Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!pro1-130.barrie.connex.net!user From: developer@woodentulip.com (Sean Kennedy) Newsgroups: scea.yaroze.freetalk Subject: Will I rant, or no. Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1998 00:20:45 -0500 Organization: Wooden Tulip Ltd. Lines: 200 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: pro1-130.barrie.connex.net Hey Everyone. So far this includes Matt, Scott, and Mario. Not to mention Darco and Steve, and Others who I can't remember off-hand Because I am Writing this while not being online on the Chat area. I have dissappeared for the past three weekends due to {Personal AKA new Girlfriend thingy.. :)))) } not being at home to sit in front of the PC and watch the Chat Areas. For the Next Semester this may be more often than not due to me Teaching RADAR and MicroWave Techniques classes. In the meantime I have been poring over a few of the demos from the SCEE web-site. It looks like the membership Over the Pond are really keeping it together. Too bad we aren't.. :( There is no clear reason for it. It dissapoints me, and it looks like we may waste away to nothing is there isn't a Pick Me Up soon. Really the Pick Me Up would have to come from staff at Sony. The Likelyhood of that happening is quite small. No wonder since most have been swallowed by the VMLab group. This doesn't mean that Sony cannot do anything about it. In fact this opens an opportunity to get things going with newer people. In a Recent Post Matt, raised some interesting points. Here's a Quote: > Hmmm... I suppose all must accept responsibility. I have spoken of > my desire to get more people involved from my first days in the > program. I got some support, I got flamed too... I still think the > majority of members don't participate because they are intimidated. > How many members do we all converse with in e-mail, who do not post? > The atmosphere has improved a great deal since the horn butting and > sharpening of the first few months of the program though... I was fortunate to miss a lot of this due to having limited Equipment and funds. E-mail was a once in a month opportunity. News was something I got into later. And I like many Yarozers had big plans and big Dreams. I still do. Like having an OSS based operating system for the PSX so that the Sony Licence agreement restriction would allow Hobbyist interaction in the Set-Top domain. But that is a really hard project for one individual. So I scaled down what I wanted to do, and found that writing an RTOS engine would be cool to illustrate the same thing. At no time was I intimidated, what did happen a lot in the past 1_1/2 years that I have had my Net Yaroze, is me running out of time at home AKA Energy to sit in front of the console doing development. Having a Grilfriend is not going to help matters much either. [She forgives me the fact I will be sitting in front of the Computer a Lot, Thank Goodness...] But this looks like what has happeded to a lot of the other Yarozers who haven't been around or keeping up. [Shrug] Here is Another point: > I assert that we would benefit greatly from a "Peter Passmore" in > the United States, and a team that would just forget the stipulation > about "only experienced programmers need apply". In the U.S., it is > obvious that we have a great number of people who are not advanced, > and would benefit from any kind of input that would get the ball > rolling. Clear as a bell! Here in the USA, [Canada too, I am not forgetting!] there has been ABSOLUTELY No contact from ANY Sony staff with the exception of two people. First and Foremost: Barbara Castillo. I met Barbara at the E3 Conference Last May. She is a very nice lady and she got me to where I am in the Net Yaroze due to her dedication to making the Plan work. I have not heard from her. Peter Alau: The Systems monitor, and programming mentor. Good fellow, haven't met him, but I did e-mail back and forth a few times to realise that he knows a lot of what happens in the Yaroze arena. No messages for the past wee while. :( > As an aside, it is also odd how Joel Sumner disappeared. MW told me > that version 3.0 would be released last May. No new release, no posts > from Joel... odd. Yep, Methinks when I was emailing to him last, he was really gung ho about the latest release. The latest tools were a bit better in some ways and in others. Yuck. I really cannot comment on what may have happened at Metrowerks. {I tried getting into the Web-Site just now, and it failed. } but there was some serious backlash from a post I put into the SCEE/SCEA forum about the operations of the SIOCONS tool used by CW called PsCommUtil. My beef with the Util, was that it was NOT a terminal program. I used Zterm for a couple of Experiments, and then switched to Minicom and SIOCONS in GCC/PC /Linux. There I could make some code that could not function in CW, work in Gcc. The actual PSXOptimised code would work too. { TestCard() remember???} but you had to load it manually using an old trick I remembered from the First incarnation of PsCommUtil: A Memory addressing thing. You used SIOCONS to load the pxe into the Yaroze from a PC, and then switch the serial port to Zterm on a Mac {or Hyperterm in WinNT} and type GO and the program would work. The major source of the Blast was by the express use of HSS.EXE on the Yaroze boot CD-ROM for the use of PsCommUtil. Nasty EXE that, even with GDB it is a real memory intrusion. But I would assume that was not what dissollusioned Joel out of the Yaroze camp? I really do not know, but if that was part of it, I apologise to Joel in advance. Another Point: > I have decided not to wait any longer for this aid, I have waited > six months, and can wait no longer. Nevertheless, for those who > scratch thier heads and wonder what would get the SCEA side of things > going, well, it seems obvious to me that an instructional set of docs > would be very productive. I couldn't wait either. And I have been with Yaroze for 1_1/2 Years. :_S Most of what I wanted to know about the Yaroze I found out so far. LIBPS.A is an ECOFF file one can open up with Linux GCC tools. Not much to look at, and the Assembler is really kinda wild, since it lacks Line by line documentation that really cannot be done on a disassemble. ;) As for the performance of the PSX/NY don't use the HSS.EXE debugger unless you ABSOLUTELY must! For the CW folks out there, {And I am one of them} I wish the best of luck with your code. We'll see what happens.. I found that the most informative information was from the UK SCEE site. Your UserIDs and passwd's wrk there so got there. It is a little zany in layout, but once you find something. its usually gold. The Middlesex University is holding a NY program and is putting a lot of Documentation on the SCEE site. I's hoping that that would get mirrored here on SCEA. Finally: > Imagine, if you wanted to start learning C, > and I just dropped a slew of sample code in your lap. You would > eventually get where you want to go, after an extreme effort and much > wasted energy. And, yet, so many nuances of understanding of the code > would be lost to you. Each character, most spaces, all punctuation has > meaning and importance. There's the nitty-gritty of each function, and > it's coding peculiarities, and then there is the forest of the entire > program, and how the functions work together. One can get a good sense > of the forest studying PC programming, but those trees are still > somewhat cryptic when one dives into LibGs. I will be forced to ask > many insignificant questions in the groups. Hopefully, many will > benefit from this, and my questions will be noticed and answered. TOOO TRUE! I sent an email to Mario Perdue about this very topic. Haven't heard from him either. The real question comes down to the basic mechanics. That is what people want. At E3 that was what I wanted, and that was what I got. I asked stupid questions, and I asked really good questions. Both gave me answers that I needed to make the right descision as to where I would look to the future for Game Development. Net Yaroze is a good area to work in. I like the conversations. I like being able to fill someone in on what CPU's are really great console CPU's, what they do in comparison to a known Processors, and what it means to code for it. Most of the SCEA membership is novice enough to ask the same questions in Mechanics for Net Yaroze. But enough have accumulated the right knowledge to answer those questions as well. Time for an Intro to PSX Programming. "The most common Grail quote within SCEA.." But who can do it? The big problem is the use of the Placeware system at Sony. That is an effective forum. BUT IT HAS TO BE USED TO MAKE IT WORTHWHILE!! Sony spent at least US$ 11-12K for the system and technology, and what did it do. SURVIVAL. What a waste. If I used A system like that, I would install something to automate some intro forum Animated Sets, to introduce members into the finer points of PSX Programming. Like wise, I would enjoy trying to put Interactive sessions on-line just like the Z-Net guy's do. {PSX Underground? What about Yaroze Overland? Same thing, just a difference in content.} But to do that I would have to be working for Sony, now wouldn't I ??? I have access to a lot of things at Humber College. I put together a proposal for an Interactive Computer Entertainment workshop. I couldn't get the funding because of internal politiking. That was last year. {Blame the Digital Imaging Training Lab for that..} But I am going to re-submit it again, and see what happens. But from what I have seen from the Yaroze End. There is a lot that can be done. And we aren't even doing anything "High-Bandwidth". [sigh.] Maybe I should go over the specs on the blackbird one more time. http://www.motorola.com/semi/blackbird/ But methinks I can wow people right away with the Yaroze. -sean