I thought it would be good to have a place for people to list retro computing related items of interest / hints and tips as they discover them.
For example I have a 21" Sony WEGA CRT TV which I use for old consoles, which is perfect for the job but the image was not centered properly. This is the sort of imperfection that sends my OCD into hysterics, but last night I "discovered" (this might be common knowledge) that Sony CRT's have a 'service mode', which allows you to adjust all sorts of things that are not available via the very limited user menu.
The process varies depending on the model, but to get to the service mode I put the TV into standby mode, and then pressed the following buttons on the remote:
?
5
Vol +
Power on
This turns the TV on with an OSD overlay. The overlay doesn't make much sense without the service manual, but I was lucky enough to find that online and it described - amongst all sorts of other useful things - how to center the image.
I'm assuming other TV's have similar functionality.
You can lock up Lego Racers on the N64 by attempting to pause the game immediately after crossing the finish line to end a race.
The Game Genie code "APPLES" will cause Super Mario Bros. on the NES to freeze whenever you try to hit a block from underneath.
If you put a Hercules graphics card into a 486/Pentium system, make sure the BIOS is set to reserve the proper address space, and attach a second monitor to the card, Mechwarrior 2 will display debug information on that monitor while the game engine is running.
Right before you beat Dragon Warrior II for the NES while in Midenhall Castle, go up the hallway on the right and when you get stopped where you shouldn't get stopped, attempt to talk to the imaginary thing that's blocking you. You'll get a dialogue box that's completely empty.
In the English version of Wonder Boy in Monster World for the Genesis, your very last unit of health may seem like it lasts longer than it should. This is because in the original Japanese version, zero health was allowed, but in the English version, once you're down to zero health it just continues to show a single unit.
Lastly, did you know it's possible to save Aeris in Final Fantasy VII? It's actually pretty simple. All you have to do is invent a time machine, go back in time, buy out Squaresoft, then tell the dev team to make it possible and give them enough time to code it all in. :D
...this is what happens when you're taking a break from editing a video regarding a rather silly game and decide to read a thread like this. :P
If you put a Hercules graphics card into a 486/Pentium system, make sure the BIOS is set to reserve the proper address space, and attach a second monitor to the card, Mechwarrior 2 will display debug information on that monitor while the game engine is running.
There were a couple of games that did this, IIRC Rise of the Triad was one of them - play on the VGA monitor while showing debug on the mono monitor.
If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.
I have problems with CH Pro Throttle, namely lagging and "jumpy" throttle response.
Turned out the cable is detached from its clamp, so the cable moves alongside throttle up and down movement, thus the jumpy response. Putting the cable back into the clamp solves the problem.
If you put a Hercules graphics card into a 486/Pentium system, make sure the BIOS is set to reserve the proper address space, and attach a second monitor to the card, Mechwarrior 2 will display debug information on that monitor while the game engine is running.
There were a couple of games that did this, IIRC Rise of the Triad was one of them - play on the VGA monitor while showing debug on the mono monitor.
I bought a 6 button Sega Megadrive (Genesis) controller - the smaller Japanese one - for the suspiciously low price of 1 dollar recently, and of course it was broken. 2 of the 4 tabs on the mechanism under the direction pad were broken off. It was headed for the bin but I remembered that I'd bought 2 of these a while back:
These are cheaply made, and the cord is so short that it makes them pretty much useless, but they're almost an exact replica. They're so accurate that all of the internals are interchangable with the real thing, so I grabbed the bits I needed, translplanted them, and bob is now my uncle. I also used the rubber thingos under the buttons so it feels like a new controller.
Not a bad source of brand new spare parts for 6 bucks delivered.
badmojo wrote:I bought a 6 button Sega Megadrive (Genesis) controller - the smaller Japanese one - for the suspiciously low price of 1 dollar […] Show full quote
I bought a 6 button Sega Megadrive (Genesis) controller - the smaller Japanese one - for the suspiciously low price of 1 dollar recently, and of course it was broken. 2 of the 4 tabs on the mechanism under the direction pad were broken off. It was headed for the bin but I remembered that I'd bought 2 of these a while back:
These are cheaply made, and the cord is so short that it makes them pretty much useless, but they're almost an exact replica. They're so accurate that all of the internals are interchangable with the real thing, so I grabbed the bits I needed, translplanted them, and bob is now my uncle. I also used the rubber thingos under the buttons so it feels like a new controller.
Not a bad source of brand new spare parts for 6 bucks delivered.
I wonder if they got permission from SEGA to put their name on that piece of crap.
Like most of my ‘discoveries’ this is probably old news around here, but I had a dilemma and found a solution so I thought I’d share it. I use 2 sound cards in my PIII machine, a Sound Blaster Live! for Windows 98 duties, and a Sound Blaster 16 ISA when booting directly to DOS 7. The SB16 has an NEC XR385 attached for MIDI, but when a joystick is plugged into it, then the MIDI daughterboard is ignored (i.e. no music plays). This is the expected behaviour from what I understand.
For a game like Wing Commander III, I want both MIDI and a joystick, so this bothered me.
This PC actually has 3 joystick ports, 1 onboard, 1 on the SB16, and one of the Live! I tried using the onboard one, but it didn’t respond, so I’m guessing it needs a driver to work in DOS and I don’t have a driver disk for this motherboard. I do however have a driver disk for the Live!, so I ended up using the port on that instead. There were a few gotchas but overall it works OK. Steps:
- disable the game port on the SB16 via the relevant jumper.
- install the DOS drivers for the Live! (I used the CD that came with it, but I think Vogons Drivers has an image).
At this point 2 lines will be added to autoexec.bat:
1SET CTSYN=C:\DOSDRV 2C:\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
The first time SBEINIT.COM is called it’ll pull the resource details from the ‘Sound Blaster 16 Emulation’ settings within Windows 98, but from that point on it will refer to a local copy of those resource settings. This means you can change them for DOS only, and this is important, because I needed to move them out of the way so they didn’t clash with the Sound Blaster 16. This can be achieved with SBESET.EXE, SBESET.TXT explains how. Unfortunately you can’t just have the game port enabled by itself; you need to have the Sound Blaster emulation enabled too. But once the resources are changed so as not to clash with the SB16, then both can exist together just fine.
One final issue I came across was the ordering of the lines in Autoexec.bat, which is very important.
Firstly, SBEINIT.COM must be run before SMARTDRV.EXE, or it won’t load.
Secondly, SBEINIT.COM doesn’t need a SET BLASTER line to exist in autoexec.bat and indeed it will overwrite any that come before it, so it’s important that it be called BEFORE the SB16 config lines (SET BLASTER, diagnose, mixerset, etc). This way the Live!’s SET BLASTER line will be replaced with the SB16’s one, and not the other way around.
And thirdly – kinda related to the point above – if ‘Sound Blaster 16 Emulation’ is active in Windows 98, then Windows will inspect the Autoexec.bat file every time it’s shutdown and will move the SBINIT.COM call around depending on some internal logic. In my case this was a problem because it insisted on having the SBINIT.COM line after the SET BLASTER line. To stop this from happening, I disabled the SB16 emulation under device manager in Windows 98 because I didn’t need that anyway. If you wanted that, then I’m sure you could come up with an external bat file solution to get around it. Making Autoexec.bat read-only didn’t help.
And that’s it, now I can have my cake and eat it too. The only downsides are that SBEINIT takes up about 5K of memory, and that the Live!’s Sound Blaster emulation is using additional resources for no good reason. Neither of these are a big deal really, but if I could have done this a better way then please let me know.
The SB16 has an NEC XR385 attached for MIDI, but when a joystick is plugged into it, then the MIDI daughterboard is ignored (i.e. no music plays). This is the expected behaviour from what I understand.
Actually, this shouldn't happen. There is a certain chance that this behaviour is caused by the wiring in your joystick (most likely pin 12 connected to GND). Did you try different joysticks?
I tried 2 but both Thrustmasters. I'll try with a Sidewinder and report back.
I'm sure I read somewhere that this was a limitation of the Sound Blasters, and it was one of the reasons people went for a dual sound card setup. It doesn't really make sense though I suppose, as they use different ports.
Right I tried this again and you're right, it did work with a different joystick - it was actually a CH Flightstick (classic) that was giving me the trouble.
So I got MIDI + joystick going on the SB16, but in DOOM (which I was using to test) the music was slowing down periodically with a joystick connected, I presume this is some ISA bus speed issue? Switching back to the Live!'s joystick port fixed this issue too, so I'll keep the Live! setup described above.
I just found an eBay item from a seller based in the U.S that I want real bad, but eBay Australia wasn't allowing me to bid on it because the seller had apparently specified "ships to the U.S only". I haven't actually seen this before, usually is just says "may not ship to Australia", but this time I was getting a big red error message when I tried to bid. I couldn't even ask the seller a question, all very upsetting and my thoughts turned to how I could trick eBay into thinking I was located in the U.S.
After some googling though I discovered that there's no need for trickery, all you have to do is have a U.S address selected as your primary shipping address. So in the end it was a simple matter of temporarily selecting my freight forwarding company's address as my primary, and eBay Australia let me bid.
Like most of my ‘discoveries’ this is probably old news around here, but I had a dilemma and found a solution so I thought I’d share it. I use 2 sound cards in my PIII machine, a Sound Blaster Live! for Windows 98 duties, and a Sound Blaster 16 ISA when booting directly to DOS 7. The SB16 has an NEC XR385 attached for MIDI, but when a joystick is plugged into it, then the MIDI daughterboard is ignored (i.e. no music plays). This is the expected behaviour from what I understand.
IIRC using MIDI/joystick split cable solves the daughterboard problem.
Depends on the splitter - it must keep all four axes and buttons on the primary/only joy port as the CH Flighstick uses three axes and all four button pins. I had a splitter that was meant for two standard 2-axis 2-button joysticks for two player games so this kind would not work.
In reality it's the fault of a joystick, not sound card. The joystick was meant to be used on non-midi joy port where there are still power pins instead of midi pins. So the joystick forcibly connects power pins directly to data pins and if the wavetable header is getting the same midi wire that goes to joy port it obviously is jammed. Although some sound cards might split the data through separate buffers so the wavetable would work.
