hex65000

I'd vote for Longhorn's mods. I'm just sitting back right now until he finishes the one for the 5200 and to give him a chance to catch up on his backlog. The reports I've read on when they are built correctly, the picture looks great. That's what I'm looking for because my 2600 looks like crap on my fancy-schmancy 1080p television. Hex. [ Needs a 'stop time dammit!' power... ]

I may be the minority, but my DS library is bloody huge and has seen more recent purchases than most of the other platforms I own. The 360 is close though. Am I the only person on the planet who isn't pirating DS titles? They come in nice cases that store easily and I can always load up a couple of 'clips' of loose carts for travel purposes. <shrug> If I'm gonna warez something, it needs to be close to unobtainable at the average price. So I could see pirating Electroplankton, until I realized that it's more of a tech-demo than a game. Can't see spending crazy money on it that's for sure. ANYway.... My wishlist for the 3ds is simply that they hold out long enough to get the cost down and the technology right. I can see the priming the supply chain for parts being an issue. <shrug> It's not a day 1 buy for me either, and would like to try it in person first -- though you're right, there will have to be demo kiosks. I'm very happy with the DSi right now other than that Opera is crap-slow rendering pages. I'd like to upgrade to a DSiXL, but can't justify the cost. Honestly, this was the only thing from E3 that sounded interesting to me so take that as you will. While Nintendo will miss the Christmas season, it's not like there's a lack of similar product out there. The DS lite/i/iXL s will keep the least common denominator happy until they are ready. Hex. [ "It's time for a rethink..." --Red Green ]

I didn't vote on this topic, but wanted to throw in something I haven't seen mentioned. This is minor, but one thing I don't like about the 360 slims is that they changed the form factor so that all those 'collectors faceplates' are effectively unusable now. Which I think is kind of silly since there is still quite a number of different faceplates out there. If it wasn't for that, I'd be more interested in the 360 slim as a spare. The PS3 Fat/slim I have no meaningful opinion on... Hex. [ Likes his discs shiny and his contacts clean... ]

I'd rather see prices for this and the Indus drives... Hex. [ Is NOT having a rainbow day... ]

Ars Technica Link was broken for me... fixed Ars Technica link Hex. [ Read the 'adventures of...' article and thinks sometimes he's in the wrong line of work... Nah.]

Two things for the record: 1) I prefer the Wico to the stock controllers mostly because the analog feels overall more responsive. The buttons I am not overly thrilled by. The stock controllers do less for me, primarily in that the fire button layout isn't suited for my big paws and the stick doesn't feel as responsive. the numeric keypad has never been a problem for me though. <shrug> In short, neither solution does a ton for me. 2) Atariksi: Did you know that you don't have to quote the entire thread? It's just a waste of bandwidth to quote two screens of a conversation to simply add a paragraph on the end. Quoting the relevant bits and discarding the rest makes reading easier overall, and the conversation is right above your post. Hex. [ Felt it needed to be said... ]

You are correct on what it is... Let's put it in perspective though. A lot of todays youth know of only inkjet and laser printers. the character based printers (daisy wheel, band, chain, etc.) are effectively antiques in their mind. Either that or they are just scamming, but the price isn't crazy and their other items look like they were in a lot of other stuff. Strikes me as a junk dealer more than anything else. <shrug> Hex. [ Not sure if he's helping or not... feh. ]

Pending with BuddyBuddies... Hex. [ " I'm magical! " --Me, just happily messing with the heads of my students. ]

Me too. It's a great game, but there's some home-front problems looming. I had one nibble, but I don't think they are interested. Last try and then it goes on the GGavel... Hex. [ Still hasn't caught up at work... At least I'm making progress though. ]

... And ordered. Hex. [ Has done nothing but do real work all week... Pfeh! weeeak... ]

Just finished 'A Witch's Tale' for DS. The main character is Liddell a somewhat dressed witch. Hex. [ What is GOING ON in this looney bin?!? ]

Game has been opened and is in flawless shape. $19+shipping to you. Hex. [ Has way too much on his plate... I need a nap. ]

You're welcome. I've learned that if one person asks, then it's likely that others were asking the same question and just didn't say anything. I appreciate your vote of confidence. I really don't have a fixed timetable here and I will not take anyone's money until I have parts and completed units to fulfill the requests I get. Having a deposit is a recipe for problems if something happens along the way. As things get closer, I'll likely make an interest check thread and buy enough parts to meet that demand and we'll work the rest out from there. Short answer: When there are units ready to mail out, I'll ask for money. I'll still need to do some serious work and testing before I'm even comfortable declaring things at Rev. 1.0 Fortunately, I have an AtariMax for testing, so I can try a majority of games here when the time comes. That's some good work there. That said, I can make some educated guesses on what he did based on his schematic. The end result is similar, but he's likely taking the 8bit value off the Playstation analog controller and just piping that value directly into 1MOhm digital pots. Since I've got a bit of variance and the full resistance scale is less than 1MOhm, I can't quite do the same thing. I think I've got the calculation portion worked out. If that's true, my life just got better. Still have to simulate it with everything glued together. Let's just say that 8052.com may have just saved my bacon. Hex. [ Doesn't actually LIKE bacon... ]

I'm mostly a "brute force" programmer for the most part. I've worked on some big projects where I realized quickly that there needed to be building blocks to handle the interfacing. You could use them in a stand alone format or roll them into a bigger program. Mind you, that was a high level language. (LabView) I also have this dichotomy of that I like to work in either Labview or Assembly. As one of my friends would say "Stitch THAT Trebeck!" When I do Assembly, I try to break it up into reasonable sized modules, at the same time I try to avoid doing anything fancy and try to stick with consolidating where it's obvious I should or where I'm probably wasting more resources in making a subroutine tree too many layers deep and should just do a copy-paste of the offending code chunks. I am not an 'elegant' programmer. I'm more interested in getting the program to work and the hardware to 'talk'. If the time/money/motivation is there, I can always revisit it and try to streamline the process. It makes sense to me, because I'm not a computer science guy. As for documentation, I tell this to students when they first start programming and it paraphrases from the Church of the SubGenius: "Don't just document your code when you're learning a language, document the HELL out of it!" Because, it's no fun looking at ASM code that you wrote a year ago and you find yourself going: "What the hell does this do and what does it touch?" I still do that, but I've trained myself to be pretty verbose in my comments that it's not horrible to get beck up to speed on what a module is doing. And when you're first learning a language/architecture those comments help reinforce what you are learning by essentially repeating to yourself what it is that your code is doing. Just my thoughts... Hex. [ Dreads his upcoming programming challenge... ]

Instead of cluttering up the Redemption thread any more, I decided to just start a new one. So to recap: I'm slowly working on this and have started a video development monologue/discussion on Youtube. The three installments to date are: : Background on previous projects mostly and a little bit of what brought on this project. : The best solution of how to connect to the Atari 5200 that I could come up with and how I got there. : Updates, clarifications, a simple demonstration, and a discussion of the top level architecture of the adapter. If you have questions, ask away. Hex. [ Needs a new plan... ]

PM in your box concerning the everdrives... Hex. [ Did not sleep well and fears it's gonna be a LONG day.... ]

I typically use desoldering braid and occasionally one of the suction plungers for stubborn through-hole parts. My workhorse is a Weller WES51 which at a glance seems comparable to the Hakko that was initially recommended. If you plan on doing fine pitch soldering, invest in a microscope of some kind. I have an old Leica that I pull out, there are some inexpensive USB models out there too that can also do the job. Hex. [ Can't be tired already... it's early! ]

Oh, sorry. I figured the interested parties had found this already. Linky... As a side note, a length of nylon snakeskin (Don't know the formal name for the stuff) makes the pair of cables look pretty pro. McMaster Carr to the rescue! Hex. [ Estimates cost to be close to that of the Best Electronics price at the end of the day. Not GREAT, but not bad either... ]

Got Starcraft 2 for my birthday as a gift. I have awesome friends. Just starting to go through the campaign on Normal now. I've also done a couple rounds against the AI on normal. I'm still flagging badly in terms of getting used to the build tree. I'm best playing Protoss in SC1, so I'm trying to make that transition. Found it really annoying that Immortals can't shoot up, while Stalkers can. Look up damn you. Those guns swivel, just point and click dammit! Also have learned that once a Vespene mine is empty, it goes offline v/s the depleted behavior that you see in SC1. (2 gas per trip (SC1) v/s no gas at all (SC2)) Anyway, I'm not doing competitive multiplayer yet until I've ramped up on my ability to play the game. Still, if you wanna add me, shoot me a PM. Hex. [ REALLY needs to get his desktop up and running again. The laptop works, but it becomes a toaster during play. ]

While I don't particularly like DLC for various reasons, this is one case where I have gotten good mileage for my money. Still wish I could get a CD with everything without having to rebuy the game. Anyway, the fourth content installment in Borderlands was announced... A new level cap, and some other minor tweaks it seems. Joystiq link Hex. [ Between this and Sacred 2, I could have no life for a good 6 months and still not have done everything... 0_o ]

So today I'm cleaning out the basement and I stumble across the Timex Sinclair 2068's that we had when I was younger along with some tapes and two 'productivity' cartridges. (State's and Capitals and the finance cart). Now I'd like to get these resurrected and if I'm lucky the tapes still work (but I doubt it). I also need a power brick, since the original has wandered off. As a side note I had located the 2068 box ages ago and thought I had either given the machines away or they got thrown away. While not a total victory since they lack a power supply, I'm calling it a win. I'd like to get some software for these to play with it again, any good resources out there? I know the 2068 pretty much bombed in the US. Hex. [ Also has a ZX81 (sinclair 1000) with a kludged on full keyboard that his dad rigged up way back when... ]

New installment. My camera work wasn't great on this one. Still, this was something that was kicking my butt in terms of problems. Hex. [ Will be doing coding over the weekend... ]

I have solved this within reason using the best kind of force: Brute Force. How did I do it? I'll post the answer soon enough. Hex. [ Also feels that the best kind of kill is OVERkill. ]

Sure... I'll bite. PM on the way. Hex. [ <Insert the 60's Batman transition sound here.> ]

What happened? I've had some bugs pop up here and there, but nothing that made it impossible to progress. (so far) Hex. [ May just cry a little if he has wasted 70+ hours and can't clear the game... ]