[stella] Question about Chimera

[Rob]

On Monday 11 September 2006 13:22, bob.montgomery at thomson.com 
wrote:
> >but try and keep in
> >mind that this machine is an Atari 2600 from 1977 and not a
> >Power Mac from 1994.
> I kinda see your point, but...as far as I can tell, it's
> basically just a souped-up DPC, like in Pitfall II.

I guess you could sort of say that because of the limited onboard 
RAM, but I still think there's a pretty big difference between 
the single-function DPC and a 70MHz ARM7 chip of the sort that 
wasn't even invented yet when Atari stopped making the 2600 in 
1991.  I mean, apart from the lack of additional sprites, this 
platform will really be a lot more powerful than the 7800.

It isn't that I don't want to see cool applications, just the 
schism.  Within a couple years, if this goes according to 
schedule, there are going to be two types of homebrews.... the 
kind that needs to be released on a Chimera, which might as well 
have been done on some platform like the 7800 or Amiga that was 
more powerful to begin with, and 2K/4K games that run on totally 
stock hardware.  

It is kinda tempting to try and write a BASIC interpreter for a 
Chimera plus a Palm keyboard and flash device, though.... or to 
break the mold a little, a Forth compiler.

Rob