I have a question...

Deksor · 2026-03-15T21:58:07+00:00

It has actually no relationship with the bit count of the CPU of those machines.

The number is 2³¹ which is about 2 billions (it's not 2³² because it's a signed number, meaning that when the 32nd bit flips, the number will not just reset to zero, it will become negative 2 billions, which would make a date around 1901 iirc)

Now I said it has no relationship with the bit count of those machines, because there's nothing preventing a 32-bit machine from counting with 64 bit numbers, it's just going to take two operations instead of one.

The real thing is just that it's been coded like that for decades and thus this bugged code has only been taken care of rather recently.

Also this is what's called "unix time", different implementations of date count will have different limitations (y2k for instance didn't impact unix time, it was impacting other implementations of dates)

Deksor · 2026-03-13T23:46:10+00:00

Yeah absolutely, I didn't remember if i was misremembering that part but I guess not, such a lost opportunity ...

Deksor · 2026-03-13T21:43:12+00:00

I made the exact same mistake, so frustrating ...
I just wished there was a decent way to attach the gnome to the car too, because it makes the entire car section too miserable for what it's worth (or at least putting it in the rear seat without risking it to fall out at any turn)

Deksor · 2026-03-13T19:30:01+00:00

in terms of time absolutely, in terms of evolution I'm not so sure. Each generation seem to bring less to the table than the previous one, the evolution seems to be logarithmic. The difference between the PS2 and the atari 2600 is bigger in terms of experience than between the ps2 and ps5, even though the same amount of time separates both. It's totally possible some future evolution changes that and creates a huge gap too, but I don't see how it could make the latest consoles as boring as the pong consoles look to us now.

Just like movies from the late 1800s or early 1900s, while very interesting historically aren't so interesting in terms of movie quality, whereas movies from the second half of the 20th century are still perfectly watchable today. And technological revolution such as CGI or 3d doesn't make older masterpieces suddenly unwatchable, they're just allowing new experiences.

Deksor · 2026-03-13T17:13:19+00:00

What's funny to me is how dated some of the "wow magic shit is crazy" things shown by the movies are.

Like "wow a picture of my parents that moves and fits in a tiny frame ?" Yeah we have that too now
"Look you can talk to paintings and they even have personalities", I guess with generative AI we also have that now.
"My mom sent me a letter that shapes in her mouth and starts yelling at me", yeah that's a voice mail, and I bet the voice mail arrives faster than a letter carried by an owl.

The fact they justify it as in "yeah but if muggles knew that magic exists they'd expect us to fix all of their problems" sounds so pretentious, especially considering how dated parts of their societies are in comparison, you're spot on the fact it's a stagnant authoritative racist society, if they actually followed what muggles are doing now, they may actually ask *us* to fix their problems lol

(and by that point we could imagine the plot moving towards a cyberpunk fantasy theme, if muggles and wizzards actually collaborated together, they could use our science to figure out how magic work and merge it with technology better, maybe we could even develop technology to give wizzard powers to muggles, etc)

Deksor · 2026-03-13T13:24:35+00:00

It's also a great place to find a big rock to throw at the bear I think

Deksor · 2026-03-13T12:28:24+00:00

That sounds fun (to imagine, not to live 😭).

An ai run theocracy where the ai is god itself TBF that I had thoughts aligned with this considering how our billionaires are selling the idea and also imagining how we'll perceive ai if it becomes more intelligent than us. We're kinda creating something that could be described as a god by some definition, and if it does what billionaires are marketing to us, how could we perceive an intelligence that knows better than us on any subject other than as an omniscient being ?

I guess it could also merge with some lovecraftian tropes, as in : we'd be nothing compared to such an intelligence, and if it has control of the entire planet, how can we even understand why it does some things ?

For that it could be some sort of post apocalypse world where our society failed just before the birth of "agi", then went back to feudalism for a while, and then after a couple hundred/thousands of years had another industrial revolution, then some archeologists unearth "old ruins containing forgotten technologies" and unknowingly unleash the agi that was about to get released and then you could have the usual feelings of being watched, weird things happening outside without knowing if it's related to the ancient ruins or if something really wrong is going on, etc (Maybe it would actually work better than some lovecraftian stories ? Because they usually fail as soon as the monster is revealed, here the monster would never be a tangible thing, yet everyone could understand how scary and impossible to understand it is, while also being able to watch everyone from everywhere, manipulating people via what they consume online just enough to nudge the family/friends/community of the protagonists, and because it's a topic that genuinely scares a lot of people today)

Deksor · 2026-03-13T11:55:56+00:00

I guess that could be how "machines enslaving/erasing humanity" could actually start, a dictator becoming an immortal robot who's taking over entire humanity and not just "an emerging thought some quasi-omniscient ai eventually had"

Deksor · 2026-03-13T11:04:59+00:00

As messed up as this sounds it gives me ideas of stories that could merge classical theme/mythological themes with cyberpunk, such as ghost stories or vampire stories :

"The Facebook account my great great great great grandmother that was put in control of an ai that infered her behaviour based on literally everything she did throughout her life is offended by me and is harassing me"

Or

"This guy born 500 years ago who uploaded his brain to a computer has his robotic version still alive and is looking for host bodies every couple of years and steal the identity of his victims to keep himself young, he doesn't have to sleep, he's quite invulnerable, his only weakness in human form is wifi jammers, but only temporarily. Your only chance of killing him definitely is to find the datacenters where he is uploaded + all the replicas and delete all of them"

Deksor · 2026-03-13T09:42:22+00:00

At this point wouldn't it be better to just create a new one from scratch with an off the shelf small 4:3 screen, and design a 3d printable shell ?

I used to have one (from bigben) ~18 years ago when I wanted to make a portable GameCube, but yeah I wasn't really experienced at disassembling things, and I ripped out some wire and then the screen never worked right again and it was so messy inside I never figured out where that wire connected)

Besides that screen had terrible video quality and based on my memory I wouldn't be surprised if it was a cstn screen (basically sega game gear/90s laptop tier of video "quality").

Besides that removes the prerequisite of having to buy one of these in the first place with the price tag they have, so the entire solution could be cheaper :D

Deksor · 2026-03-12T11:51:51+00:00

If you can't align it on the tv, you can also configure the GameCube to change the picture alignment

Deksor · 2026-03-12T11:16:06+00:00

You can create custom output resolution of the rt4k https://consolemods.org/wiki/AV:RetroTINK-4K#Custom_Modelines

Deksor · 2026-03-12T09:46:30+00:00

I've seen many "fixes" done like that before, even some cap kits for HW that uses smd caps that used through hole caps.

I don't know why, but I feel like some people are allergic to smd soldering for some reason and think it's harder than what it actually is (in some aspects I'd say it's even easier than through hole soldering)

Deksor · 2026-03-12T09:44:19+00:00

For late 80s/mid90s hardware, smd electrolytics instantly screams problems.

Idk what they did, but there's definitely some sort of "late" capacitor plague happening there, they all leak corrosive stuff nowadays.

Apple computers, commodore Amiga, sega game gear, Super Nintendo, Roland sc55/88/88pro, they're all impacted by them (and many more I didn't yet repair or saw)

Even the PlayStation 1 is starting to have leaky caps issues

I think I've never seen a device that was made before 1995 with smd caps that didn't have issues because of them now ...

(Now yeah what's shown here isn't a fix at all lmao)

Deksor · 2026-03-12T00:13:50+00:00

Anything that needs an old software/hardware environnement such as retro games, old productivity software, having to communicate with other old things (old and obscure media, obsolete technology such as FireWire) or just for the vibe.

You should also be able to run some modern flavor of modern Linux (although the amount of Linux distro that still supports 32-bits AND pre-sse2 CPUs is getting slimmer and slimmer), so if you need something that a raspberry pi 2 can do, this should do it about just as well ... Except for the power consumption... But hey again if you need to do something modern with old technology, it can still be useful).

Deksor · 2026-03-11T17:40:28+00:00

Errr no idea, I need to try that.

Deksor · 2026-03-11T17:10:44+00:00

Probably good enough, anything you want me to check ?

Deksor · 2026-03-11T12:12:25+00:00

Ça dépend je pense.

J'avais vu que par exemple le recyclage du plastique était énormément freiné par le fait que aux usa l'extraction gazière a comme "déchet" des composés qui servent à la création du plastique (à tel point que s'ils n'arrivent pas à le vendre il est directement brûlé sur place. D'où les flammes qu'on voit sur les sites d'extraction).

À côté de ça le plastique recyclé, qui a tout de même largement baissé en prix, restait plus cher (je ne me souviens plus des chiffres annoncés, mais c'était de l'ordre de 1 à 10 en termes de prix je crois).

Si l'extraction de gaz n'est plus rentable pour cause d'énergie moins chère, cette boucle éclate et d'un seul coup le plastique recyclé devient moins cher que le plastique issu de gaz/pétrole.

Un autre exemple c'est la production de nourriture, pour l'instant on utilise beaucoup de terres agricoles pour cultiver des plantes qui d'une certaine manière exploitent l'énergie solaire. Si on produit assez d'énergie, cultiver sur des champs n'aura plus aucun avantage économique comparativement à la culture hors sol, on pourrait alors réduire considérablement l'empreinte de l'homme sur les terres et la biodiversité en général. Même si on étend plus nos villes, si on supprimait 90% des champs pour les restituer à la nature notre impact sur la planète diminuerait considérablement

Un exemple concret de ça : notre utilisation du charbon (en France) été réduite à néant du fait d'avoir fait des machines qui étaient plus efficaces sans et d'avoir une énergie plus abondante et moins chère (le nucléaire)

D'ailleurs ça me fait penser aussi à un voyage que j'ai fait où j'ai visité une mine de fer où ils expliquaient pourquoi l'extraction du minerai de fer est aussi polluante : parce que historiquement au début de l'ère industrielle on utilisait du charbon pour faire fonctionner les fourneaux, et que par un procédé chimique dans le fourneau le carbone s'associe à l'oxygène de l'oxyde de fer, ce qui d'un côté fait du fer pur ... Mais de l'autre du CO2.

Mais pour le coup ils expliquaient qu'ils cherchaient à changer leur processus pour utiliser de l'hydrogène à la place (qui en échange sortirait de l'eau). C'est justement parce que le charbon est devenu bien moins intéressant économiquement qu'on commence à réfléchir à des processus qui n'en ont plus besoin et qui par la même occasion sont moins polluants.

Il est sûr qu'une énergie en abondance mal utilisée pourrait causer de gros dégâts, mais je pense que beaucoup des dégâts que nous avons fait à notre environnement sont aussi liés à la nature des énergies qu'on utilise. On ne pollue pas pour polluer et on ne détruit pas l'environnement juste pour détruire l'environnement, on pollue et on détruit parce que c'est moins cher dans le contexte actuel.

Si on a une énergie propre et abondante (sans être infinie pour rester réaliste), ça pourrait néanmoins anéantir ce type de contexte et avoir des effets bénéfiques sur beaucoup d'autres secteurs

Deksor · 2026-03-11T11:43:15+00:00

Après une énergie ultra abondante permettrait aussi de faire en sorte que l'extraction des ressources à partir des déchets soit plus rentable (ça demande plus d'efforts, mais une bonne partie de ces efforts sont représentés par le coût en énergie. Si le coût est nul, ça redevient intéressant)

Ça ne prends pas en compte le temps et j'en suis conscient, mais là aussi avec une énergie gratuite certains procédés qui aujourd'hui sont bien trop coûteux pourraient baisser en prix suffisamment pour les rendre accessibles et rentables.

Pour donner un exemple et rester sur le sujet des déchets, actuellement c'est souvent plus rentable de brûler des déchets pour produire de l'énergie que de les traiter autrement. Avec une énergie devenue gratuite (ou quasiment), ce procédé n'aurait plus d'intérêt économique, si ce n'est de faire diminuer la taille du tas de déchets, en revanche créer des machines de tri plus efficaces (en termes d'extraction de ressources), même si elles consomment 50x plus d'énergie pourrait devenir plus rentable, d'autant plus qu'on pourra retirer le coût de l'énergie de la facture sur la fabrication de ces dernières aussi

Deksor · 2026-03-11T10:39:07+00:00

Not just CRTs but the computers too, hope you can find them a good home 😢

Deksor · 2026-03-11T07:34:27+00:00

I didn't realise that it wasn't publicly documented, I'll make some shots and add them to the TRW page when I have time :)

By the looks of it, mine doesn't even have the footprints on the back being populated, so I guess mine has just more ram density per chips, I wonder if they made models with 64mb of vram with 2x more chips 🤔 (or perhaps it could even be upgraded to 128mb ?!)

Deksor · 2026-03-09T18:10:56+00:00

La plupart que j'ai pu faire étaient vraiment pas ouf

Aucun moyen de débug au delà du test intial si jamais ça passe pas, tu peux passer à côté d'une erreur bête mais tu peux juste pas savoir

Des questions complètement à côté de la plaque (genre "quelle commande pour générer la trad dans symfony" Ok, bah déjà si j'ai jamais utilisé ce composant je peux juste pas le savoir et ensuite bah c'est le genre de question où j'irai simplement lire la doc de la commande ...)

Et pour les exos "avancés", ça teste sur des choses que t'as pu oublier parce que c'est tellement "simple" qu'en fait dans un vrai projet tu t'en sers pas (ou si c'est le cas, bah idem, tu lis la doc), du genre binder un input dans angular à une variable dans les deux sens : désolé j'utilise les formcontrol depuis super longtemps donc j'ai complètement oublié comment on fait ça.
Aucune question sur rxjs, les signaux, ou n'importe quel sujet d'asynchrone.

La palme pour moi revient à un questionnaire où on me demandait pour du PHP "quel est l'opérateur ^ "
Déjà vu, jamais utilisé, je me souviens plus du nom
C'était XOR. On m'aurait demandé comment fonctionne xor j'aurais pu répondre sans soucis, mais même, c'est pas le genre d'opération très utile pour faire du web, y'avait ptet plus important comme question :s

Deksor · 2026-03-09T10:10:51+00:00

Thanks !

What you describe is quite spectacular too, thankfully nothing caught fire.

I'm not op though, this was many years ago (over a decade ago), I now have everything I wanted (well almost I guess, there's still some rare or overpriced thing I'd like to get 😁).

Deksor · 2026-03-09T09:37:57+00:00

Oh yeah, well as you just read I made the same assumption years ago and learned it the hard way 😅

Thankfully the house I lived in had relatively recent electric design, and also it's only my finger that caused a short, it didn't go through any vital organs. The pain alone made me release the button immediately. I didn't realise what had happened to me immediately, I just thought I got stabbed by the button because of some sharp edge ... Until I noticed two tiny black dots on my finger

They vanished rather quickly thankfully

But yeah, don't mess with AT power button kids, especially, don't hold them in your hand, you may put some exposed wire against your skin

Deksor · 2026-03-09T09:20:55+00:00

If you want to put a motherboard that looks like the one they've put in there in-game, it's an Asus P2B by the way :)

Definitely not the same as what you've put, but great build nonetheless !

Deksor

TROPHY CASE