– Retrodrömmar
World of Warcraft (WoW) hardcore mode started out as a fan made version of the original game, with a lot of restrictions of what the player was allowed to do (no trading, quest grouping etc), and one fundamental rule: if you die, you have to delete your character. The people at Blizzard were not late to monetize on this idea and therefore created official hardcore…
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I recently acquired an untested Macintosh SE/30 from Swedish eBay. It was a promising project as the seller stated that the battery was removed without signs of leakage. These machines are infamous for being damaged by leaky batteries. When I booted the machine I was presented a bright screen with horizontal lines, no beeps or signs of any OS. Macintosh SE/30 recap The second thing…
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I bought an Atari 2600 junior recently and the unit came with a power supply (psu) that had a broken cable. A good opportunity to take a closer look at the PSU, which is the focus of this post! As mentioned, my PSU had a broken cable, near the cable strain relief, visible in the image below. Opening the PSU is a rather straight forward…
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In this post we’ll summarize key events and characteristics that led to players turning to their PC:s for gaming. The materials are based on various sources, such as Jamie Lendino’s excellent book “Starflight: How the PC and DOS exploded computer gaming 1987 – 1994”. Let’s dive right into it. How did the personal computer go from being purely business-oriented machines to gaming powerhouses? The PC’s…
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I decided to give ChatGPT (3) a go, to explain why the Dreamcast failed. It generated the following response: The Dreamcast was a video game console developed by Sega and released in 1998. Despite receiving critical acclaim and having a strong initial launch, the Dreamcast ultimately failed in the market and was discontinued in 2001. There were several reasons for its failure, including: Competition: The…
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I recently acquired a Compaq Presario 460 from Swedish eBay. I did not know this model existed before I saw it online. As a kid I owned a Presario 433 while my buddy owned a 425. A few years ago I bought a Compaq Presario CDS 520. The difference between the “CDS” range and the regular Presarios is that the former has integreated sound card…
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My recapped Game Gear had a problem with scraping sound when adjusting the volume with the volume control. There is a relatively straight forward way to fix that: replacing the volume control wheel. To do so, you need some basic soldering skills and tools. The volume control is a 10KA (log) Potentiometer. My potentiometer was a bit slimmer than the original, but that is not…
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The PS Vita slim, or PCH-2000, was released by Sony in 2013, two years after the original Vita. The slim variant is 20% thinner and 15% lighter compared to the original. It has a lower cost LCD screen, an hour extra battery life and 1 gb of internal memory. Moreover, the charging jack is a micro-USB type B port compared with the odd format of…
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The PS Vita, released in 2011, is a very capable handheld console, and you can really benefit from softmodding it, allowing you to play homebrews, backups, emulators, etc. In this post, we will show how you softmod the system, step by step. The following steps will be performed: Update firmware to 3.65 or above. Install h-encore and Vitadeploy Install Ensō Finalize setup Install NoNpDrm +…
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The Playstation Vita (PS Vita), released in 2011, was Sony’s successor to the Playstation Portable (PSP). I recently aquired a cople of these consoles, 1x original PCH-1000, and 1x PS Vita “slim” variant. The PCH-1000 had a serious problem: the charger port was broken. It is not uncommon that these ports fail, and replacing them is a bit of a hassle. I looked around online…
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