#HDD mode

[pikanepgamer]

Masuda called the leaker on Twitter to announce that Mega Zeraora has sadly been scrapped. So instead, I drew an HDD mode of Zeraora to save it from being scrapped instead!

Hope you guys liked this fan art and have a nice day!

[vivanightcity]

Anyone know what setting it is that makes adverts look like ass in photomode?

I know there are ones they censor in photomode, don't care about that, but it clearly like ratchets down the quality of the advert and it stands out in places like this.

[livingdeadhorse]

idk what this is. i like robots. i’ll clean these up later. i think.

anyways while drawing these I started thinking abt like. idk does this count as an AU.

General shit:

I didn't make it clear, but the robots that have pupils were built without a hardcoded purpose. They've always been free to explore what they want to do. The robots with fully colored "scleras" were created with a purpose from the jump, so their creators didn't feel the need to make them appear more "human".

The more expensive a robot's parts are, the less clunky it is.

Right now, I'm going with "their human family built them" but that's liable to change.

The designs are also liable to change because uh. duh.

Celestia Ludenberg:

Viewed the robots with an imbued purpose as interesting and superior (something something humanity's advancement). She wants to be praised like that, so she emulates them

Her cat loves how much heat she radiates so it's always near her.

Most of her upgrades are cosmetic but if they aren't, they're stupid. She won't upgrade her CPU or her motherboard, but she'll load up with three 4090s that her other components can't even keep up with. Yes, she does it to flex.

She'll distract from bootleg, refurbished, or shoddily painted parts by turning on her RGB. It gets annoying.

She knows that she's fairly unsettling and she revels in it.

All things considered, her cable management is pretty good.

Her gambling skill is still just luck here, but she tells everyone it's because she has a never-seen-before GPU(& CPU) that does calculations at insane speeds.

Most don't believe her but have no way to disprove her lie.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru

I can't decide if he was built by his father or his grandfather.

Either way, he was built before Toranosuke's downfall, so his internals were all pretty expensive for the time. Luckily for him, that means he was slightly future-proof and has a viable upgrade path.

Unluckily for him, this means he's stuck with really old parts and his 8gb of RAM can barely keep up in a 32gb world sadge

His chassis is built from secondhand or scrap parts. It's why his joints are so ancient in comparison to the rest of him and why he has so much cabling that he can't seem to manage.

Shit chassis = shit airflow = he is always overheating

BUDDY IS YOUR CPU BURNING HOW IS THERE SMOKE

Older tech = LOUD AF. The class bought him new fans to avoid the loud ass whirring. It's not quiet but he used to sound like a jet engine.

He runs on Debian. It was originally going to be Arch since it's lightweight but Debian's whole "old but stable" reputation fits him more. I don't see him properly dealing with bleeding edge software anyways.

His room is filled with past HDDs that no longer have storage. He deems all educational material important so he refuses to delete any lessons. He doesn't have the money for SSDs.

Mukuro Ikusaba:

Is usually in reconnaissance mode, meaning she has a shit ton of hidden cameras in her chassis

This used to benefit Fenrir. Now it benefits Junko.

She can have her parts shifted around with no issue to make room for a better arsenal.

She’s durable in her reconnaissance mode but she’s nigh on untouchable in her combat mode. Her chassis gets 10x bulkier and she can split her attention to several different tasks on the battlefield.

Fenrir Mercenary Group doubles as a weapons company. Mukuro is the only model of her kind though.

They tried to give her reconnaissance model the look of a “normal girl” so she could gather info more efficiently. They failed real bad. They also didn’t account for the fact that Mukuro isn’t good at socializing.

She allocates a CPU core to a process dedicated to Junko. 24/7 365

She believes herself to be less capable of emotion than she actually is. She can’t seem to find the system process that triggers such painful emotions.

Chihiro Fujisaki

Each “fold” in her skirt doubles as a screen. Think of the skirt as having two layers: the top shell and the under shell. The top shell is what doubles as a screen.

Optimized her hardware to work on code as fast as possible (fingers, skirt, etc).

She tends to test out new software on herself regardless of their compatibility with her pre-existing shit. She constantly has to reinstall her OS, but it’s all fun for her.

Speaking of her OS, I was going to make her run on Gentoo but IDK cause of the compile times. It’d be faster if she used distcc but I can’t see her screwing over her classmates like that lol.

So I’m between Nix and Arch.

Insecure about the fact that she overhauled her original model so extensively. Got made fun of for being a ‘defective’ robot. Her father supports her modifications but she still feels bad about having ‘failed’ somehow.

Cue identity issues

She helps out her classmates when it comes to repairs.

Tendency to stay up programming leads to high uptimes. If her friends notice her lagging or crashing, they’ll try to get her to shut down. (In a computer sense lol, not an emotional shut down)

Do y’all remember the xz utils backdoor? Yeah that’s how extensively she combs through code.

Sayaka Maizono

I can’t decide if she was built to be an idol or was originally some other type of robot.

Loves to make kids smile, so she has a sort of candy mechanism in her arm.

Everything about her glows or spins. You will never get bored looking at her.

Her skirt isn’t actually see through I just didn’t feel like erasing the hip joints lmao.

If corpos give her manager enough money, she has to perform with literal ads on her.

State-of-the art facial recognition software. It makes her fans feel special to have their names remembered.

She has a regular sleep cycle due to how load-intensive her everyday life is. Has to shut down for a couple hours every week at least.

Her psychic ability is just her running a million calculations based on people’s behavior and sensing which one is most plausible. This feature is in place to avoid PR disasters during interviews or public appearances.

There really aren’t enough worker’s rights regulations in place for robots.

The company gets alerts whenever she freaks tf out, so she feels even more stifled and repressed. Chihiro helped remove this.

Kyoko Kirigiri

Can’t decide if she was built by her father or grandfather. Probably just built by Jin and he “left” her in Fuhito’s care.

Fuhito made her go through several modifications, hardcoding his own investigative skills into her system.

Her grandfather loves her but has fucked up ideas about her own autonomy.

The events of DR:K still happen. She chose not to replace her hands.

Fuhito doesn’t make much use of a backdoor in her system anymore. He used it a lot more when she was a child but he sees her as a viable heir of the Kirigiri clan now. Chihiro isolated the backdoor to a separate SSD anyhow.

Still complicated father-daughter issues

Everything about her (but her OS) is proprietary, probably commissioned from Towa Industries. Her OS is a fork of Mint. The Windows 7 UI is just because I imagine her grandfather is One of Those lmao.

Has way too many scanners and sensors. She can’t test any evidence herself but she can gather a fair bit of information. Has a vast database for cross-comparison anyways.

Same issues as Togami and Mukuro: sees herself as less capable of emotion than she actually is.

The ramen noodle incident called for actual repairs.

Byakuya Togami

His superiority complex is far worse because he was literally CREATED to be the perfect Togami. You can’t tell him shiiiiiiit.

Gold joints. Scoffs at those with unoptimized cable management or software.

He’s constantly streamlining his own processes. Brings up that he runs on his own OS when Nobody Asked.

Had a similar backdoor to Kyoko’s but Koji did check that one. Obsessively. Nobody would tell Byakuya but He Just Knew. The lack of privacy irritated him. Aloysius helped fix it once Togami finally took over.

Only trusts Aloysius with his repairs. Has a hard time admitting when he needs repairs in the first place so Aloysius hides it under “monthly maintenance”.

Does everything from the terminal even when he 1) shouldn’t and 2) can’t. Bragging rights. He has written a bunch of his own scripts though to speed things up.

Kernel and OS provided to him by Koji. (UNIX-based. Proprietary) Byakuya maintains and builds his own updates. Doesn’t trust cheapskate peasants to do it for him.

Anti-FOSS. For him at least.

Has glasses for the aesthetics. Doesn’t need them.

[felassan]

Dragon Age™: The Veilguard - Patch 4 Release Notes

"We have a patch to celebrate Dragon Age Day, as well as more goodies to come. In Patch 4, you will find a great new tool to take photos of our amazing cutscenes, and 20+ bug fixes."

Rest of post under cut due to length and possible spoilers.

"Hey everyone, Happy Dragon Age Day! First things first, we have our 4th patch out today, and we’ll have even more to come throughout the day to celebrate this yearly tradition. Thank you for being with us on this journey! New Content:  - Dragon Age 2 Hawke’s Iconic Outfit (Armor, Body Paint, Face Paint) - Qunari Complexions (Two new complexions for the Qunari lineage)"

"Quality of Life Changes:  - In Patch 3, we introduced a line on screen showing where a Photo Mode screenshot was saved. In Patch 4, we are reverting that change due to a safety concern brought to us by some content creators. PC players can find their Photo Mode screenshots in Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age: The Veilguard/screenshots - Added an in-game Setting to turn off Bloom.  - Added a “Hide/Show UI” button on the pause screen to better take screenshots on Console.  - Added a “Take Photo” button on the pause screen to take screenshots during conversations and cinematics on PC."

Bug Fixes:  - Fixed an issue that prevented some saves from loading properly. (PC Only) - Fixed an issue that was preventing the Frame Rate Limit setting from being saved.  - Fixed an issue with Rook’s face and hair changing drastically when a save is loaded. - Fixed an issue with certain longer hairstyles that floated above Rook’s chest and shoulders.  - Fixed an issue where two Neve characters could appear in the Fire and Ice quest.   - Fixed a rare issue where Emmrich did not lead Rook to the next task in his recruitment Where the Dead Must Go quest.  - Adjusted the spirit guides in The Warden Vault quest.   - Fixed an issue that caused the Ultimate Ability to swap to the default Ultimate.  - Fixed an issue where the Ultimate Ability Icon was not displayed after Bellara is recruited.  - Fixed an issue where the first hit in a Warrior Rook’s shield throw may miss the target unintentionally.  - Fixed an issue where the Slaughter of Pillars Revenant had no health bar.  - Fixed an issue that caused Achievement Progress to reset when a new Rook was created. This will not restore Achievement Progress that was overwritten, but your Rooks will no longer compete with each other for who can kill more High Dragons.  - Fixed an issue with the camera in The Demon’s Bargain quest when playing on an HDD.  - Fixed an issue with the camera in the Sea of Blood quest if Rook backtracked too far.  - Fixed two instances where Viago was clearly talking to Rook but was too absorbed by Teia’s beauty and staring at her instead.  - Fixed an issue with Photo Mode screenshots appearing slightly blurry for some players.  - Fixed an issue where taking a screenshot with the space bar in Photo Mode also toggled the highlighted setting at the same time. (PC Only)  - Fixed an audio issue that caused battle music to stop playing while Rook was still fighting darkspawn in A Warden’s Best Friend quest.  - Fixed an audio issue that prevented music from playing during a conversation with Lucanis in the Lighthouse.  - Fixed a rare lighting issue in the One Last Breath quest - Fixed a blocking issue in the Fire and Ice quest when returning to the Lighthouse.  - Fixed a blocking issue in the Blood of Arlathan quest if Rook backtracked too far. - Fixed a UI issue that caused the “New Item” highlight to get stuck on an item.  - Fixed an issue with the In Lost Friendship codex that was mentioning events out of order and possibly with the wrong companion.  - Fixed an issue that was causing the male British Inquisitor (Harry Hadden-Paton) to be pitched too low.  - Updated several German voice line instances with corrected translations."

[source]

[nectar-cellar]

I feel the most comfortable asking you this but I am STRUGGLING with severe lag in my TS3 game. I just did a clean install, tried smooth patch, took it out bc it was conflicting with Nraas and didn’t make a difference, but it’s still nearly unplayable. I’ve tried every tutorial under the Sun. don’t remember having this issue years ago when I played. Do you have any tips or tutorials that you recommend? TY in advance!

heyy 💛💛

the only tutorial i really followed was the sims 3 performance and bug fix guide hosted on steam which i'm sure most sims 3 players know about. i'm not sure how helpful my answer will be but this is what i would suggest:

smooth patch

i believe nraas and smooth patch conflict in create-a-sim mode, you can't enable master controller's compact mode with smooth patch integrated with it. so what i did was:

first, install smooth patch according to the MTS page instructions. you should have "ld_SmoothPatch" and "ld_SmoothPatch_MasterController" in your Mods/Packages folder

using s3pe, open "ld_SmoothPatch.package"

in the s3pe screen, right-click on the xml thingy named LazyDuchess.SmoothPatch.Tuning

in the right-click menu, click on "Notepad" then make sure kMasterControllerIntegration value = "False"

save and close the notepad window. then, in s3pe, save the change you made and close s3pe.

nraas mc and smooth patch should no longer conflict. this is the only nraas mc and smooth patch conflict that i am aware of, unless there are others...? but that's how i got them to play together.

lag

the main issues that used to cause super long loading times for me and lagging during gameplay were the following:

thousands of unmerged cc packages in my mods folder

laptop had HDD instead of SSD

framerate was not capped

a lot of script mods installed which were probably conflicting with each other and using a lot of resources in the background

sooo the steps i took were:

organized and merged most of my cc packages into packages smaller than 1 GB - reduces lag and load times

changing my laptop's hard drive to a SSD decreased load times and reduced lag dramatically for me - also adding more ram to my laptop probably helped. but this is a pretty extreme option. i had to replace my hard drive with a SSD because it literally died.

when i used to play on my laptop with a HDD, capping the framerate to 30 or 60 FPS helped to reduce the lagging during gameplay. you can limit the game's framerate using smooth patch, using "3Booter", or thru your computer's graphics card.

script mods like nraas story progression and mingos birds and bees are script mods that are known to cause lag in the game because they are resource heavy. the only way to remove the lag is to uninstall them or, for nraas SP, i set the speed of the story progression to the slowest option.

so yeah i hope that is helpful <3

[genericpuff]

welp, this kinda sucks

I'm currently at odds with the PC that I got a couple months ago, it's started freezing and soft-resetting randomly for seemingly no reason. It would usually be after hours of use that I could chalk up to the memory overloading, but now it's happening as soon as I boot up the frigging thing. And just to make it clear how much I've done on my own to diagnose the problem, our attempts to fix it have included the following:

Limiting startup applications

Running virus / malware scans

Swapping out display monitors

Updating the GPU drivers

Setting a lower overclock profile in the BIOS settings

Swapping out power cables and outlets to check for power surges

So far none of these things have worked and if anything, the issue has just gotten worse in the last two days. Like, it can barely make it to the startup screen sometimes, despite the memory and CPU usage being >20%, there is zero reason it would be the PC overclocking itself just from startup.

(and no, it doesn't even compel me, i'm just annoyed to shit LOL)

So I dropped it off with the guy who built it (he runs an electronics / pawn shop downtown that's very reputable and well-known so it's not like I don't trust him or anything, he's been building PC's for people in the area for years) and it's now in his care for the next day or two while he tries to isolate the problem. Right now the only thing I can imagine being the problem is the power supply or my display monitor, which is my old Huion Kamvas 22 Plus that still works as a monitor, just not a drawing tablet - but if something's still fucking around in the tablet, it could be causing problems through the PC, maybe.

When I dropped it off with the guy, he went and set it up in his office and came out and told me that so far it seemed to be running just fine, when he asked me if I was doing anything specific I told him it was crashing even after startup so I gave him permission to overclock the shit out of it, run 53879205893 browser tabs, run my games, software, anything he needed to do to push it to its limits and see if he could replicate the problem.

I am terrified if it has to do with the motherboard, because that will be an expensive replacement that will also potentially lead to losing files / installations / etc. depending on how big an issue it is. It could also potentially be Windows 11 having a hissy fit especially seeing as how it's freezing up on startup, but doesn't freeze on the BIOS screen when it loads up in safe-mode after hard resets, so something is clearly happening between the hard boot-up and the startup of Windows 11 itself.

Thankfully I do have Google Drive sync support and plenty of external HDD's that I can back my stuff up to, but with the freezing and restarting getting as bad as it's been, I haven't been able to back anything up, and I don't want to risk doing it manually if it'll just freeze and potentially corrupt my files in the process. So I told the guy to call me if he needed to mess with anything concerning the system storage so that, if he could at least keep it running stable in the shop, then I could swing by and get everything I needed synced up safely before he messes around with anything.

It could also very well have something to do with the power supply itself, the house that I occupy the main floor of isn't exactly built with electric optimization in mind, we've had fuses blow on us before just from running the hair dryer at the same time as the TV, so if it's something to do with the PC drawing too much power for the electrical system here to keep up with, either (hopefully) the guy will be able to instruct me on how to lower and manage that power intake through the PC's BIOS (I believe you can but I'm still a massive noob on custom builds and I don't want to go tinkering with it myself) or, idk, maybe I'll have to get my landlord to drop by again with his electrician and check out the fuses to make sure they're all operating properly. I'm not an electrician either, so fuck if I know at this point what could be going on. I feel like it can't be the house itself because everything else is running fine and it's just become a recent issue, but our city's power grid is also not exactly praised for being good at its job, especially not in the winter.

So yeah, I'm a little - well, a lot - stressed right now, but all I can really do at this point is wait. Fortunately, I have my iPad and also remembered that I still have my old PC, so I've hooked it up, at best if the problem repeats itself on this PC then I'll know it has to do with the display monitor, at worst I'll just be stuck working with my clunky old hardware for a couple days, which is annoying, but it'll get the job done. Fortunately I had the newest episode of Rekindled uploaded to the cloud in Clip Studio so I can still download it and work on it, which was my biggest worry when everything started to go belly-up (next to just, like, having a working PC).

Sooooo yeah. It's annoying, but I'm hoping for the best. Send good vibes y'all, I really could use it rn, between this and slow traffic at work and some other personal shit that's been going on, it's been a shitty few days (╥﹏╥)

And yeah, I'll keep y'all updated on if it affects this week's update, it really shouldn't honestly as most of the work left is doable from both my iPad and PC, but obviously at this point anything can happen so if anything has to be postponed or changed to accommodate the current situation, I'll update y'all as soon as I can! Thanks everyone, y'all are the best, wish me luck <3

[blazehedgehog]

I Love To Shoot At Trouble

During the Steam Christmas Sale I ended up buying Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 because it was like $6 or $7 and I'm in the mood for a new racing game to chew up. EA already gave the game away for free in like 2015, but that meant installing "The EA App". I figured having it on Steam would be more convenient.

You'd think so.

It's not! As part of the first time launch, it installs "The EA App" anyway, which also means it found and uninstalled whatever version of Origin I still had (I wasn't aware I'd ever reinstalled Origin since my HDD crash). As part of this process, it also asked me for my EA password, I misread Firefox's stored password incorrectly, and went through the trouble of resetting my EA account with a new password before linking it to Steam. To my surprise, EA's been sitting on my seven year old cloud save from the few minutes I played of this on Origin in 2017, and asks if I want to import it. Sure, I guess.

So that's ten minutes down the drain before I can even boot up the game. Okay, fine, the game finally launches. Gotta wait while it boots up The EA App each time before it boots into the game, gotta wait for the title screen logo animation, gotta wait for a 10-15 second load screen because even though this game came out in 2012 it's gotta ping some always-online "Autolog" leaderboard whatever. Once it connects, it has to do a slow cinematic pan across your car, telling you what your online rivals have done since the last time you connected, and what kind of equipment you have on your car.

All told, every time you boot up Most Wanted 2012, you're looking at a 30-45 second wait before the game actually hands over control and lets you start driving.

Pull the accelerator and instantly Most Wanted SCREAMS at me:

Fair enough. I'm using a Dualshock 4, and the Playstation 4 did not release until over a full year after this game. Click to the menu it's asking of me and see that the control binding menu is awful -- it's one of those super oldschool ones, like binding keys one by one in Doom 2. I have no idea what these buttons are supposed to be in terms of Xbox equivalents, and I realize that Steam has this thing called "Steam Input" that's supposed to be handling all of this anyway. Steam Input generally makes my Dualshock 4 look like an Xbox controller to most games.

I exit out of Most Wanted, force Steam Input to "on" (I was messing with its settings recently, so I thought maybe it was disabled), and relaunch the game again. Wait for the EA App to boot up, gotta wait through the title screen logos, gotta wait 10-15 seconds on a loading screen, gotta wait another 5-10 on the cinematic pan across my car. I have now spent a minute and a half total waiting for this game to boot while I troubleshoot this.

Pull the accelerator. Instead of it complaining about my controller, straight up nothing happens. That's weird. The Start button works, the analog stick seems to work in the pause menu, but the triggers do not. The face buttons also do nothing. Upon checking the settings, that's because Most Wanted has settled on keyboard mode, even though it's clearly accepting some controller input. After poking at it, it does not seem like there's any way to get it to see my controller.

This makes Most Wanted a special game, because a lot of games I play will happily accept that Steam Input is telling it I have an Xbox controller connected even when I absolutely do not. But this is the rare 1% that seems to be incompatible. It's time to bring in the big guns.

Mayflash makes a terrific little passthrough device called the Magic NS, and the general purpose of this device is that it lets you use any controller on any other platform. An Xbox controller on a Playstation? No sweat. A Playstation controller on the Switch? It'll handle it. If you upgrade to the Magic NS2, you even get full gyro support. Every NS device also doubles as a Bluetooth dongle, so you can stay wireless if that's your thing. I love it so much I bought two, because generally they're only about $20.

A Magic NS2 for my Switch... and Magic NS1 for my PC. Strictly for scenarios like this, where a game expects an Xbox controller and Steam Input fails its camouflage.

Plug the NS1 in, connect my Dualshock 4, and once again boot up Most Wanted and wait the 45 seconds to get through the EA app, logos, loading, and the cinematic pan across my car. More than two full minutes now looking at this junk, and that's not counting the time spent outside of the game troubleshooting this in menus or digging out dongles or whatever.

Pull the accelerator... and my car starts to drive! I can steer! It works! Of course it works. The Magic NS never lets me down. I pull up to the first race event...

Press J and K to start the event.

Those are, uh. Those are keyboard keys. I'm using a controller. The controller is fully functional. You don't need to tell me this in keyboard controls. This isn't going to be one of those games, is it? The kind that still tells you everything in the keyboard shortcuts no matter what?

I drop into the menus again and see Most Wanted is still stuck on Keyboard mode and won't let me switch to anything else, even though I'm clearly using a fully functional controller now. This can't be right. But then I remember: Steam Input is still turned on, and when I forced Steam Input to be on, Most Wanted got stuck in this keyboard mode.

Exit out of the game, tell Steam to turn off Steam Input for this specific game only, and relaunch. Wait through all that crap again. We're up to three minutes just waiting for the game to start, and probably closing in on 20 minutes since I first decided I wanted to try Most Wanted.

Pull the accelerator, it works, drive up to the first event, and...

Pull LT and RT to start the event.

FINALLY. HOLY SHIT.

On the plus side: this game controls a lot better than I remember. It's a decent middleground between Criterion's heavier-feeling Hot Pursuit (2011) and the snappier Burnout Paradise. Though I could do with a lot less full screen flashing or the fact that Autolog alerts hide the minimap for some reason.

Not pictured, but the "always online" nature can also be frustrating if you pause, unpause, and find you have to quickly re-pause again a second time. That second pause will actually incur a loading spinner because it hasn't finished syncing with the server from the first pause, apparently. This game is going on 12 years old.

Anyway. This was a nightmare.

HOT BONUS

"The EA App" now starts up with Windows and is nagging me to enter the login credentials I already entered last night. I have to go through extra steps to get it to leave me alone and not do this

THE RIDE NEVER ENDS

[as-if-and-only-if]

hmm, parents’ iMac from almost 10 years ago is dying. Fusion drive; HDD seems fine but SSD seems, well, fucked. Kernel panics causing a boot loop—no Macintosh HD visible—etc.

But not completely fucked. Adventure!

Brought it into the Apple Store today: guy turned the computer on in target disk mode (where it behaves like an external hard drive), connected it to a laptop, and there everything is! all the data!

get home, do exactly the same thing—doesn’t work.

The Fusion Drive shows up in disk utility, but of the (adjacent) partitions under “Macintosh HD”, which are (another) “Macintosh HD” and “Macintosh HD - Data”, only the latter will mount. Can’t seem to read anything from it, though. (“Permission denied”—weird.)

Meanwhile, if you mount and open the parent Macintosh HD, you see four empty folders: Library, System, Applications, Users, iirc.

Trying to restore any of these to an external hard drive via disk utility fails because the “seal is broken”. `diskutil apfs list` shows that every disk is unsealed except for the unmountable leaf Macintosh HD, which has a broken seal. (No data/user is encrypted with FileVault or anything on this disk, fwiw. diskutil unlockVolume doesn’t do anything as a result.)

Ok. So, I try `ddrescue`; this is where “Fatal read error: permission denied” comes from. Then I try it on the physical disks. Works fine on the HDD for quite a while, copying away with no errors. Encounters loads of read errors on the SSD. Pretty regularly, too, which I found odd: one every 6-8 seconds without fail. But it’s apparently able to rescue some data in the meantime, so I figure this isn’t just some timeout.

But what use to me is a bunch of corrupted data? It bugs me that it was working in the Apple Store. Let’s just get there again! What was different?

The only things I can think of are:

it was turned off (but plugged in) overnight beforehand. I don’t know anything about SSD failures, but maaaaybe something electrical is afoot.

maybe there was something about the exact sequence of things he tried first in the Apple Store. What was it? Recovery mode, safe mode, PRAM reset, halfway through internet recovery, then shut it down and go for target disk mode…?

maybe the fact that he had it plugged into ethernet mattered for some wacky reason. maybe some of the relevant components are near each other. what if the wifi card is heating up and disrupting the SSD, or something? well, that probably wouldn’t be immediate, and so wouldn’t explain the kernel panic. but, who knows.

Maybe something just jostled back into place while carrying the computer into the store and jostled back out while carrying it out.

Favorite option so far is something electrical having a really long relaxation time of some sort. So we’ll see, I guess…!

[ns-games]

Computing on a Budget

I wanted to talk about the story of my old computer.

On July 23, 2008 I acquired a Dell Vostro 200 from the Dell Outlet website. This computer cost around $800 (with an extended warranty) at the time. I was looking for something low cost that I thought was capable of running games, and could be used for future projects

The computer came with the following specs: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 GPU: Intel GMA RAM: 4x 1GB DDR2 Storage: 80GB Western Digital Black HDD OS: Windows XP Professional

And at first, this computer turned out to be a pretty good powerhouse for my needs. I knew it wasn't the best computer by any means. But with the budget I was on, it would get the job done. Plus my mom helped out with around half the cost as a high school graduation present.

Later on, I decided to purchase The Orange Box as I wanted to look into playing games like Portal and Team Fortress 2. And while I was able to get Portal to work, when I tried to join a game in Team Fortress 2, the game would simply crash on me. It turned out that to run 3D graphics like that, the built-in Intel GMA card was not going to cut it.

So, I took a trip to my local Best Buy. Taking a look at the graphics cards they had on sale, I found one I could afford for around $60. The Galaxy NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS.

And it worked... but just barely. Later on I started to expand my Steam library. And there was on game in particular that gave me some trouble with this card. Left 4 Dead 2. It turned out that the 8400GS isn't great a drawing hundreds of zombies on screen at once. And my system would lag any time a horde would start chasing my party. But I still kept this card going for as long as I could, cause I couldn't really afford to upgrade. That and any money I did have for upgrades went to other accessories like drawing tablets, and a desk to house everything in.

Don't let that picture fool you though. Everything here was done on the cheap.

On January 18, 2013, I installed a 1TB Western Digital Green HDD into this computer and installed Windows 8 as a secondary operating system. And yes, I know that the WD Green drive was not the best option as it only ran at 5400RPM. But again, this was on a budget. And plus my dad offered to buy it for me for Christmas the previous month. I also managed to get Windows 8 for a low price, as Microsoft was offering the Pro version for only $75 at the time. I managed to pickup the license from Target using some gift cards I acquired over Christmas as well. I later performed the free upgrade to Windows 8 on October 18, 2013.

Around Memorial Day weekend that year, I ended up getting hired by an electronics retailer, and a bit more money started coming in as a result.

On April 8, 2014, Microsoft officially discontinued security updates on Windows XP. A month or so prior, after fiddling around with rebuilding the Master Boot Record on the drive I had Windows 8 installed on. I retired the WD Black drive that had run Windows XP for me since 2008.

Some time around July 4th of 2014, I woke the computer up from sleep mode and heard this really nasty grinding noise. It turns out, that little fan running the 8400GS finally gave out after years of trying to run games it couldn't handle very well. So I knew it was time to not only replace that, but to start thinking about replacing the whole computer, now that I had a bit more money in the budget.

Looking at my options for cards. I didn't want to go with the "latest and greatest" since I knew the computer was starting to age. So, I went with an EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT 630. On the box it recommended that it be run with a 500W or greater power supply. The one that the Vostro came with was only 300W. So, I also ended up swapping out the power supply with a Thermaltake TR2-600W power supply unit.

Finally, on April 30, 2015, I retired the Vostro 200 after I decided to build my own computer.

So, why do I bring up this story?

The reason I wanted to talk about this is because I know there are a lot of people out there that are computing on a budget. Something I constantly run into during my career as a computer technician are people telling me they can't afford the latest and greatest. That upgrades don't typically happen until they become absolutely necessary. And that's something I can understand and sympathize with.

And while I've stressed the importance of upgrades as time goes on in the world of computing. I also understand that there's times when we need to keep the current technology in front of us working for as long as possible. So when people come to me saying "I can't afford a big upgrade right now" I always try to do my best to let them know "what can we fix", "what can't we fix", "what parts can be saved", and "what parts need to be replaced."

And if you're finding yourself in this situation right now. The one thing I want to say is, don't worry. At the end of the day, acquiring computers parts can be very simple and inexpensive if you know where to look.

[clatterbane]

This is what we want to see!

Operating in full Tired Chaotic Dumbass mode last night when I was trying to get the new external disk set up, what did I manage to do? Wipe out the boot partition on the WRONG DRIVE. Because of course I did.

So yeah, everything else on the drive was fine, but I couldn't boot into anything there.

After a little internal screaming and more than a little cursing myself, the best plan forward looked like getting the system up and running to boot off the new drive as I had intended, downloading a Windows 11 install ISO from there, and then hauling my stupid ass to bed for a brain reset.

But, this afternoon I did successfully get a working EFI partition and Windows bootloader back on the internal drive!

That does work the same on 11.

And, a very similar procedure if you didn't manage to fuck up the whole partition like I did, but just the Windows bootloader files:

But yeah, I did test and it's booting fine now.

In an enlarged partition too, since I decided to migrate my existing MX install over onto the new drive. Because yeah they make it easy to do that:

Thankfully I had already written the (gigantic) ISO and burned it to a USB before I accidentally wiped the boot partition. Was trying to get the new drive set up for it when that happened.

[netscapenavigator-official]

Idk how to explain this without being long-winded, but it’s my blog so whatever.

Basically, I have a 2011 MacBook Pro 15”. I’ve replaced the battery and upgraded the RAM and replaced the 500GB HDD with a 500GB SSD. It’s great! The machine is truly the fastest mobile computer I have.

The 2011 MBP was let go from software updates a while ago, meaning, natively, macOS High Sierra is as high as I can get the thing.

Luckily, this computer is from an era when Apple actually made computers and not eWaste, so I just erased macOS off of it and flashed Zorin OS (an Ubuntu-based Linux distro) onto it. The computer is now even better! It’s my primary productivity machine. The display, speakers, battery life, and thermals are all pretty bad, but it’s just so snappy and problem free I can’t help it.

Now, when I set up Zorin OS I used LVM Encryption to encrypt the entire disk. Basically, upon booting, before anything happens, I’m prompted with a password box. Once I put in the encryption key, the computer would continue booting and bring me to my usual login screen. Great! Easy peasy, extra secur-sy. Well. That was the case.

Somehow, in my efforts to find a way to stop Linux from using my MBP’s Discrete GPU in favor of its Integrated (more efficient, less power hungry) one, I broke something in the EFI or SMC idk. Reinstalling didn’t help. MacOS Recovery mode didn’t help. The only way I fixed it was by wiping the device, running the installer USB, downloading the script I used to fuck it up, and then running it to undo what I previous had it do. This worked. Luckily, I was keeping the machine backed up with Timeshift. So, I wiped the computer again and installed Zorin OS, fresh, reinstalled Timeshift, and restored from backup. The only problem?

When I reinstalled Zorin, I didn’t use LVM Encryption because I was tired of having to manually type in that 25 randomized character password I chose. As a result, now every time I boot the computer, I’m prompted with a “Waiting for encrypted device, (name).” That prevents the machine from booting for about 5 minutes until it just randomly decides “ope, never mind” and finally takes me to my login screen. It does nothing in prohibiting me from using the computer expect prolong it. It’s just annoying and weird as hell, and I have no idea how to get rid of it.

Clearly, the way Timeshift resorted the device has it thinking it’s still an encrypted volume, and I have no idea how to tell it that it is not.

But anyway, it just aggravates me, and I needed to ramble and vent about it. Carry on.

[effemimaniac]

genuinely really curious about your setup and the why of it. bc im guessing there is a cool and interesting why of it. god i hope this sounds sincere and not condescending bc i mean it for real but im also very stoned. you know how it goes. i like heaven laptop and wanna know more. if thats okay. pls. 👍

sure! basically it's a lot of me trying to work the best with what I've got and ending up with something that works pretty well actually but looks a bit odd (in a cool way I hope. like lain). it's evolved gradually. I'll put this under a cut because I am caffeinated and the explanation became rambly lol

^same image as before copied for illustration

I like big desks and having desk space to put things but my desk is not big at all, I also prefer my monitors higher up, and I like music and good audio. I don't like spending lots of money unnecessarily. so the solution that has emerged is this oddly tiered lovingly thrown together system. my monitor has little in the way of adjustability nor does it support VESA mounts, so having it set up on top of the speaker on top of the monitor stand gets it to a comfortable height for me. It's also conveniently a good position for the left speaker. the right speaker is at about the same height stacked on top of the subwoofer and my old desktop I don't really use anymore. I got a monitor arm with laptop holder attachment to allow me to set up my laptop to a matching height, it also frees up the desk space it would otherwise take up, and since I prefer to use an external keyboard + mouse anyway the angle of it doesn't matter to me. the plugging and unplugging is simplified by the USB-C hub I zip tied onto the bottom of the laptop holder but I still have More devices than it has ports.

connected to this is the monitor, keyboard, mouse, bluetooth keyboard+touchpad, and external HDD, respectively.

all of this results in having a lot of functionality while still having enough usable desk space on this small desk to not feel cramped.

as for audio, I have a nifty steinberg USB audio interface I scored on the cheap. I got this to do music stuff, I can plug my bass straight into it and it generally makes using ableton and the likes significantly smoother. it's also really great for switching between headphones and speakers, I just have to turn one up and turn the other down with the physical volume knobs. I have my headphones plugged into the headphone port of this, and the main output goes to a regular degular sony stereo amplifier below my TV which goes to the speakers on my desk and the floor standing speakers to each side of my TV. that's the secret power of this setup, I just have to turn on the TV, turn around the monitor and press a button on the amplifier to switch between the A and B speaker outputs to set it to Bed Mode.

^bed mode POV.

I keep the bluetooth keyboard + touchpad always plugged in, and the TV generally plugged in also so it's easy to smoothly transition to a reclined and relaxed PC using experience. The subwoofer is in a position that works well enough for either pair of speakers. I got all of these speakers and the amp as a set for $60 off of facebook marketplace, they're meant to be surround but there's no rules saying it can't just be two stereo in one. hope you enjoyed this bedroom tour of my weird computer setup 👍

[meezer]

she's got that slow HDD mode pussy

[jiubilant]

enabling slow hdd mode in the video settings might help with your crashes! playing the game with steam fully closed (enabled solely through larian's launcher) might help also—i had to fiddle with a lot of stuff when i first played so i thought i'd pass on what worked for me !!

i'll try that too! thank you :)

[druidgroves]

The most annoying thing abt bg3 is how it doesn't save the fact that i checked slow hdd mode on & i have to turn it back on every. single. time. i have to load the game up.

[blazehedgehog]

If you thought replacing/upgrading a PS4 HDD was easy, you'd be wrong.

After hours of fighting with it, I am depressed and defeated.

As I mention in the video, a few weeks ago the PS4 was acting a bit funny, and I've noticed some corruption in its video recordings from time to time, so I figure the HDD is on its way out. I bought a Crucial MX500 to replace it with. Came highly rated, there are guides out there about how amazing and easy it is to swap out the old platter HDD for this new SSD. Even Sony's official guide is pretty straight forward: back up your current data, take old HDD out, put new HDD in, reinstall the system OS, restore personal data.

I fought with it for hours, got it to work one time, and when I went to restore my backup saves/account data, it crashed and seemingly bricked the HDD because it refuses to work a second time.

Is the HDD bad? It's not impossible they just sent me a defective unit.

Is the SD card containing the OS bad? It's only 1-2 years old and has only ever been used maybe twice. It is, however, exFAT, and Sony's install guide says you should be using FAT32. The fact that it seems to work when prompted leads me to believe it's fine, it's just getting to that prompt.

Is it the PS4's fault? I think there might be a short in one of the USB ports because when I first got it, I was testing out the media player by watching a video from a flash drive. In the middle of playback, the PS4 dumped me back to the dashboard and from that point onwards refused to see the flash drive. Pulling the drive out, it was almost too hot to touch. From that day onwards, that specific USB port refused to accept any flash drives (though it still works with controllers, and once the flash drive cooled off it has remained functional).

That being said, the PS4 has three USB ports. Surely I could just use one of the other ones, right? Sure, if I could reliably get the damn thing to boot into Safe Mode. I don't know why, 9 times out of 10, it won't. And even when I get it to boot into Safe Mode, another 9 times out of 10 it won't read the install file on the USB.

I'm at a loss. I have no ideas on what's wrong or where the problem can be solved.