stamasd wrote:

For recording I use a Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD external USB sound card connected to my daily laptop. I chose that card because it also provides MIDI in and out, it's the cheapest model they make that has this capability. There are cheaper models if you don't need the MIDI, such as the U-Phoria UM2 which is around $30 (the one with MIDI is $80). As a cheaper alternative, if you have a machine with line-in that should work as well - but laptops have typically only mic in these days and that's not very good for recording.
The software I used for recording is Audacity which is free https://www.audacityteam.org/ I captured as 44100Hz 32-bit float then exported as plain WAV, which I then converted to FLAC with http://flacfrontend.sourceforge.net/ (Audacity has an option to export directly to FLAC but I did it that way because I wanted to keep the intermediate WAV as well).

Thanks for the recommendation. Something else to find room to fit into my budget.

I do have machines with line in, but I'm skeptical of the quality I'd get out of them, given that a sub-$3 CA chinese USB audio fob blows away every Intel HDA motherboard I've ever encountered for for microphone SNR. (I actually keep a few around to give away to friends who I want to voice-chat with.)

I doubt I'll need the MIDI though. The cheap $5 Chinese USB-MIDI bridges seem to do just fine in the configurations I've tested them with. (Mostly things like "Yamaha PSR-E413 (USB only) ↔ My Main PC ↔ USB-MIDI Adapter ↔ MIDI-Gameport Adapter ↔ SoundBlaster 16" or "Yamaha PSR-E413 ← My Main PC ← USB-MIDI Adapter ← Cheap RadioShack MIDI keyboard". using aconnectgui for patching.)

OldCat wrote:

Ah, I see you're man of culture as well. I don't have exactly the same titles, but our collections do overlap in good part: Lumines I and II, both Capcom Collections, Daxter, Persona... I also have a couple of Neo Geo classics and would highly recommend Persona 3 Portable and Tactics Ogre: Let's Cling Together. These days I tend to play most PSP titles on PS Vita (OLED screen FTW), but some titles are UMD-only, hence I keep my old PSP stashed in the cupboard in the basement too.

To be honest, I try to keep my "for the experience of it" stuff (eg. building and using retro PCs) separate from my general gaming so my expectations for a given game can instead be tied to commodity hardware via an ABI-insulative layer of emulation and Linux... so I only really use my PSP as a UMD dumper for PPSSPP these days. (I make backups of my old floppies and CD-ROMs. Why wouldn't I "make backups" of my expectations for the experience of playing them?)

At the moment, I'm working my way back through my old platformer favourites. (Completed Super Mario World without pressing switches and I'm near 100%-ing Yoshi's Island. Beat Donkey Kong Country. Near completion for DKC2 and DKC3. Completed Mario 64 and I'm most of the way through Banjo-Kazooie. Beat Sonic the Hedgehog. Spyro's on hold because the swamp world was never a favourite of mine. Not sure how far I am through Rayman since I never beat it as a kid. Beat Super Mario Land 1-3 and taking a break from Wario Land 2. Beat Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and still working on the remake of Rondo of Blood.)

That said, Persona 3 Portable is actually on my TODO list already. (As are the PSP ports of Disgaea, and Disgaea 2. I already have PS2 versions of all three, but I'm not even sure it's possible to get comfortably performant PCSX2 on my Athlon II X2 270 with those titles while PPSSPP is a breeze.)

I hadn't considered Tactics Ogre: Let's Cling Together though, so thanks for that. I'll definitely look into it.

Duouk2000 wrote:

Are Apple bad with repairs now? I've only every used them once when I had an iPhone and the service was impressively good. it's a shame if they've gone downhill.

Apparently the iMac Pro is infamous when it comes to repair in various ways. Searching "iMac Pro" on YouTube will turn up a variety of videos to that effect.

Here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_NRcy5mxU

Duouk2000 wrote:

Are Apple bad with repairs now? I've only every used them once when I had an iPhone and the service was impressively good. it's a shame if they've gone downhill.

Yep. Not the same Apple I used to praise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdwDvz47lNw

Louis Rossman has several videos on how Apple cuts corners on their hardware(desktop and mobile).

Off topic, but I have to chime in. Apple computers today ares are GARBAGE. I've owned five Macs and every single one had serious problems. My Powerbook G4, Macbook Pro 2006, and Macbook Pro 2011 all had GPUs die. And I took care of my computers. Apple refused to repair my "vintage" 2011 MBP even though I bought Applecare. They wouldn't even give me a discount towards a new computer.

I couldn't stand to live without an Apple trackpad and a 16:10 screen. So I reluctantly bought a new 2015 MBP without a discrete GPU that will eventually die and without the new keyboard that will die because of a speck of dust and without the popping screen and without the electrical noise from the speakers. It helped that Amazon gave me $500 off the price.

Don't buy a Mac....

FuzzyLogic wrote:

I couldn't stand to live without an Apple trackpad and a 16:10 screen. So I reluctantly bought a new 2015 MBP without a discrete GPU that will eventually die and without the new keyboard that will die because of a speck of dust and without the popping screen and without the electrical noise from the speakers. It helped that Amazon gave me $500 off the price.

As much as I want to call you a fool, that'd make me a hypocrite.

For all my efforts to use commodity and/or open-source everything to ensure ready replacement stock, I willingly chose to grow accustomed to a hard-to-replace keyboard and mouse.

For the mouse, I'm using a discontinued Logitech G3 (wired, IR sensor for no red glow, standard ambidextrous shape, two extra buttons for desktop cycling). Thankfully, Logitech came out with the G203, which is close enough (physically and light-disabling-wise) that I'll probably buy one to keep as a spare.

As for the keyboard... a standard 104-key layout (ie. pre-2013) Unicomp buckling-spring board (I make heavy use of the Windows keys for custom keybinds). Thankfully again, I did manage to get a good deal on a spare that just needs some yellowed keycaps (for which replacements are still manufactured) either retr0brighted or replaced.

That said, fool that I am, when I have the money, I'm willing to grow accustomed to something even harder to have spares for... at some point, I'd like to acquire (then write a US104-approximating keymap for) a 122-key Model F, since I fondly remember the Model F switches on the original IBM PC we had when I was really young. (It has to be the 122-key variant, though, because that's the only Model F I know that has keys in the right places to map a US101 layout with the remaining three US104 keys moved slightly.)

...and I'm told that being used to Model F and going back to Model M is like being used to Model M and going back to Cherry MX Blue. Ugh.

Changed the sound cards in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus as the ES1688F doesn't work in MS-DOS for some odd reason, even though I put the correct parameters for the sound card, or maybe bad drivers in general and I copied games I purchased on GOG.com and Steam.com for MS-DOS, and I didn't double-check to see if I copied the audio drivers for some of the games. Aladdin gives me an XMS error message, Lion King doesn't produce sound (missing drivers), and the Jungle Book game (haven't tested yet) might be missing the drivers that I accidentally removed due to HDD space limitations, sadly.

And one picture for page 487.

Tested floppy drives. "fixed" a couple of them just by cleaning them.

Working on figuring out which drives are actually dead and which ones will work.

Found out that all but 1 of the floppy drives I bought in a lot of "dead" floppy drives are just fine.

The dead one was a TEAC 3.5". Tried a few different jumper settings, re-seating the cables, cleaning the heads.. but still just gives an error when trying to read disks. Oh well.

I've been mostly sourcing out an 8/16-bit multi-I/O card so that I can add a serial port and maybe a parallel port to my 486 build. The PC Chips motherboard has these onboard but I have no idea what the pinouts are and the three backplane connectors I have don't work, so it's not whatever they're using!

Been also looking for an 8-bit ISA high-density floppy controller.

That's been about the only retro thing today. 😀

ssokolow wrote:

That said, Persona 3 Portable is actually on my TODO list already. (As are the PSP ports of Disgaea, and Disgaea 2. I already have PS2 versions of all three, but I'm not even sure it's possible to get comfortably performant PCSX2 on my Athlon II X2 270 with those titles while PPSSPP is a breeze.)

I hadn't considered Tactics Ogre: Let's Cling Together though, so thanks for that. I'll definitely look into it.

It's a really good SRPG game, a little similar to Disgaea and Final Fantasy Tactics, but with fairly serious story and lots of branching storylines. The original was a SNES game, PSP version is a remake, but is widely considered as the best version, partially because of possibility to rewind moves, partially because of bugs, translation kinks and corner cases ironed out, partially because a navigable story tree (so you don't have to complete the game three times, but upon first completion can move to decision points and replay from there). I have spend dozens of hours with this game and I don't regret a single one. Plus, your posts suggest a completionist approach to games, and there's plenty of things to complete/max out in Tactics Ogre (story arcs, hidden characters, specific builds, etc. etc.). Highly recommended.

Thallanor wrote:

I've been mostly sourcing out an 8/16-bit multi-I/O card so that I can add a serial port and maybe a parallel port to my 486 build. The PC Chips motherboard has these onboard but I have no idea what the pinouts are and the three backplane connectors I have don't work, so it's not whatever they're using!

Like an Acculogic sIDE-4/plus?

Thallanor wrote:

Been also looking for an 8-bit ISA high-density floppy controller.

I need to look something up. I think the one I have is low density.

As for me, I stayed up way too late desoldering 24 individual pins from an eMac monitor board because that connector was so badly designed I can't possibly reinstall it (I mean it pushes the pins out). Gonna try to install the pins in the other connector and resolder them all in the correct position using the connector as a jig, without melting it (I hope).

My improvised solder wick was a failure, but I think it's the solder. And I was just going to replace *one* capacitor...

ssokolow wrote:

I doubt I'll need the MIDI though. The cheap $5 Chinese USB-MIDI bridges seem to do just fine in the configurations I've tested them with. (Mostly things like "Yamaha PSR-E413 (USB only) ↔ My Main PC ↔ USB-MIDI Adapter ↔ MIDI-Gameport Adapter ↔ SoundBlaster 16" or "Yamaha PSR-E413 ← My Main PC ← USB-MIDI Adapter ← Cheap RadioShack MIDI keyboard". using aconnectgui for patching.)

Do the ones you have actually work correctly for MIDI-in? Many of them are missing components and thus work only for out, not in as they violate the MIDI electrical specifications. Here's a description of the problem: http://www.arvydas.co.uk/2013/07/cheap-usb-mi … ay-be-required/ and https://karusisemus.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/ … w-to-modify-it/
I have one of these, and it doesn't work with a MIDI keyboard. I opened it up and indeed it has the same problem as in the article. I had planned on fixing it but eventually got sidetracked in other projects and never did it.

Yesterday I started working on this gigantic NEC PowerMate 2 desktop. The power supply in it is bad, it makes a high-pitched squeaking sound when turned on and only provides around 1.5 volts on the +5 volt rail, and 3 on the +12. I assume the output filter capacitors are weak, so I'm going to replace them soon when I can order replacements. I can't cheat and find another full-AT power supply either because the motherboard connectors are proprietary and I cannot find a pinout online. The manual I found only goes over specifications of the system itself.

The system is a 10 MHz 286 with 640K of RAM stock, however it can be upgraded to 8.6 MB in total (I'm not sure how much this one has installed yet). It originally came with an MFM hard drive, but mine lacks it as the previous owner told me he got it with the drive drilled ( 😢 ), but thankfully the controller and cables are still there. It also has both an EGA card and a Cirrus Logic VGA card installed at the same time for some reason, I'm not sure why or if they will even work together.

OldCat wrote:

ssokolow wrote:

That said, Persona 3 Portable is actually on my TODO list already. (As are the PSP ports of Disgaea, and Disgaea 2. I already have PS2 versions of all three, but I'm not even sure it's possible to get comfortably performant PCSX2 on my Athlon II X2 270 with those titles while PPSSPP is a breeze.)

I hadn't considered Tactics Ogre: Let's Cling Together though, so thanks for that. I'll definitely look into it.

It's a really good SRPG game, a little similar to Disgaea and Final Fantasy Tactics, but with fairly serious story and lots of branching storylines. The original was a SNES game, PSP version is a remake, but is widely considered as the best version, partially because of possibility to rewind moves, partially because of bugs, translation kinks and corner cases ironed out, partially because a navigable story tree (so you don't have to complete the game three times, but upon first completion can move to decision points and replay from there). I have spend dozens of hours with this game and I don't regret a single one. Plus, your posts suggest a completionist approach to games, and there's plenty of things to complete/max out in Tactics Ogre (story arcs, hidden characters, specific builds, etc. etc.). Highly recommended.

That does sound appealing, given that I unlocked all of the maps in Advance Wars a few months ago, have a childhood copy of Final Fantasy Tactics for PSX sitting on my shelf that I want to get back to one of these days, and the only reason I haven't completed Advance Wars 2 is that I'm stumped by a difficulty spike on one of the levels.

stamasd wrote:

ssokolow wrote:

I doubt I'll need the MIDI though. The cheap $5 Chinese USB-MIDI bridges seem to do just fine in the configurations I've tested them with. (Mostly things like "Yamaha PSR-E413 (USB only) ↔ My Main PC ↔ USB-MIDI Adapter ↔ MIDI-Gameport Adapter ↔ SoundBlaster 16" or "Yamaha PSR-E413 ← My Main PC ← USB-MIDI Adapter ← Cheap RadioShack MIDI keyboard". using aconnectgui for patching.)

Do the ones you have actually work correctly for MIDI-in? Many of them are missing components and thus work only for out, not in as they violate the MIDI electrical specifications. Here's a description of the problem: http://www.arvydas.co.uk/2013/07/cheap-usb-mi … ay-be-required/ and https://karusisemus.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/ … w-to-modify-it/
I have one of these, and it doesn't work with a MIDI keyboard. I opened it up and indeed it has the same problem as in the article. I had planned on fixing it but eventually got sidetracked in other projects and never did it.

Hmm. I honestly don't know. I've never had a problem, but I don't know if I've ever tested that configuration on all of them.

• My only external MIDI synth is the Yamaha PSR-E413 keyboard, which doesn't offer MIDI ports separate from its built-in USB-MIDI bridge.
• My cheap Radio Shack keyboard (free from the leftovers of a church sale but needed a wall wart) only has MIDI Out.
• I've only used the bridge connected to my retro-PC to send MIDI from the retro-PC through the main PC to the PSR-E413 for rendering.
• I don't yet have suitable software to do any testing with my Atari ST 520FM
• The only external synthesizer in the house with a non-USB MIDI input is the lower-end Yamaha keyboard I gifted to my brother years ago.

I'll have to ask him if he'd mind my installing and configuring LMMS on his laptop for live playback on suitably low-latency synthesizer modules (something he had trouble with last he tried) in exchange for using it and his keyboard to test some cables.

Any suggestions for some DOS, Windows 3.1, or Windows 9x freeware I could use to check whether notes played on the PSR-E413 reach the retro-PC when I've set up the usual patch-through? It'd be a hassle to get that particular cable out of the routing wrap I used for the wires leading between my main and retro desks.

That's a good looking case cj, hope you manage to sort out the PSU.

It's been a while since I had full access to a working 9x machine so I've been installing a ton of my old games and seeing how they run. Most are OK although a few seem to have issues running in D3D which I'm assuming is a compatibility issue with my 6800GT drivers (which is complete overkill really but I do still kind of want to install XP on this machine as well).

Updated my post about the docs for the NEC Powermate Portable APC IV luggable. I scanned in the entire Owner's Manual which includes the DIP switch settings and I recently found an addendum for the page 45 dip switch settings. Since I donated the machine to a museum after restoring it I thought it was a good time to archive the docs before sending it on its way. Thanks to modem7 of vcfed.org for converting my scans to PDF format and posting it on minuszerodegrees.net.

Bought these (retro) hardware today

ssokolow wrote:

[*]My cheap Radio Shack keyboard (free from the leftovers of a church sale but needed a wall wart) only has MIDI Out.

Well that was the point. If you connect the MIDI-out on the RS keyboard to the MIDI-in on the cable, does it send MIDI commands to the PC? The cable I have, with my cheap MIDI keyboard (not RS but I imagine similar, purchased for about $15 in the early 2000s) doesn't work.

stamasd wrote:

ssokolow wrote:

[*]My cheap Radio Shack keyboard (free from the leftovers of a church sale but needed a wall wart) only has MIDI Out.

Well that was the point. If you connect the MIDI-out on the RS keyboard to the MIDI-in on the cable, does it send MIDI commands to the PC? The cable I have, with my cheap MIDI keyboard (not RS but I imagine similar, purchased for about $15 in the early 2000s) doesn't work.

Oh. Derp. If that's the side that may not work, then all of my three cables pass MIDI messages just fine:

• The whole point of one of them is to connect the MIDI Out line from the Gameport MIDI splitter on my retro-PC to acconectgui on my Linux desktop so I can patch the SB16's MPU401-compatible to the USB-only Yamaha PSR-E413's synthesizer and play games like Tyrian 2000 and Wacky Wheels with really nice MIDI. (Gotta love Asteroid Dance Part 1 on a soundfont almost identical to what either Sony or Squaresoft (not sure who was responsible for MIDI) licensed for Final Fantasy 7. Given how much else Skunny Kart used without permission, I wish they'd also ripped off Wacky Wheels's support for MPU-401 MIDI.)
• The second is for the refurbished Yamaha YPT-310 keyboard that I bought my brother, and his complaint was that he didn't know how to configure away the latency so he could use LMMS as a SoundFont-based synthesizer for real-time play on the keyboard. (ie. It worked... he just didn't know how to configure Windows to match the "no perceptible latency" behaviour I'd configured my LMMS for on Linux. I can't remember whether I tried using Yamaha's MusicSoft Downloader to load MIDI files into it via SysEx messages or not.)
• The third one was originally bought for when I get my Atari ST fixed up, but I'm currently using it with the Radio Shack keyboard to goof around with patching Radio Shack -> PC -> Yamaha so pressing keys on one keyboard plays notes on the other. (Tip: RoseGarden is probably the simplest way to assign instruments to channels if the source keyboard's MIDI feature list stops at "button to cycle through output MIDI channels".)

...and, just to be sure about the one that's a pain to disconnect is working perfectly in both directions, I started up my Win98SE retro-PC and...

• Fired up WinAMP 2.95 to play some MIDI out to the Yamaha PSR-E413 via aconnectgui.
• Searched up and installed MIDI-OX 6.2 on my retro-PC's Win98SE partition, mapped the MIDI In to the driver endpoint for MIDI via the OPL3 (as opposed to the software WaveTable with the oh-so-90s splash screen), and noodled around a bit on a Radio Shack → MIDI-USB → Linux → USB-MIDI → MIDI-Gameport → Windows 98 → OPL3 setup. (I couldn't connect them directly if I wanted to. My first ever "plain ordinary MIDI patch cable" is still on order.)

Here's an example of WinAMP on Win98SE → Gameport-MIDI → MIDI-USB → acconectgui on Linux → Yamaha PSR-E413 (USB-only) on a file which I suspect to be somewhat obscure, since the versions of QMIDI for QBasic that I see floating around these days only have SAMPLE1.MID through SAMPLE5.MID. (Though it's possible I renamed it myself because two different versions of QMIDI had different sample files with the same name and I wanted both. It's been a long time since I did anything with QMIDI beyond listen to the MIDI files I've been carrying from PC to PC for somewhere around two decades now.)

https://instaud.io/2F6S

As you'll notice, there are two problems:

1. Whoever put the MIDI file together seems to have only tested it on a narrow range of configurations, since one of the instruments is too quiet on the PSR-E413 and another one doesn't play at all when using the Windows driver endpoint that leads to the OPL3... though it does get the instruments right on Creative WaveSynth... but at a risk of not getting the timing right, depending on system load. (I just wish I still had the ThinkPad 755C that produced my "authoritative memory" for so many MIDI files.)
2. I'm a complete novice when it comes to recording things and have no idea how to set up a proper recording setup. (There's no noise during passages of silence and Audacity reports plenty of headroom on the input meter, but I still get distorted percussion that sounds fine on the keyboard's internal speakers or the Sony MDR-V150 headphones I got for free because their previous owner didn't know how to solvent-weld.)

EDIT: Fixed some "don't post too soon after waking up" slips.

Duouk2000 wrote:

Are Apple bad with repairs now? I've only every used them once when I had an iPhone and the service was impressively good. it's a shame if they've gone downhill.

Yup... Releasing stuff, they do not have any spareparts for, and even if people pay they will not repair a broken computer.

Just received a "shrinkwrapped cardboard sleeve" copy of Delphi Developer 2 that I grabbed on eBay.

Speaking of which, as fellow enthusiasts who probably collect things, there's something I've never really been clear on. What's a good heuristic for determining when "I look at my collection of X and want to share some fraction of that glee" might come across as tactless and/or bragging?