Our New Machine, Pandora

[prairiefire]

I think it should come with many screens at varying resolutions that you can swap in and out, that way you will never have to use scaling at all and it'll always be perfect for whatever obscure arcade game you want to play.

sig'd

 

[Dead Ghost]

But the Craiginator isn't 5:4, lol...

Ah...damn. It's 5:3......I need some glasses.

 

[shinneri]

http://craiginator.bluwiki.com/

MWeston is planning on releasing information any week now.


Thanks! This sounds great. I can't wait to see these specs in action.

 

[moz]

im looking forward to seeing if this will run a PalmOS emulator

 

[atomicthumbs]

Since we have the processing power, emulators such as Megadrive should use scaling techniques such as 2xSaI by default IMO, rather than using the hardware scaler.

OT:
Say, what emulators support hq3x?

Edit: Or hq2x.

 

[javaJake]

im looking forward to seeing if this will run a PalmOS emulator

Funny you should mention that, because I was thinking the exact same thing. The Craiginator shouldn't find it too difficult to emulate Palm's ARM processor ....or should it?

 

[cappuchok]

OT:
Say, what emulators support hq3x?

Nothing you'd run on this machine, though HQ2X would probably be fine (resolution isn't high enough to support HQ3X for most emulated platforms).

 

[pepone]

Since we have the processing power, emulators such as Megadrive should use scaling techniques such as 2xSaI by default IMO, rather than using the hardware scaler.

OT:
Say, what emulators support hq3x?

gngeo support it, but hq3x will be too big for the craiginator screen. Anyway, gngeo support also hq2x which fit perfectly.

 

[Squidge]

Funny you should mention that, because I was thinking the exact same thing. The Craiginator shouldn't find it too difficult to emulate Palm's ARM processor ....or should it?

Depends which version you want. Do we really care about ARM PalmOS? Will 68K PalmOS be enough?

Am I correct in thinking that the first version of PalmOS on the ARM architecture was little more than a 68K emulator?

 

[Yuglooc]

Since we have the processing power, emulators such as Megadrive should use scaling techniques such as 2xSaI by default IMO, rather than using the hardware scaler.

OT:
Say, what emulators support hq3x?

SCUMMVM does

 

[A_SN]

Since we have the processing power, emulators such as Megadrive should use scaling techniques such as 2xSaI by default IMO, rather than using the hardware scaler.

Yeah, why downclock when you can waste your energy away

 

[Squidge]

Since we have the processing power, emulators such as Megadrive should use scaling techniques such as 2xSaI by default IMO, rather than using the hardware scaler.

Yeah, why downclock when you can waste your energy away


Why put a 600Mhz processor in there when everyone wants to run at 200Mhz to save battery power? Lets just put a 200Mhz one in at the beginning. That way we save a bundle of cash too

 

[A_SN]

Why put a 600Mhz processor in there when everyone wants to run at 200Mhz to save battery power? Lets just put a 200Mhz one in at the beginning. That way we save a bundle of cash too

It's called choice, and compromises. If you're gonna look for new ways to waste power just because you've got too much of it, but that on the other hand your batteries won't last 2 hours, you need to do some mediating

 

[DaveC]

I always use bilinear interpolation when I scale my emu graphics on the PC.

But... that's not DaveC friendly!


FAIL!!

I always thought it looked pretty good--gets rid of the pixelation without adding obvious filter effects.


But bi-linear IS a filter It just blurs out the edges, and everything else. Yeah it gets rid of some pixellation but adds alot of blurr and reduces contrast/sharpness. It won't be needed for many emus on this as the screen is not 17"-20" like a PC monitor. If you are running Megadrive or NeoGeo on this you can just double the pixels both direction from 320 x 224 to 640 x 448 pillarboxed. It will look the same as Megadrive running on a GP2X which is very clean and sharp. What would be the point in blurring out the image with a filter? It makes more sense to use it for very low res stuff like GB/GBC GG SMS etc though. I am just saying that there should be options to set the screen the way you want it nothing should be forced. If you want it blurry turn on a filter, want it sharp just double by an even integer and turn off the filter, etc.

The software horizontal only scaling used on the NES and GP2X Megadrive emus from Notaz for 256 wide games looks very good. Maybe something like that could be used. It looks much better than a bi-linear type thing.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Guys guys guys guys guys guys guys guys!

I've found the perfect web browser to include in the firmware.

Flock!

It's an open-source Firefox derivative. Basically, it's a Web 2.0 browser.

Wikipedia says it best:

QUOTE
Flock is a web browser heavily based upon Mozilla Firefox and other Mozilla technologies. Flock is also the name of the company developing the browser. Flock's creators call it a "social browser", due to its ability to interact with popular social networking web services. Such web services include Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Photobucket, and various popular blogging and news aggregation services.


This would be the perfect thing for blogging on the go, as well as being able to connect your camera to your Craiginator and upload photos anywhere.

I see Flock making the Craiginator into an even more awesome device; having this would make it a sort of connective gaming machine. Hey, there's a tagline for you:

<name>, the gaming machine with connections!
<name>, the ligament of gamers!

Anyway, you can read more about Flock and developing for it at:

http://developer.flock.com/wiki/Main_Page

The Trac SVN interface is here:

http://svn-mirror.flock.com/trac/flock/browser

And the SVN server is here:

svn://svn-mirror.flock.com/

Summary: Flock is a browser that's based on Firefox, integrates with various services in a seamless way, and is open-source. Saving Opera, this is probably the best browser we could have on the Craiginator.

What do people (especially people involved with the project) think? I think that this would be much better than little old Firefox.

Edit: Here's a Wired Magazine article about it.

And a PC world artickle

And a Business Week artik-ul

 

[___]

sounds fair... i guess. Actually, that's a really good idea! Even if not included with the firmware... since we will probably have an apt-get like packet manager for the craiginator this can be also optional software. Sound good!

 

[atomicthumbs]

sounds fair... i guess. Actually, that's a really good idea! Even if not included with the firmware... since we will probably have an apt-get like packet manager for the craiginator this can be also optional software. Sound good!

Well, not sure this is in the official Debian/Ubuntu apt repositories or not.

I guess if we had our own, our special ARM version could go in there.

 

[senquack]

Just what we need, sure, shove as much crap on there as you can, and don't forget the buzzwords!

 

[atomicthumbs]

Just what we need, sure, shove as much crap on there as you can, and don't forget the buzzwords!

Did you try it?

Do you use Flickr/a blog/Facebook/other feature supported by Flock, like many other people?

Then you'll obviously have to use the browser as just a browser, and *gasp* turn off the other features! Oh no! Why should you have to go to any effort because so many people would like this stuff? Oh, the pain! The suffering! :rolleyes:

 

[___]

*sigh* yeah let's all go back to the old flamewar. How much software do we need... aren't we all masochists who want to use the lynx browser... how much scaling with filters are we allowed to do... bla bla bla.

I thought the point about having a package repository was that everyone could choose what they wanted on their system even easier then with the file archive. So what's the point about bashing this perfectly good idea? I would love a browser with multimedia capabilites like that. Why in hell should we not use it? And please... can the obvious "real" nerds on here defend their title with less arrogance and hostility? I thought there was something called manners and politeness but it seems this sort of new-age trendy habitus hasn't gotten through to all parts of the planet. If I look at some of these comments especially in this thread I am surprised any of the developers and people wanting to discuss stuff are even putting up with all that. Also where are the mods. I have seen so many posts lately that normally people would get banned for.