FPGA vs Emulators...

Just I grabbed the Xmas opportunity and organised a meeting with friends, you know typical stuff like beer, bs food and retro consoles. Just our conversation went to FPGAs vs Emulators, as we had a MIST there and one guy brought his DE2 , quite a beast btw.

Well, the winner is ... EMULATORS! Believe it not, the "emulation" on the FPGA (cores) is not better than an emulator that is running on a pc.

Just compare the Hatari (Windows) or Steem SSE (windows) with the core on the MIST, well some guy demonstrated the MIST's AtariST high speed and an high-mono screen mode, some limited I can say as the Hatari (1.8.0) can even have 040, high speed (from 32Mhz to FastForward pressing Alt+X) and better VDI resolutions up to 16 colors.
In addition the Hatari can read MSA and STX images and play ALL of the ST Demos, something that is impossible on MIST (ST core) now!

Some examples:

Apple2 emulator (AppleWin) vs the Apple2 emul on MIST , just limited to a format of disk images that I never bothered to convert all of my .dsk images to .nib

C64, WinVICE 64  that supports a hell of peripherals like Carts and 4 drives like 1541, 1581 vs a core that just loads PRG.

ZX Spectrum, Fuse (what else!) has a jawdrop features incl. divide vs the ZX Spectrum core that just loads TAP (tape images , not even TZX) with REAL TAPE speed!!

NES, MESS vs a core that is not compatible 100% with the NES.

ZX81, EightyOne vs the core that can only run standalone programs (dot P) not even full tape images.

Amiga,  WinUAE with PPC support vs the current core that just matured to support AGA, with some issues and just 68020 the maximum CPU can handle.

Just my mate Jake told me the FPGAs are nice because its a instant turn-on / run the core / play, well that's correct, but at the same time my wii can have a hell of emulators too! Also, what my friend Jake forgot to tell me is that he TRIED 3 different monitors till to find one that is compatible with all of the cores! LOL now.

I know there is some FPGA called FPGAarcade, a bit pricey I think and with limited availability , but you can have a 060 , seems useful only for Amiga core, but I bet it will have its limitations like the other FPGA devices there.

Hatari ... in a browser!

Yes,  its true, now you can have an ST in the browser (Firefox for now, as the emulator is crawling under chrome... LOL) for more info: http://absencehq.de/union/

DX Forth

This is news now... the nice DX Forth had an update to v 4.08 just a few days ago...

Firefox sync : what the fuck is going on?!

I had the idea that Opera was the only browser that the Sync is in fact Shit, really.
Now as I can see, I am unable to proper sync firefox bookmarks between 3 different systems.

Then I found on the sync logs that the shit cannot be sync because "Could not authenticate: No keyFetchToken" and the 'nice' of this story is there was not even a fucking VISIBLE notification error message, instead I had to dig into those shit logs, thanks to the fucking idiot(s) firefox dev(s) that is(are) involved with the (shit)sync procedure.

Editing Savegame of Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, on OSX

Its just a couple of days that we got the Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, for the mac.
Its a nice game, and we enjoy it, the only problem is that save game editors for this game (Baldur's Gate save games) are for PC's only.

I found so far that the (windows) program EE Keeper can be run under wine , but it asks for the installation folder. After some trial and error I found that this works very well under OSX :

First of all setup the wine (wine config) so the Z: drive is the root (/) of the mac, then launched the EE Keeper and configure the installation folders as:

Installation Directory: 

Z:\Applications\IcewindDale.app\Contents\Resources\

User Save Data Directory:
Z:\Users\user01\Documents\Icewind Dale - Enhanced Edition\save\

(The game save files are located under the user's Documents)

Also enable the option "Use Custom Save Location"

so simple, as the EE Keeper, just needs to access the Resources files from the game.

FileZilla , the nice FTP client that serves you with malware

I used FileZilla since the version 1..something, then later its developers started to follow what the cnet and some other losers do : free malware "offers" into the installer, like the mackeeper or PUP.optional , or whatever shit they put.

Way better alternatives: FireFTP , Cyberduck or better : ncftp ;-)

Minimig AGA running on MiST

Just a beta for now, hm, even the "beta" cores are fine on this little FPGA machine.

Minimig AGA running on MiST,  I am not sure about the specs, it seems 680EC20, but I think for the most games it will be fine...

Opera Browser

I m testing the beta v 26 now and it seems,  jesus, that the devs behind opera are more interested to fix the UI and adding "new" features than the fixing the *BROKEN* sync ?!?

Inbox by Google...

If you don't have an android or iphone then don't bother yourself to ask for an invitation code,
as in order to activate the "Inbox" you must install the Inbox app (35MB !!!) on your phone (again: android or iphone ONLY).

I tried to install the app on a BB10 device --- > fail.

It definitely needs something that google can "control".
I have a bad feeling this this the end of the gmail, as I read there is no DELETE for the emails, just "snooze" , well, what the fuck is this...

Seems is time to start looking something different that gmail, like outlook.com or zoho.

No OEM Windows 7 in few days.....

If you are fan, of the Windows 7 and you are looking for a new system with the Seven preinstalled then there is a little more time to find one.

After the 31-10-2014, Microsoft will no longer provide the OEM system builders with copies of Windows 7 to preinstall on new systems, they will continue anyway to sell any stock of PCs with the Seven.

I went back to Windows 7 , just when I realised that the 8.1 were not for me. We do have a Mac at home but this machine is mainly for the other members of the family that like to play with the Garage Band (USB midis and keyboards and blah blah blah) cool things but its not my cup of tea.

Anyway, I tried the beta of Windows 10 and found it quite nice, also as I read, this version will be free for the Windows 8.1 users.

Paragon vs Tuxera NTFS for OSX

In the case you need to write on NTFS filesystem based devices, then I would suggest Tuxera instead of the Paragon NTFS.

The reason is simple:

on every new OSX version (major version I mean here) the Paragon releases a "new" version then you simply can't be update (they do offer a such update in the case you got the older version... one month ago, ridiculous) , so they milk you to pay again and again.

This is not the case of Tuxera,

So, keep this and avoid the Paragon.

The Tuxera NTFS is a bit slower than the Paragon, as I read on some sites.

I never bothered to run any benchmarks. In fact we use at home the Mac to copy/sync files from external hard disk (NTFS).  It was not a big deal until we realised that some files we copied on the NTFS were ... corrupted.

I bet it was something about the Paragon NTFS as they just released the v12 of their software , labeled as "Yosemite compatible".

In the meantime we just got the full version of the Tuxera . What is cool is that Tuxera releases too a community version of the NTFS-3G, its a bit slower than the full version, but not too bad if you only want to write some files into an NTFS volume, not like me that I have to share a couple of NTFS external drives with the other members of the family, we sync in fact our work there as backup.

One could ask, why we still use NTFS and not exFAT or FAT32, both of those formats can be R/W by the Mac, but , for one reason, I want to test from time to time system images that are over 4GB (FAT32 limitation).

The second reason is that the NTFS is journaled, while the exFAT is not, so, mind, that the external HDDs have too our backups. I would not risk the backup files to be held on an non-journaled filesystem.

Malware shit... from "freeware"....

I really hate this crap..

I am taking here for the well known Imageburn , it seems that their developers decided to put whatever shit wanted into their installer !  As usually avoid install this crap by any means, or alternative install it under sandbox/vm and then copy the binaries somewhere else.
Also its a nice idea to report their site as malware.

OneChipMSX on MIST FPGA board

This is effin'!!!

OneChipMSX FPGA core ported by Alastair Robinson to the MiST  FPGA board:

Update (as of 22-Oct):  It seems that the OneChipMSX FPGA core on the MiST has the write to media (SD card) unimplemented, so there is no option to install apps/save game data.

Many thanx for the comment below: the ability to write media (SD card) of OneChipMSX FPGA core is working.

In case you have the MiST go and grab the OneChipMSX FPGA core now.

Some real cool links with MSX stuff and info:

http://www.msxarchive.nl/
http://www.msx.org/forum

Deleted Outlook.com account still receiving calendar notification emails...

In the case you had a domain on hotmail.com/outlook.com and you moved from there and you maybe still receive notifications from an non-existent hotmail.com/outlook.com, then visit _THIS_ link and ask for a fix! ASAP.


I bet the M$ have no f idea what is going there... I bet that the "....we are aware of this issue and our Product team is working hard to fix this." means "we have no clue" , really!


I strongly believe this, as this issue is definitely NOT new.


I have say this issue since.... years ago, endless chat with M$ support with no idea what is going there I had to setup email filters to bin messages from the outlook.com.


Sort of this crap I think is going on with gmail, yea...

I moved my domain on gmail then deleted my account and changed the DNS records and moved to other email hosting, then when I went back to gmail I realised that some web pages that I did with my domain at the past were..... there!!! Puta que pariu!! As they say my Brazilian friends...

Fake DS Lite on eBay (UK seller!)

Seems the shit is un-believable...
brand new - Genuine(!) DS Lite , sold buy an UK, Birmingham based seller (feedback  = 1200+ 100%).


Just be aware that there is a hell of fake DSLites on the net, each one has its differences and some of them are even look like the original.
Rule number one : if a 2007 machine is advertised as "New" is fake , end of.

The quality is, well, better than the fake DS Lites that were produced some years ago (seems the fakers are improving what are they doing), but if you have -like me- a real DS Lite then you realise quickly that this thing is (probably) a re-manufactured console -ie. real Nintendo PCBs into third party shell , of course without having any permission from Nintendo.

There are a f lot of differences, like:

All of the screws of the fake, Philips style not Tri-wing like what Nintendo use.
In fact the DS Lite has just 2x Philips on the case under the rubber feet plus one for the batt port and another one under the batt port (to support the PCB), all of the case's and even the GBA (slot-2) screws are Tri-wing , the fake has all of them Philips.

Also: I scanned the barcode of the serial nr of the fake one and I found that the serial number is different than the barcode, another indicator that is definitely not original.

Your smartphone maybe has a barcode (code39) scanner app, but is not easy to scan this barcode correctly, so take a good pic and upload to : online-barcode-reader



Just to show here some pics so buyers be aware about this kind of shit:

LED covers



Genuine on the top , spot the smooth LED covers that are in par with the hinge cover, so smooth, that you have the feeling that the LED covers are one part with the whole hinge cover.
The fake shit at the bottom: the difference is quite visible.

Power port



The fake shit's power port is mis-aligned and the plastics around it are quite different that the original:
("shit" on top)




Volume control

You really need a very good eye or a loupe for this task. Real DS Lite's lettering is nice and sweet, the letter "O" is more round than the fake's "O" and the dot after L is like a nice round dot. On the fake one the dot is like square, check the lettering too, bit shitty on the fake.
Also the volume slider is smoother on the genuine one, but again, this is not easy to see without using a good magnifier/loupe.

FAKE on TOP...



Headphones port

The headphones icon is bolder on the original (bottom) :




Touchscreen

I did not power the device, for the reasons I wrote above. But if you compare side by side the fake and the genuine, you can see that the genuine's touchscreen is a bit darker (like its upper screen).
On the fake one the touchscreen is lighter and also the screen bezel is not too smooth as the original one!!



Buttons, etc...

Hm, its clearly visible that the start/select buttons of the fake are ... different! (LMAO now)
Also, pls, notice the difference of the lettering original vs fake shit.

The plastic around the case is smoother on the genuine, there are some gaps on around plastic on the fake. The lettering colour on the original is way better than the fake.




have fun...

Unison .. syncing nightmare

In the case you want to use Unison instead of rsync , better think twice or three times as the Unison seems to work *JUST* with same filesystems! If -as in my case - you want to sync between OSX and  NTFS the prepare the be fucked up with messages that the properties are not right.. so the hell with that useless shit ..

rsync rulez!

[WARNING] a list of 'clear and present danger' sites

Thanx to MSJ , here is a list of sites that serve shit with their cracked/pirated apps:

AppKed = http://www.95mac.net & http:/osxdl.com & http://www.macappdownload.net

AppsDL = http://www.appsdl.net

AppDn = http://appdn.net

CNET = http://download.cnet.com/mac/

I already blacklisted their IPs on my hosts


More info >> HERE <<

Mageia Linux FAIL!

Well, this is for the LOLs now...

I just installed for testing the Mageia 4.1 Xfce on the C710...
Everything ok, except the Mageia cannot detect the SOUND, yea there is no sound!

so....

rm -rf Mageia-4.1-dual-DVD.iso


UPDATE: as I read from their forums, this is a bug, say from 2009, well
I now can understand how shit is this distro ... 

MiST FPGA... more Amiga (Minimig core) that ST

In the case you are looking to get the MiST FPGA to replace your ancient ST you will dissapointed.

I had hopes that the ST core would be nice, but in fact is limited. Well, the midi addon is cool, I m not using it anyway.
I tried to play some demos, almost 0% success, as it seems the video chip is not impemented 100% there.
There are features like super monochrome monitor and STEroids (like Turbo STE), but again the inability to run Demos its a big minus for the ST core.

On the other hand , cores like Atari 800 and Minimig, are performing very well.