Rick's b.log - entry 2011/09/11

PS2

Yup.

Sunday in (almost) summer, so it'd be a vide grenier. ☺

Saw nothing of interest, until near the end, a PlayStation2 and some games. I haggled down to €15 for the console (missing power brick) and two games. It helped that the "dualshock" controller was damaged (one of the vibrators was loose inside) and there was evidence of a ham-fisted attempt to get inside by way of a flat-head screwdriver, but without knowing about jeweller's screwdrivers... Still, it was useful to knock down the price (ruthless) and was easily fixed with a soldering iron and a dab of superglue. Really... teenagers these days... got no bloody ingenuity...

When I got home I noticed that the video lead was missing - lovely Sony saving money by sticking a proprietory connector on the back instead of, like, normal audio/video sockets. The price of consoles, makes you wonder why. Perhaps to hit you for more cash should you want, say, an S-video lead?
Helpfully, the video lead from my PS1 fit perfectly.

The power was a different matter. Eight and a half volts, centre positive, and the label claims 5.3A which is a shedload of milliwatts.
I tried the Sega Master System supply. Big brick, 10V (floated at 13V). Powered up into standby okay, but upon switch-on, the voltage dropped and the console died. Bloody hell, it's a hungry little thing.
I'm currently running the console from my eeePC's power brick (12V regulated) and it seems happy. Mom and I played games for an hour and a half, then watched an episode of "American Gothic", neither bit of kit was overheating or anything like that.

Had a look online, the specs are basically a moderate (near 300MHz MIPS) processor bolted to an epic set of graphics/FP chips. Data transfer pathways measured in Gb/sec just so your rendered imagery looks convincing. It's a damned far cry from the pixelated graphics of the likes of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.

The first game is "Myth Makers Super Kart GP" which is a cute cartoon girl with an alice-band-bunny-ears thing racing (!?) on an unfeasibly tiny motorised cart.
I found it a little lacklustre, though mom seemed to enjoy it. It was a fair bit simpler to control than the other game.

There were two memory cards. One is an official 8MiB card that I wiped off all the info on, and the other is a third party 32MiB card that is, for want of a better word, reformatting. Some corrupted files that cannot be deleted. And does the PS2 offer a format option? Does it hell. Useful, Sony, very useful...

This takes up to the other game. One that I must admit I'm quite taken with. "World Rally Championship 4". Basically, a chunky car and a bunch of roads even worse than the ones around here. Plus the opportunity to floor the accelerator without fuzz or tickets or cute little girls running across the road unaware of you barrelling down the road at over 100km/h. If you want to be a menace in an urban environment, that's what "Grand Theft Auto" is for...

It starts well, but there's a certain finesse to handbrake drifting around those sharp turns. Well, I'd wipe out a couple of hundred if I tried a Tokyo Drift given this is... well... the picture speaks for itself.

Speaking of Japan, there's a course which features pretty good looking country houses and entirely different scenery, not to mention weather.

Oh course, even with (imagining) the entirety of AKB48 cheering me on, I still go and hit stuff. Or maybe that was the problem? A driver <ahem!> distracted?

On the Japanese course, my ranking changed from "Unpredicable" to "Pinball Wizard". I'm not sure if that is better or worse.

A course in... is that the Finnish flag? Whatever, it is mountains and ice and I'm no Skater Boi, not in person and certainly not in a car.

I think we'll finish with a Thelma & Louise moment...

Honestly, I could have gone all night. Sitting in bed with the eeePC on my lap as my television, and the game controller in my hands. But there's the small problem of the eeePC's power pack running the PS2, so my eeePC will only run for as long as the battery is good for, which is less when the video capture box is quite a hungry box. But never mind, if it wasn't for the necessity to charge, I wouldn't have [bothered|had time] to write this b.log entry. It's not all bad, I have JPopsuki in a WinAMP window on the right of the editor. This song has just been on. Cute. Followed by this one. Whoa, heavy!
380kbps constant for the past four-five hours. Yay for no idiotic FUP or capping. Still, it's hard to max out the world with a 2mbit link!

It's only quarter past four and 71% charged. I'll give it a little longer, then fire up the PS2 some more. ;-)

Kitten

Battery is tip-top. Later, dudes, I got myself some wheels to... er... crash. ☺

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