Most liked posts in thread: What's new Pussycat too?

There is no place whatsoever for blatant sex, relationship drama or parading of sexual orientation in sci-fi and fantasy, period. It ruins it all, just like it ruined the more recent BattleStar Galactica series. Eluding too, sex and romance, like between Leia and Han in Star Wars, or like it Lord of the Rings is great, and needed, but the rest just ruins the rest of it. And then you start throwing overt (current day) political and PC stuff in too. Again, keep it vague and along the lines of ideals, not true current politics. Obviously my favorite series of all time, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is full of government and politics, but distant fantastical ones that may vaguely resemble something can ponder or learn by. But then the entire series shows the entire gambit of politics and government and slaps both good and bad of each across both of your cheeks.

 

classic scene to a classic movie...I'll have to give it another watch. I've seen the film 2-4 times in my life I would guess, but I'm sure it's been 20 years since I saw it last. I want Royal with cheese, like you Brits get, instead of the Quarter Pounder with cheese.

 

We are the quarter pounder here as well Matt, mainland Europe gets the Royal

 

Blimey Richie, is any console safe from you

Good luck to you my friend, keep enjoying the old stuff, it needs the loving..

Paul..

 

Yeah Matt, my Stereo POKEY is an old school DIY one using MYTEK’s design minus the Transkey element. I preferred that and I can always pop it back into my 7800 cart but with all the will in the world Ballblazer on the 65XE is better so I don’t think I’ll do that any time soon.
The chip shortage is impacting a lot of projects isn’t it.

 

One of my best buys of the last couple of years peripherals wise was the SID-FX board. It’s fitted in my C128 and currently have two 6581 SID’s fitted. You can mix between 6581’s and 8580’s and the board auto adjusts the voltages. The Game of Thrones theme tune in stereo is quite impressive. The ARMSID is an excellent replacement for the SID much like the POKEYMAX. All these projects are suffering from chip shortages.
I also forgot I bought a Raspberry Pi Pico W last week as well for my microcontroller MicroPython practice.

 

Nice mount Matt, like the portrait/horizontal option.

Nothing new here, in fact I've actually sold off a couple of machines and am probably down to the smallest collection that I've had in a long time. Decided that PC emulation will do for the majority of systems as I only tend to play a couple of titles on most of them. Let's call it "curated" now lol.

 

On a birthday related note, I found a couple more Rush albums at good prices, hopefully the last one will arrive by the 12th of August, but one arrived already (Clockwork Angels). One used in great shape and one new, just like the first two albums.



Though I already have 3 of the 4 Rush albums in-hand, I have not listened to any of them yet. I'm saving them for a personal birthday "concert."

 

On an Atari related note, I finally got around to painting and installing a 3D printed thumbstick replacement (upgrade) for one of my Jaguar controllers and I love it, so of course my other controllers will be getting the same upgrade. It's still the digital pad underneath, but uses a modern styled thumbstick and is tight and responsive with a good feel and "throw" to it. I tried Raiden and Tempest 2000 with it and was sold! I never had issue with the original thumbpads, but I do have a bunch of more modern systems I'm used to now that have them, and even my 7800 pad controller has a thumbstick and feels much better than without. I'll be adding it and a rapid fire mod to my 3-button original Jag controller for my Jag shoot-em-ups(as none need the extra buttons of the pro-controller anyway).

 

Got a Fat PS2 with a HDD, I think I'll leave it as that as I don't use it very often, and I have a set of titles on it that I feel is complete for my liking..

Personally I'd leave the Gotek in there, unless there's any compatibility issues I'd stick with digital media, storage is easier, and you don't have issues finding real floppies at a reasonable price. But hey, everyone is different..

 

The PS2 is one of my favourite consoles, and the majority of games are still very cheap on it. Think I have around 100 original titles. Plenty of racing games and retro compilations

The idea with 'restoring' the ST is that right now I haven't used it in well over a year (the A500 Mini in comparison gets played at least once a week). I'm going to dig through all my old floppy disks and see what I have before deciding on the next step. A lot of the time I think it is the actual menu disks that bring back memories instead of playing the games themselves! Also got a 9pin to USB mouse adaptor to try at some point.

 

Do you have a McBoot memory card Al ? It lets you use PAL or NTSC DVD-R discs. Makes retro gaming a bit easier. I have about 50 original games but I wanted to play some of the games released in Japan or the USA. I have created a Japanese account on my Nintendo Switch to do the same thing.
I used to like the Japanese 2D stuff on the Saturn with the 4MB memory cartridge back in the day.

 

You and LED's Matt

Nope, what did you use for the tips?

I actually owned that EQ, I'm 99% sure it was that exact model..It didn't match the mat black gear but what the hell..It did the job..

 

I'm sure it was that one, the part number and the designs on the top just triggered my memory...

Lol re the fuse ends, very clever use..

In truth, I'd never call myself an audiophile, because I was in the electronics trade I became known by the local hi fi centres as a parts place, just the basic stuff like caps, solder, scart plugs etc, we didn't keep custom IC's (bloody things were the bane of our life. We would get people from Nigeria etc coming in with huge parts lists from TV's hi fi etc, pretty much all of which we did not supply or could not. You would then be badgered for 20 mins by the guy demanding you get them for his because he had come especially to Maplin all the way from Lagos, which of course was rubbish as he went to every shop he could find with the same spiel.

But I digress, because I got matey with the hi fi places I'd get a generous discount and genuine help with making choices ie not trying to get me to buy old stock they could not shift. Got some good deals and made some good mates..

Amazing what a little bit of back and forth dealing can get.

The only thing I didn't get that I wanted was a Technics turntable (forget the go to model number), the prices were horrendous even with something off and even though I had the money I could not justify it to myself..

 

I have my own 5.1 cheapy system but I also got Bob's old stuff and he was always going on about the Arcam amp he had, he said he got it to replace the Quad he had (I'd heard of Quad, all good things)

Also got his multi CD player, his DAT & CD Sony and a Pioneer CD player..

He loved his audio gear..

 

The big speakers are the best part. Sound quality is so much fuller and rich from them than the (average) small speaker surround systems of today.

 

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TO YOU TOO, MATT!! Sorry for shouting... memo to oneself... turn the bloody CAPS LOCK off Baz.... darn, did it again! ;-)

 

I do indeed mate. Lovely little bit of kit. I just got the MC 2 SIO adaptor which fits in the memory card slot and takes a microSD card. Runs games buttery smooth and well worth the 20 quid or so it cost. It means I no longer have to faff about with putting images on to hard drive via the PS2 network card.

 

The Caress of Steel CD arrived today. So below is my complete audio/video collection of Rush on-hand so far, with 6 more on the way...

The three at the bottom are Laserdisc, DVD&CD and Blu-ray material. The rest are studio albums or live albums. Caress of Steel, 2112 and Clockwork Angels I have on both CD and LP.

 

Great sound, great artwork and some great purchases there, Matt.

Great job, mate.

Also getting into my 80s music too at the mo so can well appreciate how much this collection means to you.

 

No disrespect, metal was never my thing, but I'm happy to see someone get some goodies

 

If you made it through all of that Paul, and you have changed your mind about Rush not being "your cup of tea," well that was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Rush. I don't want to throw you off the iceberg into the deep quite yet, but just hang your feet over side into the waters.

Maybe you happen to recall the movie Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn? In that movie when Kirk goes down to the planetoid to recover the Genesis device and encounters his old flame and meets his son, his old flame says something to the effect of "Let me show you something that will make you feel young, as when the world was young."

Well, this Rush song will make you feel young, as when rock was young. But also make you realize that up to that point, you have never truly heard what rock music could be, what rock music should be. Not just musical noise with a beat, but a rock and roll masterpiece that in the generations and centuries to come, like classical symphonies, ballads and chamber music, will stand the test of time and be considered a great musical masterpiece in the same light as the great composers of ages past. This is the epitome of a rock symphony...This is still just the beginning...



Maybe I should have started you on this one before the more main-stream Rush songs, even if they are light-years above most main-stream rock.

 

A few of their songs I guess might feel a bit like Supertramp, another band I do like, I just never gave it much thought. But we'd have to check the time-line between songs to know for sure if one might have inspired the other.
I'll make you a Rush fan yet...well, you will really decide for yourself you are one, I'm sure, after you've heard these songs through... But just to make sure you know after one song that Rush only sounds like Rush, for the most part, besides maybe a few beats or riffs, may I suggest when you get back to it, to listen to the song in the second post first (it's 10 min. but I guarantee you will enjoy it and wish the song (instrumental) was longer...La Villa Strangiato

 

LOL! That's ironically hilarious and pitiful at the same time, in my case anyway; I just purchased a RUSH live album on Laserdisc called Chronicles. And just before I came to check the forum sites I started unpacking my VHS and S-VHS tapes and putting them away in a nice antique artist's supply cabinet! Along with those other high-tech media discs I have including my Laserdisc collection and my CED vinyl movie collection! Last week I got my VHS, S-VHS, Laserdisc and CED players connected to my 70's JVC component stereo system.

I'm just old school all around and proud of it! But I keep up with them times some what. I have those new fangled VCD/DVD/Blu-ray players and game consoles from the 70's through 2010's all hanging around my stereo system too.

You say I should move on to streaming? I don't have a boat...

Or, wait a minute...was that a jab at me due to my "new" Rush Laserdisc I posted on here a week or two ago? I like jabs where I am referred to as a "kid."

 

Sounds like the job will mainly be removing and replacing removed screws to open the DVD/VHS and get the disc. As long as you can pull the disc out easily, that should be all it takes to get her running again. I also have a DVD/VHS combo still. Though I have a Blu-ray that can play DVD's and an S-VHS that can play standard VHS, i keep it around for one reason; the old DVD player in that unit can play my VCD movie discs and my new Blu-ray does not support VCD's anymore. I have a Panasonic DVD that will play VCD's, but it's laser went out and it won't read any discs now. So I pulled out the old DVD/VHS combo.

I'll take a few pics and post them here this weekend, focusing on my old media players and consoles and the media itself too. I had to sacrifice my second tape component to my JVC to make room for these other devices. But I wasn't using it any more as I don't dub tapes anymore, I just record other media to cassette tapes, so I only need one cassette deck now.

It's just a bit saddening because the two cassette decks together made a world-class dubbing system for tapes, but there is just no sense in making copies of tapes when there are a bunch of other media sources that are superior and will create a superior tape copy. No more making mix tapes from cassettes. Just mix tapes from every other superior type of music media!

I have a future project in mind for my old cassette tape collection, in fact. I'm going to invest in a bunch of superior high-bias metal tapes, open up all my old cassette music collection, remove their old worn tapes, install the new metal tapes in the cassette cases and then record the original music back onto them, but with new remastered source material and all those old cassettes will sound even better with higher fidelity than the original normal bias tapes were when new!

I also removed my second turntable and another VHS I had since I moved in the combo machine. I only had that VHS set-up because my S-VHS player needs to be fixed. But now I have the combo player for that too. The S-VHS is just a matter getting up the nerve as it was a broken gear that I fixed, but I'm having trouble getting all the little mechanical bits and bobs that load and eject the tape to synchronize so it can load and eject! Maybe I'll make that adventure this weekend myself.