(Semi OT) portable SEIV

[bearclaw]

For quite some time now, I've been watching the storage capacity of various flash drives with the intention of having my SEIV folder on a USB drive device. The intention: portable SEIV! Anytime, anywhere. Just give me a PC and I'm ready to go. Great for traveling (which I do a lot for work). Stop in an internet cafe and you are set.

I was in Future Shop yesterday and I found the device that will do just that. The newest Palm OS PDA, the Tungsten T5 has a built in flash drive converter and 256 Mb of built in RAM. Not nearly enough for an SEIV folder, but the flash drive is there. Next, I turned around and found the SD Cards and there before me was a 1 Gig SD Card! After doing some research I found that the T5 can use SD Card Memory as a flash drive.

Voila!! Portable SEIV! Now, I just need the $700 CDN to get them both...

[Suicide Junkie]

$50 used laptops have more than enough stats to run SE4...

And you can trim down SE4 to around 100 megs just by removing the pictures from the resolutions you don't use, and down converting the bmps to lower colour depth.

[Fyron]

You will certainly find better deals by ordering from internet "stores"... Cut out the retail middleman. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[bearclaw]

Suicide Junkie said:
$50 used laptops have more than enough stats to run SE4...

And you can trim down SE4 to around 100 megs just by removing the pictures from the resolutions you don't use, and down converting the bmps to lower colour depth.



Sure you could do that but where's the fun in that? How can I say "look at this cool toy!"

I do have a 1 year old laptop, but I just like the toys.

[Captain Kwok]

You can stick it on a usb memory stick. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Will]

Or, you could use what has become my new favorite toy. Get an iPod, then you have a lot of music in your pocket all the time, and a few to several gigs of data storage for good measure. Any (windows) PC, and you just plug it in, wait a few seconds for the drive to be recognized, and you're off! Cheaper than your option, with 40GB for $399US compared to 1.25GB for $700CDN.

But personally, I would go with SJ's suggestion. Then not only will you have portable SEIV, but you don't even need to find a computer, only an outlet to charge up every once in a while. Find someone ditching their old laptop, make sure it's one you can at least still order batteries for. Like my mom's old (OLD... as in, bought in 1996, one of the first shipped with Win95) laptop, a Toshiba. I think they stopped making that model of battery in 1999, then Toshiba sold their battery division in 2000... so tough luck getting a replacement for that. Now, even with the most stringent of power-saving measures, the thing won't Last unplugged from the wall for more than 20 minutes. Good thing no one really uses it anymore.

USB memory stick is another way to go. Quick search on newegg shows a 1GB flash USB drive at a bit under $100US, but shipping and currency exchange would bump up the price quite a bit more. Perhaps an Online Canadian store will have a better deal.

[boran_blok]

Be aware that SEIV will not run on that palm eh, it uses a different architecture, to run it you need a PC or laptop.
So imho going with an old ultraportable will do fine.
(the ones without CD drive etc, an old PII 300 or something in that neighberhood will do just fine, and wont cost all that much)

[Sivran]

Ouch.. 300MHz will hurt unless you only plan on playing multiplayer turns and not processing or playing single player. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif

[Kamog]

I used to play SEIV on a 233 MHz machine until about a year ago. When playing against 19 A.I.'s in a 255-system quadrant, the A.I.'s turns took a really long time, over 10 minutes. I used to eat meals, brush my teeth, clean the house, take showers, all sorts of stuff while the A.I.'s turns were done.

I now have an 800MHz computer so I usually just stare at the screen while the A.I.'s turns are processed.

[Makinus]

Some time ago i tried to run SEIV in my Nokia 9210i cellphone, using an XT emulator and installing a reduced Version of Win95, but i stopped when i run out of space on the cellphone (32mb bult-in + 64mb memory card) and i still don´t know if it would work.... maybe i when i buy a bigger memory card i´ll try again, but i think i´ll wait for the next generation of the nokia 9xxx to arrive in Brazil (9500 if i read correctly) to buy it and try again...

Anyway, i was able to run a (reduced) Version of Win95 in the Cellphone, but it as extremely slow, and i wasn´t able to run the mouse...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Cell phones can run win95 now?!?!

From coolsig.com - 'Imagine what cell phones would look like if our mouths were nowhere near our ears.' - Think about it.

[Fyron]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
From coolsig.com - 'Imagine what cell phones would look like if our mouths were nowhere near our ears.'

For a lot of people, that isn't very far from the truth... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif