I guess most of it could run as a Vulkan layer?

I do wish they used micro-LEDs for that kind of display though. I guess that they could be manufactured at the same time as a metamaterial acting as a lens sitting on top.

The harder part may be networking: it would be harder to ask them to wire it up to the network; but with Wi-Fi, I may be able to pre-fill their WPA key.

MSVC2019+ now include "volatile metadata" to the output executables to make emulation on ARM faster[0][1], though it seems to be off by default since MSVC2022, I am curious to know why they disabled it.

Microsoft now also offers an "Arm64EC" ABI, that, as I understand it, helps calling into native ARM libraries from emulated x86 code by avoiding the need to translate calling conventions, but that's mostly relevant for third-party libraries in this context (I imagine that Microsoft ships all system libraries with the "emulation compatible" ABI with Prism?).

I'd be curious to see some Prism vs FEX (vs Rosetta vs Box64) benchmarks.

[0]: https://fex-emu.com/FEX-2504/#windows-pe-volatile-metadata-s...

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/volati...

And I usually refer to the "IP KVMs" as a "lights-out" module/engine as I was familiar with HP's "ilo (integrated lights out) [0]. More on lights out management on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-band_management

I was thinking of making my own with an ESP32 + serial, as that's enough in theory, though I am unsure how well-supported serial ports are in BIOS and bootloader. Also, IIRC RS232 is ±12V, so the ESP would need a level shifter.

TFA's device looks cheap enough (well, depending on shipping to EU), I may just get one. The screen is a bit superfluous though, and I think that the ATX power button support is a must.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPE_Integrated_Lights-Out

The other big thing in my opinion is the furniture that hides everything away when not in use. I am surprised it cost as much as you say. Well, I suppose that there is a lot of it. Taking a few mental notes here as well.

I have fond memories of university, where we would play UT99 (and DOOM I, believe it or not) in the computer room on Windows XP computers. Staff eventually found out that most of us were playing games over lunch break, so they tightened up the firewalls. However, one of the PC didn't have password protection on the BIOS, so I retrieved the necessary files, and cracked the admin password offline. Good times! The games went on for years.

Back then, around half of us were in a boarding school for a couple years, fully wired with Ethernet and no client isolation despite an extremely restrictive external firewall (that had us using free proxies ~15kB/s to launch Steam, I even saw some students play League of Legends with up to 13s of latency). But LAN was the thing. We had shared NAS, local bittorrent clients, and played soo much UT2004, some Sins of a Solar Empire, supreme commander, dawn of war II, minecraft & a few others.

Unfortunately this friend group is all over the place now, and I don't even allow myself to spend time playing single player games these days. Still, I hope that I'll settle down a bit at some point, and make more local friends. It's easier than people seem to think (for me at least), you don't have to be rich either. Meet a few people, meet their friends, etc.

We used to have LAN parties with my high school friends too, maybe we should try to reconvene, though much driving would be involved.

Even earlier in my life, I was figuring out the rudiments of networking (including these pesky crossover cables) playing Halo 2 with multiple Xboxes.

So yeah, this build resonates with me, thank you for sharing. I've had something similar in mind for a wile, though I think I'd do it a bit differently:

* probably use Linux as a host. On a single or a couple of servers: older games aren't too demanding, and half the fun is in the nostalgia.

* If using a single host, a single link is needed for USB, and can be split over multiple hubs in the gaming room.

* Maybe use GOG installers, they work well for LAN: no DRM, no Internet access required. People can buy a copy if they like the game.

It's tempting to multiplex displays and I/O over the network, but I am concerned about the necessary bandwidth and latency increase. It's also feasible to send all the data in a single optical fiber over multiple wavelengths, however I just looked it up: DP-SFP converters (fiber KVMs) seem to cost more than $1k, so $30 cables are a better option.

I have been thinking about this lately, and figured that another difference with classic media was the "live service" model, where games receive updates.

You can't take for granted that a copy comes with updates, so I guess that as a middle ground, publishers could license updates (and online multiplayer) & sell copies of the game. Sell your copy, fine, but if you want updates or multiplayer, you have to purchase a subscription again. This would make more sense to me, but may be difficult to communicate and implement.

Weird, I would have compressed cold content instead, if the goal was to save on CPU time during decode.

It certainly seems feasible from an engineering perspective (though it does make cooling harder), at least for mid-range, not H100-class HW, but it prevents market segmentation, so EOMs may not be too interested (as long as no competitor does it).

+1 for fiber though. Long fibers are cheaper, SFP connectors and modules are commonplace and have become quite cheap. Just need to learn a few new things, such as simplex/BiDi vs duplex fiber, and multimode vs mono mode.

mDNS / Avahi is also great if the machine advertises itself: just use machinename.local after plugging it.

Though the interface needs to be configured for link-local addresses. In my experience, NetworkManager now periodically resets the link if it can't get a DHCP server to respond. I understand the rationale, but it used to be simpler to plug into a headless machine and be confident that you could just ssh in.

Relevant support page, though light in details: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/captive-portal

Edit: ah, yes, DNS can be hijacked too (requires intercepting outgoing traffic on port 53 therefore incompatible with DoH), that may require fewer computing resources. Still need http otherwise the server cannot use the correct cert chain.

Edit 2: Wikipedia says both methods are used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_portal and also mentions RFC 8910. I suspected something like that existed, hence my initial disclaimer.

My point was: that domain is not treated any differently from other domains.

I initially put up a request in their system, which did not match anything when they found it. I ended up finding it in their "public" listing (not really public, I think they ask for a ~10€ registration fee).

Anyway, when I got it back, I tried to argue with the employee that the phone did not, in fact, have a case. But they were adamant that it did. I ended up shrugging it off, happy enough to have my phone. But some people really don't care. Maybe someone filed your bag as something else, and then it wouldn't appear in the system, and weren't bothered enough to go look inside.