Comments on: Virtualcogs open portable gaming platform

By: Keilaron

Keilaron — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:21:26 +0000

Meh, big whoop? If you wanted an open-source gaming console, the GP2X is right there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X

By: p quinn

p quinn — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 04:27:09 +0000

ah and sorry i forgot to post my email pferpady@hotmail.com

By: p quinn

p quinn — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 04:23:30 +0000

hello im a major techy and absolutily love devoloping persicisily this king of thing i really want to get my hands on one of these devices for devolopment purposes can any one please give me contact details for this group/person/company
regards
pferpaddy

By: Forrest

Forrest — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:26:32 +0000

Nice effort - but there's another similar device on the market with a 800 x 480, 4.1 inch LCD touchscreen, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, USB, a 252 MHz TI OMAP 1710 processor (ARM926TEJ core), 64 MB DDR and 128 MB Flash memory than runs Linux - the Nokia 770 being sold for $140
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770

By: TJHooker

TJHooker — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:13:17 +0000

You don’t have to go with ITX, or prefab buses, just use better chips. Anything below 600Mhz despite the instruction set isn’t practical for competitive floating point math used in modern 3D.

By: David Knox

David Knox — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 18:04:45 +0000

Linux already runs on this thing along with very powerful bootloader (uMon — that even has its own file system). I think they are demonstrating you can either program standalone or using Linux.

By: Tolaemon

Tolaemon — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:59:51 +0000

It sounds nice, and seems to be a good job, but there are other “open portable gammings platforms” with better specs. On my opinion GP2X is the best example: it has a bit smaller LCD but two 2 ARM9 at 200Mhz each one, and everything works under Linux etc.

By: logicus

logicus — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:37:50 +0000

As much as I love the idea of an open freescale based handheld. tjhooker is right.

VIA EPIA PX 10000 Pico-ITX + PSP screen would be better IMHO.

http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/pico-itx/default.asp?page=3

That these things are small enough to the point where the could be worn !!

These people need funding, although they do have a good niche market.

By: caliraisin

caliraisin — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 05:05:34 +0000

#7, there is a free USB sniffer that works in Windows called Snoopy: http://sourceforge.net/projects/usbsnoop/. I've used this before when I was working with PIC micros and USB, and it was extremely helpful. It captues all the messages sent between the host and device and decodes it. Its sorta like ethereal for USB.

By: TJHooker

TJHooker — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:00:01 +0000

There are 1000Mhz ARM cores now such as the Cortex-A8 MMU. Wonder why nobody is using them. They use a better BUS protocol too. They have really nice Mali and JME 3D support as well. The Mali shaders and stuff look like the ones on my Geforce 7800. Go 600+ Megahertz or don’t go at all.

By: Daniel Monteiro

Daniel Monteiro — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:35:05 +0000

Cool, but you will need a OS, or else, every game will need its own bootstrap, and this is mostly undesirable for indie game developers like me.

maybe some freedos or a small linux?

By: rmiller021

rmiller021 — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:12:43 +0000

Azurus read the article.
It is a module for their VCMX212 ( which already supports linux)

It is designed to demonstrate their products which are pretty much what you describe.

check out their site http://www.virtualcogs.com

By: Azurus

Azurus — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:32:01 +0000

Oh wow, could you imagen what they could do if they can put a laptop harddrive to this and somehow be able to bood up some simple form of linux?
Didnt say winders because with how small the mem is on it, thats a farcry of what you could do.
Having a gps, camera, and bluetooth all intigrated into it… or even better, have them as moduels that you can click into ports.

Theres so much potental here for this open source peice of hardware. I know Id like to have one that is capable of being able to plug into any VGA TV connection or computer screen connection to have an emergency display or something as a usefule on arm platform.

Email me with some other ideas. Id like to hear what others can think of with simething like this.
azurusnova@gmail.com

Think about it and boil on it for awhile. ;)

By: joseph lopez

joseph lopez — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:31:30 +0000

I think everyone who visits this site regularly enough knows what the GPXX series is... This is nice though.

I would suggest Li-Poly for batts.

Only question I have is what software can you run on this?

By: Rob Ristroph

Rob Ristroph — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:32:08 +0000

I saw this project a while ago when it came up on linuxdevices. The idea that I had was that I might be able to get one of these that had a USB host and client on the same device, and then make a USB sniffer for debugging work.

The main board should have a USB client, and the USB daughter card they list as "coming soon" is listed as having a USB host port.

I am not sure if a USB host and client is all you would need to sniff USB traffic, or if you would need some lower level of control than the usual USB chip gives you.

If anyone knows of a USB sniffer that costs less than a $1,000, let me know.