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Been a while but the 99-4aW has a new keyboard with ALL functioning keys. The original KB had a Non-functioning Space Bar Keyswitch. I had swapped the Left Shift Keyswitch into the Space Bar. Which had left this gap Thanks to the efforts of @visrealm I was able to build (so far) 3 functional Key boards. One in the Frankenine, one for the 99-4aW, a spare "Prototypeing" board. The white board had brass 1/4" keystock for stiffeners. I used brass cause, well, it's easier to drill and tap and I had some. I tapped it to M2 and used 8mm M2 screws and two bars not only make a stiff board, they make it feel weightier. Note also that I used a 90 degree header on the board to interface the wiring harness. On the prototype the wires kept breaking off when the cable flopped around while soldering in the key switches. NOTE: Hindsight - put the cable down with some VFD tape. I used Gateron Buttery Yellow switches. They are five pi and REALLY fit the board well. So well I was tempted to not solder them in but I found that the contacts didn't always snug up against the hole sides. So I soldered them in. The Prototype board also revealed a clearance issue

Only 37 usd for shipping. But yeah not worth it for me with the 51 cad in shipping or I will try.

Figured I'd throw them here as well as the FB thread. My high scores: Got pretty good RNG on The Blob: Pensate gets REALLY tough on higher levels! I think this is either level 8 or 9: For the live of me I can't understand how @Rickster8 got such a high score! But I'm trying to get there. lol: Kart-Tag isn't randomly generated in standard mode so a good benchmark for competition: Canyon Escape turns from scoring in meters to a high score, which I'm guessing is a combination of lives and fuel left: Sheep it Up! You're gonna have to tune in to my stream tomorrow at 2pm EST to see how I did this:

Cheap for pick-up, but Monopoly$51.36 shipping?! Crikey!

So far with 15 minutes left, a cheap ti99 console. https://www.ebay.ca/itm/156192985890

This is enough to cause the faint-hearted to experience certain visceral effects. this man has over-gasped!.mp4 Anyway, I always knew (may be wrong, whatever,) that canola oil is rapeseed oil processed specifically for food use. There are a number of canola oil brands, but the name itself is a generic product.

Wow, KP8. When I was in Northern Finland in January 2023, we hoped for KP5 or 6 (and clear skies). They announced visible auroras for regions of Germany as well. Note that you will only see red to violet lights which are created much higher in the sky than the green ones that you see in polar regions. The reason* is that the lower green lights are hidden behind the horizon. (* not for Flerfs obviously)

Mode 10 uses 4 bits per pixel.

Don’t twist words. The DC serial port is slow and that is the cause of dreamshell solution based on a serial adapter for the sd card being slow. SD card themselves can be fast enough as the GD drive in the DC is a 12x or about 2MB/s. All other solutions hook to the GD drive connector, I think I’ve seen one that keeps it working but most are full on replacements, I linked you to an aliexpress vendor that sells premodded DC with Sata drive installed and bios mod to boot from it and that comes cheaper than Mode … at present there are no DC solutions to simply hook up a hard disk to the DC via serial port or broadband connector. The GD drive is not destroyed simply removed, it’s a couple of screws and it lifts right up from its connector on the motherboard with no ribbon nonsense, if you opened your DC you would know by now. All told some say the DC serial interface could be fast enough … https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14926 but I am not sure … give it a try, you have it no?

Isn't that just the name of a popular brand for rapeseed oil? Used to avoid spelling out a name that happens to share four letters with another term that refers to sexual violence, not even by etymology but by simple chance?

I was playing some Streets of Rage 2 last night, and was reminded of how awesome its soundtrack is. I didn't have a Genesis/Megadrive growing up (SNES household), but at my friend's house we'd sometimes leave the intro looping just to listen to the music while we were doing something else. Curious whether there were other awesome musical numbers from the era that I was missing out on, I did a little Googling, and I have to say I was pretty let down by the results. E.g., this is the top result: https://www.thegamer.com/best-90s-video-game-soundtracks/ I don't agree with a single entry on that list. I figured this community, full of the more learned retro gamer minds, might be able to do better. I'll start things off with some of my favorites: Streets of Rage II (1992, Sega Genesis/Megadrive) - Kickass intro song and all-around solid music throughout the game. The Gamegear version also does a remarkable job conveying much the same music with its more limited hardware. Tempest 2000 (1994, Atari Jaguar) - High energy music that pairs perfectly with the gameplay. If you've played this, your ears will prick up instantly upon hearing the first few notes of either the title screen music or the main theme. Sonic the Hedgehog - (1991, Sega Genesis/Megadrive) - A lot of people tout the music of Mario World, and I don't want to knock Koji Kondo at all, nor the technical achievement of the layered music in Mario World, but having played a lot of both Mario World and Sonic during that era, I would have taken the Sonic music over the Mario music any day. Super Mario Bros. - (1985, NES/Famicom) - Again, while people will often say Mario World has a superior soundtrack, it's the OG Mario soundtrack I'll sometimes put on just to listen to without playing the game, not the Mario World one. What are your favorites of the era?

I found this going through an Atari dumpster back in 2000 ish...

Added!

Me too! But it’s not moved for 10 days, so not holding out much hope

Modes 9 and 11 use 4 bits for each pixel, mode 10 need 2 bits per pixel

That's too bad, it's a really good game. I still need to tackle the bonus games that unlock.

Try YAART. You have to tell YAART to test the specific ram though.

I've got Stock 64k PAL Xegs with 512k Rambo added (576k total) (Jurgens mod which is a delightful addition) No other memory add ons, just s-video out from Gtia through passive resistors Using SDdrive or A8Pico or SIo2Pc to launch games (xex or Atr files are easiest to trial) Let me know if you need any other info, Thanks Richard

Man. I'm excited about this. I'm having a bit of trouble following the thread through. Are the gerbers in Speech_gerberv2 the latest ones for this board?

Dragon Quest IV As a huge fan of DQII and DQIII, I had high hopes for this one. First impressions were good; it looks and plays like those classics, and the way that the story is split into chapters with different characters is fun. However, midway into the second chapter, I'm not 100% pleased with this one. The chapter system is good in theory. Each chapter is like a mini RPG, and while they all use the standard DQ engine, they vary quite a bit. However, think back on playing DQII or DQIII for the first time, and how frustrating the first couple of hours can be with your weak level 1 characters. DQIV is that, over and over. What makes it even worse is that the worlds in each chapter are absolutely tiny and completely linear, with boss battles gating your progress. The greatest thing about DQII and DQIII was how the game started you out in a small, linear area but after only a few hours the world was yours to explore, and there were very few bosses at all serving as level checks. In DQIV, because the chapters are so small and linear, you are just following the story from place to place... and soon after you start feeling comfortable with your party, the chapter is over and you're back to level 1 with some other character. Brief thoughts on each chapter so far: Chapter 1 You play this tiny chapter as Ryan, a kind of medieval cop sent out to find some missing children. This took me maybe two hours to complete, and it was fine. It sets up the story, and it's balanced fine with no need to grind at all. Chapter 2 You play as Alina, a badass princess, accompanied by a couple of retainers. I'm only a few hours in, but it's extremely linear; what's worse is that that second step of the quest is just a few minutes away from the starting castle, and yet you are forced to fight a pretty difficult boss battle to continue. You are lucky to get to level 2 naturally just walking to the fight, and level 2 is far, far too low to stand a chance. Even the standard enemies outside of the starting castle are quite difficult for your level 1 weaklings, so there's no choice but to grind some levels. This is quite disappointing, since DQIII requires no grinding at all (and DQII requires only a tiny bit at the very end of the game). Anyway, it didn't take too long to get to level 4 for my party, and at that point the boss battle was a bit frustrating but beatable. There was another massive difficulty spike right after that, but no bosses so it wasn't too bad. It's not a bad game, but it just doesn't feel like Dragon Quest so far due to the tiny linear worlds and focus on story over exploration. Hopefully future chapters will be a bit better.

That should have been the initial approach along with a user-accessible menu via some kind of special switch+button combo. The amount of time being spent on an update which fixes a lot of issues suggests to me that the release was a bit rushed and probably should have come out this year. Certainly the testing wasn’t as extensive as it could have been. Obviously I don’t have details to indicate why this is, but lessons learned and all that I’m sure.

That would be great if Atari started producing CX-80 Trakball controllers!

Alright, but if you put a routine in the bankswitchable area of the cartridge, that routine has to appear in all banks (or at least the banks that can be active when the routine is called) otherwise you'll call garbage data if you call the routine in a bank where the routine is not present. How does your compiler deal with this?

There was at least one poll here quite a few years ago that showed how many respondents used each dos. IIRC, at that time Dos 2.5 was still the most widely used, with versions of Sparta second (and it was a close second) and MyDos third. All the rest followed. BTW, I couldn't locate the poll, but it did exist.