>>22666
Would you buy one of these?

>>22667

I thought I was clear I wouldn't buy a mouse bungee so I also wouldn't buy an infrared finger blaster either.

I did spend £130 on a keyboard mind. But that's more for pleasurable britfa typing than gaming performance.

>>22667
For those days when you really can't afford the gas bill but absolutely must play Battle of Honour: Black Warfare 6 Season 3.

>>22667
That is madness. I guess it might dry up the spills a bit quicker.

>>22669>>22670

I bet the idea is that the heat loosens up your fingers for more dexterous gaming or similar bollocks, rather than just being for comfort.

Having said that I used to rent a workshop space that was freezing and expensive to heat, so I might well have appreciated a desktop hand warmer then. I doubt very much that's what it's designed for, though.

>>22667

Not him, but I immediately Googled it to see where I could buy one. Sadly it's a bullshit Kickstarter, but it has given me a few ideas. I've ordered one of the heat mats people use for keeping reptiles to go under my mouse mat.

>>22671

Warm hands really do make a huge difference in terms of speed and preventing injury. Everyone knows that your hands get really stiff when they're freezing cold, but the same applies to a lesser degree at normal British room temperature.

>>22672

There's one version that's shipping next month if you're really keen on it.
https://envavo.com/

>>22655
>It's gonna take me a while to get used to the 50Hz refresh rate of the CRT - I've been spoilt by good LCDs for too long.

That's PAL games only, presumably? The Xbox should switch automatically and there may be a way to force 60Hz. The TV is of the right age to support both 50 and 60Hz.

Lads, I cannot for the life of me get connected ad-hoc to ethernet. I have it set to static IP, likewise with my laptop. I've used (what I believe to be) xover cables as well as standard patch cables, but the xbox always reports 0.0.0.0 as its IP. Any guesses?

>>22674
It's an el cheapo "Goodmans" TV, so I'll see if I can play an NTSC or PAL60 game but I wouldn't keep my hopes up.

Does it look better on the CRT, or you don't have an LCD (or one with suitable connections) ?

>>22675
Okay, it works fine on the standard xbox dash, just the mod dash doesn't want to play. Hm.

>>22676
The only LCD screens I have have digital-only connections. That said, there is something nostalgic about that 15KHz whine of a CRT.

>>22678
And we're in. No idea what changed. Downloading an NTSC version of Crazy Taxi 3 right now.

>>22680
Either the TV or the Xbox seem to be resampling to 50Hz. Ah well, I'll get used to it. I have a 200GB IDE hard drive, but no way of interfacing to it with any of the PC hardware I have. I'll have to get a USB/IDE adapter.

Sage for blogging.

>>22679
As I get older, I have found that I suffer from very mild tinnitus - it is exactly that whine. From time to time I often wonder if there is a misfiring VGA somewhere in the house and then remember.

>>22675
Did you assign an IP to it?
Static IP implies you should, unless I misread you.

>>22692
And you're plugging it into the PC?

>>22692
>>22693

It started working with no explanation. >>22680

Hard drive upgraded. Now, just to find all these games. The one working download I found for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X is hosted on a site that has a 25KB/s cap unless you pay them.

I also have the cheapest controller I could possibly find, and I think the analogue sticks aren't very.... analogue. I have two original big boy controllers in my parents' cellar somewhere, I'll have to dig them out next time I'm home.

Christ, pirating games is a lot harder than it used to be. I can barely find anything with any seeders or working links.

>>22696
I know right.

Kids nowadays don't even know what these are for.

Sageru for OAP.

>>22697
At around 112kb capacity you'd need about... the first thing that came up when I googled "most popular PC game right now" was Destiny 2 and their website says the minimum hard drive requirements are 68GB so... 607,143 cassette tapes to play.

>>22698
Destiny 2 has enough loading screens as it is - do not want.

>>22698
Sod's law you'll get a tape loading error halfway through side B of cassette 607142.

>>22700
I know that feeling.

When I was 13, this was the worst thing that could ever happen.

Simpler times.

>>22701

That and buying a game and waiting over 15 minutes for it load up, only for it to stop loading, and you're staring awkwardly at the loading screen.

Frostbyte for the CPC 464 was a classic example :'(

>>22701

It was a handmedown and was older than I was at the time, but the C64 I had as a lad brought me joy and despair in equal measure.

I'm not even joking when I say I think it's what taught me a lot of life's hard lessons - the concept that sometimes, things just don't go your way. Sometimes you don't get what you want. I think if I'd never had to fuck about with Dizzy on a 15 year old cassette, and had gone straight to the flawless luxury of the PlayStation and CDs, I'd have been a much less resilient person.

Forced it into PAL60 mode (which the TV actually supports, to my surprise) - christ it's so much better, I don't get a brutal headache as I do with 50Hz. Halo really doesn't like being forced into 30FPS though, I get audio issues.

OutRun 2 is loads of fun. I've also got Jet Set Radio Future, Conker Live and Reloaded, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X (which also has audio issues) and am currently downloading GTA San Andreas (which I have the PC version of, but I'm just getting it for the CRT nostalgia), The Wrath of Cortex, and Beyond Good and Evil.

I'm also looking for a light gun at not-ridiculous prices.

>>22701

Fuck. I can't stop playing OutRun 2006. It's got that perfectly balanced arcade thing of being mere seconds short of getting to the next stage that just makes you want to keep playing and playing and playing.

GTA: San Andreas' control scheme absolutely destroys the PS2 one.
SSX 3 is loads of fun.

>>22705
Yes yes we've all seen it.

>>22703
>flawless luxury of the PlayStation and CDs
What?

>>22707

>What?

Which part don't you understand?

>>22707
>>22708
I think he means that CDs were fraught with their own issues - scratching, poor laser units on earlier model PlayStations, etc.

>>22709

I feared that's what he meant. I had thought my hyperbole was obvious enough.

>>22710
So when you said "I'm not even joking", you were, in fact, joking?

I remember when I was rescued from a desert island after being stranded there eating raw crabs for over a week. The luxury of eating a pot noodle in my grotty bedsit was actually not that great compared to various foods that had not yet been invented I thought to myself.

>>22712
U wot m8?

>>22711

Hyperbole doesn't mean 'joking'. For fucks sake, what's happening to this site?

At least >>22712 gets it.

>>22714
>Hyperbole doesn't mean 'joking'.
OK, so then why were you using hyperbole?

>>22715

To highlight the contrast in reliability between the tape loaded C64 and the CD based PlayStation, and to elevate my writing beyond stating bland facts.

If you'd like a dull cunt version of my post, here it is:

I had a C64 and the tapes didn't always load for it. I got a PlayStation later on, and that had CDs which loaded successfully more often. If I hadn't had the C64 I might not have appreciated that as much.

Hooked it up to a projector for a setup I could only dream of as a wee'un.

>>22719
The list of teenage "wow" moments I do at least once a week now is what keeps me content in life. I never had access to a shower until I moved out of my parents some 13 years ago, so baths are just for fun now and that has never worn off. I have an entire cabinet of bath related smelly stuff and salts to mess about with (and a boat, obviously). I can walk about bollock naked, have my PC riggged up to the TV in the living room and my wife doesn't care either because she appreciates the same simple freedoms.

It's not much compared to what some have, but I think keeping that teenage ability to marvel at things that adults can just do because we have the cash is what keeps you humble.

>>22720
For me it's comics. When I was a kid a comic was a treat, a small one but a treat nonetheless. You had to at least be good for half an hour first while you went around the supermarket with your mum. Now I can just sit in bed reading years and years of Spider-Man in one go on my tablet whenever I have a couple of days off. There's a part of me that still wants to pinch myself even as a 30 year old man.

>>22723

For me it's online chess. I used to dream of the day when I'd be old enough to get the bus into town and play against good players every week. By the time I was old enough I had very much lost interest in chess, but now I'm a boring old man and I can play blitz against strong players at any hour of the day or night on my phone. If you'd told the nine-year-old me that one day it would be possible to watch lectures by grandmasters or play in chess tournaments on a little glowing slab, he would have been delirious with excitement.

Also YouTube in general - it's now possible to curate your own nerdy TV channel that's full of fascinating weirdos. TV is a lot stupider and more facile than it used to be, but it almost doesn't matter.

>>22724
Have you played Dennis Bell of Torquay?

Not quite the same but I've been spending too much time and money in B&Q lately; it feels like being a kid in Toys R Us.

>>22723
>>22724
>>22726

For me it's Darknet drugs and prostitutes that get delivered in Ubers. Now this is a future I can get behind IYKWIM .

Bumping this thread because as an original Xbox owner (albeit in storage >>22651) I have just discovered this important urgent news: remove the clock capacitor to stop your console from being destroyed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/originalxbox/comments/4c60th/reminder_if_you_own_an_original_xbox_remove_the/

>>23386
Somehow mine survived that cap leaking, so it's not fatal in 100% of cases. But yeah, definitely worth doing.

>>23386

Electrolytic capacitors and RTC batteries are a hazard on any old hardware, but particularly anything manufactured between 1999 and 2007. If you're a collector or enthusiast, pre-emptive replacement of these parts is a smart move.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague