So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

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digger47
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by digger47 »

Help NUCORE will not load Terminal does not come up....Do I need to run the ubuntu updates...it says there are 176 of them....wish there was someone I could call for HELP....darn

Sue (digger47's wife)
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Chuck
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Chuck »

digger47 wrote:Help NUCORE will not load Terminal does not come up....Do I need to run the ubuntu updates...it says there are 176 of them....wish there was someone I could call for HELP....darn

Sue (digger47's wife)
I left my cell inthe dev section, give me a call.
digger47
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by digger47 »

:lol:Thanks CHUCK I am well on my way to getting this set up.. INSTALLATION COMPLETE shut system down and connect to your game....Happy Now...thanks for your help. Stupid mistake on my part... :P :mrgreen: :oops:
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Chuck »

digger47 wrote::lol:Thanks CHUCK I am well on my way to getting this set up.. INSTALLATION COMPLETE shut system down and connect to your game....Happy Now...thanks for your help. Stupid mistake on my part... :P :mrgreen: :oops:
Sue (Digger47's wife)
Glad to help. Also glad it was easy ;-)
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Jazman »

Shipment came over the weekend but we were out of town. I hope to get the install running on the PC sitting next to the game sometime this week. Then I can figure out when I can get time to actually do the permanent install.

Jaz
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digger47
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by digger47 »

First a thanks to Chuck for helping my wife out (she's the computer guru but didn't read the instructions properly).
Everything is now working fine. I have a an Acer LCD 22" monitor coming tomorrow, so I'll be checking out install options.
the jukebox is really fun and the optional amp from Terry cranks for such a small unit. I no longer fear the RFM breaking down.
thanks for everything guys.
dig
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Chuck »

digger47 wrote:First a thanks to Chuck for helping my wife out (she's the computer guru but didn't read the instructions properly).
Everything is now working fine. I have a an Acer LCD 22" monitor coming tomorrow, so I'll be checking out install options.
the jukebox is really fun and the optional amp from Terry cranks for such a small unit. I no longer fear the RFM breaking down.
thanks for everything guys.
dig
Thank you. We're really glad you're enjoying it.
Jazman
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Jazman »

Hey Gang - here's some questions and comments from me...

First - Chuck, I'll understand if you don't want to give details, but I hope you will. Can you share with us how many there are that are part of the early adopter club and have hardware? Specifically, how many non-beta testers are installing at this time. It's really quiet so I'm curious as to how big of a support group we have. Are there 25 of us or are there 100?

Second - Minimum hardware being used. Chuck and Don put out hardware minimums that I am guessing are much more than are really required. It's understandable because it's much better to overspec than underspec and piss people off. Plus, you can't even buy new hardware that doesn't meet their minimum spec.

But, I am re-purposing old hardware and will be going below that limit. So, I'd like to hear what other hardware people are running on and having success with. I am working to re-purpose and Athlon 64 3000+ (this is 1.8GHz hardware which AMD would market as comparable to the 3.0GHz Intel hardware of the time)) with 1Gb of memory. I have absolutely no idea what my success will be but should have some idea in a week or 2. The stock computer had a fraction of what this has, so the big variable is how much processing power is burned up by the OS and emulator software. Is anyone successfully using this hardware level or less. If this doesn't work out, I will either find another system to re-purpose or buy a cheap CPU system.

Lastly - My progress to date... I had Ubuntu loaded on a spare drive a long time ago. So, I went in and created the user and root accounts based on what the user manual wanted. I did this last night and then installed the Nucore software. This completed in about 10 mins and successfully completed. This is the point where the manual tells you to plug in your hardware and reboot. This is where I am at and will be working to put this system next to my cabinet tonight or possibly this weekend.

I have a spare 21" monitor that I no longer use and will be doing some measuring soon to see if I can make it work. I had been hoping to use an LCD (mainly to lighten the weight of the system), but I share the opinion of a couple others. If you can see the backlight in the black areas, then the illusion is ruined (SWE1 already does this, so no biggie there if that is your only exposure). For RFM, that is not something I can live with. Chuck had said he was able to adjust the screen down so it was a non-issue, but my tests with holding one in place says I doubt I can do that without it being too dark overall. So, at this time I am planning to replace the stock monitor with an older computer CRT.

Jaz
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Chuck »

Jaz,

There are a lot more people that bought the base package than are reporting here. I'm not sure if they haven't gotten around to installing it or plan to keep it til a later date. A whole lot of people are waiting for the complete package. I'm sure we'll see new people trickle in every now and then.

As far as minimum hardware goes your 64 3000 probably won't work. I'm assuming it's not a dual core system and Nucore won't even run without a second core. If it did have a second it is definitely not fast enough to keep the machine running well. The absolute minimum is a amd x2 4400+. That will run it well but much below that and you'll have all sorts of issues. As far as ram goes 1GB won't be enough. If I remember correctly to OS and Nucore use around 1.2GB of ram nominally. Going below this threshold will cause the system to use a hard drive ram drive and your performance will go to hell. Slower machines could cause undue stress on the driver board since duty cycles will not be efficient.
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Jazman »

Now why would you prevent Nucore from running without a dual-core processor? Multi-threaded apps have been running on single core processors for a long time. Since core processors are still being made and there are single cores that are actually more powerful than the low end duals. It's one thing to list minimum specs as dual-core... is there a technical reason you had to do this? Does Linux not automatically manage cores so you needed to either make a choice or code both?

Remember that during development and into the pre-order, you were talking that you could recycle older computer hardware (at least until you released the minimum hardware list). Well, my plan has been to recycle my older game machine and replace that with newer parts. Is there an override so I can try it on my own hardware and make the decision myself?

Do you task certain processes to a certain core to get as close to real-time as possible (since Linux isn't real time either)? Will this limit future compatibility if there is code that relies on certain architectures?

Thanks,
Jaz
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Chuck
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Chuck »

Jazman wrote:Now why would you prevent Nucore from running without a dual-core processor? Multi-threaded apps have been running on single core processors for a long time. Since core processors are still being made and there are single cores that are actually more powerful than the low end duals. It's one thing to list minimum specs as dual-core... is there a technical reason you had to do this? Does Linux not automatically manage cores so you needed to either make a choice or code both?

Remember that during development and into the pre-order, you were talking that you could recycle older computer hardware (at least until you released the minimum hardware list). Well, my plan has been to recycle my older game machine and replace that with newer parts. Is there an override so I can try it on my own hardware and make the decision myself?

Do you task certain processes to a certain core to get as close to real-time as possible (since Linux isn't real time either)? Will this limit future compatibility if there is code that relies on certain architectures?

Thanks,
Jaz
There are many reasons we require at least a dual core processor. The main one is that we have lots of threads that all need to run concurrently. If you tried to run all the threads on one core they can't run concurrently and this would cause all sorts of issues. This is a very simple explanation of a what’s going on.

I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you say I was talking about recycling hardware. If you can point to any specific posts I would like to read them again to see the context. As early as March of 2008 was when I told everyone of the dual core requirement and that has never changed. So I don’t think it should have been a surprise to anyone. You have to understand it was in our best interest to make this work on the slowest possible hardware we could and over a year ago we knew that would be at least a dual core processor. You really have to trust me when I say it won’t work on a single core, we’ve tried it on many processors.

For your third question about future compatibility the code is not tied to a certain architecture other than x86 based machines which will not be going away any time soon. We don’t require a specific graphics card or sound card and it works on all both x86 compatible chips. We built this with future compatibility in mind.
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by mjannusch »

Grrrr, my ArcadeVGA card in my MAME cabinet that I was going to steal for this is AGP and my motherboard is PCI-express. Ordered up the PCIE version of the ArcadeVGA card, so waiting for that to arrive now. Bummer.
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by mjannusch »

Made it through the install, but still waiting for my ArcadeVGA card to arrive. Install was fairly painless, except for the 130MB of Ubuntu updates to wait through at about 50K per second. I didn't have any issues at all. Install took about 2.7GB total on my hard disk, so considering getting a solid-state disk so I'll never have to worry about the hard disk going bad and it'll be a bit quieter. This project is getting expensive though!
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Chuck »

mjannusch wrote:This project is getting expensive though!
When I added the custom audio rig to my demo machine my wallet cried ;-) Alpine amp - 150, JL Sub 180, Eclipse 2 ways - 38 pair (good deal) - Computer power supply with dual 12v rails to power amp 100. It really does sound incredible though. Hang on for the SSDD. I think they'll really come down around Christmas. In a year or two they'll replace winchester drives.
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Re: So, who will be the first to setup their machine?

Post by Jazman »

I'll have to see where I remember the comment from. There was some reference to using old hardware that you had around. But, dual cores have been around for so long now, you could have just meant reusing an older dual core. No real biggie. It still doesn't make sense why you would specifically prohibit from running without a dual core. If I violate your recommended minimum requirements, it's my responsibility anyway.

Anyway, I got hardware together for a dual core and got it running on the bench at the end of last week. Only installation problem I had was that I somehow logged in as nucore when I downloaded the ROMs so initial bootup didn't run because it couldn't find the files. After debug and copying over the system booted up and ran next to the machine. I hope to retrofit my CRT this week or next and get the system going with a permanent installation.

A few issues:
1. How do I turn off the "Nucore" logo that appears on the attract mode screens? I know you guys are proud of your work, but I don't want to see that all the time. If you guys have it on a boot up splash screen, that would be fine. I also wouldn't care if it was on the service menus. But definitely not during any screen that would show during normal operation. If I buy a replacement translite, I don't expect to see "The Pinball Factory" or "Illinois Pinball" somewhere on it.

2. This is more of an Ubuntu question... I've used other distros of Linux for some equipment at work and there is the ability to cover the bootup text with a splash screen so you don't see all the text during power up. Usually, if you need to see it, you would just press escape to do so. But, normally, you would just get a nice clean boot splash. Does the Ubuntu version you are using have such a thing? Can you send me a link to how I might enable that?

3. You said that the jukebox could access a music library on a network drive. However, I don't see any instructions on how to set that up. All I could find what how to add music locally with a USB stick. Did I not read the instructions thoroughly or is that just not described yet?

Keith
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