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Been a while since I posted anything. This one will be brief, more like an exercise. I’ll list ten PC Engine CD games, the first ten that come to mind.

  1. Akumajo Dracula X
  2. Cotton
  3. Gate of Thunder
  4. Sapphire
  5. Renny Blaster
  6. Shubibinman 3
  7. Panic Bomber
  8. Star Parodier
  9. Bonks Adventure 3
  10. Advanced VG

There you go, the first 10 that came to mind.

Good night.

I’m writing this entry using my recently acquired brand new IBM Model M keyboard made in Scotland in 1997. I forgot how awesome these things were/are.

Not to mention the nostalgia factor. I remember those days writing essays in Professional Write (PW) on my Tek 8088 PC or even playing some games like Space Commanders, Alleycat, Chess, Digger, Centipede, etc.

The only key I’m missing is the windows key, I know Ctrl+Esc pulls the start menu which is something but other than that I’m missing some combos like Win+R. Using Sharpkeys I just remapped the right Alt key to the right Windows key. It is asking me to logout, so I’ll do it and let you know how it went.

Update: It worked! Pressing the right Alt behaves as if I’m pressing the Windows Key, shortcuts and everything.

Until the next entry.

 

After about 2 days, the site is back up and running again. No plugin magic, just good ol fashioned manual restore from backup. Site is now up and running at the new hosting provider.

For my next entry I intend to talk about a Dreamcast ODE. See you later.

This Mega Everdrive Pro is an awesome piece of hardware. In addition to playing Megadrive roms, it also plays Virtua Racing (the only SVP game ever made), Sega Master games with FM support (for those compatible games) and Mega CD games. Also, so called MSU (aka Mode 1) patched games work flawlessly. More info about MSU here.

Highly recommended piece of hardware, no more having to mess with aging hardware, just fire up your Genesis / Megadrive console and you’re good to go.

First some background.

Recently, a friend of mine switched ISPs. His previous one was slow and had no intentions of improving their infrastructure. What really made him pull the plug on them was the fraudulent charges on his invoice and their poor (non existent) customer service.

His current ISP (which I won’t reveal), provides him with a much cleaner and faster (though not symmetric) connection. You know, a real broadband connection.

While no mechanism is invulnerable or impenetrable, I try to implement at least some basic security measures on a home network. As soon as the installers leave, I begin tinkering with things.

Connecting devices (PCs, tablets, cellphones, you name it) directly to the ISP’s gear is a big no no, so the first thing I do is disable the WiFi on the ISP router and only hookup a router (which I own and can setup to my liking). That way a barrier is created between the ISP and the internal network. Double NAT is not an issue since ISPs these days are going the Carrier Grade NAT route anyways.

One of the settings I always customize on my routers is the DNS servers. In my experience I can obtain better performance and reliability while using custom DNS servers. Also, it doesn’t matter if the ISP DNS servers go down and the ISP doesn’t get to log any DNS activity.

After setting things up, I visit some websites like IPLeak for example to make sure things are working the way they’re supposed to. Well, to my surprise (or shuld I say to my horror) I see the ISP DNS servers and not the ones I specified. I rechecked settings, tried different DNS servers, same result, there is a dns leak.

What this means is, the ISP is actively intercepting DNS requests and redirecting them to their own DNS servers. DNS can be a powerful tool (weapon) for an ISP to keep logs of your activities, block websites (or substitute them).

The best way to protect your activities from the prying eyes of your ISP is to subscribe to a good VPN service and setting it up on the router, that way, every device on the local network will connect to the internet via the VPN tunnel.

It’s been a while since I last purchased an Everdrive product. So far I have the Everdrive N8, the original Mega Everdrive and the Turbo Everdrive v1. All three of them are awesome and still running like champs.

Like many others I’m sure, the main motivation on getting the Mega ED Pro is the Sega CD support. Being able to play CD games on real hardware without having to mess with my aging CD unit sounds great. 

This, like the others before it, is a great quality product. 

Professionally made. Comes nicely packaged and with a nice detailed manual printed in full color.  

Another plus is, the creator, Krikzz, now uses the Amazon fulfillment center to help distribute his products in the US. That will help make the Everdrives more easily attainable than before.

Besides being able to emulate a Sega CD unit via an advanced FPGA, this unit allows us to play Virtua Racing (SVP chip) and Master System games (those that support it off course) with FM sound (YM2413) . 32x roms will run fine provided that ugly mushroom is hooked up.

Can’t wait to try it, possibly Monday, when I’m back home.

Update 03/30/21 I was able to try it for a brief moment today and I think it is great already. It is unbelievable how all that magic fits into a regular size Genesis cartridge. 

Recently I got a SNES console to use for parts. I wanted S-Video and modifying my Snes Jr was not an option. Once I got it to work using parts from another console (which I got from my good buddy Eleazar) I began fiddling with my Super UFO Pro 8. Besides being able to play the majority (excluding special chips) of roms from SD Card, there are other cool things can be done with it (I’m sure after these years I just began scratching the surface). One of those cool things is downloading and uploading sram saves to and from real carts.

In general, the process is:

  • Prepare the emulator sram files using ucon64. The resulting files should be 128kb (1 MBit) in size.
  • Copy the srm files to the SD Card (use extension srm)
  • Fire up the Super UFO.
  • Go to Backup (third icon)
  • SDC to UFO (that will copy the sram file to the Super UFO sram)
  • UFO to Cart (that will copy the Super UFO sram into the real Cart)

Problem is sometimes the sram doesn’t detected (Yoshi’s Island for exmaple). In that is the case, just go to utilities (fifth icon), Check Cart and manually turn on the SRAM. If you don’t know which parameters to use for your cart, you can check them at Superfamicon.org Yoshi’s Island sram size is 256kbit for example.

In some cases, no matter if your cart is in great shape, the SuperUFO will just plain refuse to detect there is a cart at all. I still haven’t figured if there is a solution.

If you want to hook it up to a PC, you’ll have to disable driver signature enforce before installing the driver. Using the included software you can load a rom from your PC directly into DRAM. Kinda cumbersome a vestige of the good ol days I guess. Just load your roms from the SD card.

This is just my opinion. For the record, like many, I’m a huge Metallica fan, they’re my favorite band of all time. However, I don’t intend to allow that to blind my judgment.

Refreshing? yes, Energetic?, yes Fun to listen, off course. Is it better than the first S&M? No.

Not a bad album by any means, just not as awesome as the first S&M.

Some of the issues, again, IMHO

  • The mix leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes you can barely hear the Orchestra, sometimes it is the other way around, other times it is kinda messy. I just don’t get the same vibe and harmony from the first one.
  • For those repeated songs, the arrangements are not as awesome as the ones from 20 years ago, in some cases they feel as a downgrade.
  • While there are classics that should always be at any Metallica presentation, some are not so classic and could have been left out in favor of old school greats.

It was to be expected they included some of the newer material, and I enjoyed listening to some of them like the “Day that never comes” (my favorite from Death Magnetic) and “Moth into flame”.

I loved the interpretation of “The Unforgiven III” , it was really full of feeling.

The best moment of the night was the tribute to Cliff.

In conclusion, it is worth getting it for Metallica fans, youre getting some new stuff, it is a good listen, just not as polished as the first S&M.

IBM Netvista

 

Or somewhat newer hardware. Socket 478 CPUs are the newest I attempted to run it, with 1 GB of ram or less. Careful with the page file size, games like Fifa 98 don’t work if the page file is set at 1 GB or above. As per storage, so far a 500 GB IDE drive formated as FAT32 (off course) has been working fine.

Main reason as to why you would do want to do this is if you will only be running Windows (yes, there are scenarios) and the storage is limited. In this case I had to do it on a 256 GB Mac.

It is challenging but doable. The current Macbook Pro 13″ only comes with two USB type C ports.

You’ll need a USB-C to USB adapter

Download windows support software inside Mac OS

Disable secure boot

Boot from usb stick

Load the Apple SSD driver

I forgot I was working on this article. I forgot the rest but this should help anyone interested get started.