News: 1606911310

Actually really cool project

I always assumed minecrafts system requirements must be very very very low. The graphics look sub N64 and a raspberry pi can emulate that. Am I missing something about the complexity of this game?

Minecraft's problem isn't so much in the graphics, but in the sheer amount of data it holds in memory. Every block rendered (and quite a few beyond that) has at least some data in memory, so if you're rendering 12 chunks in each direction (a chunk is 16x16x256 blocks), that can get big quickly.

A good graphics card is less important than a lot of memory and a quick processor.

Whilst blocky, there are a huge number of those blocks in memory.

So yeah, the basic texture data could probably fit in an N64's memory, but the geometry would never have a chance. It really needs the memory expansion that this guy stuck into the Mac Cube.

This achievement was mostly achieved by the GPU upgrade - weak as it is still.

RAM is the problem, plus the overhead of running a JVM (Minecraft is a Java application). PowerPC never had good JVM performance: part of that can be blamed on a lack of development resources, but also, fundamentally, the Java Virtual Machine was modelled on a system that looks a lot more like a 32-bit x86 chip than a PowerPC (or even 680x0, given that PPC hadn't been launched when Java was being developed), so you get a small number of "registers", and the instruction stream is organised in variable-length byte chunks. So, the JVM brings the PowerPC's superior register provision down to the level of the x86, but without an x86's faster memory access and smarter pipelining to compensate for the need to keep fetching stuff from RAM.

Java Edition is quite demanding but the alternative Bedrock Edition (generally the only option on consoles and tablets) is a bit speedier. Only Java Edition is officially supported on Linux and MacOS but the mcpelauncher project hacked Bedrock Edition into working. The difference is certainly noticeable. Although Bedrock Edition on the Xbox 360 is presumably built for PowerPC, I think mcpelauncher needs the Android version, so it wouldn't help in this case.

I don't mean to rain on this particular achievement, it is definitely impressive.

But I'm not sure the saying "What's old can be made new again" can apply when you've switched out the memory, processor, hard drive and graphics card for new versions. Pretty much the only original hardware in there is the case, motherboard and (I assume) power supply. It's more like new(er) kit in an old box.

It does seem a bit like Trigger's broom, I'm surprised the original motherboard would still work!

Well I do know the owner the Trigger's PC. The only thing that hasn't changed in over 20 years is the tower.

Was Ive responsible- directly or indirectly- for that particular aspect, or did he "just" do the industrial design on the case?

From my memory (I had a very brief and small role in the product), Ive designed the casework and "pull-out" handle concept, so yes. Ease of upgrade was one of the big design goals on the Apple gear of this period (even iMac had a simple memory-and-wifi access cover, although I concede that changing the HD was a pain): the PowerMac G3 also had a super-simple case-access mechanism, and this is from the same period. (Back when Apple's design was functional rather than just aesthetics)

I believe it was Jobs who specified that the system had to be fanless. A team of uncredited system design engineers came up with the "chimney" heatsink.

When I think about what I do on a daily basis (Microsoft Office type tasks, Project planning, email, coding in C), I should be able to do everything that I need on my old Mac SE/30. Technically, I suppose, I should be able to do those tasks on DOS - but multitasking, even if only cooperative, is handy. In fact, I used to use pretty much this configuration for work every day. The only reason that such a configuration is impractical today is bloat, whether in the form of features that no-one ever uses added to the OS and application software, or bloat in the form of an obsession with inefficient programming tools (I'm looking at you, Java - and I say that as someone who can and has written application software in Java (admittedly whilst grumbling about how I'd prefer to be using C)). The obsession with doing everything on the web also stymies the use of older hardware in a modern office.

Even in the field of entertainment, those older computers shine. Sure, my kids love playing modern games - but they're more likely to pester me for the gameboy and the delights of SuperMarioLand, or my old Mac (for the joy of Arkanoid, Spectre, Lemmings or Prince of Persia) than they are for time on my modern Ryzen 5 powered Steambox. Content is King (or Queen), and addictive games are addictive, no matter when they were written.

All of which isn't to say that I don't recognise that there are some genuine advantages to a new computer - particularly in these covidy times. But the advantages are in the use of Zoom or in the simultaneous playing of music rather than in actually getting work done. For actually getting work done, I'd argue that an old Mac, Amiga, ST, DOS PC - or even CP/M machine is just as effective for over 90% of users, 90% of the time.

The biggest advantage of new technology? Well, bearing in mind global warming, that comes from systems like Apple's M1 powered machines which can deliver high performance, and all the benefits of the modern world, whilst sipping at the power.

"I'd argue that an old Mac, Amiga, ST, DOS PC - or even CP/M machine is just as effective for over 90% of users, 90% of the time."

No. At least an old Amiga anyway. I used to write my English homework on an A600. Without a memory module upgrade to 2MB RAM you couldn't save a document and then print it. So you have to write everything in one sitting, then print it, and then keep hold of the paper copy.

(Edit: you could print it and then save it, that wouldn't crash it. But you couldn't load a document and then print it, as it had run out of memory, so the effect was the same.)

Fair play, perhaps I should modify that to …old computer with a hard disk. That’s why I bought a Mac all those years ago. At the time, STs and Amigas weren’t commonly available with a hard disk, but the Mac was.

My A600 came with a hard disk. A 20MB beast. (This did not help with the saving and loading issue, since the memory couldn't take it whether you saved to df0 or dh0.)

That's the thing, developers often can't restrain themselves from taking advantage of modern processing power and graphical features - even when they're not necessary for the functionality of the product. Sometimes it may not be intentional, it's just lazy programming - and if it works OK on a modern system, why bother optimising it?

Case in point, for a few years I used Asus Eee as a little travelling laptop (it was an XP version). To keep me amused during trips away, I popped a few games onto it. It was genuinely quite impressive to see old but A-rated games such as the original Unreal Tournament, Quake III, Warcraft III etc. running perfectly smoothly on it - even with the detail turned right up to maximum. Then I installed Bejeweled 3. It's a far more simple game, yet it ran very sluggishly on the Eee's little graphics chip.

There's no reason for a simple little game like that to need more 3D processing power than A-rated games from a few years earlier. Yet because modern kit has more capability, the developers couldn't resist sticking way more graphical complexity in than was required.

"Yet because modern kit has more capability, the developers couldn't resist sticking way more graphical complexity in than was required."

Sure, but there are probably two effects here:

1) Because it's only going to play on much better hardware, there's no incentive to optimize, as optimization takes time and thinking. Tiem and thinking that could be spent bashing out another mobile game to get more money.

2) Computer programming is very easy. Computer programming well is not. The number of people who can create fast, efficient code, is far smaller than the number of people producing code.

Case in point: Megadrive/SNES roms are around 1MB in size, many smaller. For an entire game. Space Academy Year 1, which has better graphics, but not massively better, than an old RPG game on the Megadrive (and the only one I have installed right now) is 765MB. A lot of that is texture files, sure. But now people will just paint a big tile rather than code the tile. I found in one game that they needed a black background for one menu and simply created a massive black picture file to use. Quick and dirty.

It also used to immediately overheat if looked at funny.

"But, to the credit of Jony Ive, it was remarkably customisable."

I'm not sure Ive had anything to do with the design or implementation of PCI or any of the actual technical components, underling interconnects or software based hardware drivers that connect them all up to give you a working "computer".

Ahhh yes, it was a nice colour though, I'll give him that.