portable space empires???
 

Just wondering if anyone has recommendations for a portable external hard drive. The ones Ive seen all operate at 5400rpm. Is this sufficient to run SE directly from it? Any opinions and personal exp. welcome.

Thanks,
CB

Re: portable space empires???
 

Buy.com

I just bought this one; 7200rpm USB 2.0 etc, for a pretty reasonable price.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Heck, you could use a USB key.

Even a 128meg key is enough if you trim down the data files...
Delete the 800x600 or 1024x768 system pictures, whichever you won't be using. And downgrade the ones you will be using to have fewer colours and save more space.

Re: portable space empires???
 

External hdds are usually a rip-off. It is generally cheaper to buy a IDE drive (on sale all the time too) and an enclosure (pay more than $20 for a good aluminum one and you are getting ripped off).

$100 is sort of approaching what you could pay for a 250 gb IDE drive + enclosure though, and might be worth it for you.

SJ:
I dunno if you could fit it on 128 MB. Dogscoff had a hell of a time getting it to fit on just a 700 MB CD.

Another possibility is to mod the SystemTypes.txt file so that all systems use the same image. Won't help much with PBW, but fine for single player.

SE3, however, is fairly portable. It's install size is only a few MBs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif But you might need to activate the registration on every machine you run it on... Could probably export the registry keys for that to make it faster though.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Im looking at a 100GB simpletech that is up for $100. Dark Horse, Ive seen nothing but good things about the MyBook but its much larger dimensions than what Im searching for. Im looking for something truly pocket size. I thought of the 1GB jump drive but I need something that I can store several GB's of other data on for work and such. I guess what it comes down to is whether 5400 rpm is enought o run the game directly from the drive. As for the file size on my PC for the game Im sitting at 669MB for the whole deal with AT's Star Trek mod. Thanks for the opinions guys and tell me what you think. I forgot why I liked this site so much when I lurked around several years ago.

CB

Re: portable space empires???
 

Later this month I'm due to buy a replacement for my aging Palm m500. I'll be buying a Palm LiveDrive. It has 4 Gb onboard memory and I'll be purchasing a 2 Gb SD card with it. LiveDrives can also function as a USB drive so my intention is to have SEIV installed on that and run games off it.

When I get it all together, I'll try to remember to post it's performance.

Re: portable space empires???
 

100 GB for $100? Yikes! Don't throw money away like that. Watch the deal sites til the next time a 160 GB is up for ~$40, and an enclosure is under 20. Lots of companies make good enclosures that are not much larger than the hdd itself.

Of course, if you want truly pocket sized, you want a notebook ide drive and a 2.5 inch enclosure.

Re: portable space empires???
 

128 would be a tight squeze, but you might be able to do it. A clean install should be fairly easy to fit it on a 256MB flash drive. IIRC Dogscoff was trying to load it with lots of extra shipsets and his favorite mods.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Oh it was, but 128 was all that was available way back when.

Nowadays, you could grab a 1gig stick for a couple bucks and pile the imagepacks and a couple of mods onto it.


Oooh, what about a bootable linux with wine on it?
Insert Disk, Power On, Play SE4. Power Off, Poof.
Good on CDRW too.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Of course, it's probably not a good idea to run SE4 off of a USB flash drive anyways; all those temp file writes are sure to kill it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif With flash getting cheap these days, it might be worth it though. Just make sure to back up your savegames from time to time.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Yeah, but that was including a whole heap of mods and shipsets. Remove those (or scale down the BMPs, something I was unwilling to do) and you could squeeze se4 onto a USB key no probs.

I wish se4 could have supported zip files for mod and shipset folders , I'd have a gig more space on my HD than there is now.

Re: portable space empires???
 

You know, I'll bet someone could make a "Mod picker" style utility that would store the mods as zip files and only unzip the one you are currently playing.

Re: portable space empires???
 

The only saving grace for purchasing a boxed external hard drive is the backup/recovery software you usually get.

Approach 1) Save money, use time, no software = buy the drive and enclosure and put them together

Approach 2) Waste money, save time, get backup/recover software = buy a boxed LaCie or Maxtor hard drive.

Personally I like the Maxtor One-Touch for its' utterly painless backup system (push the button stupid!). This is what I use on the majority of my client installations.

Re: portable space empires???
 

I operate a lot of my work now from a portable hard drive, as a gift a few months ago, it was a 100gb Seagate Portable Hard Drive and it was all enclosed and that good stuff. Works great too. I accidently found the receipt for it at my parent's home and it cost them about 90 bucks after shipping and freight insurance.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...36|&Sort=4

That is where they bought it from and this is it, looks like the price went up or it was on sale.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...93&CatId=0

Re: portable space empires???
 

Woah. Hadrian is back. Welcome back, amigo.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Oh wow, I didn't even recognize you! Hadrian as in SpaceEmpires.org? Or are you going to kill me because I remembered that? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: portable space empires???
 

I dunno if you already bought your hdd, but Dell has a 160 GB external drive for $79 with no shipping. Still a little pricier than a good deal on a IDE + enclosure, but it beats the other prices posted earlier. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

http://bensbargains.net/deal/7611/

Re: portable space empires???
 

Fyron,

Thanks man, Ill look into it.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Ouch, 79$ for a 160? I am so glad I live near a Fry's. I picked up an external 250 for that price after rebate.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Hmm... this deal is more like it! 160 GB external for $50 after rebate.

http://bensbargains.net/deal/8022/

(hdd link in case the "click here" button doesn't work)

Re: portable space empires???
 

Bearclaw:
You installed SE IV on your palm? Wow! Did it work. Does that mean I can install SE IV on my HP HX4700 too?

Re: portable space empires???
 

Anyone, perhaps...?

Re: portable space empires???
 

<Using his necromantic powers Makinus ressurects the bane of message-boards everywhere: The long-dead thread of doom!>

Just to share with everyone: just bought an Asus EEE 4G and installed XP and SEIV in it and it works perfectly! The turn processing time is smaller than i tought possible, in fact it processes at the about the same speed as my old 1.4 GHZ Duron desktop...

Now i finally have SEIV in a really portable format...

Re: portable space empires???
 

now now don't let us catch you at work playing it now LOL

Re: portable space empires???
 

I'm glad you did resurrect this topic because I forgot all about installing SEIV on my LifeDrive to see if the DriveMode would work...

No, I haven't but only because I forgot about it. Now I'm going to though and I'll let you know how it works.

Re: portable space empires???
 

Gentlemen, the future is now!

Re: portable space empires???
 

Those Asus machines look great, I was thinking about getting one instead of a new laptop, but I need something with more screenage.

Do they run on Crystalline technology, as we would all expect from any EEE technology?

Re: portable space empires???
 

For me it is perfect, as i needed a machine small enough to fit in my suitcase with space for all the documents i need to take with me everywhere and still be able to work with .doc and .xls files on the go...

The battery life is good enough for me (typically around 3 hours for what i use) so i don´t need to search power outlets when i need to use it and, as a side benefit, i can use it to play SEIV and other games i like...

Now my next step is to buy a 4gb or 8gb SD card so i can play Baldur´s Gate II in it...