March 2007

Not very original. About ten minutes spent in “Start / run / mspaint / carriage return”.

My mom audibly discovered a bee’s hive high in the oak tree that shares the front yard with the cypress tree.

Click on the images for high resolution versions. Note that your web browser may shrink them to fit the browser window (a default option that can be changed, of course).

Chucking, we recalled that, a couple of years ago, she found a bee hive’s in the water meter, under the cypress tree. Fearing that a city meter man would potentially get attacked, she suffocated the buzztards. The pictures below are from the aftermath. I told her that I thought it would be okay to leave them bee, considering how high up in the tree they were.

Seems obvious enough.

Sunday was fruitful:

Quake 4 with box, manual, clean discs – $6

The seller claimed that he never played online and he uninstalled it from his PC. For six bucks, I decided it was worth the risk that I won’t potentially be able to play online, due the CD key already being in use. I know where he lives anyway, so I could egg his house, or something, if warranted. “Just like the good ‘ol days. You can waste your life away.” -Joel Plaskett. I have a feeling “Everything will work out fine” -Joel Plaskett. I used to play lots of Quake 3 Arena and was pretty good at it (IIRC, Q3DM7 FTW). In fact, my first gaming PC, an Athlon 700 MHz with a 64 MB AGP 4x GeForce 2 GTS, was built after seeing a friend Josh play Q3A. I stopped playing around the time I was introduced to CS, and wasn’t interested in Q4 probably because I was involved in BF2. This will be quite a change of pace from CS:S and BF2 (especially the Reality Mod), as Q3A was a much faster game, so presumably, Q4 will also be. I’m now on my way to Wikipedia to see what the general consensus is on Q4.

1 stick of Kingston 512 MB PC3200 RAM – $20

Project Retro Gamer PC had a free dual-channel memory slot that was asking to be filled, since Erin so generously gave it to me. Running GeeXboX, the upgrade probably won’t make much of a difference, but I may run MCE 2005 in the future, so I couldn’t pass up a matching, brand-name stick for twenty bones. They are about $35 new, so $20 is fair. As a baseline for crudely measuring video performance, I have a HD (720p I believe) nVidia 8800 demo video that was very choppy the last time I ran it, and I believe it ended up locking up the PC. I will try it again this evening, after the RAM upgrade and update this post with the test results. Update, it didn’t do shiat to that video – still froze.

1 HP LaserJet 6L with spare (brand new) toner cartridge, delivered – $30

It all started when father gave me his old 6L, which has worked like a charm for me over the years. I don’t recall him having problems with it either. Well, it started acting up a couple of months ago, “multi feeding” (pulling too much paper). Brother cleaned its innards and that resolved the issue for a short while, until it returned along with another issue where the printer makes a loud noise and prints (usually) solid black pages. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be the laser part (a metal box on top with a yellow warning sticker about lasers) that was making the noise, so we decided it would be best to just buy a used one at Logic Approach in South Austin. We’ve seen used 6L units there before, for $19. In fact, mother and one of her friends each bought one, per our recommendation. Unfortunately, there was only one left and it was in bad shape so we declined.

All was not lost though, because I found a Logitech Wingman Force Feedback USB Mouse on the 50% off rack. Although it had no price tag, the word “Trash” was written in marker a few times on the box. It didn’t sway me. Brother chuckled when I expressed interest in it, and I said something in return like “Well, if I can get it for five bucks, who cares if it actually works.” The clerk opened the box and we all giggled after taking a closer look at it. The mouse and pad are one unit – that is, you can’t remove the mouse from the pad. Additionally, the mouse is limited to a certain “square” area, mostly at the top of the mouse pad. So, your wrist stays put and you control it with your fingers (which is how I game anyway, with high sensitivity). An AC adapter is included to drive the motors, or whatever. He let me have it for $5, but didn’t have any recommendations for where else we could look for a 6L.

Brother and I were initially skeptic about the fact that the mouse was attached to the pad because, as we all know (but may not realize), you periodically have to lift a mouse and put it back in the center of your mouse area. Well, that’s impossible with this mouse, so the question was posed, “What were they thinking”? The answer, I now know, is “Outside the box!” I connected it to Retro, downloaded the latest version I could find of the Wingman software for 9x, and installed it. When the mouse is at the top-left, the mouse cursor remains at the top-left, and so forth. Compare this to a normal mouse, where the cursor stops, but you can keep moving the mouse in that direction (hence, if you move too far, you have to reposition the mouse by picking it up and dropping it back, as previously mentioned). As far as the force feedback is concerned, I’m not sure if that part is working. I do feel some friction depending on what the mouse is moving over, and can “feel” the edges of the screen when I get close, but I was also expecting “rumbles” in the supported games (3 included: Gruntz – 1999, Heavy Gear II (Black Talon?) 1999?, Railroad Tycoon II – 1998) that I never ended up feeling. Granted, I didn’t spend much time with those games, so hopefully I was being impatient. One thing that suggests to me the mouse may be defective (besides, of course, the words “Trash” written on the box) is that the mouse itself has a blue LED, yet mine has never lit. The blue LED on the mouse pad, however, does light. After I play around with this gizmo some more, I’ll update this section.

Back to the 6L. Brother and I ended up finding one at Discount Electronics for $39. Considering I already had a brand new toner cartridge from when father gave me the printer, and the 6L rubs me the right way, for a good, stable, low-cost, network printer (it’s attached to a print server), as well as the fact that it was the only one they had in stock, I took the plunge. After a few tests, it exhibited the same “multifeed” behaviour, which meant that I’d end up with store credit at Discount Electronics – a place I’ve been before that’s becoming commonplace. A quick peek on austin.craigslist brings us back to the beginning of the story, sort of. I ended up spending too much store credit ($9) for some “ice blue” USB-powered mini Christmas lights that caught my attention on previous browsing sessions. Sorry, they’re called “USB Deco Light”. Or is it Lights? I mean Its. Obviously, a new addition to Project Neo Tokyo. I have so much blue stuff already, I decided that blue will be my theme, going forward, besides anything that cycles colors, of course. This means it’s time for a new (version 4, I think) Neo Tokyo picture, which will be used as my avatar for forums, etc.

I always go shopping during the in-between seasons. Right now is a great time to get long sleeve/ winter season stuff at a 75% discount. I was looking at some shirts the other day and wondering about your size. I know that brother wears a small, but wasn’t sure about you.

I buy stuff on sale, then put them in my closet for birthdays, Christmas, whatever. I never pay full price for anything. My mother taught me how to shop; she was a pro.

At the end of summer, I get all the short sleeve stuff on sale! Nothin’ better than a bargain…

I am a newbie Wikipedia contributor. Being so has been rewarding thus far. I feel empowered, and suggest that my readers make accounts and report their experience.

I haven’t made any major changes yet – I’ve only updated broken links, added suggestions, fixd tpyos, and am attempting to thwart off vandals on the “Breaux Bridge, Louisiana” article. As time goes on, I’m sure I’ll find something I’m knowledgeable and/or passionate about, and add to its content.

TGIF.

FRAPS is nifty but even when synching my games to 60 FPS, they are obviously choppy. This results in a less than pleasant gaming experience, in addition to lowering my “performance”, which is important considering I want to capture video clips to put into a demo.

So, I’ve been trying think out of the box, for another method of capturing in-game video, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

My video card is dual head, which means it has two DVI outputs. My monitor has a VGA input, which is no problem because the card comes with a DVI to VGA adapter. What if I get a second one of these adapters and connect to it a VGA to S-Video adapter, then connect that to an external video encoder (think “Dazzle”). The video encoder (USB or Firewire) would then connect to a second computer, which would be handling the encoding. Theoretically, it sounds like a great idea. What’s really cool is this wouldn’t lower the performance of my gaming computer whatsoever, since the encoding is being handled by the video encoder and second PC.

What helped influence this idea is that, at the office, I’ve been helping our developer test a USB video encoder, which has a S-Video input.

I’ll bring one of these devices home this weekend to test. Hopefully I can find one of thsoe VGA to S-Video adapters locally, for around the same price.

NAGGING

• Fark cliche, typically referring to unattractive females, plus the animal prop influence of ceiling cat. Not mine! If the owner wants props or removal, no worries, leave a comment and it shall be done.

• we are the female robots

_.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’`^`’~*-,._.,-*~’

The deal went through yesterday evening without a hitch. I met an older guy with “child molester” spectacles, who drove a silver minivan like my brother’s, full of boxes. He apparently sells used computer components for a living, or at least spends a lot of time doing that. He told me he had something like 60 other bundles like the one I bought.

All of the components were as advertised. The RAM is PC100 Samsung brand with ECC (what the seller called “server RAM”). The PII-450 had a silver-colored passive (fanless) heatsink, which I was very glad to see. He even included some IDE cables, SATA cables, and a burned CD with the P2B manual, BIOS updates, etc.

If any of my readers are interested in building their own retro gaming PC, or may be in the future, this is a great, inexpensive foundation, so let me know and I can buy more from him. Other required components would be a hard drive (something like 4 GB should be plenty), sound card (i.e. Sound Blaster 16 ISA), video card (Voodoo, early GeForce), case, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers.

Last night, I removed all of the components from the Pionex case then brought it outside and cleaned the dust out of it, using the Intex Quick-Fill with the help of a three to two prong adapter and extension cord. Since I didn’t know the history of that P2B board, I didn’t want to swap everything over then boot it up to find out the board was bad, so I first put the P2B in the Pionex case (keeping the original power supply in there) and powered it, listening for beeps. And it beeped, of course, because there was no video card. OK, that’s an easy swap. I put the Voodoo3 in, and listened and only heard that one quick beep, which means “all is well”. Who needs a stinkin’ monitor. Afterwards, I swapped more components, booting up the PC periodically listening for rapid beeps. After I moved it into my room, I updated the BIOS (from 1008 to 1011 I believe) then customized the BIOS for my needs. I initially thought I would have to re-install Windows 98 SE, because it wouldn’t let me boot, even in safe mode (instead, the PC would reboot when Windows started to load). That problem turned out to be due to not having the correct RAM setting (ECC enabled) in the BIOS. Windows 98 happily installed the new motherboard components and peripherals.

If any of my readers have older, DOS/9x games to recommend, i.e. fun ones you used to play, please do so here.

I spotted this ad on austin.craigslist:

Great Starting Point – Motherboard, CPU and RAM – $20

This starts with a rock solid Asus P2B AGP Motherboard as the foundation. The CPU is an Intel PII-450 and to round it all out is three sticks of 128MB memory for a total of 384MB memory.

This motherboard has the Intel 440BX chipset and on-board USB, parallel port, 2 serial ports, and PS2 mouse and keyboard ports.

The general consensus on the VOGONS forum seems to be that a motherboard based on the Intel 440BX chipset is the best overall choice for Retro Gaming PCs. On top of that, it’s an Asus board, and I’ve had a good experiences with them over the years. It has 1 AGP slot, 4 PCI slots, and 3 ISA slots. Those ISA slots are important because some “retro gamers” use multiple sound cards, sometimes requiring 3 slots, i.e. if you want to use a Roland SCC-1.

The Dell machine I’m running now, for this project, is based on the Intel 440LX chipset, and has 128 MB RAM and a PII-300. Granted, I probably won’t actually run 384 MB, extra sticks are always welcome. I’m curious if these RAM modules are 100 or 133 MHz. Regarding the CPU, 450 MHz may be too much for older games, but I’ll leave it in there to start off, with the option of putting the 300 MHz in its place if needed.

Hmm, what case to use? Maybe the Pionex case that Jim so graciously gave me.

I think $20 is a good deal. Let’s hope it goes through! I’m meeting the seller this evening at Chili’s for the exchange.