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FamiTracker
First off, I'd like to say that i installed famitracker on my aging dell 2300 desktop pc (7 years old) and i love it. I wanted to know if anyone has any ideas on how famitracker would run on an asus eee pc with windows xp sp2 installed on it... My primary want is to have a small mobile machine running famitracker to go with my apple powerbook running ableton live. Love to get some feedback!
Thanks,
sef
ps. http://eeepc.asus.com/global/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eee_pc
I have an EeePC 4G Galaxy 701 (pink one yayayayay), running windows 2000 -- so I can possibly share my experiences on this...
It works pretty well, but not in a stock windows installation. First of all: As cochon mentioned, the 800x480 resolution is very limiting, as the instrument/frame editor panels take up quite a bit of room (not to mention that pattern editor text/grid size is not yet customizable).
In this case, I highly suggest installing the [url=http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=24848]custom hacked video driver set, which slipstreams the latest Intel GMA video drivers & AsTray program.
This allows higher resolutions (e.g. 900x540, 1000x600, 1024x768, etc) in a scaled fashion via the AsTray program, which definitely helps in displaying more rows at once. (plus it's a nifty driver to have for the eee in general). Just remember to use the 16-bit color modes for the higher resolutions, or else the driver will not anti-alias the now-scaled display -- otherwise making it look like unreadable crapola.
Second of all: The EeePC's CPU is underclocked to ~630MHz by default. It's acceptable for Famitracker, but often times in my experience the playback scrolling starts lagging -- with the audio underrunning shortly afterward.
You can always increase the buffer to a rather annoying amount. But a better way to avoid slowdown is to solely use bitmapped fonts for the pattern list (which do not utilize 2000 or XP's anti-aliasing/cleartype engine -- thusly speeding up performance quite a bit).
Also, overclocking to 900MHz or faster via installing Eeectl is a possible solution. Obviously, you're on your own in that realm with none of my responsibility.
I could add an option to remove the instrument/frame editor, it's very simple. Most of the common stuff should be possible to access without it (changing intrument, instrument settings, frame and so on).
CPU speed could be a problem, and my experience is also that the font rendering is eating most of the CPU time. I've been working on some caching to speed it up even on normal PCs (you probably has noticed lagg on playback with higher speed/tempo) so that might be a solution, but bitmap fonts could probably make it even faster.
Well we'll see. If many of you requests it then I'll have to make it work some way.
Btw, it has been a very long time which I've been unable to make progress on it (due to school, sorry!), but hopefully I'll been able to resume soon.
For widescreen monitors, it might be nice to be able to have the frame editor to the left of the pattern editor. That way you would also get a better overview of your song. I'd even find it useful for my own non-widescreen monitor - the pattern editor tracks only take up half of the screen horizontally, and moving the frame editor down to left of the pattern editor would both help use the screen more effectively and help me get a better idea of the overall structure of the song I'm currently working on.
[quote=Dafydd]For widescreen monitors, it might be nice to be able to have the frame editor to the left of the pattern editor. That way you would also get a better overview of your song. I'd even find it useful for my own non-widescreen monitor - the pattern editor tracks only take up half of the screen horizontally, and moving the frame editor down to left of the pattern editor would both help use the screen more effectively and help me get a better idea of the overall structure of the song I'm currently working on.
[/quote]
[quote=Dafydd]I was considering getting one of these. Are they worth it?[/quote]
To me for the price I paid ($400USD), I think it was a worthwhile investment. It's not without its glaring flaws, but at its price point, it's almost forgivable. Just don't get the 700 2G Surf versions, though! 4 gigabytes of SSD space is good enough -- 2 gigabytes (even with a light Linux build / nlite'd Windows installation) is NOT.
Mainly I bought it because I always wanted a small computer that I could do rudimentary work & easily throw in a small bag, and I hated how impractical carrying my Macbook really was. (5 pounds and 13" span may not seem much, but believe me, it becomes one hell of an noticeable annoyance after a few hours worth of traveling around a city such as Kyoto with a duffel bag).
Had Apple actually released a 10" or smaller laptop, I would have jumped for that instead. Unfortunately, the 13" Macbook Air was not the answer I wanted (yes it's thin & light, but it's STILL too large for my tastes). Sooooooo.....
Anyway, It's a pretty good ultraportable once you know the inherent limitations. For instance, the Celeron processor it uses lacks the SpeedStep technology found in the equivalent Dothan Pentium-Ms, so its average battery life is not really the best thing in the world (nor is its HORRIBLE S3 standby mode power consumption). I don't have much a problem with the bezeled 7" screen as much as I do with its pathetic native 800x480 screen resolution, but at least that can be somewhat solved with the appropriate aforementioned drivers. The lack of a built-in optical drive is easily forgivable for me, since I almost NEVER use one. And of course as with other UMPCs, the keyboard is condensed. (however since I have small hands to begin with, I have no problem at all typing on it.)
If you're willing to wait a few weeks & spend a bit more cash, the upcoming 901 series uses the new Atom processors, which solves the problem of the Celeron's cookie-monster battery consumption. (In fact, I highly suggest you wait for this one instead of diving for the Celeron-based 900s...). Also, both the 900 & 901 use an 8.9" LCD panel that actually makes good use of the screen housing, with perfectly workable 1024x600 native resolution to boot.
Just wanted to say that I bought the 1000H model today and I'm liking it a lot. It runs famitracker just fine, as well as Reason 4 (though obviously not as well)...
