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Computers, A/V, and the like.

HOWTO resolve “playback error” on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

January 8, 2008 in HOWTO, Hardware, Music, Project, Software by modul8r | 1 comment

My Xtra exhibits a “playback error” when trying to play certain mp3s. The resolution is to use foobar2000 to re-encode these mp3s. Specifically, click “File / Open” and open the respective mp3. Before you get started, you’ll need lame.exe. Extract the contents of the .zip file anywhere on your hard drive, then copy/paste lame.exe anywhere, for example in the foobar2000 folder. In the following steps, when prompted for lame.exe, browse to where you pasted it.

In the two versions of foobar2000 I’ve used, the track starts playing automatically, so stop playback if that’s also the case for you. Right-click on the file (the item in the playlist), click “Convert” from the menu, then click “Convert to Same Folder”. Choose “MP3 (LAME), 190 kbps, V2, fast” from the dropbox then click OK. Click “Yes” in the warning window that tells you there will be quality loss. Your newly-created mp3 will have a different filename and a newer timestamp than the older one. This newer one is (obviously) the one that should be copied to the Xtra.

The only problem I’ve observed is that sometimes, not always, the converted mp3 isn’t able to be fastforwarded or rewound, if those words still apply in the digital world. In other words, once you start playing the track, if you try to fastforward or rewind it, you’ll have to start over, so be cautious. I haven’t looked into that problem – I’m leaving good enough alone, or whatever the saying is.

Find Unused FM Frequencies in Your Area

November 16, 2007 in Hardware, Links by modul8r | No comments

Helpful site for those who use FM transmitters to interface portable audio players to their vehicle’s audio system.

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

July 11, 2007 in Gaming, Hardware by modul8r | No comments

I’m picking this up after work today. I found it for $30 on austin.craigslist. It will go in my gaming machine and hopefully lower CPU useage (thus giving me more FPS), since I’m currently using onboard audio and this card has an onboard processor.

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I read a couple of reviews on this card and supposedly it’s great for gaming. I believe it’s the best of the Audigy 2 series. I’ve never cared much about sound cards since I’m skeptical that the sound is “that much better” but I do have good ears so I’m anxious to see, er, hear, the difference in audio quality. Oh, and now I can use all those EAX settings that I couldn’t before.

07-12-2007 update:

I’m not sure if it lowered my FPS because I change video settings quite often (especially after upgrading to the 8800 GTS). The sound is noticeably much better, though, so I’d say that I got a great deal for a new sound card. I played a little BF2 and it’s as if different (higher quality) samples were used for the weapons. For example, the PKM sounds much different than it did before. Even though the card supports 7.1, I believe, I’m still just using 2 speakers. I may connect another couple of rear speakers to take advantage of surround capabilities.

I bit the bullet…

July 9, 2007 in Gaming, Hardware by modul8r | No comments

…and upgraded my gaming rig video card for the second time. When I originally built this computer, I put a GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB in there with the option of adding another in the future via SLI. I ended up getting a second 6600 GT later, which helped performance-wise but it wasn’t as big of a performance increased as I had hoped for. I then did more research on SLI (which I should have in the first place) and determined that cost-wise, it’s a better choice to just buy a better next generation card than run two cards in SLI mode. More bang for the buck, so to speak. That’s when I upgraded to a single 7600 GT 256 MB, which exhibited a noticeable performance increase.

The 7600 GT has been great for my usual FPS games: CS:S and BF2. Heck, much lower end cards will run those games just fine. I still haven’t spent much time playing Oblivion, though, because I want to experience it properly, without having to sacrifice video quality. IIRC, the highest resolution I could run Oblivion at was 1280×1024, with HDR enabled and everything else on medium, generally speaking. My CRT monitor, however, can do 1600×1200 @ 85 Hz, so I was not getting the most of out my hardware due to the bottleneck that was the video card. Granted, I suppose it could be the CPU, an Athlon 64 3700+. I wonder how exactly one can determine which of the two is the bottleneck.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the new DirectX 10 video cards, namely the 8800 GTS 320 MB version. You get the same GPU core as the 640 MB version for about $100 less. After reading some roundups/reviews, I determined that the EVGA 8800GTS 320MB Superclocked offered the best value – an overclocked DX10 card for under $300. The 6 and 7 series cards I had were both XFX brand, which I experience no problems with, so I hope that this EVGA one works out fine as well. EVGA seems to be reputable, from what I can tell, and this will be the first of their products to get in my hands.

As much as it hurts to spend this much money upgrading an existing component (as opposed to getting a hold of a completely new product), I’m at least somewhat “future proofing” my gaming rig. I’ll now be able to run Vista, if/when more interesting DX10 games start showing up. It’s also nice that I’m still able to get the most out of my existing motherboard, before I’m forced to upgrade the heart of the system (mobo/CPU) and join the Core 2 Duo bandwagon, unless, of course, AMD has a better answer when that time comes.

Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

June 19, 2007 in Hardware, Music, Project by modul8r | No comments

Last week I spent some time writing a post about a new “car mp3 player” project that I had started working on. After running into some minor roadblocks I realized it might be easier to just get a portable mp3 player and use that instead of the old laptop I was originally planning on using. The main reason I wanted to use the laptop was to make use of existing resources and save a few bucks. The laptop wasn’t being used, nor was the 20 GB hard drive pulled from Erin P’s broken Rio Karma. Portable mp3 players are generally not upgradeable and the inexpensive models offer small storage, which are both deal breakers for me

One night I was browsing through austin.craigslist electronics and came across a 30 GB Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen NX for $50. The buyer reported it as being used for just 4 months, and in working order. I did a little research and the reviews were overall favorable. Plus, the battery and hard drive were both removable. The only potential issue was the fact that the unit did not offer a line out. It only had a headphone output, so my concern was that the pre-amplified output might sound distorted when connected to the line in of the EQ in my car. Oh well, I thought. Worst case, I could use a cassette adapter or resell the thing.

The seller was nice enough to drive down to Austin, from Cedar Park IIRC, and meet me in the smoothie area of Whole Foods on 360 & 183. It turned out that the model was the “Xtra”, not the “NX”, which was both good and bad. You see, from the small amount of research I did on these Zens, I had read of a known issue regarding the headphone jack. The plus side of the Xtra models, however, is that they have a larger display, buffer, and a blue backlight (instead of green). Want to guess what my favourite colour is? I asked him if he ever encountered issues with the headphone jack and took his word that he didn’t, so I took a chance and forked up the cash. Once back in my car, I connected it to the cable already in place and it sounded fine, as far as I could tell. Cool beans.

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Mine is a 30 GB, not 60 GB, although I can put a bigger HDD in there once the warranty is void.

Later that night, Nora was over to drink beer and play video games (does it get any better than that?). While taking turns playing WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii and talking with brother while he was playing with his new Power Mac G4, we played miscellaneous songs that were left on the Zen. Or should I call it NOMAD, Jukebox or Xtra? He had a mixture of Vietnamese songs, mostly from a particular artist that sounded 80s-ish, as well as the most typical music you can think of. Think The Beatles, Elvis, Depeche Mode, Two Doors Down, 10,000 Maniacs (which I only remember because it was the first artist listed), 50 cent, etc. At that time, it was connected to the hifi in the living room, which was a better test for audio quality than my car. And, once again, it sounded pretty good. The thing to keep in mind is that, of course, the quality depends on the characteristics of the songs themself, so the best test would be to put something high quality on there. At any rate, it will be in my car and the mp3s that will be on it will be either ripped from yours truly or from others’ “album rips” (NOT INDIVIDUAL TRACKS!), so rest assured that the quality will be sufficient.

I also read that the bundled software from Creative sucked, and that 3rd party software applications were recommended, so I didn’t even try Creative’s offering. I ended up getting Notmad (not a typo) Explorer from Red Chair Software, which increased my investment $25. Still, I think $75 is a very reasonable amount of dough required to play 30 GB worth of high quality mp3s in my car. I tried moving the existing songs to the file servere, where I would later go through them to delete the crap and keep the interesting things, but I kept getting error messages and would have to start the process over (from what appeared to be the very beginning) each time. This rubbed me the wrong way, as it wasn’t a nice introduction to this new software, but at least Red Chair had information related to the error message on their website. Although there wasn’t a workaround to the issue, at least I knew that it was related to the mp3s being somehow corrupt. After I found that out, I just deleted all of his stuff because I was anxious to get my stuff on there. Since then I haven’t had any errors, so I’ll give Red Chair the benefit of the doubt and point the finger at the previous user or, more specifically, the source of his purportedly corrupt mp3s.

As far as looks are concerned, I think it’s made of adonized metal. All of the buttons are on the sides and the jacks (AC, USB, headphone) are on the top. I don’t think a docking station option is available because there’s no interface on the bottom of the unit. It came with the AC adapter and a car charger, the later of which I was both glad to hear, considering the application. It’s basically as tall and wide as a 12 oz soda can and about an inch deep. It also has a black (faux leather?) case. Since there’s a hard drive inside instead of flash memory, it’s not ideal to carry around, i.e. jog with, but, again, that’s perfectly fine for what I’m using it for. Brother thinks the “Smart Volume Management (SVM)” EAX setting will normalize/compress the audio, resulting in all tracks being played at the same volume. I hope that’s indeed the case, so I don’t have to adjust the volume depending on the album, while in shuffle mode. I haven’t yet experimented with that feature enough to determine if he’s correct. The user’s guide says it “intelligently controls the dynamic range of audio, providing a superior audio experience in difficult listening environments such as in a plane or car”. WTF does that mean? Layman’s terms are great but only when bundled with technical details alongside.

It would be super if it had a remote, something I haven’t researched yet, because it’s a small nuisance to control it while driving, i.e. adjusing the volume, skipping tracks and toggling shuffle. “Right now I’ll take what I can get.” -Joel Plaskett

Valve Survey Summary

May 31, 2007 in Gaming, Hardware, Software by modul8r | No comments

Results

Netflix and Windows Media Center 2005

May 8, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | 3 comments

Here we go again. For the third, perhaps, fourth time, I’m investing in a replacement AGP video card with DVI-out for my media center PC. The last few efforts to get the most out of GeeXboX resulted in me returning them – usually along with the DVI-I cable for either store credit (Discount Electronics, bah) or a refund (Fry’s, woot) because I couldn’t run GeeXboX at the higher resolutions I was aiming for, at least in combination with my HD TV.

After streaming Soylent Green through Netflix’ relatively new “Watch Now” feature this weekend, I realized that I would prefer to watch these movies on the living room TV, sitting on the sofa, instead of on my gaming PC monitor, sitting in that dreaded computer chair. Mother says I need to get out more anyway, and I take it she means my room. My ass hurts enough from late night weekend gaming sessions.

It turns out that, in order to stream, you must use Internet Explorer (Firefox is incompatible), which means there’s no way it will ever be integrated into Linux-based GeeXboX. That means I’d have to go the Windows route, which I was considering doing anyway, in order to play HD content from my NASLite+ file server. So, now I have two excuses to install Windows Media Center Edition 2005 on my media center PC that’s currently running GeeXboX.

Since GeeXboX is a bootable CD, I can easily choose to run either OS upon booting. Either press a key on the keyboard to boot to GeeXboX, or don’t and it will boot to MCE 2005 off of the hard drive. Unfortunately, hard drives are noisy, but I’ll just have to live with it (at least, until I can get a great deal on a CF card, and use a CF-to-IDE adapter like I have in my IPCop firewall). But I’m not getting another CF card and adapter until I know MCE 2005 runs (well) on this hardware, so I’ll use a spare WD 20 GB HDD in the meantime, for testing purposes.

Considering my current MSI Radeon 9250 AGP 8x video card is limited to S-Video out (which is the best I can do with GeeXboX, so it’s a great fit), and that MCE 2005 can run HD resolutions, I took a look on austin.craigslist for an older, passively cooled ATI video card with both DVI and S-Video out, and DirectX 9 support, and I found exactly what I was looking for: an ATI Radeon 9550 AGP 8x for $40. $40 was a little steep but I got started on this project last night (playing around with MCE on existing hardware) so I don’t feel like waiting for something to ship. Now, now, now! I’m gonna pick up the video card from a “short guy with a gray shirt and jeans, holding a video card” at Starbucks on Parmer around 7 this evening.

I did some research on MCE 2005 hardware requirements and it turns out that:

Media Center has higher hardware requirements than other editions of Windows XP. MCE 2005 requires at least a 1.6 GHz (or equivalent) processor, DirectX 9 hardware-accelerated GPU (such as a recent ATI Radeon X series or nVidia GeForce 6 series), and 256 MB of System RAM. Some functionality, such as Media Center Extender support, use of multiple tuners, or HDTV playback/recording carries higher system requirements.

It installed on my system last night, with my 9250 that only supports DirectX 8, which makes me wonder how much of a requirement DirectX 9 really is. Maybe that’s just a way of differentiating “modern” video cards with older ones. Still, it seems confusing to call it a requirement instead of a recommendation, if it will let me install the OS using something that doesn’t fit the requirements. The same goes for my 1.3 GHz Athlon XP 1500+ CPU.

Anyway, I see no reason why the Netflix streaming service won’t work with MCE 2005 and I’m more anxious to see how “taxing” HD content is on this hardware, which is another reason for upgrading the video card: the new one has twice the amount of DDR memory.

The info below was mainly for personal use while doing (compatibility) research, but I may as well leave it here to assure you’ll fall asleep if you haven’t already.

Mobo is AGP 3.0 compliant (up to 8x @ 0.8V)

Current video card: MSI Radeon 9250 (DirectX 8) 128 MB – Universal (1.5V & 3.3V) physical interface.

New video card: Radeon 9550 (DirectX 9) 256 MB – 1.5V physical interface.

05-09-2007 update:

They say “you learn from your mistakes”, but I say “only if you remember what you learned”. I forgot that my HDTV doesn’t play well with ATI cards when it comes to DVI, until I scratched my head yesterday after installing the new card and connecting it via DVI. There’s still hope, though. After looking through old posts (which, in retrospect, I should have done before getting that card yesterday) I recalled that two nVidia cards worked just fine using DVI to connect to the HDTV, whereas 3 ATI cards didn’t. With that in mind, I’m throwing another sixty bones at the project in hopes that this XFX PV-T44A-WANG GeForce 6200 256MB AGP 8X DDR Video Card w/TV-Out & DVI will follow the nVidia compatibility trend. I checked pricegrabber and filtered 256 MB, DVI, nVidia, AGP and this was the cheapest passively cooled card. I’m very glad to see that a 6 series was available without a fan. Also, I guess you can call me a XFX “fanboi”. My 6600 GTs were XFX, as is my 7600 GT. They seem solid so far, so I’m gonna stick with what works. Specs here. By all means not a gaming card, but hopefully works well for my HTPC (home theater personal computer) application. I read on Wikipedia that “there are still reports of people successfully unlocking pipelines and overclocking the newest 6200A NV44A chip ranges, using older Geforce drivers.” Turns out that this card has a GeForce 6200 A chipset, but I’m not certain if it’s a NV44A. Still, presumably it is, since the model name is “PV-T44A-WANG” (note that T44A portion). I’ll see what google has to say regarding “unlocking 6200A NV44A”.

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$2 for 1-2 day shipping, so hopefully it will be here by this weekend, so I don’t have to stay up late during the weeknights like I have been, fiddling with this stuff.

Oh, I’ll probably sell those ATI 9250 and 9550 cards on craigslist after this works and market them as “FANLESS, GREAT FOR HTPC!”.

05-15-2007 update:

The nVidia 6200 does output via DVI to the HDTV as I suspected (and hoped) it would. I’m running 1080i now, technically a little less than that due to overscan compensation, to shrink the video to fit better to the screen.

Brother and I initially spend some time trying to troubleshoot why the process of playing a video (even small ones, to rule out large/taxing videos being the problem) would make the computer “take a dump’, the way brother put it. Different media players didn’t make a difference, nor did 3 different drivers (2 from nVidia and 1 from the XFX CD). Videos would play immediately using no driver (essentially, the Windows built-in VGA driver). It turns out that, surprisingly, a 4th older nVidia driver did the trick. Isn’t that something? Anyway, we started testing HD content and some are choppy (although not that bad) and some have lots of artifacts), so the latest hurdle is figuring out “why?”. As far as choppiness is concerned, my best guess is that it’s due to the CPU, which is an Athlon XP 1500+ (1.3 GHz, first core)), so I’m going to upgrade it to the fastest the mobo can handle, which is a 3200+ (2.? GHz), since I recall glitch telling me that a better CPU is more important than a video card when it comes to playing videos (as compared to gaming). I’m currently seeing what austin.craigslist has to offer, regarding Athlon XP CPUs, and trying to sell the 9550.

05-24-2007 update:

The 9550 sold for $35. I probably could have gotten a lot more for the card, since I must have gotten 10 or so responses. Anyway, the first responder got it and that’s that. We met in the back parking lot of Threadgill’s on Lamar. I always feel like people in the area (that notice) are going to think a drug deal is going on, when I make these kinds of craigslist transactions, as cash is traded for a mysterious item. Yes, I worry too much about other people.

Picked up a 3200+ on craigslist for $50. The guy said the CPU was suspect – not in those words, but I like to use that word, since I borrowed it from when I worked at a computer sales and service shop that I won’t name – and was initially hesitant to even sell it, since the computer that it was in would reboot periodically. We both agreed that, more likely, the problem was due to the motherboard. I trusted him on his offer to refund my money within a week if the CPU seemed bad. It took a BIOS tweak to get the BIOS and XP to properly recognize it. I was a little worried at first that it might not be compatible, even though I had already done research and determined 1) that mobo supports up to 3200+ Barton core and 2) the only 3200+ have Barton cores. I need to stop second-guessing myself so much, give myself more credit, etc.

The nVidia 8800 780p demo plays great now – big difference. I’m also able to play a couple of racing games (Live for Speed and Richard Burns Rally) at full resolution/graphics settings and get playable frame rates. On top of that, I can stream a 1080i video over the network from the file server and it’s just barely choppy. Good stuff! Now I need to get more HD content, heh. Right now I mainly have demo videos.

Speaking of racing games, I picked up a Microsoft Sidewinder force feedback wheel (w/ pedals) at GCW for $10. Ironically, the week before, I went there to specifically look for a force feedback wheel and I settled with a non force feedback Microsoft Sidewinder wheel (again, w/ pedals), because it was in great shape and appeared sturdy. They’re both USB and work like a charm. Oh, the ff wheel didn’t come with an AC adapter, so I grabbed one from the AC adapter bin at Goodwill that, IIRC was a marginal amount of current/amps lower than required. At any rate, it works, so I “won’t argue with success” (another term borrowed from my old boss at that computer shop). I love me some force feedback, as it (obviously?) makes the experience more realistic. Brother seems unsure. I’ll get a picture and/or video of the driving setup in the living room. It’s really nice sitting there right in front of the 36″ TV instead of at my computer. I’m sure other games that have more text, like RPGs wouldn’t be ideal for this computer, since small text is difficult to read after the conversion and what-not, but for racing games, where you’re spending most of your time driving, it seems like an ideal setup.

So that’s that, right? Project complete? Of course not. Now I have a noisy hard drive to deal with. Since I’ve been spending too much money as of late (mainly on a Wii and games), I’m going to start off by trying some basic, inexpensive methods to reduce the HDD noise. silentpcreview.com has some interesting ideas involving foam and elastic bands, to name a couple. Also, once I find out what size chassis fan (well, technically you could call it a CPU fan, since it cools the “radiator” that’s attached to the CPU as a heatsink), I may get a fan that got favorable reviews on that website for being quiet, but only if I can get a good deal, because I’m already using the “ultra low” fan setting in the BIOS and it’s pretty darned quiet without the hard drive.

austin.craigslist

March 26, 2007 in Gaming, Hardware, Project, misc by modul8r | No comments

Sunday was fruitful:

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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Hacking FRAPS

March 16, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | No comments

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.

Update on P2B

March 15, 2007 in Hardware, Project by modul8r | No comments

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    • we are the female robots

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

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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.

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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.

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