The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

Acquired a Gigastone 64GB microSD card tonight and cloned the original SuperConsoleX card. While there is really no discernable speed difference between the Gigastone and the generic no-name, at least I got a storage card that will likely be far more reliable long term than the no-name. At some point, I will again clone the OS to a larger 128GB card. There are so many pre-loaded ROMs that updating Emuelec is impossible due to lack of space.

I will use the no-name 64GB card to toy around with making a custom emulation OS. Besides Emuelec, there is Batocera which some say is more stable than Emuelec. And pre-configured images are provided for Amlogic S905 SoC boards. And funnily enough, my streaming TV box provided by my cable company also runs off an Amlogic S905x SoC and also has a microSD slot. For the lulz, I am going to insert the old Emuelec card into the streaming box and seeing if it will actually boot Emuelec.

Reminds me of those horror stories of how unscrupulous sellers would hack the firmware off either a USB stick or an SD card and make it appear as if it is of far larger capacity than it really is, more often than not sold at unrealistically low prices.

[cpd2009]

So another Black Friday has come and gone, and honestly, the only thing I want this year is from Menards, of course. I still want a cheapo Android device to toy around with, to play my stash of Android games on, but also to function as an inexpensive e-reader.

https://www.menards.com/main/p-742980612...yer_hosted

Don't let the Sylvania name fool you. Another company called Curtis International licenses the name from Osram and just plasters it on lots of cheapo Chinese electronics from BT speakers to tablets such as this. Curtis stuff tends to vary wildly in quality, from SoOkayItsAverage to just plain abysmal.

Judging by the price of this tablet, it may just be enough to run simple mobile games and perhaps function as said e-book reader. Battery life is a mystery, but based on previous experience, these budget tablets tend to only have four to six hours average life during active use. I would be curious to see what kids apps they preloaded and how much storage they take up. The ad says "16GB RAM", but I think that really means 16GB internal storage which is barely getting by even for a budget tablet. A microSD card is a must for this tablet.

I will report back when and if I do get this tablet. It should be very soon, if the stock hasn't run out....

[huckleberrypie]

So another Black Friday has come and gone, and honestly, the only thing I want this year is from Menards, of course. I still want a cheapo Android device to toy around with, to play my stash of Android games on, but also to function as an inexpensive e-reader.

https://www.menards.com/main/p-742980612...yer_hosted

Don't let the Sylvania name fool you. Another company called Curtis International licenses the name from Osram and just plasters it on lots of cheapo Chinese electronics from BT speakers to tablets such as this. Curtis stuff tends to vary wildly in quality, from SoOkayItsAverage to just plain abysmal.

Judging by the price of this tablet, it may just be enough to run simple mobile games and perhaps function as said e-book reader. Battery life is a mystery, but based on previous experience, these budget tablets tend to only have four to six hours average life during active use. I would be curious to see what kids apps they preloaded and how much storage they take up. The ad says "16GB RAM", but I think that really means 16GB internal storage which is barely getting by even for a budget tablet. A microSD card is a must for this tablet.

I will report back when and if I do get this tablet. It should be very soon, if the stock hasn't run out....

Low-end tablets like this will never go old lel. Heck, the Sylvania licence reminds me of when the likes of Polaroid lent their name to some random Chinese OEM selling shit-tier tablets of questionable quality.

[cpd2009]

I remember getting one of those Polaroid tablets back in 2011, when they just started licensing their name. It actually wasn't too horrible. The device was rather snappy, had a decent amount of in-built storage, and it could run Angry Birds well among other games of the era. The only drawback was the touch screen. It was the resistive type. It wouldn't be until 2012 when I got my hands on a low-end Android tablet with capacitive screen.



This video sums up why I decided to stop collecting retro games. While he doesn't go into emulation, he does explain just how crazy the prices are getting with even well known games like Super Mario Bros.

Currently, things like Nintendo DS and 3DS have become my priority. Such games with a few exceptions are still rather affordable. Right now, I'm on a quest to acquire every single Littlest Pet Shop game ever made for the Nintendo DS. There were several, such as Littlest Pet Shop 3: Biggest Stars, which itself was divided into Blue Team, Purple Team, and Pink Team cards. It's rather decent for a kids game, but I'm curious to see if there are any differences between the three teams.

[huckleberrypie]

I understand jacking up prices for rare or prototype games, but doing so for your run of the mill retro title is insane and deluded to say the least.

[cpd2009]

I'm now getting the itch to collect Skylanders crap.



Not sure if you heard of Scott the Woz, but he's a YouTube channel that makes rather comedic videos about video game history. His latest video is about the "Toys to Life" craze that happened in the early 2010s and their downfall.

I remember seeing these things all over from their launch in 2011 to around 2016 or 2017. Even my old small town department store had a section dedicated to Disney Infinity figures. I never got into them for the simple reason being that you need to collect the small plastic toys to unlock on-disc game content. It was a definite RevenueEnhancingDevice for sure in the era before F2P games became the norm.

However, the video goes over the actual gameplay of these things too, and Skylanders actually looks pretty awesome for a collect-a-thon platformer. And when Skylanders first launched in 2011, it was actually pretty innovative for the time. It was only when other companies like Disney and Warner Bros tried to get a piece of the Toys-to-Life pie that the market became oversaturated with these games and figures, and parents began to figure out that in the end, there were just cash grabs thanks in no part to the figures being the necessary component. Disney even bowed out of the scene when they shut down Infinity in 2017 citing it wasn't profitable.

Skylanders starter sets still tend to go for around $20 USD brand new on eBay and you can find second hand figures easily too. I even managed to acquire a Skylanders Imaginators starter pack from Walmart a couple years ago for just $10 IIRC. The Wii U was dead in the water and this was clearance stock. I forgot I had it in storage.

The only surviving franchise of this craze is Nintendo's Amiibo, and they didn't even do much with them other than unlockable content in certain games.

[huckleberrypie]

I'm now getting the itch to collect Skylanders crap.



Not sure if you heard of Scott the Woz, but he's a YouTube channel that makes rather comedic videos about video game history. His latest video is about the "Toys to Life" craze that happened in the early 2010s and their downfall.

I remember seeing these things all over from their launch in 2011 to around 2016 or 2017. Even my old small town department store had a section dedicated to Disney Infinity figures. I never got into them for the simple reason being that you need to collect the small plastic toys to unlock on-disc game content. It was a definite RevenueEnhancingDevice for sure in the era before F2P games became the norm.

However, the video goes over the actual gameplay of these things too, and Skylanders actually looks pretty awesome for a collect-a-thon platformer. And when Skylanders first launched in 2011, it was actually pretty innovative for the time. It was only when other companies like Disney and Warner Bros tried to get a piece of the Toys-to-Life pie that the market became oversaturated with these games and figures, and parents began to figure out that in the end, there were just cash grabs thanks in no part to the figures being the necessary component. Disney even bowed out of the scene when they shut down Infinity in 2017 citing it wasn't profitable.

Skylanders starter sets still tend to go for around $20 USD brand new on eBay and you can find second hand figures easily too. I even managed to acquire a Skylanders Imaginators starter pack from Walmart a couple years ago for just $10 IIRC. The Wii U was dead in the water and this was clearance stock. I forgot I had it in storage.

The only surviving franchise of this craze is Nintendo's Amiibo, and they didn't even do much with them other than unlockable content in certain games.

I guess the gotta-catch-them-all aspect of these games only served to frustrate parents more than entertain kids. Remember when one parent was interviewed in a news report expressing her frustrations on having to buy a new console just to play Super Mario World?

This also accounts for why the Steam release of Disney Infinity 3.0 has all of the characters unlocked.

[cpd2009]

After several delays and paying a little bit more than I wanted, I acquired the Menards Black Friday tablet.

Details coming soon...

[huckleberrypie]

After several delays and paying a little bit more than I wanted, I acquired the Menards Black Friday tablet.

Details coming soon...

Noice... I'm sure it's yet another one of them Mediatek ones, yes?

I mulled about getting a defective Nextbook Windows tablet once, but idk if I'd be able to pay my attention to it tbh.

[cpd2009]

After several delays and paying a little bit more than I wanted, I acquired the Menards Black Friday tablet.

Details coming soon...

Noice... I'm sure it's yet another one of them Mediatek ones, yes?

I mulled about getting a defective Nextbook Windows tablet once, but idk if I'd be able to pay my attention to it tbh.

According to the manual, it's a Rockchip 3126 with Mali 400-MP graphics. 1GB DDRIII RAM, 16gb flash storage, 1024x600 screen, and Android 8.1 Go edition.

I will do more testing tomorrow. I got CPU-Z installed and will be able to tell if the actual specs lineup with the manual. I will also do some general performance tests with various games, and seeing how an e-reader app runs on it as the specs listed in the manual are rather dated now, hence the tablets low price. And given this particular model is aimed at kids, I wonder how well it will work with simple educational titles like the one it comes with.