Category: 8-bit

Bored

January 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I have been maddeningly, horribly, insanely bored this weekend.  I was sick for most of this week, so I didn’t bother to make plans to get out of the apartment.  To try to entertain myself–and I use the term loosely–I have done the following:

  • Bought a series of locks to practice picking.  I can get the one-tumbler lock easily, the three-tumbler lock with a bit of work, and the five-tumbler lock not at all.  I practiced until my hands ached.
  • Signed up for a basic electronics class.
  • Moved everything out of the kitchen, swept, mopped, and moved everything back in.
  • Cleaned the hell out of the bathroom.
  • Watched all of Futurama season six, plus the first movie.
  • Created a spreadsheet of monthly pricing for all the major carriers for the new iPhone.  (They’re all pretty much the same, if you were wondering.  I’ll save a bit of money by switching away from AT&T because I’m still being charged Wisconsin taxes.)
  • Wrote this.
  • Finished a three hundred page book, started another.  (I didn’t start the first book this weekend.)
  • Went grocery shopping.
  • Made all of these.  (Not pictured: a shyguy I made and gave to Mike.)  The skulls will live at work as a coaster.  I thought about karma-whoring the Reddit alien, and decided I don’t care.
    Pixel art

    I thought it would be funny to create a QR code as a physical object, but couldn’t think of anything worth saying in two hundred and fifty characters. (If you’ve got an idea, leave a comment.)

  • I also attempted to buy a new laptop, as my current one is literally falling apart. I opened it up last week and a piece of the keyboard assembly came off in my hand. I found out as I started to pay that Apple charges sales tax online, so I’m just going to wait until the next time I’m in Portland (no sales tax) to get it.  Take THAT, Washington and Seattle.
  • Yet to do: I have a date at seven tonight.  I’m not expecting much.

What an exceptionally pointless post.

Steve Wozniak in Nintendo Power

March 23, 2008 / / 8 Comments

I went out in search of used Nintendo games yesterday. The second store was a goldmine of poorly organized collectibles, junk, rare unlicensed carts, and random accessories I hadn’t known existed. It was as if a garage sale had exploded in a game rental place twenty years ago, and no one bothered to clean it up.

After picking through a heap of vintage consoles and computers (think 128K memory on down), I discovered the January 1991 issue of Nintendo Power–with Megaman III on the cover. I bought it for a buck, and found this gem inside:

Steve “Mr. T” (seriously–I couldn’t even make that up) Wozniak showing his high score aboard the Concord between London and New York. Classic.

New NES!

April 5, 2007 / / 0 Comments

I went on a $50 shopping spree on eBay over the last week or so. I bought myself a new processor for the server that just served this page to you (now at a whopping 1GHz!), a replacement power supply for my laptop (I bumped a glass of water into the old one and fried it), and a new NES console!

Granted, I already had an NES that’s in perfect working order. Other than the fact that you have to do the jiggle-the-game-back-and-forth trick to get Megaman II and Mario 3 working most of the time, it worked perfectly.

This, however, is not the typical NES. Just after the Super Nintendo was released, Nintendo released a redesigned NES console called the NES-101. Instead of the toaster-style cartridge loading, these load the games through a slot at the top like the SNES. This allows for a much tighter fit. Games work the first time you put them in and hit the power switch.

There are a number of improvements on the console–the top loading chief among them. It’s also half the size of the original NES. Seriously, this thing is tiny in comparison. I also like the hardy physical power switch. The original power switch was the momentary type, and it was easy to lose your game if you just brushed the switch. Turning this thing on has to be done very deliberately.

Unfortunately, there are a few drawbacks as well…

  • For whatever reason, Nintendo decided not to include component out, which means the only way to get video in is via fuzzy old RF and coax.
  • This may seem strange, but the case doesn’t specify the voltage and polarity of the power adapter. This isn’t a big deal if you got the system new, but it sucks if you got a used one without a power supply like I did. I used the PS from my original NES not knowing if I was going to blow the thing up when I turned it on.
  • That new power switch? It rocks. But there’s just one small problem with it–there’s no power LED. Megan had a game of Mario 2 going when I grabbed the unit to take some pictures, and I killed it because I didn’t know it was on.

Being a huge 8-bit geek, I took some pics of my new toy with its older brother. Check ’em out.