Wifi or Bluetooth Gaming?

[Timmy]

Hi! I was just thinking about how the Bluetooth (and possibly wifi) is gonna be used in the Pandora in emulation and any games designed for p&|a

If anyone remembers those little wireless connectors for games like pokemon:leaf green on GBA, would it work in the same way? Or would there be too many problems like incompatability and stuff.

Would be cool if we could!




Just a small additional question, would it be possible to use a usb stick as additional ram?

 

[Calmatory]

USB stick as a RAM could not work due to the slow bandwidth the USB-bus is able to handle. That is, 480 Megabits per second or 60 Megabytes per second in theory. In practice it falls somewhere below 48 Megabytes/s. RAM in Pandora works probably at 400-700 Megabytes per second, I'd guess(Just a wild guess from a total PC guy, no clue what kind of chips, memory controllers or clock frequenzies are being used in handhelds.).

Actually after I thought about it a bit more, 32-bit bus with DDR running at 133 MHz would yield ((32/8)*133*2)=1064 Megabytes per second as a theoretical maximum. However, the memory controller might not be that efficient and it would usually tun at 75-87 % efficiency so the practical maximum bandwidth would be (1064*0.75)=798 - (1064*0.87)=925. Then again, I have absolutely no clue about the memory configurations in handheld devices, it might be that the bus is full 64-bits(DDR RAM transfers the data in 64-bits chuncks, so this would make sense) or that the frequenzy is 66 MHz with 32-bit bus.

Sorry for off-topic. This just somehow interests me. <_<

 

[Timmy]

USB stick as a RAM could not work due to the slow bandwidth the USB-bus is able to handle. That is, 480 Megabits per second or 60 Megabytes per second in theory. In practice it falls somewhere below 48 Megabytes/s. RAM in Pandora works probably at 400-700 Megabytes per second, I'd guess(Just a wild guess from a total PC guy, no clue what kind of chips, memory controllers or clock frequenzies are being used in handhelds.).

So unless a revolutionary usb-bus is made, no external ram ^_^ thanks for the reply

 

[Calmatory]

Well, the revolutionar USB would/will be USB 3.0(Just wait till '09 to see them!), with 10 times the theoretical bandwidth. That is, 600 Megabytes per second or 4,8 Megabits per second.

 

[Timmy]

:wacko: too advanced for me... but i didn't know about the new 3.0 coming out!

Even when it does come out, would the usb slot on the p&|a need to be upgraded, since it's a 2.0 (i think) would anything change even if the device is 3.0? or is it nothing to do with the slot, and just the device.

If it does work, it would be possible with the 3.0 right? 600 is inbetween 400-700 which were your estimates

 

[Calmatory]

Well, Pandora supports USB 2.0, but not 3.0, so it would not work.

Even if Pandora did support USB 3.0, the problem would not be the bandwidth of the USB bus, rather the bandwidth of the chips which are used in the USB device and the latency to the external RAM(read: USB bus).

Even if that did work, why wouldn't 256 Mbytes of RAM be enough?

 

[Timmy]

Its definitely enough, i just wanted some info from clever guys like u XD

hehe, we went so off topic...

did u get an order in the first batch?

 

[Chaosstorm]

Well usb 3.0 does come out in 09 but my guess is that it will be very expansive and will get popluar in 2010+ when prices have dropped alot

 

[Calmatory]

Its definitely enough, i just wanted some info from clever guys like u XD

hehe, we went so off topic...

did u get an order in the first batch?

No, since I was more into Wiz but after I heard that Wiz will be pushed back to February I decided to get Pandora next spring or so. Would love to get one this year but quite impossible.

 

[fischju]

Over internet connection or adhoc is possible, somebody just needs to write it. But it would be no easy task.

 

[Timmy]

So we could be experiencing wifi gaming, for simple games of course, in a couple of years! That would be cool. What can't it do! :lol:

Question: Buying a 8gb sd card costs £10, buying a 32GB costs £62, so it would be cheaper to get 4 8gb by £20...
What would you choose

sorry for using £, here's a convertion for dollars

Buying a 8gb sd card costs $16, buying a 32GB costs $142, so it would be cheaper to get 4 8gb by ... bout $130 dollars (thats what amazon said... i think its wrong)
What would you choose

 

[sukhi-2006]

I bought 32gb sdhc card for £69.99,which is a really good one.

I'm disappointing in pandora not using existing memorysticks i thought they can be used now we need 3.0 ones that's let down, i was looking forward to connect my 2.0 memory stick now i have to wait for the new version plus pandora doesn't support 3.0 which is crap.

 

[riosingh]

I'm disappointing in pandora not using existing memorysticks i thought they can be used now we need 3.0 ones that's let down, i was looking forward to connect my 2.0 memory stick now i have to wait for the new version plus pandora doesn't support 3.0 which is crap.

Sukh I think your geting the wrong end of the stick(haha)
I think they were talking about expanding the RAM with usb.
I'm fairly sure you can use a usb memory stick as a mass storage device.
even an external harddrive will be hooked up by the usb.

 

[Tor]

+1
Of course you can use your normal (USB 2.0) memory sticks. USB 3.0 isn't even properly out of the lab yet, and I have yet to see a USB 3.0-only memory stick (I doubt they even exist).

 

[Timmy]

Another problem with the USB stick is it sticking out of the pandora all the time, if you were playing a game off it, or even listening to music from it it would be kinda hard to fit in your pocket...

I think an 8 GB sd card is fine for what your gonna need it a day though, unless you have a huge library of music, or loads of ps1 games. I mean, u can fit Final fantasy 7, 8, 9 all on it no prob.

 

[Timmy]

I bought 32gb sdhc card for £69.99,which is a really good one.

I'm disappointing in pandora not using existing memorysticks i thought they can be used now we need 3.0 ones that's let down, i was looking forward to connect my 2.0 memory stick now i have to wait for the new version plus pandora doesn't support 3.0 which is crap.

You can use 2.0 usb memory sticks in the pandora, just not for additional/extra RAM (or ready boost as some call it) ^_^