Stubborn Idealism

Computer Dead

Date: Tue 3 April 2007
Time: 3:14 AM EDT

A few days ago, I replaced my computer's chasis with a larger one from an old computer that was just sitting around. My computer had been overheating, and I figured the problem might be due to the fact that there was only about 0.5 cm between the top of the CPU heatsink fan and the power supply...couldn't suck in the air fast enough. The CPU temperature would routinely hit 80 C. Well, after I swapped the chasis, the CPU temperature did indeed go down by about 25 degrees. Problem solved. A couple days later it turned itself off and I haven't been able to turn it back on again.

After lots of testing, I narrowed the problem down to either the CPU, motherboard, or RAM, with the motherboard being most likely due to the fact that it was the part most likely to have been damaged during the swap. A replacement board should be here in about a week. Meanwhile, I'm using our home network's file server (which, incidentally, used to be my PC before I upgraded in 2004) to check email and play Conquer Club. No Team Fortress Classic for me for a while :(

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Even More Geocaching

Date: Tue 6 March 2007
Time: 9:30 AM EST

I went to Myrtle Beach with Sam and Bridgette this weekend. Sam and I found some geocaches there. We found another in Apex when we got back. I made a couple of stops on my way back to Lenoir to find some caches in Pittsboro and Asheboro.

I found these three in a park in Pittsboro:

I found the fourth one in Asheboro hidden in the grass at the base of a martial arts dojo:

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Vectrex Emulator

Date: Mon 19 February 2007
Time: 9:05 AM EST

I downloaded the source code for the vecx Windows Vectrex emulator. Then I ported it to SDL / OpenGL and wrote an emulator for the sound chip (what fun!). It plays great on my computer, except that Spike and Molly don't speak. If you want to check it out, you can download the sources with my modifications.

Here are ROMs for many of the games.

Not all of the games work since some of them use the 3D viewer or the light pen. Also, due to a timing bug that I haven't tracked down in the original emulator code, the lines aren't drawn in exactly the right places on the screen. (From what I've read, this problem plagues most Vectrex emulators. Apparently there are analog components in the Vectrex called "integrators" that don't behave to spec in the real world, and their actual behavior is really hard to model.) This is really noticeable in Clean Sweep, but in most games you can't tell.

If you want to hear Spike and Molly speak, look near the top of vecx.c and change
#undef DAC
to
#define DAC
Their speaking uses different hardware to generate the sound than the sound chip, and I haven't had much success yet getting it emulated right. It's really noisy.

The Makefile is for Unix-type systems, but the source code should compile and run on any system that has the SDL and OpenGL development and run-time libraries installed. If you successfully compile it for Windows, I would love to get my hands on the .exe, or, better yet, step-by-step instructions on how you did it. See the comments for a link to the .exe file.

Use the arrow keys for the joystick. A, S, D, and F are buttons 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively. Only the Player 1 joystick is implemented.

There is no support for color overlays yet.

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