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hex65000

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Posts posted by hex65000

  3. Posted

    How did they botch Castlevania X on the SNES? I'm under the impression that it still commands a noteworthy price (not $130!) -- not that I've looked really hard for it or anything. I'm happy with my complete Genesis version of Bloodlines. And I SO suck at the castlevania series.

     

    Hex.

    [ Running on mutant technology... ]

  4. Posted

    There were a few in there I don't have: Hunt N' Score, 3d-tic tac toe, Chess, Quick Step, and Spiderdroid. If it was just for the dice game, I wouldn't have bid on it. And I'm hoping the manuals are in decent shape, I can fill out my stack of those a bit too.

     

    Man either I'm buzzing from that auction or my coffee is extra-mighty this morning.. 0_o

     

    Hex.

    [ When I bang I boom... ]

  5. Posted

    That was my impression. A hearty dose of UV will wipe em' clean. Exposure to light over time will also yeild the same result. BTW, those look a lot like the protos posted in the 'prototypes' forum. Any comments from the experts?

     

    Hex.

    [ Run the clock... pick up the stock. ]

  8. Posted

    I used to get kids come in and I'd tell them about the old school game machines and they'd say something like the Playstation 1 or maybe the SNES. I woud suggest, old school as in Atari. The one that mad me take a step back was "What's Atari?" I know, preaching to the choir here. :D

     

    It is refreshing to see that some of the younger generation are looking at the classic 8-bit stuff and taking it seriously.

     

    Story:

    One aquiantence of mine is heavily into more modern stuff. He does play selected NES/SNES titles, but he focuses mostly on the current gen stuff. I promised him a surprise one day which was that I brought my boxed complete Vectrex up to let him experience one of the most novel 8-bit systems of the day. Not to mention, I am told no emulation does this thing justice. He balked when he saw the overlay and when I told him that the unit would hum. :) On the other hand he got a kick out of Minestorm and was actually annoyed when I told him that I had Blitz!, but neglected to bring it with me. Score one for our team. :D

     

    Hex.

    [ Age and treachery ROCK. ]

  9. Posted

    I can't think of any noteworthy recourse with this jerk, the lot was as is, it's the blatent lie of 'untested' that leaves a bad tase in my mouth. Thankfully, he seems pretty incompetent as far as how to fix units up. That may be my saving grace here. I have the proper tools and I'm pretty handy with an iron. And by gumbo, If I can solder a 68000 QFP on a Genesis, I can pop off a lithium battery. ;) I'm thinking that Yu-gi-oh! cart will work nicely.

     

    @ Brad: Thanks for verifying what I suspected of this guy.

     

    I didn't mind playing Bruce Lee terribly. When you drop ~$90 on junk you need pleasure where you can find it. Don't spoil it for me! :D It does look like a release title though -- as in the Dreamcast could probably pull this off. The camera control was the pits though.

     

    Like I said initially, I have already ordered some replacement parts. I picked up a Phillips drive and a Decepticon jewel from this place: http://craxtion.com/ . I spent about 4 hrs Fri. night digging through the Xbox Scene archives. Along with it, i had to grapple with the culture shock that comes with some forum boards.

     

    @ Jeepnut : Once the machine is operational in its stock condition, then I'll look at the modding or I'm going to wonder if I killed it during the mod process. Expect a PM eventually to get your feedback on my intent.

     

    Just an update on my progress with this lot: The NES is up and running. I cleaned it inside and outside and replaced the connector (like I always have with these toaster oven decks.) I had more of those MCM connectors than I thought I did. :| That's okay, it'll be an experiment on their reliability.

    However, I noticed a nick in the cable of the NES controller; it still works, but I'll repair it. I also have given the 2600 shell a bath. You would not recognize it other than the big scuff on the woodgrain finish. The electronics inside the 2600 will be addressed next. Thank goodness AA has schematics.

     

    Hex.

    [ Live damn you Live! ]

  12. Posted

    Just ranting at the walls here... For the uninterested, just move along. :D

     

    I won this:

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=6948087518

     

    And after cruising his feedback I knew that the Xbox was going to be DOA. I did expect that everything else could _probably_ be saved with some time and work. I also feared that this may have been some junk dealer and I'd get a 'reverse bug bomb' in my house. He was straight up on shipping, and packed surprisingly well, but what was inside has been beyond my expectations as far as 'deadness' goes. Lets start with what you see and then we'll talk about the "great deal of game discs, catridges, and controllers that are not pictured"

     

    XBox: Ver 1.0, has been refurbed at least once and _may_ have been violated by the seller. First of all it rattled. Which to me is a big flag to not even plug it in without opening it first. This was to be my sacrificial machine to gain experience in the XBox Modchip arena. (I am beyond overwhelmed there) My judgement was good to crack it open before plugging it in. I found a 1/4" metal screw wedged among the power supply. That would have been exciting. Also the Thompson CD drive is quite dead. I bought a replacement unit and hope to at least be up and running. I suspect that I'll have to act quickly though, because the hard drive is making unhappy sounds too. My impression is that I'll need this drive alive for at least the modchip and disc clone portions of the show. It's a Western Dig. drive, my experience with them is that you can almost set a clock to their failure point (about year 4 or 5) hey, look at the time. (MFG date: 2001)

     

    2600: If you look closely at the cord wrapped around the unit you will find that they severely (and poorly) kludged a RCA -> F adapter together. Of course there are no parts (I have parts) After at least wiping out the cart slot a little bit I used an ET from a separate lot as my sacrificial cart. It fired up. Yay! Next the Testcart. my initial tests look okay, BUT the video looks like crap and the colors seem to be rolling on the color bars. Not an unqualified success, but still... more poking and research. :x I've already tried the tuning coil in the RF modulator and no dice. Something is really goofy here.

     

    NES: The connector is beyond floppy. (no surprise) After I give the case a bath I'll drop on the last of my MCM connectors and see what happens. At this point the best I could get out of it was a blinking screen. Surprisingly, the controller actually worked after just plugging it in.

     

    N64: Stripped bare. That black blob that looks mostly like a jumper pack is actually an Interact PS2 DVD remote IR receiver. I may have a few extra bits to attach to this guy to test it, but it's just not worth my time right now.

     

    Controllers, cables, & memories: haven't touched any of them but the NES controller which works. My prediction is that the memories for the 64 will be junk, but the beat up rumble pack will work just fine.

     

    GB games: The three that are pictured are MegaMan Battle Network 1, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Eternal Duelists Soul, and Zelda: Link's Awakening. The big hint of the blatent deceit on this lot is that the price tags from this guy's brick & mortar _game shop_ are still on the back, and that he wrote in permanent marker on the Yu-Gi-Oh! game 'BAD' Again, the rule of thumb was: don't apply power until I have looked it over.

    -Yu-gi-oh: looks like it may have gotten some kind of damage from a liquid. It is truly gone. The game does not even POST on my GBA.

    -Megaman: fired right up, but the save feature is goofy. It'll retain the save state for a short time and then 'forget' I suspect the battery is going dead, and perhaps the GBA itself is partially recharging the battery. Regardless, I'm goig to replace the cell and see what happens.

    Zelda: Link's Awakening: It seems to work okay. But the sticker is mangled and the plastic is discolored from environmental abuse.

     

    The 'bonus' material consisted of two NES games (Mario 3 & Double Dragon 2) 4 PS2 games (Ape Escape, Tekken, Tarzan, something else) and 1 xbox game (Bruce Lee). These are just loose CDs, no cases, paperwork, etc. Of the CD games, Bruce Lee was the only one I didn't just throw away. On three of the four you could see light through the media and were badly scratched up. The fourth one had a sticker that said, "This media is cracked and cannot be repaired" Yep, there was a little dimple on the disc that wasn't obvious. Also these CDs had his game store's stickers on it. Untested my incredibly hairy ass. :x

    Mario 3 and Double Dargon 2 both had filthy contacts and about 12 q-tips later, I was willing to put it in a deck. Both of these fired up and played well on my top loader and it let me test the NES pad he included wich also worked.

    Bruce Lee was found after I had finally plugged up the XBox and opened the drive to put a test disc in, the disc looks good there are only very minor scratches, and no nasty can see light through it holes. I played that for about an hour or so on my working deck -- too bad I already own a copy still in the shrinkwrap.

     

    Overall, this was a frustrating lot of stuff. I bid too high on items that the seller pretty much lied about. Our lesson of the day is: "Untested as is" = "This is some of my dead crap and I hope you're dumb enough to buy it."

     

    So far the tally of fully functional items are: Nes Controller, Bruce Lee game, Zelda GB cart, Mario 3, and Double Dragon 2.

     

    Thanks for listening gang!

     

    Hex.

    [ Repair RAGE! ]

  14. Posted

    The ship floats in Asteroids using a string that is less than 1 pixel wide so you can't see it.

     

    However, did you know that real space rocks WERE injured in the creation of Asteroids. It wasn't until Astroblast for the Intellivision where they realized they could use construction paper, packing chips and gram-crackers to simulate a space rock.

     

    :D leg>

     

    Hex.

    [ ... trading one bad idea for another ... ]

  15. Posted

    Partial bump...

     

    So far, the two ideas that appeal the most to me are:

    - The redesign of the Colecovision; What I've noticed so far is that even though the parts may have been pretty standard, finding parts and data sheets on the audio and video ICs has been rather frustrating. If anything, this would be the brick wall that will stop that happy-train.

     

    - A 'universal' controller tester. This would be an excersise in programming, interfacing, research and design. It is however an 'oddball' project. The idea is that I interface a USB device to the PC (lots of background work right there), write a basic I/O driver :? THEN attach the other end to a FPGA that will control interface hardware for various joysticks. The FPGA takes that data -- pipes it through the USB port and out on the PC screen. This may be way too ambitious, but my big box of PSx controllers can argue otherwise. :)

     

    Thoughts?

     

    Hex.

    [ When the minimum order is $500 and I only need 1 or 2... ]

  17. Posted

    I'd say get the 3d pad. It's not horribly expensive and like others have said it's a decent controller. The only downside to it is that the analog portion of the controller doesn't get much use in anything other than Nights. Such a waste.

     

    I don't think you'll hit any compatability issues with Japanese controllers FWIW.

     

    Hex.

    [ Must decide wether to do... or not do. ]

  18. Posted

    My impression from that article was to look at revising the GBA system and not ditch support for the DS. (I still want a DS -- I'm just holding out because I just don't want to shell out the cash) Also note that they are concerned about piracy on the GBA carts. This leads me to suspect the possibility of region coding or some other new and improved DRM scheme. I could be wrong though.

     

    I am (still) happy with my original GBA.

    Mind you mine has an afterburner kit in it. :D It's so sad that you can't buy the kits at a reasonable price anymore.

     

    Before we panic / spout completely unfounded opinions on this, perhaps we should just calm down and wait to see what appears.

     

    Hex.

    [ Knows that meaning of panic... I live that moment lots sometimes. :) ]

  19. Posted

    Actually, a senior last year did a mame cabinet. Overall he did a good job. At first he was trying to interface an old arcade monitor to his PC, but gave up when the image quality was pretty crappy. Instead he mounted a 19" monitor inside and worked up a controller -> KB interface. I played a lot of TMNT that day. :D Keep hitting me guys. Some of these definately sound like awesome mini-projects though.

     

    Hex.

    [ "No matter what you do ... it's got to be... funky." -- James Brown ]

  22. Posted

    Hey, I was surprised with the Home Improvement SNES game. It's a 2d platformer with some aspects of Sonic and a flimsy storyline, but at the same time the feel was competent, the boards I did get a chance to explore rewarded you for looking around thoroughly.

     

    Mind you it's a game based off of Tim Allen. . . My expectations were pretty low at the starting gate.

     

    Tell me more about the Family Guy game. I mean that series has more ADD than.. I..

     

    What was I talking about?

     

    Hex.

    [ " Because I hate those guys so very... very... much" --Cartman; South Park ]

  23. Posted

    Since its so plentiful you can probably find one in the wild for a dollar (or less). And really, I'm sure you've spent more money on something you didn't like in the past. A trivial outlay just makes the risk more palatable if you aren't impressed. Do go through the manual first though, it'll help the game make more sense.

     

    I did admittedly play ET a lot when I was kid. It did not age well to me, but still. I've blown more money on dumber things...

     

    Hex.

    [ Some might call it keepin' it 'real'... I call it perspective. ]

  24. Posted

    Here's one for you guys, I need some ideas and want to see what the community can come up with.

     

    Why: Soon, oh so very soon, I will finally start my senior year at school. It is a good thing. I am sick of school. However, as required I must create something original to show that I am truly clueful. That's where you can help me out here.

    So...

    I'm soliciting for ideas for my Senior design project. I don't need nuts and bolts aspects, but some suggestions for an item that would be useful to the retro community in general.

     

    My knee-jerk reaction was to attempt a homebrew game. I actually have mulled one over in my head and know what I would want to do in it. However, that is more of a programming project than a hardware related one. While doing some software work is not out of the question, the idea is to perform something more hardware-centric.

     

    Other requirements:

    - Not redundant to an existing project. There's no real point in doing the same work twice and run the risk that work has been plagurized.

    - Usefulness: The project has to have some reasonable application that is not limited to about 10 people.

    - Cool factor: Let's face it. nobody likes 'lame' projects. It has to be interesting and have some degree of appeal to the unintiated.

    - Reasonable time to complete: I have to do this and my regular classload and work. An overly ambitious project will never get done.

     

    Hex.

    [ Needs to not watch any more South Park for about a month... ]

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