Im more curious about the LGR theme by Andrew Hulshult. Whats up with that?

I commissioned him to make it for me for this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nMiajM6BsLjRXWw.html You can download it here: drive.google.com/open?id=1YgPdZXcLIr-k7InTToLSPeuwthazoR_F

Dang man, thats so awesome. Huge fan of his, thanks for the links!!!

hey LGR, have you ever done Dingoo A320 review? would like to see that.

It’s curious that they chose MMC, when the whole point of SD was “Digital rights management”... (back when companies were thinking about distributing preloaded media on these cards.)

Troy Polloy omg that's wonderful!

this is the most heartwarming tech tale I've ever heard.

Troy Polloy LGR please post your working device to Mr Polloy

I love these old pdas, I will never give up my hp ipaq hx 4700 which still works.

Wow. That's great!

Just Like smartphones

@@theJ1M1 these aren't the same as phones. Smartphones do just about everything, that's entirely the point and it does 90% of those things great, unless it's something hard to even do on a PC like video/photo editing, hardcore gaming, or photo taking.

This describes me perfectly

@Adoki what phone are you using that's "shoddily" made? Most Samsung budget phones can get glass-polymer fuses on the back and the specs are good for the money

Jacks of all trades but masters of none

Yeeaah, I find that kind of marketing super misguided. What gamer doesn't like having their hobby called childish, right?

Exactly, why else has the brand been so successful over the span of more then 2 decades

And my Windows Mobile PDA from 2004 could run GBA games in a emulator. It was awesome as phones back then had actual buttons.

Not long after Nintendo brings NDS and Sony brings PSP. Face to such strong competitions, Tapwave won't stand a chance.[I don't even know the Tapwave Zodiac at that time.XD]

The only thing I've outgrown is that cursed non-backlit LCD screen. Yech.

Give it another 5 or so years and it'll be in fashion again.

Everything had to be in a blobey bubble shape back then. I remember windows in old games and programs looked like that too. It all reminds me of late 90's/early 2000's Nickelodeon aesthetic.

SkuzzyJ GOD, I hope so! This style is totally my aesthetic

It looks like a mockup of a cancelled console from the early 2000s

Same, between blobby designs and silver on neon colours that were everywhere, all my questionable design choices in life are explained by the early 00s Lmao.

YOU TOO OLD FOR A GAME BOY, STOP PLAYIN THOSE BABY TOYS, GET A TAPWAVE ZODIACK. That should have been one of the ads

There WAS a game man Saw it in a magazine but forget which one It was basically a giant game boy about as tall as a man I recall it wasnt very ergonomic

@@Mr3DLC really? It wasn't ergonomic?

Nintendo had a TV commercial with a man in a business suit playing the Game Boy. A voice over said, “You don’t stop playing (games) because you get older. But you could get old if you stop playing.”

@@ccricers lmao 😂

Viljo Vaan facts

@Tony Oh please ...

nintenchildren on suicide watch

I mean it is and was a product made and marketed for use by children.

As a adult I wouldn't be caught dead in public using one!!

TwentyEightySeven And yet Duke 3D was cut down to work on it. This stuff is always weird.

It also doesn't help the circumstances to consider that Tomb Raider got released to the N-Gage and not this one. The natural path mobile phones were taking were there early on - people just didn't see a need for a PDA when their phone can do some of that too WHILE always being connected to do those things on one device.

@@AgentTasmania posibly because they still didnt get the hardware right, with videogame consoles the early games are always worse looking that those released near the end of it's lifespan (or beyond it) because developers learn tricks to squeze as much performance as they can, that is the advantage of a closed system

*Ted Cruz laughs*

Oh lordy

Too late:)

Longest run on sentence ever

It wasn't so much the pace of tech, as it was companies not learning their lesson in overreach. They kept trying to release products where the tech was there, but it wasn't reliable or affordable yet. See every company that tried to compete with the Gameboy by releasing more advanced tech that was still too expensive and battery-draining. This was compounded by companies not having any clear design vision for features or interface in the brand new popular mobile market. The overreach extended into financial as well. They invested everything into products that tried to do a bunch of things mediocre rather than one thing well, and collapsed when that one product was a failure. The tech for smart phones was there before 2006, but it wasn't remotely practical or affordable until then and Apple had the cash reserves, the brand, and the marketing that it would take for the new device to catch on. I would argue the pace of mobile tech is the same as it was back then (or maybe just a little slower). You still have phone and tablet models becoming outdated in under 4 years (especially Apple). The only difference now is companies know what the public wants and what they're willing to pay, and don't try designing expensive, experimental Frankenstein's monsters. (and if we're talking general computing tech, it was WAY faster back in the 80s and 90s. You had to upgrade memory every 2 years on PCs if you wanted to play the latest games, and the difference between console generations was light years bigger than it is now)

far better handhelds like the DS & PSP did not cause the death of PDAs it was cellphones and then smart phones that killed them.

Idk what you're talking about. The cellphone IS the PDA. Treo 650 is a PDA with data/cell service. PDA's evolved into cellular devices. Palm just lost the race.

Especially considering the more successful PSP sacrificed vertical resolution for a 16:9 aspect ratio which came down to 480x272 Needless to say resolution isn't a deciding factor if you've got that software to back it up.

Very true - these PalmOS 5 devices were from several years before the first iPhone, and even that used a 480x320 screen. I had a Sony Clie at the time the Tapwave Zodiac was released, and those times really seemed like the peak of PalmOS. The multi-media capabilities provided by the additional co-processors finally made them quite usable for multi-media consumption.

My modern Android doesn't have much better resolution. Haha

It’s actually better than the 3ds

@Matt Russo - Better than the GBA, DS and 3DS.

I feel like a child would ignore its issues and just be like "woo, yay, cool!". I think the big problem was they didn't market it enough for games. The analog stick obviously made its design gaming-oriented but the marketing, specifically the box art, felt like it was a PDA that could play games, not a game console that worked as a PDA.

Sadly, that sometimes is the price of breaking completely new ground. You can't figure out how to market something nobody has ever seen before. When this was first announced, my friends and I were blown away and couldn't believe the PDA market had advanced that much.

The problem is, to really enjoy it you would need internet for homebrew and stuff. And if you had the internet you would realize how trash it was.

Well I had a similar experience with the psp too! 😂

😂😂 I caught that too.thought I was trippin

If you go back and look at the ad its attached to, youll see its entirely intentional. Thats what youre supposed to be seeing.

It’s not subliminal. It’s... _liminal?_ it’s supposed to be sperm and an egg.

They took the initiative to come up with such a head Turner

Yep, absolutely intentional. I saw your comment before seeing the ad. The fact they actually came up with the idea and went with it is bizarre! Although the earphone idea is very clever, I am going to think of it every time I put one in my ear!

What gave that away? The matte silver colour, or the curved/blobby design?

Gallóglaigh design is superb.

So true

I was born in 2003 myself.

We had N-Gage also back then.

I miss CompUSA.

Thats some shenanigans, our store never pennied them out so we had them up until the store closed in 2007. Was an amazing emulator device

I worked techbench at CompUSSR, and unfortunately for that I was never privy to any of these crazy deals to be had. Wompwomp.

oh yea i didn't mention the emulators. i should've mentioned i was an inventory control coordinator for 4 different stores in the region so i had a large selection to choose from and it was literally my job to know the status of everything lol. got a lot of good finds.

wow nice generic, copied comment

PANZERFAUST90 wow nice 1 year late reply

@@TristanSpeno one-year-late* idiot

PANZERFAUST90 wow nice use of immature insults, boy.

@@lowen__ nothing immature about my comments, kid

Nokia 7710 had a 640×320 screen (yup, 18:9 AKA 2:1) but it was a bit of a mess UI-wise. Still, 1998 - 2008 was a decade when fascinating and exciting things happened all the time. Color screens, cameras, MP3, storage cards, crazy designs and shapes, etc ^^

I used to love the Sony Cleo

I've got both the Mylo 1 and 2 - a full package would be great to see. I don't even have their headphone kit, so that may be the one that prevents a full device overview. Plus the broken services will leave a Mylo review on a pretty empty note. Unless someone wants to mod that Linux firmware and make MSN Escargot compatible for it.

The tapwave zodiac is like a cybiko that doesn't have the excuse of being aimed at kids, tbh. Also it doesn't have the cool mesh network thing that cybikos could do.

Erol Sunalp oooh THAT is where I recognise its from. :)

Holy crap, so that's what they used, jeez i always thought they custom made the PDA thingies for the show and used editing to simulate their screens

Yes, I posted this image a few hours ago. I remember them using the stylus as a "probe" and would wave it around like a Star Trek tricorder. photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5151/25/1600/sg1-zod-1.jpg

That's actually true lmao

Kalvinjj I absolutely agree.

I wish I can force technology of the world into a downgrade

RetroBytes wow! You must be tiny :-(

RetroBytes Dude. Today I dusted my gbc and been playing that thing all day

Travis J Hayes That's true up until you try to play a Gameboy or GB Color game. It's honestly amazing how far back the GBA's backward compatibility went.

Has anyone? :-)

BlocksLEGO Only edgelords, and even then it doesn't last too long.

Sure was, I couldn't believe that kind of power could be done in a handheld!

ProtoMario the price kills it. They don't have the concept of moving the hardware first, and make the real money from software sale(game cards). US$299 in 2000 is expensive.

your a poopweasel

I don't what the fuck?

Rest In Peace

Too pricey. As palmos device, it never really shutdown. It was not for kids. If it gets discharged software get erased. A linux os was planned but Tapwave closed down and that effort was lost. It would have lots of linux game ports. :-(

your a bucket full o buzzards

Mike Binks if tapwave zodiac was discharged internal storage was reset. Fortunately it could have a backup in sd card. It was not cheap compared to gba, nds or psp.

The real market of the DS were kids. Not only was this way too expensive, but it was marketed towards a different crowd.

MultiLelde I think it has something to do with the fact that the emulator hasn't been fully optimized yet. An console emulator has to mimic the hardware capabilities in software, and I'm guessing the coder(s) for that emulator hasn't gotten to that point yet.

Games consoles are like a forklift and the package it lifts is the game. You would think a much more powerful forklift could easily lift the same package, but with emulation, the more powerful forklift not only lifts the package but instead lifts another forklift that is lifting the package.

Emulators are a lot more intensive than you might think. IIRC Higan-level accuracy for SNES games was impossible just like 5-10 years ago. Most emulators use a lot of tricks or hacks to improve speed. Don't even get me started on plugins. That shit was a good idea at the time but goddamn is it holding N64 emulation back.

W. Durrsly Maybe the N64 Mini will show them how it's done?

Picodrive emulator was never ported to Zodiac. Zodiac could with megadrive but emulator was not as good ad gp32, psp, and gp2x one. :-(

I only saw n-gage for 1-2 weeks where I lived at the time, it was on top of a shelf with the games decorated around it and it didn't look like anyone had ever taken them off for a closer look. But after these 2 weeks, it was gone and I didn't hear anything about it again until ProtonJon said he had jokingly convinced a guy to buy one and still felt guilty about it years later..!

FedorovAvtomat Yoyofr was the man and ported the Little John multiple console emulator. It was quite nice.

James Stewart ohh man so many hours playing gb games on my zodiac.

I'd actually expect that, if someone were to take the time to do it, you could make a faster Genesis emulator for that thing. That was running as slow as the Pentium 100 computers at my school. (I installed games on the computers at school and pawned that off as being educational.)

Thats the point It says "conceived to reality" on the top

...yes.

Shane Thomas Thanks a lot for the free gift. I enjoy Zodtris a lot. Very beautiful and charmful. The Zod is capable of 4sd non sdhc.

Fascinating story man, how easy was it to develop for this?

@@Suedeash it was a pain at the time because it required the codewarrior ide specifically. After that it was all just c++...so not to bad. Nothing like the freedome to develop you get with Unity. If you want to work on something cool with an oldschool feel...check out the arduboy

Ah yes the 604 wifi still have mine that I got when CompUSA was liquidating and even tried the Linux hack shame that it was so locked down that the Linux was jokingly useless. My n800 is way more useful for Linux. The 604 dose do a good job at video though and the recording is decent. The big issue is the battery on the 604 if you where like me and left it docked most of the time the battery will swell like crazy and might even explode. Thank God the battery is easy to replace assuming you can even find a new battery for it at this point in time.

I still have a 605 wifi knocking around somewhere. Shame you can't get the plugins anymore, otherwise it would still be a half-decent media player.

No smarthphones at that era. This is pre ds and pre psp.

Ha, that would not surprise me, provided they build enough of 'em

I just posted that without the PalmOS and touch screen. I didn't have the money to throw away on this at the time, but I really liked the idea of this. I see use my PSP occasionally for video, does that make me a hipster? Well good. Fine.

They were announced in the same year.

tyaty Zodiac was releasedin 2003.

Because Sony announced PSP the the same year as they unveiled the Zodiac, so they rushed it. It was their main reason for the small game libary,

tyaty Oh. So bad. Thanks.

FireLeo IV And no wifi so you had to do networking with Bluetooth.

Bluetooth was a new thing back then, from what I remember. I remember Compaq selling Bluetooth modules that clipped onto the silver area on the lids (after removing the blanking plate) of some of their Armada and Evo laptops they had around the time.

Well we are talking about Bluetooth 1.2 at best.

Just like that episode of Drake and Josh

I remember reading a magazine from that time saying bluetooth was a thing from the future we only saw on films and stuff

JHDK more like the switch was the thing that assimilated it

it could run DOOM, but why would you want to?(tm)

Zack Stewart The Switch also has Doom

Disappointed Turtle At the exact same frame rate as the original version on the Zodiac 1.

Eric Lerma it's pretty obvious that you haven't played Doom on the switch

They were kind of like early CD based gaming systems like the Sega CD and 3DO. They were a bit to early and the idea hadn't matured enough yet.

All i remember was the dusty N gage eroding away on the target display that nobody touched. da fuq

My dad is the same way to a tee. But IBM instead of Microsoft, and then he jumped to working at a video game publisher and developer in '96 (ASCII/Agetec). Anything from the era, video games, software, hardware, whatever, he loves to give you a story on it, and it's always fun to hear. LGR gives me "my dad" vibes, sans the Japanese accent and old age. He loves id Software games, as well, though he's more or less an RPG kinda guy. He'll still ruin your day in a Quake 2, Quake 3: Arena, and shockingly even Quake 4 death match. He'll ruin your whole life in any given Armored Core game.

@@yukikofujiwara2144 Id hate to play quake with your dad

Naah, it's just a PAL version, poorly ported, running on NTSC device. (jk)

No you’re both wrong the real reason is that the device is a piece of crap.

Thank you!

Zach I wanted an Xperia Play soooo bad

Zach Xperia Play is the tru sucessor of Zodiac and Ngage.

1. The screen was unfortunate considering it was 3.8". Just a year later much better 4" vga screens came out on hx4700 and dell axim 50V managed to do 3.5" in the same year 2. This can be done unofficially if there is interest: I actually installed linux on one of my ipaq hx4700 pdas not emulated under windows mobile but actually replaced the bootloader, got minimal desktop debian on it, runs off sd card. It does work fine and it's just for fun, windows mobile is better. 3. Yeah but wifi increasingly started becoming common, not putting wifi was a big mistake, the model 2 should had wifi at very least. 4. All high end pdas such as hx4700 had it 5. Not with any pocket pc device I had, maybe that was palm thing 6. Nah windows mobile had better writing recognition and had the full screen one too where you could write everywhere and it would then read all what you wrote, besides soft keyboard was better too and you could... wait for it install 3rd party keyboard layouts something that wasn't a thing with apple for a long, long time and iPhone didn't even exist until years later

The thing I miss the most about my Windows CE device, the version my device had was just called Windows powered which was CE 3.5 I think, is the word recognition of the soft keyboard. It was so good that once trained you basically just clicked on the words it predicted/proposed so you could type ultra fast. Somehow it didn't work as well on my Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone and today on Android devices it totally sucks. My uncle and myself always thought about buying the Sharp Zaurus because we liked the idea of a Linux PDA but inb the end it was too expensive for what basically would have just been an experiment out of curiosity. I'm still waiting for a fully useable real Linux mobile device. Some are on the horizon so I hope those will become sucessfull.

got any old software backed up for us zodiac softies?

bɿɒW ꙅiɿʜƆ thats cool where can I get software for Mac tungsten PTA to run games Like he is showing or doom

TheKeeper Vex In fact two and a "half" Tomb raiders.

That is correct, thanks for the correction! Although Tapwave was really pushing the SD card capability here and it does indeed feature dual SD card slots, not just MMC :)

No problem, and I know... kinda. MMC are backward compatible with SD i think. Also MMC were a lot smaller in capacity than SD. My theory is that they used MMC to reduce producion costs. It kinda makes sense.

Yep MMC and SD are both forward and backwards compatible. The point of MMC is that its faster than SD cards.

LGR one slot is sdio! I have an sd4Gb card for my zodiac(no sdhc) Dymitry tried an sdhc driver but failed with Zodiac.

there were MMC plus cards which had about the same capacity of SD cards at the time up to 1 or 2 GB I think.

I wonder if it made any use of the "secure" features? SD cards were supposed to support this whole DRM scheme and replace CDs for music distribution...

In another comment someone said they actually came on SD precursor MMC. So the cards themselves wouldn't have those built in "security" features.

your a poopwidget

thisssssssssssss

right in the feels and thissssss very 4 years ago.

your a poop slushie

Oh no it was Jeff who brought it up. I meant I didn't know what it was.

Paul Sutton Officials: Are We A Joke To You?!

If you got the TextPlus app, it provided text prediction (words AND phrases) and really stepped up the speed. I could write with my finger and manage to take notes on all manner of events. I amazed people with just how fast I could fill the 4KB(?) limit on the Memo app.

Penus head

Oh pocket pcs were awesome, palms were kind of limited and were really budget pdas

I had it too and for gaming it was a joke.

Was the sdk software? Or a development kit that includes a Zodiac (modified or otherwise)? Would be really unique if it was one of those ps or Xbox or Dreamcast dev kits

@@sasacc322 so this was DECADES ago. lol I can't really remember since I was gameplay designer/artist (meaning i wasn't coding directly on it). IIRC - it was mostly software with external devkit connections. (i.e. plug it into your computer for ease of transfer). I never ended up with the dev tools itself (after canning the project), and I'm not even sure where my system is.