Inside Nintendo 64 (1997) | Hacker News Reader

Inside Nintendo 64 (1997)

n64.icequake.net

83 pointsCrazedGeek28 comments

The N64 development manual and SDK leaked a few years ago. Here's the documentation for the curious: http://level42.ca/projects/ultra64/Documentation/man/

I wonder what the legality of using the manuals in homebrew and emulator development is.

In the US, it's almost certainly illegal. (though admittedly very unlikely to be prosecuted)

All materials used for RE must have been obtained legitimately, and as far as I'm aware any legit way to obtain this sort of manual for console development involves/involved signing an NDA.

Wow, I loved thumbing through this. Very informative.

Even the mirror of the mirror doesn't load for me. Here is a Google-cached copy:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_aGYRQK...

Cached wasn't working for me, here is a snapshot from the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140117054854/http://n64.icequa...

A video tear down with a knowledgeable electrical engineer: EEVblog #491 - Nintendo 64 Game Console Teardown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScicrgZwvg4

Thank you so much for the link, I had never seen this, it's pretty amazing! :)

This guy's channel is absolutely full of amazing gems. All kinds of retrocomputers with some pretty great commentary on the design of the hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/user/bkraz333?feature=em-subs_digest

is another very very good channel

He's my go to bedtime youtube channel. Good stuff.

Dave Jones is great.

If anyone has a Nintendo 64 languishing in a dusty closet, we'd love to have an annotated teardown guide added to TakeitApart[1].

1. https://www.takeitapart.com

I love the part where he describes the heat sink as "meh" - it's true that it's probably the least efficient heat sink ever seen! But they had space (and surface) available in the console, so why not...

> Designed for 1024x768 resolution and Netscape Navigator 4

Wow, we come so far in so many ways, but screen resolution is not one of them.

Nah, we have come a long way in screen resolution. The pixel count goes up by four when you double the resolution, and graphics hardware doesn't improve that fast.

It wasn't too long ago that 320x240 was a pretty normal resolution. At 1080p, we have quintupled the number of pixels more than twice- from 76,800 to 2,073,600

No, you're just old. 320x240 was normal, on cellphones, a damn long time ago.

Desktops (and game consoles) really haven't kept the pace with everything else.

You guys who complain that it's taking too long to evolve don't seem to realize you need to build new facilities every time you want to increase the density of pixels. New factories take years to develop and years to get proper ROI as well. There's not much incentive to build super high resolution LCDs, it will cost much more to make, end up with massive reject rates, and nobody will want to buy them at much higher prices anyway.

On top of that, I'd add that even if the resolution has not improved THAT much over the past 5 years, we have made massive progress into having better looking pictures out of LCDs and OLEDs - with much better contrast and refresh rates. Ghosting is pretty much a thing of the past, and narrow angles of vision as well (still not perfect but much better than 5-10 years ago).

No, you're just really young. Something tells me your "damn long time ago" was like just 10 years ago or something.

> It wasn't too long ago that 320x240 was a pretty normal resolution.

Maybe for games and such, but not for desktop use. The Mac came out in 1984 with a resolution of 512×342, which was 30 years ago.

When Windows 3.0/3.1 came out, 640x480-ish was the new standard, and that was the very early 1990's.

512×342 monochrome is much less computationally expensive than 320x240 8-bit color. There's a factor of 3.5× memory difference there.

Indeed, my MBA has a humble 1366x768, which makes me reflect about progress in this area. The lack of more vertical real state is especially frustrating.

My wife has the MBP with Retina Display. It's got lots more pixels than my MBA, but no more real estate. Display widgets can really only get so small while still remaining useful, and increasing pixel count involves some tradeoffs with things like power consumption.

I could have had a lot more vertical real estate, but I decided that since I'd be carrying the thing around in my satchel, physical size was also a consideration. At home I can plug it into a monitor that's much, much bigger.

Try Eye-Friendly.

> The lack of more vertical real state is especially frustrating.

I see the aspect ratio as the main problem with current monitors, especially on laptops. 4:3 was nice, 3:2 is pleasant, 16:10 is wide but tolerably so, 16:9 has too little vertical pace.

It is sad that current monitor are all glossy and very wide: optimized for movies instead of text and other "lean forward" applications.

BTW, Dell still produces very nice and not too expensive IPS 16:10 monitors.

I've found that I quite like very wide screens now, with a little reorganisation.

For browsers, I put the web inspector on the side. For editing, I have two editor panes side by side.

That's true, but 1366x768 makes it difficult to achieve this, even when running a tiling WM full screen!

I find it also quite interesting that such notices are not found on any websites anymore. I remember my first 'home-page' having a couple of 'download X browser now for best viewing experience' buttons scattered at the bottom of the page.

Whether that's an indication that browsers have gotten better (or more adhering to specifications), web developers less lazy or if there are simply more tools these days to make sure that your website will work properly on most common browsers at most resolutions, I do not know.

Love this.

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