[PD] Piksel'05

[Christian Klippel]

hi,

Am Mittwoch 17 August 2005 16:03 schrieb Marc Lavallée:
> Le 17 Août 2005 09:44, cyrille henry a écrit :

[...snip...]

>
> Software can be modified, hardware can't. It's easier to sell and buy

objection!

i wouldnt say that hardware cant be modified. remember the good, old c64? how 
many were sold, and from that, how many were used unmodified? almost none, i 
would say.

admitted, with modern hardware it becomes harder to make modifications, but it 
is still possible. for example, on serveral occasions i modified wintv cards 
to have certain output jacks, that only higher-priced models had. all that 
was needed are readily available chips & jacks, and a calm hand to handle 
these smd beasts.

just recently i modified my dvd player to have a full set of jacks for the 5.1 
audio output (it only had stereo and one digital output). that was even 
simpler, only some cap's and the jacks were needed, plus an op-amp.

or look at gfx cards.... its not long ago (or it still is) that there were 
serveral versions of the same card: with additional outputs, like video, or 
with higher speed dac's that allow for higher refresh rates and resolutions. 
it would be possible to change the dac chips, for example. or put the missing 
parts for the additional outputs on it......

once in munich we got a big batch of memory cards for some exotic hardware at 
a really low price (surplus like). that was in the time when 4-mbyte simm 
modules had high prices. now we desolderes the single chips, and soldered 
them on empty simm sticks. about 80 percent of them worked flawlessy 
afterwards.....

> physical goods (like food), but it's easier to share ideas, so harware
> companies consider their drivers as being part of their hardware. They are
> so wrong... One day, we will build our own hardware based on shared ideas
> and software.

im hoping for that. and im already working towards that.
after all, digital hardware is much easier to design and build than analogue 
hardware. in fact, one could look at it (the digital part) as "pd with real 
objects". its just that many people are not interrested in creating new 
hardware, for whatever reason. many are afraid to handle chips, a solder 
iron, etc, because they think its too complicated, and that the parts would 
be too sensitive (i.e. that they would be easily destroyed). but its not that 
complicated and sensitive as most people think. its pretty much the same as 
it was when computers became widely available. many people were afraid to 
touch them, because they thought they are too fragile. today we know better, 
and many people built their own pc's from single components.
and whats the real difference between plugging a ram stick into your pc, 
compared to plug a chip into some pcb? to me, not much ....

> --
> Marc
>

greetings,

chris