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"the computer is now asking me for my own personal password..." blatantly types 1234 "...which I've now done"
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May 30, 2016 02:10
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Police Automaton posted:Everything aside I think the cult leader invented himself into a corner and also realized he wouldn't be around forever and that story has to come to an end. Dude was nuts. he has something in common with some sa posters: he cut his nuts off
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May 30, 2016 02:36
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Faceplate replacements on mobile phones seemed to have a huge boom then bust once everything went touchscreen and got replaced with custom cases, instead. But I remember the window of time where you could just take off the keypads and faceplates and buy any number of custom aftermarket solutions depending on your model of phone. I think even MS said the original 360 came out of the era of thinking folks were really interested in customized face plates due to the popularity of them in phones. I think some of the dollar stores I've stopped in in recent years still like some for various Nokias.
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May 30, 2016 03:35
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I think it's scary that there are people dumb enough to still join cults after so many highly publicized mass suicides.
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May 30, 2016 03:39
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They say there's a sucker born every minute but I think that figure is definitely lowballing it
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May 30, 2016 03:47
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i think people who join cults are generally in an emotional state that hampers reasoning, and all the articles in the world won't stop that.
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May 30, 2016 03:54
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Cojawfee posted:But why? Wasn't the comet the only chance for them to get to heaven? Why stay behind? I didn't read the whole article - I skimmed the culty bits and concentrated on the IT side of it - but I think it said that the comet wasn't the only chance. But why waste time on earth when you could level up NOW? They didn't need to hang around on earth to recruit more people, they weren't concerned about recruiting lots of people apparently, they just wanted a small group of true believers. I think the article said the IT people got left behind because they refused to participate in an exercise. No, not a Flavor-Aid drinking exercise, it had something to do with saying "I may be wrong, but it appears to be raining outside" even when you can see it's definitely raining outside. They said they could come back when they were ready to do the exercise.
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May 30, 2016 04:07
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It's pretty hard to get an IT dork to do exercise
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May 30, 2016 09:35
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Black Pants posted:This is a dumb thing but I really miss the MIDI playback of my 'soundblaster clone' Avance Logic ALS100 soundcard back in the 90s. Sonic and Knuckles Collection had music that actually sounded right, like from the console. Hell all of my games' music sounded like 16 bit console music and I loved it. Now anything with MIDI sounds like the awful fake instrumental poo poo. I guess the only games I've ever played recently with MIDI music have been DOS games (and even then, for games like DOOM, I've gone and gotten MP3s that people made by putting the original music through actual physical synthesizers), and DOSbox didn't do an obviously bad job. I ran across this article, though, which talks about some Windows software called "Munt" which is a Roland MT-32 emulator. Looks like it can be a struggle in more recent versions of Windows to get Windows to use the emulated MT-32 as an output device. Anyway maybe it's worth a shot? From searching the web it sounds like you can get DOSbox builds that have Munt built in.
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May 30, 2016 12:19
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If he had an ALS100 he's probably not talking about proper midi with the "fake instrumental poo poo" but about FM synthesis, which basically was the poor man's version of having music in video games. Devices like the MT-32 (or the Soundcanvas devices, whatever) were the rich man's version as they were quite costly but amongst other extras, worked by basically having ROM-banks of rather high quality, real instrument recordings. There were also some soundcards that had such ROM chips with the appropriate controller/synthesizer, but the capacities weren't great and so the samples weren't that high quality and also not always complete. (although they still could sound fine still) Some later cards replaced these ROMs with RAM so you'd be flexible with the samples. It's possible that his card had such a ROM but with the ALS100 that's kinda improbable as it was a bit of a cheap chip and would probably come on soundcards with not too many extras. The FM snythesis sounded very different between implementations on different sound chips later on, (as every major manufacturer of the sound chips cooked their own) but the absolute reference here was Yamahas OPL which was often used on earlier sound cards which weren't as highly integrated and still used an dedicated chip for that. People young enough might wonder why to go through so much effort to get music into games. The answer is lack of storage space, lack of good compression algorithms and lack of processing power to implement compression algorithms that were. To sort of put this into perspective, decoding a 192 kbs mp3 would put a late generation 486s (those non-intel, aftermarket 486s clocked at 100 Mhz and more which were more Pentiums than anything else) or early-gen Pentiums at about 80-90% CPU utilization. This is considering there's no cycles wasted on IDE and stuff like that and the MP3 is fully loaded into the RAM of the system, which sounds like nothing today but putting a 3 MB file into a system with 4-8 MB system RAM is kinda impractical. So you see, there would basically be no resources left for a game (or really anything) there. A solution to make this possible could've been a (then) fast DSP (sort of a specialized CPU, made to do specific math on specific digital samples very quickly) and equip it with it's own cache/RAM. There were such solutions but for widespread usage they would've been prohibitively expensive. Just leaving the the music digitized but uncompressed would've not been a solution either because you'd fill up an entire harddrive of back then just with a single ripped CD worth of music, and with the major storage device of the day being floppies this wasn't really a possibility for distributing either. So something like Midi is the better solution there, you basically just give the computer the note sheet and let the specialized hardware figure out how to turn it into noise. This was also good enough for consoles where you could be sure they all were the same and sounded about the same, for PC less so because the hardware could be different and how it sounded could be very different also, something the dude making the music just could not know. Systems like the Amiga did something in between by having a format which basically delivered the sound samples and the "note sheet" together and also being built in a way that this could be implemented without really eating too many CPU cycles. Later on this could've been implemented on faster PCs too but that only happened with a few games. Both processing power and storage medium capacity for the end-user kept increasing in huge steps in the second half of the 90s so eventually digitized music was used and all of this died overnight. The different hardware sound implementations in modern computers are kinda "dumb" in comparison and everything is handled by the CPU which can handle all of this so well that it barely registers as a blip regarding CPU load. Casimir Radon posted:I think it's scary that there are people dumb enough to still join cults after so many highly publicized mass suicides. That specific cult was around for a long, long time. (they started off in the 70s I think) You usually don't join a cult and kill yourself a week later in a mass suicide, but if you have your brain washed by "teachings" for many, many years 24/7 your perception could be screwed enough that it actually might make sense to do so. I imagine it's one of these things you will never truly understand if you haven't lived them.
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May 30, 2016 13:28
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Ah drat I just remembered another relic: Subspace (Continuum) I played this poo poo in 2001 and not only is the loving thing still running, it's still exactly the same. It even still has the same drat UI as way back then. Police Automaton posted:If he had an ALS100 he's probably not talking about proper midi with the "fake instrumental poo poo" but about FM synthesis, which basically was the poor man's version of having music in video games. Devices like the MT-32 (or the Soundcanvas devices, whatever) were the rich man's version as they were quite costly but amongst other extras, worked by basically having ROM-banks of rather high quality, real instrument recordings. There were also some soundcards that had such ROM chips with the appropriate controller/synthesizer, but the capacities weren't great and so the samples weren't that high quality and also not always complete. (although they still could sound fine still) Some later cards replaced these ROMs with RAM so you'd be flexible with the samples. Yeah I was exaggerating with the 'fake instrument poo poo' line but as someone who only had that particular soundcard until after the MIDI era, that -was- how games sounded to me. For an example, here is the Genesis version of Sonic 3's Flying Battery Zone music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd8G40yhxNQ And here is the Sonic and Knuckles Collection MIDI version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dImXAxnC0T8 The thing is, with my card, this music sounded like the first video. And that went for all of my MIDI music games. And replaying anything with MIDI in it these days sounds like the latter, so sounds.. wrong. Black Pants has a new favorite as of 13:47 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 13:33
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I remember even on a Pentium 90 it was nigh impossible to play an MP3 and work away on Word at the same time. The tragic solution was to have a midi collection.
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May 30, 2016 14:29
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Black Pants posted:Ah drat I just remembered another relic: Subspace (Continuum) I brought up Subspace and some other old early internet games earlier in the thread. When I was gathering pictures and info, I found out that Subspace is actually on Steam now, so check it out if you are nostalgic. (No clue if there are any players).
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May 30, 2016 14:43
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wyntyr posted:I remember wrapping my 14.4kbps external modem in a towel so my parents wouldn't hear me dialing the Shadows Lair BBS back when we lived in Memphis circa 1993 Ha look at this noob doesn't know AT &L0 E: Oh look I'm like 5 pages too late. 
Squish has a new favorite as of 15:04 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 14:47
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Black Pants posted:The thing is, with my card, this music sounded like the first video. And that went for all of my MIDI music games. And replaying anything with MIDI in it these days sounds like the latter, so sounds.. wrong. I honestly think that was the experience of most people because who had all those nice midi thingies costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars? There's a reason the retro market trades such things expensive these days, nobody had them so they are rare. Back then I had an early Pentium Notebook which was the bees knees and had astonishingly-sounding Midi. Years later I checked out what was actually inside there and it was some low-cost YMF chip with a small ROM bank retro snobs would smirk about. No idea why people act like there's huge nostalgia around things like the MT-32. Nobody had one. Yes, games actually sound better with one, but IMHO not always. Well without checking I'd assume you can still get ALS100 cards by the boatload for a buck a piece, but that maybe doesn't help in your situation. The next best bet is a YMF724 soundcard (the chinese still sell those by the boatload, so no reason to pay for overpriced crap on eBay) which has an PCI interface but a chip that still has the OPL3 block integrated which would make samples sound more like the first video and less like the second. You'll not get that running in Windows but Linux still supports it last time I checked. My Desktop PC doesn't have any PCI slots anymore but yours might! The OPL3 FM Synth should show up as MIDI device for ALSA purposes.
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May 30, 2016 15:03
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I haven't played around with it too much, but dosbox does indeed seem to have decent opl2/opl3 emulation. If you really want to play MIDI files in proper '90s FM synth style, you could try installing windows 3.1 and a midi player in dosbox set to emulate e.g. a SoundBlaster 16?
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May 30, 2016 15:19
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You can also try http://adlibtracker.net/ if you don't want to rely on windows. No idea about the DosBox part though. (it says something about DosBox in the FAQ, researching more is up to you!) EDIT: Oh there you go: Adlib Tracker II SDL (Win32) Windows (2000/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10) version with updated OPL3 emulation from M.A.M.E, featuring WAV recording. Enjoy! Apparently they also have specific software to get OPL3-comaptible cards to work with the program under windows now. Didn't know about that. EDIT2: Whoops, doesn't look like it loads .mid files. You might wanna try adplay 1.6 for DOS if you don't want to go the windows route, but I don't have a binary download link I'd recommend right now. Police Automaton has a new favorite as of 15:54 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 15:33
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Bonzo posted:Pharmaceutical labs aren't much different. Lab instruments communicate via serial port and no new hardware will have them. Serial to USB cables don't work very well either. Also once a lab has a testing environment in place they will never change it. Change means at least two years of regulatory planning. About two years ago I took an after hours call to fix some software. When I connected to the server I was presented with the Windows Server 2000 login prompt. I work with instruments, though on the testing end in labs and hospitals. Most instruments still use serial as a primary means of communication, though some vendors have caught on and slowly started implementing these new-fangled "ethernet ports". For the serial-only instruments, most lab sites/hospitals still use old Xyplex and Digiport servers, though I've seen a lot more Lantronix boxes of late, which are like a full leap forward if only because the pinouts can be set via software (rather than having to build a new 9 or 25 pin connector). Also, they clear ports via power-cycle rather than requiring users to telnet in and clear ports manually, which is always fun to walk people through (and a major confidence builder for the one lab tech who got stuck handling the issue when nobody in IS will help them). A good portion of my day involves explaining how termservers work to people who actually hold degrees in computer science. It's like having to explain how steam engines work to a modern mechanic.
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May 30, 2016 15:45
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JediTalentAgent posted:Faceplate replacements on mobile phones seemed to have a huge boom then bust once everything went touchscreen and got replaced with custom cases, instead. But I remember the window of time where you could just take off the keypads and faceplates and buy any number of custom aftermarket solutions depending on your model of phone. 
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May 30, 2016 18:06
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I used to have a sick reflective chrome faceplate for my first ever nokia that i bought from a kiosk at the mall. My hi score on snake was out of this world
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May 30, 2016 18:23
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Midichat? Awesome. I had a ridiculously spergy collection of Anime midis around 99, thanks to AOL, running on a Mac Performa 63xCD. One day I installed a midiplayer that simulated piano keys and the damned midis sounded way, way different than when they ran through the QuickTime library. Major WTF moment for sure. Few months later I try getting a Final Fantasy MP3, which takes like 2 hours to download. Takes the computer something like 6 hours to decode, only to find its like a 30 second clip. I decided I needed a new computer soon after that.
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May 30, 2016 18:30
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So who else had a website that was just a wall of simpsons gifs?
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May 30, 2016 18:35
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Im sure one of my geocities or angelfire hosted free sites had all that and more
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May 30, 2016 19:08
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i used to make dragon ball z websites with built in chat rooms for role playing as dbz characters and I would have shops with prices for senzu beans and move lists and everything on separate pages
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May 30, 2016 19:09
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I had an AOL page where I just took the included pictures and put funny captions on them. Thinking back, one of them was of the USS Arizona memorial. I didn't know that at the time, it just looked like a weird building with a flag on top and half staff. So I put a caption of "who died?" or something. Guess I was getting my internet trolling in early.
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May 30, 2016 19:11
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CaptainSarcastic posted:Is that a DVD-RAM cartridge missing the actual DVD part? A lot of hospitals would store patient images (x-ray, CAT scans, etc) on these in the late 90s/early 00s, since DVD-RAM was a large capacity format geared towards archiving/rewriting lots of data. My dad would bring a few empty DVD-RAM cartridges home from work and I would use them to store game discs I didn't want scratched, since my little brothers didn't know how to open them.
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May 30, 2016 21:51
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FilthyImp posted:Midichat? Awesome. I got at most 3.5KB/s on good days so I didn't really download any mp3s. I just downloaded videogame soundtrack midis from vgmusic.com, an internet relic that has remained unchanged for at least 15 years by now. One of my friends eventually introduced to MOD music and a WinAmp plugin that plays them and man that was a trip. I could download dozens of rocking tracks in just a couple of minutes! I also spent a lot of time listening to Big Mog Radio and Fantasy Bytes Radio (and hanging out in their respective chat rooms) for videogame music that was lo-fi enough to stream on my lovely dialup connection.
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May 30, 2016 22:09
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Byzantic posted:A lot of hospitals would store patient images (x-ray, CAT scans, etc) on these in the late 90s/early 00s, since DVD-RAM was a large capacity format geared towards archiving/rewriting lots of data. I used to work for a clinical trials company and we would get patient scans on all kinds of media - from CDs and DVDs to obscure/archaic stuff like floppies, zip disks, MODs and superdisks. If you ever wonder why drugs are so expensive, imagine what the cost is to provide 10 superdisks per patient per trial to transfer about 100k of imaging because the hospitals in eastern europe got swindled and that's the one format their 1998 DXA scanner uses
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May 31, 2016 00:41
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Ah DVD-RAM. A format I fondly remember as being slow and glitchy.
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May 31, 2016 01:30
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Three-Phase posted:Ah DVD-RAM. A format I fondly remember as being slow and glitchy.
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May 31, 2016 01:44
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WebDog posted:I remember even on a Pentium 90 it was nigh impossible to play an MP3 and work away on Word at the same time. The tragic solution was to have a midi collection. At work I used a Pentium 166 for work and a 486 nobody wanted for running some Linux clone of WinAmp. I think I hooked up line out of the 486 to line in of the P166, and remoted in to the 486, so it was not that terrible except for the power usage I guess.
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May 31, 2016 04:16
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Buttcoin purse posted:At work I used a Pentium 166 for work and a 486 nobody wanted for running some Linux clone of WinAmp. I think I hooked up line out of the 486 to line in of the P166, and remoted in to the 486, so it was not that terrible except for the power usage I guess. Was that Linux clone XMMS? I used that for years.
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May 31, 2016 04:36
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Pham Nuwen posted:Was that Linux clone XMMS? I used that for years. Maybe, or it could have been FreeAMP, back before they had to change the name and called it Zinf. It was on my work PC so I don't still have the entire disk contents to check 
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May 31, 2016 09:56
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 I know similar tools were discussed itt, but this ad is something else
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May 31, 2016 16:14
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laserghost posted:
My personal favorite was Magnaram 
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May 31, 2016 16:45
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WebDog posted:I remember even on a Pentium 90 it was nigh impossible to play an MP3 and work away on Word at the same time. The tragic solution was to have a midi collection. I managed to play an mp3 on my old 66 MHz 486. It had to be low bitrate, 22KHz and mono and you couldn't do anything else with the system while it was playing, but it worked. Then I upgraded to a Pentium 2 300 and could listen to all the CD-quality music I wanted to while doing my homework.
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May 31, 2016 17:35
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I had a Pentium 200 (non-mmx) and could listen to an mp3 except when I scrolled IE it would make the mp3 sound skip.
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May 31, 2016 17:37
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Mplayer2 and/or Winamp were awesome when it came to playing an MP3 and doing something else (usually Jezzball or Ultima Online at most). I even remember at times, for some reason, Napster's internal mp3 player wouldn't make other programs "stutter" like other options did. The pioneer days were so much fun!
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May 31, 2016 17:40
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Lowen SoDium posted:My personal favorite was Magnaram I lost all my data using the built in drive stacking thing in Windows 95 (or 98, it was a while back). I had a 2GB (I think) drive in a computer with 32MB RAM and a Pentium 200-MMX. I used the max compression option and one day the computer just got super super slow. It kept getting slower until it just completely ground to a halt. Wasn't able to boot back into it. I booted into DOS with a floppy and C was completely inaccessible, as if it was not even plugged in. Had to run FDISK and repartition to even get functionality out of the hard drive again, then reinstalled Windows from floppies. I think it started right after I tried playing Obsidian after first installing it. Turns out it was a pretty poo poo game. That computer had an S3 Virge video card and it was total poo poo. I upgraded to a 3DFX card as soon as they came out and that was amazing. GLQuake blew my mind, and the GL version of Tomb Raider was great too. Oh did I mention this was my roommate's computer I did all this to? I was a lovely roommate. I remember installing the memphis codenamed betas of Windows 98 on that computer at some point in time. That was fun. Eventually I built my own computer, I think I had a 700MHz AMD CPU, 256MB of RAM, and a Matrox M400 video card that I'd triple boot with Windows ME, Windows 2000, and slackware linux. It was an exciting time for computing. GutBomb has a new favorite as of 17:54 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 17:50
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Tyson Tomko posted:Mplayer2 and/or Winamp were awesome when it came to playing an MP3 and doing something else (usually Jezzball or Ultima Online at most). I even remember at times, for some reason, Napster's internal mp3 player wouldn't make other programs "stutter" like other options did. The pioneer days were so much fun! I remember when we first were able to play music while playing a game, it was glorious. Trying to remember what my first computer to play UO and EQ was. I think a K6-2 at the time from a P2.
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May 31, 2016 19:41
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