The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

Beginning to make space for the future iMac-retro-thing. I will place it in one corner of my bedroom.

I'll have to do a bit of re-arranging, moving my gaming TV to the opposite side of the room and moving a bookshelf or two. I will then have to acquire a new computer desk from Walmart. Pearl's desk is one of these, which you build yourself.

As for Pearl's SSD... I do have a question. Would it be better to just get a smaller SSD (around 500GB or so) for a boot disk, and just use her existing 1TB WD Black as storage? I wonder how long an SSD would last if it were just the sole disk in a PC. If I were to start editing video on a more consistent basis, would that shorten an SSD lifespan if it were the sole disk?

Yeah, a boot disk+storage disk scheme would be more or less ideal given how limited the lifespan of a typical SSD is. At least you won't end up trashing the drive sooner if you stash them other files elsewhere.

[cpd2009]

Beginning to make space for the future iMac-retro-thing. I will place it in one corner of my bedroom.

I'll have to do a bit of re-arranging, moving my gaming TV to the opposite side of the room and moving a bookshelf or two. I will then have to acquire a new computer desk from Walmart. Pearl's desk is one of these, which you build yourself.

As for Pearl's SSD... I do have a question. Would it be better to just get a smaller SSD (around 500GB or so) for a boot disk, and just use her existing 1TB WD Black as storage? I wonder how long an SSD would last if it were just the sole disk in a PC. If I were to start editing video on a more consistent basis, would that shorten an SSD lifespan if it were the sole disk?

Yeah, a boot disk+storage disk scheme would be more or less ideal given how limited the lifespan of a typical SSD is. At least you won't end up trashing the drive sooner if you stash them other files elsewhere.

The dual drive setup sounds like a better idea. SSDs have improved in reliability with TRIM and all that, but I'd rather keep the SSD usable as long as possible.

I also decided to place all my casual games on the retro-iMac-thing once it's set up. Save for a few games, most of my collection was made during the XP era, with even a few listing Windows 98/ME as compatible.  My copy of XP is 32-bit, so I would be able to run most 16-bit Windows games as well. It gets around that annoying issue with certain games that had to use a 16-bit installer while the game itself was 32-bit.

Pearl's secondary disk is an old 500GB HDD from 2012. I'll retire that drive and use the 1TB WD Black in it's place.

[cpd2009]

Some interesting tech that I spotted while around downtown today....

Pawn Shop: Another Dell. This time, an old Dell Inspiron 1575 laptop. Has Windows Vista preinstalled and an dual core Intel Celeron at 1.8ghz, Intel IGP and odd 3GB of RAM. Didn't check the HDD size. It was slow when I tried it in the store. Could be a combination of the Celeron, slow HDD and Vista. They wanted $30 for it. I thought about getting that, but I invested in upgrading Greta and I don't know how much it would take to get that Dell up to speed, so I passed for now.

At the flea market, someone brought in a black OG 3DS, an black/red OG 2DS, and a blue DSi. Seller wanted $75 for the 3DS. Don't remember the price of the 2DS. The DSi was only $25. No games with either system, but part of me wants to see if there's any preinstalled stuff on the 3DS/2DS.

[huckleberrypie]

Some interesting tech that I spotted while around downtown today....

Pawn Shop: Another Dell. This time, an old Dell Inspiron 1575 laptop. Has Windows Vista preinstalled and an dual core Intel Celeron at 1.8ghz, Intel IGP and odd 3GB of RAM. Didn't check the HDD size. It was slow when I tried it in the store. Could be a combination of the Celeron, slow HDD and Vista. They wanted $30 for it. I thought about getting that, but I invested in upgrading Greta and I don't know how much it would take to get that Dell up to speed, so I passed for now.

At the flea market, someone brought in a black OG 3DS, an black/red OG 2DS, and a blue DSi. Seller wanted $75 for the 3DS. Don't remember the price of the 2DS. The DSi was only $25. No games with either system, but part of me wants to see if there's any preinstalled stuff on the 3DS/2DS.

I'd take offence if the 2DS sold for a fortune imo.

[cpd2009]

Spending the evening backing up files off my external HDD and putting them on DVD-R discs to free up space. Also thinking about what macOS version to use on the old iMac. Leopard/Snow Leopard still appears to be a good choice, but if I want to use my previously purchased Mac App Store stuff, I'll need to run Lion at minimum.

The iMac I intend to get (2007 to early 2009 range) can only take El Capitan and nothing newer. You can use the dosdude1 patch to run Sierra with no problems, but I read that issues start popping up with High Sierra onward. Mojave and Catalina are out of the question.

Besides running Windows XP stuff in Boot Camp, I will also install an old version of the Adobe suite such as CS3 or CS4 and use the iMac to work on my illustration skills. Yeah, I know I could do that with Pearl, but I don't want the iMac to sit and collect dust. I have an old Wacom Graphire 4 tablet and I think you can get it to work in El Capitan using a specific driver version mentioned on a Reddit thread. If not, I may have to roll back to Lion.

So yeah.. here is a tentative process on the steps I'll need to do to get the XP/El Cap dual boot to work...
1 - Install Leopard or Snow Leopard and use Boot Camp 3.x to set up XP natively.
2 - After XP is all set up, either upgrade or replace Leopard/Snow Leopard with El Capitan.

I think this will be a fun and interesting project, and if everything comes out right, I may even share my results with the LowEndMac group.

[huckleberrypie]

You have the iMac already?

[huckleberrypie]

I love how pirated releases of media would bear an icon of a newer, more advanced platform or format despite the pirated release itself being on a less advanced format. It's more or less justified with "Blu-Ray" bootlegs on DVD being sold in flea markets, but it's egregious with DS multicarts on flash cards being slapped with a "New Nintendo 3DS" logo even if the games themselves were developed for the older platform.

One such example being this:


Given how there are 16MB ROMs of shovelware DS titles and how they could be copied easily to a cheap 8GB MicroSD card, it's trivial for bootleggers to copy as many scene releases of Barbie, Frozen, Dora The Explorer and American Girl amongst other things to an R4 or AceKard and supply online resellers and less-scrupulous video game and toy stores with those cards. I often write them off as a waste of time as you could just buy an R4, stuff them with pirated ROMs and/or homebrew, and call it a day.

[cpd2009]

You have the iMac already?

Not yet. It's still going to be awhile... anytime after February 14th. I should place the order around the end of the month or early March. It all depends on how fast the IRS is in getting out the refunds.

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I love how pirated releases of media would bear an icon of a newer, more advanced platform or format despite the pirated release itself being on a less advanced format. It's more or less justified with "Blu-Ray" bootlegs on DVD being sold in flea markets, but it's egregious with DS multicarts on flash cards being slapped with a "New Nintendo 3DS" logo even if the games themselves were developed for the older platform.

One such example being this:


Given how there are 16MB ROMs of shovelware DS titles and how they could be copied easily to a cheap 8GB MicroSD card, it's trivial for bootleggers to copy as many scene releases of Barbie, Frozen, Dora The Explorer and American Girl amongst other things to an R4 or AceKard and supply online resellers and less-scrupulous video game and toy stores with those cards. I often write them off as a waste of time as you could just buy an R4, stuff them with pirated ROMs and/or homebrew, and call it a day.

The closest thing I have seen to pirate multicarts in my area are old fashioned NES ones or knockoff plug-and-play NES Classic knockoffs at the mall.

I can imagine if these were sold in America (and they probably are in bigger cities and various Chinatowns), an unknowing parent would stumble across this and think they found the perfect game for their little one, only for said little one to get upset if the card stops working. Worse still, the small microSD card is a choking hazard.

[huckleberrypie]

Choking hazard concerns is what drove the Big N to have their Switch carts coated with a bitterant to deter small children from eating them. Makes me wonder why the likes of Sandisk haven't done the same with commodity memory cards especially on children's devices.

[cpd2009]

I just realized that once I get that iMac, I'll have a way to retrieve a macOS installer for creating a Hackintosh. Too bad that tonymacx86 site is rather sketchy. I read a forum thread on InsanelyMac on why tonymac is so controversial. For one, you have to pay for his tools, which I wasn't aware of until I read the post.

https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/...onymacx86/

It's a shame since the tonymac GA-H110M-A Hackintosh guide appears to be rather straightforward.

I've also been thinking of switching antivirus suites. I'm currently using Avast and running a two month trial of their premium suite. While the premium suite successfully blocked a harmful website, I hate how they try to upsell you on other utilities like their VPN or their registry cleaner. I don't have an interest in a VPN at the present, and I hear registry cleaners are unecessary. If I decide to switch, I may go back to Norton. I haven't had much trouble with Norton in the past, though I ended up leaving them since I didn't have enough funds to renew the yearly service when it was time to.