potential PPC Amiga REAL CHEAP

[Louis Dias]

has anyone seen the developer leaked stats on
http://revolution.ign.com ?

Revolution is a direct upgrade for the GC with supposedly 100% backwards HARDWARE compatibility.

It will have about 96MB of main T1-RAM and double the clockspeed of the GC.  I wonder if it is getting an 800MHz Gekko or and 800Mhz G5...  Also the Flipper is updated to double the clock rate (400Mhz and is to incorporate Radeon technology)....

If there connect the external devices that same way (EXI bus) but with a faster bus...  It seems that all GC "hacks" may be compatible with Revolution.  Worst cast is that the video frame buffer driver might have to be rewritten.

Thanks to USB 2.0 ports and direct SD card compatibility and built-in wi-fi, I may be running Linux on the Revolution before anyone runs it on the 360.

Lest we not forget the possible $99-150 price point.
Now that's what I call a
"potential PPC Amiga REAL CHEAP"
 :-D

Let me remind people that VERY EARLY on in this thread, I stated that any development work done getting AOS4 onto the GC could carry over to Revolution. :rtfm:

I hate to say - "I told you so!"

No I lied.
:smack:
I am happy to say "I told you so!"  :lol:
:laughing:
 :-P

:flame:

[Louis Dias]

adolescent wrote:

lou_dias wrote:

Let me remind people that VERY EARLY on in this thread, I stated that any development work done getting AOS4 onto the GC could carry over to Revolution. :rtfm:

Wow!  So all the OS4 development work that hasn't been done on Gamecube could carry over and not be done on the Revolution either!  

That's quite a prediction.  :crazy:

Hey, where's that 256MB cell phone? :roll:

[Louis Dias]

that number came from the implied memory requirements of any serious modern OS that you say rules out the GC...

how about 96MB?  That's what Revolution is supposedly coming with.

[Louis Dias]

koaftder wrote:

bloodline wrote:

koaftder wrote:

Amiga wont live unless it opens up, and thats not likely to happen. Aros is going about things the wrong way by staying in the stonage.

Suck my what?

I'll take it your commenting about the aros statement.

I like aros, now that gcc runs on it, it's been much much more useable for what i do.

My gripe with aros is the lack of memory protection and other things. I really would like to see aros on the L4 kernel.

LOL, gcc's been running on GC-Linux for some time now.  But since it's Linux I guess that doesn't count.  On a brighter note, there is some interest in  GC-AROS.

[Louis Dias]

They claim that with the extra cache, clock speed and bus speed that exaclty 2x realworld performance is possible.

I think they went as faster as they could go without requiring a fan on the cpu.  To quite Iwata "small, effiecent and quiet".

GC multiplied by 2.5 (benchmark) is not a bad thing at all.  Add to that the 2 UBB 2.0 ports and built-in wireless capability.

Really, graphics whores and speed freaks can diss it all they want but Revolution is going to be the easiest to hack and also the easiest for real developers to code for.

Nintendo literally just upgraded the GC to create Revolution.  GC backwards compatability is in the hardware thru the natural virtue of the hardware upgrades.  I bet the GPU comes with a PPU instead of a DSP built-in and 32MB of ARAM instead of 16MB.  That PPU will be used for AI and physics letting the rest of the system do other things.  I can't believe they will leave the texture cache at 3MB...  I think that's just the cpu upgraded version of the devkit that was quoting that number.

In the end, Revolution will still have that awesome controller to reel in the masses.  And I believe they will come.

Also, Nintendo has some graphics patents up it's sleeve:
http://nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com/2005/12/is-displacement-mapping-last-secret.html

[Louis Dias]

MskoDestny wrote:

lou_dias wrote:
They claim that with the extra cache, clock speed and bus speed that exaclty 2x realworld performance is possible.

So much for that whole 3-5x powerful bit eh? I guess their original statement of 2-3x more powerful may have been correct after all.

Yeah...but it's still an early version of the finished chip.  The final one could be faster.

Really, graphics whores and speed freaks can diss it all they want but Revolution is going to be the easiest to hack

I don't see how you come to this conclusion. There were PS2 and XBox modchips long before there were any for the Gamecube and if I were Nintendo I would make sure to tweak the authentication enough to make sure the current mod chips don't work.

The GC was hacked last because of popularity not design.  Revolution will probably employ a similar method.  The big copyprotection scheme was in the barcode on the GC discs.  I think Nintendo realizes that copy protecting the media is easier than copyprotecting the IPL.

and also the easiest for real developers to code for.

Easiest to use to it's full potential perhaps, but if the recent rumors are true then you don't have to use the 360 or PS3 to their full potential to get better performance than the Revolution. All the extra complexity from writing games on the 360 is from the multiple cores, but even using a single core the 360 is more powerful than the Revolution as described in the recent rumors.

Well, a single 360 core was said to be barely 2x more powerful than the Xbox's cpu.  So if developers are saying the benchmark is 2.5x more powerful than the GC, then I would say that Revolution can handle anything that's on the 360 today.

I bet the GPU comes with a PPU instead of a DSP built-in and 32MB of ARAM instead of 16MB.

Well the recent rumors suggest that the ARAM will stay at 16MB and unless they do throw in some crazy physics processor there's really no good reason for them to increase it.

The recent rumors are still based on the original Flipper.  The GPU is not finished yet.  Nintendo just said to target atleast double the performance.

The unwashed non-gamer and casual gamer masses is going to be hard to capture. These are people that don't buy game consoles. If anything they play games on their PC (because they already have it) or buy those little joysticks with built-in games that you plug into your TV. That's not to say that Nintendo can't capture that market, but it's hardly a slam dunk at this point.

That person will be able to play NES games online against other people.  That's who it will be a hit with.  Nintendo is attacking XBox Live head on.  Only Nintendo has a better catalog of games.  While Geometry Wars is a great game on XBL, who's really heard of it?  I just wonder how they will manage the "micro-transactions".

[Louis Dias]

I hear what you are saying but when developers already know how to develop for the GC, there's practically no learning curve for developiong for Revolution except for finding new performance limits since the api is practically identical.

[Louis Dias]

On a brighter note, I've recently heard from someone who is going to attempt to port AROS to the GC.  He put his system together for $151 and I just sold him an SD memory card adapter for $10 with shipping and paypal fee included.  So I guess he's up to $161 in costs.  Still the cheapest ~500Mhz PPC pc he could ever buy as he put it.

[Louis Dias]

b&w - black and white?
Yeah, you both got ripped off.

[Louis Dias]

koaftder wrote:
In about a month and a half, this thread will be 1 year old! It's first birthday! A celebration is in order for sure.

We need a poll here, how do you intend to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of the Nintendamiga thread?

1) Get drunk and paint red and white checker patterns on the game cube

2) March through the streets dressed up as a gamecube console and inform everybody that amiga os 4 will be released for gamecube *any day now!*

3) Print out a screen shot from AOS 4 beta you found on the web, and tape it on the front of your television set and invite your friends over to witness amiga os on the gamecube.

4) Dress up as aros the cat logo and yiff & skritch every body at your local star trek convention and tell everybody that game cube makes you purr.

5) Goto your local glue sniffers anonymous meeting, and inform everybody that you do not sniff glue, "But you just saved a bundle by switching to gamecube as your main computing platform" ( you can dooooo iiiiit )

6) Spend your time pursuing the opposite sex.

I think I will just ponder how much effort was wasted trolling instead of petitioning or coding.

Personally, I think you all are quite bitter about the fact that Revolution is shaping up to be a clear and easy upgrade path for any work that could have went into Amicube.  At $199 or less NEW at launch with an 800-900Mhz processor, 104 MB of ram and built-in USB 2.0 ports, SD adapter ports, wi-fi capabilities and a DVD drive that it is quite an ideal platform for a capable future Amiga.

Being able to send apps to a Ninendo DS such as Jabberwacky wouldn't be too bad either.  So many possibilities...

[Louis Dias]

@koaftder

I stopped comparing Amiga value to PC value around 1997.  I own an Athlon XP 3200 with 1GB of 400MHz DDR ram and a 300GB HD, does that mean that any Amiga machine that doesn't hold up against those specs is worthless to me?  If you can leave garbage like the first 2/3 of your message off this thread, maybe we wouldn't have scared away more people like Darklight for so long.

You can piss and moan about Linux on the GC not being useful, but Linux is only useful for whatever a user decides to compile for their installation.  That's why Linux is useless to me and 99% of all PC users.

Here's the bottomline.  You, Waccoon and adolescent all own GC's.  Yet you are the biggest "critics" (being nice) here.  Infact, I'd venture to say there are more people who frequent this site that own GC's than real Amigas or use them daily.

If Hyperion released an OS4 "lite" to try out on the GC, alot of people would scoop it up.  They could then release a Revolution "patch" to take advantage of the extra capabilities.

I don't expect AOS on GC/Rev/360/PS3/XBOX/DC to ever replace my PC, but it sure would be cool and fun to try out.  That alone could help the platform grow
if done properly.

@Darklight
Yes, it is all about the controller!

[Louis Dias]

coldfish wrote:

I see the next gen' consoles as a testing ground for new (and FUN!) ways to interact with computer tech.  I for one would be quite dissapointed if they presented us with boring, more-of-the-same-2D-windows-like interfaces.

That's why it's going to be all about the Revolution controller.   You'll be able to drag "icons" in 3d space...

[Louis Dias]

koaftder wrote:

lou_dias wrote:
@koaftder

I stopped comparing Amiga value to PC value around 1997.  I own an Athlon XP 3200 with 1GB of 400MHz DDR ram and a 300GB HD, does that mean that any Amiga machine that doesn't hold up against those specs is worthless to me?  If you can leave garbage like the first 2/3 of your message off this thread, maybe we wouldn't have scared away more people like Darklight for so long.

Now your saying you arent comparing the hardware to generally avaiable pc/mac hardware. Strange, because  thats the opposite of half your posts in the past. Which one is it?

I know it's been a while...I was comparing it to the A1 on a performance/price basis.  It's everybody else that shot it down for not being as good as a Mac or whatever other more useful platform that isn't getting a port either.

You can piss and moan about Linux on the GC not being useful, but Linux is only useful for whatever a user decides to compile for their installation.  That's why Linux is useless to me and 99% of all PC users.

Most linux users out there arent compiling anything from their perspective. They just click on the app manager, select a program they want and click install.

good for them :roll:

If Hyperion released an OS4 "lite" to try out on the GC, alot of people would scoop it up.  They could then release a Revolution "patch" to take advantage of the extra capabilities.

I don't expect AOS on GC/Rev/360/PS3/XBOX/DC to ever replace my PC, but it sure would be cool and fun to try out.  That alone could help the platform grow
if done properly.

blah blah blah whatever. Now your saying that it would be cool and fun toy, earlier you were pimping it as the next potential amiga, a vehicle for keeping the platform alive.

Anyway, you'll get your chance to schlick your ideas to the AmigaOS developers on IRC next week. Maybe you can discuss how hard it is to use a threading library, or debate on the best way to use the 16MB aram chunk.

[/quote]

blah blah blah...
My idea came from every other Amiga user and their mother whining about not having an affordable PPC OS4 solution.

My first question would be how much longer before their contract with Hyperion and Amiga, Inc. expires so they can rebrand the OS and dump the curse that is backward compatibility and actually get the OS in users' hands.

[Louis Dias]

The OS - no.  Workbench - yes.  But now you can build a better gui.

[Louis Dias]

Well, having a controller interface that inherently detects 3D spacial movement does lend itself to allowing for 3d manipulation of the location of objects on a screen.  Workbench is just a 2D filemanger.  If Hyperion does implement a 3D api, then creating a 3D filemanager isn't a big leap.  The problem up until now is that the primary interface (mouse) only detects 2D movement.

Dos/cli: 1D - a simple list of files
Workbench/Windows: 2D - we have icons now and can move them around
future: 3D - we still have icons but not we can move them behind each other then you can move the camera/view angle

Once holography becomes commercial technology, interfaces like in the movie Minority Report will be totally possible.  A 3d Workbench could be the same thing but without the holography, a virtual pointer placed on the screen then becomes necessary - but that's what today's mouse pointer is now.

[Louis Dias]

@koaftder

if you have 1000 icons on your screen, you're just unorganized, don't blame to OS

@Waccoon

Most people don't multitask as well as the OSes they are trying to use.

Which is why I said it's a "nice feature" and why I said you can get away with 24MB...several pages ago...

As for the rest, some nice ideas but my scope here has always been cheap hardware + OS 4 for the masses.  Who knew this thread would get so philisophical?  I can't see them going beyond OS4...

As for your comments about a PS2 looking better than a GC - hahahaha...  Maybe you should compare apples to apples.  Get the same game on each system and play them both.  The GC verion is either an exact port (graphically) or better.  I've played Madden on both systems, PS2 looks like cartoon drawings of real people.  Not much shading and not too detailed textures.  The GC version looks about 3/4 of the way from the PS2 version to the XBOX version, but I guees with the 3 games you own, you'd never know how great the GC really can be.  

What are those 3 games you own anyway?  I've owned about 80 GC games, maybe I can recommend you some based on your tastes.