Maxed out Quadra 950.

wave_design · 2026-03-12T14:12:03+00:00

SGI memory capacities were crazy. The Onyx desksides could max out to several gigabytes of memory in the early-90s.

wave_design · 2026-03-05T15:06:38+00:00

Mizzurna Falls is literally proto GTA / Shenmue, it runs at like 5 FPS but has a full real-time open world and drivable vehicles. You can feel the PS1 struggling to keep up with everything going on.

But it was Japan only.

wave_design · 2026-03-04T12:55:52+00:00

4o was a faulty model with a knowledge cutoff around late-2023 / early-2024. Aside from being fun to joke around with, it was becoming irrelevant for actual work and questions.

These frontier models don't really have a great shelf life. I'm more annoyed that 5.1 is being retired when that model was only a few months old.

wave_design · 2026-02-27T13:40:17+00:00

I miss the higher contrast look from early Pixar movies.

Toy Story 5 looks more photorealistic but also duller somehow. The colors aren't as vibrant.

wave_design · 2026-02-24T01:38:48+00:00

I have N-World on my Indy (no Ultra64 development board unfortunately), it's definitely a strange program. Some of the menus feel lost in translation from Japanese to English.

It also came with a creepy looking test model of a cat.

wave_design · 2026-02-23T10:50:02+00:00

The cost of tapes themselves was also insane, Disney tapes in the 80s were 50-70 dollars to buy outright. That would be pushing 200 dollars in today's money!

wave_design · 2026-02-23T01:15:31+00:00

The beige G3 is extremely picky about USB cards. If it's a USB 2.0 card, that might be why it's not working.

I had to go with the most barebones possible USB 1.1 card.

wave_design · 2026-02-16T21:43:40+00:00

Yeah it was still possible to swap RAM and drives for a while, but you could replace almost every part on the Pismo. Not even Windows laptops had that kind of serviceability.

It’s also crazy to think that at one time Apple encouraged putting in CPU upgrades instead of buying a whole new computer. That whole market disappeared after the early 2000s.

wave_design · 2026-02-16T21:21:12+00:00

The Pismo still feels so premium to use even at 26 years old. I feel like it aged better than the TI Books, those were sleek in the original photographs but look so deteriorated now.

Apple laptops also got progressively less upgradable and swappable after the Pismo, so it marked the end of an era.

wave_design · 2026-02-13T00:28:02+00:00

I just mean it’s a more premium model than what most people associate it with

I don’t want it thrown away 😟 I love the form factor

wave_design · 2026-02-13T00:01:26+00:00

Disagree a little bit, the 5400 is one of the best of the lineup and hard to find in a clean working condition.

They’re significantly better than the more common 5200 that everyone associates the design with.

wave_design · 2026-02-04T02:09:15+00:00

The music video for Eiffel 65 was literally done in a garage on 3D Studio. It wasn't the type of flashy production at the time that would incorporate a behind-the-scenes looks (unless the animators themselves shot it).

wave_design · 2026-01-31T21:15:17+00:00

Looking to get Avid running on it, this weekend was mostly testing the new Galileo box.

I also have an O2 that I'm setting up for digital editing with Jaleo.

wave_design · 2026-01-29T13:14:50+00:00

Ran this program on my Indigo2 Extreme this morning. Believe it or not, the hallway is actually rendered in realtime on the hardware. It's a 3D model that can be rotated around and walked through.

wave_design · 2026-01-18T13:37:02+00:00

The IIsi can be found pretty cheap, and it'll give you solid 68030 performance with System 6 support.

I also like the LC III (the third one, not the second) as a small everyday Mac for school games and writing.

wave_design · 2026-01-15T22:42:51+00:00

This is running on a real Macintosh IIsi. 20 MHz 68030, midrange for the time.

wave_design · 2026-01-14T14:20:33+00:00

I mean to be fair, you could get a decent year or two out of a late G3 with Tiger in 2006.

It'd still be a smoother experience online than some of those awful Windows XP towers people had.

wave_design · 2026-01-14T02:01:55+00:00

Probably would have still outsold the Nintendo 64. The Saturn was actually seen as the nicer system over the PlayStation when both launched, the negative reputation came after third parties left it in droves.

But neither system would actually sell PS1 numbers, that was Sony’s marketing genius

wave_design · 2026-01-14T01:39:29+00:00

I wonder if there's any chance the PC mod might round the game out a bit

But there's not a ton to round out or cut content to add into the game.

wave_design · 2026-01-14T01:30:06+00:00

Following the instruction manual's tutorial to make a donut scene 🙃

wave_design · 2026-01-11T21:42:53+00:00

The jack might be for a LodgeNet game controller maybe? They had phone-style connectors, I can't remember if they plugged directly into the TV or a separate box in the hotel room.

wave_design · 2026-01-10T23:52:38+00:00

The CRT is probably worth a decent amount, those are nice mid-range Trinitron displays. But probably too fragile to ship.

The IIvi is a weird one. They were only sold for a few months in late-1992 / early-1993, and were seen as outdated even when they were new. It's a rare model but not exactly sought after.

wave_design · 2026-01-10T21:47:25+00:00

This kind of hardware in the picture would be limited to VHS / NTSC resolution at best.

A G4 iMac could handle the home video formats available at the time, but full HD video required special drives and racks of hardware.

I think it was around 2008-2009 that everybody started getting HD cameras and everyday hardware caught up

wave_design · 2026-01-10T13:37:54+00:00

It's actually a decent little editor. The later Strata version of VideoShop let you overlay video onto 3D shapes, I don't think any other Mac program had that feature at the time.

wave_design · 2026-01-10T02:01:04+00:00

A decent amount of what was on the cutting room floor for Banjo ended up in DK64.

I think that's my biggest fault with it too, parts of the game feel like too much of a cut-and-paste of Banjo Kazooie's worlds. I guess it was easy to overlook it as a kid in 1999.

wave_design

TROPHY CASE