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Captain Yossarian posted:I don't even have one and now I feel lower then garbage Hey now! You're an all-star!
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Mar 8, 2016 00:21
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VectorSigma posted:My original SNES fell from a ledge and took a tumble down a flight of hardwood stairs, shattering the plastic casing and bending and cracking the exposed mainboard in a few places. It still worked perfectly, so I sloppily glued the many, many pieces of the case back together and used it until emulators caught up on PC. If I hadn't thrown it in the trash, I think it would still be working today. I've had mine fall off the television set numerous times (heavy RF adapter + slick surface = bad times) and it still ran like a top. In its last years, though, I had to wedge little pieces of paper between the cartridge and the cartridge door so the connection would stay solid. After about 6 or 7 years of faithful, reliable use, it got killed with cat piss, courtesy of my late grandma's hateful rear end oval office of a cat.
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Mar 8, 2016 07:21
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I always thought that the enclosure was real, but the internals were rebuilt from a doner.
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Mar 8, 2016 09:04
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evobatman posted:They were also giant pieces of poo poo that had hardware that constantly needed to be replaced. You're talking about all Dell XPS products right?
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Mar 8, 2016 09:36
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Buttcoin purse posted:You're talking about all Dell XPS products right? Considering my own experiences with my Studio XPS 13 (that I do love dearly) and the experiences of all my coworkers who got the M2010 as an employee purchase at our workplace - yes. Dell was just putting too much processing power into too poorly ventilated and cramped designer cases, and of course loaded them up with crapware that would keep the CPU running hot all the time. If you want an XPS product, buy it for the nice design, but always get at least the 3-year onsite warranty. Also, format it and reinstall Windows yourself. Just like you would with any and all laptops.
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Mar 8, 2016 11:33
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I ran across this on an old magazine cover disk. I had been trying to remember the name for a pretty long time so I could post it here  fpArchie (in German) was a tool for searching the Internet using Archie which was nicely integrated into Windows 95. It showed up in the Start Menu under "Search" where you'd go if you wanted to find files on your own PC, but under another option like "Files or Folders on the Internet" or something. And it looked like a proper Windows 95 component too:   evobatman posted:Studio XPS 13 How many times have you had the video card replaced? Maybe that was an older model that had that problem.
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Mar 8, 2016 12:04
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Boy that is uh...from a more innocent time. I wonder if it still works somehow? Can you get porno and  on it?
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Mar 8, 2016 12:07
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Light Gun Man posted:Boy that is uh...from a more innocent time. I wonder if it still works somehow? Can you get porno and I guess Most Archie servers were turned off when everyone started using Google. Oops, I forgot to explain that bit. "Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files. It is considered to be the first Internet search engine." I can't even remember what I used to use it for! I don't think I used it for porno and because my university had its own internal search engine for that - you just shared your hard drive on the LAN and there was a centralized search engine Wikipedia mentions that there's http://archie.icm.edu.pl/archie-adv_eng.html which seems to have a few FTP sites in Poland indexed. Looks like you can find Linux-related stuff on there, yay. Google doesn't have any other ones on its front page.  e: And yeah, a more innocent time is kind of what I was thinking before I posted it too. No ads, nowhere to click through to say you read a EULA before you download.
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Mar 8, 2016 12:40
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Neat stuff. Kind of reminds me of the way DC++ was/is used in somewhat more modern times. I like how there were apparently other things named on the theme. Anarchie 
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Mar 8, 2016 14:32
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Humphreys posted:I always thought that the enclosure was real, but the internals were rebuilt from a doner. from a what
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Mar 8, 2016 19:38
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donor like with organs
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Mar 8, 2016 19:42
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The screen was replaced. Everything else was original. I know it at least worked well enough to tell the internals were good after only a battery change.
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Mar 8, 2016 19:48
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Lincoln posted:from a what 
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Mar 8, 2016 23:35
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I was drunk and hungry and I guess my mind slipped on the spelling. Oops!
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Mar 9, 2016 08:51
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Humphreys posted:I was drunk and hungry and I guess my mind slipped on the spelling. Oops! Don't worry, the vision of a Dell XPS filled with doner kebab was worth it.
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Mar 9, 2016 10:30
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Fanelien posted:Don't worry, the vision of a Dell XPS filled with doner kebab was worth it. Well that XPS (the one with the carry handle) DOES look like the toaster presses used in kebab shops! And probably runs hot enough to toast food too!
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Mar 9, 2016 11:08
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Holy crap, haven't seen or heard Archie mentioned in years, an excellent tool.
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Mar 9, 2016 11:27
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There was a time when the most awesome tool imaginable was a thing that could search the entire Internet for a thing, across all the popular services: Gopher, WAIS, Archie, Veronica ...
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Mar 9, 2016 17:00
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Ftpsearch.ntnu.no was quite nice for a while, too - it indexed a lot of weird FTP sites. They eventually turned into FAST and got bought by Microsoft, but by then Google had become a better alternative.
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Mar 9, 2016 17:47
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I was just reminded of this after having forgotten all about this for a while. I'm sure many people know this already but maybe others have forgotten about it, too. http://www.oocities.org/ They have quite a bunch of geocities pages archived. You can find lots of "personal homepages" from people who're probably long dead by now! Somehow this also reminded me of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7-8DNE0ZTc and this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y6T9UlwICc UO was my first and last (thank god) MMO, which was when I was still having dial up. I didn't even know there were more songs like these two. UO was great for griefing and generally playing cleverly in the beginning, then they regulated it just too drat much and people started to take everything too drat serious instead of just having fun and marveling at the wonder that tons of people from all over the world could play together at the same time. (well not quite, the official "shards" were by country, but you could select whichever you wanted) That's where I quit. Doesn't seem like it ever got better. (Well I bet MUDs etc. weren't any better but didn't really care about them) A friend later really really tried to get me into that Matrix MMO but I was just like "nah". UO I played with an external 28.8k modem first which managed around ~3 kb/s, (still have the modem) Then for a short time 56k and then ISDN which was a *lot better* latency-wise than my DSL line later ever was. I'm on cable now. You could "bundle" the two ISDN lines and reach about 14,4 - 14,5 kb/s on average on downloads which would cost double with the phone company but that really made these nightly download sessions better. This just makes the memories flood back. Around that time (mid- to late 90s) I usually had two PCs (not rarely the older one I got about a year prior and a newer one which was "bleeding edge") because it was just so much more convenient to have two PCs to do stuff because you'd be surprised how easy it was to completely occupy one with relatively (for today) simple tasks. For example, my first Pentium (which was screaming fast compared to my 486) could play back mp3s in realtime but would hover around at ~80% CPU utilization while doing so, which didn't really gave you a chance to do much else with the computer, it still was amazing to be able to download music in such small files at such a good quality. It was different than today though, even with ISDN downloading a song would take about 3x the time it's playtime, as rough estimate. Later on I got my 600 Mhz (I think? Or 500) P3 Coppermine and that thing served me a long time. Outrageously expensive. 440BX Chipset, best Chipset intel ever made with a great mainboard from Tyan I got from the computer store down the road. Gave that computer away a few years later, regret that a lot now. I did a lot of great things on that machine. This was also around the time when PCs started to "just work" and hardware didn't have bizarre problems anymore. I think I played System Shock 2 on that computer. Skipped an absolute horrid job on release. No regrets. Wish I could still get that excited about vidya. Or maybe not.
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Mar 9, 2016 23:57
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I quit playing UO before Second Age or whatever, but there was a period of time near the end of my subscription when some players had cable internet service while almost everyone else was on dial-up (including me). If memory serves, people with fast internet connections could literally run faster than players on slow connections, giving them an enormous advantage in a game where much of pvp involved playing cat and mouse, running off of a player's screen/viewport to regroup or to attack with the element of surprise. I am happy I had the chance to play UO on release, but I am sad that I will never play such a fun game ever again. It was too much a product of its time and the state of the internet and internet culture for anything like it to exist again, I think. There was nothing better than looting someone's boat/house/tower, leaving a bunch of books with nasty titles and content behind to taunt them. Or gating them to one tile island, or gating nasty monsters into popular places. Or stealing house deeds from people as they tried to get from the bank to their planned location. Or tricking people into calling guards on themselves in town and watching a million newbies descend upon their corpse to pick it clean.
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Mar 10, 2016 00:12
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Kids these days couldn't handle the loss of losing everything because you left a door unlocked, or even worse somebody invisible followed you inside.
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Mar 10, 2016 00:31
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You haven't truly lived if you didn't have an angry ghost following you around going OoooOooooOoo
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Mar 10, 2016 00:41
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Was UO just completely unregulated at the start or something
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Mar 10, 2016 02:05
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UIApplication posted:Was UO just completely unregulated at the start or something Griefing history was made when Richard Garriot logged in to address people in game and got assassinated.
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Mar 10, 2016 02:19
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UIApplication posted:Was UO just completely unregulated at the start or something It was more self-regulated - I remember somebody giving me a sob story that he'd been jacked by a guy who lied to him, and if I helped him get his stuff back he'd give me a reward. These days that would just be a scam or way to grief you even harder, but this dude really did get screwed, and we ended up getting most of his possessions back just by killing the dude who took his key. I think I got some armor and some raw ore out of the deal but it was also the unregulated revenge aspect that made it so cool. UO was some Darwinian poo poo back in the day. Tumble has a new favorite as of 02:29 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 02:27
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Also there wasn't really any experience with how to do such a game and because of that there were many loopholes, bugs and outright exploits which kept things interesting. Completely unlike to MMOs of today where they have everything down to an exact science, which actually just helps to make things boring IMHO. Also honestly, I don't think people took everything as serious as they do now. This might be rose tinted glasses but the 8 to 12 hours a day shut-in autistically creating excel spreadsheets about everything didn't really seem to be such a thing back then or at least he seemed to be a rare creature, now it seems to be the only way you can even play such a game and get anywhere. Well, if you can call that enjoyment. I personally prefer having a life outside of the game.
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Mar 10, 2016 02:39
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UIApplication posted:Was UO just completely unregulated at the start or something It started out with the idea that people would police themselves but it turns out being a PK or Thief is a lot more alluring than being a good guy. Later on they changed the game so that the main facet of the world had no PKing or stealing from players, and everyone moved over there but the game slowly died after that partially because UO isn't that interesting without the real danger provided by players. TOOT BOOT has a new favorite as of 03:03 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 03:01
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McDowell posted:Griefing history was made when Richard Garriot logged in to address people in game and got assassinated. Holy moly
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Mar 10, 2016 03:36
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UIApplication posted:Holy moly I think I may be an rear end in a top hat because that story made me legit giggle.
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Mar 10, 2016 03:40
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Im not old enough to have been there, I read about it in PC gamer years later. He took precautions, too - like having a ton of regenerating HP, but it wasn't enough.
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Mar 10, 2016 03:44
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McDowell posted:Im not old enough to have been there, I read about it in PC gamer years later. He took precautions, too - like having a ton of regenerating HP, but it wasn't enough. Legit funny story about the wild west of online gaming... Anyone have a link?
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Mar 10, 2016 03:52
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i like how some games (eve, age of wushu) have decided to embrace griefing as part of their ecosystem. i never played wushu but there were some good stories about tricking people into probating themselves for long stretches of time or castrating other characters just by simple in-game trickery.
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Mar 10, 2016 03:55
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Captain Yossarian posted:Legit funny story about the wild west of online gaming... Anyone have a link? The Wiki on Lord British has a good summary. Interview with the killer.
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Mar 10, 2016 03:57
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I kinda want to install some emulator, get the old client from somewhere and just walk around a little for old times' sake.
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Mar 10, 2016 04:03
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Playing LAN games of Age of Empires II in a computer class and reaching over and turning off someone's computer if they were winning.
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Mar 10, 2016 04:07
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Captain Yossarian posted:Legit funny story about the wild west of online gaming... Anyone have a link? Man I was there. When ultima online was in beta they were still trying to figure out how to balance the game and so a lot of the mechanics from old ultima games carried over such as being able to cast any spell by just having a scroll, open line of sight, etc. Anyway they'd do a full reset of the game world every week or two so the only people who were loaded out with high end equipment were either in big guilds or friends with developers. Our little group hung out in the uo Efnet channel with some of the dev team so we got good stuff. (Anyone remember the player town north of Brit gy?) I remember being given a full plate armor set and a horse which were impossibly expensive during the beta. The night before the one of the last resets before public release rolls around they announce that Richard Garriot himself would be touring all of the major cities. This I think was meant as a load test for each zone of a shard because the main britan castle was completely packed with people. It would take you 30-40 minutes to shove your way across the screen. But on Efnet somebody had made the comment that the other big castle in britan was almost totally empty so our little band of idiots made our way over there. Well Lord British finally shows up at the main castle and the entire server goes down. This repeats a few times where they try to get things under control but the load is just too much. Server goes up and down a few times and they make an announcement he'll be going to the next stop. He appears with chuckles and a few other ultima characters at the other castle where we were stationed up. Remember how I said we were all getting good stuff? Well another player there had managed to pick pocket a higher level fire wall scroll from somebody in our group and within a minute of Lord British being on screen their entire posse of ultima characters is on fire. And then Lord British died... You see, when they made the game the developers had it so you could flag a player as invulnerable. But if the server rebooted the flag reset to normal. Well everyone else had their helpers set their flags after the last reboot, but somebody forgot about Lord British. Shortly after Lord British died the GMs unleashed a wave of ultra high level monsters into the court yard where everyone was gathered. We all died... I have a ton of screenshots of it on a Zip disk at my parents house somewhere. I'd love to unearth it and publish them all but that's require digging through a lot of storage and crap.
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Mar 10, 2016 04:16
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Return Of JimmyJars posted:Man I was there. When ultima online was in beta they were still trying to figure out how to balance the game and so a lot of the mechanics from old ultima games carried over such as being able to cast any spell by just having a scroll, open line of sight, etc.
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Mar 10, 2016 05:49
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VectorSigma posted:My original SNES fell from a ledge and took a tumble down a flight of hardwood stairs, shattering the plastic casing and bending and cracking the exposed mainboard in a few places. It still worked perfectly, so I sloppily glued the many, many pieces of the case back together and used it until emulators caught up on PC. If I hadn't thrown it in the trash, I think it would still be working today. It's not strictly a relic, but it is both relic-related and SNES-related: a goon has a project called BeagleSNES, which is software he wrote to turn the BeagleBone Black into a badass multi-system emulator. I have followed his updates with great interest for a long time, and finally ordered my BeagleBone Black, today. Check it out at these URLs: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3684105 http://beaglesnes.sourceforge.net/ While I'm here, does anyone else remember Alfredo's Arduous Adventures? They followed the pixelly, animated adventures of the titular character, the ill-fated Alfredo. They used to come on disks with certain computer magazines. The one that has stuck in my head for the last thirty-something years is Alfredo's Laser Lament, but there are a bunch, and they are all cool. They don't look like much, now, but they were amazing in, like, 1982.
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Mar 10, 2016 05:58
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LethalGeek posted:If you have some honest screen shots of British dying there are people who would happily dig through that pile for you to get at it. That's some minor historical stuff right there. iomega, you'd better not take this away from us with your click of death 
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Mar 10, 2016 06:15
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