Thoughts on better ideas

[rocketcitydude]

Hello all, I'm new here, first post to be accurate. I'm not exactly looking at building a portable in the near future, just here now to exchange ideas. On this point, have any of you thought about using PC flash memory cards such as SD (really tiny card 1inch X 5/8in and about as thick as two sheets of thin cardboard) or the newer formats that are even smaller as a way of reducing size especially on cartidge based units? Also, the UMPC, a superportable, general purpose XP based PC (I know, emulators ruin the purpose of this site, but still its a thought). Portable amigas? mac mini porta-slab or clamshell?

edit: for USB2.0 capable portable builds (should there be any) xbox 360 controller is the ONLY way to go, use its guts, you're ready to install after making a shorter cable.

[Sparkfist]

Well in order to use flash ram, it would require building a bridge for sending the binary data right to the system. Kevin Horton has made one for the NES where he loads the games from roms on his computer and then plays it on the NES. The thing is most of us here don't have the konwledge for such things and really it's not neccessary, cartridges don't consume a lot of energy, nor do I believe many of us switch games often.

A portable Amiga? Well there is a person working on reducing an Amiga to the size of a 3.5" floppy drive. Up to know Amigas haven't undergone the "On A Chip" transformation and so you would be stuck with really the orginal size, which is really big.

Mac Mini, that thing is small enough as it is. It's the size of a laptop motherboard. If someone wanted to mod it and make a laptop out of it they could but I don't see what value you'd get out. By the time you finished the mod you have spent equal or great amount of money to say a Macbook (Pro).

Clamshell, we've taked that that would work on hugh projects like the orginal consepts of a portable Xbox. To date the only portables I know of that use this design are the DreamcastP by Atkafighter and Cennar, and the Atari 800 laptop Ben made.

USB 2.0, yeah I'd have to agree the 360 is the only system you're going to have that on. At least until the PS3 and Wii are released. But the new sytems are too big to portabize anyways.

[rocketcitydude]

I knew there'd be issues, just not sure what the flash drive issues were. You're right, C64 is as far up that line as they have come, unless you realize the genesis is not too far away hardwarewise, just the custome Amiga chips jobs done by other custom chips, the portable amiga could be done with a job like tom61's PCp with AROS as the OS. I guess i have to give in on the mac mini idea, unless you do it y'all's way using the cheapest or most easily salvaged parts, i was talking on a PS1 Screen, this idea has in fact been done inelegantly ( http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/09/the- ... -portable/ ) i figured you folk could do better a la really big gba sp.

[Sparkfist]

The C64 and the Genesis are not anywhere close to each other. A C64 for one is really a computer, the Genesis can be a computer but it is limited to cartridge media, well unless you havea SegaCD then you have CDs but still the bottem line is that the Genesis is a console. Now there is device you can use to have roms on and run off of at SD or MMC card, the thing is called a IDE64 and it reaquires the use of the cartridge slot.

As for the Amiga and custom chips those are not two things easily done. You need to find someone that knows microchip egineering, you can't just say throw these two chips together and make a system. You have to have someone go in and design a chip that will work just like the original but on the microsopic scale. And as really no one in the Amiga community has that experiance or has publicly released anything of that nature I'd say it's not going to happen soon.

As for the Mac Mini turned into a laptop, you don't want a PSone screen. First off they didn't even use one in the mod, they used an 8" LCD. Two the PSone screen can only operated in VGA fomat with a refresh rate of 15Hz which is not fast, it's really slow. You'd want a real LCD monitor if you were to do the mod.

The GBA SP, well I know I've though about the mod using the Transverter to output the video signal and patch it into a PSone screen. I can't say it's very possible now, the Transverter has been out of production of over 2 years. There are alternives but non come to the quality the Transverter offered.

[Triton]

WOOHOO! the minimig, my little obsession! i cannot wait till this guy gets a manufacturer for that thing, i will be all over it like a fat kid on cake! http://www.amiga.org/modules/myalbum/vi ... ?uid=12811

[Krepticor]

... i will be all over it like a fat kid on cake! http://www.amiga.org/modules/myalbum/vi ... ?uid=12811

i guess you have it covered like a fat man on the toilet