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Fighting games. The move durations, defensive reaction times, and openings are all measured in frames. Timing is absolutely critical. In high-level play, you may only have an opening of a handful of frames in which to land an attack...and that's at 60 frames per second.

If your game isn't running 100% frame-accurate (Try as they might, emulators really don't), you might as well be button-mashing.

That's why those of us who care about that sort of thing take extreme measures to ensure an authentic experience. (Also, it's just totally bitchin'!)

Fighting games. The move durations, defensive reaction times, and openings are all measured in frames. Timing is absolutely critical. In high-level play, you may only have an opening of a handful of frames in which to land an attack...and that's at 60 frames per second.

If your game isn't running 100% frame-accurate (Try as they might, emulators really don't), you might as well be button-mashing.

That's why those of us who care about that sort of thing take extreme measures to ensure an authentic experience. (Also, it's just totally bitchin'!)

A while back, my little sister picked up a Nook Tablet for, what was it? Like $170? Back in May I picked up a 7" Android 4.0 tablet from China that kicks its ass for $30. (In fact, I bought four different ones, and one of those 'Android TV stick' devices, for a total of $145, god bless DealExtreme.)

Just pull the plug, B&N. Concentrate on content distribution, and maintaining the reader app. I think in the long run, the Nook is nothing more than an unnecessary expenditure that exposes them to equally unnecessary financial risks. Hell, if they really want a branded tablet to sell in their stores, they should just re-brand one of those Chinese ones, and cut it out with the custom OS crap that makes it 'not quite an Android device'.

I was looking through some old 'desktop crap' folders the other day, when I found a screenshot I'd been looking for for a while now. I took this screenshot of an error message in the EVE-Online beta back in 2003. I'll tell ya, I laughed pretty damned hard the first time I read it. "Something is fucked." may be ambiguous, but it's certainly concise and to the point. ;) http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/blog/2011-02/images/evebetaerror.png

Okay, that may be overstating. I'm sure the Odyssey and those other semi-obscure Atari-age consoles are probably going to fade from memory eventually. But the Nintendo? The Super Nintendo? The NEO-GEO? No way. Not a chance.

The NEO-GEO is pretty obscure compared to the other 16-bit era systems, yet it still has a massive userbase. Not to mention the fact that a new game just came out for it a couple months ago. Even with the almost absolute death of the arcade in America, it wouldn't surprise me if the NEO-GEO MVS actually has a larger operating userbase than the home console at this point. And the NEO-GEO userbase is hardcore. They know how to fix their hardware when something cocks up, so they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. And people are still coming out with hardware mods, improvements, and hacks.

Speaking from personal experience, I have over a dozen NEO-GEO MVS motherboards in various states of repair, as well as a fully working 4-slot cabinet and over 40 game cartridges. The cabinet runs pretty much 24/7 and I still feed it quarters on a very regular basis. On top of that, I'm working on an LED array replacement for the horrible EL-panel titlecard backlighting. I also have some interesting ideas about network-enabling the hardware, shared high scores, and other features. ;)

I want to do my part to preserve the rest of gaming heritage though, such as getting a full set of Famicom and Super Famicom hardware and refurbishing them to better-than-new with things like RGB video output for the SuperFami. I still have most of my old Super Nintendo carts, but my console itself is long gone.

Honestly, I don't think anything is gone as soon as 'the last working piece of hardware bites the dust'. Didn't some guy just emulate a Sega Genesis in hardware on an FPGA? Hell, didn't some guy build a working 68000 computer in wire-wrap not too long ago? As long as people remember how the hardware works, it's possible for crazy hackers with wire-wrap guns to make new ones. Besides, I have NEO-GEO MVS hardware schematics. :) (Before anyone asks, they're like 3rd generation photocopies in PDF format, and I plan to redraw them in EagleCAD when I have the time.) Other 16-bit consoles like the Super Nintendo may be harder to do, but the NEO-GEO is just a 68000, a Z80, a Yamaha sound chip, and a bunch of off-the-shelf components like logic ICs. The BIOS and other ROMs are available anywhere on the net. Even the 'custom' chips on newer boards are just a bunch of off-the-shelf stuff consolidated into single IC packages.

But hey, all this is just my two yen, adjusted for inflation.

Luckily, all my drives are mounted through silicone vibration isolators. Gotta love Antec case design! :D http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/2007-02/blog/images/u1_array_supersize.jpg

Think we could clean up the air a little faster? It's snowing in New England right now, and it's supposed to keep doing it for the next 20 or so hours. http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/blog/2010-04/images/someweather.jpg

Yeah, Vermonter here. I dropped Failpoint and went with Comcast for internet AND phone, when Failpoint refused to recognize the existence of my new apartment despite already providing service to the only other unit. The chronicles of my hellish move that cost me an extra month's rent thanks to Failpoint can be found here.

First off, LadyAda is awesome. I really don't need to say any more than that.

I've been wanting to make something like this for a while now. A year or two ago, I bought a big box of the same old Soviet 'vacuum fluorescent indicator' tubes, but I was always having trouble working out the hardware involved, especially the power supply. Using a boost converter is a great idea which might have occurred to me if I had had any experience with them at the time. (Other projects have since taken priority)

My enclosure design wasn't quite as...ah, 'conservative' as a nice simple laser-cut plexiglass box though :) http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/blog/2008-06/images/clockwip3.png

Now I'm going to have to take another try at it! :D

I bought a commercial diamond-based thermal paste when I built my quadcore machine a couple years ago. I tested it by pushing a high-res scene through unbiased physical light renderer for a week. It never went above 38C running at 100% on all four cores. My older dualcore machine idles at 55C with ArcticSilver 5.

Of course, the cooling of the quadcore certainly isn't hurt by the ridiculously large all-copper CPU cooler I put on it.

I was telling my little sister (A silversmith and jeweler) about it, and she said "Well duh, diamonds conduct heat like you wouldn't believe. It's basically the only stone you don't need to heatsink while soldering a ring because it doesn't hold heat long enough to damage it."

I can totally see the whole shift/ctrl thing coming into play in games eventually, I model 3D in Newtek Lightwave 3D and the interface makes use of "a" "A" and "^a", for instance. A large percentage of the commands are accessible from the keyboard through various means.

As far as games go, I'm a die-hard Keyboard/Mouse user on the computer. There are only two exceptions: Fighting games. For which I use a custom arcade stick I built. And Mecha games, which require uhm...a little 'more'. If the PC version of Mechwarrior 5 doesn't use a gimped console-oriented control scheme, I'm going to build a custom controller setup from military and aviation controls that will put the Steel Battalion controller to SHAME. COUNT ON IT.

Oh for the love of-- Whenever I read what is basically this same story, time and time again, it makes me wish I had a man-portable microwave emitter. I go to this place and find the crazy goddamn technophobes responsible, and show them what a 'Health Hazard' really is! But then, they'd probably use it as proof of their maniacal rantings about how free wireless internet will cook the human brain in its own juices. In rebuttal I ask them this; what the fuck are _you_ worried about then?

I made this image yesterday as a response to something similarly stupid, but it works just as well for this.

Whole damn country's coming apart at the seams. California is burning, New Orleans is sinking...again... I spent Monday night in a Red Cross shelter, and I live on the EAST coast. (Story if anyone's interested.)

I seldom say anything nice, or anything one would repeat in polite company, but my heart goes out to the folks in California. (And not just my numerous friends and acquaintances who live in Socal) Worrying about my apartment being destroyed in a massive explosion and/or fire while I was two miles away with little more than the clothes on my back was one of the most painful and trying experience I have ever had, I can't begin to imagine the plight of those who have lost their homes.

Almost all of the news coverage we saw on the TV in the shelter was on California... Some of what I saw indeed looked like hell on Earth.

As long as you have to buy wonky third-party hardware to play console FPS games with a keyboard and mouse (Read: The proper interface), uhm no. But then, I'm kinda spoiled when it comes to console game control interfaces, I own Tekki. http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/images /blog/2005-06/controller.png Between that and my DLP (circa a year after that was taken) the heavens have actively started trying to smite me for idolatry. ;P