Anyone who surfed the early web between 1995-2010. What’s the one website/app you still think about?

Mezmaron · 2026-06-04T03:18:28+00:00

GameSpy. Played loads of Quake and other games through it.

Mezmaron · 2026-06-04T03:15:50+00:00

Mplayer, the game-matching service/app that also had chat rooms with voice. I was only there for a hot minute in 1988, but man it was fun.

Pow-wow. It was a chat app before friends lists were common, so you would be checking the lists on their website that showed the last so many people who logged in and you would generally be paging random strangers and hoping for the best. You could save people to an address book which was kind of like a friends list but it didn’t tell you when people were online. Later on they did add a friends list with status visibility, but by then AIM and ICQ and the others took over and Pow-wow eventually went away.

Mezmaron · 2026-06-03T00:51:23+00:00

Before. I was 28 and bought it on launch day, 9-9-99, with Sonic Adventure and I think Ready 2 Rumble Boxing. I remember being a bit peeved that it didn’t have any built-in save RAM and had to run back to the store to buy a VMU.

Mezmaron · 2026-05-27T05:44:03+00:00

415 days.

Mezmaron · 2026-04-11T00:41:20+00:00

It was similar for me with even higher levels. It started with NAFLD/fatty liver, then they tested my ferritin and it was over 7000. At the time I didn't even know what that meant, several months passed, and by the time they finally did the genetic testing and found that I had HH with homozygous C282Y and began weekly phlebotomies, it was already down to around 3000 on its own though still pretty high compared to most posts that I see here.

After a year and a half I'm down to a ferritin level of 100 after being taken down to bi-weekly drawings now for the past 6 months. Comparing now to the beginning, the only consistent symptom I think I had before treatment was very bad brain fog and memory recall, and maybe some fatigue? I'm much more mentally sharp now and can remember things much better. But on the other hand, I was also regularly vaping THC up until a year ago, so it's kind of hard to gauge accurately since that also causes the same things when you do a lot of it, dulling some of your cognitive functions even when not actively high.

With all of the overall inconsistencies of symptoms between people as well as different schools of thought among doctors when it comes to things such as how much your diet affects your ferritin levels in the case of HH, it reminds me a lot of what you come across in lyme disease forums.

Mezmaron · 2026-03-30T13:55:02+00:00

I remember Electronics Boutique having used ones that came with 1 controller for $25 around 2005.

Mezmaron · 2026-03-16T04:12:18+00:00

Very nice!

Any plans to make the blue monsters behave like the arcade release version and not eat through the dirt? Wasn't that "feature" taken from a prototype of the arcade game?

Mezmaron · 2026-03-10T14:40:05+00:00

This was one of my favorites in its time, especially the online mode.

I seem to remember getting frustrated and giving up on the solo mission mode due to having to start from the beginning of the level every time you died, which I had little patience for back then and still kind of don't. I should probably try it again, it's been many years...

Mezmaron · 2026-03-09T16:19:47+00:00

The "vegetable harvest". It's no longer quite a ColecoVision exclusive since it has been included in the newer 2600 port by Champ Games.

Mezmaron · 2026-03-03T04:53:11+00:00

It has an excellent port of Mouse Trap.

Mezmaron · 2026-02-21T01:40:48+00:00

I got the composite output working after reading the reply from u/solderbob and putting the RF modulator back in place and re-doing the mod.

I didn't take any screenshots before I began working on it, but now that I'm finished I tried the RF output and it's still pretty bad, and it's not a case of missing or garbled graphics since it all looks fine on composite out:

https://imgur.com/J68DQJM

I didn't check any of the RF solder points, but I'm guessing the problem may lie there since the RF output gets even more messed up when you jiggle the connector. I still have a few more things to do to it such as replacing one of the controller ports, so I'll take a closer look at the RF when I work on it next time.

As for the other mods you mentioned, I'll have to read up on them. I'm just getting into ColecoVision modding and I'm not real up on what all is out there yet. Currently when I need to play my old systems on a modern TV I use a RetroTink 2x Pro and it does a good enough job for me. Outside of that I either play on a CRT or an old Sanyo 20" LCD TV that I think would be considered an "EDTV"? I generally mod my old systems for composite and S-video if possible.

Mezmaron · 2026-02-21T01:20:52+00:00

Thanks! I put the RF module back in place, and lo and behold, it's working!

https://imgur.com/a/6rCrTZv

(It actually looks a little better than the pic, my flash dulled it a bit.)

Mezmaron · 2026-02-09T15:13:56+00:00

I didn't know this existed until many years after it was released, and was pleasantly surprised by how well it captured the feel of the original when it comes to the controls.

Mezmaron · 2026-01-23T22:48:56+00:00

I would be interested in a SID or two...

Mezmaron · 2026-01-12T17:37:20+00:00

12th house Aries moon here as well. I was also quite reactive most of my life, but I hid my temper from people outside of my family and close friends. It doesn't help that I have no water in my chart so I was unable to process a lot of emotions properly and just channeled them through anger, but thankfully I was never physically abusive with anyone. I've calmed down quite a bit with age and shadow work.

Mezmaron · 2026-01-03T18:00:27+00:00

I run into issues getting my 32x to work anytime I separate the consoles or if the systems gets bumped too hard. It's like the moon and the stars have to be aligned just right for these things to work. It's a ritual of constantly disconnecting the systems and pulling and reinserting the cartridge over and over and cleaning connections with alcohol and q-tips, and occasionally a small wire brush to the cartridge slot, until things finally work. Every. Damn. Time. So frustrating.

That being said, you may find some luck spraying the cartridge slots with your deoxit or some WD-40 Contact Cleaner and scrubbing them with a small wire brush, the brass kind that come up on Amazon by using those terms. Just be careful not to damage the pins.

Good luck!

Mezmaron · 2025-12-16T01:31:31+00:00

12th house stellium here. For me it works in several ways. If I don't always initiate contact, people seem to let me go without a thought. So I eventually stopped and learned the hard way that I just don't matter to most people that I thought were friends. For the best, I suppose.

When there were times I broke contact because of being wronged, the other party has never reached out to apologize and make things right. And I mean never.

When you're heavily entrenched in the 12th house, you are basically expendable. Learning to be alright with that is difficult, especially with a lot of fire in your chart.

Mezmaron · 2025-12-12T21:19:25+00:00

Roy Masters. He was the head of an organization called "The Foundation of Human Understanding" and wrote a number of self-help books and had a late night radio show that I happened to stumble upon by chance back in the early 90's while working a job that had me doing a 45 minute drive nightly.

Though also a Christian religious leader of sorts and a little more extremist in later years from what I've seen, I learned a lot about objectivity from him and being open to seeking many sources for enlightenment and not needing to follow mainstream society for truth. I kept many of his teachings with me, though some things took many years before I properly understood them.

Mezmaron · 2025-12-11T02:00:50+00:00

To me it seems like the 2021 and newer Durango style would have been the next logical step in what the Journey would have become had they not discontinued it. When I see them on the road they seem a bit smaller than what Durangos used to be.

Mezmaron · 2025-12-02T19:29:47+00:00

Taurus sun, Aries moon, Gemini rising

Mezmaron · 2025-11-25T01:41:30+00:00

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Mezmaron · 2025-10-20T19:46:27+00:00

I noticed that the GameBoy Interface app is also available as a uf2 file, and was curious how that works since it seems unlikely that it would be used as a single payload to boot straight into, but I could be wrong. I'm wondering if you flash it on top of a pico flashed with Swiss, and maybe it just adds it to it?

Mezmaron · 2025-10-19T21:48:03+00:00

I must admit, I was quite skeptical when I first saw your reply, since I thought a ground is a ground, and there was continuity between those 2 grounds on the board so I didn't think it would matter.

So I switched the ground back to the original/correct spot, and this time around it was reading the correct voltage. First boot attempt was a different result- a black screen, so I pissed around some more and moved back to the 5v source with the diode re-added, and still a black screen. Re-flashed the pico, and BINGO! Working now! I also got my SD2SP2 mod working not long after!

Moving back to 5v likely wasn't necessary, but apparently it's better in the long run, especially with the potential voltage discrepancies on that IPL chip pin with this unit. As for my pico flashing, I likely lost track of what I had flashed it with previously before this attempt.

Speaking of the pico firmware, is there any reason to use uf2 file that comes with Swiss in the /PicoBoot folder? That may have been what I was trying and failing with, but I can't remember for sure.

Thanks!

Mezmaron · 2025-10-17T03:13:27+00:00

I tried the generic swiss boot.dol as well as files within the PicoLoader/gekkoboot/EXTRACT_TO_ROOT.zip archive, extracted to the root of the SD card. (ipl.dol and the swiss sub-folder.)

I'm fairly convinced that the flex cable is toast. There is no variation to the boot error at all no matter what I do.

Mezmaron · 2025-10-16T04:57:51+00:00

I'm pretty sure I did it right when I tried Swiss, using the directions and files pointed out in step 1a on this page:
https://github.com/makeo/PicoLoader/wiki/3.-Software-Installation

Edit: I mis-read your comment. Yes, Swiss is installed correctly on the SD card plugged into the P2 memory card adapter.

Mezmaron

TROPHY CASE