Our New Machine, Pandora

[foft]

Wow, I missed this thread for the last month. I'd been checking the front page for threads with any news Just read/skimmed it all now - quite long.

An OMAP3430 as the SoC will be awesome. Fingers crossed that is used (or better ). TBH £200 sounds too cheap to me for such a powerful gaming device with Wifi, running Linux and a touchscreen... Though I'm not complaining! Guess you have to make sure you get a good contract with TI for it though, if certain contacts there move on couldn't that make getting more OMAPs problematic?

For me the GP2X wasn't really fast enough compared to the GP32 (at least easily - e.g. using one core). Given how long its been... Will be good to have something that is a real leap forward again.

Looking forward to Spring 2009

 

[God Ginrai]

Wow, I missed this thread for the last month. I'd been checking the front page for threads with any news Just read/skimmed it all now - quite long.

An OMAP3430 as the SoC will be awesome. Fingers crossed that is used (or better ). TBH £200 sounds too cheap to me for such a powerful gaming device with Wifi, running Linux and a touchscreen... Though I'm not complaining! Guess you have to make sure you get a good contract with TI for it though, if certain contacts there move on couldn't that make getting more OMAPs problematic?

For me the GP2X wasn't really fast enough compared to the GP32 (at least easily - e.g. using one core). Given how long its been... Will be good to have something that is a real leap forward again.

Looking forward to Spring 2009

2009?!?!?

Either you are sadly mistaken, or you made a typo that will send new readers into depression.

-God Ginrai

 

[sam fisher]

Wow, I missed this thread for the last month. I'd been checking the front page for threads with any news Just read/skimmed it all now - quite long.

An OMAP3430 as the SoC will be awesome. Fingers crossed that is used (or better ). TBH £200 sounds too cheap to me for such a powerful gaming device with Wifi, running Linux and a touchscreen... Though I'm not complaining! Guess you have to make sure you get a good contract with TI for it though, if certain contacts there move on couldn't that make getting more OMAPs problematic?

For me the GP2X wasn't really fast enough compared to the GP32 (at least easily - e.g. using one core). Given how long its been... Will be good to have something that is a real leap forward again.

Looking forward to Spring 2009

2009?!?!?

Either you are sadly mistaken, or you made a typo that will send new readers into depression.

-God Ginrai

You haven't been here for the gamepark legacy, usually the consoles take many years longer to arrive, however in this case gamepark and GPH are now out of the equation.

 

[Yrx]

That design is a nice idea, but has anyone done a design that has 6 buttons like the saturn controller or microsoft sidewinder. That IMO would be nice to have. The 2 extra buttons added from the regular 4 button desings could be used as extra shoulder buttons for psx emulation. Also it could be used for cps2 fighting games, or mame games. It's just another of 340598732409834507 thoughts that have been floating around this thread. I guess one more wouldn't hurt. :lol:

Seconded. That curvy thing looks like it would be kind of funky to use. The diamond plus 2 extra buttons would work best for the most things. PSX, SNES, Genesis, N64...

 

[A_SN]

Just wondering, with an OMAP 3430, how fast could we emulate a x86 PC running Windows 95 or 98? Could it do everything a Pentium I @ 133 MHz could do?

Just asking because, you know all the good games that runned on such things. I'm mainly thinking of SimCity 2000 and F/A-18 Korea, but there are obviously many more. With a keyboard and two analog controls, it'd be perfect for flight sims such as this one (which could run smoothly on a Macintosh Performa 6200 @ 75 MHz with no 3D card).

EDIT : By the way, has anyone heard of that OMAP 3430 emulator? http://www.virtio.com/products/page/0,2573,39,00.html too bad it's a commercial product, someone should buy it and leak it to us

 

[Squidge]

Just wondering, with an OMAP 3430, how fast could we emulate a x86 PC running Windows 95 or 98? Could it do everything a Pentium I @ 133 MHz could do?

Well, there's one way of finding out. When someone gets there hands on an OMAP3430, they can check the speed of it and see how stuff goes. We can only speculate before then, as I don't think many people have used the Cortex-A8 before.

QUOTE

EDIT : By the way, has anyone heard of that OMAP 3430 emulator? too bad it's a commercial product, someone should buy it and leak it to us



It seems like a nice bit of kit. Pity you can't just buy it however - you need to have an NDA in place with TI (along with other things) before TI will allow them to sell the kit to you.

 

[fusion_power]

Well, there's one way of finding out. When someone gets there hands on an OMAP3430, they can check the speed of it and see how stuff goes. We can only speculate before then, as I don't think many people have used the Cortex-A8 before.

I think it's time for the project members to get an OMAP Dev-board, right? I don't know how long this takes but I hope an request email to the company (TI ?) should be enough....maybe
So you can start playing around with all these nice Chipsets and compare and decide...

 

[Squidge]

That would indeed be nice, but unfortunately you can't just buy a dev board. To be honest, I don't even know if TI do dev boards (considering there main customers are people like Nokia). We'll just have to leave it upto Craig and hope something will happen in the next month or so.

 

[fusion_power]

That would indeed be nice, but unfortunately you can't just buy a dev board. To be honest, I don't even know if TI do dev boards (considering there main customers are people like Nokia). We'll just have to leave it upto Craig and hope something will happen in the next month or so.

Really? Uh, but with what will Craigix & Co. work? You guys need something...as soon as possible I would say. What is the usual way if an company want to build an new machine and need Chips for that? Praying? :lol: I thought I as an Compalny just order an Chipset for testing and get it. ^^ Companys like to sell their products and TI could sell maybe 50000 new OMAP Chipsets if the new Handheld is built. If I'm TI, I would send you the chipsets/devboards in a second. ^^


Sounds like we have to wait a longer time until someone holds an usable Omap Chipset in hands.

 

[sam fisher]

But Ti are used to selling 50*(10^6) units a product not 50*(10^3). Thats three orders of magnitude difference! I'm amazed Craig managed to negotiate a deal! I'm glad he did as well though

 

[Eolair]

OMAP3430 Dev board:
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbu...contentId=28741

 

[Dubya']

Just wondering, with an OMAP 3430, how fast could we emulate a x86 PC running Windows 95 or 98? Could it do everything a Pentium I @ 133 MHz could do?

Just asking because, you know all the good games that runned on such things.

Intel is on its way (2009) to producing a fully x86 compatible SoC:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/09/19/...bile-PCs_1.html

http://www.edn.com/article/CA6480629.html

 

[A_SN]

Just wondering, with an OMAP 3430, how fast could we emulate a x86 PC running Windows 95 or 98? Could it do everything a Pentium I @ 133 MHz could do?

Just asking because, you know all the good games that runned on such things.

Intel is on its way (2009) to producing a fully x86 compatible SoC:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/09/19/...bile-PCs_1.html

http://www.edn.com/article/CA6480629.html


Yeah, nice and all, but hardly relevant here

 

[Squidge]

Really? Uh, but with what will Craigix & Co. work? You guys need something...as soon as possible I would say. What is the usual way if an company want to build an new machine and need Chips for that?

With the MMSP2+ and MX31, thats not a problem. You just say your interested in using that chipset and want to buy a development kit, and they send you one. However, if you do the same with TI, they probably want a load of legal paperwork filed first, and then a signed MOQ agreement before handing anything over (I'm assuming here from whats on there website and other peoples experiences).

QUOTE
OMAP3430 Dev board:


Nice find, Eolair. However that seems like it's quite expensive, and I notice no price is stated. I bet you can't easily order it either.

 

[mavsman4457]

OMAP3430 Dev board:
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbu...contentId=28741



That is great. Since it lists camera and IR transceiver in the main board stuff does that mean that we will have IR and camera included into this thing? Please tell me yes.

 

[sam fisher]

OMAP3430 Dev board:
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbu...contentId=28741



That is great. Since it lists camera and IR transceiver in the main board stuff does that mean that we will have IR and camera included into this thing? Please tell me yes.

No, it just means it has the hardware support to drive those devices if they were in the design.

 

[zaoin]

Another suggestion for software:

If this supermachine will have two analogs(or one) I would love to have a soldat clone here.

Soldat in a handheld. Wow! I know this will not happen...


Soldat's webpage

 

[mavsman4457]

I won't mind having addons for things that I want like bluetooth and IR but I sure hope that they will be small and look good on the device rather than being ugly and protruding out from the thing. Also, that soldat thing remind me that I really hope someone makes a Warhawk type of clone. A third person shooter where all the different weapons are assigned to a direction on the d-pad. Are there any games that exist that are like this that could simply be ported? Sorry to get off topic.

 

[Julius]

All the design ideas I have seen so far feature analog sticks on the side of the screen, which IMHO is quite bad as the screen is already a widescreen one and the console shouldn't be too long.
So what about having those two analogs *below* the screen, in a fashion similar to how those two analog sticks are usually placed on PS2 controllers in relation to the other buttons?

@craigiX could you give us some information about the quality of the touchscreen? E.g. precision, levels of pressure sensitivity, multiple inputs at once etc?

 

[Squidge]

Why would you want multiple inputs on a touch screen?