Next Generation Pandora

[christo930]

Wouldn't it be awesome to see a handheld based on a PC? Maybe it could have an intel atom or something (assuming it can run dos) and we can run all the classic dos games, windows games and emulators all in a handheld format with good battery life and gaming controls. Is there any interest in something like that?

Chris

 

[christo930]

Wouldn't it be awesome to see a handheld based on a PC? Maybe it could have an intel atom or something (assuming it can run dos) and we can run all the classic dos games, windows games and emulators all in a handheld format with good battery life and gaming controls. Is there any interest in something like that?

Chris

 

[greendots]

Wouldn't it be awesome to see a handheld based on a PC? Maybe it could have an intel atom or something (assuming it can run dos) and we can run all the classic dos games, windows games and emulators all in a handheld format with good battery life and gaming controls. Is there any interest in something like that?

Chris

Oh you mean something like this? Link

 

[lulzfish]

I guess he meant an x86 PC.
Yes, it would be awesome, but in the domain of handhelds, x86 is more expensive and consumes much more power than ARM processors, although it is a bit more powerful.

It also seems to be bigger, I haven't seen any pocket-sized x86s, only "handheld" ones, for large values of "held".

 

[Exophase]

Is this a joke topic?

 

[fischju2000]

Sony made an x86 UMPC, 1.33ghz processor, 4.5" screen, the VAIO UX390N. Size comparable to the Pandora and N800, although much thicker (1.5 inches, the Pandora is just over 1 inch). It had serious drawbacks, including a $2500 price tag,battery life under 2 hours, and it ran Windows Vista. They now have an 8" subnetbook (the VAIO P), or whatever they want to call it priced at $1000 with a 1.86 ghz processor, 4 hour battery life, and also Vista.

Then there is the OQO model 02, thinner x86 but also with a $2000+ price tag. 1.5ghz VIA, Windows XP, 4 hour battery life.

A cheap x86 device in the same form factor as the Pandora with comparable power and battery life isn't happening any time soon.

 

[icurafu]

There is the umid as wel, which is smaller and cheaper. But no UMPC or MID has been designed with game controls. I've seen 2 prototypes, but they never became real products.

Anyway, I still feel that ARM is more suitable than x86 for small, cool devices with long batery life. Also ofcourse there is better bang per watt.

But I can see how the compatibility of x86 would be desirable.

 

[icurafu]

lol, it has to be. Christo being long time member plus this topic already recently created again again; plus he said "good battery life".

 

[christo930]

lol, it has to be. Christo being long time member plus this topic already recently created again again; plus he said "good battery life".

No, it really isn't. I was envisioning something the size of a Pandora with gaming controls, a small 640x480 screen and a low power processor like the Intel Atom. With such a small screen and good design, I would think it could easily reach 5 hours battery time. I know the Intel x86 architecture isn't exactly power friendly, but progress has been made in that area. The big advantage would be the huge game and emulator library available already. The main reason I was thinking about it was that I really like the old dos games and so far a fast dos emulator has been elusive. Toshiba came somewhat close with the libreto line, but it was still too big and bulky and with the hard disk and standard Pentium, suffered from battery life issues (2 hours). Maybe it's just a pipe dream, but it's something I would definitely buy. You could have a 2 gig sd card formatted with dos and run all of the dos games, then you could put in a 8 or 16 gig for windows games and emulators. I am not really suggesting a next gen Pandora (that part was a joke), but kind of a dream system. I grew up on the early 8 bits and then in my early 20s(between school, girls and beer), I was exclusively a PC gamer (and ever since). It would be awesome!

Chris

 

[christo930]

There is the umid as wel, which is smaller and cheaper. But no UMPC or MID has been designed with game controls. I've seen 2 prototypes, but they never became real products.

Anyway, I still feel that ARM is more suitable than x86 for small, cool devices with long batery life. Also ofcourse there is better bang per watt.

But I can see how the compatibility of x86 would be desirable.

What about the atom, is that any better for power consumption (especially if you could get it a 1ghz)?

Hey, A guy can dream, can't he

EDIT: Sorry about the double post. My internet was giving me trouble and I guess I hit submit again thinking it didn't take it because well over 2 minutes passed and it was just sitting there. Maybe someone can bring over the responses in the other thread into this one. Sorry again.

 

[Enverex]

Look at netbooks and current UMPCs for battery life, they are already using the Atom.

 

[Prometheus]

I just feel compelled to say here that under real-world usage (specifically WiFi on and occasionally loading rather undemanding web-pages, and mid-to-full brightness on the screen), I get about two hours at most out of the Atom-based critter that I have here. That's about two hours less than my large-sized dual-core Pentium laptop under the same conditions.

 

[christo930]

Look at netbooks and current UMPCs for battery life, they are already using the Atom.

I figured the hard disk and 10" screens were sucking up a lot of that juice. It would probably need a great deal of custom stuff which would run the price through the roof. I guess we will have to make the best use of what we have. On that note, I wish someone would write a dosbox like package that was really optimized for speed, especially on arm hardware. I'd love to have at least decent 286 level performance on my gp2x.

 

[jlepley]

I have a notebook with atom, it gets a little over 2 hours of life. If I were to dim the screen down all the way, it might last longer. Either way, that isn't very good.

 

[Enverex]

Look at netbooks and current UMPCs for battery life, they are already using the Atom.

I figured the hard disk and 10" screens were sucking up a lot of that juice. It would probably need a great deal of custom stuff which would run the price through the roof. I guess we will have to make the best use of what we have. On that note, I wish someone would write a dosbox like package that was really optimized for speed, especially on arm hardware. I'd love to have at least decent 286 level performance on my gp2x.

Look harder, there are UMPCs with Flash disks and smaller screens.

 

[Exophase]

Sigh, this is like the thousandth topic of this exact nature, does anyone else think this is getting kind of old? Unfortunately for you it'd also never happen, because craigix doesn't want to build an Atom handheld.

I doubt that it'd achieve 5 hour battery life because my netbook doesn't achieve that (despite advertisement to the contrary), and it has a significantly higher capacity battery than what'll be in the Pandora. Wanting it for emulators of all things is pretty silly.

Do you really think x86 has such an advantage when it comes to emulators? I think there are probably more ARM optimized cores. Sure, x86 has better N64 right now, but are you sure it'll be that way forever? If you were thinking of running something like PCSX2 or even a Dreamcast emulator then you're probably entirely out of luck. Optimization has fallen to the wayside in x86 emulators and current releases haven't exactly been done with Atoms in mind.

I also don't think the compatibility with DOS is guaranteed to be great. There are certain things that DOS requires that machines have had problems with for years now, like not having certain regions of the first MB of address space taken up by various peripherals. Without this it can be impossible to use things like emm386. Also, good luck getting sound blaster compatible audio, that's extremely unlikely. And gamepad support. So for a good amount of things (and sound, in general) you'd be stuck with is DOSBox again, which in time the ARM could at least be competitive with the x86 version. Sounds like a pretty lousy win for something that cuts the battery life at least in half.

 

[craigix]

It's not that I don't want to build one, me and Michael have spoken about how cool that would be. It's just that right now what Intel are offering is almost a step backwards. I doubt at the Pandora size we could get more than 2 hours of battery life.

I really don't know if Intel will ever get their power usage down to anything like ARM socs. By the time they do/if they do, I should imaging we will be able to emulate a lot more PC stuff anyway, and even more advanced consoles, leaving few classic games which can't be played somehow.

 

[matzesu]

A next gen Pandora whit only two hours of batterylife? thats sounds awefull like a psp whitout any umd drive.. <_<
better to make a next gen pandora whit a most powerfull arm cpu who can emulate the ps3 (when it it can, whe need realy big sdhc carts (min 200gb..) thats the good thing of the pandora: he works a long time whit one charging..

when the aktual pandora gen is ending, its a long time far away.. :lol:

 

[Bosbeetle]

when the aktual pandora gen is ending, its a long time far away.. :lol:

especcially since its gen did not really start yet

 

[Tor]

Lately I've been thinking about a replacement for my laptop. It's a fantastic laptop, nearly ten years old, 1400x1050 15" screen (I think). It's slightly heavy though, particularly when carrying around the power supply. I have a 4-year old replacement battery, due to careful handling it can still pull off 3.5 hours of off-line work (down from about 5 when it was new).

There are a number of notebook-sized options now, but to me the screens are really too small for real work (long programming sessions). So, realising that my old laptop is more than fast enough for everything I do, I should think an ARM-based one, of the same size, should both be lighter, thinner, have better battery time, and be more than fast enough.

So: A proper laptop, but ARM-based. Problem is, as far as I know, the OMAP chipsets don't come with any kind of SATA interface, for mass storage.