Laserjet 4P posted:

So I found this somewhere.



Copyright said 1988. You can do arithmetic exercises, train yourself in touch typing and the "games" consist of hangman and solving jumbled words.

Unperson_47 posted:

I had a similar little computer like this with cartridges. I loved the hell out of that thing, especially the cartridge that had Biology quiz questions.

I remember reading the word "organism" as "orgasm" because I was a kid. And I of course read questions out loud.

blugu64 posted:

How else do people get prints of their photos? That’s how I get family photos printed out for the album/letters, so if there’s a better way...

LifeSunDeath posted:

I remember having my mind blown the first time I saw non-green PCB's.
https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2017/07/23/why-are-printed-circuit-boards-are-usually-green-in-colour/

Thomamelas posted:

Cyrix lead the charge on that.

LifeSunDeath posted:

Thanks, that makes sense. Reminds me, I had this in highschool (literally asked for it for xmas to stunt on this one nerd in my chemistry class who also had one), and had zero use for it. I ended up getting the same nerd to install some asteroids type game on it. Luckily I was able to sell it off in college for like 100 bux.

the keyboard and d-pad were great though, you could enter all your notes in there, and the dpad was useful for the few games.

Plinkey posted:

When I graduated these were banned on all of the AP tests

Krispy Wafer posted:

And yeah, that's the extent of a scenery disk. You have a vague outline of a coast, there are some major roadways, and only the tallest buildings. Turn around and there's probably the Empire State Building aaaaaaaand that's all of NYC.

I need to play an actual up-to-date flight simulator. I got so much drama out of playing Battle of Britain with all of my crew named after Catch-22 characters. I'd feel real grief when one pixel erased the other pixel and Yossarian finally met his fate.

mobby_6kl posted:

The last flight sim was DCS when it was called Lock On, at this point I think I'll wait for the new MS one. Looks fuckin sweet.

And of course Deus Ex removed WTC before 9/11.



This was actually because they had to crop the skyline due to technical limitations, which is a great "obsolete technology" story in itself

mobby_6kl posted:

This was just the first screenshot I grabbed off GIS so who knows why it's dithered. But back then Unreal (and many other games) could run in 16-bit color mode which was IIRC the only format some Voodoo cards supported and was faster than 32-bit on some others. So maybe that's it.

The story with the skyline is that there was a limit on how large of an image you could load into the game - either in resolution or in size (as in bytes), I'm not sure which. So the solution to still have a realistic-looking NYC skyline was to crop and then mirror the real skyline by reusing the same image. Here's another screenshot, it looks like there's a seam to the left of the statue of liberty, and then everything further left is repeated on the right side of the previous screenshot too, so WTC just got cropped somewhere. I tried to google for the original source but couldn't quickly find it. Anyway, they realized it and made up an in-game explanation that it was blown up by terrorists.



Anyway, nowadays you can load huge jpegs right into the GPU memory and it works fine.

Der Kyhe posted:

Except for the part where Voodoo and Voodoo2 chipsets dominated the 1st and 2nd PC 3D graphics card generations, and were better than any of their competitors only by support, speed, and performance.

Manuel Calavera posted:

Going to repeat for a new page that this is absolutely a pro click.

uli2000 posted:

Ham here. I promise, we're all not batshit crazy Omaba hatin' diabetes havin' boomer, but yeah, most are.


That guy is what's called a rover. There are ham radio contests (yes, it's a thing) where hams try to make contacts with different countries or different areas. This guy is is all likelihood activating different Maidenhead grid squares for a VHF and up contest (50 mhz and up) contest transmitting in multiple squares, often times in areas where there may not be many hams or many people. During these contests hams get 'points' for making contacts with as many grids and/or other hams, and those that collect the most points often times get plaques or certificates proving you are the most ham.




Data via ham radio is still governed by archaic symbol rate rules. Anything on HF (30 mhz or below) has a maximum rate of 300 baud, VHF (30-300mhz) is 1200 baud, and UHF (300-3000mhz) is 9600 baud. The more data you send, the more bandwith it takes, which is at a premium, especially in the HF bands. Hams have lots of bandwidth in various chunks above UHF, including exclusive portions of 2.4 and 5.8ghz, just below and into the unlicensed wifi bands, which hams have been using for enhanced uses like broadband hamnet and AREDN. Hams have had a class A block of ip addresses since 1981 (44.x.x.x). The group that controls the block sold off a chunk of it to Amazon last year, but they still hold 75% of the block that can be assigned to hams.

Platystemon posted:

Meaning you would have regrown it if only you’d ever lost it in the first place?

Jerry Cotton posted:

Joke post: hey guise remember gbs.fm?

Vavrek posted:

You've got a pretty intense name/post/title combo.

Dick Trauma posted:

Dick Trauma posted:

No need to turn the tap dance into your crusade. Sheesh!

Beartaco posted:

That part was really interesting too. I'm not from the States so I'd never even heard of these rental vending machines.

3D Megadoodoo posted:

A comma in there would probably be good.

Antioch posted:

I took a Dremel to one of the blanks on the back of the case and fed a SATA and power through that.