@BatElite Oh whaaat?? that's ADORABLE! I Love it!! It's such a beautiful shade and those buttons are gorgeous and it's so smol and sweet and I kinna wanna chew it lightly to see if it tastes like blue raspberry but not very hard I don't wanna damage it just lightly nom it a little but also protect it aaa

@Nine :D

Here's some closeups. I think you could lick some off the battery if you wanted to know the taste. :P

@BatElite my mind says no.

but it also screams "DO IT, I BET IT TASTES LIKE SOUR RASPBERRY FIZZ SHERBET"

hhhh

@Nine I suspect it'd taste like death. :P

@BatElite i dunno i like/hate licking 9volt battery terminals ._.; it's weird. it's very unpleasant, but... I ALSO like the 'taste' of it??

... I also like the feeling of electricity running through a surface. like both my Surface Pro 4 laptop's back when it's powered, and the weird touch lamp I have (not plugged in because the bulb broke again ;; and I haven't a spare) feel tingly like they vibrate if I brush my fingers against it.

@Nine You have an interesting liking for stimuli from my perspective. ^^; Kinda wonder if you'd be one for like electrostimulation kink then. :P (I hope you don't mind me mentioning that...)

Also you're a lot braver than me, I'd not but batteries near my mouth at all... ^^;

(BTW is this what you're referring to in that neurotypicality toot?)

@BatElite (yeah it actually is what I'm referring to ^^; I'm... starting to wonder if I'm on the spectrum possibly. I mean I might not be! But... I'm starting to wonder, you know?)

Also regarding electrostim, I'm... not sure. I would normally say no? But I used a TENS machine semi-recently because my back was in agony. but uh... I ramped that thing to full without much issue... it was... nice??...

@BatElite I mean not like... sexually nice, but... definitely kinda fun?... I mean heck it definitely worked out the muscle aches, but it was nice just having it on and changing the program settings and levels and stuff...

@BatElite also related, physical stimuli I like. I often LOVE to touch really smooth, lightly textured things, I can't stop fiddling with things tactilely, and I often just... brush my fingertips along surfaces, even ones I'm familiar with so it's not just "checking the area", it's just a stimming thing I guess... noise however is unpleasant. ><; high pitched tones, loud static, loud sirens/noises, huge nono D:

@BatElite this last few weeks has been super unpleasant with all the work going on in the house. ;; hammering and sawing and stuff is ... very not fun ;_;

@noiob omg the ngage!! Like, how powerful was the gaming systems on that, that it could run a basically almost entirely intact PS1 game??? I'm kinda in awe!

@Nine the N-Gage is an impressive Handheld (especially considering its competition was the Gameboy Advance, where 3D means pushing the hardware to its limits) and a really good phone thanks to Symbian (it has real multitasking! on a dumbphone!). I think with a different strategy it and a launch model without obvious flaws it could've been very successful.

@Nine Also Tomb Raider plays super well on it! I've only stopped playing because for some reason you can't just release forward to stop moving, it sticks, and you have to push it again or push back to stop running which is super not how Tomb Raider is played.

It has a replay function which I think allows you to post your playthroughs of levels to N-Gage Arena, Nokia's online portal, but I can't try that nowadays for obvious reasons

@Nine oh yeah Tomb Raider's missing its soundtrack which is a bit sad, but then again I'm sure MMCs were expensive

which reminds me of the fact that I still haven't got a MMC to work with my N-Gage, I don't know if I've just had bad luck with MMCs or if my N-Gage eats them lol

@noiob jeez I'm imagining now what could have been had Symbian taken off and evolved more instead of Android

@Nine Nokia lost the license and had to go back to making awful S40 systems, I had two phones running that trainwreck of an OS…

I wish MeeGo had taken off tbh, it had some amazing concepts and is based on pretty solid Linux work, but it was too little too late. It kinda lives on in Sailfish OS but well, they support like one and a half phones

@Nine the N-Gage brand kind of lived on in N-Gage 2.0 which was some kind of download-based games platform for the most powerful Nokia phones. Had some impressive games afaik, they even got a Metal Gear

@noiob that psp lookin a little cold

@sara but the battery life is amazing!

@noiob wow, that last-model PSP looks so tiny, i didn't know it was so compact. a little tempting.

@gatewave it's a wonderful little console! a little short on storage since it's 16GB internally and without mods it only takes M2 (basically small Memorysticks). Might be a problem if you want to carry a lot of PSP games, those are usually a few gigs. There's a hardware mod thing but I haven't done it

@gatewave oh yeah and it's the second-to-last model, the PSP Street came afterwards, it's the budget model which looks pretty cool but from.what I've heard feels and is super cheap

@noiob aw jeez i forgot about the street, what a piece of junk

yeah the proprietary storage sitch sucks (possibly worse on Vita, which has corruption issues). i'd only use it for PSP games i think. for GBA i'd rather have a nice modded GBA and console games are better on CRTs / emus with good shaders.

@gatewave It's great as a portable PSX and you can hook it up to a tv via component and use a Dualshock 3 as a controller (needs a PS3 to pair though, there used to be PC software but it's long gone). I just wish there was a way to get the dock for a reasonable price, so I can have it plugged into power and video at the same time

@gatewave here's the mod, though my friend has had some trouble with a Memorystick adapter on a regular PSP, maybe get one with just one microSD slot https://m2adapter.cart.fc2.com/ca1/1/p-r-s

oh yeah and apparently the Street was hacked the first time it was shown to the general public and they had to remove the demo units

@noiob yeah TV-out's a good feature. i'm a purist though so i wouldn't want to play 240p PS1 games on an HD screen. i actually have a CRT for that and am satisfied with RetroArch's PS1 CRT output.

sexy as it is - it really is - i'm generally moving away from owning specialized hardware with the exception of a DS and maybe that future expensive GBA. for console platforms RA + authentic controller adapter + CRT is my happy spot.

ha, that's hilarious about the Street!

@gatewave you're the only person I've ever heard of playing emulators on a CRT

@noiob that's what CRT_emudriver is for. and before that the ArcadeVGA which was a slightly modified, not-very-fast Radeon card

MAME has also been at the forefront of this for obvious reasons

this past year RetroArch incorporated CRT mode-switching logic which greatly simplified and improved the experience of running it on a CRT. that's when i finally jumped in cuz I've had a big old Japanese-imported Sony here for 15 years.

CRT gaming is beautiful. it's one thing that really re-awakens my old enjoyment.

@noiob it makes the visuals messy and analog again, like my memories. and of course much brighter with great colors, that lovely phosphor glow, yadda yadda.

@gatewave I recently happened to acquire a lovely small Trinitron and I love how bright and sharp its picture is

@gatewave but it never occurred to me to use an emulator on a CRT… then again I don't mind the pixel-perfect look. I've also been loving the 2x upscale epsx reARMed on the Playstation classic can do, makes Tomb Raider look less blocky but not out of place like running the old windows version at 1080p would do

@noiob nice re: Toshiba. small is good. mine is 29". if i ever get another it'll be closer to yours.

the easiest NA TV input to connect to a PC for 240p is probably component.

Nvidia cards, which most of us run because AMD fumbled so badly, basically make life hell re: outputting 240p. luckily, it's easy to add a cheap Radeon card to your system to handle CRT stuff. got this one, it's considered ideal:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-amd-radeon-r5-220-core-edition-2gb-gddr3-pci-express-2-1-graphics-card-silver/5315600.p?skuId=5315600

in Win, CRT_emudriver drives it while happily leaving any Nvidia stuff alone

@gatewave Toshiba? I'm in a PAL region, I can use real RGB through SCART 🙂

@noiob sorry, i realized after the toot that i had assumed NA :)

SCART sounds ideal! i'm not personally up on devices to convert VGA to it though, like i am component. prolly easy.

i used to upscale polygonal emulation like PS1 but i stopped liking that ultra-sharp look. with CRT it is basically made unnecessary because of the various CRT IQ benefits

these days i even prefer Chocolate Doom on PC in its 320x240 or whatever glory. the adjustment period going from GZDoom to that was surprisingly brief.

@gatewave bonus Trinitron pics (I should take some proper ones tbh, those were just from testing it once I got it home)

@noiob (pic from web)
bless that scart input

hope you put it to good use!

@gatewave right now I can only use my Xbox's RGB so I'll have to get some cables n stuff. Wish it had a way to take S-Vid because that's the best signal my N64 outputs unmodded (even composite looks decent on this one but the dot crawl is real)

@noiob i'm not up on current RGB mods (some have improved over time) but i just paid other people to mod my N64 and TurboDuo back in the day. the modest cost was worth the lack of DIY hassle for me.

never did NES. but whatever, RetroArch covers that now. RA is so good once you beat back its godawful interface.

(related re: mods, i actually need to get someone to recap that TurboDuo before i ebay it. last time i tested showed it's definitely gone bad over the last few years, as have just about all Duos.)

@noiob and actually, i believe original Xboxes are known for capacitor failures too?

@gatewave I removed my Xbox's clock capacitor the day I got it, had to clean some electrolyte off the mobo

I just found out that getting a N64 RGB mod kit would only run me about 35-40€, plus a Nintendo security bit and a compatible RGB cable. The installation looks relatively painless, even with my limited soldering skills, hmmm