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It only looks decent, it performs like complete crap. The only sort of saving grace controller-wise is that you could connect PS3 pads to it. But that didn't solve the awful bluetooth range, the horrible uneven performance.. simple 2d games kept stuttering, the tiny lovely fan kept whining.. awful! I've kept mine on a shelf though, it's a good reminder to never trust the crowdfunding hype
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Sep 13, 2016 20:56
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error1 posted:It only looks decent, it performs like complete crap. So it literally is the same as the $20 Android box I got my parents instead of a Roku for Plex, Netflix and big-screen Words with Friends, got it e:  I'm comparing specs and the box I got actually has a slightly faster A9 processor and a slightly faster, though off-brand GPU, and the exact same memory, onboard storage, etc. Pretty hilarious that they tried to brand and sell one of those as a high-end gaming system when there are hundreds of cheapo Chinese equivalents that do the same exact things for a fraction of the price and without locking you behind a proprietary Android reskin
Snow Cone Capone has a new favorite as of 21:05 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 21:00
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:Refresh rate on arcade monitors are only 15hz, also they are much lower resolution than even an SD CRT. When I tried arcade games on a standard CRT TV (like one you had in the 90s) everything had a slight fuzziness too it and it just looked wrong. Also if you go the MAME cabinet route you need a special video card so you can run Windows at 15hz and 320x240. you mean 15khz horizontal, the vertical refresh rate is generally anywhere between 50 and 60hz depending on the games resolution You no longer need a special card, this genius programmer has made "CRT emudriver" which is a custom ATI driver for old Radeon cards, "GroovyMAME" a custom version of MAME that syncs perfectly to arcade resolutions and also if you're willing to risk breaking your GPU there's a custom firmware hack that lets you boot the computer directly in interlaced 640x480 so that the 15khz monitor can display it. http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/viewtopic.php?id=295 http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,151459.0.html I've hosed around with it for months trying to get it perfect, and eventually got to the point where I can no longer tell the difference between my original arcade boards and the same game running in GroovyMAME. Also most old arcade games run 256x240 instead of the 320x240 we're used to from the DOS VGA days. I was surprised to learn both the NES and SNES use the same resolution!
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Sep 13, 2016 21:04
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I have a pair of G4 Towers that run it because I cannot find OS X Drivers for my Formac ProFormance 3 video card which drives my sweetass SGI 1600SW Oh my gee, I had one of those displays. A flat-panel of that size at that time was unreal E: As was the $4000 of dot-com IPO money I dropped on the first 22" Cinema Display a couple years later
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Sep 13, 2016 21:22
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error1 posted:you mean 15khz horizontal, the vertical refresh rate is generally anywhere between 50 and 60hz depending on the games resolution Should I use groovymame even if I am already using the special ArcadeVGA card? And quick question because you seem way more knowledgeable than me, but why do games higher res than 320x240 like Mortal Kombat 3 display properly on my standard arcade monitor? All this stuff is confusing.
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Sep 14, 2016 00:04
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Naxuz posted:This was mentioned in the SA sagas thread. The schadenfreude is off the loving charts.
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Sep 14, 2016 01:48
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:Should I use groovymame even if I am already using the special ArcadeVGA card? I'm probably not great at explaining, but the 15khz monitor doesn't limit your horizontal resolution since that's just depending on how many pixels you send during a single horizontal sweep of the beam, the limiting factor is how many times you can sweep the beam from left to right without blowing up the circuitry that generates the control signals for the magnets that direct the beam 15 000 sweeps per second / 60 frames per second = 250 lines. You need some blanking time in between so the usable lines are probably a little lower. The graphics card can display 640x480 by interlacing like they do in broadcast television, where the horizontal resolution is 640 and the vertical resolution is still 240, but the graphics card sends even and odd lines for every other refresh cycle so it adds up to 480 over two frames. (I'm unsure if it is also able to nudge the beam slightly up and down for the half-frames, I don't think arcade monitors do this but maybe some TV displays do since they are designed for interlacing) As far as I know the ArcadeVGA card simply scales higher resolutions down to fit into the vertical line limit, so 1024x768 becomes a scaled 640x480 interlaced signal and text is almost completely unreadable. Arcade monitors also have a really coarse shadow mask / aperture grille which further limits how useful a higher resolution can be. I love how chunky it is, you can clearly see the red/green/blue phosphor stripes on mine  To answer your question, yes you should absolutely try GroovyMAME. Especially if your arcade PC runs windows 7, I think the guy who sells the ArcadeVGA still recommends XP because old mame versions used directdraw which works well with his cards but that stuff is about to become unsupported by plain MAME anyway. I have an ArcadeVGA too and non-interlaced games work great on it with GroovyMAME. Interlaced and vertical games are pretty hit-and-miss though. You should consider ebaying a card that is compatible with the CRT emudriver, they are dirt cheap.
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Sep 14, 2016 07:06
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Thanks so much. I didn't want to derail the thread so I sent you a PM.  CRT chat
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Sep 14, 2016 07:53
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I'm hoping when OLED displays get ubiquitous, someone will put together a CRT-styled OLED screen. You could probably get something that looks pretty darn close, at least while the display is on.
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Sep 14, 2016 08:55
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Yeah, another cool thing is that you can get square 1920x1920 displays now that are great replacements for 4:3 monitors since you can play both horizontal and vertical games without needing to rotate the screen. My dream monitor would be a 4096x4096 oled capable of black frame insertion for low persistence. Combined with a fake CRT effect done by a modern graphics card I don't think you'd be able to spot the difference then (apart from the display surface itself being flat instead of curved, but you can hide that pretty well behind a glass plate) Check out http://www.testufo.com/#test=blackframes for an explanation of what makes LCD so different from CRT, the basic idea is that LCD monitors keeps displaying the picture constantly while a CRT scans the image from top to bottom with large areas of the display actually being dark (it happens so fast your eye doesn't notice) and that doesn't cause as much motion blur when your eyeball is tracking a moving object. If your LCD is fast enough to strobe the image without noticeable flicker you can get near CRT performance. http://www.testufo.com/#test=eyetracking ..it's really weird
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Sep 14, 2016 09:15
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error1 posted:Yeah, another cool thing is that you can get square 1920x1920 displays now that are great replacements for 4:3 monitors since you can play both horizontal and vertical games without needing to rotate the screen. I haven't tried any of them yet, but I'm quite interested to see how the VR shells for arcade machines feel, since any decent modern setup uses low persistence displays.
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Sep 14, 2016 09:45
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I actually would think it is more likely that some retro nerd with capital would start making 25" and larger OLED displays but at extremely low resolutions, so you won't even need to "emulate" the look of a CRT. I can dream!
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Sep 14, 2016 11:40
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speaking of VR arcade shells, how about Beach Head 2000?
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Sep 14, 2016 20:30
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I'm someone who is a huge sucker for "CRT effect", scanlines, etc, and I love Retroarch's filters for that. I need to see if Retroarch for the Vita / Vita TV supports them, they look awesome on my Shield TV. Scanlines, apeture grille, CRT color bleeding, I think you can even emulate geometry errors with the picture tube too, so cool. To get something similar with my Vita TV before, I used to have it hooked up to an LCD monitor with an SLG3000 scanline generator [via an HDMI to VGA adapter]:  Which looked pretty decent:   Works especially well with 2D games, with clean lines. The photos don't really do justice to how good it looked in the end.
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Sep 14, 2016 20:55
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You guys are mental.
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Sep 14, 2016 21:01
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That's a neat scanline effect, it isn't that far off from the real thing It's hard to make generated scanlines actually line up to the game resolution though, if it isn't some clearly defined common format like 640x480 or 320x240 Here's my CRT, it's hard to get a good picture since the camera goes out of sync. The dimming isn't visible to human eyes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3dInbZ-6bA
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Sep 14, 2016 21:09
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:I am actually so paranoid about arcade machines no longer existing in their classic form that after four years of searching, I finally found a guy who managed to find brand new 25" arcade crts. In 2007 when I began getting interested in making a MAME cabinet, you could get these Wells Gardner monitors for $50. Now only a few years later and you're looking at $400 with burn-in. The early television museum in Ohio was donated all of the equipment to rebuild CRTs from the owner of the last CRT rebuilding business in the US when he closed down. The volunteers at the museum managed to build a room and set everything up and are working on learning the craft. Hopefully soon they will be offering CRT rebuilding again. Prior to that, the last rebuilder was in France and closed down 2 years ago.
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Sep 14, 2016 21:22
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It's wild how technologies can evolve through a lifetime from "workshop tinkering" to "massive industrial assembly lines" to "niche artisan craft".
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Sep 14, 2016 21:48
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Data Graham posted:It's wild how technologies can evolve through a lifetime from "workshop tinkering" to "massive industrial assembly lines" to "niche artisan craft". The current situation for cellphones and the like is a weird hybrid - they are only made on a massive industrial scale, but actual repair (e.g. resoldering chips) is the realm of a few individual specialists.
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Sep 15, 2016 08:27
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Code Jockey posted:Which looked pretty decent: Incredible  Bloody Hedgehog posted:You guys are mental. Buying dongles to get scanlines is pretty tame by retro gaming enthusiast standards: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3515794 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3785100 Mak0rz has a new favorite as of 04:24 on Sep 16, 2016 |
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Sep 16, 2016 04:17
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Maybe, in a far off land, on some other dead gay forum... or mayhaps!... this very dead gay forum, there is a place to talk about video games!
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Sep 16, 2016 05:32
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thathonkey posted:yeah i cant really think of an avenue for them to make a comeback. it's much less likely to find somebody who still has a vcr versus people that still have turntables or even cassette decks. Alan_Shore posted:VCDs are still a thing here in Hong Kong, and that's just insane. Gonz posted:The state of Personal Computers, nearly 11,000 days ago. oh my god I think I used the Muppet Keyboard as an extremely young child, where have these memories been buried? I think our local public library had it? Ugh going to the library to sign up for 30 minutes of Apple II computer time in an era when the Amiga already existed, what the hell Illinois I hope that MS-DOS-compatible Macintosh rumored for 1987 comes out soon! Ugh that discussion about how you should make sure your user group library has at least a couple of copies of the guide to hard drives...so nostalgic for something I never experienced. Jerry Cotton posted:S3Ms please name chang to Secret Scene Releaser TIA. Farmer Crack-rear end posted:I'm watching that video and I can visualize in my head the LAN parties where kids played that for hours on end. nigga crab pollock posted:*double clicks on .mov file*
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Sep 16, 2016 05:43
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Naxuz posted:This was mentioned in the SA sagas thread. The schadenfreude is off the loving charts.  They couldn't get into the 2013 E3, so instead set up their display in a parking lot over the road from the convention center
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Sep 16, 2016 06:50
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Naxuz posted:This was mentioned in the SA sagas thread. The schadenfreude is off the loving charts. This makes me feel bad. It's also part and parcel how I feel about console games and any kickstarter. "you poor idiots." doctorfrog has a new favorite as of 07:01 on Sep 16, 2016 |
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Sep 16, 2016 06:58
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thathonkey posted:there is a pretty cool story on ars technica about crazy people that still use OS 9 I thought for a minute you were talking about the original OS-9 which is what the CD-i used (and the OS is older than that.)
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Sep 16, 2016 07:04
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I was in a Radio Shack recently and saw something that brought a small amount of joy into my otherwise sad life... They had Tandy-branded computer accessories on the shelf, again. You hear that, everyone! TANDY'S BACK! edit: I know it's likely all the same rebadged stuff as anything else, but seeing the old Tandy logo on a box just made me nostalgic. JediTalentAgent has a new favorite as of 07:39 on Sep 16, 2016 |
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Sep 16, 2016 07:35
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Are you sure this wasn't an alternate dimension? I was positive that Radio Shack went under a few years back. EDIT: Oh poo poo. The internet just told me the following: quote:In December 2015 RadioShack named Nick Cannon as its Chief Creative Officer in an attempt to appeal to younger generations. 
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Sep 16, 2016 07:38
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im gonna see if this old computer hobbyists store is still open, this guy is batshit crazy enough to let windows 95 software and games sit on the shelf for 20 years, plus all sorts of other weird garbage ill get some pictures for this thread if it is e: i remember an official 8in floppy of ms paint in the early 2010s for sale there dookifex_maximus has a new favorite as of 07:45 on Sep 16, 2016 |
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Sep 16, 2016 07:42
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dookifex_maximus posted:im gonna see if this old computer hobbyists store is still open, this guy is batshit crazy enough to let windows 95 software and games sit on the shelf for 20 years, plus all sorts of other weird garbage There was a game store here in Adelaide that just closed down a couple of years ago like that. They had all new 360 and PS3 stuff on the shelves, right next to Sega Master System and NES games still with their original pricetags, never opened that had been sitting there since the early 90's. Every possible space on the shelves and floor was piled with classic items. Their magazine rack was the same, new magazines right next to gaming magazines unsold since the 90's. It was an insane and glorious hoarders den of a store that I figured had to be some kind of drug front.
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Sep 16, 2016 07:48
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Haha I just remembered the new-in-box gateway towers it's the kind of place you'd go to exactly replace your grandfather's old ibm because he's not gonna live much longer and he can do so many things for his vfw with the old one Hoarder is right, but also out of date. The guy has to be independently wealthy to keep the overhead going for all those years without much revenue, if you want a retail space to work for you you have to clear product and get red hot poo poo in to fill that space this is why I think there's a real good chance that he's still there
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Sep 16, 2016 07:56
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I would love to find a store with lots of old PC stuff. The closest I came was when I lived near an EB Games in the early 2000s where the following happy things happened: One time the bargain bin had one of those cheap re-releases of a few games packaged together, one of them was Gunship! (not 2000, I don't think), it was out for about a dollar. The box was wrecked but what can you expect after all those years? Another time the bargain bin had all those cheap DVD case re-releases of games, and I grabbed DOOM 2 out of it, but the guy at the counter said he had something better out the back and came out with some non-lovely-looking DOOM collector's edition including both DOOM 1 and 2 and those two additional packs, Evilution or something, and some other one, for the same price. I was tempted to ask if I could just go have a browse out the back.
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Sep 16, 2016 10:31
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Gonz posted:Are you sure this wasn't an alternate dimension? I was positive that Radio Shack went under a few years back. they did, then sprint purchased the name and all that jazz
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Sep 16, 2016 12:58
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In my town we had a little cafe type thing run by a seemingly nice young nerd that sold coffee and cookies and had a number of classic consoles. I was impressed and loaned a few rare but inexpensive stuff (not my Neo Geo poo poo) and of course I saw them being sold on ebay locally a week after it closed shop.
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Sep 16, 2016 13:19
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mrwuss posted:they did, then sprint purchased the name and all that jazz Not quite, Sprint bailed em out pretty heavily, and as a result Sprint owns the leases and such to a good chunk of the stores, and they only sell Sprint and its prepaid subsidiaries now instead of the big three providers, but sadly Radio Shack as a corporate entity keeps on chugging somehow (IIRC they went from a 4-building office complex to half a building's worth of offices down at Corporate  )
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Sep 16, 2016 13:55
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Gonz posted:Are you sure this wasn't an alternate dimension? I was positive that Radio Shack went under a few years back. Haha, you wish. 
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Sep 16, 2016 14:01
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Yeah it's been replaced by The Source in Canada, but as far as I know the ol' 'Shack is still going strong in the US.
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Sep 16, 2016 15:17
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Going strong is probably overstating it a bit. It's more like the guy arguing that he isn't dead at the beginning of Holy Grail.
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Sep 16, 2016 15:38
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Doing some cleaning around my office today and I found a stash of some older software:  The copy of OS/2 in the middle hasn't been opened but everyone I've asked has no recollection of ever running OS/2 here. I'd like to think it was stashed by a time traveler who knew this thread was coming.
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Sep 16, 2016 17:00
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Germstore posted:Going strong is probably overstating it a bit. It's more like the guy arguing that he isn't dead at the beginning of Holy Grail. You must not have any interest in hobbyist electronics then. People who are rant and rave about how excellent Radioshack's in-store supply of parts are. They've also got the RC/drone market by the ballsack when it comes to retail sales.
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Sep 16, 2016 18:22
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Turdsdown Tom posted:You must not have any interest in hobbyist electronics then. People who are rant and rave about how excellent Radioshack's in-store supply of parts are. They've also got the RC/drone market by the ballsack when it comes to retail sales. lol people rant and rave about how terrible their in-store supply of parts are, not how good it is.
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Sep 16, 2016 18:29
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