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EricBall

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  1. EricBall

    Cray-1

    By EricBall,

    Even though I didn't get into computers until several years after the Cray-1 first came to market, it was still a legendary computer.
     
    Just the look and shape of it was awe inspiring; looking like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey (or any other SF film). No simple box, but a C shaped tower with a "love seat". Then you learned that "love seat" was the refrigeration system - it was cooled with Freon - how cool was that? A computer that got so hot it needed a cooling system. (Which actually wasn't that uncommon for large systems of the time. But when your point of reference is a fanless home computer....)
     
    The actual design of the Cray-1 is interesting. Seymour Cray took the knowledge he gained working on the CDC supercomputers and built something very advanced.
     
    One major design change he made was adding a huge number of registers for temporary storage, including vectors. Up to that point vector processors processed data stored in main memory. Seymour realized memory was too slow so a significant performance improvement could be gained by having a large number of registers and performing all operations on those registers. This is the same "load/store architecture" most RISC processors use. The Cray-1 had over 5 kilobytes of register storage!
     
    The Cray-1 also had 12 independent functional units. Each was pipelined so they could process multiple instructions without delays. The vector and floating point units also had the ability to automatically forward the result to another functional unit, called chaining. With judicious use of this with vector processing the Cray-1 could hit 250MFLOPS under ideal conditions. (Although I'm not certain how, since it only had 3 floating point functional units and ran at 80MHz, thus 240MFLOPS.)
     
    Yep, the Cray-1 had a 80MHz system clock; which doesn't sound that fast today. However, the Apple 2, available at the same time had a 1MHz system clock and the original IBM PC, which came 5 years later, had a 4.77MHz clock. So for the time 80MHz was insanely fast. Also consider the Cray-1 was made from LSI chips: 1Kbit SRAM for main memory (max 8Mbyte+1Mbyte ECC), 16x4 bit 6ns registers, and fast & slow NAND chips.
     
    But while a microprocessor is typically less than an inch square, the Cray-1 "processor" was spread over 340 square feet circuit board (512 6x8 PCBs). So the design of the Cray-1 had to account for propagation delays, and ensure the delays were equalized as much as possible. (Either by cutting wires to precise lengths or adding extra capacitance to PCB traces.) The curve of the physical frame was also to minimize distance.
     
    In order to be as fast as possible, the Cray-1 was made using ECL (emitter coupled logic) circuits. ECL circuits are very fast, but require a lot of power because they never "turn off". This led to the built-in cooling system, which always sounded so impressive.
     
    Part of me wonders how small and how fast a Cray-1 made with modern technologies would be. There are certainly Cray emulators out there. But they probably only worry about duplicating the ISA, and are not clock accurate. Unfortunately, even if schematics were available it wouldn't be possible to simply "port" the design to modern technologies as much of the Cray-1's design was overcoming physical limitations. But it's fun to dream.
  2. EricBall

    Tempest MAME 2012 pt2

    By EricBall,

    My Tempest MAME cabinet is coming along well. After some initial learning curve frustration, I now have 3D Arcade configured as a front end. It displays the games as 3D cabinets in a spinable cylinder. It still needs some tweaks and some additional setup, but it's now close enough to be usable. The main task is now going through all of the games and making sure they work and making any necessary configuration tweaks. In doing so, I've run into a problem...
     
    MAME is, first and foremost, an emulator. The idea is the software should reproduce the hardware as closely as possible - using the original software (ROMs). In slavish dedication to this ideal, the MAME devs flag any games which don't meet those standards with a warning screen, e.g.: "There are known problems with this game. The sound emulation isn't 100% accurate. Type OK or move the joystick left then right to continue." In current releases of MAME this warning message cannot be bypassed, and unlike the "ROMs are copyrighted, so you're almost certainly violating the law" warning, it appears every time you run the game. Which presents a problem for me since my Tempest cabinet doesn't have a joystick or a keyboard.
     
    One solution is to recompile MAME after modifying the code the eliminate those warnings. But that's a chunk of error-prone effort which I have no desire to perform. I'm sure if I search I can find someone who's done that for me, but I'm thinking a better alternative is to modify my keyboard encoder wiring to map the buttons to left & right arrows (typical for joysticks) which will allow me to bypass the warning manually. Unfortunately, this has two annoying facets. First I'll have to go back through the reconfiguration process to remap the buttons used by MAME and 3D Arcade to be compatible with the new keys. Second I'll have to physically change the wiring, which will probably involve some soldering.
     
    Right now I'm using a keyboard encoder scavenged from an actual keyboard, but I'm thinking I might want to look and see if there's a cheap alternative.
  3. EricBall

    Apple TV 4 games - fail

    By EricBall,

    Why do I say fail? Simple: no standardized controller except for the small touchpad on the remote.

    Why not announce a standard controller app (similar to the Remote app) or declare the PS3 or PS4 controller a de-facto standard Bluetooth controller? (Although then they'd need to provide a USB input for pairing.) This would then allow developers to port games much more easily.

    Heck, with a controller app Apple could provide a way for the Apple TV game to push the controller layout down to the iDevice! You could even have multiple controllers by using multiple iDevices.


  4. EricBall
    The Acer Aspire One netbook we bought after the fire has turned out to be a decent computer (especially with a RAM & SSD upgrade). It came loaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition and (bonus) MS Office Starter Edition.

    The free upgrade to Windows 10 sounded like a good idea. Not only would I get all of the ongoing security updates etc., but it wouldn't have the 2GB limit of Win7SE.

    Unfortunately, I just ran the Win10 upgrade check and learned the Intel GMA 3600 graphics adapter isn't supported. (Apparently Intel never made a 64 bit driver and is not likely to either.)
  5. EricBall
    Back in late September when Apple announced the Haswell iMacs I thought it wouldn't be long before Apple would announce a Haswell update for the Mac Mini. But in spite of much forum speculation and rumor no update has occurred. I'm done waiting, so I will probably buy an iMac in the near future.
     
    Which is funny, because when the Haswell iMacs were announced that was what I was going to do. But then a coworker pointed out the wisdom of keeping the screen & CPU separate (so the screen could be used with a different CPU) and the waiting began.
     
    Last night I discussed our options with my CFO:
    1. Continue waiting. However, there's no guarantee a new Mac Mini will be forthcoming in the near future. There's also the risk Apple will make unacceptable changes (e.g. SSD only - not good for my video editing plans). And I'm already kicking myself for how long I've already waited.
    2. Get the current Mac Mini & 27" display.
    3. Get the 27" iMac - which not only has a better CPU & GPU than the current Mac Mini but costs a little less (depending upon configuration).
     
    We concluded the better CPU / GPU is worth more to us than a separate display. And while a separate display could be used with a different CPU, we don't upgrade that often.
     
    Now I'm just trying to convince myself that I really should go big and get the i7 & 780M instead of the cheapest 27".
     
  6. EricBall

    worth the effort?

    By EricBall,

    The head honcho of my department has decided he no longer wants to fund the public area meeting room he inheritted. In the room are a pair of 15 year old ceiling mounted Electrohome ECP-4101 front projection CRTs. There's a high probability that I could take them myself if I asked nicely. (Otherwise they will probably be scrapped.)
     
    Now, in spite of their age, they probably have been used very little. So I doubt the 7" tubes have been used up. They were also high-end data projectors for their day with 1280x1024 resolution, which translates into (almost) full HDTV capabilites.
     
    So why haven't I jumped at the chance?
    1. The dang things are big, heavy & ceiling mounted. So I'd need to somehow rope in 2-3 other people to unbolt them from their ceiling mounts and get them out to the car.
    2. They only have RGB BNC inputs which will make it more difficult to interface with source equipment. (Although it should be possible to connect a PC via a VGA to BNC cable.)
    3. Although I've found the service manual online, and having two means I might be able to swap out failed parts, I'm not sure I have the time or ability to do my own repairs.
    4. Did I mention they are big & heavy? And it's not like I have the space to put them in the house.
     
    But dang, free HDTV displays!
  7. EricBall
    I saw SW VII last weekend so I could stop worrying about spoilers.

    While the Force Awakens is a great movie and a worthy and logical successor to Return of the Jedi, it is not without it's flaws.

    First is the Death Star Mark III, complete with last minute destruction (IV & VI) following an attack on the shield generator (VI), a short trench sequence (IV), and flying into the structure (VI). Even Han points this out when planning the attack; almost, but not quite, breaking the fourth wall in the process. And unlike the previous movies, this time the activation of "the Weapon" is far too coincidental. In both prior movies the Rebel Alliance is fully aware of the construction of the Death Star and it's activation is better integrated into the storyline.

    Second are the "new" characters which seem to be simply copies of previous characters. Ben / Kylo Ren is Ankin Skywalker / Darth Vader, Rey is Luke Skywalker, and Supreme Commander Snoke is Emperor Palpatine. Even BB-8 is R2-D2 carrying around the stolen plans, I mean map. The one truely new character is Finn. OTOH I also have to say Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford did an excellent job communicating the relationship between Leia and Han. Mark Hamill also looks appropriately world weary.

    Third are the abilities of the characters. Kylo Ren has force powers far beyond those shown by the Jedi during the clone wars (e.g. stopping a blaster bolt in midair, mind reading). Rey is an absolute savant with the Millenium Falcon, even though she has never been off the desert wasteland of Jakku. Then there is the underused (and over-marketed) Captain Phasma, who could be a Resistance sympathizer given how quickly she disables the shield.

    Finally, there's the abilities of the Millenium Falcon: carving the dunes of Jakku and smashing through the forests Starkiller Base with no ill effects, jumping to lightspeed from a standing start and dropping out of lightspeed deep in a planet's gravity well. Whatever happened to getting the coordinates from the navi-computer?

    (Is anyone else jazzed about Captain America: Civil War? I was disappointed by Age of Ultron, but Civil War looks more like Winter Soldier, which I enjoyed.)

  8. EricBall

    I'm an iPod mechanic!

    By EricBall,

    Last night I replaced the hard drive (which had died) & battery in my wife's iPod color. So now she's happy again. Plus I upgraded the drive from 20GB to 30GB and replaced the faceplate with a brand new glossy black one (from the U2 model).
     
    The only difficulties were finding a Torx T6 screwdriver (well, not that hard, but I think only one multibit at Home Depot had it) and prying open the case. (It looked much easier in the how-to video.)
     
    Oh, and I did manage to install Win2K onto the TP760ED and it's been quietly (heck, it's silent except when it's actually working) running for almost a month. My only mistake was partitioning the drive rather than sticking with a single 4GB partition, which made installing the SP tricky. (I had to partition to try to avoid some bad blocks on the drive.) When the drive dies I'm going to put in a CF adapter and a 4GB CF card.
  9. EricBall
    I am going to start a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxuqdYak8Q81EUkUeSDoUVg of my 2b2t experience. My plan is to kill myself so I start back at spawn, then work out from there. Hopefully passing along a few bits of wisdom for new players and a few laughs.

    I'm bringing home a headset from work tonight to see how that works out. QuickTime does a great job of recording the actual gameplay at 4K then converting it down to 720p for YouTube.

  10. EricBall
    Earlier this month the family and I spent a week camping at (nee Six Flags) Darien Lake - riding roller coasters & other rides plus roasting marshmallows & drinking beer. Every night DL has a laser & fireworks show set to music. (Unfortunately the same one every night.) The laser show part of the show in particular was particularly impressive and would have made Pink Floyd (from 40 years ago) green with envy - complex animated scenes in full color. (Probably restricted more by the creation tools and software capabilities than the actual hardware.)

    But seeing what a modern laser projector is capable of got me to thinking - could one be used as a replacement for a vector monitor (e.g. Asteroids and Tempest)?

    But then I suspect was others probably had had the same thought - and there's probably a big reason why I've never heard of a laser version of Tempest. Of course, last week's insurmountable problem might be this week's trivial solution. So I started with a little investigation.

    To make a long story short, the limiting factor is moving the beam. A vector monitor uses electromagnets, while a laser display uses mirrors - typically using a variation of a "mirror galvanometer" or galvo. People have made their own galvos using the voice coil actuator from a hard disk (which is what moves the heads across the disk). But electromagnets can change the position of the beam from one side of the monitor to the other in 100-300 microseconds, whereas it requires 10-20 milliseconds to move the head across the entire disk. That's 100 times slower and a bigger challenge than I think can be easily overcome.

  11. EricBall

    laser parking idea

    By EricBall,

    Winter makes me glad to have a garage to park in. No scraping ice & snow in the morning. And I've learned to back in so I don't have to change direction if the laneway hasn't been plowed.
     
    And there's the rub. In my old car, a Plymouth Acclaim, I could see the rear corners but I'm having a devil of a time with my new Corolla. Although I can use the side mirrors to make sure I don't scrape the sides, it takes me several tries to get squared up.
     
    So I was wondering if I could rig some kind of laser guidance system. There are some on the market, but they all seem to be downward pointing, putting a spot on your hood or dash so you know when you've pulled in far enough (but not too far). I'm thinking more of something which shoots straight down the middle of the garage so I can line up the car along the centerline. Maybe wave the beam up and down so it's not just a single line, but kinda draws a line of light through the vehicle. Maybe something like what they use for power saws.
  12. EricBall
    Valve decided to make CS:GO free to play and at the same time add a battle royale mode "Danger Zone". This is great for me as I was looking for a way to scratch my PUBG itch on my 27" iMac rather than playing PUBG on phones.

    But IMHO Danger Zone is better than PUBG because it is only 16 players on a correspondingly smaller map. This leads to quicker, more intense gameplay and shorter games.

    With PUBG, I typically spent the first third of the match (10-15 minutes) looting up, the second third traversing the map or camping depending upon where I am relative to the zone, and only the last third actively looking for conflict with the remaining players. Danger Zone basically trims down the experience, speeding it up and pushing the game into the conflict interval very quickly.

    Other players may "drop hot" and thus spend the beginning of their PUBG game simultaneously looting and in conflict. Even those players should enjoy Danger Zone as it ensures all players are relatively close. They could even select a drop point specifically near other players. The tablet map also makes it more difficult for players to camp & hide.

    The other game design decisions (e.g. money, buy menu & delivery drone, loot in cases, map showing player occupied hexes, drop point selection & how ammo works) can all be learned and tactics modified or developed. None of them make the game unplayable. (And I believe some are even shared by other Battle Royale games, like Ring of Elysium.) Even the lack of lean, crawl & vault aren't deal breakers. And while I've heard complaints that the Source engine is showing it's age and the map is unremarkable, I don't find DZ to be lacking in either case.

    Obviously Danger Zone isn't for everyone. There is no third person perspective, so players who like to peek corners are out of luck. "Skins" also don't include the player model, so players who like to play as team mascots or naughty nurses are SOL.

    The one place I do believe DZ could improve is with the matchmaking process. Currently it appears the game requires all 16 players to Accept before the "waiting room" is started. If even one player doesn't click the Accept button before the 20 second countdown, all players are put back to the matchmaking process. (If a player disconnects after the waiting room has started, the game still continues.) IMHO this is stupid and results in a lot of delays. My suggestion is to start the "waiting room" if a minimum number of players have accepted (e.g. 12). Then while those players are preloading the assets and playing a 2 minute deathmatch, the matchmaker selects other waiting players to fill the game. If they click Accept, they are put straight into the waiting room. Once 16 players are in the waiting room, or after 2 minutes, the main game begins.
  13. EricBall

    PUBG Mobile

    By EricBall,

    So last night I played my first game of PUBG Mobile - and survived long enough to reach #34 and made 3 kills. (And I probably would have done better if the game hadn't glitched and not auto-reloaded my AR.)

    I'm old enough to have played Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM; but not Quake because I'd stepped off the upgrade treadmill. Multiplayer shooters also didn't interest me as I didn't have the time to sink into playing the games to get good enough not to be cannon fodder. So why am I playing PUBG Mobile?

    It's free to play and so far real money just gets you cosmetic items. 1 The point of the game is not to see how many other players you can kill, but to see how long you can survive.

    So the point of the game isn't based simply on how good you are with the in-game guns, but somewhat whether you can avoid combat entirely. And I don't think that's the mindset of many players, who are too used to playing other games where the objective is to kill your opponents. That's not to say being able to take out someone with a well-placed headshot isn't a skill to develop - but trying to go toe-to-toe with every other player is a losing strategy.

    So what did I think of PUBG Mobile (played on my son's Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7)? Fun, although a little frustrating. First, it looks like many of the menu UIs expect a 16:9 display, so there are some strange overlaps and glitches - although this doesn't seem to be a problem in game. Some text occasionally is almost too small to read, again probably expecting a screen more than 1024x768. Graphically the game is impressive - it's frankly amazing given the age and capabilities of the tablet.

    The frustration comes with the controls. Admittedly creating touch controls for a first/third person shooter is going to be difficult. The developer somehow has to put the functionality of a mouse+keyboard or dual analog stick joypad onscreen without obscuring the screen with controls & the players hands. And maybe some of the frustration is because this was my first game and I was trying to hold the tablet rather than placing it on a table. But I would love to be able to use my son's NES30 Pro controller so I could have the precision of dual analog sticks.

    The main problem is with the turn / look function. The onscreen joystick does a decent job handling the forward / back / strafe movement (although I wish the sprint-lock was a little closer) but you're supposed to swipe on the rest of the screen to turn - which doesn't seem to work as well. Going in and out of buildings and rooms was frustrating. This also made combat more difficult, although part of the issue was I was trying to use the same hand to look & fire - I need to remember there's a fire button on the left side of the screen as well.

    I do like some of the UI tweaks which have been made to the mobile version (e.g. shot source indication on the mini-map, auto-pickup / equip). They've managed to put a lot of info onscreen and make the controls otherwise easy to use and understand.

    So for my first game I did the following, most of which I think helped me succeed:
    Got out of the plane early (near Severny), spotted a small cluster of buildings and dove straight down for them. The idea is to increase the amount of time for looting before the first play zone shrink. I also wanted to try to avoid early confrontation if possible by not going for one of the well known "high level loot" locations. Unfortunately I did end up getting into a early firefight. Aim down the sights! I'm fairly certain the reason I won my firefights, several against better equipped players) was because I actually aimed. Use cover! Again one of the reasons I probably won a couple of my firefights is I was behind cover. In one case I took defeated a player armed with an AR with a shotgun because I hid behind my vehicle.

    Stuff I need to do better next game:
    Use healing after a firefight! I might have survived the last one longer but I hadn't healed up from my previous encounters. Reload! The game was auto reloading, and then it stopped and I didn't think to tap the button. Auto pickup ain't perfect. I probably would have been better with a pistol and a shotgun rather than two shotguns.

    Anyone else playing PUBG Mobile?



    1 I think PUBG missed an excellent monetization opportunity. Keep the free to play idea - but when playing for free you don't get to select your character name (it's set to PU#<random number>), your character skin (again randomized - this game you're a Chinese chick with long blonde hair), etc. But for a token micropayment (subscription?) you can pick your character name, skin, and are included in any ranking boards etc.

  14. EricBall
    I just had an interesting thought. Typically with fractional positioning the fractional byte is treated as an unsigned value/256. So $10.10 = 16+16/256.
     
    For Leprechaun I see that causing two problems. First when the sprite moves left, it will move one pixel left on the first frame (3+n/256), but it will take multiple frame to move right one pixel. Second, my collision detection only checks the integer bounding boxes, which is okay from a sprite perspective, but is a little sloppy numerically.
     
    But what if that fractional byte is instead treated as a signed value? So that first move left would be 4-a/b and the sprite wouldn't move on the first frame. The integer bounding box would be n-a/b to n+a/b, thus a more accurate representation of what is shown onscreen.
     
    Okay, but how would it work? Simple addition an subtraction would work normally, the trick is in the transition from one integer value to the next.
     
    My first idea as to consider the positive and negative values to be overlapping, e.g. when the fractional value overflowed from +127 to -128 I'd increment the integer byte and subtract 128 from the fractional byte. But that doesn't work that well going the other direction. Hmmm
     
    Maybe just look at the fractional byte as a continum, almost list the unsigned version, but shifted left. So instead of n+0 - n+255/256 you have n-128/256 through n+127/256. The transistion is still at the overflow from positive to negative (or vice versa) but I don't adjust the fractional byte. Sounds very possible, though I need to check the oVerflow bit behaviour with ADC/SBC to make sure it works the way I need it.
  15. EricBall

    Acer Aspire One upgrade

    By EricBall,

    After the fire we bought an Acer Aspire One (D270) netbook to use while our laptops were being cleaned. It's biggest problem isn't the 10" 1024x600 screen or the correspondingly small keyboard but the 1GB of RAM. The Intel Atom N2600 isn't a speed demon either, but it's surprisingly adequate for basic web surfing. But once that RAM fills up the system slows to a crawl. So I'm looking at upgrading the RAM and replacing the hard drive with an SSD.
     
    Although officially the system will only support 2GB of RAM, it appears that at least 3GB of a 4GB stick will be recognized even by the preloaded Windows 7 Starter Edition. So now I need to do some price shopping, while trying to avoid the line between "cheap" and "cheap 'cause it's junk".
     
    I have the same problem shopping for an SSD, as there are a lot of reports of people's SSDs suddenly becoming non-functional within the first year. Therefore I'm trying to research people's experiences with warranty replacement, particularly in Canada, on the assumption the drive will fail and I will need to replace it.
  16. EricBall

    more Apple ][ musings

    By EricBall,

    My latest distraction is the Apple ][ disk. I'm sure some of you, like me, remember the golden age of copy protection & cracking which happened around the Apple ][. Much of that was because the A2 was largely software driven. (Another Woz brilliant lunancy cost-cutting effort like A2 graphics.)
     
    Unfortunately, because the A2 was pre-Internet, there isn't a lot of surviving detailed documentation on the web. The one piece I'm missing is a detailed description of how the bits get written onto the disc. I'm just interested in how fiendish copy protection could have been, since it was certainly possible for someone to basically create their own disk format. Sync bytes? We don't need any stinkin' sync bytes? No sectors either, just read in all 50K bits per track straight into RAM. Have your own 6 data bit to 8 disk byte translation process. Use those half and quarter tracks.
     
    Of course the problem with any of these complex non-standard disk format schemes is the game still ends up executing in RAM. So many crackers simply worked out ways to save RAM to disk and then patch the code to skip over any disk accesses. Another method was to rip the boot loader code off the disk and reverse engineer the routines.
  17. EricBall

    PS3 as ATSC PVR?

    By EricBall,

    Of course, now that I've ordered a new computer the "dead" one stops crashing and actually transcodes overnight. So now I have a spare computer to find a use for.
     
    I have two SD TiVos - a dual tuner connected to the HDTV for analog and digital cable, and an old Sony S1 in the bedroom for analog cable. I also have an antenna connected to the HDTV for getting OTA (over the air) channels in HD. I'd love to add an HD TiVo but I can't quite justify it for recording network television; and I can't justify the rental cost of a cableco HD PVR when I get HD OTA for free. But would it be possible to use my old computer as a cheaper solution?
     
    An ATSC PVR does two things - first it stores the bitstream to disk and second it decodes that bitstream for display. The first step just requires the right hardware and a large hard disk. The second step is CPU or GPU intensive. So my old computer should be able to handle the first step without any problems, I just need to buy the ATSC capture hardware; but the second step is quite beyond the capabilities of the system. However, if the display were handled by another system, like my PS3 which is already attached to the HDTV, then I'd be laughing. (The old system is also noisy, so I don't want it next to the HDTV anyway.
     
    That brings in two more challenges - first is getting the video to the PS3 so it can display it and second is getting the video in a format the PS3 will display. The PS3 can function as a DLNA client, displaying video streamed by a DLNA server. There are several DLNA server applications for PCs, including PS3 Media Server which will automatically transcode video into a format the PS3 can use. Unfortunately, transcoding is even more CPU intensive than simply decoding. So unless the PS3 can display something very close to ATSC this idea still won't work.
     
    Fortunately, (based upon a simple test) it looks like it can. One problem is the PS3 Media Server interface is dang ugly - it's a very simple folder tree structure. So then the question is whether I can find some free software which will behave as a kind of minimalist PVR (ideally controllable via a web interface).
  18. EricBall
    Due to my basement purge, my Tempest cabinet is getting an upgrade from a P3-450(?) to an Athlon XP 2000+ (1.2GHz).
     
    The first step is to install Windows XP. Although this PC previously had XP installed, it's hard drive now contains Mythbuntu and is in a different PC. As I detailed in my previous entry, I spent several hours trying to get a 37GB drive to format before giving up and dropping in a 10GB drive (which I formatted FAT32). I managed to find the XP manual & key and the install went smoothly from there (other than one heart-stopper when it wouldn't boot after I put in the cards).
     
    But then came trying to update. I know XP is no longer supported, but would it kill MS to make installing SP3 a little less difficult? The default Windows Update won't work, the SP3 installer won't work without SP1 or SP2 and one of those is broken too. But after digging through multiple dead links and dead ends, I did install SP3, which then asked to download a huge number of security fixes. But it's done. I also installed the current drivers for the motherboard (older) & chipset (newer), so I should be golden for graphics & sound.
     
    The second step was to update my ROM set from 0.97 to 0.146 (current). To my shock the ROM set is now 42GB! (0.97 fit on 3 DVDs) And that's without the CHDs (250+GB) and extras (15GB). It's a good thing I kept some of my old drives and could drop in an 80GB to store it. But before joining the torrent swarm, I tried to use ClrMamePro to bring my 0.97 files as close to current as possible. After several hours of trying to TorrentZip the results, I gave up and decided to let the torrent figure out if any of the files hadn't changed.
     
    I ended up downloading 39GB for the ROM set and 15GB for the extras - and blew through my 60GB monthly download limit. On the plus side the month starts on the 24th, so I only had to last a couple of days before the limit reset. But on the down side I now know the limit warnings are based upon the previous day, not current.
     
    In any case, I'm now complete and ready to rock. One challenge with the Tempest cabinet is it only has the original controls: a spinner and two buttons (plus the player buttons) and a vertical monitor. Great for playing Tempest, not good for 90% of the other games. However, I discovered last night that MAME will let me use mouse left/right for joystick left/right. This means I can play Space Invaders and lots of other games - not just Tempest and Cameltry. I've made up a list of over 100 possible games. MAME also had a primitive, but functional, game selection screen, so I can play even without setting up a front end.
     
    I need to do some research to figure out what front end I want to use. Previously I'd used AtomicFE, but it's no longer being developed. 3D Arcade looks cool (especially the cylinder select), but has the same problem. Maybe I need to spend some time on BYOAC and find out what's current and can be used with my spinner CP.
  19. EricBall

    Next project

    By EricBall,

    While working at IBM (1993-2008) I acquired several classic Model M keyboards. Unfortunately, they have PS/2 connectors which isn't supported even by many current desktops. I have bought one of the "blue cube" adapters so I can use one at work, but I'm thinking I'd rather "roll my own" - open up the keyboard and replace the 6805 based controller with something that will output USB.
     
    This has been done before by others, so I'm not breaking new ground. I even have a keyboard which is missing the SDL cable - so is ripe for modification. The question is what microcontroller to use. The popular hobbyist solution appears to be either the ATMega16 or 32. However, I also found a TI whitepaper which uses the MSP430. The advantage of the MSP430 is it should be more "according to spec" versus something which works "well enough".
     
  20. EricBall
    All files available from: http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/3:2010cv01811/226894/
     
    Well Sony has fired back at the Amended Complaint with two barrels: a Motion to Strike and a Motion to Dismiss. I haven't gone too far into them, but Sony's first point is the five plaintiffs have different complaints and one didn't even install OtherOS! So Sony's point is if the the five plaintiffs are representative of the class, as a whole, then the court can't assume a class really exists. Ouch!
  21. EricBall

    Minecraft PS3

    By EricBall,

    Apparently the big game for early teens in Minecraft - at least according to my 13 year old son. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to partake in the game himself as we still haven't replaced the home computer (when will the Mac mini be upgraded to Haswell Apple, when?), nor can it be installed (even the "classic" version) on his Chromebook. But now the Xbox360 port has been ported to the PS3 - so I downloaded it as an early Christmas present.
     
    We originally tried to play the demo (which seems to dump you into the tutorial with no way to save, but is otherwise unrestricted) split-screen, but doing so makes the text & icons difficult to read / distinguish at normal TV distances. So we've dropped back to local single player games.
     
    My first game (seed = Daddy 1) started me in the middle of the ocean with one mushroom tree on the top of a mountain. Not a good start when you need wood to build a crafting table in order to craft almost everything else. My second start has worked out better and I have even survived getting lost, a creeper explosion and various other hazards. I'm mining (spiral staircase), exploring, and getting a little bored.
     
    Technically, it's impressive. A nearly infinite, procedurally generated, massively modifiable, persistent sandbox world. But as a game it's less impressive. Once you get beyond the first few days in survival mode the challenge of simply surviving drops considerably. Yes, you can work towards entering the Nether and the End Game Dragon, but the game doesn't push you to do so. So the "game" drops back to the grind of mining for resources. Yes, you could spend time creating massive structures, but that's what creative mode is for. (My son likes creative mode because it gives easy access to TNT and blowing things up.)
     
    I'm going to still play for a while longer. I want to put a skylight in my mine and explore a nearby cave. But I don't think I'm going to still be playing come the new year.
     
  22. EricBall

    3D TV is dead

    By EricBall,

    https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/17/01/19/2218238/3d-tv-is-dead

    I don't dispute that 3D TV never took off, what I find interesting is the TV manufacturers decided to drop a feature - no matter how unused.

    What's interesting is 3D is still popular enough to make 3D films. (Although my preference is for 2D editions I saw Rogue One in 3D because there wasn't a non-3D showing on a big screen.)

    Personally my 55" LG TV is passive 3D capable - so the glasses don't require batteries. I've used it to watch 3D Blu-Rays (e.g. TRON Legacy), but in most cases it doesn't add anything to the movie. But at least I have the capability.

  23. EricBall

    Grand Theft Auto V

    By EricBall,

    As has been splashed all over the news, GTA5 sold $800M in the first 24 hours, the most of any game and far more than any movie. I'm sure than most of the approximately 13 million copies were pre-orders, so it remains to be seen how many more sales will happen over the next month (or however long the advertising blitz continues). But in any case I'm sure Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive are celebrating.
     
    What amazes me is with just the first day sales, GTA5 is already near the top of the best selling games list for the PS3 and XBox 360. (Although the exact break between the two has not been given and Wikipedia incorrectly lists it as 13 million copies for the Xbox 360 alone.) This also means one copy of GTA5 was bought for every twelve PS3 & Xbox 360 consoles ever sold!
     
    OTOH, I have to wonder why "everyone" decided to pre-order it or buy it on the first day. I'm sure there will be a huge glut of used copies available before Christmas after people complete the single-player game. I'm sure some multiplayer "crews" pre-ordered the game so they could train-up rather than getting pwn'd later by other early entrants.
     
  24. EricBall

    N64 versus PS1

    By EricBall,


    MAME
    This past Christmas I bought an N64 for my son (and me) to enjoy my collection of games. (Although the problem turned out to be dirty cartridges rather than a dead N64.) He's been having a blast playing Super Mario 64 and the Mario Party games.

    This nostalgia rekindled my interest in what is under the hood of both it and the original PlayStation. It turns out there's a lot of similarities between the two, more than I would have expected.

    Both used a MIPS CPU (PSX: 32bit R3051 @ 33.8688 MHz, N64: 64bit R4300 @ 93.75MHz), both have a vector coprocessor (PSX: Geometry Transformation Engine, N64: Reality Signal Processor) and a graphics / triangle / texture processor.

    Of course there are the obvious differences too. The N64 is cartridge based, while the PSX is CD based. The PSX has a macroblock decoder for video decompression. The PSX GTE is integrated with the CPU (similar to the old 80x87 math coprocessors), while the N64 RSP has dedicated instruction & data RAM (like the SPEs in the PS3 Cell processor). The N64 has 4MB of main memory (500MB/s) while the PSX has 2MB of main memory (132MB/s) plus 1MB of memory dedicated to the GPU and 512K of memory dedicated to the sound processor.

    And even though the N64 had better "numbers" (e.g. CPU clock) than the PSX, Sony sold three times as many PlayStations as Nintendo sold N64s. And I have some theories why:
    First, Sony released the PlayStation 20 months before Nintendo released the N64, which gave them definite traction in the marketplace. The N64 launch library was also very thin (no matter how good SM64 was). Developers could already see the "virtuous cycle" starting with the PlayStation. Second, Sony's decision to use CDs (an easy decision for them given they helped invent CDs) and Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges had a huge impact for multiple reasons CDs allowed developers to store more - more game content and/or prerecorded audio & video (which the built-in decoder enabled) lower manufacturing cost, it cost much less to press a CD than to manufacture a cartridge so higher profit per sale at a given price I heard that one of the reasons Nintendo stuck with cartridges is Nintendo did all of the manufacturing (charging publishers up front for runs of cartridges to boot), whereas the PlayStation CD could be replicated by nearly anyone who could press CDs.  
    Third, while Nintendo provided developers with C libraries, they didn't provide any low level details. And the provided graphics libraries were much slower than the "numbers" would suggest. So unless you were willing to spend a lot of time & effort reverse-engineering the libraries (e.g. Rare & Factor 5), it wasn't possible to fully exploit the N64 hardware and work around limitations. On the other hand, early third party developer Naughty Dog was able to leverage the PlayStation hardware at a very low level. Finally, although the unified memory on the N64 allowed the CPU & RSP to update the frame buffer (which causes problems with emulators today), I suspect this caused bottlenecks in memory access (especially random access due to the latency of the Rambus memory).  
  25. EricBall

    Clash of Clans

    By EricBall,

    My son managed to convince mom to install CoC on his iPhone. After watching a little bit, I put it on my HTC. It's pretty cool, although I wonder how Supercell is making any money given lack of IAP pressure and the TV advertising.
     
    IAP - in app purchases, or the way "free-to-play" games make money. In the case of CoC, $$ buys you gems which can be used to:
    Instantly complete anything which would otherwise take time to complete. (More time requires more gems.) But if you're willing to wait then there's no requirement to spend $$.
    Buy gold or elixir which can then be spent to build & upgrade stuff. But again, if you're willing to wait then your gold mines & elixir collectors can give you the same.
    Certain cosmetic items.
    Builder huts, which impacts the number of things you can build or upgrade simultaneously. Again, this is primarily a time saver as after the tutorial you have two.

    So unlike a lot of other FTP games, it is feasible to play CoC without spending any real $$. (Although #2 might be more useful as other players can steal your resources.)
     
    The basic gameplay is you collect gold and elixir to build up your defenses & your attacking army. You then use that army to attempt to raid other player's villages and steal their resources - unless their defenses defeat your army. Other players try to do the same to you. Successful raids & defenses give you trophies; unsuccessful raids & defense lose trophies. However, an unsuccessful defense also gives you a shield which prevents other players from attacking you for a period of time, unless you attack, which can then be used to replenish resources you lost.
     
    This brings up the one problem with CoC (IMHO). Who you get to attack (and who attacks you) is based on the number of trophies each player has. So a common strategy for high level players is to purposely lose raids to reduce the number of trophies they have, then to smash some poor low level player with the full power of their army to steal resources. The game does try to limit this by restricting the percentage of resources the higher level player can steal, but . . .
     
    One of the challenges is defense design. You have limited resources (weapons & walls) and layout challenges (as each building takes up space, but weapons have finite range and there are insufficient walls to surround all available buildings). Then there are various attacking tactics.
     
     
     
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