RIP-Felix

Good to hear the build quality didn't disappoint! I think I'll pick one up myself, as the OSSC doesn't have inputs for composite and S-video. PS: The rabbit hole got deeper this week. I got a Sega Saturn. I see a Rhea/phoebe in my future.

I think this thing will be dead on arrival, if it ever arrives at all.

Bonk's Adventure!!! Seriously though, this one doesn't hit me in the nostagacles. I never did own a Turbografx-16. I'm a bit interested, but I will probably let this pass.

PART 7: Cheat Well, it's fixed! Of course the solution I came up with was to buy a working 1-chip motherboard of e-bay (just the motherboard, to save a little bit). It still cost me $75. It came in and works perfectly. A quick swap into my case and pesto! It's fixed! Okay, okay...I know! That's cheating, but I'm not really done here. I have 2 reasons for doing this: I'll have a working SNES to play with while I try to fix the other motherboard. That allows me to take risks with I wouldn't otherwise. If i do end up fixing it, I can always sell it. If the working one goes bad in the future I have the semi-working board as a backup to use for parts, even if I never figure out what it's problem is. Anyway, this is where I'm at. The shmups forum was helpful, but no way forward has materialized yet. I have an idea or two to try, but I'm waiting on a Hot air rework station to arrive before I can replace a chip on the board involved in the reset circuit.

You'd be well withing your right to "wait impatiently" at this point. As for me, hindsight being 20/20, I'm glad I didn't put any money down on this.

May you survive the nostalgia with you wallet intact! Ohhhhh...careful Alice that rabbit hole goes deep! Last summer it started with my x-Box. In September it was the EverDrive 64. Then the N64 RGB mod and ultraHDMI mod. Then I got an OSSC and that blew the door open to the rest of my OG consoles. Then the 1-chip super Nintendo restoration project (which I'm still working on). This month I visited a local retro gaming store and picked up a bunch of Genesis, PS1/2, NES, and even a Super Gameboy. Now I want a Everdrive GB to pair with that super gameboy! It'll have to wait, since I just picked up an Everdrive N8, SD2SNES Pro, and Mega Everdrive. Last weekend it was the Dreamcast GDEmu. And I'm in the next batch for the DCHDMI...Yeah...I fell down the rabbit hole and haven't found the bottom yet. My wallet's hurting a bit at the moment. But it's been a hell of a lot of fun. I'm on a bit of an OG console tear.

Agreed, except for the part about there being a possibility for a bad ass console. A more powerful dual core is like saying they upgraded a donkey to a horse, then entered the Indy 500. At this point I'm sure it'll underwhelm if it doesn't outright suck. I don't see the hook that distinguishes their product from something like a small form factor PC, like intel NUC. Just a dual core pc in an pretty Atari case (AKA Atari Box). In my opinion Atari is just as divided and dysfunctional as they were during the fall from grace in the 80's. Bad strategy saturating the market with loads of shit games just for increased profit, refusing to give game designers credit for their work, law suits from people who were contracted for work but did not receive compensation...They've obviously not gotten their shit together, regardless of how willing to forgive and forget the fans are. Their investors are too busy fighting over the scraps to focus on the future of the company. We have to wait for them to finally resolve the infighting. Atari is a case study of how greed corrupts a good thing. It's a shame too. I wanted the VCS to be the one that puts Atari back in the game. They bit off more than they could chew and have locked themselves in on this path after raising $3,000,000. They have to put something out or really put the company in danger of loosing what little consumer confidence they've built. Or worse, risk more legal trouble. That's a recipe for a crap product. But I'd love to be wrong.

I don't think it was intended as a scam, but there is that saying about path to hell being paved with good intentions. I agree that Atari has botched this release by not securing exclusive games and hyping the shiz out of them. You: "What it is?" Atari: It's a 4k streaming device! "You mean like the roku?: "Err...No! It's also a gaming platform that we can confirm will have an Atari classic compilation bundled onboard!" "You mean it can do what just about every other platform currently available can already do? ..."Yes?" "why do you keep delaying the launch" "we gave it more power!" "why?" "um...to make it more capable... since AAA developers still refuse to come onboard" "What did you do with the $3,000,000 we gave you on indiegogo?" ...psst...don't tell them about the blow and hookers...better yet, say nothing and hope they go away!!! ... "how will the legal battle and internal strugles among investor affect the company going forward? Do you think you can resolve the backbiting and focus on creating content?" ... "is this a scam?" ... "Hello...Atari..." ..."we are committed to providing our backers the best possible product. We are getting close and still committed to meeting our promise of releasing a product soon." "that's what you said last year. How is this delay any different? Why should we believe your any closer than you were before? ...

when I opened my OG A2600 controller to clean and maintain it I noticed that the plastic was cracked by the force people were using. I saw what the issue was. The problem isn't with the controller being stiff, it's with there not being enough fulfillment when the contact switches were depressed. That happens without much resistance at all, but gives you no click to feel. That leads you to force it further against the plastic that stops it from bending further. That's why it feels so stiff, because your bending it too far and it's resisting being broken. It's an interesting case study in the psychology of controller design. We need feedback when the contact engages to be reassured the controller fulfilled our request. It also reveals how we react when we don't get that fulfillment...violently applying extra force to be damn sure it heard us...lol. It explains why we got so many blisters and remember that controller with true nostalgia (Nostos, means homecoming. -algia means pain. Nostalgia literally means "homecoming pain", but is used in the sense of homesickness or a painful longing for the past). The controller didn't respond in the way we expected it should, so we hurt it and ourselves in frustration. That's a axiom in psychology that can be applied to many different scenarios. We do it to people, pets, everything. It reveals a primitive impatience for unpredictability and ignorant retaliation against things that don't respond as we feel they should. Basicly, predictability is safety. Unpredictability is dangerous. It stress us out and engages the fight or flight response (a real biochemical phenomenon that bitch slaps reason into submission. Emotion is in the driver's seat untill the endorphins wear off).

I , for one, will continue to watch star wars movies once they come out on DVD.com. I've lost interest in getting mugged at the box office. That's one step in the grave for Hollywood. Disney is a media whore that has gained weight. She used to be hot, now she's not. That's why she's loosing clients! If Hollywood wants it to stop, they need to stop reeling from streaming shock and get back to business. What separates Hollywood from HBO, streaming services and Made for TV movies has, and if they get their $hit back together, always will be production quality compelling stories. Hollywood passes on ALOT of screenplays that get picked up by streaming and TV. The solution isn't accepting more, to deny your competition. They just have to get back to choosing great stories, and producing the hell out of them. If they can do that, they will solidify screenwriter and consumer confidence. Then they will continue to get first choosing of the best stories to produce. And consumers will have great movies to pay for.

How corporations see you: Because they know we'll fork it over, and they don't have imaginations of their own. Their content destroyers now, not creators. They only know how to milk the last drop of $$$ out of previously successful franchises. If they had an original idea once and a while they could start something new, but instead they're letting streaming services get under their skin and making desparate cash grabs under the deluded guise of saving their market share.

The Hotfix just got applied on my machine...Yay! Discovered Friday, hotfixed on Sunday. FireFox rocks.

privacy badger looks interesting, learning based, not list based. Starts blocking tracking elements once it sees it on 3 different websites. I just installed uBlock Origin, which is list based, but efficient. It blocks more elements than Ghostery, HTTPS everywhere, DuckDuckGo privacy essentials, but It also breaks alot of websites. However, the lists can be customized to work better. I just haven't put in the time yet. I think the badger will be a good one to add to the quiver.

Yeah, good call about password managers. I have avoided them mainly because it seems unsafe to record them at all, anywhere but in my head. However, I'm told that is old school thinking because password managers can produce stronger passwords harder to crack than anything our brain can remember. Plus they can be changed more frequently without hassle and be set to autofill to make things easier. SO...I see the appeal. I just don't trust it, call me old fashioned.

I had it fixed with the date turned back, but yesterday my extensions got nuked again. I turned the clock back another day and nothing happened. I set it back to automatic, but they're still gone. I just set it back to Thursday again, maybe they will come back after a few minutes like last time. ***EDIT: Nope!*** WTF Mozilla? If I didn't hate Google and MS so much, I'd be switching browsers about now! Yeah the issue doesn't affect all plugins. However, the only one of mine that wasn't nuked was "New Tab Homepage", which I have set to DuckDuckGo.com. Mozilla has a Hotfix rolling out in "a few hours". Here is their official response.

I've been trying to find out what happened to all of my extensions for the past hour. Basically firefox said they have been disabled due to expired digital signatures, but they are respected current add-ons like HTTPS everywhere, Norton Safe Search, Ghostery, DuckDuckGo Privacy essentials, and etc. Apparantly this is a know issue that is hitting everyone today. It began hitting users yesterday, who had their clock set forward one day. Anyway, if your having this issue. There is a potential workaround. Change your computer's clock to manual and go back to may 2, before the Firefox Nuke was set to detonate. I've read too, that disabling xpinstall.signatures.required in the About:config helps. I already had this disabled, but it still nuked me. However, when I set my clock back I was able to install an addon. And after a while the extensions came back - not immediately curiously (actually while I was writing this, 10-15 mins later after opening a tab). There is a reddit page full of people complaining about this. So I'm not alone.

He/She must have had some really wide component cables! I've seen some that are absurdly wide. Even HDRetrovision's component cables (top notch, fully shielded) aren't much wider than standard composite RCA jacks. Maybe that's the issue. I've been reading more and I see what you mean. I think people are expecting it to be like other full fledged, thoroughly tested, mass produced products. And no, it's not up to that standard. I guess that's the nature of the Device. It was made for enthusiasts by an enthusiast, not for mass consumer production (requiring it to be built like a tank). It seems to me like you'd treat something you spend $100 on carefully. Don't wrench on it. If your component cables span the ports, get different cables. If you treat it like your beloved console, you shouldn't have issues. But yes, there is an element of risk paying for a product made by an enthusiast. You'll have to decide if it's worth it for you. The zero added lag alone is wort it IMO, even if the design problems are as bad as the reviews say. Although it looks better in 480p, it's really about getting 240p/480i into a signal all modern TVs can accept without needing to deinterlace (which adds lag). The 480p limit is a bit of a drawback for me. Basically, the closer the input is to the TV's native resolution the less softness is applied by the TV's upscaler. The softness caused by upscaling from 480p will be hidden behind the worse quality of composite. However, component is a very high quality analog signal. You can easily see sharper edges if the line multiplier could get closer to the screen's native resolution (3x = 720p, 4x = 960p, 5x = 1080p), like the OSSC can. However, the OSSC cost's more than $100 more and has it's own drawbacks.

Lol...ghostery was blocking the reviews on the page, so I didn't see them at the bottom there. Honestly, it's not that hard to de-solder them and put new ones on if they do go bad. It's only 1 review and I'm sure it's not that bad. Given the other advantages over similar products that's not a deal breaker, especially when this exists:

I bought my OSSC from VideoGame perfection (UK based) because they were in stock and ready to ship, otherwise I'd have gone with castlemania. So my guess is that's just the way they describe their batch based system of procuring stock without over buying and taking a loss. A bit annoying, but that's the niche. I'm not sure what your referring to about the RCA connectors? I know that some RCA cables, Monster for example, have a death grip notorious for destroying connectors. Here is a great review by RetroRGB. I'm thinking I might get one myself, for my NES, but I'm debating on a HI-Def-NES mod:

Videogame Perfection is out of stock, but Castlemania Games is taking pre-orders and expecting to ship in mid april. You'll save a bit not having to pay the currency conversion and international shipping. The RetroTink2x and OSSC are in and out of stock, they sell out because they're niche items made to order in small-ish batches. Not quite as sought after as the UltraHDMI mod for the N64 (I had to wait 4 months for mine), but niche in a similar way. Most people will just buy one of those cheap converters on amazon and never look back. There's nothing wrong picking an inexpensive solution if lag and poor picture quality aren't deal breakers. For me they are. That's how I came across the OSSC and RetroTink2x.

PART 6: Rejected by the Gods Here's where I'm stuck: On powerup it black screens. After a few seconds I can hit reset a few times and It will startup. After the initial power fail, then reset trick, every game I've tried runs perfect. No graphical glitches that would indicate a bad PPU, It just takes about ten seconds after PWR ON before the reset button will begin working. On my OSSC LCD screen I notice that after a few resets it will show the 15KHz sync. Once it has been on and running for a while, if I turn it off then back on withing 4 seconds, it will fire up no problem, but not after 5 or more seconds. After that I have to hit the reset button a couple of times to get it back. I have reached the end of my ability's. I started a topic on the Shmups forums to see if they can help me find a way forward. I'll update with news if we find a solution...

I'd be more impressed if they went down the ARM processor path.

Lots of superlative adjectives and nouns in that press release, inflating the message. I'm tired of talk, I want to see a product. If they wait too long the market is going to lose it's nostalgia, repeating SONY's PS Classic flop (though I think it's a great little piece of gear).

Why the hell does Costco do this anyway? They have a huge garage door to funnel people out single file? Seems pointless.

Wow, I've never even heard of the MoneverdiTV Sports system. And I call myself a retro gamer. Shame...Shame... It looks like it only plays the few games up top on that panel. Did it have any cartridges or was it just those?