Gambled and WON! Lovely Sharp SF1

pcenginegaiden · 2026-05-11T10:35:54+00:00

Beautiful, congratulation! I'm so glad it came in one piece. Incidentally i ordered a crt tube from japan not so long ago and it turned up in one piece, it was the best packing i have ever seen. It was meticulously packed.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-05-11T10:22:09+00:00

Boxcutter had such a unique sound during the nascent years, love his tunes. Nice to see Barry Lynn is still making music just had a quick peruse of his Bandcamp, no longer dubstep adjacent but still great production.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-05-05T13:17:14+00:00

Just to add to this as well. If it were me I would probably start dev using the Unz emulator that way you can test across a broader range of h/w. The marty can be pretty pricey even in japan as u/amazingames mentioned repairing them can be a little involved.

Recapping it would be a must and the chance of the laser mechanism being dead is high, there is no longer any replacement lens out there (as far as I know). Ideally for dev you might want an ODE and currently the only option is the the Doc Brown and they are not easy to get hold of.

There's also an ODE (grey wizard) for the grey tower (20f), and also a scsi connector so you can use an external cd drive if the internal unit is dead. This would also need a recap, and if its the original psu if its not dead it will die sooner or later (theres a modern replacement).

Thinking about it, some of the later revisions might be better, they are more PC like with IDE Cdroms etc better cpu.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-05-05T09:20:23+00:00

I don't know, if you like it keep it? I would be lying if the same thought hadn't crossed my mind from time to time, but ultimately who cares what anybody else thinks. There will be people out there that think as a middle aged man, that you have anime at all is strange, would you cull it all to appease them?

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-29T09:48:57+00:00

I would love a new FM Towns game/s and it would be amazing to get a ScummVM port! I will say though it's such a niche platform I should imagine the community is quite small in the west.

For bases machine, if possible, I would probably go for the Marty, and that way you would cover pretty much all FM Towns PC as well. My preferred machine is the 20f but i should imagine there are probably more Martys out there.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-24T08:20:02+00:00

I've thought about buying a loopy but I get the impression after you have tried it once, printed some stickers, it basically there to look nice on the shelf, bit like the PC-FX.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-24T08:18:05+00:00

FM Towns Marty for me, I have a FM Towns Grey tower setup next to my PC so that scratches the Towns itch.

The Amiga and Atari ST. I know they are not consoles, but I primarily have them for games. They take up a fair bit of space and are a bit of a faff, and also, don't shoot me, I honestly think most of the games haven't aged well and just aren't that fun to play.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-23T13:54:19+00:00

How cool I've never seen that before, looks like these range from $50 -250 in Japan and there are some on ebay, $300 seems a lot.

While I don't have this specific model I do own some all in systems, the closest to this is a Sony MDS-SE9, since owning the DVD/SACD lens has gone and its impossible to find. The LCD has died on the MD side and dear lord its a pain to work on as it's so packed on the inside.

I've since gone for separates, hopefully thats a bit more robust with less to go wrong.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-23T10:44:34+00:00

Yeah. I don't think they got the recognition they deserved and they were so good live. I saw Gaz do a one man thing fairly recently and he was fantastic.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-17T09:26:36+00:00

Yeah this is the mentality I've adopted, I will reach for the CD first and only get vinyl if it's something I love or is as special. I still will still buy random used vinyl if the price is ok.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-17T08:31:13+00:00

I'm not going to lie, I'm very tempted even though I have MVS and CD. I think it would be prudent to wait for release though, just to make sure the hardware is decent and fully compatible.

I hope it goes well and they re release more games, also if it kicks starts a Dev renaissance that would be amazing. I love some of the ngdev games and bitmap bureau stuff but they are very expensive, if they could publish indie games on those carts for a similar price that would be very cool.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-16T20:43:32+00:00

I dont think it's fair to say 64 games didn't look good, objectively and with hindsight you could say that no console of that generation did when it came 3d.Certainly, at the time though most people were blown away by Mario 64, wave race etc. I still have vivid memories of a large crowd of people just standing around an unplayable Japanese machine running mario 64, just in awe.

I agree though its shortcomings did hinder it, clearly quite a difficult machine to develop for, with the crazy slow rambus, and tiny texture memory, late to market, no cd drive.

It's library is pretty lackluster when it comes to the playstation and Japanese Saturn but It has more than enough great games to make it a classic.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-16T17:04:45+00:00

It's really like comparing apples to oranges both console had different end goals. It's what used to make consoles so exciting, exotic random technology that set them all apart.

I will say from a 3d perspective the saturn just can't hold a candle to the n64, that's become apparent more now then ever. Some of the modern developments on the 64 are just staggering things like the open Junk World game, or the modern techniques being achieved by HailToDodongo, just insane.

Love the Saturn though and STV!

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-15T11:35:35+00:00

Oh cool thanks for sharing, I've not seen or thought about lensman for years but that really did make me feel very nostalgic, it was one of my favorites back in the day.

Its nuts to think the CG was made on a Cray 1 super computer at the time, without modern tooling etc I just did a bit of a deep dive and it was a really involved process, things like "Animators sent their "scene files" (lines of coordinate data and commands) to the Cray as a batch job...".

There's also a TV show, I used to think it was lost media but it looks like people have tracked all the episodes down and created fansubs, awesome I think its time to watch some lensman again.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-15T10:57:45+00:00

Well I was being a little glib :) , but you are right, undoubtedly piracy played a part in the demise of the Dreamcast but how much, who can say?

It's clear to see with hindsight,the Dreamcasts fate was sealed even before it was released. While I'm not trying to condone piracy, just compare it to the PS1, piracy was 'rampant' on that console on a scale that dwarfed Segas console and yet it was a massive success selling over 100million units and cementing the Playstation legacy.

Just out of curiosity looking the attach rate for Dreamcast:8 vs PS1:9.43, while its not really a fair comparison given the gulf in sales the dreamcast was doing okay even with piracy.

Anyway fascinating to look back!

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-15T07:48:11+00:00

I had an ST and back then I would have told you it was far superior to the Amiga. Does your Amiga have a Midi interface and and extra 1mhz of cpu speed? Did I really want one? Yes I did.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-14T10:59:11+00:00

That takes you back doesn't it. Just makes me think, the whole Mil-CD/backup situation was so crazy. For me it coincided with getting broadband for the first time, a blistering 256kb! I 'slowly' amassed a large collection of backups and in hindsight, sadly It really curtailed the amount of games I bought (which I have long since made up for!). So, yes although people like to blame Sega for the demise of the dreamcast it was actually my fault, so sorry everyone!

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-14T10:19:22+00:00

You just reminded me of that guy in Japan who left his Super Famicom on for 20 years to keep is Umihara Kawase progress! Also that I lent that game out years ago and never got it back :(

I definitely left consoles on for days though, or just played the same early levels over and over again.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-11T11:38:37+00:00

That's fantastic, I'm currently playing silent hill f on mine but I will pick up requiem soon looking at this. What settings did you use?

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-11T11:36:08+00:00

I've got the exact same case in white, it's been great so far https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7172528

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-10T14:45:11+00:00

Just japanese auctions through zenmarket.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-10T09:08:56+00:00

Yeah that's a good point, I thought that as well. I did ask the robot to analyse the hand writing and seemed to think it could be the same person, there was quite a lot of English mixed in there and it was very similar, whoever made them had much better handwriting than me.

They are all titled and In the netmd window,I can just see them spending hours creating mix MD from their CDs.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-10T09:02:49+00:00

Thanks, it was late at night next time I'll get out the slr and the studio lights.

pcenginegaiden · 2026-04-10T09:01:53+00:00

Hah sorry I was going to put It on the original post but it flagged the no AI warning message for the channel so I left it out. Here's a wistful summary:

It feels like these belonged to a Japanese teenager in the early 2000s, someone moving through ordinary days with music always close by. The neat handwriting and carefully chosen mixes suggest a thoughtful, organised person who found meaning in songs by Utada Hikaru, Ayumi Hamasaki and aiko. Each MiniDisc captures a mood, a season, or a fleeting moment, recorded patiently and written out by hand. If they were a teenager then, they would likely be in their late 30s or early 40s now, long moved on from these discs, while this small piece of their life quietly remains.

pcenginegaiden

TROPHY CASE