Category Archives: Computers/Tech/Games

Arcades/Arcade Games, Computers/Tech/Games, Main

My Retro is Retro!

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People occasionally ask me how long I’ve been into “retro” gaming and I never have a good answer for them because I’ve been playing a lot of these retro games since before they were retro. Here’s an interesting thing I ran across today that reminded me of that fact.

I was interviewed for an article titled “Classic Video Games Make Comeback” by a reported from the Associated Press. The interview took place over the phone and a day or two after that, they sent a photographer out to the house to take pictures of me with some of my gaming collection. The article was picked up by most national newspapers and websites.

That happened twenty years ago, in the summer of 2004. Twenty years ago, classic video games were “making a comeback,” and I was considered to be enough of a subject matter expert on the topic that someone reached out to interview me. One of the funny things about that article is that the then-modern consoles being discussed, like Nintendo’s Gameboy Advance, are considered to be retro systems today. There’s a bit in the article about how Nintendo is cashing in on the retro crazy by re-releasing updated version of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, again back in 2004. Since then, Nintendo has released multiple Mario games, including Super Mario Bros. U in 2012 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2023. To put the date of that AP article in perspective, it was published two years before Nintendo released the Wii.

Here’s a link to that article, if you want to read it: Classic Video Games Make Comeback (CBSNews.com)

On a recent episode of my podcast Sprite Castle I covered Congo Bongo for the Commodore 64. Congo Bongo is a super old and retro game — nobody would argue that. It was released by Sega in arcades back in 1983 as a pseudo-3D (“isometric”) competitor to Donkey Kong, and found its way to home consoles and computers later that same year. But the thing is, I remember playing it when it was a new release in arcades, and I have a copy of the cartridge for the Commodore 64 that I got from someone (Jeff, probably) back in the mid-80s. So, yeah — I play retro games, but I played those same games when they were new.

Anyway. That interview I did for the AP was a neat experience. I had friends in New Jersey and family in Chicago all see the article. The one newspaper it didn’t seem to run in was ours here in Oklahoma — go figure. Although a lot of people already knew my name, that article helped me get writing gigs at a few magazines and helped me make a few other connections. Not bad for playing and being willing to talk about video games — games that didn’t seem to be that old to me then, or now, twenty years later.

Computers/Tech/Games, Hacking / Security, Main

The Case of the Changing Blog

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I rarely re-read or revisit old blog posts on this site. Generally speaking I write them, give them a quick once over, and send them on their way. The only time I look up old posts is to either verify a date or find a link to send to someone. That’s what I was doing over the weekend when I dug up a blog post from four years ago and was surprised to find spam links embedded throughout the post — links I did not put there. The game, as they say, was afoot.

Discovering your website’s been hacked in this fashion isn’t like coming home from work and discovering that someone has kicked in your front door. It’s like coming home fro mwork, unlocking your front door, setting down your stuff, fixing a drink, sitting down in the living room… and then realizing your television is missing. And quite often it’s like realizing that the television in that back bedroom you only go into once a month is missing. At least when someone kicks in your front door, you know how they got in.

Last week through WordPress I was notified that one of the plugins I use was got hacked. I don’t mean someone used a vulnerability associated with one of my plugins to hack my website. Apparently someone hacked multiple WordPress plugins at their source, which then got pushed out to everyone who was using those plugins. This is one of those cases where doing the right thing and enabling auto updates bit me.

My initial hunch, that someone had snuck those spammy links in directly into my posts, was incorrect. When I tried editing one of the infected posts, turned out to be wrong. When I attempted to edit the offending posts, the spam links were nowhere to be found. Instead, they were somehow being injected on the fly when each post was being generated. I ultimately found a bunch of encrypted code hiding inside my functions.php file that seemed to be doing the dirty work.

I still haven’t put all the pieces together, but best I can tell here’s what happened.

– POWERPRESS PODCASTING PLUGIN BY BLUBERRY: Last week I received a notification from WordPress that this plugin (also known as “PowerPress”) had been compromised. (The plugin has since been updated.)

– HEAD, FOOTER, AND POST INJECTION PLUGIN: Head, Foorter, and Post Injection Plugin: I don’t know if this is related, but around the same time this plugin appeared on all my WordPress sites and was enabled. I only noticed it because it broke the header of most of my WordPress sites. In the “post injection” portion of the plugin was a bunch of encrypted code. That seems sus. (The plugin has since been removed.)

– ADMIN ACCOUNTS CREATED: I discovered four new admin accounts on all my WordPress sites. All of them had randomly generated names that were eight characters long and email domains of example.com. (Accounts were all removed.)

– MORE SUSPICIOUS PLUGINS DISCOVERED: Discovered the existence of two more plugins, “Code Functionality” and another with just the name of my domain (“RobOHara.com”) that were new. One linked back to my functions.php file which had been compromised and contained a very large section of hex-obfuscated code. Removed all the offending code.

I think that’s everything I found. Because my old WordPress theme was out of date and no longer being supported, I’ve changed to a new one. I don’t love the new one and I’m sure I’ll be tweaking it a bit, but it’s modern and up to date, so there’s that. I’ve also installed a couple of WordPress plugins that scan for code changes so I won’t be caught quite so blind-sided next time.

EDIT:

I found someone else, Terence Eden on Mastodon, who experienced the exact same hack. One of the remediations he suggested was grepping all the PHP files on your site for the IP address of the attacker. Here was the exact command he suggested:

grep -r –include=”*.php” “94\.156\.79”

Leveraging that, I found multiple other malicious plugins that had been installed on my websites, including:

/wp-content/plugins/custom-mail-smtp-checker/custom-mail-smtp-checker.php
/wp-content/plugins/informative/testplugingodlike.php

Between removing those, the original ones, and removing all the newly created admin accounts, I think (hope) I have this one squashed.

Computers/Tech/Games, Main

Breathing New Life into an Old Laptop with ChromeOS Flex

I have a hard time parting with old laptops, especially when there’s nothing wrong with them other than the fact that Microsoft Windows has expanded past their capabilities. The typical response you’ll get from nerds like me when this happens is “install Linux on it,” which is not a one-size-fits-all solution and, at a minimum, requires familiarizing oneself with a completely new and often confusing operating system.

Recently I found another solution: Installing ChromeOS Flex.

ChromeOS is an operating system developed by Google that runs on Chromebooks. It is a very lightweight operating system that relies heavily on having access to the internet. Last year, Google created ChromeOS Flex, a variation of ChromeOS designed to run on traditional x86 PCs.

I won’t bury the headline; both ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex were designed with Google products in mind, and you’ll need a Gmail account to even log in to the machine. If you are anti-Google or are already trying to imagine ways to circumvent those limitations, ChromeOS is probably not the solution you’re looking for. ChromeOS Flex was not designed with tinkerers in mind. Instead, it is a very thin operating system designed to give users access to the internet.

I currently own an Asus laptop that I purchased back in 2013. It has a third generation i7 2.2GHz processor which ran Windows 7 stunningly, did okay with Windows 10 for a while, and has no chance of running Windows 11. It’s old enough that I replaced it about five years ago, and replaced the replacement earlier this year. The Asus was relegated to a shelf in the garage. It’s too slow to keep up with windows, and works too well for me to throw it away.

Last weekend I decided to give ChromeOS Flex a go and see if it could turn my abandoned Asus into a usable machine again. ChromeOS Flex is free to download and comes in a .IMG file that must be extracted onto a USB memory stick. Once a machine is booted from the memory stick, users have the option to test drive the operating system and run it from the USB stick without altering the machine’s hard drive (just like a Linux Live Distro), or fully commit and install ChromeOS Flex as the primary operating system, wiping out the computer’s hard drive in the process. My Asus laptop hadn’t been turned on for months, so I had little to lose by going all in.

The full installation took about ten minutes and the end result was an operating system with… not much to see. After logging in with my Gmail account I was presented with a toolbar with links to Gmail, Google Chrome, Google Docs, YouTube, and a couple of other links I immediately deleted (Google Messenger). There’s a button that links to any local music and video files you may download, and a settings area that allows you to tweak things to your liking. ChromeOS Flex feels like a combination of Windows, Macs, Linux, and my iPhone all mashed together. Options were just kind of where I imagined they would be, and I was able to find everything I was looking for without much stumbling.

Without the ability to install apps except for what’s available in the Google Chrome Store, I felt a little lost. What could I do with this computer? And then I realized… just about everything I do. Anything you do in your browser can be done on a Chromebook. You can watch YouTube videos, surf the web, or do anything else you do in a browser. With the Drive app you can write documents using Google Docs, work with spreadsheets with Google Sheets, and create slideshows with Google Slides. All of those documents will be saved in your Google Drive, which means you can access them from any computer using your Gmail account. Things like Spotify and Plex, which I typically access through an app, can just as easily be accessed through a browser.

I’m no expert on games in the Google store, although there certainly seem to be a lot of them. Modern off the shelf games are not going to work with ChromeOS Flex. It does have the ability to install a virtual Linux machine and sideload games and apps… but again, if that’s important to you, why not just go with Linux?

One nice thing about ChromeOS is that updates install very quickly and, to my knowledge, there have been no viruses that target ChromeOS/Flex. All that nonsense with drivers and patches and upgrades and antivirus is immediately removed. ChromOS Flex is also a very light operating system. All the sluggishness I was previously experiencing on this computer before I retired it is gone. It takes about a minute for the computer to boot, and once you’re logged in everything is ready to go. Another benefit is that by design, you’ll be mostly working with files and things in the cloud. It’s less like a traditional computer fill of files and more like a phone or a tablet. If this laptop were to die tomorrow, I could install ChromeOS Flex on another machine (or simply buy a Chromebook) and nothing would be different. It’s more like replacing a phone than a computer.

I have read that running ChromeOS Flex has the ability to extend the battery life of a computer, and I’ve only been using it for a few days now, but that hasn’t been my experience so far. My recollection was that this Asus got about two hours of battery life, and with ChromeOS Flex installed I got somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 hours before it shut down.

There are times when I would like to go to the library or my workshop and use a computer, whether it’s to write or simply look stuff up, when shutting down and unhooking my main laptop simply isn’t worth the effort. For a spare, lightweight, mobile-friendly solution, I think ChromeOS Flex will fit the bill nicely.

Hacking / Security, Main

Kevin Mitnick (1963-2023)

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Earlier this week I was informed that Kevin Mitnick, the “world’s most infamous hacker,” had passed away. I was asked to sit on the news until the family had time to release a statement, but word travels fast and this morning it appeared on the front page of the New York Post.

For those who haven’t heard or read the story, back in the mid-2000s my wife, who was in charge of putting together a training class at work, hired Kevin Mitnick to travel to Oklahoma and teach a course on social engineering. Susan knew how into computers and security I was and had heard me mention Mitnick’s name many times. As you might imagine, getting permission to bring Kevin Mitnick and his friend and business partner Alex Kasper onto a federal campus took some string pulling, but Susan managed to pull it off. This would have been approximately six years after Mitnick had been released from federal prison on hacking charges, and only three since his probation barring him from using computers or electronic devices had been lifted. One stipulation from management was that Mitnick and Kasper would be accompanied at all times while they were on the campus, and it was almost embarrassing how quickly I volunteered for that job. For three days, I followed Kevin and Alex around like a shadow, something I probably would have done anyway. After hours, we took the two of them sight seeing, out for dinner, to a country and western bar (which I got tossed out of), and even spent time at a Waffle House at two in the morning.

As I mentioned in the blog post where I documented that week, I started the week excited about meeting Kevin Mitnick the celebrity, and ended up meeting Kevin Mitnick the person. Yes, I got his autograph and he gave me copies of his books (and I gave him copies of mine!), but the real fun happened after the ice had been broken and we were able to swap old stories about computers, networks, and phone systems.

I have always been interested in computer security, and a couple of years after Kevin’s class I changed jobs and moved to a security team where I spent a couple of years traveling the country and testing the networks of other government agencies. On one of those trips we discovered several employees had connected modems to their machines and were dialing into them remotely from home, circumventing the agency’s firewall and every other network security system that had been established. To find the machines I ended up in a hotel conference room late one night with four modems and phone lines connected to my laptop, wardialing the entire office looking for those modems. It felt like a scene right out of the 80s, so I took a picture of that crazy setup and sent it to Kevin. He got a real kick out of it.

Mitnick and I were not close friends, but we did remain in contact through social media. We talked about meeting up for coffee when Susan and I were in Vegas, but the timing didn’t work out. I always got a kick when he liked a picture I had posted on Facebook or Twitter, usually of an old computer or payphone.

Kevin Mitnick’s life had the potential to go a lot of different ways. Not everyone who emerges from federal prison is able to turn over a new leaf and go straight, but Kevin was one of them. He turned his passion for security into a career that has lasted nearly 20 years. For all the trouble he had with federal agencies over the years, I’m glad ours took a chance on him and helped launch his career in cybersecurity. Kevin Mitnick was an interesting, creative, funny, and dangerously smart individual. I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet him.

Apple II, Commodore 64, Computers/Tech/Games, Console Video Games, Games and Technology, Main, Photo Gallery

Boatfest 2023 Recap

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Last weekend I attended the second annual Boatfest gathering, which again took place in Hurricane, West Virginia. Despite its name, the event has nothing to do with boats — it’s a gathering of retrocomputing and retrogaming enthusiasts named after the organizer, John “Boat of Car” Shawler.

Boatfest is difficult to summarize because it’s different things to different people. Some people go to Boatfest to show off their vintage computers and gaming systems, while others go just to see them. It’s an event where old friends reconnect, and new friendships are made. There are tournaments, there are presentations, there are people repairing things, and this year there was even an auction. And the fun didn’t stop at the show, as the party moved to local restaurants each evening. At its core, Boatfest was simply fifty people meeting in a single location to have fun.

This year’s Boatfest took place in the Copper Room, an event space located above a Connolly’s, an Irish Pub… that recently went out of business. Fortunately, Boat was able to work a deal and maintain use of the space. The room was twice as large as last year’s space, with a capacity of approximately 50 people. A series of round tables were available for attendees to set up their vintage equipment. In the front of the room, couches and chairs faced a makeshift presentation area complete with cameras, microphones, and a projector screen. More tables, filled with items for the auction and things for sale, lined one of the walls. There was also a large chest-style refrigerator full of drinks, a restroom, and a kitchen area. With the addition of a few extension cords and power strips, the room was ready for business.

Several people associated with show are involved in podcasts, many of whom performed live shows in front of the attendees. Boat, the event’s organizer, is one of the hosts of the Amigos Podcast, a show about Amiga computers. Boat’s podcasting partner, Amigo Aaron, does another show with his brother, The Brent, called ARG Presents. Both of those shows did live performances, and I did one as well for Sprite Castle, covering the 1986 game Friday the 13th. There were also a couple of Jeopardy-style trivia challenges, but in between those events it was all about the gaming and checking out each other’s tables. My time was spent pretty evenly between demonstrating the things I brought, and checking out everyone else’s goods.

For my part, I brought two computers. First was an Apple IIe with a CFFA-3000 card installed that allows users to load games and programs via a USB stick. I also brought my old Commodore SX-64, which was a portable version of the Commodore 64 (complete with a 5″ color screen). Boatfest is a place where terms like “rare” are relative. Approximately 9,000 SX-64s were originally sold back in the mid 1980s. Of those, of course, many have since died. It’s a nearly 40-year-old computer that cost $1,000 in 1984 and was relatively obscure even when it was new… and there were four of them in the room.

There were so many neat systems on display that it would be impossible for me to list them all. One of my favorite displays was a working Video Toaster running on an Amiga 2000. The Video Toaster was a video editing suite that could be used for video production. It’s a legendary piece of equipment which I have heard about for decades but never actually saw in person. At Boatfest I was able to sit down in front of one, play with it for nearly an hour, and walk away with a DVD-R copy of the experience. All over the room people were having similar experiences, whether they had stumbled across some holy grail from their past or discovered something new for the first time.

Building off of last year’s swap table event, in 2023 Boatfest held an actual auction. Attendees were encouraged to bring items from home, set a reserve, and let ‘er rip. The Brent did a fine job of running the auction, and I had about a dozen entries for sale. I tried to keep things interesting by putting both some low and high dollar items up for sale. For example, I brought five 10-packs of NES cartridges that I listed for $1/game. On the other end of the spectrum, I decided to sell my NTSC Amiga CD32. It is a rare variant of a rare console that ended up selling for $475. The buyer was happy with the price and I was happy to pass it along to someone else to enjoy. I have such a hard time parting with things, and knowing they’re going to someone who will appreciate them as much as I did makes it a little easier. Some of the items in the auction sold much higher than I was expecting, while others went surprisingly low. I didn’t talk to every buyer and seller so I can only speak for myself when I say I thought everything with amazingly smooth and I was more than pleased with what my items sold for.

There was always something happening at Boatfest. In the front corner of the room, Frank and Jason from Retro Rewind were busy soldering on people’s broken machines, doing their part to keep these old computers operational. In the rear of the room, PacBilly and his brother had organized an Astro Duel Deluxe tournament, which had four people at a time shooting each other’s spaceships. There were two separate Jeopardy-style trivia contests that took place. I competed in the first and took second place with -100 points. On the second game, I knew like seven answers in a row — sometimes it’s the luck of the draw! But in addition to all these activities, conversations were happening non-stop, and everyone was always approachable. There were many times I found myself walking up to a conversation in progress and joining in — and, just as often, there were times I was talking to someone and suddenly three or four people had gathered around. There wasn’t a single person at the show who was stand-offish or negative.

At Boatfest 2022 attendees were on their own for meal arrangements, and even though it was never really a problem, each time I skipped out to grab sometime to eat I felt like I was missing part of the show. In 2023, this was rectified by shutting down the show each evening for 90 minutes and inviting everyone in attendance to a local restaurant. This worked out great for multiple reasons. Not only were attendees able to sit down and eat without worrying about missing any part of the show, but it was nice to get away from the noise for a bit and reset. Each night I ended up sitting by different people and had some great conversations. Plus, Hurricane, West Virginia has a surprisingly number of great restaurants!

Traditionally the Sunday after the show is spent visiting local locations and winding down. Unfortunately for my buddy Jeff and I, the beds in our rental RV weren’t as comfortable as we had hoped and so we made a command decision to hit the road back home Sunday morning. We took turns driving and made a few stops to stretch, but ended up driving all 990 miles back home on Sunday. It was a long day on the road, but sleeping in my own bed was 100% worth it.

Both Jeff and I had a blast at the show, and I haven’t heard that anyone didn’t have a great time. If there’s a Boatfest 2024, I’ll definitely be there… although probably not in an RV next year. ;)

My Boatfest 2023 Photo Gallery: LINK

Computers/Tech/Games, Games and Technology, Main

An Up-Down Experience at the Up-Down Arcade

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Last weekend my buddy Jeff and I visited Oklahoma City’s Up-Down Arcade. Up-Down is a barcade (21 to enter) with a full bar, a kitchen that sells pizza by the slice, and sixty(ish) arcade games. Jeff and I were hanging out in arcades together years before either of us were old enough to drive, and nearly 40 years later we’re still doing the same thing.

There are seven Up-Down Arcade locations; the other six are in Des Moines, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Nashville. This was my second time to visit our local Up-Down, and Jeff’s first. Up-Down has different specials every day of the week. Some days they offer discounts on beer and on others they offer discounts on tokens. Saturdays (the day we went) are two-for-one token days, which means a fiver will get you 40 tokens — more rounds of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong than most people want to play in a single visit.

As a guy who collected arcade games for many years, I’m pretty sensitive to the condition of games in places like this. Of all the games we played, 95% were in perfect working order. A few of the games we played had minor issues. The Tetris machine has a dim monitor, one of the triggers on Spy Hunter doesn’t work, and some of the controls on the Ivan Stewart 4×4 Off Road machine don’t work. The last time I went to the Up-Down Arcade was two years ago with my buddy Robb Sherwin, and all those same things were broken. That being said, I don’t recall any non-working machines on the floor. Along with the arcade games, Up-Down has eight pinball machines and all of them were in perfect working order as well — no easy feat.

During our visit, we bought a round of draft beers and two slices of pizza. Two beers were $17 ($20 with tip), and ordering two slices of pizza was a complete fiasco. Up-Down offers six different types of pizza by the slice. We ordered a slice of pepperoni and a slice of meat lover’s and were told they were out of both. The employee suggested we try the macaroni and cheese pizza; when we ordered two slices of that, we were told he only had one. Out of six different types of advertised pizza, they had a total of two slices available. The employee apologized for not having more pizza available, explaining “I’ve only been here for an hour and a half.” I must have looked really confused because then he added, “I’m sorry, I’m really stoned.”

A few minutes later while sitting at the bar, we saw the same stoned employee walk behind the bar and refill his beer from the tap. Can you say “dream job”?

Jeff and I had a great time playing pinball and hopping from game to game, trying our hand at Moon Patrol, Q*Bert, and Mortal Kombat, among others. I still have 30-40 tokens left over and I’m sure we’ll be going back again.

Next time, we’ll eat before we go.

Computers/Tech/Games, Main

When Expensive Things Become Worthless: My Sony DVD Burner

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Recently while digging through a pile of old electronics in my workshop I stumbled across this, my old Sony DVD/CD burner.

I began purchasing audio CDs in the early 90s, and bought completely into the format in 1993 when my car was broken into and all of my favorite cassettes were stolen. I never thought people would be able to burn CDs on their home computers; if such devices were ever produced, I reasoned, they would be much to expensive for the average person to afford. We got our first CD-ROM burner at work in 1995, a clunky external device with its own hard drive that burned CDs at 1x speed. Burning a CD with an hour’s worth of audio literally took an hour. It had a fairly high failure rate and blank CD-ROMs cost $10 each. I thought it was incredible. The hard drive that came with the computer I was using for my BBS held 212 MB, and a single CD could store 3x that amount. Simply amazing.

I purchased my first CD-ROM burner from Future Shop in 1996 while living in Spokane, Washington. It was a 2x model, meaning it burned CDs at twice the speed, and I paid $599 for it. The process was still fragile — simply opening an application or even opening a folder was sometimes enough to produce an unusable coaster, but over time things got faster, better, and cheaper. For many years it didn’t make financial sense to burn copies of audio CDs, but eventually it did. I used to drive around with a hundred CDs in my car at any given time; then I got a car stereo that would play mp3 files off of a burned CD. It was like having an entire radio station’s library with me in my car! (If only we knew!)

I got my first living room DVD player right around Y2K, and soon after that DVD drives began appearing in computers, followed by DVD burners. As it was with CD-ROMs, formats were always changing and speeds were constantly increasing. I paid $600 for my first DVD-ROM burner, which I left in my car overnight and was promptly stolen. I spent another $600 to replace it, and when that one died, I bought this one in 2006.

I believe this is the last DVD burner I consciously bought; after this, DVD drives were included by default in laptops and desktop computers. If I remember correctly, I purchased this particular model because it could burn both DVD-R and DVD+R discs, one of which worked with the Sony PlayStation and the other of which was compatible with Microsoft’s Xbox 360. It could burn both DVDs and CDs and even do RW (rewritable) discs. With a burn speed of 16x, it was a speed demon compared the the previous burners I had owned. I wanted to use the drive on multiple computers, which is why I picked an external USB model.

You may or may not be able to tell in the first picture that the unit’s front door is missing. It got jammed once, half-open and half-closed, and every time I turned the power on the plastic gears inside the unit would begin to strip. In an attempt to unbind the gears I dropped the drive onto my desk from about four-feet up. The front door broke and fell off, the drive began to work, and it worked ever since.

Except for ripping my own movies onto my home server, I haven’t used a DVD drive in years. For home media, DVDs were replaced by Blu-rays. On computers, optical media was replaced by smaller and faster storage mediums like USB sticks and SD cards. Today on Amazon you can get a 10-pack of 4GB USB sticks for $25, or a single 512GB stick for under $50.

You can also get an external USB Blu-ray burner for around $80, which I what I paid for mine last year. In case I ever need to burn a Blu-ray, DVD, or CD, I can do it with this drive. (Since purchasing it, I have burned exactly zero Blu-rays, DVDs, or CDs.) I still want the ability to be able to read and/or rip an old disc if I find one, so this will do all of that. It sits on a shelf disconnected, but ready for service if needed.

Which means, unfortunately, it’s time to put this Sony out to pasture. It’s hard not to see a stack of hundred dollar bills when I look at it, but the only thing it’s doing these days is collecting dust. Adios, old friend.

Computers/Tech/Games, Games and Technology, Main

Boatfest 2022

I met John “Boatofcar” Shawler online twenty years ago on the Digital Press forums. Although “Boat” is nearly a decade younger than I am, the two of us share a a common love of old computers, games, and arcade machines. Boat has been a fan and supporter of my podcasts from the very beginning, and several years ago he, along with his pal Amigo Aaron, started their own show about Amiga computers, titled “Amigos”. Boat has expanded their show to a small network which includes, among other shows, a couple of my podcasts including Sprite Castle and Like a DOS. When Boat said he was planning a small gathering tentatively titled “Boatfest,” I was in from the very beginning. Boatfest took place June 24 and 25, in Hurricane, West Virginia.

Susan and I arrived at the hotel Thursday evening. The conference room was available for pre-setup Thursday evening, and so I grabbed a table and set up the two systems I brought with me from Oklahoma — my crystal clear Ultimate 64 setup, and my Amiga CD32. My CD32 is the relatively rare (or at least uncommon) NTSC model which was never sold in the United States. At this gathering of approximately 40 people, two other people brought CD32s as well.

The vast majority of people who attended Boatfest run in the same circles. Most of those in attendance listen to the Amigos podcast (most of them listen to my shows as well), and the majority of people there hang out and chat on the Amigos Discord server. In the old days of attending fests, the first few hours were spent trying to figure out who was who. At Boatfest, all of us were wearing name tags, and many of us had seen (or at least heard) one another prior to arriving. This cut out most of the awkward “who is who” phase, allowing us to get right into visiting, gaming, and eventually, drinking.

A big part of the fest were the live shows. Boat and Amigo Aaron did live versions of many of their shows before the audience, including episode of their Amiga, CoCo, and Atari computer shows. Aaron performed double duty, also doing a live version of ARG Presents with his brother, The Brent. Saturday evening, I did a modified version of Sprite Castle in which I talked about my memories of Commodore copyfests.

The gods were smiling on West Virginia last weekend. Storms moved into the area the day before the event was scheduled to begin, knocking out the hotel’s air conditioner. By the kickoff of the event, the skies were blue, and within an hour or two the air conditioner had been repaired. Throughout the event, free food fell into our laps multiple times. Eip, Boat’s wife, surprised us with enough Thai food to feed an army; later in the evening, another group at hotel donated leftover food from their catered event to ours. Saturday evening, Frank from Retro Rewind bought a stack of pizzas to feed to crew. And if that’s not enough to prove everything was going our way, on Friday I won the game-themed Jeopardy contest, thanks in part to a question about… me!

I haven’t been to a gaming fest in many years, and haven’t been around this many people in this close a space in at least two years. Boatfest felt a lot like the parties and gatherings I attended in the 80s and 90s — smaller in scale, with more focus on personal interactions. Everyone I spoke with at the show asked when tickets for next year’s event were going on sale which is a testament to just how much fun everyone had. When they go on sale, I’ll be the first in line to purchase one!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show. I had a great time meeting and chatting with everyone.

Computers/Tech/Games, Main, Reviews

Pixoo-64: A Pixel-Pushing Art Display for Retro Fanatics

I’m a fan of old school digital artwork. For the past five years I’ve enjoyed viewing ANSI artwork (created in the 1990s for BBSes) in my office on a dedicated Raspberry Pi running PyAns. Another style of vintage art I really enjoy is pixel artwork. Pixel graphics are images drawn on a grid, one pixel at a time. These pictures can be very small, like characters from an old video game, or very large. The sprites that make up characters in most Commodore 64 games are only 24×21 pixels in size. Other pictures, like the backgrounds from those games or large pieces of art, could be several hundred pixels wide. Regardless of the size, pixel artwork has a unique aesthetic that I (and many others) happen to love. It evokes a sense of nostalgia for me. I’m a fan.

One problem with viewing pixel artwork on a modern computer is that computers are really good at smoothing things out, a feature that ruins pixel art. Taking those tiny pixel characters and increasing their sizes often makes them blurry. When viewed at their original resolution, pixel characters would appear almost microscopic on a modern computer. On my monitor, which is set to a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, a 16×16 character would be unrecognizable. As a comparison, most of the icons on a Windows desktop are 96×96.

Introducing Divoom, the company behind a series of pixel art frames. Divoom’s first picture frame, the original Pixoo ($55.99), has a resolution of just 16×16 pixels. Each pixel is represented by its own LED. Divoom’s second frame, the Divoom Pixoo Max ($85.99), is a 32×32 frame. Their most recent offering, and the one I purchased, is the Pixoo-64 ($149.99), which has a resolution of 64×64 on a screen approximately 10″x10″. (Divoom also offers a several other devices, many of which combine their smaller screens with Bluetooth speakers.)

Let’s get this out of the way up front; to call the Pixoo-64 (or any of Divoom’s products) a niche item is an understatement. We’re literally talking about a very specific style of screen designed to display a specific style of ancient artwork. The moment I saw a picture of the Pixoo-64 I fell in love with it and knew I had to have one. If it doesn’t elicit the same level of excitement for you, you can exit the ride here. I can already tell you, this device is not for you.

Pixoo-64 displaying a Biker Scout from Star Wars

The Pixoo-64 looks like a picture frame — not unlike those digital picture frames that were all the rage a decade ago. It arrived in a square box roughly 12″x12″ and about an inch thick. Along with the device inside the box you’ll also find some mounting hardware, a kickstand, and a long USB power cable (no wall adapter included). The Pixoo-64 can hang on a wall or stand on a desk or shelf, but the device contains no internal battery so the USB cable is required for power. The frame has a single button on the side for turning the device off and on and cycling through options.

The Pixoo-64 displays both still and animated pictures 64×64 pixels in size. All pictures must be viewed on and transferred from Divoom’s app, available both for iOS and Android. The app’s layout is less than optimal and the options are confusing, but it’s required. If you purchase a Pixoo-64 I recommend spending an hour or two going through every feature of the app. The app can connect to the device using Bluetooth, or wirelessly if you connect the device to your WiFi router.

There are so many options and utilities within the app that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Along with displaying artwork, the Pixoo-64 can also display calendars, alarms, timers, and events entered into its embedded planner. There’s even a digital coloring book. There are audio visualizers that work with the device’s built-in microphone.

The app is also filled with “community” features, all of which feel like they were designed by someone unfamiliar with the definition of the word. You can chat (one-on-one) with other users of the app. There’s a music section with thousands of online streaming radio stations. The message area displays lists of everyone who liked the artwork you’ve uploaded, comments your pictures have received, your list of followers, and private messages. Another section is full of YouTube videos, all of which are about the Pixoo, many of those in Chinese. Somewhat confusingly, almost none of these features are grouped together inside the app. Divoom literally took every community feature and then separated them as if they weren’t a part of the same… what’s the word I’m looking for…

The most important feature is the artwork available for the Pixoo-64; the quality and sheer number of pictures available for the device is astounding. The available library is entirely user sourced, and hundreds (thousands?) of artists have uploaded (tens of?) thousands of pictures, most of which are good and some of which are great. The Galleria section has fifteen categories to scroll through, including “New” and “Recommended”. The Expert section has artwork grouped by artist. There’s also a search feature that’s limited to searching titles and hashtags, so it’s only as good as the original artist’s metadata. By default the app only displays 64×64 pictures to Pixoo-64 owners, but they’ve added the option to include earlier 32×32 and 16×16 images as well, which simply get resized to fit the Pixoo-64’s larger screen.

Adding your own artwork to the device is relatively simple, although you should forget about trying to create anything using the app’s built in editor. Although both the drawing studio and the animation studio have a small selection of drawing-related tools, it is literally impossible to accurately draw anything this small on your phone’s screen using your thumb or finger. Everything I drew looked like a five-year-old got a hold of MS-Paint. Fortunately, there’s a better solution.


Both studios allow importing pictures from your phone, which it will then resample to the correct resolution. I uploaded an iPhone picture of my wife with some roses and the Pixoo-64 instantly resized the picture to 64×64 pixels without making a complete mess of the picture. To create your own pixel artwork, you could draw a 64×64 picture in Photoshop and then import it into the device. I spent the past week cruising websites full of animated GIFs, downloading them to my phone, and sending them to the Pixoo-64 with mostly successful results. I found an online cache of animated enemies from the 1980s game Bard’s Tale for the Commodore 64, which I was able to upload into the animation studio and convert with success. I was also able to download a sprite character sheet from a website (a sheet that contains all the frames of animation from a game character), import the frames into Photoshop, and generate an animated GIF from the layers. The app’s import features worked better than expected. Just don’t plan on directly drawing anything stellar using the app itself.

The Pixoo-64 is Divoom’s first device to support wireless connectivity (all previous models were limited to Bluetooth). Earlier Pixoo models supported calendars, audio visualizers, alarms, timers, event notifications, and so on, but the Pixoo-64, once connected to the internet, has an API-driven section of screens. Now, you can display things like how many followers you have on YouTube or Twitch, display stock information, Bitcoin prices, and a short list of other things. You’re limited to the services they have developed APIs for, and at some point you’ll be typing in your social media credentials into a questionably-designed app from Hong Kong, so let the influencer beware. The “If This Then That” (IFTTT) website has a few connectivity scripts as well.

One downside to internet connectivity (and technically, this is another shortcoming of the app) is that when viewing artwork on the phone, the picture on the Pixoo-64 updates instantly. Viewing thumbnails of pictures doesn’t present a problem, but the moment you expand any picture in the app, the picture immediately updates the Pixoo-64’s screen. Multiple times I’ve had the perfect pictures displaying on my Pixoo-64, only to accidentally touch another thumbnail, accidentally update my Pixoo-64’s screen, and have no idea where I found the previously perfect picture. I wish they had added an optional “update your screen?” button.

The Pixoo-64 looks great but doesn’t feel finished. I’ve received two app updates and three firmware updates in the two weeks I’ve owned it. In the app, I have the options to “save to my local gallery”, “save to phone”, “upload to device”, and “share”, but I don’t really understand what all of these things do (the included manual is, shall we say, lacking). I don’t know how many pictures I can store on the device, and I don’t know how to tell how much free room I have left. The option to view pictures in your local gallery is broken — no matter which thumbnail you select, it defaults to the first one and you’re forced to scroll through them all. I’ve learned a lot about the Pixoo-64 and its app by watching tons of reviews on YouTube, and even more by simply playing around and exploring. It’s a neat device that comes with a learning curve. Patience required.

Pros:

– (Tens of?) Thousands of free pictures to choose from.

– Changing pictures is fast and simple.

– Importing your own artwork is fast and simple.

– Multiple display modes allow for building local slideshows or subscribing to other creators’ channels.

Cons:

– The app is convoluted and confusing. Features are not laid out logically. The community features seem tacked on and unintegrated.

– $150 for a low-resolution pixel picture frame is high.

– The app and device are closed source. Should the company shut down their servers, this thing becomes a $150 brick.

– The Pixoo-64’s colors do not match the colors as they appear on my phone. Some whites appear light blue, and some purples appear dark blue.

Summary:

The Pixoo-64 is an LED-powered pixel art frame that does indeed display pixel art, both still and animated. There are a seemingly unlimited number of pictures to choose from, with more being uploaded every day and the ability to add your own. The app, which is required to interface with the Pixoo-64, is a bit of a dumpster fire full of odd UI decisions and too many options. $150 may seem expensive for what it is, but if you enjoy pixel-style artwork, there’s nothing else like it.

Bard's Tale Creature on Divoom Pixoo-64

Computers/Tech/Games, Console Video Games, Main

The Art of Selling Nintendo Games

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It’s a little difficult to explain how I ended up with more than 200 Nintendo cartridges — a system I never cared that much for in the first place. For those who know me, it may be even more difficult to believe that I’ve decided to part with them.

The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, was released in North America the fall of 1985 just in time for Christmas. Several of my friends ended up owning a Nintendo, and while I enjoyed playing their games when I visited, I never wanted a Nintendo of my own. By the time the Nintendo was released I already had a Commodore 64 computer in my bedroom. While Nintendo owners had to buy (or rent) games to play, I was downloading new games every night for free using my computer’s modem.

I didn’t get a Nintendo until the summer of 1991, right around the time Nintendo released their follow-up system, the Super Nintendo. A fast food coworker of mine sold me his NES including 30 games for $100, in part to help pay for a Super Nintendo. I hooked the Nintendo up in my bedroom and played games on it while my computer was downloading other games. When I got my first apartment I hooked the Nintendo up in the living room, where Jeff, Andy and I occasionally played Super Mario Bros. 3 or Tetris. By the winter of 1993 I had assembled my first PC, and both the Nintendo and my Commodore 64 went into storage.

I didn’t think about the Nintendo again until I joined Digital Press, an online haven for video game collectors. Being (virtually) surrounded by like-minded gamers gave me the collecting bug, and I began buying video game cartridges at garage sales and thrift stores — not just Nintendo, but Atari 2600 and Sega Genesis games as well. From the late 90s though much of the 00s, old game cartridges could be picked up for pennies on the dollar. At one garage sale I bought an Atari 2600 console with joysticks, paddles, and 40 games for $20. Every garage sale you went to had Nintendo games for a buck.

The thing I discovered about myself is that I loved the hunt for games infinitely more than I loved playing the games. I loved the excitement that came from walking up to a garage sale in hopes of finding a title I didn’t already own. I created a spreadsheet of all the games I owned and copied it to my Palm Pilot (remember those?) so when I was out shopping I could easily check whether or not I already owned a specific title.

Sometime in the early 00s, Blockbuster launched GameRush, an offshoot designed to compete with GameStop. Some GameRush locations were stand-alone stores while others were nestled inside Blockbusters. A few years later — I want to say this was 2007 or 2008 — Blockbuster announced that all GameRush locations were closing and that all their inventory would be liquidated. Armed with my electronic spreadsheet, a friend of mine and I spent an entire weekend driving to every local GameRush location, about a dozen, buying every NES game I didn’t already own. Not only had GameRush dropped the price of used NES games to 99 cents, but they were also offering a buy two/get one free sale. The funniest thing about this sale was that GameRush put all their NES games in clunky, oversized antitheft boxes that definitely cost more than the old games they were protecting. The plastic containers were difficult to open, and by the end of that weekend every GameRush cashier in Oklahoma City had cursed my name after I had approached them with towering stacks of cartridges that they had to open one at a time using a janky plastic key device.

By the end of that weekend, my collection of NES games had soared to approximate 250… and still, I didn’t play them. Sure, I sorted them, arranged and rearranged them, cleaned them, and made lists of them, but I never played them. I bought a set of shelves to display them, and when they outgrew that, I built some custom shelves to house them.

In 2011 we moved from that house to the big house. When we moved, I put all those NES cartridges in a big plastic tub where they slept for several years. On a whim one day I pulled those games out of the tub and put them on a shelf in my closet; when I needed the shelf space for my DVD collection, I put the games back in the tub. I’m positive I never played any of those games during the seven years we lived in that house.

The next time I touched that tub was to move it from that house to this house in 2018. The tub has been sitting in the back of my closet, unopened, for almost three years.

Two weeks ago I was looking for something in my closet and ran across that tub of games, which I had essentially forgotten about. I already mentioned that I don’t play a lot of NES games, but if I wanted to, I have three ways to do it within 2′ of the chair I am currently sitting in. Directly in front of me, I have a Nintendo emulator installed on my PC. To my immediate left I have two devices, a MiSTer FPGA computer and a Raspberry Pi, both of which also play NES games. All three of these solutions allow me to play every single NES game ever released with minimal effort. If for whatever reason I want to go back and revisit some of these old games, I have plenty of ways to do it. Pulling physical cartridges out of storage and playing them on vintage hardware is the least convenient way, and the method I’m least likely to do.

I feel a lot of anxiety when it comes to parting with certain things, old video games being one of them, but when I realized the games inside that tub hadn’t been played in over a decade, something inside my kooky brain finally clicked. Like I said before, I never liked playing those games as much as I liked hunting for them in the wild and displaying them. With the proliferation of eBay and Craigslist, I very rarely see vintage games at thrift stores or garage sales anymore. There was a time I got enjoyment from putting all those games out on display, but today it feels like a burden to keep lugging around all that old plastic.

Last weekend, Operation Nintendo went into effect. I spent about $20 at Dollar General on isopropyl alcohol, Goo Gone, Fantastik spray cleaner, a pack of Q-tips, a roll of paper towels, and a four pack of Magic Erasers. I’ve been cleaning and testing my way through the pile of games, one at a time. Some of them have previous rental stickers that need removed. (Curiously, some of the games that came from Blockbuster have stickers on the back reminding customers to “rewind the tape.” Somebody at Blockbuster had a sense of humor.) Lots of the games needed cleaning before they would even work. Sometimes early in the morning and sometimes late at night I’ll grab a stack of games and scrub their little contacts as the sun is either coming up or going down.

My office is filled with multiple piles of NES games. There’s a pile of games that haven’t been cleaned, and a pile of games that have. After the games are cleaned I plug them into a Nintendo clone I have (the RetroN 1) and test them out. If the game fires up, I take a picture of it working along with shots of the front and back of the cartridge and it goes into the “ready to list” pile. Games that don’t work go into the “try again” pile. When the “ready to list” pile gets so tall I’m afraid it will topple over it gets moved over near the computer (the “list it on eBay” pile). As time permits I list them on eBay and the games are moved to a “they’ve been listed on eBay” pile until they sell.

Over the past week I’ve listed 78 NES games on eBay; 15 have sold. The vast majority of my games are listed at $9.99, which includes free shipping. Shipping a padded envelope with a game inside costs $3.50, and eBay now takes 12.55% plus $0.30 off of the total price. For a $9.99 sale, that means eBay keeps $1.55; add in $3.50 for shipping and I’m making just under $5 on a $10 sale. eBay is a good way to part with old video games, but not a good way to get rich doing it.

There have been exceptions. My copy of Tecmo Super Bowl sold for $30, and a game I don’t even remember buying (Bible Buffet) sold almost immediately for $70. But again, these are the exceptions to the rule. Most of the games I’ve listed haven’t sold, and most of the ones that have sold went for $9.99.

To be honest, selling these games has been the most fun I’ve had with them in years. It’s been fun to go through and touch them all, to find random people’s names written on the back of them in Sharpie, and to look at the label artwork. It’s pretty satisfying to pull a game from the non-working pile and clean it until it fires up. Frankly, I get more enjoyment from that than playing them.

For anyone worried (or excited) that I’m “selling it all,” I wouldn’t go that far. The hundreds and hundreds of games I’ve been cleaning and listing on eBay have come from a single tub. There are more tubs in the closet. There are dozens of tubs in the garage. I have miles to go before I sleep.

I haven’t decided what else, if anything, I plan to get rid of. For now, I’ll focus on these NES games. They’re small, easy to ship, and I won’t miss them too terribly much. Except for ExciteBike — I’ll miss that one. That was such a great game and I might hang on to it. Oh, and Dr. Mario, which was fun, and Tetris, which Susan likes. And Super Mario Bros. 3, because it was such a classic. But other than that, I’m selling them all. Wait, is that Gauntlet? Maybe just one more…