Don't try this at home!

(from the I Luv The BBC department)

Hi everyone,

There's something amazing about the BBC news service. Where else would you get a story like this?

Doctors save man with vodka drip

Summary: Australian doctors have kept an Italian tourist alive by feeding him vodka through a drip for three days, medical staff in Queensland say.

This isn't a funny story or anything - but that headline is amazing. Almost as good as this one:

Policeman shot in butt with own gun while battling porn vending machine bandits

But - since that's from Japan, where they actually have porn vending machines, that's almost too easy.

Cheers,
Paul

Finally - a good PS3 diagram

(from the Aha! So *that's* what it looks like! department)

Hi everyone,

Just a quick digaram of the internals of the PS3. Original article here. (Translation)



Also, as a follow-up to my prior post, if you translate the original article, you find this tidbit of information about the original EE-less design constraints:

(Note: I've smoothed out the auto translator "english" a little. It should be pretty close to the original Japanese, although this is *not* a direct translation.)

"According to an industry insider, the GS was retained because it can't be emulated by the PS3 chipset. This is due to the GS's pipeline architecture which requires 4MB of super-wideband and low latency eDRAM. Because the RSX (Reality Synthesizer) GPU of the PS3 has a PC graphics pipeline with external memory, it can't replicate the special architecture of the GS."

"Moreover, it is difficult for the cluster of SPUs (Synergistic Processor Unit) in the PS3's Cell BE processor to emulate the GS. Even though each SPU has 256KB of on-chip memory (Local Store), that is insufficient for the requirements of the GS. In addition, a number of game industry insiders point out that there are many developers who did direct, custom access to the GS which would necessitate a hardware solution."

So, based on this, it looks like these 40 gig PS3s are going to remain incompatible with the PS2 - for the foreseeable future, anyway. I'll keep you posted if Sony changes their mind, but at this point, I think it's fairly safe to say that PS2 emulation has been eliminated from the PS3.

Cheers,
Paul

40 gig Euro PS3 released without PS2 compatibility - entire world says "Wha?"

(from the Wha? Guh! department)

Hi everyone,

Well - Sony continues to send a very mixed message with their marketing strategy for the PS3.

First of all - they added rumble to the SIXAXIS controller after they said that it was "last generation" technology. All well and good - but although the controller comes out next month in Japan, customers in North America and Europe have to wait until "Spring 2008".

Wha?

Well... okay... it seems stupid to miss the Holiday season window in NA & Europe, but... okay...

But wait - that's not all. Today Sony announced a new, low-cost PS3 model in Europe. As predicted by various news sources, this model lowers the HDD size to 40 gig, reduces the number of USB ports from 4 to 2, and removes the multi-function memory card slots. All well and good - it's a lower cost machine - but here's the strange part.

They also removed PS2 backwards compatibility.

Wuh? Wuh? Wuh...WHA?

Didn't Ken Kutaragi himself once say, "the PS3 will feature backwards compatibility with PS and PS2 games from day one. I'm emphasizing this because, from what I hear, there are some platforms that haven't been able to completely do this. It's costly in terms of hardware, but we'd rather [invest] firmly on compatibility from the beginning, rather than to have issues later on."

Oh yeah - that's right - he's not there anymore.

Some of you might be wondering how this is possible, given what I said earlier about backwards compatibility in my blog.

Well - the answer is simple. The heart of the PlayStation 2 is two chips - the Emotion Engine (EE) and the Graphics Synthesizer (GS). The earliest PS3s had the EE + GS in silicon - thus hardware PS2 compatibility. The next revision (Europe, Korean, 80 gig US) of the motherboard removed the EE in favor of software emulation by the Cell BE processor of the PS3, but left the GS in place. Apparently, this new 40 gig model removes the GS entirely, breaking backwards compatibility. Someday, if they were so inclined, they might be able to get the PS3's nVidia RSX GPU to emulate the GS, but that would be quite the undertaking, since they are fundamentally different beasts.

*sigh*

If PS2 compatibility means anything to you, buy that 60 gig model now - before it's too late!

Cheers,
Paul

P.S. The other thing about Sony that's annoying me right now? They're not releasing the S-Video cable for the new PSP in America. Grrrrrrr....

UPDATE: Some of the European blogs have reported that the 40 gig model has lost SACD playback capabilities as well. I did confirm that on Sony's Australian PlayStation site. The blogs theorize that the SACD playback was discontinued due to either a licensing issue with the SACD division of Sony or due to the increased costs of incorporating Pit Stream Protection in the BluRay Drive. This latter reason seems most plausible to me. By removing Pit Stream Protection, you can use a "standard" BluRay drive, and could shave a little bit more from the cost of manufacturing.

UPDATE 2: I had mentioned that the 40 gig PS3 had dropped PS1 backwards compatibility. This is not true - the 40 gig PS3 will still play PS1 games. As it turns out, PS1 compatibility had been achived entirely through software emulation since the launch of the PS3. The PSP also uses a full software emulator for PS1 games; that is why you can share them between your PSP and your PS3. That is also why the PS3 dramatically improves the graphics quality of PS1 games; it isn't constrained by the original PS1 hardware. Mea culpa.

Here it is...again...Wire!

(from the It's Beginning To And Back Again department)

Hi everyone,

So - you might be wondering where the name of this blog - TheIdealCopy - comes from. It's the title of an album by the band Wire.

Wire has an odd history of being very active, then being rather quiet. Their last period of activity ended around 2004 or so. Fans of Wire - myself included - had wondered if, perhaps, this last phase was indeed the end of the band.

Well - we got some great news from their website Pinkflag.com. Official press release follows.

Cheers,
Paul

---

Read & Burn 03 is on its way!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Read & Burn 03—the latest in Wire's series of 'research & development' vehicles—is finished, mastered, designed and in production for a November 12th UK release. Featuring four new tracks—23 Years Too Late/Our Time/No Warning Given/Desert Driving—and with a total running time of over 25 minutes, Read & Burn 03 is both a substantial chunk of audio and significant signposting in the third reactivation of Wire as a recording and live entity.

We will, of course, let you know as soon as we can offer pre-order through Posteverything. Meanwhile, we would be happy if you spread the word that Wire is most definitely back! Please note: unlike previous Read & Burn releases, this item is intended as a complete standalone entity. None of the tracks will be included on the next full-length Wire album, so there will be no excuses not to buy it!

Paul's "Twisted Thought Of The Day®" (inaugural edition)

(from the Snowball's chance in Heck department)

Hi everyone,

I just had one of those weird thoughts that sometimes occur to me.... I think I'm going to start keeping track of these here: My "Twisted Thought Of The Day®" (or TTOTD® for short).

So - follow my logic here....

1. The original Xbox used an Intel processor with nVidia graphics and USB peripherals.
2. The Xbox 360 uses a PowerPC processor with ATi graphics and USB peripherals.
3. The Xbox 360 offers backwards compatibility by software emulation. This is tricky because the CPU and the GPU both have to have an emulation layer.
4. The PlayStation 3 has a PowerPC processor with nVidia graphics and USB peripherals.

Therefore, to my way of thinking, you should be able to create an Xbox emulator for the PS3 with decent performance. In addition - you wouldn't have to translate the GPU commands with as much effort - the architecture between the Xbox and PS3 GPUs should be similar. (Not identical, but similar). And the Cell should do a great job emulating an Intel microprocessor.

Wouldn't that be a scream? Playing my Xbox games on my PS3?

Unfortunately, we'll have to file this in the "never gonna happen" department, I'm afraid. Still - Halo on the PS3 would be something.

Cheers,
Paul

Running Fedora 7 on Virtual PC 2007

(from the Hardware vs. Software 2 - this time it's personal! department)

Hi everyone,

Here's a (very) quick guide as to how I got Fedora 7 running on Virtual PC 2007. These are necessarily terse notes to myself - experienced Linux users (and Virtual PC users) will dig 'em. If there's interest in a step-by-step guide for normal (?) Linux users, I'd consider writing that as a separate blog entry.

Quick Guide/Notes:

1. I decided to perform an FTP install of Fedora, so I only downloaded ISOs for the Live CD (Fedora-7-Live-i686.iso) and the Rescue CD (F-7-i386-rescuecd.iso).
2. Virtual PC was set to use shared networking. (I'm not sure if this is a requirement or not - that's just how I did it.)
3. Booted from the Live CD and followed the instructions for an FTP install of Fedora 7.
4. You must perform a text based install. The graphics won't work by default since Virtual PC uses a 16-bit display and the installer defaults to 24-bit.
5. When you reboot after the install, use a recovery disc and get to a command prompt. You'll want to change /etc/X11/xorg.conf and switch it to 16 bit graphics:

   Section "Screen"
           Identifier "Screen0"
           Device     "Videocard0"
           DefaultDepth     16
           SubSection "Display"
                   Viewport   0 0
                   Depth     16
           EndSubSection
   EndSection

6. You'll also want to comment out the S3 driver (with a "#") and add the framebuffer driver:

   Section "Device"
           Identifier  "Videocard0"
   #       Driver      "s3"
           Driver      "fbdev"
   EndSection

7. Next, we need to start the kernel with extra parameters. This starts the kernel in framebuffer mode, fixes mouse support, adds mouse wheel and fixes a clock issue. I did this by editing the kernel entry in /boot/grub/grub.conf as follows (split into three lines for browser compatibility on the main blog page):
   

   kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro
   root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet vga=791
   i8042.noloop psmouse.proto=imps clock=pit

1. The vga=791 selects 1024x768 screen and 16 bpp. You can set the pixel resolution to whatever you like by putting in the appropriate VESA value, however, for Virtual PC 2007, you must pick a 16 bpp mode. There's a handy list of them here at Wikipedia.
2. The i8042.noloop fixes the mouse issue (i.e. PS2 mice that the emulator creates don't work with some kernels)
3. The psmouse.proto=imps gets the mouse wheel working.
4. The clock=pit fixes a clock issue


8. Finally, I had to edit /etc/inittab to switch to X11 graphical boot instead of a text boot. Look for this line, and change the "3" to a "5" as follows:
   

   id:5:initdefault:

9. That's it!

Regular Virtual PC 2007 and Fedora 7 usage I leave as an exercise for the reader. *grin*

Update: Here are a few more notes that might prove useful.

1. When you set time zone, be sure to indicate that the System Clock does *not* use UTC. Otherwise, you will find that your Fedora clock is off by a number of hours, depending on how many time zones you are away from UTC. If you set this by mistake, you can change it later in the GUI by selecting System-->Preferences-->System-->Date & Time.
2. You may be able to use the graphic installer after all. When you boot the installer, use "Tab" to edit the command line, and try adding "vesa i8042.noloop psmouse.proto=imps clock=pit" after the "vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img". I'm testing this now, and will update my blog notes accordingly.

Cheers,
Paul

Creepy Robot Cat!

(from the Meowwww...eeeewwww... department)

Hi everyone,

I pass this along without much comment... (except maybe....eww!)

Yume Neko Smile, Creepy Robot Cat from Segatoys is now on sale!

(from Akihabara News)

I guess this is a perfect example of "Uncanny Valley".

Cheers,
Paul