Official BlackBox News Thread

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:40 pm

You do recognize this is a 8-bit to 32-bit console?

Javabrain · Post by **Javabrain** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:44 pm

HELLS YEAH I DO!!

Javabrain · Post by **Javabrain** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:45 pm

If Nintendo can lower the bar, the black box can do quadruplefold of that.

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:48 pm

Uhr, I doubt that Nintendo will do that.

Also, you're new around here, but can you try not to double post? Just edit your posts.

Javabrain · Post by **Javabrain** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:50 pm

sorry for posting so much,but how exactly will the Audio CD Gametrax work? could you, theoretically, slap more ram and a dvd drive in to the black box to make it capable of handling DVD? will it have good DEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERS*gasp*DEVELOPERSDEVELOPERS? Activision would rok. and Incognito.
PS: "developers" that was an in-joke.
um, what i meant by nintendo lowering the bar was graphics and price wise.

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:52 pm

I doubt we'll have a DVD drive, seeing the system is homebrew, using carts.

Javabrain · Post by **Javabrain** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:00 pm

baad carts. not good. i'm sorry, but carts are too expensive to make. you could just go buy a spindle of cdrs and there ya go. i think they even have services that put an image on the front of a spindle of cdrs. where can i find a video of the blackbox splash screen?

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:12 pm

You gotta understand, BlackBox is in its early stages of development. Whether carts are going to be final is another question. Carts are good because they are reprogrammable, perfect for open source.

CD-R's are too unprofessional, and harder to interface with.

The image that goes on a CD-R is see through, and once again unprofessional.

And finally, the splash screen is still in development, and will most likely be the last thing to be done on the list. So just wait.

The BlackBox is a homebrew system, meaning gamers download their own games to the carts, most of the time, that's why we aren't using CD's/DVD's, most likely.

-Skyler

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 7:22 am

plus its a lot easier for the blackbox to read carts than it try and read CD's

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 7:28 am

Agreed. If you use a cartridge, you don't need any moving parts to read it. Using a compact disc or DVD system would require motors and lenses at remarkably fine tolerances for a homebrew device. Cartridges are best for homebrew. It somewhat forces one to optimize their code anyway. If you HAD to use a CD, I suppose one could burn a homebrew ROM onto CD and let a PC act as the translator, if a PC interface were ever constructed, but this isn't certain either.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 8:50 am

MM007 wrote:Agreed. If you use a cartridge, you don't need any moving parts to read it. Using a compact disc or DVD system would require motors and lenses at remarkably fine tolerances for a homebrew device. Cartridges are best for homebrew. It somewhat forces one to optimize their code anyway. If you HAD to use a CD, I suppose one could burn a homebrew ROM onto CD and let a PC act as the translator, if a PC interface were ever constructed, but this isn't certain either.

Well wouldn't that be perhaps the best way to get a CD-Rom on a homebrew sytem? Have something like a laptop CD-Rom and use it's interface, which is I believe typical ATA or if it's a newer model SATA. Also I read that there is an expansion port planned so if the port is fast enough it could handle a CD-Rom. Also it doesn't have to be a fast reading Rom anyways, the SegaCD read at 1x, PSone read at 2x and the Dreamcast read CDs at 12x.

Also I'm not saying that you should have a CD-Rom option, and I understand what you mean by coding for a EPROM is forcing the programmer to code efficently. I just think that a larger media like a CD is something that would aloe for larger games, even if the idea of larger is only 15MB.

Post by **marshallh** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:18 pm

Why not build an EEPROM emulator that hooks up to say, your parallel port? Faster code debugging as well as loading games off CDs.

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:34 pm

The interface directly to the PC may be better because no one will have to engineer a custom IDE/ATA interface for the blackbox, which may be possible, but difficult to do, and not cost-effective.

An EEPROM emulator might work, but what I was thinking of was using the PC as a media interpreter, more or less. That way, even an 486 or something old would work, and about a gig or two of hard drive space could keep the developer saving his homebrew ROMs for a long time.

The simplest thing would be to make a Windows or Linux compatible application to do this, while another way would be to send out Linux-based OSes custom tailored to BlackBox development that would run on something as slow as a 386 or even slower, but will work with most hardware and treats the PC as a dedicated game server.

...In addition, if someone connected the computer to a home PC...perhaps some savvy programmer could develop online multiplayer for the thing, allowing the PC to serve as a media interpreter and an online interpreter terminal? I seriously doubt the Black Box would need a lot of bandwidth to play multiplayer, even dial-up should more than suffice for most games...

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:38 pm

how about SD or flash cards? they'e like cartridges except they're available everywhere, have higher capacity, and can connect to a computer

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:49 pm

Well, the thing to remember is this:

Some early processors have internal limitations on how much RAM and ROM can be addressed. You should know what RAM is, and ROM is any form of Read Only Memory, such as cartridges. Using other forms of media such as flash could work BUT it would take an obscene amount of effort and work, and is not cost effective.

Using the PC as an interpreter is one way around this. All the Black Box needs to know with a PC interpreter is that it plays what the PC sends it (this would require some extra RAM than normally expected to minimize PC/BB communication and lag, but well within processor specs), and that the Black Box sends data back, such as saves or maybe eventually extra data for the PC to transmit to other players online, though this may be a bit more complex, or as simple as a "snapshot" of a specific area of Black Box RAM.

An 8-bit machine capable of FLASH and DVD reading sounds nice, but you may just wind up with media devices with more processing power than the system itself, and it wouldn't be worth the price to build it, frankly. If support for these things is necessary, a PC interpreting system way be the cheapest, simplest, and generally the most sensible way to make it work.