Retro Gaming

Retro Gaming (or Retrogaming as wikipedia prefers to call it) is to quote wikipedia: "the hobby of playing and collecting older computer, video, and arcade games. These games are played either on the original hardware, on modern hardware via emulation, or on modern hardware via ports on compilations".

It makes me feel old to see Tetris and Duke Nukem 3D referred to as Retro or "Classic Games", but it is still a pleasure to be able to play duke Nukem 3D on a handheld, specifically a Tapwave Zodiac (which is almost on its way to becoming a classic handheld). There are two versions of Duke Nukem 3D available for the Tapwave Zodiac, one which is a stripped down version re-written specifically for the Zodiac (and not very good either), and the other a free one which uses the original DOS data files.


Aaah, the retro Tapwave Zodiac for retro gaming... (the one shown above is the silver 28MB Zodiac 1, not the black 128MB Zodiac 2)

YACP

Yes, yet another cellphone. Good or bad, my work has given me a cellphone. Of course this would be while I'm still carrying my boss's cellphone and Blackberry. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't get an entry level LG, instead I got the LG VX8300 which as I have mentioned before is a pretty decent phone - I bought one for my wife a year or so ago, and quite like the handset myself.

The main thing this phone lacks is a decent assortment of ringtones, because of course Verizon wants you to buy some ringtones from them. The pleasant surprise is that it actually supports Bluetooth.

Put my Treo aside

Today I left my Treo 650 at home. It is still working, and I haven't replaced it. It is just that I'm swamped with too many cellphones. My boss went on vacation, and left his Blackberry 7130e and LG VX-5200 with me (Tag, you're it!). I used to want a Blackberry, but I much prefer the Treo, even though the Blackberry is almost 2 oz (about 50g) lighter than the Treo.
Anyway, I figured carrying 3 cellphones, including a BlackBerry and a Treo was just too much. Since I couldn't leave the Blackberry at home (as much as I wanted to), I had to leave the Treo...

Motorola Q2? Nein

Well, first some feedback about the Treo 650.

On my favorite podcast, Buzz Out Loud, it was mentioned in passing a week or so back that Treos are no longer the cool phones which everybody carries. I must agree that the latest sleek smartphones are much better looking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the sleek smartphones run the lighter version of Windows Mobile, which is also lighter on features. They also do not have touch screens - not in itself a problem, as most things can be done on the Treo 650 without using the touch-screen and stylus. It is just the occasional third party app which relies on touchscreen input.

Third party apps and the Palm OS are what makes me not mind the extra bulk of the Treo 650. After going from a plain PDA to a Treo and back to a (not so plain) PDA, this time I decided not to try to use the Treo as my main handheld computer. Instead, the Tungsten T3 remains my primary handheld for now, with its superior screen, and I transfer the information I want to have at my fingertips to the Treo, which I mainly use as a cellphone, and to look up information copied from the T3 with a simple restore from a SecureDigital Card. Okay, the first draft of this blog entry was written on the Treo, but it was pretty easy to get it from the Treo onto the Tungsten T3 and up to the PC and onto the Internet.
Admittedly that is a multi-step process and I could post this Blog Entry directly to the Internet from the Treo 650 - if I was willing to pay Verizon's exorbitant data plan rates. Frankly it would be cheaper to write the blog on my Palm TX and post it via Wi-Fi on my home broadband connection. It would take the equivalent of 3 months or so of Verizon's "unlimited" data plan to pay for a bluetooth keyboard to use with the Palm TX - a keyboard being a lot faster for me than Graffiti handwriting recognition.

Oh, and Motorola's follow up to the Motorola Q, inexplicably called the Q9? The specs sound good, but it is only likely to get to Verizon at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. Maybe by then I may have tired of the Treo...

Running on Automatic

No, I'm not referring to the Roomba (I still have some video to edit for that blog entry). This is something more serious.

I was researching scripting languages and started looking at Basic compilers and interpreters. The main reason I was looking at Basic is because the Basic programming language is the one I know best. Among many other trial and demo versions I downloaded was one called IBasic Professional. I ruled it out as it wasn't what I was looking for at that stage - a professional Basic compiler costing $75.

During my research I was surprised just how many Basic compilers and interpreters are available. See this List of Basic-like language compilers for Windows at mindteq. Some are free (thinBasic and XBLite), while others cost up to $400 or more (the multi-platform RealBasic)
For the difference between compilers and interpreters see compilers at Wikipedia). There is also an article on the Indiana University Knowledge Base.

Among the Basic compilers and interpreters, some products are actively supported and others are either abandoned or just no longer supported.

This brings me back to IBasic Professional. One way of checking if a development tool (or in fact, a wide range of software) is any good is to have a look at the User Forums. The IBasic Pro User Forum was not available but had the following cryptic message "Closed until further Notice. Read the message on CodingMonkeys.com to see why":





My curiosity piqued, I just had to look at CodingMonkeys.com, which turns out to be a user forum for an assortment of programming languages from Java to Delphi. I could not find out much information without first registering for the CodingMonkeys forums - something I would not normally bother with (you want me to register on your forums just to be able to read them without restrictions?), but I was curious.

After a few searches on the CodingMonkeys forums I found out two things:
1. The IBasic Pro forums had been hacked over six months ago
2. "IBasic is a dead product. The site is automated and will probably continue to run, as a ghost, for a long time come" (from the developer of IBasic Pro)

Whether IBasic Pro could still be purchased on the website I don't know - but I had been able to download the 15 day trial version.

If you go through the purchase process, it says:



Free updates (from who?), free priority technical support (from who?) and maybe they mean CodingMonkeys as their "active programming community"

I wouldn't recommend buying IBasic Pro from their website, since no-one is home. I have also seen some online software vendors selling IBasic Pro for around $45, but who wants an unsupported, abandoned compiler?

Domestech?

i bought a Robot. Not quite a tech "gadget", but an iRobot Roomba Vacuuming Robot 2.1. I'll give some feedback once I've actually used it.

Domestic Technology=Domestech?

Rip to Ogg?

I was going to call this blog posting "Ogg", but then I may have continued with:
"Ogg! Your village called and they want their idiot back".

Okay, so no offense intended to Ogg Vorbis - not a person (at least I don't think so), but an audio format (actually an "open, patent-free, professional audio encoding ... technology" according to the Ogg Vorbis website).

Why would anyone rip an Audio CD to Ogg format instead of MP3?
Well for one, Ogg is a completely free format, whereas MP3 isn't. Wait a minute, I hear my one reader say, I thought the MP3 format was free. Well, so did I, but I've heard on the "Buzz Out Loud" podcast that the MP3 format is actually owned by several companies, who license it out. That explains why you have to pay extra for an MP3 encoder in some audio software. I assume that Apple pays for the licensing for you somehow so that in iTunes you can rip to MP3s for no extra charge.

So do I rip to Ogg? No, I rip all my Audio CDs to MP3s, as MP3s can be played on all of my "MP3 Players" or DAPs. My only MP3 Player which plays Ogg files is an iRiver H320. This wiki has a list of players supporting the Ogg format, so if you want to make use of this free codec, buy a new DAP...

Vista - Just Say No

For now anyway.

According to ZDNet, "Dell brings back XP on home systems" - no surprise considering the problems customers have been having with software incompatibilities and "a lack of hardware drivers for Vista" as mentioned in this article "Dell Brings Back Windows XP as Option" in BetaNews.com.

From my point of view, if I bought a new Desktop which had Windows Vista installed, I would reformat it and install Windows XP Professional. Why? So my Palm handhelds could synchronize with it.

Even Pocket PCs and Smartphones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile Operating System cannot synchronize with Windows Vista. You can only hope they work with "Windows Mobile Manager", which replaces Microsoft ActiveSync.

This is just the tip of the incompatibility iceberg.

The hunt is over...for now

I haven't mentioned my hunt for a replacement cellphone for a while.
This is because it ended prematurely (before my contract was even up). As I mentioned in "Cellphone Research Resumed" , I had seen a Verizon Treo 650 on sale. Anyway, after comparing the Treo 650 with the Motorola Q, and finding to my surprise that the Treo is actually slightly smaller than the Q in height and width (but obviously not depth) and reading numerous bad user reviews of the Q; namely about the poor battery life and slow data entry, I decided to give the Treo 650 a try. Since I would not be signing up for a new contract and could "simply" switch from my existing phone to the Treo 650, for not much more than I would pay for the Q with a one year contract, I figured it would be worthwhile. It may seem risky to buy online from someone advertising on a user forum, but after reading their posts on the forum, as well as a number of email exchanges I felt I could trust him, and bought the Treo. After paying for it on the Saturday I received it the following Wednesday, in its original box with the original accessories and a Vaja (expensive leather) holster.

The now defunct "Mobile" magazine referred to the Treo 650 as being so much better than the Treo 600 that it was "like comparing a sports car to a melon cart". There are a number of reviews comparing the two phones here and here, but since I still have my old Treo 600, I'll mention a few points.
First, two standard phone buttons (Send and End) have been added to the keypad, which also has been rearranged slightly so some of the buttons are more logically placed.

The 650 was the first Treo with a "user replaceable" battery - the back opens like a normal cellphone and the battery can be swapped out.
As a result of having this "user replaceable" battery it meant the 650 could not have volatile flash memory like the Treo 600 but used Palms new NVFS (Non-Volatile File System), a major hardware change - the battery could run down (or be removed) and the data wouldn't be lost. The touchscreen had been upgraded to 16-bit (65K colors) 320x320 pixels, a major improvement over (less than 4096 colors) 160x160 pixel screen. The processor was upgraded to 312MHz (from 144-MHz), making the performance quite zippy. The only downside was that the new NVFS (Non-Volatile File System) required more space to store the same amount of files, so although the available memory was appeared the same it was actually less than the 650.

The 650 also has bluetooth, so I can finally use the bluetooth headset I got with my RAZR.

Patching the Patches

Yesterday I re-installed the Microsoft patch which gave me so many problems. No, I'm not crazy - I had already tried it on another machine, along with Microsoft's patch "935448" to their "security update" patch "928843" - according to Microsoft after applying their first patch (on top of a previous patch!) "...certain third-party applications may not start." This was due to two files from the two separate patches conflicting.

Up and Running

I'm up and running again on my main PC. It turned out not to be Partition Magic, as I got similar errors trying to resize the partition with BootItNG. So it must be the PCs configuration. I've had enough restores to last me for a while, so I won't be trying this again in a hurry.

Recovery Mode Again

Today I was hoping to finally blog about the end of my hunt for a cellphone. However, since I had backed up my primary PC to a working external hard drive (why "working"? - that's another story), I decided to try to resize the partitions again. This time I booted from the Partition Magic 8 CD, but it made no difference. After resizing the C partition, Partition Magic gave an error and Windows was unbootable. This time I restored from the original PC restore disks, and am now running "Restore my PC" from Norton Ghost, which will hopefully put it in the working state it was this morning.

These Partition Magic failures are really puzzling me. I have used the software successfully numerous times before. Since Symantec bought Powerquest - the developers of Partition Magic - in September 2003 they have not updated the software other than to rename it. So it could be their fault since I'm working on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 which was released since then. But I have also had problems with running Partition Magic on my three year old Compaq Presario notebook, so it could be the Compaq.

Oh well, it is recovery mode again.

Grrr! Microsoft Windows updates

My iPod is now syncing, and I no longer get an error about HHCTRL.OCX when I start up my PC.

Why? Because I uninstalled the latest Microsoft patch KB925902.

Nano not recognized?

Plugged in my iPod Nano 2nd gen this evening and got this message:



After attempting to restore it multiple times it still shows the same message.

In cyberspace no one can hear you scream

About the crash

So, about the crash, as I mentioned it was on my main PC. This is ironically the PC I'm moving everything to because of the random shutdowns on my other PC - by "everything" I mean the Palm desktop software which I use to get blog entries from my handheld (where the first draft of most of them are written), and iTunes and a ton of other software.
My PC's hard drive is partitioned into at least 2 partitions: the C drive which basically contains Windows and Program files and a D drive where most of my data and documents is stored. I'd initially partitioned the C and D partitions the same size, but was starting to run out of space on the D partition. So, I fired up Partition Magic, which I'd used to partition the drive on the first place, and shrunk the C drive and expanded the D drive. When I pressed the "Apply" button, Partition Magic rebooted Windows XP and went into batch mode to do its magic. When I checked on it later it had some error message - I didn't write it down although I probably should have. Anyway, next thing I see a Partition Magic error - which is never good. I rebooted the machine.
Windows seemed to boot up okay, although the Start Menu task bar looked a bit squeezed.
I ran a check on the D Drive with Partition Magic but no errors were found.
Then I ran a CHKDSK on C Drive and it displayed all weird errors and showed messages about invalid security for file number (starting at 1 and going through to around 2000) - security set to default.
After rebooting the machine Windows was a mess - no Start Menu or TaskBar and two programs DISCUpdate and DISCHub were using 100% of CPU. I killed them and tried to copy some files to an External Hard drive, but the copy and paste wasn't working (Neither was drag and drop).
After trying to research the problem online I figured my best option was to restore the C Drive. This took 3 tries, but now Windows XP is back minus whatever programs I installed since December last year. Of course my Documents and data on the D drive are still there.

Yahoo to offer unlimited email storage

According to My Way News "Yahoo Promises Unlimited E-Mail Storage" and Yahoo themselves say "Yahoo Mail goes to Infinity and Beyond"

I'd rather have a Gmail account with only 2.8 GB of space and non-intrusive text adverts than infinite storage and adverts flashing in my face. Actually, I do have a Yahoo account, and the adblock extension in FireFox makes it bearable.

Still around

Yes, I'm still around, I don't have writer's block nor have I (gasp) abandoned this Blog.
I've just had some Critical crashing computer syndrome (my main PC this time) - more about that later...

Random shutdowns

That was what my eMachines Desktop is doing. It has being doing this since around September last year. The weird thing is that the power button would stay illuminated. It is not like a Windows shutdown, but an immediate power off. I would then just unplug the power cord, wait a few minutes and then plug it in and boot up the PC.

That was until a week or so ago when it just didn't come on after I plugged it again. Of course I thought the power supply had gone for good, and started hunting for a new power supply. The next day I tried it the PC again, and it started up fine. The only problem now is that it only seems to run for a few hours before it shuts down without warning. The strangest thing is that this always happens when I'm not using the computer.

Anyway, after much web research, this seems like a there may be a few possible solutions. Sometimes just blowing out dust from inside the computer case does the trick, or a new power supply solves the problem. Then there are other possibilities like problems with the motherboard, or the CPU fan - that's when troubleshooting is just too complicated (and expensive) for a budget PC.

Weird patch results

As mentioned yesterday, I applied Daylight Savings Patches to several handhelds.
Well, this morning I checked the results. First was my Tungsten T3, and I was initially dismayed - the screen was displaying the message "Please insert CD to continue with the installation". This was was fairly familiar to me as one of the screens displayed after the hard reset process (I've had more than my fair share of hard resets in the past month). Once I had verified that my programs and data were still there I relaxed a bit. How other Palm users would interpret this message I don't know (Apparently the Palm LifeDrive displays a similar message). Palm should have really tested this patch and advised users what to expect.
My wife's Palm Zire 72 only displayed the standard "Your clock has been adjusted for Daylight Savings Time" message. I had forgotten to turn my Treo 650 off, but it had not automatically updated its time from the wireless network. It only did so when I switched the phone off and on again.

DST Patching Away

It has been called the "Mini Y2K" (Year 2000) by some, but to me the Daylight Savings Time changes have resulted in more applying of patches than changing software code. Even at home today I spent a fair amount of time applying patches to various handheld computers. I drew the line at patching my Dell Axim with its Windows Mobile Operating System though. Sure, Microsoft had a patch for it, but to apply the patch I would have to upgrade the ActiveSync to version 4.5 on my Desktop PC (ActiveSync being the utility which handles synchronizing data between the Desktop PC and the Pocket PC).

Typical for Microsoft, as the automatic Daylight Savings Patch for Windows PCs only works on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above - it will patch run Windows XP Service Pack 1 if run manually. If you have Windows 98 or Windows 2000 then a manual patch is required, unless you downloaded one of the third-party patches.

Back to Palm, their patch didn't work on my old Treo 600 (which they said should be patched), giving an obscure "Cannot update CityTime database" message - guess they never tested it. I got two emails today, one from Palm, and another from Verizon Wireless, both about patching my Treo 650. I didn't, relying on the network to update my Treo's time.