Home Computer Questions, oh boy... Options

[AK404]

OK, let's get weird here: how many megapulses does (or would) a standard PC in the SR world have? (I do not have the new Matrix books, so if the answer can be found there, please tell me.) I'm not talking a backup machine or something for creating decking utilities, but your average personal computer for office work, something a non-decking character could have in her house.

I've beginning to question this because IIRC, the cost of a Mp is 50 :nuyen:, which would make a 120Gp PC (and I'm assuming a Mp = Mb) damned expensive, even though a 120 Gb hard drive is considered somewhat behind the SOTA in modern-day terms.

Admittedly, the more I think about it, the more it confuses me: for example, 200 Mp in a pocket secretary is...well, it sounds kind of weak, even if they're not counting the OS and included programs. Hell, how many Mp would a standard document take up?

[hobgoblin]

SR, p. 287...

there you will find thecost of a normal pc and as you will see there is no upper limit, just a question about how mutch money you are willing to spend...

[The_Sarge]

Oh, and:

Mp != Mb

A megapulse is much more than a megabyte.
There is a listing in the BBB somewhere, but as I have the german book, my pagecounts wouldn't tell you anything. ;)

[Sphynx]

Something else to remember, after the Great Crash, the way data storage worked changed completely. (Ancient History, help me here? :P) MP's are not 'disk space' but more like 'space + processor' in a chip, at least that's the best analogy we have.

As a matter of fact, you actually waste MP by not using the processor part of it. Storing simple files in MP takes the same amount of MP as to perform complicated algorithyms with the same files.

Anyhows, I'm no expert, just trying to relay what little I remember (and I could be completely off even). So sorry if I just made matters worse. :P

Sphynx

[Abstruse]

One explanation to the change -- After the Crash Virus, computer companies took advantage of the chance to not have to be backwards compatable to the 1970s technology to reinvent the computer. Instead of using magnetic storage devices like hard drives, they switched to chip-based storage devices (some companies are proposing this switch now). Imagine instead of buying a hard drive, you buy RAM chips that store all your data. No bad sectors, no scandisks, no worries about phyiscal damage to the drive since there are no moving parts. Because of the change of storage device, they also changed the name of a "unit" of data from a byte to a pulse.

I think that 1 megapulse = 812 Mb. Where do I get my numbers? One minute of uncompressed video with audio takes up 2 MP of storage. One minute of uncompressed video with audio also takes up 1624 Mb. This may not be true across the board depending on the framerate, size and resolution of the frame, and the quality of the sound. However, it works as a pretty good rule of thumb.

Sources: http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/6076.htm for file size for video, Shadowrun 3rd Ed. p.135, courtesy of JonathanC for the page reference from a thread in the old forums.

The Abstruse One

[Rain]

Allow me to throw out some caveats to Abstruse's helpful remarks. I think you're headed in the right direction, Abstruse. I also think it was clever of you to try and figure it out like this. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.

First of all, we cannot assume that uncompressed audio and video in the SR universe will be treated the same as it is now. For one thing, the numbers you used are not even accurate to today's standards. (The current DV-NTSC standard is 720x480 @ 29.97 fps with 48 kHz, 16-bit stereo audio. And that's just for North America and Japan. Europe uses the DV-PAL standard, which is 720x576 @ 25 fps with 48 kHz, 16-bit stereo audio.) I don't fault you for not knowing the current standards, I'm simply pointing it out. Hell, you would be surprised at how many people in the video production industry don't know the standards. We do not know what standards will exist in 2064. Granted, we have no reason to assume they will change much because the NTSC and PAL standards have been around since the 50's. Still, what if the available color spaces change between now and then? At present, video is only 24-bit because there are only three color channels (YUV or RGB, depending on the camera). However, it is entirely possible that a fourth or even fifth channel may be added someday. Personally, I would love it if they would add an 8-bit alpha channel to the standards so that all video could have 256 levels of opacity for each pixel. That would rock. No more friggin' bluescreens, no more keying. Sweetness.

There is also the fact that all video is compressed as it is captured onto a computer's hard drive. If you look at the bottom of our techdoc, you see we mentioned the 5:1 compression standard. This will probably change over the next few years, but the fact remains that until digital storage media become much, much larger and faster we will have to compress all of our video as it is captured (or digitized, as some people call it). The amount by which it is compressed is dependent entirely upon the codec used during capture, but all the common DV codecs use the same basic algorithm (Microsoft DV, Sony DV, Pinnacle DV, Matrox DV, Canopus DV, DV Soft, Angel Potion DV, Avid, Media 100 DV, QuickTime Animation, and QuickTime DV/DVCPRO).

Edit:
Additionally, the standards for audio will probably double in the next couple years or so. 16-bit stereo will no longer be enough. It's going to be 32-bit pretty soon. I should also have mentioned that not all cameras follow the standards as closely as they should. For example, some very high end Canon DV cameras record video at 29.96 fps instead of 29.97. Also, most Sony DV cameras record audio at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz instead of 48 in order to match the standards for CD audio.

[Solkari]

All you guys have said is well and good, but you're still thinking in bits and bytes. When the entire computer infrastructure went toes up, it gave companies the opportunity to finally upgrade our systems. Even now we know how to make computers far better than we are, but don't because EVERYTHING would have to be updated. We could completely forget binary, and switch to digital frequencies. Computers are built differently in SR than they are today, and not just in the sense of being entirely optical, the whole logic system is something only a few have even dreamed of. With that in mind, Mp does not compute to MB in any way, it is a whole different way to store data.

[AK404]

I love it when I toss a question like this out: I learn a whole lotta interesting shit and still don't have the answer I was looking for. :grinbig:

Oh, and heya Rain, we wuz lookin for ya when I rediscovered the AVS files.

[TinkerGnome]

I'd wager the average home computer has about 150-300 MP. The only backup I have for this is that in Matrix, a computer shop is listed as having one or more computers with 300 MP of total memory, thus making 300 MP seem like it's pretty standard for those who use computers for a purpose. Considering that pocket secretaries have 100 MP, a slightly higher amount for table top computers seems about right.

[Rain]

[Crusher Bob]

Another way to do it would be via price-point. The low-end home pc these days goes for around 1000 US (or whatever dell is selling them for) See how much computer you can get for that many :nuyen:

[Phylos Fett]

Just build a Cyberterminal (gives you legal Matrix access - just like a PC surfing the internet). They only cost 10% of the price of a deck. And that is assuming that they are laptops. If you use the Breadboarding option from VR 2.0, you get a desktop PC for half that price again...

[Abstruse]

I know the video standards, I was just being lazy with my math and pulling it straight off the Adobe webpage rather than trying to figure it out for myself :P I was just throwing that out as a base comparison for people to visualize. It's also very obvious that audio standards in Shadowrun will be better (even if video isn't) by the fact that audio with no video as well as video with no audio both take up the same amount of space given the same amount of time. Anyway, my point was never chalk up to ignorance what you can to laziness :P

The Abstruse One

[TinkerGnome]