My Portable PC Idea

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 6:48 pm

Reploid Ayla wrote:why hasnt anyone tried using a mac mini yet?

Three reasons, one is that the Mac mini out of the box at the bottem level is $499, I think that the aimed price of this little project to begin with.
Second is that well OS X is a supperior OS it doesnt have much (if any) game support and though I have read that OS X can run a lot of Windows software games might not be easily done.
Three is that the Mac Mini is really lowend when it comes to power. Its not by any comparison as powerful as say the eMac, IMac or the towers.

Good idea just not going to really work here.

Post by **Black Six** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 7:51 pm

Sparkfist wrote:
Reploid Ayla wrote:why hasnt anyone tried using a mac mini yet?
Three reasons, one is that the Mac mini out of the box at the bottem level is $499, I think that the aimed price of this little project to begin with.
Second is that well OS X is a supperior OS it doesnt have much (if any) game support

While there are a couple games I'd like to play that aren't Mac compatible, most of the big ones are, Halo, Doom 3, UT2004, Sims 2, etc, all for the Mac.

and though I have read that OS X can run a lot of Windows software games might not be easily done.

True, the emulation is ok, but not when you're talking about rendering 30 FPS and all other kinds of processor and GPU intensive stuff.

Three is that the Mac Mini is really lowend when it comes to power. Its not by any comparison as powerful as say the eMac, IMac or the towers.

Actually, the mini is quite comparable to an iBook or an eMac without their respective screens. Those three make up Apple's low-end computers, but are by no means weak, it's just that everything pales in comparison to the G5.

Good idea just not going to really work here.

I do have to agree with that, but for a different reason, has anybody here seen the inside of a mini? Everything is already jammed in their pretty tight, good luck making it any smaller.

Unidentified Assilant · Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:36 am

I want to use Windows XP because it the most stable OS ever (except Linux), DOS, is defentely no.... and Windows 2000, is literally non-existant in Nuneaton (just about here its if its old, they'res no use for it, for Windows XP is your only option)

Alchemist · Post by **Alchemist** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:56 am

Black Six wrote:While there are a couple games I'd like to play that aren't Mac compatible, most of the big ones are, Halo, Doom 3, UT2004, Sims 2, etc, all for the Mac.

You'd be lucky to get any of them running at playable speeds on a Mac Mini. Maybe Sims 2, since I have no idea how it looks/what spec it needs (and I have no intention of finding out either, since it's bound to be crap).

Unidentified Assilant · Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:29 pm

Well heres something new for you to ponder about, the controller being mounted is going to have a button that selects either Mouse or Keyboard, and I know exactly how to do this.

FDSMAN · Post by **FDSMAN** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:56 pm

hey you guys, do you want to know how you could make a portable computer? well, for oe you take out that heat sensetive pad out, and he buttons, and you get a frogpad

http://douglas.typepad.com/content/Phot ... -thumb.jpg

soundwave · Post by **soundwave** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:12 pm

I heard those things were deathly annoying, I'd rather stick with the scrunched up PS2 little-keyboard-thing.

Alchemist · Post by **Alchemist** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:28 am

Unidentified Assilant wrote:Well heres something new for you to ponder about, the controller being mounted is going to have a button that selects either Mouse or Keyboard, and I know exactly how to do this.

Clicky switch between the 5v line on the usb of both?

this-is-me · Post by **this-is-me** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 11:49 am

Assilant, You can use a program called nlite to slim down XP to about 700MB Installed, less if you remove internet access.

http://nuhi.msfn.org/

Basically, You copy your XP CD to the hard drive, run nlite and then burn the created ISO and install away. I have used it on many occasions and always have good success.

Unidentified Assilant · Wed Apr 20, 2005 11:52 am

Alchemist wrote:
Unidentified Assilant wrote:Well heres something new for you to ponder about, the controller being mounted is going to have a button that selects either Mouse or Keyboard, and I know exactly how to do this.
Clicky switch between the 5v line on the usb of both?

No, a program on my PC is called JoyToKey which converts 19-Pin or USB Gamepad Input to either Mouse or Keyboard, and buttons can be assigned to switch between configurations, so therefore I did that, and no hacking was required.

nos_slived · Post by **nos_slived** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:44 pm

I was thinking along the same lines as Alchemist.