misc

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.