h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

in an otherwise pretty good article. (And I'm a programmer working on PS2, so this might be nitpicky )

"capable of playing current Playstation games due to its core processor being the same as in the current Playstation"

The gist of this is true, but the core processor is not the same as the PS1. There is a new chip called the IOP (Input/Output Processor) that has on it the core logic of the PS1. The main processor on the PS2, the EE (Emotion Engine) doesn't really do ANYTHING when you're playing a PS1 title.

If you want to discuss the backwards compatability, there are even some enhancements that can be turned on to improve PS1 titles. The Japanese PS2 support 2 options: filtering to improve image quality, and faster CD access.

"So the Dreamcast can connect to the Internet, but the games are on CD"

Sorta. (I worked on a DC game last year, so I'm just Mr. Nitpicky ) However, the DC uses a proprietary CD format called GD-ROM (for Giga-Disc) that holds almost twice as much as a normal CD. (Normal CD's are about 640k, and the GD is umm, just a hair over a true gig I believe. I'm spotty on which way the hair goes.) Your point of the DVD drive being more spacious is still true, but the DC has considerably more storage than a "true" CD based machine, such as PS1.

Since this article mentions Dreamcast, I'm curious about Xbox in Europe. Are you folks hearing much about it across the pond?

A little - are you talking about the MS thingy? It seems to be being written off as a bit too late - but I heard that MS games were meant to be released as X-box compatible already... Anyone know what this means? - espesh if the h/ware spec hasn't been finished yet.

Yeah, Xbox is the new Microsoft console. The hardware spec IS finished, although MS has touched it at least once since they "finished" it. (It was a small change, they upped the CPU speed a tad.)

Here's the current specs, off the top of my head, so I might miss a bit here and there: 733 MHz Intel Pentium III processor, custom nVidia graphics chip, based off the GeForce line (GeForce 1 was NV10, new GeForce2 is the NV15, the Xbox chip is based off the NV20 or 25! So two or three generations past the best chip available today for consumer 3D.), 64 Meg unified RAM, DVD drive, 8 gig HD, 10 megabit ethernet connection.

There is not way to make a game "compatible" at the moment, but porting PC DirectX based titles should be pretty much a snap. I'll pretty much guarantee you all of MS's major titles for 2001 will be available either on Xbox exclusively or both Xbox and PC. It doesn't actually RUN Windows, the OS is A) new, and B) actually provided on the DVD. So it's much more like a traditional console than a PC. On paper anyway. They PROMISE no blue screens, and no "loading Windows" screens. We'll see.

This just in: yesterday we got the official word that MS bought Bungie, makers of Marathon and Myth and currently developing Oni and Halo. Halo looks like an Xbox title now, and Oni's fate is unclear. (May have gone to Take 2 as part of the deal, as Take 2 owned part of Bungie.)

Am I the only one that finds it worrying that they 'promise no blue screens'? If they /can/ eliminate them, er, shouldn't they 'promise no blue screens' on all computers? Just a thought...

BSODs or Blue Screens of Death are only prevalent on Windows Based PCs - mainly Windows NT machines at that.

Well in THEORY the blue screens are due to the wide variety of hardware which Windows supports. This is aggravated by the extensive list of "compatible" software they have to support, as Win9x will still run old 8088 DOS programs from DOS 1.0.

On XBox they fix the hardware specs themselves. It doesn't have to run on 20 different graphics chips, only on one. And they don't support any "legacy" software. XBox apps get written to the new "XOS". Even something as "recent" as DirectX has 7 different versions of the API now, and DirectX8 supports them ALL. XOS does not.

They are also simplifying a lot of the OS functions to be slimmer & more game oriented. They've ripped stuff out that is useful for say, a web server, or even a spreadsheet. The OS itself has no interface, no configuration, etc, etc.

I have to admit, the first time I saw the NT kernel boot in less than a second my reaction was "Can I install that at home please?"