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