XGS Pico
| Author: Wayne Eggert Date: 03/15/06 |
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Description
The XGameStation Pico is a device for hobbyists designed by Andre LaMothe over at xgamestation.com.
The Pico is just one of the many game system development kits that
Andre plans to offer and is aimed mainly at hobbyists who want to be
able to build a working game system from the ground up. It is a
simplfied version of the XGS Micro Edition, which is pre-built &
ready to program out of the box and has more advanced features than the
simplified Pico.
What can it do?
The XGS Pico is not something
you would buy if you just wanted to play games -- you'd be much better
off buying an XBox 360 or Playstation 3. It's meant for people who want
to learn how to build a basic video game system & program it. If
you'd rather learn how to program a modern video game system with
software libraries and a nice IDE, I suggest buying a Dreamcast and a
Dreamcast Broadband Adapter -- there are plenty of websites of folks
who are developing great things on the Dreamcast and it's a modern game
system to learn on. The XGS Pico, however is meant for individuals who
want to learn the ins and outs of the hardware, what makes the system
tick, and how to manipulate the hardware directly with assembly
language like was done in the old days of programming systems like the
Atari 2600. It doesn't even have color video out of the box -- it's
black and white -- you have to do some more advanced programming to
output color or build the hardware for it.
Basically where I'm going with this is it's probably one of
the best kits you can buy to learn about electronics, video game
systems, televisions, programming.. it's a real geek goldmine! Why
would you want to put together some stupid blinking LED project or
little radio kit when you can build a video game system & then..
actually program it and add onto it and make it better? So the answer
to what it can do is.. whatever you're capable of making it do -- it's
a priceless learning tool really.
My Experience
I was very pleased with
everything that came with the kit. I bought the SX-Key along with the
kit, because I wanted to be able to do some programming after I got it
all up and running (otherwise you can only play around with the racer
demo that comes loaded on the SX-28 Micro Controller).
It took me 2-3 hours to build it.. a little slow because I
was being cautious, double checking everything was right, chasing the
cat from messing with my parts strewn around the table. After I was
sure I had everything wired up correctly, I hooked it up to the TV --
unfortunately I had nothing come up on the screen. I went through the
schematic and pictures again, but couldn't find any mistakes. I tried
to program the chip with the SX-Key and it gave me an error about
failing to connect to the chip. I was getting voltages where I was
supposed to -- I was stumped. I eventually found that I didn't have the
SX-28 Micro Controller pushed into the breadboard far enough, which
definitely explains why everything was pointing to the SX-28 not
working properly :) The game demo fired right up afterwards.
More To Come
I will be playing around with
this kit some more.. first some programming, then maybe seeing what
kind of things I can do with getting color video on it. I'll post
updates here as I make progress with it. What a cool little kit!
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