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Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

bitbuilt.net

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Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#161
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IR losses? Never heard that one

I believe he means I²R losses in resistive elements

No I think he literally means IR losses. ie voltage droop V=IR

Modern VRMs also reduce output voltage when the CPU draws more current. That way when the CPU later draws less current, the voltage doesn't inductively spike up and damage the CPU. Overclockers call this LLC (load line calibration), but don't google that because electrical engineers don't use that term and most articles and reddit threads explain this ass-backwards. Google "Active Voltage Positioning" instead to find correct documentation.

If your VRM is close to the chip, voltage droop will be ~0 and LLC can be ~0. This allows you to undervolt more and save power without instability. This is probably why most server CPUs have voltage conversion inside the chip (FIVR, Fully integrated voltage regulators)

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, it's also been very useful when you want to murder a black person and get away with it in front of an all-white Southern jury. Nullification is no more inherently righteous than a butcher knife.

What you are referencing is an edge case (and an old one at that). A more recent one is the OJ trial. But those are perfect examples of bad jurors. It's up to you and your peers to be good jurors. What system do you suggest?

It's all an edge case. Nullification isn't an intended right, it's an unavoidable loophole. It's the necessary consequence of a system where no one is allowed to tell a juror how to vote or demand that they justify their decision: there's no way to maintain those requirements and also punish jurors for ignoring the law completely, so we just ask them to pretty please not do that.

And that's fine. It's certainly better than letting anyone legally pressure jurors. Democracy and freedom are all about compromise. I'm just saying, it's not corruption for judges to prefer jurors who don't ignore the law.

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#163
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play a bit of flightsim and our head tracking works the same way. Camera receives IR LED position for head movement axis, program does the interpretation of movement.

There's a homebrew head tracking demo [0] for the wii that has you put a sensor bar on your head, and a wiimote on top of your TV. I messed around with it over a decade ago and found it very convincing. 0: https://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Headtracking

Very convincing indeed. IMO it's almost as good as (if not better than) head mounted VR goggles. At least it doesn't cause motion sickness.

The person who came up with that idea, Johnny Lee¹, went on to work on the xbox and I believe was also involved in development of the Kinect.

1. https://www.youtube.com/@jcl5m

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Kawii? Kawaii is japanese for cute

Because then it would be a better pun on "Wii". I also thought that "kawaii" was kind of a missed opportunity, personally. I would've gone for "kawaii" or something.

I would have gone with Kawawii, which would sound like Fujimori Shinjo's かわうぃーねー

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yokoi said 'The Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply.' He articulated his philosophy of 'Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology' (枯れた技術の水平思考, Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō) (also translated as 'Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology'), in the book Yokoi Gunpei Game House." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunp…

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Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#166

The "Thundervolt" reference in that post is a project where they cut up a Wii PCB to leave just the DRAM and the processors on the PCB, and then they slap an external DCDC board on top of that cut up PCB to provide power to it, while also undervolting it since you reduce the IR losses. https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/thundervolt.62... That is pretty insane.

is there a goal in undervolting? Is it about minimizing the energy consumption of a Wii system? If so, how much did they save?

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#167
post #166

The "Thundervolt" reference in that post is a project where they cut up a Wii PCB to leave just the DRAM and the processors on the PCB, and then they slap an external DCDC board on top of that cut up PCB to provide power to it, while also undervolting it since you reduce the IR losses. https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/thundervolt.62... That is pretty insane.

is there a goal in undervolting? Is it about minimizing the energy consumption of a Wii system? If so, how much did they save?

The kawaii forum post says the undervolting allows them to passively cool the wii

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#169
post #92

The Wii has got be the most hacked (literally!) console ever.

Not even close. That would be the Play Station or the Play Station 2.

For pirating games: PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, for sure

For straight up modding: definitely the Xbox. The 007 and Mechwarrior bugs blew everything wide open, and the fact that it was just a PC with real (upgradeable!) storage spawned projects like XBMC, now known as Kodi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software)

And also piracy was rampant, but not the Swapmagic or Modchip kind. You could just upgrade the drive, _backup_ your games on there, and play 'em all of the drive.

The Wii and 3DS are also suuuuper open and hackable though. The homebrew scenes on both are incredibly impressive, not to mention the whole ecosystem of full blown launchers and shells and stuff. (Which, now that I think about it, was also a big deal on Xbox.)

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#170
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the Dreamcast. It got hacked on more than it got played.

It was def the dreamcast - the first model didn't require any hardware, just a burned CD-ROM. It's demise and Segas departure from consoles is blamed on the amount of piracy. A real shame, because it had some great games

One thing I was found interesting about Dreamcast piracy was that everyone was burning them onto 700 MB CD-Rs. But the retail games were actually pressed onto 1GB GD-ROMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM

For a lot of games, it totally didn't matter (shoutout Ikaruga, 38 MBs! https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2023/03/the-worlds-sm...)

But for games that took advantage of the extra 300 MBs, pirates had to use all these tricks to get the game down to a CD-R size. They'd compress assets, compress or sometimes rip out the FMVs...I think they might have even split some games across multiple CDs.

That's why DRM cracks me up, the pirates will always figure a way around it one way or the other. (Especially in today's day and age where the live service model is so effective. I'd weep for the AAA single-player game, but I can't remember the last one I played and enjoyed. They've been dead for a long time. Long live the indie single-player game.)

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