f13.net

Only problem with the N64 was even when it worked no one wanted to play it.

My roommate's old bhong and copy of Mario Kart disagree with you.

A room full of high-on's swapping controllers around is a blast.

I've had one since Feb. 06 and the only issue i had was a heat related one. During summer when we had 30+ degree heat and no A/C the console wouldn't play Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Everything else ran fine for hours but NfSMW crashed 100% within 5 minutes. Once temperatures dropped it started playing again. Not hugely confidence inspiring but pretty minimal issue for the 1st build of the machine. Now I know to keep it well ventilated and cooled in my new house.

What's sad is that something like this is actually neccessary.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16874300004

$15-20, works whether your 360 is horizontal or vertical, and plugs in-line with the power cord, so it turns on and off automatically and does a bang-up job of keeping the bugger cool.  A bit noisier than running the 360 by itself, and the noise is of a higher pitch than the stock system's fans, but imo it's worth it to keep your $3-400 box from going China Syndrome on you.

Only problem with the N64 was even when it worked no one wanted to play it.

I have one of these, and I found out from the Xbox phone support that using the Intercooler voids your Xbox warranty. Good thing "I havent installed mine yet".

Schild hates the N64 with a passion for some odd reason, maybe it touched him in a odd place. I guess he thinks everyone agrees with him, since he generally does that with any opinion.

Our 360 used to crash every once and awhile (not DOA related) until with stuck it (along with the power supply) on a overturned wireframe box. It's run great ever since.

This whole situation with X360/PS3 clusterfuck is funny to me. A while ago a lot of pro-consol people argued that their way is superior arguing that there are no hardware conflicts, games don't require patching and always work with hardware you have, and Nintendo/PS1/whatever being specialized device will always be superior to general-purpose PCs.

Well none of it is true for any of this generation. Patching and bugged releases is as common as on PCs, hardware issues are very common and all you have is overpriced limited-by-design computing device that locks you into narrow set of exclusive titles. You also can’t replace or upgrade failed components and end up repurchasing the same obsolete crap multiple times during its run.

Welcome back to PC gaming.

But for the most part, consoles have less compatibility issues than PC's. Like about 50 billion times less.

ATI or Nvidia. EAX or not.

That's pretty much the gamut of game compatibility in modern windows.

That's funny, I remember early PS2s having more problems than Germany, circa 1942.

... I have neither the room nor the inclination to place a wireframe box in the middle of my lounge room for a badly-designed console, regardless of it's manufacturer.

...

I'm sure it looks and sounds awesome, but I can't get into console FPS controls.
Besides, I'm sure that within a year or two at tops, the 360 will be stable and far less likely to spontaneously combust. And have explosion-fodder even better than CoD2 which will hopefully be budget-priced by then.

Go go team service plan.

I wouldn't buy a PS3 until they can reliably make 8 cores work. Some shady stuff going on there right now.

But the problem is 2 or more have been failing with frequency. That's getting into bad territory.

Besides that, I find the whole idea of buying a flawed processor a bit weird. I buy a processor, I kinda want it to work 100%.

Bleh, anywhere a person can read about the production process? Like, an article for someone who is not an electrical engineering graduate student?

When someone at work asks me how ______ stopped working or went wrong, I often say "Hey, I'm surprised these things work at all."

“There are a lot of chips with six cores operational, and we’ve been thinking about whether we should really throw all of those away. We also have a separate part number for chips with all eight cores good. The stuff that’s going to be for medical imaging, aerospace and defense and data uses eight cores,” Mr. Reeves said.

Electronic News: Do any of those cores ever go bad, so that you start out with seven and you wind up with six or five?
Reeves: There’s a reliability failure rate for all chip types. By definition, reliability failure is one point circuit that has failed. If it happens to be in an SPE, it will knock out one of the cores. We have electronic fuses now, rather than laser fuses, which you can only blow when you’re doing wafer tests. Electronic fuses you blow electrically. If you really want to be focused on reliability and up-time availability, you can design one of these chips to self-detect. You can ship it with eight cores working, blow one of them, and from a user perspective you would have self-healed it in the field.

Electronic News: But would it be as fast as the chip with eight cores?
Reeves: Yes, because the Playstation 3 only uses seven of them. You’d have a spare. That isn’t implemented in Cell, but it could be. We implemented that same strategy for IBM systems. If you take a logic hit on a chip, you don’t have any impact on performance because there is enough redundancy built in.

Electronic News: What happens if one of the cores blows on the Sony Playstation 3 if there are only seven to start with?
Reeves: It’s just like a reliability failure on your TV or DVD recorder. If it’s within warranty, you send it back. If it’s not, your game doesn’t work anymore. You’ll always have choices about how reliable you want to make a chip with burn-in. Most chips that go into the consumer marketplace on things such as camcorders or DVD players aren’t burned in. But you can add burn-in and improve reliability 5x to 10x. It’s extra cost. Certainly, a company like Sony adds that in.

Unless you are talking about first-gen Sony Hardware. They are not known for having good first-gen hardware durability.

Ok, I found the article I was referring to. Darn you to heck for making me dig :P

Electronic News: Do any of those cores ever go bad, so that you start out with seven and you wind up with six or five?
Reeves: There’s a reliability failure rate for all chip types. By definition, reliability failure is one point circuit that has failed. If it happens to be in an SPE, it will knock out one of the cores.

We have electronic fuses now, rather than laser fuses, which you can only blow when you’re doing wafer tests. Electronic fuses you blow electrically. If you really want to be focused on reliability and up-time availability, you can design one of these chips to self-detect. You can ship it with eight cores working, blow one of them, and from a user perspective you would have self-healed it in the field.

Electronic News: What happens if one of the cores blows on the Sony Playstation 3 if there are only seven to start with?
Reeves: It’s just like a reliability failure on your TV or DVD recorder. If it’s within warranty, you send it back. If it’s not, your game doesn’t work anymore. You’ll always have choices about how reliable you want to make a chip with burn-in. Most chips that go into the consumer marketplace on things such as camcorders or DVD players aren’t burned in. But you can add burn-in and improve reliability 5x to 10x. It’s extra cost. Certainly, a company like Sony adds that in.