EricBall
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Hmm... not ROT13 encoded and not reversed - that's about the limit of what code breaking I'm prepared to do.
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13 hours ago, bent_pin said:
How many PCIe Lanes? Do they go directly to different cores?
As per https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/ "PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals" (although you can set a config option for PCIe 3.0). No idea how they are managed within the SoC.
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6 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:
If the 5 doesn't address any of your issues, what is an issue for you?
- Cost - cheaper is always preferable
- Power efficiency - I dislike active cooling
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Excellent write up. Yes, RAM is extremely precious on the VCS. However, having to work within constraints often produces better results.
The one "trick" I've used in my games is to have a simple 1 byte PRNG which is cycled every frame. There's an amazing number of things it can be used for, especially if it's only read intermittently (i.e. when the player does something). Whether it be for enemy movement or sprite & color cycling.
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I have to say I love the form factor of the SF2000. It fits in my hands perfectly. I've been playing Pokemon Emerald with no issues.
One annoyance is the apparent volume of the rear firing mono speaker differs depending upon my hand position. The D-Pad also seems a little glitchy, occasionally registering down for left and vice-versa.
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Hmm... while that's not a bad processor, it's a AM4 processor so if you want to upgrade to a Zen 4 processor you'll need to upgrade your motherboard as well.
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For composite & S-Video color (hue) is determined by the phase of the chroma signal versus the colorburst signal in the horizontal sync at each specific point in time. On the 2600 & 7800 the way they selected the phase for each pixel is taps off a delay line. So color 0 is the first tap on the line (no delay, matches colorburst) while color 15 is the last tap on the line. The "length" of the delay line is set by the resistor (to compensate for slight differences at the gate level). So if you want to have consistent colors for all 2600s the easiest way is to adjust the resistor so color 0 is the same as color 15. You lose a color, but it's a quick & easy way to do the job. OTOH, if you want all 16 colors then you can adjust the resistor so the two are different (which is what most emulators effectively do I believe).
Oh, don't forget that the 7800 has separate resistors for the 2600 TIA and 7800 MARIA.
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Finally got it to work! The problem turned out to be the Thinkpad serial port was at hardware address 2F8, which is the normal address for COM2 (COM1 uses 3F8). So while the Thinkpad only has one serial port, I needed to specify COM2 for PD ZMODEM. It also took some trial and error to transfer the whole subdirectory tree, but now I'm copying files at 115kbps. According to PD ZMODEM that's going to take 8 hours...
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I was able to copy PD ZMODEM to the Dell hard drive from a USB flash drive using a Linux LiveCD and it also fit on the FreeDOS boot floppy. So the software side it done and ready to go, but I can't manage to get the two computers to talk over the null modem cable! I did a continuity test and I'm 99% certain the cable is a null modem, but for some reason it's just not working. So now I need to figure out some way to do a simple serial port test. Maybe it's just not COM1...
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I gave the LiveCD option another try with a different CD-RW, which was successful. So now I can boot both computers with FreeDOS. Hooray! Unfortunately, since the Dell doesn't have a floppy drive I don't have an easy way to copy PD ZMODEM onto it.... But that should be an easier challenge, I just need to figure out which method will be least painful. Maybe if I boot a Linux LiveCD I will be able to access the USB floppy or a USB flash drive. If not I can pull the hard drive and connect it as an external drive.
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The comedy continues. My attempt to erase and burn the CD-RW instead produced a coaster. So I went back to the floppy images and was able to create the floppies using my old Windows netbook and the external floppy drive. Success! Now I just need to boot the Dell off the floppies, install FreeDOS and.... hmmm.. why won't the floppy go in? I don't think there's a disk in the drive. Maybe the drive is just out of alignment with the front facia. Pop open the case and ... sigh ... there's no floppy drive!!! I removed it to put in a second hard disk. OMG!!!
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No CD-Rs at either dollar store or Walmart. (Walmart did have three spindles of 10 DVD-Rs, but those won't help me.) I tried to create floppies but couldn't figure out how to "burn" the images to an actual floppy via the USB floppy. I was looking at my media collection and I do have several CD-RWs, so I guess the next step is to figure out which of those can be sacrificed for the cause.
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What used 2708s? Would it be possible to repurpose a PSU from one of those systems? You should be able to get -5V & +12V from an old AT power supply. Also need to make sure whatever microcontroller you're using has 5V compatible inputs.
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The liquid coolant doesn't dissipate heat - it just moves it from the heat source to the radiators where it is then transferred to the air moving through the radiators.
Case fans are great for ensuring the air inside the case is room temperature, but unless you're using a completely passive heatsink, they don't actually keep the CPU or GPU cool.
Modern CPU coolers use "heat pipes" to move the heat from the CPU cover to large radiators with fans. Unfortunately graphics cards are significantly more space constrained with most graphics cards being smaller than a typical 240x120mm radiator - and in that space they must include the fans, heatsink, chips and PCB! My RTX 3080 can generate over 300W of heat and even my GTX 1650 Super can generate 100 Watts of heat. In order to dissipate that heat the 100mm fans need to move a lot of air over relatively small heatsinks (which aren't flow-through like a radiator, so even more static pressure is needed). This results in very loud fans.
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Ventilation isn't a problem - the Core V21 has two sides which are basically mesh and the other sides have lots of holes, plus it has a giant 200mm fan to push air into the case. The problem is the graphics card doesn't have a lot of space for cooling so it has to move a lot of air, which means the fans have to spin faster and work harder, resulting in more noise.
And if you think the graphics card is a lot of money, wait for part 2....
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Hmm... I can't remember the last time I used my PS3 to play a game. I used it to rewatch LoTR EE a month or two ago. I have GT5 but haven't played it since the wheel controller died. I did love bombing around the 'Ring.
The Wii U gets used to play Mario Kart Wii with my son while we do laundry (he's in residence at a local college). I sometimes win a race, I never win the trophy. The Switch gets used to play Mario Party Superstars with him as an alternative to MK.
But otherwise I'm playing on my PC, currently Escape from Tarkov. Lots of games, only so much time to play, so I tend to focus on one game until it's not fun anymore.
And I know what you mean about watching DVDs & Blu-Rays. I've got a Roku & Disney+ so I'm set for content as long as I pay the subscription (which is cheap for the amount of content I'm getting IMHO). I've actually been watching the Disney catalog in chronological order. Just finished off the original 101 Dalmatians and now I'm watching The Absent Minded Professor (flubber). I still like having physical discs for movies I want to "own", but those are few and far between.
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Yep, I can understand the value of the original hardware versus an emulator. That's why my son has taken an actual N64 to college. (Unfortunately hasn't been able to play Mario Party in the common room due to COVID.)
And I'm fond of the CoCo. It's a decent computer and probably better than most people rank it (although class B is probably about right as it didn't have sprites or a sound chip). But I wouldn't say the Apple II is a class C of the 8 bit generation - I'd rank it as class B at least. Note: Apple II high res was capable 6 colors (although with restrictions).
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The CoCo was my first home computer and it's the one I learned how to program in assembly. (Which made the learning 6502 assembly more difficult due to the lack of 16 bit address registers.) I actually have one in the basement which my parents bought me for nostalgia - but I realized emulators are just as good for that purpose.
The big advantage of the Apple ][ over many contemporaries IMHO was the ubiquitous Disk ][. And there was a massive catalog of games in spite of the quirky hi-res graphics.
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Yep, but while there's a bunch of stuff you can figure out with nothing more than a basic multimeter it doesn't cut it for signalling issues. Admittedly these days there's USB dongles with software which are a decent alternative to a DSO depending upon what you're debugging. However, the lesson I learned is to at least consider what might be necessary to troubleshoot issues before diving in and spending $$.
Admittedly software is a lot easier, although there an still be challenges.
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On 9/30/2021 at 3:44 PM, SpiceWare said:
B5 is one of my favorite shows. The widescreen version could have looked great considering they planned ahead and actually filmed all the live action at 16:9. The horrific crop & scale that they did for any CGI scenes for the DVD set ruined it for me, I couldn't even make it through a rewatch of season 1.
The series was recently remastered using 4:3, it looks awesome. If you have HBO Max it's available there, or via digital download from Amazon or iTunes. Sadly no physical version of the remaster is available.
Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware there was a 4:3 remaster available. I think I might be getting an early Christmas present.
The crime was the decision to go ahead with widescreen versions when it wasn't possible to re-do the VFX. Unfortunately, there was a huge push to avoid black bars when HDTV was new.
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https://www.youtube.com/c/Techmoan occasionally does repair videos. He has similar issues replacing belts.
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On 8/20/2021 at 1:28 PM, EricBall said:The reason they won't tell you why is they don't know why themselves. They have a neural network they've "trained" by feeding it a bunch of posts marked "bad" (and hopefully some marked "good") until it correctly marks another bunch of posts. The more similar your post is to the "good" training & testing posts, the more likely the AI will mark it correctly. But if your post is more like the "bad" training & testing posts, then the AI is going to mark it incorrectly. And there's no way to ask the AI "why is this post "bad"".
Modern AI is a big black box - garbage in - gospel out.
On 8/20/2021 at 1:36 PM, Albert said:I'd be interested in reading about this, do you have a source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network#Training
IMHO it's a huge problem with neural networks. One other item which isn't mentioned is the raw input data is often "pre-processed" to make it more compatible with the neural network. Of course, this pre-processing might introduce or amplify biases.
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24 minutes ago, Albert said:
There's really no rhyme or reason to what they do, and since they don't share the actual reason posts like this are removed, all we can do is guess. It is super frustrating. I've seen all manner of posts removed where the rationale is not clear at all.
..Al
The reason they won't tell you why is they don't know why themselves. They have a neural network they've "trained" by feeding it a bunch of posts marked "bad" (and hopefully some marked "good") until it correctly marks another bunch of posts. The more similar your post is to the "good" training & testing posts, the more likely the AI will mark it correctly. But if your post is more like the "bad" training & testing posts, then the AI is going to mark it incorrectly. And there's no way to ask the AI "why is this post "bad"".
Modern AI is a big black box - garbage in - gospel out.
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6 hours ago, Jacob Rose said:
I love this game -- I've been playing slightly longer. Without spoiling anything, I will say that there is a way to store some additional weapons outside your inventory. Amazing game.
If you're referring to the Hateno house quest - that just gives you space for three more weapons (plus three shields and three bows). I'm using those for the Champion's weapons (plus a couple of nice to look at shields & bows).
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I made it through the holiday without playing EFT, although I was tempted many times. But I reminded myself that EFT is a time sink with a very high "one more raid" incentive. In addition, progression in EFT is strongly related to playtime. So even if I was able to restrict myself to an hour a day, that would mean I would mostly be replaying the same content I have already played three times.