|
T.C. posted:I mean, I remember game reviews in the early PC 3d era where 15fps was considered playable. Pretty sure I tried to play stuff at, maybe, 10. 30 was considered the peak above which improvement wasn't a big deal. I played FFXI for almost a decade and never realized it was hard capped at 30 fps. I went back to it for a little while and tried a hack that bumped it to 60 and I started getting real soap opera effect vibes from it Idk if it's because the animations were designed with 30 in mind or if my brain just got incredibly used to seeing the game at 30, but even though higher rates = better for games, I switched back to 30 pretty quickly
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2021 16:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 13:05 |
|
|
longview posted:Looks like KingSpec PATA SSDs are the most plug and play solution for an SSD upgrade? Usually when I need to shoehorn a new SSD into an old laptop I go with one of these 44 pin IDE -> SATA adapters you find on ebay for like six bux:  And then just pry the plastic casing off a cheap Microcenter SSD to make it small enough to fit both the drive and the adapter in the laptop's bay. I've never seen this not work on any PC, but I haven't tried it on a Mac. They also make em in M-SATA flavor as well:  Works identically, might be a little easier to make it fit, might cost a little more for the SSD.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2021 04:37
|
|
|
That’s how I do it too, even on PATA Macs it works fine.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2021 12:01
|
|
|
Sam Hall posted:Usually when I need to shoehorn a new SSD into an old laptop I go with one of these 44 pin IDE -> SATA adapters you find on ebay for like six bux: Thanks for the tip! After some thinking I remembered Action Retro showing off using mSATA drives for this exact purpose, which is essentially what you're accomplishing with that adapter chain I think. mSATA drives aren't super available locally, but I found that I could get 2 sets of 128 GB KingSpec drives + a few 2.5" PATA adapters for the same price as a single 128 GB ready made PATA SSD. It looks like FireWire drives are a thing of the past? Can't seem to find any kind of new drive enclosure that includes it. In any case the current drive is 160 GB and the new will be 128 GB so I guess it'll be easier to just reinstall the OS and software.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2021 19:02
|
|
|
FireWire's been dead for ages. You can get enclosures that support it from specialty retailers but they're expensive.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2021 19:06
|
|
|
longview posted:Thanks for the tip! I'd guess your best bet would be thrift stores and refurbishing places. Early 2000s there were a fair number of external Firewire enclosures floating around - I worked in a Mac-centric office and had a few Firewire peripherals, as I recall. As much as I generally dislike how Apple evolved from that time on, I still think of the iSight as the best webcam I've used.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2021 20:38
|
|
|
I'll give even modern apple this much: now and then, they have flashes of "what if this was not bad?". It's baffling how bad most webcams still are, especially compared to the selfie cameras on even cheap new phones.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2021 00:39
|
|
|
Computer viking posted:I'll give even modern apple this much: now and then, they have flashes of "what if this was not bad?". It's baffling how bad most webcams still are, especially compared to the selfie cameras on even cheap new phones. Exactly. The iSight had autofocus and zoom as I recall, and now doing heavy teleconferencing I'm stuck with stupidly wide-angle fixed-focus digitized bullshit. I don't want my stupid webcam to take in a broad vista of my personal hovel, I just want it to show me. It's frustrating that this is now a unicorn to find, and if you do it is crazy expensive.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2021 00:45
|
|
|
Computer viking posted:I'll give even modern apple this much: now and then, they have flashes of "what if this was not bad?". It's baffling how bad most webcams still are, especially compared to the selfie cameras on even cheap new phones. Macbooks have awful webcams, even the most recent M1 models. 720p is lower resolution than the iPhone 5 had 8 years ago.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2021 01:22
|
|
|
Can confirm, my M1 MacBook is otherwise great but the webcam is abysmal. As is every other recent laptop webcam I've used. In the age of teleconferencing it's just baffling.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2021 06:19
|
|
|
It's funny that the 2000 dollar thinkpad I got has a lovely webcam, and the 400 dollar chromebook i bought a few years ago has an amazing webcam.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2021 06:24
|
|
|
I use one of the top-rated Logitech webcams and it is a wide-angle piece of poo poo that likes to defocus me at random times. If I run the proprietary Logitech software I can make it behave better and crop the picture and stuff, but that also makes my poor little i5 work laptop chug to the point of the fans being annoying since it is doing that processing before doing the processing through Zoom. I remember doing videochats 2004-2007 and it being pretty much the same, but lower res and using various IM programs. How have they managed to not improve on this poo poo?
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2021 08:54
|
|
|
CaptainSarcastic posted:How have they managed to not improve on this poo poo?
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2021 14:40
|
|
|
DrChu posted:Macbooks have awful webcams, even the most recent M1 models. 720p is lower resolution than the iPhone 5 had 8 years ago. Oh absolutely - I tried to be as weasely as possible in how I worded that. Still a bit annoying that the company that once tried "what if we make a webcam that's actually good" didn't apply the same idea to laptop cameras. I guess it would conflict with their obsession with thinness. Also, in case anyone else wonders: phone cameras are standardised, and use the SMIA standards. Sadly those are very much their own isolated little world of wire protocols and data formats, and there does not seem to be any simple way to wire one up over USB.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 00:50
|
|
|
Zoom let's you force the wide-angle camera view into the "standard" dimensions by cutting off the sides of the video. Should be a checkbox option built into the video settings.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 03:44
|
|
|
I think I just got the world's least-worn TiBook for $30. Now I just need to figure out how the hell I'm gonna burn an OS 9 CD in TYOOL 2021.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 06:18
|
|
|
I have legitimately never even heard about this media format, even in passing conversations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Z4iL8hy1A
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 10:13
|
|
|
Dr. Quarex posted:Did anyone else have an .MP3 with a random robotic voice that came on in the middle and said. "THIS IS A NON-COMMERCIAL DEMO FROM MONTERNET" [not sure on the spelling there, just guessing]? The, uh, Polish version of the theme song of Asterix Versus Caesar does not sound right without it. I recognize that Monternet seems to have been a Chinese telecom thing since 2000, but I got this song in 1999 from someone else's computer in our apartment building's network and I have no idea why it would be in English if it were related to that anyway. I had an mp3 of Maddona - beautiful stranger.mp3 austin powers which had that somewhere near the track and its burnt in my brain forever.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 11:01
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:I think I just got the world's least-worn TiBook for $30. Now I just need to figure out how the hell I'm gonna burn an OS 9 CD in TYOOL 2021.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 11:41
|
|
|
They're all trivial to get a hold of, having a cd burner is the tricky part. I can mail you one if you really need such.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 14:46
|
|
|
F4rt5 posted:Why OS 9? One of the early cats should work fine, but probably just as hard to get a hold of I just kinda like OS 9. I like how it looks, and as long as I don't have to get any actual work done, the fact that it's kind of crappy doesn't bother me much. I ended up using putting the ISO file on a USB stick and burning it from OS X on the Powerbook itself. The next thing I want to figure out: why pressing the little level check button on the battery shows full charge, but the OS thinks there's nothing--and the laptop will NOT turn on without the charger plugged in.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 17:23
|
|
|
My 2005 vintage battery had entirely shot cells - 0 V on one set and 1.4-1.6 V on the other. For reference they're normally considered "flat" when they reach around 3 V. Did make a cursory attempt at charging the dead cells directly, but no joy. Disassembly is… cleaner than expected but not trivial, can slide in a scalpel around the plastic piece the label is attached to. Once one end is opened it's mostly clipped in so can use a knife to peel it open. It does actually go together quite nicely afterwards. Mine showed no indication at all on the battery meter. I've decided to give rebuilding the pack a try, it's just 18650s in the late PowerBook models, not crazy expensive to buy new ones. It's a 2 parallel 3 series configuration, so 6 cells in total. Looking at it I can get some protected 3.5 Ah cells from a reputable supplier, which is almost as good as the 4.4 Ah total capacity of the originals. I won't bother paralleling the cells to save some money, and it means I have room for protected cells with ≈75% original capacity. In any case I've now ordered a bunch of battery tab spot welding stuff to do this properly.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 20:57
|
|
|
Trabant posted:Zoom let's you force the wide-angle camera view into the "standard" dimensions by cutting off the sides of the video. Should be a checkbox option built into the video settings. I have spent hours and hours in Zoom, and dug through all the settings, and I can tell you this does nothing. You would think with the level of market dominance they achieved they could put some meaningful video controls into Zoom, but nope.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2021 23:54
|
|
|
Huh. Either we have vastly different versions of Zoom or there's some weirdness with camera settings or hardware. This is what I'm able to do, per bullet #6 here:  It's also entirely possible I just misunderstood what you're trying to do 
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2021 00:07
|
|
|
I have a fairly well regarded slightly older model webcam from Logitech, and the Windows 10 drivers and software were such utterly mystifying trash that I hunted down a Windows 7-era driver and use that instead. Works great, has no startup crap to worry about, and actually has a couple features missing from the 10 driver.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2021 00:19
|
|
|
Trabant posted:Huh. Either we have vastly different versions of Zoom or there's some weirdness with camera settings or hardware. With the two high-end Logitech cameras I have used the picture is unchanged - it literally does nothing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2021 00:43
|
|
|
So here's a modern SSH client for Mac OS 7/8/9: https://github.com/cy384/ssheven Beside the Powerbook I just picked up, I've been looking for a compact Mac of some description (ideally SE/30 but they're scarce) with the vague intention that besides games, I could use it as a terminal to a Unix system, and this helps...
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2021 01:02
|
|
|
Well this is certainly a blast from the past. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiXNEf_NOak
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2021 22:41
|
|
|
I didn't mind most of that YouTuber's videos until he started to use his wife as bait for views
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 02:59
|
|
|
You Am I posted:I didn't mind most of that YouTuber's videos until he started to use his wife as bait for views I think that's a dog.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 03:26
|
|
|
You Am I posted:I didn't mind most of that YouTuber's videos until he started to use his wife as bait for views And continuely drops that he had a bit part in one of the Star Wars
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 03:32
|
|
|
What are his thoughts on paper clips and Gun control?
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 03:37
|
|
|
He can be a bit of a door, but he’s nowhere near 8-Bit Guy levels of dumb.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 04:24
|
|
|
It's been way too long since I've had something to contribute but all that changes right now Presenting the Sharp PC-4700, an XT class laptop from 1989. I found this while cleaning up a server room at a school I once worked at.  Whoa look at those specs. What's not mentioned is that the CPU is a 10MHz NEC V40, an Intel 80188 compatible chip with some extra instructions.  Literally found at the rubbish tip. Comes free with decades worth of hand grime.  Apart from the lead acid battery, which is like half the weight of the unit right there, it's in good working order.  And of course because the battery's completely sharted after decades of sitting unused, it takes you to the CMOS setup menu every time.  It came with DOS 3.30, but I've got it running DOS 5.0, along with the latest in graphical user environments  Graphics!  You're thinking right now "yeah that's all well and good, does it run any games?" and well, look no further, it runs the only game you'll ever need  Even on the monochrome screen it's quite playable.  I've even got another project on the way. Also please don't make fun of my housekeeping skills.  please send help I think I have a problem
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 06:05
|
|
|
Holy poo poo that laptop is in impressive shape, and I had totally forgotten screens like that. How cool.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 07:04
|
|
|
Code Jockey posted:Holy poo poo that laptop is in impressive shape, and I had totally forgotten screens like that. How cool. Yeah I was incredibly lucky to find it in such good condition, and even luckier that the school principal didn’t mind me taking it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 08:15
|
|
|
Wooden pipes!
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 09:21
|
|
|
You Am I posted:I didn't mind most of that YouTuber's videos until he started to use his wife as bait for views I hadn't clicked the video yet but immediately knew who this was from this comment. Also my favourite appearance he's had in a video is one where he met up with the 8 bit guy in London and all the photos of them together are hilariously awkward.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 09:34
|
|
|
Fil5000 posted:I hadn't clicked the video yet but immediately knew who this was from this comment. I don't care that he uses his wife as bait, she's the interesting and fun one of the two
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 09:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 13:05 |
|
|
Cool laptop there Bargarse!
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2021 11:06
|
|