Odd and Strange Hardware
 

Probally not a lot of people have heard of this:

Nintendo Sataliteview (BS-X)

That's crazy. :eek:

Hey, I was always wondering what the BS stood for in Zelda BS. (I had a ROM of it.)

M2
 

3DO M2 AKA 3DO II AKA Bulldog




May 2, 1995 the 3DO company announced the most powerful console of the 32-bit/64-bit generation. The system, dubbed the M2, would remain the most powerful videogame system ever devleoped untill Sega launched it's Dreamcast system in the late 90's. The M2 project originally began as a 64-bit expansion for the original 3DO, ala 32X, but it soon evolved into a stand alone console.

On October 25th, 1995 3DO announced a $100 Million Pact with Matsushita, (the worlds largest electronics producer, aka Panosonic). Matsushita gained all rights to produce, distribute, and develop M2 technology. They have the rights to incorperate it in any of their devices, TVs, DVD players, whatever.

After several announcements of releasing the M2 technology, Matsushita decided not to go up against Sony.

Several games for the M2 are completed and sitting at Matsushita. Amung them is the original D2. D2 was released for Dreamcast in 2000, but the Dreamcast version is a completely different game than the Midieval M2 version. Warp attempted to port the M2 version to the N64, but the deal fell through and the complete game was put on the shelf forever, and will not see the light of day unless Matsushita released the M2 technology.

In 1998/1999 Matsushita saw was Sega was doing with Dreamcast and made announcements that development on M2 technology never ended, that the company was concidering releasing the M2 console along with 10-12 fully developed games. The company later realized that the systems graphics are just too dated for the 128-bit generation of Dreamcast and PS2.

M2 System Specs

CPU :

PowerPC 602 @ 66Mhz

64 kbits total Instruction/Data caches (32k/32k)
built in MMU - SPECint92 of 40
Single precision FPU (133 Mflops)
Price approx. $30US in volume.

Co-Processing:

Graphics ASIC & 10 custom co-processors for graphics/audio

Graphics:

Over 1,000,000 polygons/sec peak throughput
700,000 polygons/sec sustained throughput with effects (including texture mapping, light sourcing, and MIP mapping)
100 million pixels/second throughput o Destination-based texture mapping
RLE compression/decompression
Light sourcing
Linear, bi-linear, tri-linear, and point sampled filtering
MIP mapping o Pixel-level gouraud shading and Alpha channel pixel averaging/anti-aliasing
3-D perspective correction
Hardware Z-Buffering
MPEG-1 video decompression

Resolution:

640x480 in 24bit or 16bit colour
320x240 in 24bit or 16bit colour

Memory:

4 Megabytes memory (SDRAM/NVRAM) on base system
64-bit bus o 528Mb/second bus bandwidth
Cache coherent memory system o 2 Megabytes ROM

Sound:

DSP running at 66mhz, with 2k cache
32 Channels with hardware decompression and interpolation
MPEG audio decompression
3-D CD-quality sound

Options: PCMCIA slot

Why do they call it the 128 bit generation when only the PS2 has a 128 bit processor?

Because Dreamcast and GameCube are widely concidered 128-bit machines. :p

Are they just gonna keep doubling the processor every year? 8mb, 16mb, 32mb, 64mb, 128mb... (start off with Nintendo on the 8mb, could be less and think there was). What's next? 256mb?

I don't think they follow that pattern anymore, it's just not that simple.

Now we have full fledged GPU's, high speed processors, custom memory pipelines.

It's much like the processor market where just Processor Clock Speed isn't the only determining factor to how good, or fast, the processor actually is anymore.

Damn, an 8 MB processor? That's like a 67,108,864 bit processor, which would be insane. When are those coming out?

As soon as the retard learns how to formulate an idea with some clarity.

Bandai Pippen
 

Introduced in 1997.

Bandai at one point teamed up with Apple Computers to create a home videogame system, which was marketed in the US and in Japan. This is an extremely rare system, and is worth a good buck. The following article can explain the console better than I can:

The System:


Optional Floppy dock:


The Pippen Docked:


Controller:


Optional Keyboard with Touchscreen:


Rear Panel:



The Pippen Atmark (white) was produced for Japan, the Pippen@World (black) was released in the US:


What is more rare than the system it's self is the software. Two DBZ games were released for it, and are amung the most rare games in the world.

A Pippen Game:


System Specs:

CPU :
Processor: PowerPC 603e @ 66 MHz
Cache: L1: 64 k L2: Unknown
System Bus: 64-bit
Mac OS-derived system
Graphics:

NTSC and PAL
640 x 480 resolution
24-bit color

Memory:
6MB RAM (shared)
6MB VRAM (shared)
Media formats:

CD-ROM (4x speed)
1.44 MB Floppy (external, optional),
Options/ Ports:

2x serial (printer / modem)
2x Pippin-ADB
VGA and S-Video (NTSC and PAL)
Optional GeoPort internal modem

Yo RobV, in the early 90's I made a friend who just moved from Japan. He brought his console, which the only thing that I can remember about it, had games that where on some sort of small thin (like flash cards these days). Do you know what I'm talking about?

Could be a few things. It could be a Sega Master System, known as the Mark III in Japan. It used both Game Cards and Carts. Game Cards, though they were cheeper to make, held less info. The SMS II wasn't even compatible with them.

Image:


More likely he had a NEC TurboGrafix 16, known as the PC Engine in Japan, is was extremely popular in its home territory. It used what they called HuCards:


Image:


about:
It was also packaged as the TurboDuo (a FG16 and TG-CD all in one):


And as the Turbo Express, which was an extremely advanced handheld. Released in 1991, it was a 16-bit portable TG-16 player, with a beautiful back-lit color screen:




Specs:
Processor - Custom 6820 (NEC)
Processor Speed - 7.6 MHz
Display - Active Matrix Color LCD :eek:
Display Resolution - 400 x 270
Maximum Colors Displayed - 512
Colors Available - 512
Maximum Sprites - 64
Sound Channels - 6
Major Add-ons - TV tuner



Unique Poetable version of the TG-16 called the LT, released only in Japan:

On an interesting side note...
 

Here is a full list of PC-FX games:
http://www.pcenginefx.com/PC-FX/pc-f...directory.html

A HUCard is depicted in this old TurboGrafix pring ad:
http://www.pcenginefx.com/TS/ad14b600.jpg

Wasn't the Turbo express using the same technology as the TG-16?

If so, it was only 8 bit, dual 8 bit processors, yes, but still only 8-bit, not 16.

Yes, well, it was marketed as a 16-bit system. ;) People used to debate weather or not is was "16-bit" as people still debate weather the DC was 64-bit or 128-bit, or if the Jaguar was even 64-bit. :)

thats the shortest cord...ever

HA HA

It's mock up for the photo...

Ever notice how in promo ads for systems the controllers sometimes never have a cord?

You know what I was talking about... fucker.

You too dipshit.

And thank you for answering the question.

It becomes that much more obvious as to the motives of Bandai trying to merge with SEGA. I still wonder what they would have done together...

Probally released some edutainment and some DBZ games. :p

What about Gundam?

There is less debate on the DC front. The processor featured 64-bit integer and 128-bit floating point calcuations. The processor itself was so damn complicated that even Hitachi said fuck it and never advertised it as 128-bit. Sega never did either, they simply claimed the DC had "128-bit graphics" which is partly true. The PVR graphics card in it was a 128-bit card :)

Now, the Saturn was a beast, and that was simply marketed as 32-bit, cause well, it's main competitor was 32-bit, and it was being released after the 16-bit generation. How would you like to tackle labeling a sytem that ran off 3-32-bit processors, a 24-bit DSP, a 16-bit Yamaha sound processor, and 2 VDPs, among other components? :)

I think there's a disconnect here. I'm not talking about high integers or whatever, I'm talking about how many words (as in 2 bytes, right?) that can be processed at any given time. Most CPUs are 32 bit. Some are 64. I'm pretty sure that the EE is the only 128 bit CPU out there.