The far left has RCA, SVIDEO, and Ethnernet. Maybe some way to output data over a network to RCA-based stereo systems, something like a PRISMIQ.
The middle device looks to be the same, except it has DV and optical in addition to RCA and SVIDEO. It could be another PRISMIQ-esque device, or it could also be something designed to go the other way too.
We can't see the back of the last unit, but I'm gonna guess it's something w/ wireless similar to the first two.
The age limit solves two problems: it weeds out the people without any money, and it automatically legitimizes the customer. They are no longer embarrassed to be seen there or to recommend the place to a friend. As a side note, it also reduces the amount of vandalism and theft that goes on with a younger crowd.
Because we all know that a) everyone over 18 has money and b) only people under 18 vandalize things
Make sure to have some tables that have ethernet jacks and nothing more. Many gamers are a lot more comfortable using their home rigs (esp those who specifically design LAN ones) than locked down store-owned ones. Wireless can also come in handy. Keep plenty of network cable (little 6 foot ones) in stock. Get some of those USB network adapters (both wired and wireless) and rent them out for $5 or so for the duration of your stay.
Some sort of electronic membership card (w/ a mag stripe) could make time allotment easier. If you go hourly, let people put as much money as they want on a card and use a punch in/punch out system to deduct. have the puncher at the door to help stop people from defrauding you and not punching in. you could also just lock out the PCs (or network ports) unless you swipe your card.
cards could also be used as gift cards, either to be sold (the perfect gift for the geek in your life) or as prizes from tournaments.
my dad just spent a good three hours disassembling my dell laptop (an inspiron 7000, circa 1998) to replace the hinges and brackets that hold the LCD on... it was a pain in the ass but with diagrams it wasn't impossible. i got the parts off ebay.
Fire up VMWare or Bochs, install Windows 98 with everything on it. Download and install all the patches. Copy that VM--you now have a fully (to date) patched master copy.
Which will instantly b0rk all over itself if you try to put it on a real machine or a VM with a different hardware configuration as windows attempts to load drivers for various motherboard components that aren't there.
Re:People will keep using it, regardless...
on
Windows 98 Phased Out
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· Score: 2, Informative
and some of the kids games didn't work on XP
I've found a lot of the problems with kids games are just that the authors wrote the game to panic and scream "AHHHH NOOOOO!" if you attempt to install it on an NT system (which XP is after all). I've just used compatibility mode to trick it into thinking its on 98 and all is well.
For older hardware, this is not an option as winxp requires far more resources than win98.
I have a dell laptop. It's a 300mhz pentium 2 and had 128 megs of RAM in it, and it ran windows 98... poorly. So I put 256 more megs of PC100 RAM in (that's what it takes... total cost: $20 on sale at the wiz closing event) and installed XP. Then I turned off eye candy. Now it runs beautifully.
>while others will stick to their current machine and may use a Linux distro
Do you honestly think Joe Average who still has an old computer running Windows 95 or 98 has any idea what Linux is, let alone how to install it properly? An improperly configured Linux system can be as dangerous out of the box as a Windows system.
Yeah, and Quicktime decided to associate itself with all my PSD files even though I said not to (Quicktime is installed with iTunes even if it's already installed and apparently takes over all file associations anyway)... FFS, why would I open PSDs in quicktime..
We have TV equipment. There is a box in the library to broadcast to a TV in every classroom over a closed circuit system. No one would be clicking on anything. It would go from a computer w/ a firewire camera on it at location A, to a computer in our studio. The computer connects to the broadcast box via RCA. DOne.
The purpose of this setup is to get the video from the camera to a transmitter we already have, courtesy of Channel One. The problem is you need to be directly connected to the box with RCA cables, so obviously we can't be running RCA cable all over the building. Therefore we would just use computers to relay the signal from a computer the camera is on to a computer with RCA output
Slashdot Mirror
First, the image is much larger than in the page.
Anyway... here's my thoughts.
The far left has RCA, SVIDEO, and Ethnernet. Maybe some way to output data over a network to RCA-based stereo systems, something like a PRISMIQ.
The middle device looks to be the same, except it has DV and optical in addition to RCA and SVIDEO. It could be another PRISMIQ-esque device, or it could also be something designed to go the other way too.
We can't see the back of the last unit, but I'm gonna guess it's something w/ wireless similar to the first two.
We're a catholic school O:-)
Sadly the services are just wired and wireless mics to speakers, theres no communication between them
Aside from that, we only control 2 out of the six or so radios we use. The rest belong to the office. Which is yet another reason.
This seams like our most viable solution (the phone circuit)... I'll suggest it to our tehc director tomorrow
The age limit solves two problems: it weeds out the people without any money, and it automatically legitimizes the customer. They are no longer embarrassed to be seen there or to recommend the place to a friend. As a side note, it also reduces the amount of vandalism and theft that goes on with a younger crowd.
Because we all know that a) everyone over 18 has money and b) only people under 18 vandalize things
Make sure to have some tables that have ethernet jacks and nothing more. Many gamers are a lot more comfortable using their home rigs (esp those who specifically design LAN ones) than locked down store-owned ones. Wireless can also come in handy. Keep plenty of network cable (little 6 foot ones) in stock. Get some of those USB network adapters (both wired and wireless) and rent them out for $5 or so for the duration of your stay.
Some sort of electronic membership card (w/ a mag stripe) could make time allotment easier.
If you go hourly, let people put as much money as they want on a card and use a punch in/punch out system to deduct. have the puncher at the door to help stop people from defrauding you and not punching in. you could also just lock out the PCs (or network ports) unless you swipe your card.
cards could also be used as gift cards, either to be sold (the perfect gift for the geek in your life) or as prizes from tournaments.
my dad just spent a good three hours disassembling my dell laptop (an inspiron 7000, circa 1998) to replace the hinges and brackets that hold the LCD on... it was a pain in the ass but with diagrams it wasn't impossible. i got the parts off ebay.
3. Marvel as you get 30 fps.
anything that isn't 90 to 120fps just isn't worth playing IMHO
The G5 also has an analog audio in port: G5 specs.
Hence the line "If you need analog in that's a bit better than what's included by default"
Um... the iPod mini is also hard drive based
Fire up VMWare or Bochs, install Windows 98 with everything on it. Download and install all the patches. Copy that VM--you now have a fully (to date) patched master copy.
Which will instantly b0rk all over itself if you try to put it on a real machine or a VM with a different hardware configuration as windows attempts to load drivers for various motherboard components that aren't there.
and some of the kids games didn't work on XP
I've found a lot of the problems with kids games are just that the authors wrote the game to panic and scream "AHHHH NOOOOO!" if you attempt to install it on an NT system (which XP is after all). I've just used compatibility mode to trick it into thinking its on 98 and all is well.
For older hardware, this is not an option as winxp requires far more resources than win98.
I have a dell laptop. It's a 300mhz pentium 2 and had 128 megs of RAM in it, and it ran windows 98... poorly. So I put 256 more megs of PC100 RAM in (that's what it takes... total cost: $20 on sale at the wiz closing event) and installed XP. Then I turned off eye candy. Now it runs beautifully.
This is how we get really bad sci fi movies. Shit like this.
I dont suppose you've considered taking them to a recycling center...?
I disagree
I run Win XP on a 700mhz p3 w/ 384 megs of RAM, and on a 300MHz p2 dell laptop with 384 megs of RAM. no problems on either.
if you know how to tweak, it can run. disable useless services and eye candy and voila.
will you at least be happy with a scroll wheel and not worry about three buttons?
>while others will stick to their current machine and may use a Linux distro
Do you honestly think Joe Average who still has an old computer running Windows 95 or 98 has any idea what Linux is, let alone how to install it properly? An improperly configured Linux system can be as dangerous out of the box as a Windows system.
got a sega genesis w/ sonic 2... i was hooked
Yeah, and Quicktime decided to associate itself with all my PSD files even though I said not to (Quicktime is installed with iTunes even if it's already installed and apparently takes over all file associations anyway)... FFS, why would I open PSDs in quicktime..
Maybe this guy accounts for a few of those characters.
Because most games don't even fit on a single CD for one OS, let alone a Win/*nix/Mac combo setup... even a DVD is probably too small.
Plus I don't wanna reboot my system to play games.
What's so revolutionary? I've got games on my Intel PC Pro webcam from 1998 that do the same thing, but more bubbles to pop and less ninjas to kill.
We have TV equipment. There is a box in the library to broadcast to a TV in every classroom over a closed circuit system. No one would be clicking on anything. It would go from a computer w/ a firewire camera on it at location A, to a computer in our studio. The computer connects to the broadcast box via RCA. DOne.
I'd like to clear up one thing.
The purpose of this setup is to get the video from the camera to a transmitter we already have, courtesy of Channel One. The problem is you need to be directly connected to the box with RCA cables, so obviously we can't be running RCA cable all over the building. Therefore we would just use computers to relay the signal from a computer the camera is on to a computer with RCA output