jmetal88

Oh, I can't find a 16-bit version of AOL 4.0. Guess there's absolutely no way to use AOL from Windows 3.1 now, haha.

Aw man, they've already disabled 2.5 from connecting now. It was just at the end of last year when I tried it and it was still working. Wonder if they've gotten 3.0 yet? I'm gonna check again. EDIT: AOL 3.0 is also being denied a connection. Since 4.0 is apparently supposed to be good until June 30th, according to that video, I'm gonna try it now. I guess it should work unless they're shutting them all off early now.

The earliest versions of AOL I've been able to test (yeah, I actually went back tried a bunch of them out of curiosity not long ago) were 1.5 and 2.5 (both for Windows). 1.5 is so old the AOL service won't actually allow it to connect, so I doubt any of the DOS versions would work, either. 2.5 actually connected when I had it set up in a virtual machine, but most everything was useless except the web browser (which was nearly useless itself because it was so old) and the Buddy List display. I was not able to verify whether AIM would have actually worked had I attempted to message anyone with it, but it definitely did display my Buddy List. It did display the home screen and I think it attempted to load the weather or something, but everything I tried to do in AOL's own interface was pretty broken.

Yep, I've got the direct order versions of both the Jazz Jackrabbit and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 CD-ROMs. First video games I ever actually ordered as opposed to just sticking with the shareware copies or waiting until the dollar store got clearance copies. Also got the Epic Pinball CD at the same time and the Epic Classics release of Jill of the Jungle with all three episodes on one floppy. My avatar is actually part of an 'in-joke' from the GP32x forums. A prominent member (Craigix, IIRC, who is one of the major people behind the Open Pandora system), had that still from Ed Wood as his avatar. Then later on, someone down the road spliced a different head over the top of Johnny Depp's and used it as their own avatar. Eventually, it got so a good portion of the forum was doing that, all with different faces over the top of Depp's. So I eventually scanned in the cover of my Jazz Jackrabbit manual and cut around Jazz's head to splice it over the top of the Ed Wood still myself.

I grew up in the 486 era, and have a particular soft spot for the kinds of side-scrolling platform games released for the PC in the early 1990s. I do indulge in some earlier PC usage as well, though, since my first computer was a turbo XT clone and my second was a 286 laptop. The earliest PC-compatible I have (or should I say, DOS-compatible since it isn't fully PC-compatible) right now is my IBM PCjr, and it's pretty fun to mess with, especially when I can find software that takes advantage of its special 16-color mode (which is the one that inspired Tandy graphics, by the way).

I'll have to check sometime. I have Ms. Pac-Man for the Genesis, but haven't spent much time with it.

Over all, the Dreamcast is probably my favorite, although there are a couple of SNES games I like a bit better than most of my Dreamcast games.

I might be interested in it, but I have no idea how much to offer. $5? Is that reasonable for something like this? It's not really something I'd have to have, but it might be neat to mess with.

SDTV should be no problem for light guns. If it was an HDTV CRT, it wouldn't work because there'd be too much delay from upscaling the picture.

I really need something like this. I don't play my Lynx that much due to the poor quality of the LCD and the fact that I have a stuck pixel. I'll send you a PM to ask about it.

Yeah, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was a Windows 95/98 game. I thought it was funny that they abandoned the 3D bonus stages that they were so proud of in the first game, though.

Jazz Jackrabbit was my number 1 game when I was a kid. I used the shareware version off a floppy disk for a long time, and then I got the CD-ROM version after Jazz Jackrabbit 2 came out (I actually bought both at the same time, along with Epic Pinball and a sweet Jazz Jackrabbit t-shirt which has long since fallen apart). Another game I really liked was Overkill.

I have a Diamond Opti-929 based sound card in my current AMD K6-II build. It's technically a Windows Sound System card, but it has a Sound Blaster Pro compatibility mode. Now, I don't have a real Sound Blaster Pro to compare it to (although I'd very much like to get one) but I've noticed that its digital audio output sounds lower in pitch (in DOS games at least, haven't tested much else) than the pitch output by a couple of early Pentium laptops I have with ESS Audiodrive chipsets. Since neither device is an actual Sound Blaster, I have no idea which one to believe. Since the two Audiodrives are the same pitch, though, I guess I'd believe them more readily, currently. Again, I wish I had a real Sound Blaster in my K6-II build.

I've heard that the mod will work on early CoCo 2s, which are essentially upgraded CoCo 1s, but it's a no-go on the later CoCo 2s. I tried that mod on my own CoCo 2, and got no usable output.

I need to take a trip home and see if my parents' old 486 motherboard still exists anywhere. Their processor was a DX4, either 100 MHz or 133MHz, don't remember which. I've actually got the RAM from that board in my possession, as I took it out and used it in one of my own systems for a while. I'm pretty sure the CPU still exists back home (I took it off the motherboard at the same time as the RAM and never did anything with it), but it's been loose for a while so I don't know if it's still in good shape.

My PVM (14M4U) actually has a menu adjustment that drives the electron guns differently to simulate different types of phosphors.

No, a 6-Pin DIN is much larger than a 6-pin mini DIN. And yes, 6-pin mini DIN is a PS/2 port.

That might be the same 4-track recorder that my dad has. Pretty sure it's a Tascam.

I do the same thing, but with an early Pentium. What's funny is I have two laptops from this time period, and the older, slower one doesn't work for this purpose. The one that does work, if anyone's wondering, is a Compaq LTE 5300. Really anything from the LTE 5000 series would work, I guess. I'll also specify that this is with the cheapest/easiest X1541 cable. The one that doesn't work is a Toshiba Satellite 400CDT.

I don't think I have any photos of my first computer, and my parents got rid of it when I was in the 3rd grade.

I hope they don't go out of business because, even though their selection kinda sucks and they're really expensive, they're the only store in town I can go to to get electronic parts and components of any kind if I need them in a hurry.

I've ordered from Collector's Cards and Games several times and never had a problem. I never used the online order form, though, I always sent him a plain e-mail asking about something he had listed. Last thing I ordered from him was a lime-green Game Boy Color and a broken GBA SP, and he went out of his way to find a GBA SP suitable for my purposes. I'd highly recommend him.

I did, but they seem to have wound up deleted. I still have the second prototype that I'd been working on here, but it's kind of hacked up and has jumper wires soldered on from where I was trying to find the best way to solve a couple of problems with it. If I remember about it, I'll dig it out and take a new picture of it later.

I am, actually, but the project 'belongs' to another individual. I'm aiming to make it a little more impressive than the one in that eBay link, hopefully. EDIT: Actually work stalled on it for a while due to school, my job, and personal circumstances (following my delivery of the first prototype), but I'll be attempting some major revisions to the design this next week that will hopefully work out well.

Network linking is the big 'addition' on that board, but I guess how desperate you are for that capability will determine whether you are willing to pay that much for it.