Linking two Pyras together?

[Wrath Of Khan]

Would it in any fashion be possible/plausible to link two pyras together, via a special port, and avail of increased power or processing capabilities?

Or am I talking out of my hat?

Some kind of external interface port would be nice though. Something that would allow anyone to build external devices or peripherals and thus add features or functions directly to the pyra.

 

[God Ginrai]

Whoops, was about to link you to the "pyra-to-pyra" topic. Then realized it was about the mouse.

-God Ginrai

 

[Null]

Would it in any fashion be possible/plausible to link two pyras together, via a special port, and avail of increased power or processing capabilities?

It worked for Nintendo.

 

[Binky]

Wouldn't such a thing require extremely-high-speed data connections to/from the SOC?

 

[Pritchy]

More importantly, wouldn't this require an OS capable of parallel processing? That is if we're talking about working together at a CPU level. Hrm, either way, extremely unlikely I'd guess 

 

[rohezal]

Linux can do this via normal ethernet for the cpu calculations. http://idea.uab.es/mcreel/ParallelKnoppix/

But I am not sure why would you want do it?I am not sure if its fast enough, and for gaming on a tv, you can stream via vnc or stuff and get more power.

 

[Binky]

If you really need power, maybe a high-end laptop would be a better choice?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

I was just wondering is all. Im in for a pyra 100%.

 

[ekianjo]

I was just wondering is all. Im in for a pyra 100%.

The real question is "what for?" 

 

[commander-beef]

better idea should be to use ED server to connect all pyras. Something like CounterStrike host server and implement online play capability in emus/games.. im sure only 1% of people have 2 pandoras in tha house so create link cable+extensions would be a little waste of time..

btw. even in GameBoy [or PS1] link cable wasnt really used in games.  

 

[ShleeDragon]

Pyra Live.

 

[God Ginrai]

better idea should be to use ED server to connect all pyras. Something like CounterStrike host server and implement online play capability in emus/games.. im sure only 1% of people have 2 pandoras in tha house so create link cable+extensions would be a little waste of time..

btw. even in GameBoy [or PS1] link cable wasnt really used in games.

Someone suggested doing this for the Pandora, (TINXL) and even attempted starting it. AFAIK, it never got anywhere. Would love to see someone actually make it happen this time around. Also, who needs link cables? Ad-hoc WiFi multiplayer is where it's at.

-God Ginrai

 

[ekianjo]

Ad-hoc WiFi multiplayer is where it's at.

Does that even work ? I've never seen adhoc wifi on anything other than PSP or NDS - and these methods were apparently protected by patents.  

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

I was just wondering is all. Im in for a pyra 100%.

 
The real question is "what for?"

It was a somewhat random idea.
I really don't know. For intensive tasks maybe.


I dont have the technical knowledge.

 

[ekianjo]

I really don't know. For intensive tasks maybe. I dont have the technical knowledge.

It's better to come first with "a problem you want to solve" and then we can think about the "how"

Starting with the "how" usually gives very wrong answers  

 

[WizardStan]

Does that even work ? I've never seen adhoc wifi on anything other than PSP or NDS - and these methods were apparently protected by patents.

Ad-hoc wifi is just connecting two computers together without a router between them. All laptops have this ability. The Pandora didn't originally but I believe it does now. Once they're connected, it is identical to a network game: you swap IP addresses (the software can broadcast them to find each other automatically), make a connection, and the OS handles everything.

 

[bzar]

You can use ready DNS-SD/Zeroconf stuff like Avahi for this

 

[God Ginrai]

Does that even work ? I've never seen adhoc wifi on anything other than PSP or NDS - and these methods were apparently protected by patents.

Ad-hoc wifi is just connecting two computers together without a router between them. All laptops have this ability. The Pandora didn't originally but I believe it does now. Once they're connected, it is identical to a network game: you swap IP addresses (the software can broadcast them to find each other automatically), make a connection, and the OS handles everything.

Actually, the Pandora's wifi chip doesn't support ad-hoc mode, AFAIK.

The current wifi chip that TI offers (which I assume we would be using with the Pyra) supports ad-hoc mode. So direct communication between two Pyra's without a router should be entirely possible.

-God Ginrai

 

[WizardStan]

Actually, the Pandora's wifi chip doesn't support ad-hoc mode, AFAIK.

It absolutely does. The N900 has the exact same chip and it supports ad-hoc. The problem was software: the original binary blob driver we had didn't support it but I'm almost positive that I remember reading that it became active when we switched to the open source driver. I haven't actually tested it so I don't want to say that it works yet but I'm pretty sure it does.

 

[God Ginrai]

If you'd like to cite an example, I'm all ears. However, the only thing I can find about ad-hoc mode for the TI WL1251 is a commit for a driver and a post by notaz saying that said driver did not get ad-hoc mode working on the Pandora:

http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_39-DriversArch#head-7c463a0210ef2c59fbb05769bd6497028118a32e

wl1251: enable adhoc mode (commit), implement connection quality monitoring (commit)

I've built a test driver from this and posted somewhere on these boards, it was reported adhoc still doesn't work. Still it will be included in HF6.

-God Ginrai