hardware

Beeshu Zinger

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 13:14:54 +0000

Beeshu Zinger

Back in 2004 or so, I visited a friend out of state, and during the visit he gave me a Beeshu Zinger joystick. Yesterday, I finally tried to use it. (I've been busy, okay?)

The Zinger is weird.

It's a standard arcade-style joystick, with a trigger on the top, a trigger on the front, and two buttons on the base. It also has the start and select buttons on the near side of the base, and suction cups to keep it attached to a flat surface (although the suction cups on this one are a little bit raggedy because of age, and probably because the stick wasn't stored very well).

The trigger buttons at the top are both the NES's B button, and the buttons on the base are both the A button, some other reviews elsewhere on the Internet (trust me on this) have postulated that this is probably for accessibility so that left-handed and right-handed people could use it, and I'd say that's probably true.

The stick feels mushy when you move it around the four directions, and I had to move it a lot further than I thought I needed to to make something happen on the screen. I tried to play a platforming game with a stick that's obviously meant for arcade-style shoot-em-ups, and it did not go well (also, I forgot to make sure I was recording sound, so I had to substitute it for something else, it's hardly noticeable).

My biggest problem is that I'm olde-schoole enough that I remember playing video games with an Atari Joystick, and which involved waggling the joystick with my hand, and pressing the 'do something' button with my other hand, so when I had to try to use my waggle-hand to also do whatever B-button thing I wanted to do, it doesn't work very well.

On the other hand, when I tried to play a more shooty-arcade-style game (like Seicross), it was much better.

Overall, it probably won't displace my NES Advantage any time soon, and it also probably won't be my go-to stick for any platformers, but, assuming I remember that I have it, I'll probably use it when I'm playing stuff like Galaga and trying to get that Real Arcade Feel(tm).

b Wed, 10/17/2018 - 08:14

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Testing the KanexPro Composite to HDMI converter by playing Star Trek

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 12:45:42 +0000

Testing the KanexPro Composite to HDMI converter by playing Star Trek

It's time for me to try out another converter. This time it's the KanexPro Composite/S-Video to 4K HDMI Converter. I also chose to use the NES Star Trek game as my test game for this one, which might have been an error. You can check out the video below, but the audio is a little low. I'd like to say that this was on purpose to protect your ears from the eardrum rending tones of the worst rendition of the Star Trek theme I've ever heard, but the truth is that PulseAudio is ridiculous to try and configure, so I (surprisingly!) didn't get it set correctly.

The device itself does alright. I'm running it through two capture boxes to get the picture you're seeing here, and I'm pretty sure that splitting it to go both to my television and the capture device isn't doing the signal quality any favors (my NES being over 30 years old doesn't help, either). The device also does this weird watermarking thing where it shows you the resolution that it's spitting out for about 3 years when you turn it on and you can't dismiss it at all.

The device also has some buttons on the front where you can switch the upscaling between 720p/1080p/4k and the source from svideo to composite, and those all work as expected.

The cost is over twice what the Hauppauge device was that I tested a couple weeks ago, and I don't think the quality is twice as good. It's not worse, either, so it's got that going for it. It's also nice to not have to mess with setting up different scenes in OBS, depending on what kind of device I want to capture from. PulseAudio and OBS are so complex and inscrutable that they're almost unconfigurable, but that's not really a complaint against this thing, it's more of a complaint about the audio landscape in Linux being an absolute trash fire that someone tried to extinguish with moldy cheese.

b Wed, 08/22/2018 - 07:45

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Hauppauge 610 USB-Live 2

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 15:56:02 +0000

Hauppauge 610 USB-Live 2

My ongoing quest to find a replacement for my old capture card has led me to the Hauppauge 610 USB-Live 2. It's a mouthful, but it promises to do what I want. Kind of.

I decided that since converting the output of my old consoles from analog to HDMI was going to be stupidly expensive if I wanted to Do It Right(tm), that the easier (i.e. 'cheaper') thing to do was going to be to not do any conversion at all. I'd get a capture device that understood analog video and then just captured it that way. So I grabbed the Hauppauge 610 USB-Live 2, and set off.

The first thing I found was that the thing is small, about the size of a USB thumb drive, with a place on the end to plug in the breakout cable that accepts composite inputs (and also S-Video if you want). It seemed weird that the cable wasn't a part of the unit (which means that I'll probably lose the cable at some point down the road), but I got everything hooked up, set up OBS, and gave it a try.

The results are... not great, but they're miles ahead of the other adapters I tried. There are some issues with interlacing and such, but it's at least watchable.

The only real problem I had was that when I tried to change the settings for this thing in OBS it would frequently crash. Or OBS would just crash anyway. Or OBS said it had crashed, but it was still recording. I suspect that this is because the drivers are not quite mature under Linux, or it could be OBS, or it could be solar flares, or my neighbor's EMP generator, or something else.

b Wed, 07/11/2018 - 10:56

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Electronic Pocket Arcade

Thu, 05 Jul 2018 14:37:35 +0000

Electronic Pocket Arcade

I was walking through my local Five Below (and if you don't have a Five Below in your area, it's basically like a Dollar Tree, except that things cost less than five dollars (if you don't have a Dollar Tree, it's like a thrift store, but they sell lower quality stuff, and everything costs a dollar or less)), and a little electronic gadget caught my eye. It was a little device with a keychain on it that promised that you got 100 games for $3. That's a pretty good game to dollar ratio, so I bought it. I mean, just look at this thing! It's got things like swords and bombs and coins and all kinds of video-game trope-y things all over it. And batteries are included!

Once I got it home and checked it out, I found that the thing was pretty small.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I could very clearly see that it was small when I looked at it in the store, but when I pulled it out of the package, it kind of hit me how small the thing actually was. It's small enough that it's about the size of this thumb drive I conveniently had laying around.

The problem is, though that my thumbs are also about the size of that thumb drive, and trying to hold the thing in any way that let me press buttons was going to become uncomfortable in a hurry.

But, those are all minor issues. The real test is to figure out how this thing played. And how good the hundred games are. Are they like the ones on those other gazillion in one portables or are they worse? Or (*gasp*) better?

The first thing I noticed when I pulled the tab to engage the batteries, was that the thing played Ode to Joy.

So far, pretty typical. Eagle-eyed viewers might notice that the resolution on this thing is pretty low. 10x20 low. That's not really a knock against it or anything, but with the pixels that large, you're not going to get the fidelity of, say, an original Game Boy. You're going to get something more akin to a calculator watch.

But all of that aside, what about the games?

First, there aren't 100 games on here, at least not by any metric I could use. You have 26 games, labeled A - Z, and each game has a setting that goes from 0 - 99. The settings just seem to make the games go faster (though, to be fair, I didn't try all 100 settings on all 26 games).

The games are all pretty basic. You have one game where you have a low-res vehicle of some kind and you have to shoot other low-res vehicles that look identical to you before they get you. You have a game that's basically Simon. You have something that's almost Frogger, but not quite, you have something that's like Quarth where you have to complete lines and some oddball games that I wasn't sure how to play (there are no instructions, why would you think that they would include instructions).

You also have about 15 variations of Tetris. You have Tetris where the playfield moves one space over to the left every time you get a new piece. You have Tetris where instead of rotating the pieces, each time you press the button you get a new piece. You have Tetris with garbage blocks and one the above modifiers, and so on.

The games are alright, especially if you like Tetris (and who doesn't like Tetris?). LCD game technology has come a long way since I had a calculator watch, which helps, but with the thing being so small, it's really hard to play any of the games that need any kind of reflexes. Yeah, okay, maybe my age has something to do with that. It certainly has something to do with the size of my thumbs (I'm pretty sure they were smaller when I was a kid).

b Thu, 07/05/2018 - 09:37

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AverMedia ET111

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 14:57:41 +0000

AverMedia ET111

In my ongoing quest to find a decent USB capture device for my old consoles that doesn't cost a fortune (although, once I've tested a bunch of these, I might end up spending as much as I would have on one of the expensive ones, so I have that going for me), I decided to try the AverMedia ET111. I figured that since I was already using an AverMedia product that they should work together in harmony and everything would be wonderful.

I was almost right.

The device is pretty simple. It's got composite inputs and a USB connector on one side and an HDMI connector on the other. I forgot to take a picture of it, so you'll have to use your imagination (unless I update this article later and add a picture, in which case this sentence will get unwritten). The USB connection is important since it provides power, but it's pretty short, so you need to have it near a power source. A lot of the negative product reviews are from people who miss this crucial step.

I got it all connected up, and played a little bit of Blaster Master to test it out (I had briefly considered playing the same game for all of the trials, but that would be boring).

The quality was a lot better than the Blackweb converter that I used, and there wasn't any ghosting or bizarre artifacts all over the screen. The screen did jump up and down a lot, which was a little distracting and disorienting. I suspect that it's related to converting the image from 240p to 480i, especially since I didn't see the same jiggling on my television screen (and I'm using a splitter to get the signal to both places) but I haven't really dug into it much.

It cost a little bit more than the Blackweb device, and you can find it on Amazon or probably other places online. And, it's better, but still not great.

The quest continues.

b Tue, 06/26/2018 - 09:57

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Blackweb Composite to HDMI Converter

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 14:30:00 +0000

Blackweb Composite to HDMI Converter

You know how computer upgrades go: the new gaming machine displaces the old gaming machine, the old gaming machine becomes the new capture machine, and the old capture machine gets parted out and sold piecemeal to finance the initial purchase. It's a story as old as time.

But, a couple of upgrades ago I decided that I would jump on the small computer bandwagon. I kind of fell in love with the Mini-ITX computer scene. They take up less room, so I can cram more in the same space, and it's kind of nice to have some project computers around to experiment on.

But the Mini-ITX computers come with a huge caveat: very few peripheral slots, i.e. usually one, and that's taken up by my video card. That means that the old capture device I was using, the venerable MTVHDDVRR, was no longer a viable choice. I had gotten a USB capture device for the modern consoles, the Live Gamer Portable 2, which I'm still fiddling with, but, crucially, it doesn't have any composite inputs. So my options were to mod my old composite systems to support HDMI (which was going to be cost prohibitive), find a USB device that accepted composite video (which is becoming difficult as composite video devices aren't really being made much any more), or find a converter.

I opted for the last option, but when I started looking, there seem to be two kinds of converters: those that cost around $20, and those that cost around $400. There's very little in between. The low end ones tend to have a lot of reviews, and about half of them say that the product is great, while about 20% of them say that the product is garbage, does a bad job, and failed in some way a few days/weeks/months after purchase. So, trying to decide which low-end converter to throw my money away on was a tall order. Even though I'm pretty sure that they're all made by the same OEM, and are all identical except for the brand name stamped on it.

While I was mulling over my options I went to my local Walmart for an unrelated reason and decided to check out their A/V section. I figured that given the target demographic for Walmart, they'd cater to the kind of people who held on to technology far longer than is normal, because buying a new TV is expensive, and this old VCR still kind of works if I flip it upside down. I wasn't actually expecting to find much, but they did have exactly the item I was looking for: a composite to HDMI converter made by some company I had never heard of: Blackweb.

They specifically mentioned 'gaming system' on the box, so that's probably a good sign! Several of the boxes were opened and looked to have been returned, that's less of a good sign. The cost was slightly higher than the cheapest ones I found searching around online (about $35). I opened one of the unsealed units and saw that it was pretty barebones: composite in and micro USB power in on one side and HDMI and 1/8'' audio out on the other side.

Seemed straightforward enough that I took a gamble on it.

Setup was exactly as I expected. I plugged my NES into one side and the HDMI output to the other side and routed that through the Live Gamer Portable 2. The resolution was locked at 720p with no way to change it that I could see (although the listing on Walmart's website shows a few more bells and whistles than the one I got. Maybe there's a model refresh somewhere?). Output was... not great.

It worked, and latency was almost good enough to play it while watching the encoded output (by the way, the clacking you hear every once in a while is me pressing buttons on my NES Advantage. I hid the video coming from the webcam but forgot to mute the audio). I used a splitter to send the signal to my TV and the converter separately so I could watch the television instead of the recording window. There were artifacts everywhere though. These didn't show up on the television picture, just on the video coming through the converter. I even tried a different set of A/V cables, but that didn't make much difference.

It was cheapish, though, and I didn't have to order it online and wait a couple of days to have it delivered. So I guess it would work in a pinch, especially if I have to have something right now (i.e. a streaming emergency, but those don't happen too often), but I don't think I'll be using it much. Unless I can't find anything better.

b Wed, 06/20/2018 - 09:30

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My Arcade Pixel Player - Data East Classics

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 12:24:29 +0000

My Arcade Pixel Player - Data East Classics

I was in my local Staples, looking for office supplies for totally business reasons, when I decided to check out the Clearance section. They had the usual stuff: day planners for last year, expired coffee, a notepad that fell underneath a cart and got the cover crinkled up, and so on. But they also had a portable video game player in among the Martha Stewart report covers and the fancy-pants ballpoint pens.

I have no idea why this would have been on clearance, because when I think of 'video games' I think 'office supply store'. And, look! It's got real legitimate games from Data East! Bad Dudes! Joe & Mac! Burgertime! And 300 more! I didn't even know Data East made 300 games (spoiler alert, they didn't).

So, obviously, I picked it up.

When I got it home and opened the box, the first thing I noticed was how light this thing is. My scale says that it weighs 3.7 ounces, but it's also pretty big, about the size of my 5'' cell phone.

You also might notice that this is similar in layout to the classic NES controller layout: cross pad, A and B buttons, Start and Reset (no, there's no 'Select' button). There's also A/V out if you want to use a cable (not included) to plug it into your TV (not included). There's also a port for headphones (not included), volume control, a power switch, and backlight for the buttons. Eagle-eyed viewers might also notice that the placement of the A and B buttons is reversed from what you would normally find on an original NES, so, if you've ever played any of these games before, screw you, muscle memory!

The thing is powered either by 4 AAA batteries (not included) or a micro USB cable (not included). None of my remote controls have died in the last five years so I haven't bought any AAA batteries in a long time. I did, however, have a micro-USB cable and a power brick to power this thing on, and, well, it's certainly something.

The thing starts up pretty much instantly, and you're greeted with one of those menu screens like you would see on a bootleg multicart boasting that this is a 308-in-1. The first eight games being the Data East games featured on the cover of the box (including some others like Heavy Barrel and Championship Karate). These are the NES versions of these arcade games, which, actually, look and sound reasonably good. There are some oddities (like your guy doesn't scream a garbled "I'm Bad!" at the end of a level in Bad Dudes, for example), but the games are more or less presented like I remember them on Real Actual Hardware. The only real complaint I had was that the A and B buttons are reversed and that the D-pad sometimes seemed to forget that I was pressing it.

But what about the other 300 games promised on the front of the box? When you open the flap on the front, the Fine Print(tm) tells you that the other 300 games are 'retro inspired', which apparently means that the games are all of the quality that you might find in the back of one of the programming magazines of the 1980's, and the names don't really help you figure out what they are, either.

Most of them are 'games' in the sense that they have you doing the same thing over and over and over again forever. Others aren't more than a demo of a game that would probably be pretty awesome if it was ever finished. Still others are old board and card games (like Crazy Eights or Dots or Checkers). Some of them are actually clones of other games in the collection, but they have different graphics.

One of the things I noticed was that a lot of the games present you with a thing to do or a guy walking around or whatever, and you need to press the A or B buttons to make something happen on the right or the left of the screen, respectively. This made sense on the NES because the A button was on the right, and the B button was on the left. But on this thing, the buttons are reversed, so pressing the left button makes the action happen on the right and vice versa. It's nothing that can't be worked around, but if these games moved much faster, that might be a problem.

Some of the games are obviously higher quality than you would ever find on an '8-Bit' console, which says to me that the phrase '8-Bit' has lost its meaning to a lot of manufacturers. '8-Bit' has kind of become a catch-all for 'chunky pixel art' or 'video games older than 10 years', which is a little bit annoying. '8-Bit' is turning into the latest 'Kleenex', 'Xerox', 'Tylenol', or 'hand-made small-batch' (don't look at the URL in the address bar of your browser).

But, minor gripes aside, this was a neat little toy for $9. A lot of the games on it are complete garbage, but some are halfway decent, and there are eight actual good games, somehow.

However. The actual retail price of this thing is $34.95(!) That's way too much for a bootleg multicart in a chunky shell, and I'd feel ripped off if I actually spent that much on this thing. But at $9, I'll probably play with it for a while, and then I may turn into a birthday present for someone's kid sometime down the road this year.

b Mon, 04/16/2018 - 07:24

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