potential PPC Amiga REAL CHEAP

[Karlos]

lou_dias wrote:

KThunder wrote:
dude do you dig this thread up every time you find something interesting? you can start a new thread you know. they let you do that :-o

Wouldn't that be worse?

IIRC, Wayne once suggested that very long threads were not so good for the system backend, taking a long time to process etc.

-edit-

As this is post 404 in this topic it would have been amusing were it to vanish or something :-)

[Louis Dias]

Everything you always wanted to know about the PPC chip inside the GC but didn't know you could ask:

http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gc-linux/06ibm-gekko.pdf


ps,
I'm staying on topic.  If all the useless comments were removed from the thread, I wouldn't complain...

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
Everything you always wanted to know about the PPC chip inside the GC but didn't know you could ask:

http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gc-linux/06ibm-gekko.pdf


ps,
I'm staying on topic.  If all the useless comments were removed from the thread, I wouldn't complain...

from the link:

Could not read file.

Go back. /home/ftp/pub/sourceforge//s/so/sourceforge/gc-linux/06ibm-gekko.pdf
Nov 17, 2005 19:13

[MskoDestny]

lou_dias wrote:
At work this week, I witnessed a 64MB Windows Mobile PDA running internet explorer.  The system has no hard drive or extra memory in it other than the built-in 192k ROM.  Cache was only invented to load pages you visit often faster back then.  With today's internet access speeds, a web cache is not required.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure most Windows Mobile PDAs have more than 192K of Flash and/or ROM to boot off of.

That said, unless you plan on running Windows Mobile on your Gamecube, I don't see how this is particularly relevant to whether or not the Gamecube can do anything useful running Amiga OS 4 (or even linux for that matter) internetwise. The Nokia 770 Internet tablet (which runs linux) supposedly struggles with some pages with 64MB of RAM.

AROS will run in a tiny memory frootprint, but it doesn't currently have anything that remotely resembles a modern web browser.

[itix]

Besides it goes along the lines of 40MB isn't enough memory to do anything with a Gamecube...which ofcourse is B.S. as Amigas have been doing plenty with 2MB and a floppy. Heck back in the day, a 20MB HD was huge...

40MB of RAM and 20MB HD was huge when we were using Workbench in 4 colours and tiny 640x256 resolutions. Start using Amiga on 1600x1200x32 resolution, launch web browser and oops, 40MB is gone.

Programs are not getting bigger but data is.

And no, nobody want back to those days when we had 2MB and a floppy.

[Louis Dias]

look for it here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gc-linux/

[Louis Dias]

OMFG!

http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=5512

USB HOST - coming soon!

...now that is everything...

now what was that again about the GC not being a sound Amiga PPC platform?

[Louis Dias]

Holy critnap!

I used a Gyration wireless mouse on a PC at work today!
It lets you rotate the mouse in mid-air and it moves the mouse pointer on the screen accordingly.

Wow!

I tried spelling my name in mid-air but the thing doesn't recognized 3D spacial movement, just rotation along 2 axis.

The Revolution controller does recognize 3D spacial movement.  I was wowed by this mouse.  I expect to be blown away by the Revolution controller.

[KThunder]

see now this last post had nothing to do would the original post at all. i have a wireless mouse and keyboard... they are pretty cool i guess.
certainly nothing to bring up the holy name of critnap anyway :-D

[Louis Dias]

well,
Revolution is capable of playing Gamecube games.
Supposedly, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is supposed to be "Revolution-aware" so an OS targetted at the GC could eventually take advantage of Revolution's capabilities.

Besides, the Rev controller was demoed on the GC to the press...

And the wireless mouse I'm talking about, I held in mid-air...it's not a wireless mouse that you need a flat surface for, you just move your wrist in mid-air and move the mouse pointer...  It's from Gyration.  You should look it up.  I'm thinking about buying it.  Works from 30 ft away too.  Again, Rev's controller can do that and more.  I'm excited!

Besides, did you read my prior post about the USB host?  The GC is the best bang for buck potential PPC Amiga hardware...soon...

[TjLaZer]

Well it seems everyone does not have anything to contribute on here so I thought I would add my first reply to this historic thread!  LOL

[adolescent]

lou_dias wrote:

...now that is everything...

now what was that again about the GC not being a sound Amiga PPC platform?

24MB RAM...  <-- All I need to say.

[Louis Dias]

adolescent wrote:

24MB RAM...  <-- All I need to say.

Gamecube has 24MB main ram and 16MB of secondary ram used as swap space by developers like a ram disk.

memory footprint of your average OS once it's "booted" and running: 256k
email client: 128K
most memory that ever came with a real Amiga: 2MB
memory that came with first Amiga: 256k
Linux kernel on Gamecube: 1.7MB
homebrew mp3 player with DVD browser on GC: 160K
homebrew multimedia player supporting MANY formats on GC: 14MB

most classic Amiga application run on a system with 512K, floppy drive speeds were the main issue before HD's became common place.

a $15 adapter gives you access to SD memory cards currently up to 2GB.  Applications can boot off of SD card or DVD.

My GC-Linux boots in 5 seconds from the 2MB of flashram in my mod chip.  That includes connecting to a TCP/IP based filesystem.  A Kickstart-clone can easily be flashed there instead...or UBOOT (ala A1).

My modchip (qoob Pro) also supports booting from DVD burned with the joilet filesystem natively.
http://www.gc-linux.org/wiki/Building_a_Bootable_Disc
Or I can flash SDLoad and boot from SD card. www.gcdev.com

OS4 has been booted from an SD card at an Amiga show

Flashing is done via a USB cable and software that runs on the PC (I think there is also a MAC version somewhere). www.qoobchip.com

Soon a new modchip called GCLoader (www.gcloader.com) will also include a USB 2.0 HOST that will allow for plugging in devices like USB harddrives and the like...  Once you have a harddrive, memory limitations are moot by means of virtual memory.

Finally, there was a thread on this site called something like "OS4 is lean and mean" where a user posted screen shots of his 256MB A1 running OS4.  He had an instant-messenger cliet, email client and AmiAMP all running well under 24MB of memory on a very hi-res screen.  OS4 is made to run lean as it's developer have stated that it is ideal for "embedded" devices with low resources.  This is what it's own developers state on the official OS4 website and cotradicts what every troll was trying to tell me when I started this thread.

People will always say something can't be done until someone comes along and does it.

When the only excuse left against running an Amiga-based OS on the Gamecube is memory.  The trolls need to find a new bridge to live under.  What's the old saying, "unused RAM is wasted RAM".   Until an Amiga user can justify needing more than 24-40 MB of RAM at any given time to go about their daily computing, it's a non-issue.

I never have never said GC-Amiga is an ideal solution.  I have always said it can be a great introduction to OS4 and help grow the market.  Then when suitable and affordable hardware comes out (now that the market has grown) you can then upgrade to that hardware.  Also, by default, the Nintendo Revolution provides an upgrade path to a G5 based system at a much better price than anyone else will sell you a G5-compatible board at.

[odin]

Port Firefox and woops, the GameCube's mem is suddenly full.

[adolescent]

lou_dias wrote:

adolescent wrote:

24MB RAM...  <-- All I need to say.

Gamecube has 24MB main ram and 16MB of secondary ram used as swap space by developers like a ram disk.

Yes, 24MB of RAM, just like I said.  Since you can't use the  extra 16MB of swap as contiguous RAM for applications, etc.

memory footprint of your average OS once it's "booted" and running: 256k

Average 1990 Amiga OS?  You're not talking about modern usable operating systems are you?  Are you seriously comparing something like OS4 to Workbench 2.0?

most memory that ever came with a real Amiga: 2MB

Wrong.  We'll just leave it at that.  

most classic Amiga application run on a system with 512K, floppy drive speeds were the main issue before HD's became common place.

HDs have been commonplace for 10+ years, even in Amigas.  Again, where's the connection.  Do you have 26MB of RAM in your PC?  It's not possible.

a $15 adapter gives you access to SD memory cards currently up to 2GB.  Applications can boot off of SD card or DVD.

As storage, not RAM.  There's nothing, currently, that can be done about the lack of RAM.  As such, and I've been saying this for months now, the GCN is not a good candidate for anything other than a game system.

People will always say something can't be done until someone comes along and does it.

That's typically how things work.  I'd never expect to see a flying car that can travel back in time, but you never know.

[Louis Dias]

@odin:

My CD32 with 4megs in my SX-1 ran IBrowse.  If Firefox is a bigger pig than Internet Explorer (<21MB) then those coders (FireFox) need to write better code.  How big is Opera?


adolescent wrote:

lou_dias wrote:

Gamecube has 24MB main ram and 16MB of secondary ram used as swap space by developers like a ram disk.

Yes, 24MB of RAM, just like I said.  Since you can't use the  extra 16MB of swap as contiguous RAM for applications, etc.

So, it can be used like RAM: or RAD:
It's still useable.

memory footprint of your average OS once it's "booted" and running: 256k

Average 1990 Amiga OS?  You're not talking about modern usable operating systems are you?  Are you seriously comparing something like OS4 to Workbench 2.0?

Show me a booted Amiga Workbench screen that has more than several hundred kilobytes of used memory.  We are talking about Amiga OS's here not pigs such as Mac OS X or Win 2K/XP.

most memory that ever came with a real Amiga: 2MB

Wrong.  We'll just leave it at that.

excuse me - CHIP RAM

most classic Amiga application run on a system with 512K, floppy drive speeds were the main issue before HD's became common place.

HDs have been commonplace for 10+ years, even in Amigas.  Again, where's the connection.  Do you have 26MB of RAM in your PC?  It's not possible.

When talking about Windows or Mac - right, not possible.  But who's talking about Windows or Mac OS's?

a $15 adapter gives you access to SD memory cards currently up to 2GB.  Applications can boot off of SD card or DVD.

As storage, not RAM.  There's nothing, currently, that can be done about the lack of RAM.  As such, and I've been saying this for months now, the GCN is not a good candidate for anything other than a game system.

SD cards are replacing floppies and CDRW's more and more.  That was/is my point.

People will always say something can't be done until someone comes along and does it.

That's typically how things work.  I'd never expect to see a flying car that can travel back in time, but you never know.

Exactly.