Yeo Kheng Meng decides to try something silly – can he get DOS 6.22 running natively on his 2020 Thinkpad?
He writes all about the headaches and hurdles he ran into while trying this retro feat – including networking and thunderbolt.
Local user brrent reviews putting solar panels on his house and gets a good discussion going on the process, pros and cons.
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SSD-tester has a great list of the fastest USB flash drives.
For SSD enclosures, Sabrent Rocket XTRM Thunderbolt line appears to be the high speed favorite of a lot of users.
The Chinese auto company BYD demonstrates the Yangwang U9 model, an electric supercar with four motors, fast charging, a top speed of 243 mph, and individual wheel drive system. It also doesn’t need a driver. Yangwang U9 also has the ability to leap. Watch carefully, and you’ll see the wheels retract into the body like a low rider, and then suddenly extend while at speed to leap over obstacles or holes in the road.
Perhaps they’re trying to duplicate Mercedez-Benz Maybach bounce that has been turning heads.
Captain Kirk and Commander Spock had their most famous duel in the episode “Amok Time“. Mega Championship Wrestling conducted a match at ColossalCon 2024 to relive that ham.
PRGE is a great convention that meets each year in Portland, OR. They get a lot of surprisingly big names in retro gaming: people from Atari, Sierra, Nintendo, etc. Over the years, they’ve had some pretty big folks show up.
They used to sell DVD’s of the sessions, but now you can catch videos of the talks on their Youtube channel.
A wonderful 1973 documentary about keepers on the Bishop Rock lighthouse. What was real lighthouse work like? Lots of long hours away from home, cramped quarters, and discipline.
Keepers needed to ride a rappel rope up/down and haul in supplies until 1976 when a helipad was added. The 3 keepers work 2 months straight on the lighthouse away from family doing 24 hour rotating shifts. They got 1 month off and back they go. This means each person works 56 hours a week – for 2 straight months.
In 1992, the tower was fully automated with only service crews coming in to make repairs and check on the systems. Watching this old footage really gives you a feel for the rough life being a lighthouse keeper on a barren rock was like.
LGR had a recent video about the PC game Hyperbowl. They brought up the fact it started life as an arcade game at Sony’s Metreon Entertainment Center in downtown San Francisco.
The game came in several forms, but the one I remember is the one above. There was a giant bowling ball mounted as a trackball style controller that let you steer the ball down the course. There was a mock ball return and a set of bowling alley style seats while waiting your turn.
What’s more interesting is I met the developers of this game around 1999 and visited their studio in California – which I believe included Terence Bordelon. I remember seeing physical mockups of the arcade system setting around the studio – which was really just a big room with black painted walls, black curtains to hide different parts, and no windows. Secrecy was definitely a thing. There were various full-size mockups of what would become the official arcade machines sitting around. The trackball bowling ball controller was on a stand, There was the ball return mock in 2 pieces, and one of the stand-up arcade verisons. What I do remember is that the stand-up arcade version had a standard Windows mini-tower PC bolted into the arcade cabinet. I believe when they booted it I saw the logo for a 3DFX card in it.
This was the late 1990’s, and it was that awkward time where arcade games stopped using custom hardware and started using off the shelf PC hardware. It was much cheaper, much faster to develop on, and meant you already had your game ported to a PC platform – which opened selling the game on two fronts. Now games are written on engines that let you ship on 4 and even more platforms simultaneously. Video games were always about 5 years ahead of other software development when it came to maximizing sales.
LGR’s video reminded me of this wonderful bit of history. It’s amazing how far the industry has developed in 25 years…
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