Datajacks allow direct neural interfaces with anything they fiber-optic-ally cable into it. They also have their own memory storage area. All electronics have Device Ratings, common-use items having a Device Rating of between 1 (for Bodyware) or 3 (standard, personal electronics). A wireless adapter has a signal rating of 3.

If you place a wireless adapter into a datajack, did you just create a Signal 3, Response 1 cheap-man's commlink, or (at best scenario) a Signal 3, Response 3 commlink, out of the box?

Can you upgrade a datajack with Modular Electronics?

If you can, can you then get a R5 Response Chip placed into your Datajack, plug in a wireless adapter, and have a massively cheaper (Essense and ) implanted comm? (Datajack 500 + Wireless Adapter 150 + Modular Electronics 1,000 + R5 Response Chip 4,000 < Implanted Commlink 2,000 + Hermes Icon [Res 4, Sig 3] 3,000 + R5 Response Chip 4,000)

You just create a Signal 3, Response 1 cheap-man's commlink, but it come with no firewall or OS.



Yes.



Yes that is possible, but you have this thing sticking out of your datajack. It is not cranial, it does not go undetected. To make it marginally more obvious you could attach satellite link instead. Now it looks like you have been shoving your satphone up the wrong slot.

You can't upgrade the Device and Signal rating of a datajack or Wireless adaptor and the only way to give it a response rating is to install a comlink. This kyboshes your poor man's comlink idea. If you read the fluff around a comlink there are specific components inside one that allow it to understand the various protocols that run the Matrix. There are also other components (while not giving a game bonus) are needed to have a functional comlink. They would be the equivalent of todays RAM, Frontside BUS, MoBo, bootable HD, and Graphics card (all of which don't exist in a Datajack or Wireless adaptor. It would be like taking a network card (datajack) and router (wireless adaptor) and saying you now have a computer. Not going to work.

Logically, you're correct.

Game mechanics-wise, you're wrong.

For all the game cares about, I can take my kitchen table, install a response chip and an OS, and I have a commlink with no signal. Slap a Sattelite link on the table and connect it with a fiber optic cable, and I have a commlink. That I can also put drinks on.

Technically, you can't do that for one simple reason. Your kitchen table is already a peripheral node. It totally has an RFID tag in it to tell you where your table was manufactured, and to alert you when it has been moved out of its' perfectly feng shui'd location.

I have to make some crack about "feng shui" being "how to arrange your house so a dragon would like to live in it" combined with SR having actual dragons. Who might take an interest in making furniture.

But I can't come up with the right words.

Well -


P.221 SR4A, bold mine.

As devices have no personna firmware, you can't use them to navigate the Matrix. So no, they can't act as commlinks.

Again, you can, if you add a response chip, signal, and OS.

And more to the point, Device Ratings actually do include an OS and Response, as per SR4 BBB. Since a datajack has a response, you can upgrade it normally.

I would argue that in order to do that you would need to buy a comlink to give it the needed functionality to install an OS. Just like today you need to add a computer to a table to make it a smart table. Basic electronics are just too "dumb" to handle the the power consumption levels of SR OSs. Only a comlink can do that! End of story.

This is loop-holing the Device Rating rules. A Peripheral Node cannot become a Standard Node just be popping some chips into it.

You know if you cluster together alpha grade cyberware then you get a Response 4 "super commlink"* for free.

@Backgammon: There is a persona on devices otherwise pg 55 of Unwired would make no sense:



Yes I know that Neraph was wanting a "poor man's commlink", but honestly most people are going to get cybereyes &/or ears. Even with just standard grade 'ware you can get a undetectable** Response 3 commlink for free.

* = super commlink with alpha grade 'ware (datajack, rating 1 cybereyes & rating 1 cyberears) will cost only cost you 3000 and .4 Essence. It will give you a Response 4 commlink, but you don't start losing Response until you hit 6 programs, and can run 3 persona on this cluster. If you skinlink the wireless adapter and slave it to cluster then you still use the datajack for whatever you need it for.

** = there is no physical commlink, and most everybody carries some form of cyber augmentation. Eyes, ears, and datajack are the three most common augmentations out there.

I have always had the stance that clustering devices still doesn't change what they can and can't run. Cyberware is designed only to run certain programs and do certain things, and clustering a bunch of cyberware together just allows the cyberware to do the things that it does a little bit better/faster by offloading some of the processing on the other devices. If there was a Standard Node somewhere in the cluster then, yes, it would be able to do those things. If the cluster contains only peripheral nodes, then it cannot replicate the functions of a Standard Node, no matter how many of them there are together.

"Frag me, Johnny, why do you have 17 toasters strapped to your jacket?"
"These toasters, which only cost me 170 nuyen, are better than your 300 nuyen commlink!"

Well, before we go any further, we're looking at if it's possible to make a poor man's commlink by using a device. The cheapest commlink available costs 300 nuyen (Meta Link + Vector Xim).

What is the cheapest price to get a commlink by using a device and tacking on necessary software?

I tend to agree with TBRMInsanity here. Claiming that just because you can acquire game rated components with commlink stats doesn't mean you actually have a commlink. Response chips are upgrades to an existing system. I don't see commlinks as something you can put together with spare parts you find at Radio Shack. You need a core commlink to upgrade, and even commlinks have limits to how much upgrade they can take. There is more to a commlink than just four rating numbers. To think otherwise is metagaming and, as Malachi states:



You practically say it yourself, Neraph, in your response to TBRMInsanity

Hey, whoa, Backgammon, put down the logic and step away. We know it is loaded with sense, but you don't need to use it.

Wow. No need for right words. The idea has taken seed. Again, I say "Wow".

Malachi, the rules are as I quoted. What we have to do is ask the Developers what the correct interpretation of the rules are.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night.

BTW, the "dragon living in the space" idea came out of some little "College Dorm Liver's Guide to Feng Shui," IIRC.

Edit: Here's the book I thought it was, but I don't see the mention in the few pages they show you and I can't find my copy.

The quote as I remember it went something along the lines of:

"Arrange your house in such a way that a dragon would like to live in it. By which we mean that the dragon flows into the space from [one direction] and moves about the space and then leaves though [another direction]. You don't want him getting trapped in certain areas or coming and going from the wrong direction."

The directions are important, as it relates to Yin and Yang, Yin flows from one direction, Yang from the other. So a dragon coming from the wrong direction is "anti-feng shui," bad energy.

More than just that, Ley Lines are also known as Dragon Lines, and you're supposted to be rearranging your furniture to allow the ley lines of your house to flow better.

In any event, even though common sense would tell us that for a computer to run we need more than just a processor and an operating system, all the Shadowrun game system cares about is:
1) Does it have a Response?
2) Does it have an Operating System?

Device ratings stand in for Response, Firewall, System, and Signal, where needed, and can be upgraded as normal, if desired. So, if a datajack has a Device Rating of 1, then we can upgrade it - as normal - and get something that is fairly effective (if a bit eccentric) for roughly half the price of something done the "normal" way.

Amazing, you answered the question and no one is paying attention..

It is not even close to being as cheap as just buying the cheapest commlink and going with it.

Anything to push the rules I suppose.

What purpose does clustering serve anyways? The only use i saw since it has been presented in Unwired was some attempts to create cheap Uberkommlinks.

more toys for the hacker?

+1 on that.

btw, i think i have a setup somewhere, of a fully cybered person who's cyberlimbs have been stuffed to the max with comlinks

lets just say that its one impressive walking cluster...

Clustering lets you use a single subscription to connect all your PAN devices to your commlink, rather than require a seperate subscription for each implant. Admittedly, it's kind of a moot point since the pile of devices form a virtual commlink on their own, but that's another problem.

I think you are forgetting one more thing that the game system cares about:
3) Is it a commlink?

Devices have the same four rating categories, but "devices" are not all the same. Certain devices are dedicated to certain types of functions. Not all devices are set up to act like commlinks, regardless of the ratings. All vehicles have the same ratings categories, but they are designed to do different things. You won't see a Westwind cruising on Puget Sound, because it wasn't designed to do that. Your datajack won't behave like a commlink, because it wasn't designed to.

more correctly, is it a peripheral node, standard node, or nexi?

another reason for it being a moot point is that most pan devices probably work by way of data requests rather then full on subscription (unwired, p54).

Regardless of whether the rules suggest that an internal commlink can be duplicated with a datajack and wireless adapter, if you came to my table with that suggestion I'd laugh in your face. It is clear that the intention is to have a headware commlink be a headware commlink, and cost as much as a headware commlink, and torturing the rules to get around it is just ridiculous.

I would also like to point out that even though a datajack has some memory it doesn't have enough memory to hold an entire OS. That alone makes this impossible. Correct me if I'm wrong but you can't add enough memory to a datajack to hold an OS and if you could the cost would be more then a comlink (thus killing your poor man's comlink idea).

I am totally doing that with a cyberzombie. Everyone expects them to punch through walls and fire full bursts from six HMGs on articulated limbs. Nobody expects the security spider to be a breathing robot.

Really though, you wouldn't get a firewall. Have you ever skipped the firewall on your computer and plugged it straight into the cable/dsl/highspeed modem? Imagine that a thousand times worse, and connected to your brain.
Not that it would work anyway.

Hobgoblin:
Now all I want to do is roll up a big walking cyber beowulf cluster! I wonder if there are rules for massively distributed processing.

Clustering allows you to get the processing power of many nodes with the "interface" of a single node. Pretty much every corporate system that Shadowrunners are hacking into is probably a cluster of servers since more people will need to access it and run programs on it than a single machine (Nexus) can handle alone. Clustering is also a great in-game reason why an entire corporate system in a building can be presented as 1-5 nodes rather than 100 or more.

Yes, you add all of Persona limits together when Clustering, but if all the devices you cluster have a Persona Limit of 0, 0*aLot = 0. You must have at least one device that can run a Persona in the Cluster in order to use it to connect to the Matrix.

The distributed processing rules are covered by the clustering rules. Take a bunch of nodes (like commlinks), bind them together with some software (represented by the Computer+Logic test in the clustering rules), and they share information and processing tasks effectively enough to function just like a nexus. Cluster a bunch of nexi together, and you get a really, really, really powerful nexus.

HAHAHAHA!

In Shadowrun, your dagger has enough memory storage to hold your OS and all your programs on it. It's not an issue of memory storage. This is an issue of you not thinking my clever idea works.


You're missing the point, and evidently you've never read the part about Device Ratings, so I'll quote:



The only thing that the rules differentiate between a toaster and a commlink, as silly as it might sound, is a commlink's Matrix attributes are higher than the toasters, and as of Unwired possibly its persona limit and processor limit.

And at the very least, noone has answered what would happen if you place a wireless adapter in a datajack. I know other people would be able to access the information in the 'jack, but what would the guy with the 'jack be able to do with his new wireless DNI. The fact that datajacks allow DNI and allow for storage and usage of the Matrix, all by their own, is what lead me to think that maybe giving it a signal would create a "poor-man's commlink." Try not to think of datajacks as network cards like you guys seem to be doing, but as crappy wireless computers. If I take a crappy home PC and give it a USB wireless network card, I can suddenly use that PC as a wireless computer. Then, if I upgrade the system specs of said PC, it'd be better (at least as good, and cheaper) than a store-bought super-PC. Same concept.

Heh, glad you like it. I got the idea from cyberpunk 2020, where in one of its chromebooks they introduced the wiseman. Basically a full borg that held some 3-4 decks he could swap between to do things online, in addition to other cyber that would enhance his cognitive abilities.

The big thing is that the work load of programs and agents are linearly increased by the number of machines you add to a cluster. so therefor this setup could run some 30-40 agents doing different tasks, from defense to offense. He was basically a walking "agent smith" farm...

Everything else already has a wireless adapter. Why wouldn't a datajack? Since it's a peripheral node, it'd have a Response, Signal, System, and Firewall rating equal to its' device rating. As a piece of headware, it'd have a Device rating of 3, giving it a Signal of 3.

TBRMInsanity, as a GM, can rule that your datajack doesn't have enough memory for an OS and he would be well within his rights. The "no storage memory" rule is there so that players don't have to micro-manage files and where they are stored, not so that someone can download the Entire Matrix into their Datajack.


Nope, the rules differentiate on more than Matrix attributes (emphasis mine):



A nearby Hacker will notice your stupidity, subscribe one of his crappy commlinks to your datajack, hit you with Blackout until you drop, steal all your stuff, strip you naked, and sell you to Tamanous.

So just like what happens when you plug your PC into the cable modem without at least a router in the way.
Yes, this is from experience.

Right. So yes, you can plug into your toaster. But no, it doesn't function as a commlink unless you actually buy a commlink and install it into the toaster. You cannot surf the matrix on a toaster. The only thing you can do when you interface with a toaster is control its basic functions, so you could create personalized settings for the toaster, maybe enable voice commands, or activate it remotely from bed so your toast is ready when you get to the kitchen. Of course, I think you can load stuff onto peripheral nodes, like you could load some IC onto your toaster to repel toaster intrusions... It just won't process AR from other nodes, and won't allow you access to the whole matrix like a commlink would.

Ummm... Why?

The description given for a datajack in the RAW is that it "allows a user to directly interact with any electronic device". Nothing in the description suggests that it can decipher or translate a matrix signal as a commlink does. The nearest analogy is a router or a network adaptor, not a "crappy wireless computer". Why do you think it should be considered such?

Because, and I've stated this before, the freaking thing has a Device rating, which gives it a complete series of Matrix attributes (minus Signal, otherwise why would you need to plug things in?). In light of expanded rules from Unwired, it would only be able to run a single persona, and you'd have to define what programs they are designed to use (Peripheral Nodes, page 48).

Seriously though people, I came with an honest question, and I've been met with heated words. That's unsophistcated of you.

Neraph your just being a munchkin and a troll. I'm dropping this thread.

I know remarkably little about Feng Shui (much less follow it), I was just posting the bits as I remembered them from the book.

Unsophisticated? Hah!

Anyway... just because something has a device rating doesn't mean it has the same properties as a commlink. A printer has a device rating. Electronic paper has a device rating. Trodes have a device rating. A sub-vocal microphone has a device rating. Hell... Are you suggesting that I can roll out my electronic paper and surf the matrix without any other hardware? It is wirelessly equipped already.

The description and the intent is obvious, and it is just as clear that to have an implanted commlink you must buy an implanted commlink. Endof.

Neraph, look at it this way:
Every metahuman has the Strength Attribute. Does that make him a fullblown Boxer, independent of his actual rating?
Or would he actually need an appropriate Skill and a Set of functional Arms to do this work properly?

Translated to your case, the Kommlink with decent ratings is a strength 3 Boxer with an appropriate skill and well trained arms, whilst the datajack is an armless strength 1 wimp who saw some dudes punch themselves in the face... maybe.

The Device Rating is just an abstract rating so you don't need to note the actual attributes of every device you own. And you can upgrade them, yes. But there is just a level your toaster and your datajack can't reach. And that is - for example - doing the work of a full blown kommlink.

I hope you understand what ornot and i try to say. It's an easily made mistake, that's granted.

OK... what about a cluster? Especially of Alpha or better cyberware? I know that everyone here is poo-poo'ing the OP idea, but my idea does work by RAW (pg 55 of Unwired - Clustering).

Really great for making Those Awesome, Trendy, Virtual Bars that are in use throughout the World... They tend to provide enormous Persona Limits if you use enough Nexi for the backbone of the Virtual Club...

Are there rules for the costs of building your own commlink in Unwired? If so, perhaps we should be consulting those for this idea, to see what needs to be added to the Datajack+wireless adapter to make it into a Commlink...Of course, it would probably still take up the same essence as an implanted commlink..

Then again, it might be that you plug this big box into your Datajack, since you added those components to your wireless adapter, not your Datajack..

It's still not a commlink. The point of Clustering, as I understand it, is to minimise the size of your active subscription list, and the reason why the devices in a cluster have ratings like a commlink is because those devices can be hacked. The fact that they can be hacked does not mean they can be used to access the matrix.

Using the example of the electronic paper again, it can be hacked to display something other than what the user is expecting. Instead of this years predicted profits, it displays goatse p0rn, to the distress of the naive and innocent sarariman trying to impress his boss. It still isn't something you can access the matrix with. That is not its intent.

If you could use other implants as a distributed headware commlink thing then they wouldn't bother charging extra essence and nuyen for a headware commlink. It would be a capacity free addition to regular 'ware. Why are you so intent on saving the 5 or so buildpoints and the 0.5 essence anyway? Do you really need it to make your character so much more kickass?

... so basically a regular external commlink? Fair enough. The thing I just want to avoid is someone claiming a headware 'link at negligible essence and cost. However imbalanced someone may claim the rules to be it is clear to me that balance is the reason headware 'links are given the costs they are. Attempting to subvert that is just pointless. Call it RAI if you like.