A Proper Handheld A500 Style Games Console - Cool Idea?!

[CU_AMiGA]

Hey Yo!

I was thinking, wouldn't it be great if someone released a handheld A500 gaming console, that used floppy disk, like the original. The joypad can be switched to Joy0/1 or mouse mode. And could have a big widescreen in the style of a PSP (although better quality!). Plus, technology today, will make the battery life pretty reasonable now, compared to if it had been done years ago. Good idea? :-)

Regards

[Floid]

CU_AMiGA wrote:
Hey Yo!

I was thinking, wouldn't it be great if someone released a handheld A500 gaming console, that used floppy disk, like the original. The joypad can be switched to Joy0/1 or mouse mode. And could have a big widescreen in the style of a PSP (although better quality!). Plus, technology today, will make the battery life pretty reasonable now, compared to if it had been done years ago. Good idea? :-)

Regards

Would've been great, but the parts and R&D cost would be rather killer, not to mention the energy cost (vs. weight) in spinning the floppy.*  Now, if you took (or found) something GP32-esque with UAE and managed to produce an adapter to 'rip' Amiga floppies onto the device, that'd be cute.

Bonus points, as I always note, for giving an A600 or similar continued purpose as some sort of 'terminal' for same.  But that's how it ends up working naturally -- you need an Amiga to generate the ADFs, so let that part live on your desk and carry the rest on low-power, low-size Flash or whatever.


*Yes, old floppy-only laptops got pretty decent battery life, but have you seen the size of their batteries? ... and those ate the latency of spinning the disk down and up per access, while, IIRC, the Amiga constantly spins the hub when the disk is in, right?

[adolescent]

@CU_Amiga

Great idea, but...

Why limit yourself to floppies?  Why not just have some sort of dedicated (hardware?) emulation and load ADF's off of a CF or SD?  

I'm not sure where a widescreen would help though, since there are no widescreen games.  BTW, the PSP has an excellent screen (best I've seen on a handheld).

[CU_AMiGA]

adolescent wrote:
BTW, the PSP has an excellent screen (best I've seen on a handheld).

Hey Yo!

You're wrong on that one buddy! :-) The PSP screen is lovely, and it's big and clear. But unfortunately the quality of the screen itself is of lower quality than GP32 or Nintendo DS. Hence, that is why you get quite a few of PSP's with "dead pixels"

Regards,

[Speelgoedmannetje]

plus, the PSP suffers much of the 'dead-pixel' syndrome.
naah, guess it'd be much cooler if the I-pod (with a 20-40gb hd) was bundled together with a gp32 (with a bit newer technology of course), plus touchscreen,  and of course UAE ported to it :-)

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Of course, one could also run UAE on this little thingy :-)

sadly, the price of this thingy isn't that funny :-(

[Magic-Merl]

Yes, UAE running transparently on an existing handheld device sounds like a real opportunity.

Must have a PC link to download adf's onto it.  Either that or a SDRAM card for the software.

[lempkee]

heh one thing just popped up here...

Please insert disk 16 into any drive...


The Amiga Handheld weighs only 0.5 kg but the bag with the floppys weigh more than 48kg's ..

:-)

[Magic-Merl]

Sod that.

I think CD32 titles should be available first

[adolescent]

CU_AMiGA wrote:

adolescent wrote:
BTW, the PSP has an excellent screen (best I've seen on a handheld).

Hey Yo!

You're wrong on that one buddy! :-) The PSP screen is lovely, and it's big and clear. But unfortunately the quality of the screen itself is of lower quality than GP32 or Nintendo DS. Hence, that is why you get quite a few of PSP's with "dead pixels"

Regards,

Nintendo has/had the same problem with the DS initially, and have taken action just like Sony has.  I guess I'm lucky because neither my DS or my PSP have dead (or stuck) pixels.

But, the GP32 (not BLU/FLU) screen is aweful.  Perhaps they fixed it when they made the new units but on my original GP32 the screen is not even centered.  :pissed:

[x56h34]

Usually, there's always something about the first batch of released systems and handheld systems that is not working properly.

I remember that even GB Advance SP had a problem with screen, however this was not due to bad pixels, but dust actually being able to easily build-up inside of the protective glass. :-(

Sony had problems with every launch of a new system released so far. There was always something buggy or defective.

Solution...wait a while before purchasing for the bugs to get ironed out. ;-)

[billt]

Well, to begin with I wouldn't consider something in the A500 style a "handheld".

Toss out the floppy drive and replace it with a compact-flash slot and perhaps some battery backup NVram and it might be interesting. Had the BoXeR been finished, that could have become such a thing, with today's FPGAs they could also bring a 68K CPU into the FPGA along with the AGA stuff they were doing, at low power and respectable performance.

Out of curiosity, are there any chances of porting UAE to the PSP? That could be one solution right there...

[Dan]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
plus, the PSP suffers much of the 'dead-pixel' syndrome.
naah, guess it'd be much cooler if the I-pod (with a 20-40gb hd) was bundled together with a gp32 (with a bit newer technology of course), plus touchscreen,  and of course UAE ported to it :-)

Sounds like a Pocket Media Assistant:-)
Whenever they release the SDK...

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Dan wrote:

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
plus, the PSP suffers much of the 'dead-pixel' syndrome.
naah, guess it'd be much cooler if the I-pod (with a 20-40gb hd) was bundled together with a gp32 (with a bit newer technology of course), plus touchscreen,  and of course UAE ported to it :-)

Sounds like a Pocket Media Assistant:-)
Whenever they release the SDK...

Now only if they had put buttons on it alike a handheld console, and it was just IT :-)
Still, it's a very cool thingy..

[Ilwrath]

Why not just run PocketUAE on a sufficiently powerful PDA?  A few hundred bucks and a vendor can have it heading toward your house tonight.

I play Nuclear War on PocketUAE on my iPaq 4155 all the time.