I received a lovely gift yesterday. It's just another NES emulator handheld. But I really like this one.
The first thing to mention is the price. It costs around 6β8 euros and comes in a nice case. I don't think I would be able to buy just the case for that price here.
So, of course, the plastic looks cheap and the buttons are not very nice to press. Sometimes you have to press them harder and more precisely. The A/V output is more amusing than useful.
However, the feature I really like about this device is the ability to connect a second external controller so you can play multiplayer games, which my son really likes.
Also, compared to the handheld I bought a few months ago in Action Supermarket, this one has well-known and fun NES games instead of Chinese rubbish.
One thing I was warned about was charging. I was told that there is no charging circuit to look after the battery; the battery is simply charged by a constant voltage connected from the source. Therefore, it would be better to only charge the device when I can supervise it. I will have ...
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I came across the Polarbit game again on the "new" BlackBerry" and remembered that I had played it on my first touchscreen phone, the Nokia 5230.
And I also realized how much I've always admired what they were able to create. Specifically, I've always been fascinated by how sophisticated games they're able to create on devices with power that makes it seem impossible
Even back then, the only 3D game I remember being on the Symbian 5Th was Bounce. A game developed directly by Nokia. After that, only Polarbit's.
Specifically Raging Thunder, Wave Blazer, and Armageddon Squadron. The first two mentioned are car and jet ski races, and the last one is a combat aircraft simulator.
After some brief research, I found two more Polarbit games for Symbian: The first is ToonWarz, a shooter game that I have played before. The second is IronSight, which I have never managed to get working.
And even after all these years, I'm still fascinated by what they've managed to create compared to all the other developers. I've come across their games on a lot ...
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I feel a bit embarrassed, but I have to admit that compiling and installing my favorite Nano turned out to be a faster and easier option than using Vim.
I'm still determined to learn with Vim, and I guess I'll still be more motivated about learning that than I was before, but for the sake of usability I'll probably resort to Nano for now, as the quickest route to a result.
Anyway, it has the upside that I've compiled something again after all these years, and on an βexoticβ device
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I've had this second BlackBerry Classic in my drawer for a long time. It came with the working one that I wrote about previously. However, this one had a cracked display, but surprisingly it was still working. About a month ago, I ordered a really cheap spare one and it arrived about a week ago. My colleague from work changed it for me.
And now it's really nice! Second time lucky! The first time, he forgot to connect the flex cable from the trackpoint. However, it works now. The only small problem is that the jack connector has somehow become corrupted and it is switching from the speaker to the jack output every few seconds.
I don't really need the sound though, and I have another fully working piece of that phone in my collection, so I don't care.
So, once again, I have installed some software and games. This time, I downloaded a different sideloading tool. This time, I tried to make it work from VirtualBox, as I didn't have a computer with Windows nearby. After some adjustments, it worked surprisingly well!
Then I did something I ...
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One of the best technical events of the whole year. Exhibition of old machines in the Museum of Old Machines in Ε½amberk. Every year there is a large number of steam cars, locomotives and other machines on display, as well as other technical uniquenesses, the vast majority of which are in working order, and others are constantly being added and put into operation.
After a few years of missing the date or clashing with something else, I finally made it to this event again, and enjoyed it as much as ever. The museum has grown again since my last visit, many of the exhibits have gotten a better location, and there are some brand new displays.
There was also a cavalcade of six steam locomotives, one of which was not fully operational until the day of the show.
The event also included a vintage car race with a steam train, which I unfortunately missed.
Below I offer at least a few photos from the event
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Yes, it works !
It wasn't as hard as I expected. It was just really annoying having to reinstall the OS. However, I then just used the Windows XP driver, which had failed before because of a conflict with a newer driver that had been previously installed.
Now, as you can see on the dxdiag screen, acceleration works. However, another issue has been found. The screen has a very unusual resolution of 1024x600, so most full-screen games require a bit of tinkering to work.
Another interesting fact is that the battery is still in perfect condition after 15 years. I did all the reinstalling, installing software and playing games on battery power alone, without an adapter. Of course, I plugged it in and fully charged it before this, but since the first run it has just been on battery. So far, it has worked for around 5 hours of hard use, and I am still on 40%, which is unbelievable.
So, the next step was to look for software and games. I guess I'll need some freeware titles and small games because of the slow processor and limited RAM. I remembered one really old but significant game ...
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A few weeks ago, my colleague asked me to reinstall his wife's Ultrabook, which had become sluggish and unstable. It took a few tries, as I initially attempted to perform a recovery from the recovery partition, but this failed and resulted in a BSOD bootloop. Then I had to set up BIOS to boot from USB, which was also tricky. However, I managed it in the end and returned the ultrabook to my colleague.
In return, he gave me his old Samsung N210 netbook.
It has a single-core Atom processor and 1 GB of RAM. Despite my obsession with installing the original OS on the notebooks in my collection, I can't do that in this case as it was shipped with Windows 7 Starter,which is terrible and unusable.
After a while, I decided to try installing Windows XP. The installation went surprisingly well and everything seemed to work. However, as I expected, driver problems arose soon afterwards.
I was easily able to get the battery driver working, and after some time, the sound worked too. However, the 3D acceleration is bugged. I found some drivers and ...
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During an online discussion about typing on a touchscreen phone, I discovered something very interesting. It's a function that everyone probably knows about, but I had no idea it existed. It's a Swype keyboard. To be clear, I am familiar with the Swype keyboard on Symbian phones, but I was not aware that it was available on the GBoard keyboard.
But let's start from the beginning. The discussion on the Discord channel was about us geeks and our decreasing ability to type on a touchscreen. And yes. I get very angry when I have to try three or four times to type every second word correctly. My wife says I literally cannot type on a phone. However, after the aforementioned discussion and receiving advice about the Swype keyboard, I tried it and found that it is a built-in function of the default Android keyboard. When I tried it, memories came back.
It was many years ago that I tried that geeky input method on Symbian. It was really cool at the time and I had to learn it perfectly to show everyone how perfect the method was.
And now... Perhaps it's time to dust off my old ...
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The 3D graphics of this game have aged really well and it still looks really nice. And the game is still absolutely addictive.
So I still play it and I still enjoy it. The only thing I have found problematic is the power-up system. As the touch controls are not really great for a racing game, it is even more of a problem there as the steering is also 'aiming' and the 'launch' button for powerups is operated with the same finger as the steering. However, I did discover one option that I did not know about, and that is the ability to completely disable powerups in-game. And that was something I needed to know when I played the games twenty years ago.
Now the game is absolutely brilliant. I enjoy every single race, which is now pure racing and not just the random luck of not getting hit by a rocket or splash ball.
For the first time I am going through the whole career and unlocking the cars, races and championships. Without the power-ups, it is a real racing experience and I am really enjoying it. So no more "CARNIVAL" and "TRACKER" cheats. Just progress.
I also ...
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While installing games on the tablet mentioned in the previous article, I remembered an interesting project. And a very interesting game too. It is called Re-Volt! One of the very first good looking 3D games I ever played. Even though it is from 1999, the graphics still look amazing. We can remember many early 3D games that look relatively ugly, but this is an absolute gem.
I think everyone knows this game, but for those who don't, it's an RC car racing arcade, in different tracks and environments, with collectable bonuses/weapons. You can race on the street between the houses, in the toy shop, in the Wild West village or on the boat. The tracks are very varied and so are the cars.
The game is so popular, and the modding community is so big, that you can download hundreds of interesting cars and dozens of very good and well-made tracks, just copy them to the folder with the game, and enjoy.
And here comes the RVGL project, an open source re-implementation of this great game, bringing it to Android devices. I tried the "official" build about a year ago. It required the files from the original game ...
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