- It's not a GameCube, it's just a regular PC in a GameCube-lookalike case
- bmonkey325 15 days agoThe replica case is pretty good. Anyone know what emulator is being used? I didn’t see it mentioned in the article.reply
- Screwtapello 14 days agoIs there any Gamecube emulator of note besides Dolphin?reply
- FractInt[1] is still around and most certainly faster with more options. I remember playing with it endlessly in the 90s, alawys looking for new versions on shareware CDs (that was before the Internet). I think I still have a dozen or so floppy disks filled with fractal images somewhere...
- The beauty of this work lies not in practicality but in the pure joy of creation. Sure, they could have used a modern tool, but like baking your own bread when you could easily buy it, there’s a deep satisfaction in building something yourself, especially using vintage tools. There’s no pressing need—just the simple pleasure of programming for its own sake.
I say well done.
- I'm not sure what to think of a guide that "highly recommends" to install "QuickVerse Bible 4.0" AND "PC-Study Bible 2.1" ...?
Also, disabling the task scheduler, NTP and windows file sharing? Disabling Windows updates without suggesting an offline update package? yeah, no, thanks.
To me at least half of this guide sounds like snake oil or cargo cult.
But yeah, some things might be useful for some people. The trick is finding the needle in the haystack
- Actually, this guide is not bad really. Well written. There are few questionable things like installing some specific software that can be skipped. Also, Firewall is a must. Even if you harden your XP, there are still few ports left open like 135 and 445. They seem to be inactive (wrapper?) when you disable services and uninstall Microsoft Networking, but I would not trust that. Also, antivirus is useless indeed. Better solution is sandboxing or even VM.
I use Win2003 daily on more powerfull PC (i5-2400, 16GB RAM) and its indeed blazing fast. When cache is warm, everything starts pretty much instantly, so SSD is not really needed. Cache FTW!
- Yeah, I don't believe any of this until I see it running on my trusty old A2000 ;-)
- I'm sure if the tapes they found contained some form of evidence against the founders of SciHub or Anna's Archive, they would have found a way to play it back /s
- This case is screwed up. This shouldn't be a thing. At least allow the requester to pay for the recovery (limited to a certain amount) like they do with other things under FOIA.
I've litigated a lot of FOIA. I would definitely try litigating this. Why don't the NSA write all their records to an obsolete format and then destroy the writer. That way they never need respond to a FOIA request again.
I once made a FOIA request and the public body claimed they had put the records in a trash can minutes before they received my request and the FOIA "does not require a public body to reach into the trash to recover records." LOL .. another one for the appellate courts.
- I love Kagi - I asked "what unique citations can you find for a talk admiral grace Hopper gave to the NSA in 1982 titled “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People,” and it returned this citation first:
https://www.governmentattic.org/28docs/NatnlCryptoSchoolTVct...
The citation for Grace's talk is on p29.
I'd be really curious to go down this path and push more on freeing this up. Having never filed an FOIA request myself and lacking the training to litigate, do you have any advice for someone like me wanting to put some energy into this? I suppose reading up on muckrock's charter and mission is a good first step. I'd love to hear more about your experience in general if you feel like sharing.
- Edit Six Weeks Later: The tapes are preserved and released online! https://www.nsa.gov/helpful-links/nsa-foia/declassification-.../
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In addition to pushing forward on the FOIA approach, I'd suggest trying to interest whatever group the NSA has assigned with historical preservation. I'm sure they are understaffed and underfunded but at least they have an interest in preserving things like this, whereas the FOIA people's goal is to find grounds to deny requests as cheaply and quickly as possible.
I imagine there are NSA history buffs outside the agency and contacting them first to get their input on who and how to approach (or maybe even an introduction) would probably be better than a cold approach. Two things that may help:
* Make it easy for them by doing the legwork up front. Find a preservationist or museum with a working 1-inch VTR, ideally one of the "portable" ones (actually like a large suitcase vs a washing machine). It may be that removing the tape from the NSA facility makes it a much bigger ask (keeping in mind they don't know for sure what's on it yet). The closer you can make the initial proposition sound to "it just takes one of your people to get the tape for a couple hours to digitize it. We'll set it up but NOT be in the room for the playback, then NSA can decide what to do with it" the more likely success will be. (obviously, it'll probably be more complicated but once they're in...)
* Highlight that this is ONLY about preservation not release. Old magnetic tapes degrade with time. Accessing playback gear may not be possible in another decade. It's probably still savable this year but will soon be lost forever (create urgency with FOMO).
Don't even talk about release or FOIA, make it about some NSA history initiative that already has support. Ideally, they're working on a "Women in NSA" or "NSA and Early Computing" exhibit for next year. Just between us though, once you know that the video exists digitally, the grounds for FOIA denial is gone :-)
Good luck!
- These are excellent points. We know there's nothing spicy in her talk, but as soon as you mention FOIA all the sirens go off and the walls go up and everyone shuts down and gets grumpy.
And if you can find some NSA folks they would be able to make calls inside the system to get the wheels greased much faster than some FOIA intern will.
- First they discontinue the old hobbyist license program, so that you have to pay $$$ to use VMS, even on decades old hardware, and now they want to build some form of community on top of that?
Well, good luck with that. I will continue to use (and advocate the use of) keygens for their PAK licenses, thank you very much :)
- Just what a niche/dying OS needs for success: make it harder for people to use it.
- Make it so no one gets it free so we can raise price on those who are beholden to the OS because it’s mission critical.
I know of an active vax 11/78O still operating. The legal agreement that requires its uses expires in 2026….
- I mean I get the "pixel-art" part, but in what way is that "8-bit"? It doesn't change the colors in any way, does it?
- In 2024, “8-bit” in the lexicon is a signifier of “old graphics”. When most people say “8-bit”, they don’t mean anything technical (like “2^8 = 256 colors”), they mean “looks like an old Nintendo or whatever.” Put a slightly higher-res version next to it and they’ll say that’s 16-bit. Same way old timey cars are all Model Ts to me.
- Compatibility is not really good. Many mods sound totally wrong. One of the classics, space_debris, sounds like it's missing an entire instrument (or channel?). Same goes for Xenon 2 and Blood Money
- This is incorrect. The best retro gaming setup is definitely an original C64. They're not even hard to get since so many have been made...
I don't understand why people glorify FPGA emulation so much. It's usually lagging behind software emulators quite a bit, which is understandable as it's harder to write and there are less people with the relevant knowledge.
Also, most FPGA cores are not developed from the original hardware (which often is not even possible, since the original chips are more than just logic gates and flipflops, they often contain analog circuitry as well) but rather from software emulators emulating the original but rather from software emulators emulating the chips...
- I don't think they had Rust (or Go, or whatever language that is) back in 1987 ;-)
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