolescent]

lou_dias wrote:
When I said the internet, I meant the real internet, it's routers and switches across the planet.  They run at 10Mb/s.  

Absolutely wrong.  Please check your facts before spouting such non-sense.

Anyway, I wasn't refering to the 27Mb/s as a problem for internet access.  I was refering to it as a problem because as of now everything needs to be streamed via BBA.  The SD card is only to load a boot file, then a PC server is needed to access the files.  You'd know this also if you did any research.

[Ilwrath]

iye-yie-yie-yie.... Where to begin... And why to bother?

So when you register as a developer for the Nintendo Gamcube and they send you a dev kit, it includes no documentation? Surely you jest. A dev kit gives you libraries to use all the system's capabilities. The GC's graphics uses Open GL...tough to find documentation there. The CPU is an updated G3 with a higher system bus speed and extra SIMD instructions but I'm sure IBM won't tell you anything about it.

First off, the Nintendo gamecube dev kit costs a fair bit.  You don't just register and look in your mailbox in a week.  Plus, with that kit, there are restrictions as to WHAT you can develop for that console, and what licensing and distribution terms are.  This is the first hurdle.  Why would Nintendo want you to be able to run AmigaOS on their console?  The chances of getting a legitimate license from them are practically nil.  Heck, the chances of just getting ahold of someone who speaks English and will talk with you about licensing at Nintendo are practically nil!

Oh and a Gamecube developer's kit is available for CODEWARRIOR to licensed GC developers for $595. But I guess according to some people, at that price, all you are buying is the Nintendo logo.

Actually, that's just a six month lease of CodeWarrior without any distribution rights....  At least I think that's what this site is talking about.

Boy, you got to admire Capcom for making a game like Resident Evil 4 with no documentation at all...truly the 8th wonder of the world. (Hello, the Gamecube has been touted as having an excellent API for programmers!)

Well, that's all fine and dandy... But if you're going to use the Nintendo's own API, you're going to have to build an abstraction/emulation layer on top of it to provide something for the Amiga OS to latch onto.  Basically write a PowerPC reference board emulator.  Talk about a performance hit!  

If you want to try to hit the hardware yourself (which is what I was assuming you were talking about) well, gee, by definition, that just threw the reknowned Nintendo APIs out the window.

Well, I guess there is a third solution... Totally re-writing AmigaOS to be able to use the Nintendo API directly, but as it's taken so long to get AmigaOS 4 written the first time, I can't see that happening.  

And you mention dog-slow shared RAM architecture... WTF? [...]  Not only does the Flipper have it's own 3MB of internal 20Gb/s bandwidth ram, the GC has 24 Megs of Mosys T-1 which has lower latency that anything else in any gaming platform. It's system bus speed is 162.5Mhz, what's the A1's?

Uhm... 66 or 100mhz, I think.  It's not exactly a rocket, either, but it's a real general purpose bus, not a dedicated chip-to-chip interconnect.  There's a fairly large difference here, not that you seem to be caring.  But the point I'm trying to make is that you're not going to see anywhere near peak performance here.  Like I said before, you have to do one of two things...

1) Throw out the Nintendo API and go at it blind.  Surely not very easy or efficient...

2) Build an emulation layer.  Figure at least 2-cycles lost to overhead per emulation layer cycle.  Even OC'd to 210mhz, you're down to 70mhz in a best-case scenerio.  Most likely real numbers would be much worse, yet.

Here's another thing you won't read: http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2002/4559.html and I know you especially won't read the last paragraph.

Here's the last paragraph.  What's so special about a proprietary chip and ATi and Nintendo aren't too anxious to share details about?

NINTENDO GAMECUBE features a revolutionary graphics processor, called the 'Flipper' chip, from ATI. The highly integrated processor includes both a 2D and 3D graphics engine, a DSP (digital signal processor) for audio processing, all system I/O (input/output) functions including CPU (central processing unit), system memory, controllers, optical disk, flash card, modem and video interfaces, and an on-chip high bandwidth frame buffer.

GameCube has a really complex chip in it!  That's what I've been saying!  The thing isn't like something you're going to find in a PC.  And for good reason.  The thing is dedicated proprietary hardware.

Alright...  Here's one for you.  When you get your GameCube stuff you ordered, go and install a Gentoo build on it.  I'll install a similar revision-level Gentoo on the 5 year old P2-400mhz (i440BX chipset) that I'm currently using as a doorstop.  We'll run some of these and see how well the Nintendo stacks up.

When I said the internet, I meant the real internet, it's routers and switches across the planet. They run at 10Mb/s

Now THAT is the best quote I've heard so far this year.  :lol:  :rofl:  Ya just put Cisco back to the 1970's!

[Hammer]

What's the XBOX's?

64MB of 6.4GB/s RAM via Dual MCH. Rated ~5 ns.

GPU support memory bandwidth savings tricks such as early Z test, S3TC/5 DXTC texture compression (e.g. 6:1 ratio) methods and compressed Z-buffer.

GPU's vertex shader program resources (as per DX8 specs).
Input registers: 16
Constant registers: 96
Temp registers: 12
Address register(s): 1
Max instruction count: 128

NV2A has two vertex shader units.

[bloodline]

And if you read the article it can go to 200+. Also, that extra 16MB bank of 'slow' (SDRAM, which is what the XBOX and A1 use) can be directly accessed by the sound processor independently of the CPU, it's got it's own bus to it. Yes, the GC like the Amiga has 2 buses...who would have thunk it.
 

Shawn? Shawn! Are you there Shawn?

[Varthall]

And you mention dog-slow shared RAM architecture... WTF? [...]  Not only does the Flipper have it's own 3MB of internal 20Gb/s bandwidth ram, the GC has 24 Megs of Mosys T-1 which has lower latency that anything else in any gaming platform. It's system bus speed is 162.5Mhz, what's the A1's?

Uhm... 66 or 100mhz, I think.

Actually, it's 133 mhz, it's not much lower than the GC one's.

Varthall

[Louis Dias]

Ilwrath wrote:

First off, the Nintendo gamecube dev kit costs a fair bit.  You don't just register and look in your mailbox in a week.  Plus, with that kit, there are restrictions as to WHAT you can develop for that console, and what licensing and distribution terms are.  This is the first hurdle.  Why would Nintendo want you to be able to run AmigaOS on their console?  The chances of getting a legitimate license from them are practically nil.  Heck, the chances of just getting ahold of someone who speaks English and will talk with you about licensing at Nintendo are practically nil!

you are kidding right?  You don't think an international multi billion dollar company with offices in Seatle doesn't have technichians who speak English?  I mean what is all GC software just Japanese imports from Japanese programmers?
As far as getting a license goes, that may be the tough part but it also may not.  Only a company like Hyperion who would have to apply for it can tell.  Many licenses are based on units actually sold so it initially may be free.

Actually, that's just a six month lease of CodeWarrior without any distribution rights....  At least I think that's what this site is talking about.

This is what I'm talking about: http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/Develop/Games/GC/Default.htm

Well, that's all fine and dandy... But if you're going to use the Nintendo's own API, you're going to have to build an abstraction/emulation layer on top of it to provide something for the Amiga OS to latch onto.  Basically write a PowerPC reference board emulator.  Talk about a performance hit!  

If you want to try to hit the hardware yourself (which is what I was assuming you were talking about) well, gee, by definition, that just threw the reknowned Nintendo APIs out the window.

Well, I guess there is a third solution... Totally re-writing AmigaOS to be able to use the Nintendo API directly, but as it's taken so long to get AmigaOS 4 written the first time, I can't see that happening.

Game machines are about hitting the hardware directly for maximum performance.  I don't see any reason by the GC API couldn't be used at all and with no performance hit over any other GC piece of software.

Uhm... 66 or 100mhz, I think.  It's not exactly a rocket, either, but it's a real general purpose bus, not a dedicated chip-to-chip interconnect.  There's a fairly large difference here, not that you seem to be caring.  But the point I'm trying to make is that you're not going to see anywhere near peak performance here.  Like I said before, you have to do one of two things...

1) Throw out the Nintendo API and go at it blind.  Surely not very easy or efficient...

2) Build an emulation layer.  Figure at least 2-cycles lost to overhead per emulation layer cycle.  Even OC'd to 210mhz, you're down to 70mhz in a best-case scenerio.  Most likely real numbers would be much worse, yet.

you are really going out on a limb there...what is being emulated?  You have PPC code running on a PPC chip... Que-est que ce le problem?  The Flipper is why this system has such tight and fast responsiveness.

Here's the last paragraph.  What's so special about a proprietary chip and ATi and Nintendo aren't too anxious to share details about?

NINTENDO GAMECUBE features a revolutionary graphics processor, called the 'Flipper' chip, from ATI. The highly integrated processor includes both a 2D and 3D graphics engine, a DSP (digital signal processor) for audio processing, all system I/O (input/output) functions including CPU (central processing unit), system memory, controllers, optical disk, flash card, modem and video interfaces, and an on-chip high bandwidth frame buffer.

Umm, the Flipper is quite documented by ATI.  Infact it's innovations are being incorporated into the next-gen ATI VPU's that's why ATI bought ArtX.

GameCube has a really complex chip in it!  That's what I've been saying!  The thing isn't like something you're going to find in a PC.  And for good reason.  The thing is dedicated proprietary hardware.

umm what's proprietary about an IBM G3 750 Gekko and an ATI Flipper?  Those are the only 2 chips inside the gamecube and that's why it only costs Nintendo $107 to produce one.
The only thing secretive about the system is Nintendo's published specs on speed of the cpu and Flipper.  Nothing else is a mystery.  Nintendo first announced that the N64 could do 100,000 polygons per second and it actually can do 150,000.  Marketing vs. real info like this is what allows any Nintendo console's software to improve over the course of it's lifespan...  I truly believe that the GC is running at 650Mhz with a 216.67 system bus and Flipper.  The fact that Nintendo tweaked the specs only 5 months before the console's launch should speak to the fact that it's possibly a software controlled system-speed based on boot code on the game discs or a matter of a couple of resistors on the board...and that the published numbers are more for marketing purpose than actual stats.  Now that the system is in it's final year before the new systems, we have graphically superior games like Metroid Prime 2, Resident Evil 4, the next Legend Of Zelda and I'm sure a few more to come.

On the A1, you have a northbridge, a southbridge and then the AGP graphics card...  On the Gamecube you have (I'm gonna get classic TV show nogostalic here) "it's Flipper, Flipper - faster than lightning, no one you see is faster than he"!

Alright...  Here's one for you.  When you get your GameCube stuff you ordered, go and install a Gentoo build on it.  I'll install a similar revision-level Gentoo on the 5 year old P2-400mhz (i440BX chipset) that I'm currently using as a doorstop.  We'll run some of these and see how well the Nintendo stacks up.

LOL. I certainly won't be the one that does it because I'm not that techincal with Linux at all.  However, I'm willing to bet you wouldn't stand a chance.

When I said the internet, I meant the real internet, it's routers and switches across the planet. They run at 10Mb/s

Now THAT is the best quote I've heard so far this year.  :lol:  :rofl:  Ya just put Cisco back to the 1970's!
[/quote]

The majority of the internet is still 10-based.  Get up off the floor and stop laughing.

[Louis Dias]

the_leander wrote:
And next week I'll be giving a lecture on how to build a BoXer system using only lolypop sticks, sticky backed plastic, and the fluff I found in my belly button this morning.

Face facts, AOS on a gamecube isn't going to happen, the technical challenge alone precludes it, let alone the legal strife anyone without Nintendo's permission would find themselves in.

The hardware although clever is designed for one thing only: Games. Running a full blown OS, even with AOS's legendary scaling would be an uncomfortable experience at best.. Then theres all the extra kit, it isn't just the game cube, is the expansion packs, its the keyboards, adapters and everything else, hell outside of a live CD your chances of actually having a usable OS that lasts more then a few days (because solid state memory cards are sooo reliable) are slim to non, unless you plan to boot off a Nas, by which time you've probably paid for a micro A1 with all the trimmings and then some!

Its a nice idea don't get me wrong, but thats all it will ever be, an idea.

Yes, that is my point!  It's a great idea!  Look what Nintendo did with the GBA Player for the GameCube.  It has a boot disk that goes instantly to the GBA player via the high speed parralel port.  Just picture an SX-1 type addon with a hard drive and with OS 4 booting and some USB ports and maybe a DVDdrive (or buy the Panasonic Q instead of a Gamecube to get a Gamecube that plays DVDs)...and the GBA player is cheaper than an actual GBA...