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Ugh.. you know those disk doublers aren't used anymore?  They're slow.

And for media files they don't provide much compression (although I guess 3d models and such compress good)

An idea.. but not much else.

[rjm2k]

QUOTE (yasman @ Dec 7 2002, 01:45 PM)

Remember those programs we used to use in DOS, Disk doublers.  You were also able to create compressed drives in 95.  We need the same type of thing now on the xbox; and obviously a way to launch compressed code from evox. Sounds like it would work in theory.  Any comments? Then we can shrink these 8gig games down to something reasonable.

                                    The thing about the dos disk doublers is that the applications running on a pc dont make assumptions about how much memory the machine has.  XBOX Games know that there is 64meg, which isn't being used and can be used in whatever way the game likes.  A disk doubler would require a reasonable amount of memory and could cause serious problems for games.  Also, such an enhancement could be quite difficult to fit inside the limited space available for a bios.

[BenJeremy]

Confession of a disk doubler: "I used to do this.... then, after my 7th or 8th corrupted disc, losing hundreds of megabytes of data, I finally wised up and broke the habit.

Just say no to disc doubling.

[yasman]

It only would have to be as fast as DVD access.  I know it shouldn't be that much slower.  And

rjm2k - I think your thinking about a RAM doubler.  Not exactly the same thing.

As far as losing hundreds of Megs of Data, I’m thinking of just storing the files in compressed format on a single DVD-R.  And your right, typically they were not reliable.  I think though the only reason there not used is because the size of HD's increased so much and became affordable.  There is no longer a need to take the performance penalty.

There are mame-emulators out there that you can put the complete rom set for a game in a single zip file.  They parse the zip file and use the files as needed.

MGS2 went from 6.4gig to just over 4gig when ziping it to a single file.  That's a decent percentage.

I'd love to be able to store a single zip file on the HD or DVD and be able to play it.

[rjm2k]

QUOTE (yasman @ Dec 7 2002, 08:23 PM)

It only would have to be as fast as DVD access.  I know it shouldn't be that much slower.  And rjm2k - I think your thinking about a RAM doubler.  Not exactly the same thing. As far as losing hundreds of Megs of Data, I’m thinking of just storing the files in compressed format on a single DVD-R.  And your right, typically they were not reliable.  I think though the only reason there not used is because the size of HD's increased so much and became affordable.  There is no longer a need to take the performance penalty. There are mame-emulators out there that you can put the complete rom set for a game in a single zip file.  They parse the zip file and use the files as needed. MGS2 went from 6.4gig to just over 4gig when ziping it to a single file.  That's a decent percentage. I'd love to be able to store a single zip file on the HD or DVD and be able to play it.

                                    lol, no I'm not thinking of a RAM doubler.  Any disk doubler would need a fair amount of memory to perform the decompression, memory that the game might expect to be able to use.

[yasman]

Decompression is primarily a CPU intensive operation, not ram.

And you have to remember with 64megs of RAM, these games at run-time all running out of that memory.  There are very little, if any, OS calls to the fixed disks during game play. Only during the Loading screens.

I’m just playing Devil’s advocate in this thread.  I do see everyone’s points and could argue it the other way myself.  I just think the idea does have some merit.  Especially when you think that a games on a 2-layer DVD that must be run off the DVD drive, is going to be hard for the average person to backup.