For some reason, “amperage” mildly infuriates me. It’s current.

Voltage equals amperage times ohmage.

I maintain dozens of the black & silver Optiplexes, they’re used in Raw Thrills arcade games like The Fast and the Furious, Big Buck Hunter Pro, Guitar Hero Arcade… They are workhorses; usually clean it and recap the power supply (which are kind of a bitch to disassemble) and they’re good for another few years.

I still run into the blue/grey ones like your picture, but not in use. Usually stored in the basement of a bar.

My personal collection includes a couple of first-generation Optiplexes, the beige GX1. Dell is a bigger part of my life than I ever imagined or hoped. 😅

Agreed, cheap DB-9 used for all kinds of different connections. I used this site for info: https://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/DB9-Joystick

In the US, Sinclair and Amstrad seem to be rare. We do have the problem where Master System was uncommon but Genesis was massively popular, so many people refer to the Genesis as “the Sega”. You can’t say, “Sega controllers are OK for C64” with Master System implied, because someone will use a Genesis pad and blow up the CIA when pad buttons and keyboard keys are pressed at the same time.

He did have some interesting things to say, though.

I thought this only applied to Mega Drive/Genesis controllers, as many two-button joysticks back in the day were advertised as compatible with “Atari, Commodore, and Sega”.

I opened my Master System controller (Model 3020) and verified that there are no resistors or components, and the Sega’s +5V pin (pin 5), and the C64’s +5V pin (pin 7) are the two wires that are not connected to anything do not even have pins or wires in the cable. So this particular pad is safe. Other pads may be wired differently!

Bad seafood or bitter almonds in the semla?

Bitter almonds contain 42 times higher amounts of cyanide than the trace levels found in sweet almonds. Extract of bitter almond was once used medicinally but even in small doses, effects are severe or lethal, especially in children; the cyanide must be removed before consumption. The acute oral lethal dose of cyanide for adult humans is reported to be 0.5–3.5 mg/kg (0.2–1.6 mg/lb) of body weight (approximately 50 bitter almonds), so that for children consuming 5–10 bitter almonds may be fatal. Symptoms of eating such almonds include vertigo and other typical cyanide poisoning effects.

Modern TVs in the US don’t have the coaxial RF jack…

In the worst-case scenario, yes… but the wording on the Windows dialog literally says, “There is a problem with your device and you should scan it” and then when you do, “Your device is ready to use, no problems were found.” This, after it was ejected and got the safe removal notification. 🤷‍♂️

Game Genie had a thicker circuit board than a game cart, to get a good connection in the frontloaders. The toploader’s cart slot is pretty tight, to get a good connection. Combine these, and it feels like the cart slot is going to pull off of the circuit board before the Game Genie lets loose. Everdrive/Powerpak would work fine.

Galoob offered an adapter for the toploaders but they are extremely rare.

Honestly, even a Trinitron TV with composite looks as good as RGB at the resolution of NES.

Remember Craigslist? I got a toploader for $40 with games because it had been stepped on and crushed! Some Bondo, paint, AV mod…

Toploader not recommended if you like to use Game Genie.

RGB mod: It’s expensive IIRC because you need to replace the PPU (video chip) entirely with one from an arcade board or a modern FPGA reproduction. Edit: Sweet Jesus, you’re looking at about $250 for RGB kit installation…

At the time, if you bought a new US toploader then complained to Nintendo about the video quality, they would replace it with a revision with no jailbars. There’s also a very rare US toploader with the composite AV port and no jailbars!

https://consolemods.org/wiki/NES:NES_Model_Differences

Не Путин?

My coworker was listening to Fox “news” radio… The teacher they were interviewing said that Palestinian people don’t exist; they’re Jordanian but Jordan (and every other Middle Eastern country) doesn’t want them… Then he went on to say he’s not racist because he had a lot of Palestinian students and they were wonderful people!

grub’s always been a hack. The first stage in 512 byte boot sector chainloads the second stage in the space between boot sector and the first sectors of first partition. Second stage chainloads the kernel. (This is my primitive gist.)

grub was never made for security, it just exists in a place where one would think security would be priority… but again, physical access = pwned, etc.

Not quite the same, but funny: I recently unlocked an HDD from a car head unit to prove to a friend that it was only storing music ripped from its CD drive (and the associated minimal CD title database)… Toshiba master HDD password is 32 spaces. 😅

Better replace your keyboard everytime you leave it unattended, someone could put a keylogger in it. Don’t forget to check for hidden pinhole cameras around that capture you inputting your passwords. Etc, etc. Those even work against an encrypted drive…

Jesus, the downvotes! Well, I thought it was funny! 😂

Very sciencey, not a toy. Hilariously, Nintendo fought hard to get their competing “Entertainment System” recognized as a toy and not a computer, for import tax purposes.

God damn marketing! That picture makes it look like it had OLED before it was invented. Of course, these days you can make it actually look like that but it’s ~$60 and you install it yourself.