Herbarius

It really depends on the (heat) sensitivity of the components you are using and even 30 Watt should be okay if you are careful... But if you want to be on the safe side, i.e. "don't trust your aim", getting one with a lower Wattage is a good idea, yes.

AFAIK, 30 Watt is the absolute maximum for "small electronics" works like that... Best is 15-20 Watt. Apart from that, I don't think there are a lot of tips to give, except maybe "don't be greedy". I heard that "cheap/special offers" for soldering irons are usually way bad. Better pay a few bucks more than to be sorry. You also should get a desoldering wick. They're not expensive and can save you a lot of trouble. As for the actual 'tips' for the soldering iron, they'll last quite a while, although not for eternity. That is, as long as you only use it for actual soldering. If you're carving in wood or stuff like that you'll ruin it pretty quickly. These are the tips a friend of me with quite a lot of soldering experience gave me a while back when I asked him the same question

So what? Probpably it was directed at kids, as a kind of "educational" game, trying to tell you how important it is to brush your teeth... After all, there are/were cartoons on TV like that, too. And as a game, that's really quite fun, what's the problem? Ever seen this old Shareware game? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNRmuM_iwoo Also looks like it still seems to be around, with newer versions: www.carrsoft.com/ctf/capture_the_flag_game.html It really is some fun, even if you just play the Shareware version, against the computer or, better yet, against a buddy (taking turns, of course the waiting player mustn't look at the screen! or you can play by E-Mail)

Mhh, I think the question "Is the Commodore 64 region-free?" can be answered with a definite "Yes and No". What can be said, that there are no intentional "region lock-outs" in place. So in principle, every game should run on every system. (AFAIK this should be true of most if not all computers, as opposed to - especially newer - game consoles). However, there's always (at least with systems that can use TVs as monitors) the technical issue of PAL and NTSC, and there seem indeed to be games that only work on one of the two standards. However, often you'll see Cracker Groups have released "fixed" versions that work on both. (Again I would doubt this is intentional by the original game developers. It's rather a result of laziness.) As for websites, you propably already found those, but if not try gb64.com and lemon64.com.

Of course, that's the definition. "16 bit" doesn't mean "the graphics are better" - however, it was used as a gauge for the overall capabilities of a video game console, propably thinking along the line "if the processor is more advanced then the rest of the hardware is as well, overall more advanced hardware results in better graphics"... So it's never been a real gauge to determine a console's "power", but more of a "rule of thumbs"... which some people took literally anyway, so there were the "bit wars" - where console manufacturers actually encouraged the misconception of "more bits = better graphics" for the sake of the marketing. As there is limited use for processors above 32 bit especially for gaming, eventually this faded. Now we maybe have "dpi wars" but... well not really. At least I rarely heard people comparing the current gen consoles in terms of hardware specs, the debates tend to be about reliability and the actual (exclusive) games availabe for each console.

Ah. I've never been into comics much. Propably doesn't help that dogs usually don't eat cats. Not even in comics...

I thought a little about the thing with the sounds... You propably all know Half-Life 2, like the guy from Classic Game Room said it reall has "excellent sound design"... He focuses mainly on the ambient sounds, but there's one other thing everyone who has played the game propably knows: The poison headcrabs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J_6IPc2YFM I don't know how they managed to do that, but while playing the game you'll soon find yourself almost jumping out of your chair every time you hear that sound... I read somewhere that they had observed during beta-testing that some players would incinerate the whole room (in-game!) when hearing it. I have never heard a real-life animal making a sound like this... I guess I would perhaps be startled if I suddenly heard it, but I can't be certain... Well, this is rather off-topic, but anyone has any ideas how they managed to create this genuinely menacing sound/s? Maybe they combined and altered some sounds from real-world poisonous animals - and such triggering some kind of genetical survival instinct? (E.g. Apart from that high-pitched shriek, it does some kind of rattle, which could remind of rattlesnakes...) The irony is, a single poison headcrab, or even a whole bunch of them, can never kill you, unless there are other kinds of enemies or environmental hazards around. (It's because they only deal a kind of "virtual damage" (you are poisoned and your suit administers an antidote which raises your Health back to the previous level), but never reduce your Health below 1 HP. This could have been easily solved by making them deal just 1 real point of damage before applying the poison damage... Then a single poison headcrab could kill you with two quick attacks, but maybe they thought that'd be too hard. However, most of the time when you encounter those there are other kinds of headcrabs around as well, and then they ARE really dangerous).

To be honest, I've never seen or played the game. I don't even know what genre it is... It's propably mostly known only for it's soundtrack http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGjy4IJSOp8

Okay, I just completed the survey. I've added my own comments to (almost) every question - with some questions I felt it's a little unclear as to what exactly is asked for. In these cases I've noted that in my comment... So, for example, I answered question 2 "Have violent video games affected you?" with "Yes". However, when reading the comment I added, you may come to the conclusion the answer I really should have ticked was "No", depending on how you actually meant the question... For the curious ones, here my comment to question 2:

That's quite impressive, sounds almost like the original! It's a little harder on the ears in parts, but I expected something much much worse when I downloaded the file. I understand correctly this should play any (or at least most) SID files, or is it just the Commando theme? I find some strange fascination in the CoCo line of computers. Being in Europe it's unlikely I will ever get one, but if I saw one, especially a CoCo 3, it would be hard to resist... It's surely not rational. I think the closest word I've got to describe how I feel about the CoCo is "cute". after listening to that tune, I'd almost say "sexy"... CoCo computers are female, aren't they?

Funny how usually those games, who feel the need to highlight being "interactive" on the box are the ones which seriously lack in interactivity

Maybe they meant to write "as easy to put down as it is to pick up and play." Even if you like the idea of fighting fires in an Atari game, it's too easy, and doesn't offer much variation. Overall an 'okay' game, but gets boring quickly. You will propably find yourself playing it one, maybe two, sessions, and then never booting it up again.

Well, I guess there could be dozens... hundreds... especially if you take into account type-in programs froms Magazines and Books or even independentely developed programs by computer enthusiasts.

Oh, I think I had this on my first PC! We had bought it used and the previous owner obviously didn't bother to clear the hard drive, so there was definitely some copyright infringement going on... Back then it was very exciting for me to look around that 20 MB hard disk (btw. it had DR-DOS, we always said "Doctor DOS" ) and discover some new little program or even game hidden somewhere... Apart from that Pac-Man game mentioned, it had some other games with ASCII "graphics", I think one was a Bridge (card) game I never understood (at that time I couldn't speak or read English)... The games Sokoban and Blockout were also on there, and PC-World - a geography program with outline maps and statistics for all countries of the world (of that time, that is), and I also recall some really weird file manager type program or more like a "Wannabe-Windows/GEOS", but with no real graphical interface but made of ASCII text... I remember the "icon" in the corner of a window to close the window was the character of 3 horizontal lines)... In retrospective I fail to see the point of the program, as Norton Commander was (of course) also on it and better suited for all the tasks that weird program could do (well... file management and text file editing - as far as I remember it, that is ). I surely remember that although as a kid I didn't have any purpose for it I kinda liked that program and ran it just to goof around a little - at least until we installed Windows I remember at one occasion I typed a letter for a classmate in it, then I realized, that program didn't even have a Print feature! Well, I just hit the "Print Screen" key and so I got it printed anyway... and the next day my friend could wonder about the menu bar on top of the letter. Well, eventually the hard disk just "gave up" with no warning and all those "trasures" were lost... Back to the Pac-Man game, I'm not sure if the game I remember had the speed setting and number of ghosts, but I clearly recall Pac-Man being represented by the smiley face and the 4 card suits being the ghosts. So, I'm interested in seeing that one again, too

Well, I sadly didn't find the time to play more, so 64,720 is my final score...

As there is obviously something wrong with the "timestamps" on the posts here, I don't know exactly when this will end... So here my preliminary score of 64,720. Can somebody tell me when exactly this will be over? So I can see how much time I've got... EDIT: Oh, I think I figured it out, there's nothing wrong with the timestamps, I just, as I'm normally used to 24 hour format, did again confuse 12:00AM and 12:00PM (they really should be the other way 'round, shouldn't they??)... So there's circa 10 and a half hours left by now. Correct?

This is for the C64: 100 PRINT CHR$(147):REM CLEAR SCREEN 110 FOR I=0TO15:POKE646,I:B$=CHR$(18) 120 FOR J=1TO40:B$=B$+" ":NEXT J 130 PRINT B$; :NEXT I There are 16 possible colors, numbered from 0 to 15. 646 is the memory adress which stores the current color for characters, this is why we POKE to it in line 110. CHR$(18) is the control character for "reverse mode" - because we want to create color bars, we will need to print reverse Spaces. We will print 40 spaces of each color, as that's the width of the screen line. If you want to change the screen background color first, add a line 90 POKE 53280,0: POKE 53281,0 53280 is for the border color, 53281 the actual background. In the above example, both are set to 0 (black). If you want the first bar to appear on the top line of the screen, instead of the second, add a ";" after CHR$(147) in line 100. The color table goes like this: 0 - black 1 - white 2 - red 3 - cyan 4 - purple 5 - green 6 - blue 7 - yellow 8 - orange 9 - brown 10 - light red 11 - dark grey 12 - medium grey 13 - light green 14 - light blue 15 - light grey

While that is correct, the refresh rates on CRTs and LCDs are not comparable... CRTs (at 60Hz) actually build a new picture 60 times a second, while the 60 Hz for LCDs is only relevant internally, as far as I know...

Well, let's see... I bought my C64 in or around 2001. The same year I got my Atari 2600, although that was a present. As I was born 1985 there's now way I could've gotten those when they were new Gameboy Advance: 2009. I don't recall exactly when I got all my PCs, but I know that my first computer, a 286, that my parents bought for me used, and it was at the time when 486s were new. This one got upgraded bit by bit, VGA card, Soundblaster, 386, 486... in the end, it was a completely different machine, the only constant was its case. Later I got a Pentium 200 MMX, this was my first computer I bought when it was still new. This was like 1996? Something like that, as I said I don't recall correctly. My next PC was a Pentium III 1000 MHz, this also was pretty much new when I bought it (~2001). However, I got my current PC, a Pentium IV 2,66 GHz, used, again when already some double-core CPUs were around (late 2008). So, all in all, I'd say I'm a "late adopter".

I think that is only a theoretical possibility, or could you think of any method that could actually accomplish this?

Okay, that explains it. Thank you. Any guesses on the purpose of the red wire?

Yes, now that you say it, one example actually are the 7800 joypads... I don't have any system that supports two buttons, and on the Atari 2600 and C64 both buttons of course do the same... and even with the red and yellow wires missing, both buttons still work... I find that rather weird, how can it be that there are two different buttons, but on the systems that only support one button they magically both work the same, instead of - what I would have expected - one buttons works like normal and the other does nothing. I figured maybe the two buttons don't have seperate wires, but the system knows which one you pressed by some kind of timing trick... but when you say the yellow wire is for the second button this possibility is out of question.

Well, now that I got myself a soldering iron, I started to take my controller cords apart again... What's that supposed to mean, you ask? Well, I had used cables from broken controllers to make those of the working controllers longer, so I can sit back at the couch easily without having to put the VCS on the floor. Until now I just had twisted them together by hand, without soldering, so the connection wasn't very good and after a while they started to get loose. So now I'm soldering them to hopefully get more solid and lasting connections. Okay, my question is this: Some controller cords only have 6 wires in them - looks fine to me - while some have 2 additional ones, a red one and a yellow one. Turns out, if you cut them... nothing happens, the controller just works like normal. What are these wires for? Why are they there in the first place? I noticed that already quite some time ago, but didn't really care as long as it works... I'm talking about normal joystick controllers, not Paddles.

Phew, this game is relentless! I'll not post a high score until it gets to non-embarassing levels (i.e. 50,000 or more) - if that happens before Tuesday.

First of all, some games have, like I said, the PAL version adjusted, so that despite running at 50 fps instead of 60, the gameplay has the same speed. Last weeks "Super Mario Bros." is a prime example. I don't know about Gradius, but it's true that most games run slower in the PAL version, propably saved effort (=money) in converting them... Well, I don't really like the idea to make NES owners play with an Emulator, just because they live in a PAL region. Last season I asked the same question and they said it doesn't matter despite the (not exactly small) speed difference... I'd suggest if played with an Emulator, you should always go for the NTSC version, but with real hardware you can go PAL... However, it would be nice if you state you played the PAL version when posting your score. Also, stick to one format, don't start the week with the NTSC version, then switch over to PAL when you feel it's too hard or something like that.