Anybody knows what this http://www.dspdesign.com/products/product_det … l?product_id=99 is and if it could be of some interest to retrogamers?
BGWG as in Boogie Woogie.
It's an industrial/embedded PC, using the PC/104 format. While I suppose it may work to a certain extent for retrogaming, it would be far from ideal... not the least of the problems being the truly stunning prices those boards usually sell for.
Damn! 😒 Why can't someone start to manufacture brand new 486 and put them to market? They would be making considerable money and a lot o people happy 😀
BGWG as in Boogie Woogie.
They would be making considerable money and a lot o people happy
Well, that's the thing... they wouldn't be making considerable money, at least not if they sold them at the sort of prices most of us would consider reasonable. Motherboards are not cheap to manufacture in small volumes (plus there's also the factor of all the supporting chips and such that may or may not still be available), and the actual demand for such a thing would be pretty limited, relatively speaking. At the most, I wouldn't expect it to sell more than a couple thousand units, and that number could even be in the down in the hundreds.
There are some 'modern' 486 AT boards out there, from a company called ESA... I don't believe they're still in current production, but they were made at least up until a few years ago. They come up on eBay from time to time, usually in the $100-120 range. That's probably as good a price as you can hope get on something like that.
True 😢
I see a growth in the demand for retro-tech changing some marketing approaches with consoles,or in the music segment the return of vinyl.
Maybe it will never be mainstream, but there is market for this kind of stuff, big companies just have to think about making it cost-effective.
Making a product oriented for the retrogaming consumer would be a smart step I think. If it is working for the consoles why not with PC?
BGWG as in Boogie Woogie.
If it is working for the consoles why not with PC?
It should be pretty obvious why not, if you think about it for a minute. With consoles, there's one specific hardware combination for each system... in other words, though there are different hardware revisions and such, as far as an NES game is concerned, every NES works exactly like every other NES. It doesn't matter if it's an original one, or a toploader, or some random Chinese clone... they're all functionally the same on a low level.
Then think about PCs... what is a retro gaming PC? A 386? 486? DosBox on a modern machine? What video card? What sound card? What sort of peripherals do you want? What about storage? Is it DOS only, or does it run Windows? What version of DOS? What version of Windows? Hell, a lot of us have multiple machines, because there isn't even a single hardware configuration that will do everything we individually want, and you can just forget having a large group of people agreeing on a specific piece of equipment. When you have 1000 people that want 2000 different things, then there's no market... it would be nothing short of business suicide to try to get into something like that.
Yes, a megadrive is a megadrive is a megadrive 😉 , and that is also why it's easy to emulate, the hardware is constant, and the few revisions are the negligible variables.
A compromise could be reached with PC (there's been a lot of very useful experimentation here at Vogons about what's the best configuration).
Bare with me, all the technology is ready and has been tested for decades, take a look here Cheapest Sound Blaster Compatible PCI Sound Card? to see decent SBPro and OPL3 for five bucks , regarding only soundcards, yes I know, but who knows...
Example:
A new product comes to market, it's a bare-bone , equipped with a standardized mobo across the range that has everything onboard audio/video/ram/storage, with, say, a VIA cpu, or an AMD cpu similar to DX4/Pentium 100MHz , with 3dnow an mmx instructions,that can run at other frequencies (66, 33, 16, 8 )via buttons on the case , its got excellent suport for 2D and soundblaster/adlib/fm , it also comes with solid state drive and decent 3D for about 1997.
It can be upgraded via PCI, AGP, ISA an VLB.
(there is the 3D version of this barebone, that comes with decent 3D for about 1997, but is a little more expensive 🤣 )
Question: would you buy it?
BGWG as in Boogie Woogie.
