Standard Def Steve wrote:

I watched Grease on Laserdisc last night.

You poor thing, that has to be one of the most boring movies in the world. Bad memories, very bad memories.

I'm bored so I'll elaborate; When I was in my teens, I used to basically be on the pull constantly. Anyways, the usual crap - met some girl, dated her a bit before I ended up at her house one evening after she convinced her parents she was fine "on her own" and they had gone off to the cinema, a restaurant or whatever (where they were wasn't important to me, just the fact that they weren't home and would be gone for quite some time, so I don't remember what she said they were out doing). The plan was we'd watch a movie together and then find something else to do if her parents weren't home yet, seemed like a good plan to me too... Until I got there, opened my backpack and began recommending really good movies such as Total Recall, Commando, Die Hard and for variety sake Twelve Monkeys to which she looks at me, picks up a DVD case and says
"But, I thought we could watch this together."
"You sure?" I said, I noted that her DVD case said Grease and having heard the music from it already was sure it probably wasn't my kind of film.
"Yeah, it's my favorite movie." She replies, smiling at me. I daren't push my luck so I held out my hand for the case
"Lets see here, well, what's this about..." I began reading the back of the box and looking at the pictures, I gritted my teeth, tried to smile and said "If you're sure. I guess it looks... OK... Might be really good."
The movie starts up with this crappy "Grease is the word, is the word is the...."
"Oh, god, what have I gotten myself into." I thought.

I managed to skip half of the movie by going out to smoke a lot, there was a sizable pile of dog ends by the front door by the time that movie ended. Absolute garbage, I hope I never see it again. I didn't regret enduring it at the time, but in the long run I think it damaged my brain. To make matters worse, that evening ended with me having to climb out of a window because her parents came home and I left my tobacco, a jacket and one of my DVDs behind and never got anything but my tobacco back. I also broke the key in one of my bike locks and had to cut through it - I always carry basic tools when I'm on a bike luckily. Tried to watch the film again at a later time just to try and build up an immunity to such inane things.

Dirty Dancing was far worse, that was around six months later with a different girl in a house where people smoked so I had no excuse to go away too much. Every so often I would disappear to the bathroom and sit there playing this caveman game which was on my old smartphone for a while, but she kept asking if I was sick so I stopped doing that and resumed filling up the ash tray. My lungs have never been the same again and I hate that movie.

Today I broke my Pentium II machine! Nothing serious, I got the RAID set up and then installed Win 98SE. Installed the RAID driver and the OS won't boot anymore, it starts working again after I remove the RAID driver so I'm going to mess with it and get it working again. The Nikimi drives seem to perform OK for now though, so here's hoping they last a while.

HighTreason wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I watched Grease on Laserdisc last night.

You poor thing, that has to be one of the most boring movies in the world. Bad memories, very bad memories.

At least you didn't have to watch GREASE 2....now THAT is a pile of crap.

You usually don't watch those movies for your own enjoyment....but for allowing someone else to share their favorite film with them. A great opportunity to add to a relationship. For instance, the HELL I went through for the sake of love...I went to the movie theatre with my wife to watch Mamma Mia!. But, my wife enjoyed it tremendously. She knows she owes me for the horrific night....and for that, she'll gladly watch one of my "dumb" science documentaries with me, and bring me treats during the show. 😎

thread topic: I just got in a package of Molex Y-splitters. These old power supplies sometimes only have 2-3 molex connectors....that's not enough!

Grease was kind of cringey but I can think of much MUCH worse.

So.. good luck on those things lasting very long. 😢

The scratches and dings in the case of the drives gives me even more confidence about them.

Grease was ok but have endured worse movies, chick flicks that are empty headed and completely mindless are the worst. Also numerous TV shows like Jersey Shore are just horrendous.

I bought a Sony Trinitron 17" CPD-200ES for $15, sigh unseen. The guy said it had a perfect display. Well, I hooked it up a week ago and the display was too dark. I did a LOT of research online on ways to fix it. I happened upon this little webpage...

http://www.electronicrepairguide.com/modify-m … en-voltage.html

First, I know its VERY dangerous to work inside a CRT. But the webpage's schematic of the G2 circuit had me very intrigued. Luckily i found the service manual to my Sony 17" online, and therein was the complicated-looking schematic.

After a few hours (don't laugh, this is my first time looking and deciphering these things), I finally figured out the same circuit (similar) on my Sony! I did try to use the little pot to increase the B+, but the monitor shut down after 10 seconds on a white background. So, I did the G2 modification. I found a resistor that was part of the circuit, and looked like I need to added more resistance. I pried a few similarly-coded resistors from an old dead PSU and I added them on to the circuit. It fixed it! The picture is FANTASTICALLY bright now, just like new! Brightness only needs to be up to around 40-50% before it gets too bright. Before I had it all the way to 100% and the picture was still a little faded/dark.

And yes, I know I could probably have found a free CRT floating around the neighborhood, but I wanted to resurrect the Sony. I remember 17" Trinitrons going for $800-1000 a long time ago. I have a 19" but its way too big for most DOS games IMO, and 14-15" monitors are just too small.

But that's the last time I'm going to go inside a CRT...those noises are freaky! They sound like the electric reaper just waiting for a circuit to be completed that includes your heart.

dogchainx wrote:

I bought a Sony Trinitron 17" CPD-200ES for $15, sigh unseen. The guy said it had a perfect display. Well, I hooked it up a wee […]
Show full quote

I bought a Sony Trinitron 17" CPD-200ES for $15, sigh unseen. The guy said it had a perfect display. Well, I hooked it up a week ago and the display was too dark. I did a LOT of research online on ways to fix it. I happened upon this little webpage...

http://www.electronicrepairguide.com/modify-m … en-voltage.html

First, I know its VERY dangerous to work inside a CRT. But the webpage's schematic of the G2 circuit had me very intrigued. Luckily i found the service manual to my Sony 17" online, and therein was the complicated-looking schematic.

After a few hours (don't laugh, this is my first time looking and deciphering these things), I finally figured out the same circuit (similar) on my Sony! I did try to use the little pot to increase the B+, but the monitor shut down after 10 seconds on a white background. So, I did the G2 modification. I found a resistor that was part of the circuit, and looked like I need to added more resistance. I pried a few similarly-coded resistors from an old dead PSU and I added them on to the circuit. It fixed it! The picture is FANTASTICALLY bright now, just like new! Brightness only needs to be up to around 40-50% before it gets too bright. Before I had it all the way to 100% and the picture was still a little faded/dark.

And yes, I know I could probably have found a free CRT floating around the neighborhood, but I wanted to resurrect the Sony. I remember 17" Trinitrons going for $800-1000 a long time ago. I have a 19" but its way too big for most DOS games IMO, and 14-15" monitors are just too small.

But that's the last time I'm going to go inside a CRT...those noises are freaky! They sound like the electric reaper just waiting for a circuit to be completed that includes your heart.

Just remember. There are some massive capacitors in there that don't look like normal capacitors.. (metal tins with big wires in em) and they can hold charge up to 3-5 days after being unplugged. And.. whatever you do, don't touch the red wire coming out the side of the glass, that carries around 15,000 volts.

kithylin wrote:

dogchainx wrote:

I bought a Sony Trinitron 17" CPD-200ES for $15, sigh unseen. The guy said it had a perfect display. Well, I hooked it up a wee […]
Show full quote

I bought a Sony Trinitron 17" CPD-200ES for $15, sigh unseen. The guy said it had a perfect display. Well, I hooked it up a week ago and the display was too dark. I did a LOT of research online on ways to fix it. I happened upon this little webpage...

http://www.electronicrepairguide.com/modify-m … en-voltage.html

First, I know its VERY dangerous to work inside a CRT. But the webpage's schematic of the G2 circuit had me very intrigued. Luckily i found the service manual to my Sony 17" online, and therein was the complicated-looking schematic.

After a few hours (don't laugh, this is my first time looking and deciphering these things), I finally figured out the same circuit (similar) on my Sony! I did try to use the little pot to increase the B+, but the monitor shut down after 10 seconds on a white background. So, I did the G2 modification. I found a resistor that was part of the circuit, and looked like I need to added more resistance. I pried a few similarly-coded resistors from an old dead PSU and I added them on to the circuit. It fixed it! The picture is FANTASTICALLY bright now, just like new! Brightness only needs to be up to around 40-50% before it gets too bright. Before I had it all the way to 100% and the picture was still a little faded/dark.

And yes, I know I could probably have found a free CRT floating around the neighborhood, but I wanted to resurrect the Sony. I remember 17" Trinitrons going for $800-1000 a long time ago. I have a 19" but its way too big for most DOS games IMO, and 14-15" monitors are just too small.

But that's the last time I'm going to go inside a CRT...those noises are freaky! They sound like the electric reaper just waiting for a circuit to be completed that includes your heart.

Just remember. There are some massive capacitors in there that don't look like normal capacitors.. (metal tins with big wires in em) and they can hold charge up to 3-5 days after being unplugged. And.. whatever you do, don't touch the red wire coming out the side of the glass, that carries around 15,000 volts.

Oh yes. I went through numerous web pages on hints on how to avoid getting killed. I was extremely cautious in every single step of the process, and very aware of where both my hands were (one always in my pocket). The only tool I used that was metal was the soldering iron. I do NOT RECOMMEND this unless you're experienced. I did it because I saw how easy it was to change the G2 circuitry to make my monitor brand-new, and keeping in mind a few safety tips, decided it was very minimal risk. The circuit change was all but a snip and a solder, nowhere near any capacitors or heavy solder points, or thick wiring.

I hate working on CRTs.

No pictures because there'd be nothing you hadn't seen before in it, but I un-busted my Pentium II. Actually, I do have one image, I managed to drag out the old wallpaper from when I was running a Pentium II as a side machine back in '03/'04, I always say this is the same machine but it has pretty much nothing in common with the original as the last original part - the CD-ROM burner - died a while ago.

My wallpaper consisted of a still frame in the end;

And ended up with more detailed text in the end (That one is gone, I only have this version from before more text was added. I still have the stretched version that was visible in my early YouTube videos sometimes though) but originally I had made an animated version of this old one (Link because it's 2.7MB) which ate the original 266MHz CPU and the ATI Rage 3D AGP that was installed back then. Luckily, my backup of the folder still contains the basic resources that were used to make the wallpaper as well as several alternate versions (one with a matrix-like background which was also animated) and it had a clean version of the canary photo left behind as well as the GIF of the fire - back then I had this weird setup for doing effects like this... The details are a page long. It was not efficient and sometimes even relied on analog machinery - so I took this;

Then I used the clean image as the desktop background and set this .GIF to be an active desktop object... Finally I have the wallpaper I wanted with about 1% overhead on the 450MHz CPU. Awesome!

Now, you're thinking "High Treason, your machines usually have female names, so either this was a server or it is breaking the tradition." and you'd be half right. For a while I did run the old P2 as the server, from 2005 to replace a 386 through until 2007 when an AMD 462 took over not long before I first appeared on YouTube where the old P2 was in my first videos (Now unlisted). But that was after it was built, the canary was called Geoff because I bought two and one wasn't the one I had asked for, they both sang so I figured they were male (female canaries don't sing) but then, the canary began trying to make a nest. This puzzled me but thinking the were both male I added a nest pan to the cage... Eggs appeared, a lot of them, and I ended up with more canaries than I had bargained for, which made me end up having to wait for my Java sparrows longer, which was fine, I liked the canaries anyway. So yes, Geoff was indeed female. The AMD box that took over as server was named Pip though after the cock bird, so that was a male name. He's still around, he's about 13 years old and frightens me every time he decides to take a nap in the middle of the day, but the machine ceased operation in 2008.

What a ramble that was! For anyone from back in my old YouTube days who wondered,this was Geoff (Clicky).

Yesterday I decided enough was enough and to put my loud FTP/CODUO/local network server up in the attic instead of in my room. I can't believe I used to cope with that noise for years as my main PC. I looked into fanless coolers, but I guess no one cared back in the Socket A days.

Regardless, routed another ethernet cable from the router up into the attic to the machine. I could have used wires that are up there already but I only have a 10BaseT Hub spare so that would be a bit of a bottleneck. My switch is in my room where the 5 PC's are hooked up.

Server worked fine, even considering i had passive mode problems since day one, that I suspect is down to the router being a cheap distribution by the ISP which I wish I never bought. But Passive mode does work as of this minute.

I then set up static IP's on some of the DOS machines instead of waiting around for a seemingly age for Win3.11 to load discovering DHCP, I gave it one too. The NIC (NE2000 compatable) in the Win3.11 machine was giving greif with sometimes not being recognised or sometimes the driver thinking there are two NIC's (Both with MAC addresses of FF:FF:FF:etc, I changed the card to a different ISA slot and that issue was resolved quicker than I thought. Then I spent some hours backing up part of my floppy collection of data onto the networked server, only two discs had files that were unreadable. I thought I needed to do this as 7 discs have failed completely on me in one weekend. I admit, they were mainly 'transport' discs but still, even the ones I hadn't used for years needed a few attempts to read the data correctly.

I then watched 4.5 hrs of Stargate SG-1 😊

I used to impress some people by having a Pentium use a WinAMP AVS visualization as a color overlay for the desktop wallpaper (with WinAMP in the background not playing anything) using a Trio or some Trident card of some sort

I also did the same by customizing the desktop color scheme to use the overlay's color so I could have the windows doing this effect instead of the desktop wallpaper, giving all of my windows some sort of glimmering, shiny Aero-ish look to them way before desktop composition was cool. Best of all, it wasn't slow! The actual effect was low resolution (like 120x70) being overlaystretched up by the 2D-only video hardware.

Also #000000 as overlay color was a nice choice 😀.
Especially before coding sessions...

There used to be some physx-enabled demos that nvidia released at one point in time that used our video card's physx capabilities as a screen saver. I vaguely remember one being "flying over an endless ocean" purpleish water, and another was a tornado. I've lost them years ago and can't find them in google today. 🙁

Started working on the puzzles/scripting ideas for a AGS Graphical Adventure game that I've been ping-ponging around in my head for years now. It's starting to turn out rather well. That's one reason I just ran through Monkey Island 1 & 2 - so I could take a look at how Ron Gilbert and co got their puzzles to work and come up with my own way. One thing playing a lot of AGS titles, and other homebrew Graphical Adventures, is that a lot of the puzzles are not as amusing/ridiculous/humorous as the commercial products from 20 years ago, very few get to that level, and most of the games are not full-length.

I've had a lot of ideas for a game, but this one is a tad unique in that you play a homeless guy who has to perform nefarious actions in the form of puzzles in order to unofficially hire himself into different departments of a small corporation all the while getting the main people in his way (and in the position he needs next to move up the ladder) to get fired/quit/disappear. The goal is to get up to CEO and then make it official (a whole other puzzle). You start out trying to wedge your way into "Parking Garage Attendant" and work your way up from there.

I'm doing ALL Development work using a very very old copy of Adventure Game Studio on my 486 DX2/66 for that official "oldskool" feel. Drew out the map for all the screens, so far about 45-55 total (though a lot are huge long scrolling sections), and have already started on some of the screens using Graf-X II for DOS. Hopefully this time I'll actually see this one through to completion.

Character sprites I'm thinking of using some sprites from Secret of Monkey Island or Monkey 2 as examples and then building off of those. I was always great at pixel art for backgrounds and objects, but people and animations have always been a bit harder for me to do unless I'm not really worrying about the "scale" of the drawing which I am using.

For Music, planning to use regular ol' Midi at first, then maybe release a big version with an MP3 soundtrack afterward. Just need to figure out how to get
that Rock Band 3 Fender Mustang Pro MIDI controller to stop being so sensitive and triggering notes that i'm not playing through the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 in Presto Arranger so I can record everything glitch free.

However, I expect this will take me a few years to do. Currently I'm writing the walkthrough in DOS Edit (in a Window in Windows For Workgroups 3.11),
and writing the object list (so I know what to draw) into WFWG311 Notepad. So far, the objectlist is getting ridiculous.

Outside of that, the DX2 seems pretty happy with it's new thermal setup, it'll soon be time for me to put some hardware on the Evil-Bay so I can raise fundage to fix the Compaq Portable 486c's monitor and maybe get a decent soundcard for it - or get an AWE32 for the desktop and put the Pro II in the Compaq.

That's quite a project you're contemplating. Do you really want to do this on an old computer? Never mind the speed and other technical limitations, are you sure it's not going to malfunction and take out hours/days/weeks of work?

And anyway didn't the professional game developers of old use proper workstation-type machines for development work?

Limitations are fun. 😀

2fort5r wrote:

That's quite a project you're contemplating. Do you really want to do this on an old computer? Never mind the speed and other technical limitations, are you sure it's not going to malfunction and take out hours/days/weeks of work?

And anyway didn't the professional game developers of old use proper workstation-type machines for development work?

Not really too many limitations, the machine's not your usual run-of-the-mill 486DX2 from 1992...it's got an 8GB HDD split into 4 2GB Fat-16 partitions using a DDO, about the only limitation that's a tad bit bugging is that the older versions of Adventure Game Studios limited you to 16-color sprites when using 320X200 @256 color, but I think there might be a way to use 320X200 @16-bit color depth or better though. No real time frame or anything, and I might end up doing some art on the 286.

A lot of it is familiarity with the tools. When I started my retro-PC website back in 2001 I was using Graf-X II for all my custom buttons, icons, and whatnot, so I'm familiar with it for pixel art, and have no qualms about making my own fonts, graphics, sprites, and whatnot using that program. I'm using Presto Arranger and Voyetra Sequencer Pro for the music.

The one thing hanging me up is whether or not to make the time period sometime in the past so it really feels like something contemporary to 1988-1993, or make it present day. I'm already hinging a puzzle on a Compaq Portable in the Janitors office so I've been thinking of making it Early 1990's based, leaving some leeway for some of that random "out of place" humor, but then doing that modern might appeal to more people.

leileilol wrote:

Limitations are fun. 😀

That's one thing that allows me to do this actually are the limitations. It's so much easier to draw a room with a result I like using 320X200 @256 on an old 486 using Graf-X II than trying to do the same in a newer program at higher resolution. Also, the utility bar in GFX II acts as a "mask" to cover over the area where the LucasArts style command interface goes....though my version is a tad bit smaller by about 4-6 pixels down as it matches the GFX-II Utility bar rather than the actual size of LucasArt's SCUMM interface.

I just did some "test sprites" on my own using Elaine Marley from SMI as a "secondary template", they turned out pretty good. By Secondary template, that means starting off by using the location of the pixels on the EM sprite to figure out where to put the pixels for my test sprites. I tried to also match that same level of frames of animation.

I'm using MIDI mostly just to have a "time piece" soundtrack of sorts. So it feels like something from the time period that this style of game came out. The fastest way for me to do audio on the game would be to do what I do in my metal band - just grab my synth, bass VI, electric guitars, and go to town in
24-track 24-bit audio.

I get tired of installing the same games individually so i'm making myself personal mass installers for them using innosetup, also having icons for all the iconless dos games/apps. Wish there were an easier way to do this. FMV games exempt, and separated by year (when I played them)

AND NO i'm never uploading it ever 😀 Just saving time for myself (and for emulator testing)

leileilol wrote:

AND NO i'm never uploading it ever 😀 Just saving time for myself (and for emulator testing)

Umm... ok. Not sure anyone was asking. But thanks for making your self-serving sentiment very clear for everyone.

🙄 It's what I did today and it was a retro activity. What do you want? Are you entitled to my backup images too?

Not really today but some month ago :

-finished favorite games ost recordings... wasn't able to record ost with my SC8600 V2 and its 9 MB GM soundfont
(Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio 2) because it only work into pure DOS (impossible to install it under Win95, not the right drivers or the card is defective
because there is no dma/irq conflict and I really tried everything possible) the only way to make it sound right with gsplay (without saturation) is to lower the velocity...
problem is that completely kill the dynamic in the music 🤣
Trying to find the universal ratio for velocity/output/line in and compressor for +-30 ost's has reduced my life expectency so much that I decided to pack away that damn SC8600 for a while....

-lan files sharing server died 😢 it was a trustworthy Opteron 146 on a socket 939 DFI NF4 Ultra-D MB powered by an Antec Earthwatts 380W 😒
Had to replace it with a shitty sempron LE with an am2 Asus m2n-mx se MB for now 😵

-Made fresh installed and configured Back-Up Images with Seagate DiskWizard of all my socket 7 and > systems' MicroSD's instead of using bitperfect Images that was using too much space.
For exemple an Image that contain a Win95 OSR 2 OS with all the drivers and utilities installed (even ie5 with sp to let you use and install virtual drives software) takes only 110 MB 😎

-Reorganize folders and files of my Back-Up HDD... made Back-Ups of Back-Ups on differents HDD and burned all recorded OST's on DVD's just in case 🤣

-Reduced the number of retro pc and toss away dead/defective components beyond repair and heavy/ugly/unused pc cases, sort and store unused parts/components.

For now I will just put pc retro activities on stand by (my pc's from 386 to PIII 800 are all ready to use but actually I don't really have the will to power them on, install and play games) 😵
Just knowing they are at my disposal and ready to use is sufficient 🤣

I will focus on a Mega Drive II I just bought last week for cheap and try to beat its best games (that will cool down my brain for a while) I currently play Comix Zone on it 😎