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TPA5

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Posts posted by TPA5

  1. Posted

    HAHAHA!

     

    "CyberBullying"

     

    Really?

     

    This is obviously something dreamed up by lawyers who cater to totally liberal yuppies who can't stand to see their 10 year old daughter get hazed/ridiculed on facebook by all her 4th grade school mates.. And are willing to throw ridiculous amounts of money towards any end for their spoiled assed child, regardless of sound reason or lack thereof..

     

    Actually, that law was created to protect people (most often young people) from the frankly brutal attacks they can face online from genuine bullies. The law was written to protect people, however in this case I don't believe that law applies to the situation.

    • Like 1

  2. Posted

    I've pretty much decided to buy one of these next month. But would still like input from anyone who has already purchased one of these for their Classic Computer.

     

    There is quite an extensive list of systems it will run with.

     

     

     

    If you have never heard about this device before: << GO HERE >>

     

    I know the folks I've talked to that are into older DOS/Win9x gaming machines usually have one of these. I've heard nothing but good things, especially since actually floppy disks for games/programs are growing more rare. Personally, for my retro build I still use a floppy drive in my machine, then I transfer programs to floppies using a USB floppy drive on my main computer to use them on my retro-box. But I'm also weird, so I don't recommend anyone does things like I do.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    Has anyone been to the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana?

     

    I am going on a road trip from Seattle to Calgary and thought about taking a side trip there. However, another part of me really wants to go to Glacier National Park. I have to choose one or the other.

     

    What would really help me is to know how it compares to the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. I have been to the Computer History Museum, so I was wondering if I would basically see the same thing in the American Computer Museum.

     

    Any advice would be appreciated.

     

    Thanks in advance.

     

     

    Honestly, you should go to Glacier National Park. I don't know anything about the American Computer Museum, but I have been to Glacier National before. It has incredible views, great hiking paths, and some of the best views around.

  7. Posted

    I bit the bullet and placed an order for the super everdrive (bare board). Hopefully they get back in stock soon!

     

    Still open to advice on tools to use to carefully cut the slot out for the SD card, etc.

     

    Thanks again!

     

    If you don't have a dremel (the best option), you could try picking up a super-sharp Exacto knife (try to get the one with the black blades). Either make lots of light passes on the plastic you need to cut out, gradually working through it, or heat up the blade and basically melt/cut your way through. In my experience, making many light cuts takes longer, but if you have a steady hand lends a nice, clean result. Smooth with sandpaper and you should end up with a sweet looking SD slot.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    I know this was asked earlier in the thread, but has anyone actually given the GCW Zero a run? They look pretty neat, and they don't sit at an awful price-point. I have (well, still have) a Dingoo A320, which was just the ticket for me. Small size, smooth emulation, it was great until one of the shoulder buttons gave out. Now that I'm looking again I notice that besides the GCW Zero, there isn't much that fits the bill anymore.

  9. Posted · Edited by TPA5

    Have you considered the possibility that you're enjoying those games more simply because the controller is easier on your brain and your hands? No analog sticks, less fire buttons to worry about, just move your ship/character/cursor/whatever around and do the desired actions at the press of a button, ergonomically-speaking.

     

    Hey! What are you saying about my simple brain!? :-D

     

    It's possible that's one reason I enjoy it, less to think about in terms of input so I can just focus on the game. Although I never had much of a problem with more complex control schemes, and the Gamecube controller is one of the most comfortable I have ever utilized.

     

    But there is also something to be said for simple control schemes, like the classic Mega Man on the NES. What do you do? Hit 'A', hit 'B', and focus on being really, really good at that. It's amazing how many hours can be put into just a couple buttons.

  11. Posted

    I'm not sure if it's waxing nostalgic, but I honestly do genuinely enjoy older games more. Especially older PC games like the Lucas Arts adventure games, strategy games, etc.

     

    I also enjoy 2600, NES, SNES, PS1, and a host of other older systems as well, even though growing up I actually never owned them. I'll use the SNES example since I've been playing that more recently. I borrowed Legend of Zelda from a friend, and I have never played it before. Now that I am playing it, I feel it's one of the most enjoyable console adventure games I have had the pleasure of playing in a very long time. It's the same with Mega Man X, Legend of Gaia, Brain Lord, and the list goes on.

     

    I'm also building a MAME arcade cabinet because I adore arcade games like Galaga, Galaxian, Metal Slug, Q-Bert, 1942, Mortal Kombat, Area 51, and so on. Even though I never was able to really play in an arcade, I've tried those games on MAME and enjoyed them to such an extent I decided to build a cabinet I could play them on and have the true arcade feel.

     

    So I can say for myself in any case, I enjoy older titles because I simply enjoy older titles. Now if we were talking about the Gamecube, the first console my dad bought us kids (previously I was a PC-only gamer) then yes nostalgia for that console runs extremely high in my heart. But I also hold the Gamecube as my favorite console ever because it has some of the most kick-ass games of that generation (in my completely humble opinion). Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime 1+2 (my number one games of all time), Killer 7, etc, etc.

     

    Thanks for the awesome responses guys, I'm glad I'm not the only one whose a little weary of being treated as a dunce whenever I want to play a modern game. That's not to say I think all modern gaming is bad. There are some excellent titles I have quite enjoyed, such as the Mass Effect Trilogy and Skyrim. I don't want to sound as though I am complaining for the sake of complaining. I would just prefer if modern titles spent more time letting the player experience the game, instead of spending all their time showing grand cinematic and particle effects.

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    I like the KayPro too. It looks very sci-fi, in a good way. A timeless design. I can't think of any 'ugly' classic computers.

     

    Maybe not classic yet, but I found the semi-transparent stuff from apple really ugly:

    Clamshell_iBook_G3.jpg

     

     

    Edit: I see the styling of the KayPro is the same as the software boxes. Nice touch.

     

    You see that is some ugly-ass design. I like the old, boxy, utilitarian computers. They didn't get in my face with trendy design that looks hilariously out-of-date in a couple years, they had a job to do and they did it. The function of the computer dictated form.

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    It's something I've been wondering about, and something I've been wondering about other people too. I'd ask my friends, if I had any, but this forum gives me a wider range of opinions anyway. (I'm just kidding, I have friends. But most of them aren't into retro gaming)

     

    And yeah, I did post this in classic computing instead of Modern Gaming. I interact with you guys in this subforum way more often than anywhere else, so it made more sense to me to post it here. Also, Keatah will see it, and I know this is his kind of thread :-D

     

    Lately I've been really digging into retro games, and I've actually been noticing something interesting. I've completely stopped playing modern games in favor of old PC games, SNES, NES, Atari, etc. Maybe it's just pining for my early childhood, but I also think I'm growing continually wearier of the stupidity of modern games. Yes, they may be more sweeping and expansive in terms of "production values", but it comes at a cost. A removal of some of the soul, if you will.

     

    It seems to me that modern games have gone much the way of summer blockbuster movies. Loud, brash, in-your-face, and really, really... dumb. I feel most games are overblown, mildly interactive movies that I sometimes get to actually, you know, participate in.

     

    And I'm not just talking about modern shooters.

     

    Let's take Tomb Raider, for instance. A game that was incredibly enjoyable back in my early PC gaming days (and not just because I was a hormonal young lad). I recently had the mild displeasure of playing the newest iteration in the series, Tomb Raider. Besides the fact it follows the unforgivable sin of giving a new release the same bloody name as the original (which plays hell with Google searches and filing systems) my discontent went deeper than that. The entire game, from start to finish, simply felt hollow. It grabbed my hand and damn near dragged me through the game, occasionally grabbing my camera view to wrench my head around and say "LOOK AT THAT SCENERY, JUST LOOK AT IT." Instead of allowing me to explore the game and find things for myself, it demanded I play the game the way IT wanted me to play it. I wasn't a player, I was simply on a tour. I didn't have a choice about what happened, it was predetermined where I would go, look, jump, and shoot. I wasn't controlling the game, the game was controlling me.

     

    Contrast this with the games of yore, before mega-developers started pumping out sewage for the sweaty masses.

     

    Games like Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Tomb Raider classic (which I have to call "classic" because %^$ new releases having the same name as the originals), Final Fantasy, King's Quest, and the myriad more that I immensely enjoyed growing up. What they had in common? What most games had in common?

     

    They didn't hold my fricking hand.

     

    If I was an idiot and made a bad decision, I failed. Game over. Start from wherever you last saved, and heaven help if you forgot to save recently.

     

    If a puzzle was hard, I wracked my brain (sometimes for days) before conquering it. If a boss kicked my ass continuously, I tried different tactics and different methods until I crushed him, and my god did it feel good.

     

    See it wasn't about a game being hard for the sake of being hard. It was about games actually challenging you, and not popping up hints every 5 forsaken seconds. Or when you fail simply plopping you at the start of the room. Or just grabbing your hand and pulling you through the tough sections, because god forbid people actually get stuck for a little while on a section of a game. Is the global public really so stupid they can't handle a tough puzzle being thrown at them? How about a boss that requires you to figure out a pattern, find the best method of attack, and exploit the weakness? Instead of GIANT GLOWING PLEASE-SHOOT-ME-HERE areas, or some awful support character popping up to say "OH BOY, BETTER SHOOT THE LEGS CAUSE YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY FIGURE THAT SHIT OUT YOURSELF."

     

    *sigh*

     

    I'm going on a rant, and I certainly don't mean to. Perhaps it's just a distaste for modern gaming that's been growing into a constant nausea every time I see another modern shooter (Or as a certain fast-talking game reviewer calls them, 'Spunk Gargle Wee-Wee'), another vapid action-adventure game, or even another too-easy hold-my-hand RPG like Skyrim. I freaking love the Elder Scrolls. Skyrim? It's pretty great. Except when every miserable quest plops giant quest markers and compass directions so I don't get lost. Because we wouldn't want to actually, you know, have to put in actual work for anything. Just play connect-the-dots in 3D space until shit happens.

    Maybe some people see this as the natural progression for games. Perhaps this is the price of progress, and I'm one of the few it bothers. But the more I play modern games, the less I feel like playing them. There's no characters that engross me, there's no personality, there's no soul. For me, I don't play modern games much anymore. I've actually been trading Xbox 360 games for classic games, and now all my Xbox 360 console does is play Netflix. I'm tired of being treated like a dumbass who can't figure out simple patterns. I don't want to have a single tutorial pop-up, support character, or cut scene telling me how to play a game I already figured out how to play in the first 5 seconds. I want to play the damn game and explore that shit for myself. And if I fail? I learned one way to not play the game.

     

    Does anyone else feel this way? Am I unique in the modern masses? Or do you think others are getting weary of being treated like they're so dumb they can hardly muster the intellectual strength to place a disc in a console?

    • Like 12

  17. Posted

    I still hammer in BASIC programs for my 400 all the time. I find it cathartic, and the click-clack of the actual keyboard is nice (no membrane garbage for me, thankfully). Maybe it's because I'm weird (I know, I am) but I enjoy typing in a game before playing it. Makes me appreciate the work that went in to creating the game in the first place. Of course, I just type in BASIC programs, I don't go much further than that.

  19. Posted · Edited by TPA5

    I have noticed an increasing amount of console games arriving on mobile platforms. I played Grand Theft Auto 3 on my iPhone 5 last night, and while the game itself runs beautifully, the controls suck big time. I'm thinking about getting myself a tablet and blue tooth controller setup for these console rereleases. Any thoughts?

     

    I know that people connect PS3 controllers to their Android tablets often, it seems to be the most popular method. Here's a video showing that:

     

     

    Although that video mentions you can't use wireless controllers without a Sony tablet, if you root your Android you can use bluetooth controllers with a much wider range of devices. (And really, you should root any tablet you get if it has Android. It makes them so much more useful)

     

    In terms of the actual Android tablet you use, the world is your oyster. There are nigh-endless options for tablets in the Android world, although ones that stand above the rest are the Google Nexus 7, and the various offerings from Samsung. What budget are you thinking? How big do you want the screen? Is it important at all that the tablet have cellular data capability? Is there much else you would use the tablet for besides gaming?

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    I feel sorry for these Pentium Pro CPUs.

    http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=Pentium+pro&_pgn=2&_skc=200&rt=nc

     

    They're being put on display, in a meat market, to be consumed in the fiery hell of a gold recycler to make jewelry for some illegitimate bitch kid of a rich movie "star".

     

    Instead they should be coveted for the vast powerhouses they were back in the day. You know, if the internet were to be disrupted and damaged. These chips might be the only computational devices left. And they could theoretically bring tens of thousands of dollars each in a post apocalyptic dystopian society.

     

    Today's kids are so high up on the tech food chain that if it were to break, they'd all hit the ground so hard they wouldn't be able to function. I mean like in the 1940's they invented the transistor and from that basic part you could build anything. But today, kids don't know what a transistor is. How are they expected to build anything from the ground up when all they know how to do is push shiny app icons and look like geniuses?!?!? WTF man.. this is crazy!!

     

     

    You know, I like your rants Keatah. You find the most unique and interesting things to bitch about, and I can really get behind that haha :-D

     

    I'll definitely agree with your line about kids today being mostly ignorant about technology. To many it doesn't matter about why or how something works, all that matters is they have the phone/tablet/computer that whatever hip commercial tells them they want. When I was a kid, I was in awe that you could take sound and video and somehow copy it to a magnetic reel on a VHS tape, and then have that turn back into sound and video on the TV. I was (and am) fascinated by things that other people have long moved on from. Hell, even the idea that something like a command on a computer can be turned into invisible waves of data, shot into the empty darkness of space, and eventually land on the receiver dish of a fricking robot on Mars. Damn.

     

    Problem is, the collective curiosity of this current generation of kids/teenagers appears to me to be so much lower than previous generations. I know that every generation says that, but honestly it truly does. I'm not very old, so I can't speak for much when I say this, but hearing my dads stories about being on the edge of the computer revolution and living through a time that changed the planet as we know it, it was curiosity that fueled so much of it. On his part, he jumped in with an Atari 400 (that he could barely afford, he missed more than a few meals to pay for it) and would stay up until 3 in the morning, catch a few hours of sleep then go to work. And really, it was personalities like that which propelled the industry.

     

    Today, no one seems to care why things work the way they do. Like I said, I'm not very old and as such do not have much of the rich experiences many of you on Atari Age do. However I can remember in high school how frustrated I was with classmates or kids in the younger grades. They had little curiosity, and no wonder for anything but the next new tech toy.

     

    But hell, maybe I was just born in the wrong time. Modern technology doesn't do much for me these days it seems, my interest lays in much older fare.

     

    Anyway that was a tangent. The short version?

     

    You bring up some good points, Keatah.

     

     

    (But I don't think we'll be needing P-Pro's for Mad-Max currency anytime soon ;) )

  24. Posted · Edited by TPA5

     

    Welll, there ya go... I spy an RJ-45 jack on that puppy, and that's exactly what that device is designed to do. That sounds perfect for something like that, and that's actually a really cool implementation for one. I suppose these days it would probably be pretty easy to have a BBS running as a background task on your PC, but then your PC has to be always on. With this cheap $45 device you could maintain a 24 hour BBS that could soldier on even when the PC is off or asleep. You could probably write the BBS in BASIC... and I'm wondering what sort of TCP support functions they built into their impletmentation of BASIC.

     

    I don't believe they have any TCP functions built in, though you can confirm here: http://propellerpowered.wikispaces.com/COLOR+BASIC+Language+Reference

     

    Is that an RJ-45 jack? I don't see it in the specifications list; although with the pins you can send serial data to the computer, so in theory you could use software like this: http://www.pcpromotions.co.uk/spc/legacy.htm to push the serial data over to TCP/IP.

    Unfortunately, this adds some obfuscation to the original idea of just plugging a little something into your router. In theory, with the expandability of the board, you could add your own RJ-45 jack, but then I'm not sure how you would interface with it from within their BASIC implementation, seeing as it has no functions to support TCP. I should email them and ask, they've added functions to the BASIC source over the months and years to support functions the community has asked for.

  25. Posted · Edited by TPA5

    Wait unitl someone says your whole wheat bread sucks when you go to sell a slice :)

     

     

     

    Unfortunately, that analogy doesn't hold too well, considering that old video games are a limited supply, and bread is virtually limitless. But imagine if some people started buying bread, putting it into an acrylic container, and then reselling it, causing your favorite type of bread's price to go up over time.

     

    Okay, okay, so it seemed like a better analogy when I was hungry.

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