Tag: hardware

A Cache of Old Tech

Posted on by Nimgimli

With our move completed I’ve started a second purge/organization sweep. My long term goal is to just reduce the amount of “stuff” I have, and I have a lot of stuff. In earlier years I was fairly comfortable financially and [in retrospect] fairly unhappy in some way, and I’d placate that unhappiness by buying things that seemed cool. The adage back then was: “He who dies with the most toys, wins.” Not something I’m proud of these days.

Anyway the goal is not only to reduce clutter but just to try to streamline life a bit. It’s just been feeling good to send things off to recycling lately.

Anywhoooo…. I’ve found a bunch of old tech I’d sort of forgotten I had. (The image at the top of this post shows most of the current haul.) A lot of it is video game stuff: a Nintendo DS (not the newer 3DS, that one is still theoretically in use), a Sony PSP, and a Sony PS Vita. No surprises there; I love me some gaming devices. I also found two old iPods, including the original 5 GB model that’s about the size of a deck of cards. Lastly some old cellular-but-not-Smart phones, including a Motorola model that has a slide out keyboard (also some unremarkable old flip phones). Most interesting was a little Nokia device that was so old I didn’t remember what it did. Turns out it’s like a tiny, tiny tablet or something. Think of a gadget like the Palm Pilot only more tuned for consumption rather than creation:

A small Nokia 'tablet' of sorts.
This is the item I find most intriguing. Sadly it is frozen in time, stuck in 2006 until I set up an old-timey WiFi network.

None of this stuff is quite working. A lot of these items had proprietary charging ports and (so far) I haven’t found the charging cables.

In other cases, the batteries are so old they no longer hold a charge. The PSP seems to work fine as long as it is plugged in, but as soon as it is disconnected it dies. One of the phones charged fine but in the 20 minutes or so it took me to wipe it prior to recycling, the battery was basically dead again.

And then there is the connectivity issue. The WiFi tech in these old gadgets has no knowledge of modern WiFi security protocols so they can’t connect. I COULD, if I was that ambitious, set up a second 2.4 ghz WEP WiFi network and somehow isolate it, and I MIGHT do that on a super temporary basis but it’s not something I’d feel comfortable leaving up all the time. Mostly it’s this little Nokia thing I’d like to use for a few minutes. It does have a bunch of content on it, cached back in 2006 so I guess that was the last time it had a WiFi connection.

Other devices are just decomposing. The phone with the slide out keyboard has a rubberized back surface that is sticky and gross. At first I thought something had spilled on it, but no, the rubber is just embracing entropy.

A Motorola phone with a slide-out keyboard.
If you think the front looks dirty you should see the back. It literally sticks to the table since the rubber backing is slowly dissolving.

I’m deciding what to do with this stuff. In theory I might someday use the gaming devices but the other items are just curiosities. Maybe I can set up a museum of old tech. Get some Lucite boxes to display it all in. Charge a nickle for admission! More likely I’ll do whatever I can to reset/wipe data and take them all to the e-waste recycling station.

Honestly, it’s been fun finding this stuff and seeing what I can get working. It’s crazy what I used to spend my money on, though.

Update On My New Logitech Peripherals

Posted on by Nimgimli

A few weeks ago I posted about buying a new set of Logitech peripherals. Now that I’ve been using them all for a while, I wanted to follow up with my thoughts on each one.

First up and the one I have the most issues with, the keyboard.

Logitech G915 TKL Wireless Tactile Version

I love the feel of this keyboard, which is obviously the most important aspect of a keyboard. It is mechanical but isn’t super loud and the keys are fairly low profile. They make various versions of this keyboard so this being the “Tactile” version is important to note. You can customize the F keys but I haven’t messed with that at all. In fact there appears to be a way to set up 3 versions of the F keys (and you can set up different profiles for different apps/games). The RGB lighting can be handled by the Ghub software or it can be connected to Windows 11’s Dynamic Lighting. I’ve done the latter just cuz, but honestly I didn’t notice this doing much. I eventually switched back to the Ghub system using a theme that marks the last key you hit in a different color. Why? I dunno, it just seemed interesting!

One nice perk for some is a “Game Mode” where you can disable certain keys, like the Windows key. I don’t use that since I use the XBox Game Bar for captures and such and it requires the Windows key, but I bet a lot of folks would appreciate this feature.

Now the downsides. The secondary functions of keys, like the $%^& symbols, do not light up and in a dark room you really can’t see them. It’s OK if your fingers are already in position since you probably know where these are, but if you’re just reaching over to hit the ^ key or something, if you’re like me you might not remember that’s on the 6 key. So that’s my first issue. My second is that when the lighting goes out, which it does pretty soon after you stop typing, the letters are really hard to see in a dark room. I generally have to tap a key to kick the lights on, then I can place my hands in the proper position. Ideally the lights would stay on a little longer and/or using the mouse would keep the keyboard lights on. Or, y’know, maybe have lettering that is readable even with the backlight off.

Of course you have to charge the keyboard (which is maybe why the lights go off so quickly) which isn’t a huge deal except the charging port is a micro-usb port and I’m surrounded by USB-C cables at this point. I bought a little micro-usb to usb-c adapter so I can just unplug my game controller and plug that cable into the keyboard to charge it, but a built in USB-C charging port would be welcome.

So that’s a lot of words about downsides but the important thing is I LOVE the feel of the keyboard so I’m still pretty happy with it. And even though I got the Wireless version just because it was what was available and I was too impatient to wait for the wired one to ship in a week, I’m pretty happy I did since it is nice to easily move the keyboard around without a cable knocking things over and such.

Logitech G502 X Wired Gaming Mouse

Very happy with this mouse. It has that asymmetric design where there is a kind of shelf for your thumb to rest on, and the mouse is very light. I keep it at 1600 dpi by default but it can go all the way up to 25,600 DPI. I set it that high once and that is just crazy and unusably fast, but it’s there if you’re The Flash or someone. The scroll wheel has both smooth and ‘ratchet’ scrolling with a button below the wheel to toggle between the two. You can save multiple profiles and there’s a second button to toggle through those. The scroll wheel pushes in and also clicks horizontally left and right. Next to the main left button are 2 extra buttons you can hit with your index finger pretty easily (by default they toggle DPI up/down) and on the side are three more that you can hit with your thumb. All of these can be customized per game and the Ghub software even offers Commands for a bunch of games. Like pick the Once Human profile and there’s a Summon Motorcycle command that is really just rebinding “G” but you don’t have to remember that the default key for Summon Motorcycle is apparently G.

I don’t have any downsides beyond I am still working on developing the muscle memory to hit all these buttons. I’m slowly adding custom button presses for the games I’ve been playing. Overall, super happy with the mouse and glad I got the wired version just because I have to assume a wireless version would be heavier due to the battery inside.

Logitech G Pro X SE Wired Gaming Headset

Really over the moon happy with this headset, but I do want to stress that I am not a true audiophile and a certain amount of hearing loss runs in my family as we age, and I am definitely experiencing that, along with a lot of tinnitus. So keeping all that in mind, the headset is super comfortable and really blocks out the world to where I have to tell PartPurple I’m putting them on so if she calls me and I ignore her, it isn’t that I’m being rude, I just can’t hear her. Music sounds really good, games sound great. The surround sound works really well, the mike SEEMS to work really well in testing though I still haven’t actually spoken to anyone using it. The Ghub software lets you set equalizer profiles, which I did, but once I found something I liked I just left it. As with the other peripherals you can set up custom profiles depending on app/game but I haven’t bothered so far.

Again, really no downsides. I maaaaybe should’ve gone with a wireless set, but since these are dedicated to using on the PC there’s something to be said for never having to worry about if they’re charged and what not. But having the cable dangling around is a bit of a hassle, particularly since Lola somehow always winds up with it wrapped around her paws (one of her MANY beds is right next to my gaming station).

So in conclusion, I guess this was a really boring post because basically I love all this gear. I won’t get any clicks for this! I should chosen something I hate as my topic for today.

But yeah, I’m just in this honeymoon PC gaming period. I LOVE my new PC, I love these peripherals, there are SO many games I want to play. All I need now is to win the lottery so I can quick my day job and just hang around playing all day!

You Don’t Have to Build Your Gaming PC

Posted on by Nimgimli

As I’ve mentioned more than a couple times, a month ago I bought a gaming PC. I didn’t have a ton of cash to spend; my budget was $2000. I mean as a console gamer, $2000 sounds like a crazy amount, but I have friends who’ve spent close to twice that on a gaming PC.

I am loving it so far. I did not build it, and I didn’t even go to a ‘builder’ place. I bought an off the shelf system from CyberpowerPC and I bought it from Amazon. I did make sure to buy a system and a brand that I knew used standard parts rather than OEM stuff so that I’d be able to upgrade it without any issues. Specifically I followed the advice of PC Builder Jason, who is a bit over-the-top but seems to offer good advice.

I made a point of waiting over a month to talk about the PC so when someone inevitably comes along and says CyberPowerPC is crap, or that PC Builder Jason gives terrible advice, I can with confidence say “I love this system and I’ve had no issues with it.” It got delivered, I took it out of the box, plugged it in and off I went. No hassles at all *knock on wood*. (OK I have one tiny issue in that all the RGB lights in it are too bright and there’s no way to dim them that I can find, at least without cracking open the case and connecting the lights to the motherboard. As shipped there are just physical buttons on the case that let you toggle between modes and hues, but not brightness.)

But to get to the point of this post, I think in some circles there’s a bit of elitism in PC gaming, and I wonder how many console gamers don’t make the jump not because of money, but because they don’t know enough about PCs. They see posts on social media or the gaming sites about how you have to build your own PC to get what you want, or to get a good deal, or to get quality, or to prove that you are a Real Gamer, and building your own seems too intimidating. To be sure over on the console side of things there’s a totally different argument but it is about PS5 is better than Xbox is better than Switch is better than PS5. Console wars never die, but once you own a system no one is going to give you crap because you don’t have extra storage space or a $200 controller or whatever.

I used to build PCs. Heck once upon a time I built PCs for doctor’s offices for a medical electronics company; that was my job. This was WAY back, like 1990 or maybe even earlier. (We sold a heart monitor that hooked up to a PC and back then many doctor’s offices didn’t have a PC so they’d buy heart monitor and PC as a bundle.) So I know I can do it (or at least that I could do it then, and it was a lot harder back then) but I just don’t want to do it. And I get really anxious spending all that money and worrying that I’m going to break something or screw something and winding up with a $2000 door stop. I know intellectually that is very unlikely to happen, but it still stresses me out.

I admit part of my resistance to getting back into PC gaming was the whole “PC Master Race” mentality that you run into on reddit or game forums, and the whole vibe that anyone who didn’t build their own PC was an idiot. Consoles are easy and gaming is a leisure activity. I don’t want gaming to be a source of stress. I also hadn’t realized just how far pre-made systems have come. I was used to the days when getting a desktop gaming system meant buying a powerful office system, a better GPU and a more powerful power supply and doing a Day 1 upgrade. That was what was in my mind. If I’d known I could have a fast, quiet system that I could just take out of a box and plug in, I might have come back to PC gaming a lot sooner.

Anyway, on the off chance that anyone who is curious about getting into PC gaming reads this, ignore all the elitism in the PC gaming space. I am NOT saying you shouldn’t build your own system if that is what you want to do. I’m sure it is very rewarding to do so. But I’m saying if you are not interested in that aspect of being a PC gamer, don’t let it hold you back. You most certainly can have a fine time with a good system bought from a big box store. Then if you want to, you can learn at your own pace. Maybe do an upgrade or two and if you really WANT to, you can build your own system 5 or 10 years down the road, ideally before you have a pressing need so you can take your time to build thoughtfully. I have pulled a complete 180 from “I like console, PCs are too much of a hassle” to “I love my PC so much! (Though I still love my consoles. too!)

Note: Header image generated by Bing Image Creator using prompt “image of a pile of computer parts”

Tiny Tech Tinkering Titillates

Posted on by Nimgimli

I might have been a bit over tired when I came up with that headline but I’m leaving it, by gum!

So a while back I bought a 2 TB SSD for the Playstation 5. Why? I have no idea. Because I’m dumb. I don’t need that much space but it was on sale. This was back last summer. Anyway I bought it, and swapped out the 1 TB that I already had in there. That 1 TB SSD has been sitting on my desk ever since.

My gaming desktop, in the meantime, has a .5 TB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. Whether it is because games just expect an SSD these days, or if the PS5 and Xbox Series X have spoiled me, loading times for games I was running off that 1 TB platter drive just seemed dreadful. Obvious solution, repurpose the 1 TB SSD that I’d pulled out of the PS5.

It could have been as simple as opening the case, plugging the drive into an available m.2 slot and be off and running. But it wasn’t that simple. My motherboard didn’t have a 2nd m.2 slot. Turns out you can get a PCI card that provides an m.2 slot so I ordered one. It came and I opened the case again and… hey wait a minute, I don’t have a PCI slot either. Well, not one that I recognized. Apparently motherboard design has changed in the maybe 15 years since I last cut my knuckles on the guts of a PC.

It turns out I had a “single lane” PCI slot, but I’d purchased a “4 lane” PCI card. Fortunately it was like $13. Back to Amazon I went and found a single lane adapter card (this one was like $8). That worked. Mounted the SSD on the card, stuck the card in, turned the system on and…. nothing.

OK let’s check the BIOS. Restarted the machine, held down DEL. No BIOS. Tried again holding F2. No BIOS. F1? Nope. F10? Nope. How the hell do I get into the BIOS? New learning opportunity. You can access it via Windows when all else fails, by using Advanced Startup in the System->Recovery options.

Finally got into the BIOS and yup, the drive is showing in the BIOS so what could be wrong… oh wait, it’s formatted for the PS5. Duh. On to the Disk Management app. This at least still looks the same as it used to look, once I remembered that it existed. Took a few minutes to format it, create a partition and assign a drive letter and voila! Now I have 1.5 TB total SSD space.

But here’s the dangerous bit… doing all this was, dare I say it? Fun. And kind of satisfying. And now I kind of want to do more. I’ve been seriously considering building a PC. I figure part of the frustration of working on a PC is that while you’re working on it, you don’t have a PC, right? But if I build a SECOND PC it should remove all that stress and frustration and it could be fun. I mean there was a time in my life where I really enjoyed tinkering in the guts of a PC. It’d be really nice to learn about all the new tech and stuff.

Really the only drawback is that everything tech-related is so damned expensive these days. Like I guess I could build a really cheap gaming PC just to build it but then what? Stick it in the closet? So I’d really want to build an upgrade to what I have (an i7-9700F @ 3.00GHz and an RTX 2070 SUPER GPU) which I’m assuming wouldn’t be cheap.

So I probably won’t do anything other than live vicariously through watching YouTube PC build videos. Maybe when I hit those lottery numbers…

Why the heck does everything have to cost money!?

Playstation 5 & Xbox Series X for PC gamers

Posted on by Nimgimli

Most of my social media friends are primarily PC gamers so I thought I’d write a post helping them to decide if/when they should buy a Playstation 5 [PS5] or an Xbox Series X [XSX]. But before we get into that, lets talk a little bit about the console business model.

Both Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles (particularly near launch) at a loss. The idea is to get you in the door, then they make their money off of you via software and subscription sales. As a general rule of thumb when you buy a game on one of their platforms they get 30% of the sale price, and of course 100% for first party titles. Keep that in mind as we discuss each machine.

Now let’s talk about exclusives. True exclusives are becoming increasingly rare these days. Don’t be fooled when a company says “console exclusive” or “timed exclusive.” The former means the game WILL be on PC (just not on the other console), the latter means it’ll be on PC you’ll just have to wait a while.

Playstation 5

Let’s talk PS5 first. Sony is a ‘traditional’ console seller in that their console is their platform. They want to sell a bunch of PS5s to build market share. This is why they have such high quality exclusives. Sony is willing to devote a ton of resources into exclusives because these are used as the ‘bait’ to get you into the Playstation ecosystem.

Tangent: I’m not a developer so this might be nonsense, but I suspect that true Playstation exclusives look as good as they do because the developers can take advantage of every hardware-specific feature and trick there is. They’re not worried about “how will we do this on Xbox or PC” so they can squeeze every drop of power out of their single target hardware.

Once you buy that PS5 to play an exclusive, Sony hopes you’ll buy other games, plus peripherals and maybe a Playstation+ subscription. The only other Playstation revenue stream they have is their streaming service Playstation Now, but so far Sony has used this mostly to put their back-catalog to use. They really want to force you to buy a Playstation in order for you to play their newest, hottest titles.

So when should you but a PS5? When there are enough exclusives to justify the hardware cost; so 2022 maybe? The truth is you probably won’t use your PS5 very much; all your friends are on PC and if you’re a dedicated PC gamer your rig is probably more powerful than the PS5 is, or at the very least it will be when you upgrade in a couple of years. Most of my die-hard PC gamer friends report that their consoles mostly collect dust after an initial burst of enthusiasm.

Xbox Series X

Now let’s talk about Microsoft. Microsoft diverges from Sony in a huge way in that the Xbox hardware platform is not their only revenue stream. They have this side project called Windows as well. Microsoft’s focus is on selling you software and subscriptions, and they’re leaning harder and harder into subscriptions at this point.

Because of this, XSX exclusives aren’t always as flashy as PS5 exclusives. In fact there are virtually no true XSX exclusives; Microsoft is making a concerted effort to offer all its games on Windows as well as Xbox.

Recently Xbox Game Pass has become a huge focus. It works on Xbox hardware and on Windows machines. Microsoft is happy to sell you an XSX, sure, but what it REALLY wants to sell you is a Game Pass subscription and it doesn’t care where you play the games. Could be on Xbox, could be on PC, could be via Xcloud.

In fact one could argue that they’d prefer you play on PC. Consider that when you buy an XSX, Microsoft loses money. When you buy a new gaming PC that comes with a Windows license, Microsoft earns money. [Granted a lot of PC gamers just carry their Windows license with them, but every time an Alienware, OriginPC or a gaming PC from Best Buy is sold, Microsoft makes money on that Windows license.]

Of course when you play on Windows, Microsoft doesn’t make anything from you when you buy a game from Steam, Origin, Epic or any other store, and no one that I know chooses to buy from the Windows Store unless they can’t avoid it. But again, this is where Game Pass comes in and why Microsoft is leaning so hard into it. Game Pass is their on-going revenue stream from PC gamers.

So when should you, the PC gamer, buy an Xbox Series X? Never. XSX is for those of us who don’t want/can’t afford a gaming PC. But as long as PC gaming is your jam, there’s very little reason for you to buy an XSX.

Snarky Summary

Hopefully this post will be of some help and will stop some of the complaints from PC gamers about how little incentive there is for them to buy a new console. These consoles are not generally meant for you. You’re wealthy enough that you can buy a $1500-$3000 gaming PC and then a few hundred dollars more every couple of years to keep it up to snuff. Be content with that, and understand that consoles are meant for a different market. Let console gamers enjoy their once-a-decade $400-500 new devices in peace. Don’t be the guy driving around in a Ferrari complaining that Chevrolet is giving you no reason to buy their new Aveo model.

New Playstation hardware revs

Posted on by Nimgimli

While the Great BlogWAR of Aught-8 was raging, the Leipzeig Game Conference was ignored here at Dragonchasers. Shame on me.

A couple Playstation-related hardware announcements cropped up. First is the PSP-3000, another rev of the familiar PSP, this one with a built-in microphone (for Skype or voice chat in games) and a screen that is supposed to have double the refresh rate of the old screen, a “color gamut” twice as wide (honestly not sure exactly what that means but I figure it boils down to twice as many potential colors) and 5 times the contrast ratio. Also the Home button is gone, replaced my a Playstation button.

An incremental improvement, for sure, but still welcomed.

Also, a new PS3 bundle. 160 gig PS2, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, DualShock Controller and a coupon for PSN game Pain, all for $500. Uncharted is pretty f’ing great, so its a nice pack-in choice. The downside is that, from everything I’ve read, this new 160 gig PS3 has no Backwards Compatibility. So presumably the MGS4 80 gig bundle now on store shelves is your last chance to get limited BC.

PSP-3000