Tag: throwback thursday

Throwback Thursday: Dial-Up

Old School Modem
Image Courtesy of Leon Brooks under Public Domain.

By Thomas Holbrook II

I went to school at the Leeton R-X school district in Missouri.  The computer lab was quite humble.

There were mostly DOS machines with some Windows 3x machines connected together via Novel Netware.  It wasn’t until about 1996 that Internet access became available.

Before I graduated high school in 2002, we had one major upgrade.  Windows 98 with Office 2000.  It’s amazing how a school could fall behind on technology.

At least the Internet connection was fast.  I remember to this day having to deal with dial-up.  It was mostly through my dad’s AOL connection, and heaven help me if I had any Windows Updates.

This was before I delved into this thing known as Linux, or rather GNU/Linux.  One of the reasons I wanted to have regular access to hi speed Internet was due to the prevalence of soft modems.

Linux-based drivers were difficult to come by back then.

Access via Ethernet was an appropriate way around that problem.  I do have fond memories of dial up, though I’ll admit that I’d be frustrated today, though not nearly as much as with a mobile hotspot that’s going at Edge Network speeds.

Truth be told, I came into the computer culture late in the game.  I never got to experience the dial-in BBS’es that others had the pleasure of using to talk to each other and trade files with.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I actually utilized IRC.  I can only imagine the amount of lag from all the conversations at once.

These days, I feel fortunate.  There’s a straight up monthly fee for access (while a price guarantee is in effect).  Long distance fees for access are a thing of the past.

Yet I still remember the excitement while exploring vast communities and dreaming of things that I wouldn’t have otherwise attempted to accomplish.

Dial-up modems still exist to this day, and there are still plenty of dial-up users out there.  Sometimes, the old reliable is all that’s needed.  Hopefully, I won’t have to use that as an only option.

With that said, I appreciate the legacy.  What are your memories of dial-up access?

Throwback Thursday: Jake the Snake Roberts

Jake the Snake Roberts
Photo taken from a screencap of WWE’s Youtube Channel.

By Thomas Holbrook II

On Old School Raw, several legends made guest appearances.  “Double A” Arn Anderson, Sgt Slaughter, DDP, Booker T, and others would help bring back some wonderful memories of WWE.  The one pleasant surprise that ended the show was none other than Jake the Snake Roberts coming out with his customary bag to the dismay of The Shield, a faction that imposes it’s own “brand of justice.”

 

There was more to him than the giant snake.  His ring psychology was so effective, his mic work so extraordinary, that physique didn’t matter.  Here’s a rare piece of footage of him in WCW.

 

There was more to him than the giant snake.  His ring psychology was so effective, his mic work so extraordinary, that physique didn’t matter.  Here’s a rare piece of footage of him in WCW.

The intellectual villain has been a rarity in professional wrestling, and nobody has matched him to date in my humble opinion.  I remember his brief feud with Sting and to this day, it’s a shame that it wasn’t lengthy.

So who is your favorite wrestling legend?  Feel free to sound off in the comments section below.

Throwback Thursday: SNES Emulation

SNES Console
Image courtesy of Evan-Amos under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Unported 3.0 License.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

Growing up, we all had our favorite past times.  Some played baseball, while others played video games.  My favorite activity revolved around the latter, and one of my favorite consoles was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and Super Castlevania IV were among my favorite games.  The bad news is that the older the hardware becomes, the more likely it is to fail.

This is where emulation comes into play.

As it turns out, most console emulators will only be just accurate enough for the games to be playable.  According to Byuu, who wrote quite an informative piece on Ars Technica:

These days, the most dominant emulators are Nestopia and Nintendulator, requiring 800MHz and 1.6GHz, respectively, to attain full speed. The need for speed isn’t because the emulators aren’t well optimized: it’s because they are a far more faithful recreation of the original NES hardware in software.

Now compare these to the older N64 emulator, UltraHLE, whose system requirements were a meager 350MHz Pentium II system. To the casual observer, it can be quite perplexing to see Mario 64 requiring less processing power than the original Mario Bros.

My experience in emulation is in the SNES field, working on the bsnes emulator. I adored the ideal behind Nestopia, and wanted to recreate this level of accuracy for the Super Nintendo. As it turns out, the same level of dedication to accuracy pushed requirements up into the 2-3GHz range, depending on the title.

 

Considering the hardware inside the SNES, requiring a high end computer makes sense.  After all, one is mimicking an entire system in software.  Byuu has since merged bsnes into a new project.