On 8/24/05, Nathaniel Dube avatarofvirgo@gmail.com wrote:
On Wednesday 24 August 2005 01:22 am, Richard Smith wrote:
What hardware do you have in mind?
I'd like it to be designed so any retail hardware off the shelf will do, but if we are to start a small business making these things I would try the best
Well LinuxBIOS only runs on a fairly small family of chipsets. The bulk of LinuxBIOS applications are in linux clusters or embedded systems. Neither of which would classify as "retail hardware" unless you want to build game consoles out of dual Opteron boxes. The higher end VIA eden boards might qualify but support for them is still under developement.
Actually a dual opteron and a recient PCI-Express video card would probally make a pretty bad ass gameing machine. *grin* Only cost you about $2k
the current XBOX cost, around $150 I think. The XBOX360 I belive is going to be close to $300 when it comes out. So it has to be hardware that would keep the over all price below the current consoles.
Going to be tough since those products are sold at a loss.
you'll know that when you turn it on it loads to it's menu (with no game in it) pretty quick. Which made me think to use LinuxBIOS. Current BIOS
That would be an excellent use of LinuxBIOS and I'd love to see it happen. Boot time graphics however are currently _not_ one of LB's strong points. But I suppose that if you can get to a Linuxframe buffer in say 1 or 2 seconds then you could load up a simple initrd that would make that pretty easy.
Now that I re-think it, building this system by hand, we would end up making a gaming system that would cost more than current systems but cost less than current desktop computers at Best Buy. And since this new system will be a hybrid of both I see no reason why this thing wouldn't sell like crazy.
I'm sure thats what Indrema thought as well. Making a commercial product is a daunting task. _Especially_ in the PC market. I'm not so sure it would be that much cheaper than a normal desktop.
This is kinda veering OT for linuxbios though.. So we should probally take it off list.