General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition

TechnoFreek

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121098208#Comment_121098208

Data retrieval I guess based on that description 🥺

I did open up the case and jiggle the connector around to see if anything like that amiss but no joy. A good chunk of family photos and videos that aren't all backed up elsewhere so data retrieval needed and will have to pony up for

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121098512#Comment_121098512

Ah poo. Does the drive spin up at all, like physically can you feel it/hear it spinning up?

TechnoFreek

Yeah it's spinning up alright but that's as much as it does. Looks and sounds ok I think bit it causes windows to totally freeze up when you go to my computer. Drive isn't visible either. I tried on a Mac also, similar result

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121098601#Comment_121098601

I'd an internal HDD go like that on me before. A WD Blue 3TB, it'd show up fine in Windows but when you went to access the drive contents, it'd lock the OS up. Never found a solution for it I'm afraid, so it got the hammer and nail treatment, and laid to rest in recycling.

McDermotX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121098402#Comment_121098402

Last time I was over there I wandered over to have a casual glance at the CRTs, and a lad who almost seemed to be 'stationed' there said nobody is allowed to whip any stuff.

Frankly, I suspect they keep a watch for anybody offloading usable items of the more modern variety so they discourage interested prospectors, but that's the cynic in me talking. Probably worth a pop if spinning over there. There's a warm place in hell for anyone dumping old retro..............even Amstrads.

Steve X2

I've fixed a few faulty drives over the years and sent some in for data recover for companies I've worked for. If the data is really worth recovering and you've tried the usual basic fixes you might buy the same drive again and swap over the controller PCB board. It's fixed a good few drives for me over the years, but it has to be the exact same drive/pcb(also best if firmware versions are the same or close) and of course nothing is guaranteed. If the fault is with the platter or drive mech the PCB swap wont fix anything.

Sending a drive off for data recovery can be expensive depending on what they have to do to recover it. It's been 10+ years since I've sent a drive off, but it used to be about €1k-€3k for recovery on most drives that needed some hardware work. One or two drives I remember costing 10k each for recovery. Glad it wasn't my money!

80s Synth Pop

Ballymount will let you take crts if you ask. I've done a few 29inch tube swaps thanks to some beko sets i got from there. Damn 25 inch A59 tubes are rare though (Need 3x more).

The amstrad computer though I'd say is toast. The crts are in the cages amd easily accessible but electronics are dumped over the fence into the skip below and would have been smashed to pieces on impact.

DaveyDave

Finally got around to adding a second drive to my NAS using Raid 1. When checking which Raid to use I learned that people really don't like it when you refer to Raid 1 as a backup lol.

As a casual Plex user I'm not too concerned about the 3-2-1 rule or any of that. I'm just happy knowing my current library is safe should a drive fail. The idea of using an external drive, online/off-site backups or putting the drive into a PC and manually backing up just seem overkill for a small, 2 user media server.

Curious what others are doing in relation to backups or just mirroring in Raid?

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121146836#Comment_121146836

I use Unraid. Small server of ~30TB or so. A lot of my legitimately purchased digital media is on there, a collection I've curated over many many years. So much so that if it all went kaput, I'd not know where to begin in restoring it. Family photos, etc etc all on the server too, so I needed to put some thought into the backup side of things.

I don't do 3-2-1 because it'd be insanity doing that for so many media files. So I implement the following:

x2 Parity drives. Obviously these aren't backups, but they give me redundancy. I can lose x2 drives from the pool, and I'll still be ok in terms of recreating lost data. I also have several external drives that act as cold storage. I simple connect them up to the server, plug them in, mount them, and then run a script that mirrors everything on the server, media, docker backups, server configs, all onto the usb drives with one click. I used to do this manually until I learned a tiny bit of scripting, just enough to tell the server what I want it to copy, and where to copy it. This script ignores files if they haven't been updated etc, so it's perfect for skipping over the many media files if they're already backed up.

Unraid also gives me the ability to backup the main OS drive and config into the cloud, which I do also.

^^ I run this one script every few weeks, just to keep things nice and synced.

For my emulation content, I do that through my PC. Everything is on an SSD in the PC, but I use Free File Sync to sync everything I need (again one click) to another external USB drive. I do this when I'm doing a server backup usually.

Backup provision is damned expensive business!

Steve X2

I go a bit overboard on storage stuff, always have. So what I do is probably a bit ridiculous to some and sensible to others :)

I use 2 NAS boxes(one is a mirror of the other on a 10 Gigabit network, NAS 1 in garage and NAS 2 in attic), both set to use Synology Hybrid RAID(SHR2 in my case). With my current setup I can lose 2 drives at once per NAS without data loss. After working in IT for way too long and seeing how many other disks fail while recovery is going on to a new RAID disk, I really wanted that extra protection. I have one cold spare disk per NAS that kicks in automatically on a disk failure. I didn't always have the cold spare, but when COVID kicked in and parts supply was an issue I decided it was a good option.

The NAS boxes cover all my home storage needs(Backups, PLEX, Retro, photos and vids, video/photo projects and raw files etc). I also have a sync that mirrors the important stuff to my Google Drive. My phone syncs pics and vids to Google Drive as well, which in turn sync to the NAS.

My final backup is a HP LTO-5 Tape drive I got a few years back for cheap along with a box of tapes. That's about 25-30TB compressed per tape. Not fast to backup or fast to restore, but very useful to have none the less.

KeRbDoG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121146836#Comment_121146836

For many years playing around with traditional RAID, I've since moved over to Unraid. Now two machines, main one is storage+VMs and secondary is basic storage mirror for backup.

Always played with the idea of an LTO tape backup, will keep an eye out for a drive :)

Retr0gamer

https://twitter.com/Captain_Pixel/status/1707556214056558948?t=VHdOeRQMUJ9oi-hhZFY75g&s=19

always loved how the likes of shining force, alundra and landstalker looked.

sniper_samurai

New trailer up for Black Finger Jet. I'm looking forward to this, more Metal Slug style games are always appreciated.

https://youtu.be/UOIzt3edIgQ

o1s1n

Really excited for this one, looks fantastic.

Do have to say though, I'm not mad on the 16:9 aspect ratio. It makes it feel quite sparse and a bit too zoomed out. I notice in some of the shots there's a black shroud around the edge of the screens to try to deal with this.

Will be interesting to see if there are a few different video modes. Would really be lovely to get running on a cabinet!

Mr.Saturn

Be nice if it does well and shows SNK there's a market for modern Metal Slug outside of free-to-pay horseshit. Then again, no one wants to be giving SNK money these day so maybe things like Black Finger Jet is the best we can hope for given the circumstances.

KeRbDoG

"A Fanmade Port Of SNK vs. Capcom For The C64 / C128 Is Now Available"

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/10/a-fanmade-port-of-snk-vs-capcom-for-the-c64-c128-is-now-available

They have a real NGP look to'em

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121189469#Comment_121189469

How come the crappy SF2 I got while being mega jealous of SNES and megadrive owners didnt look that good.

Tom Mann Centuria

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121189719#Comment_121189719

I had Pit Fighter on the ZX Spectrum, needed several hundred more K to make it even vaguely playable.

CiDeRmAn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121190007#Comment_121190007

That pitiful excuse for a game was dirt on every format it was released on.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121190050#Comment_121190050

It's one of those games Ive always been confused about. It's utter scutter but was ported to so many systems, bizarre.

KeRbDoG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121189719#Comment_121189719

Gonna guess its the time has passed, better understanding of the machines, better coding and debugging tools.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121190647#Comment_121190647

It wasn't the first digitised game but the graphics made it stand out in the arcade so probably did pretty well. I mean the original MK did the same and I know people have nostalgia for it but it's an awful fighter. I'd say arcade popularity pushed the console conversions. But again it always got horrendous reviews.

Retr0gamer

Dogs

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121192942#Comment_121192942

It always amazes me how few games were actually released on it versus how well it did comparatively to other consoles. If you were to look at it on released games only, it should be seen as a massive flop.

Only 242 games released in Europe. 388 if you count global releases.

As a comparison to 'failed' consoles, there were 214 games released for the CD-i.

255 games on the 3D0.

More modern failures, the WiiU has 206 physical releases.

Just goes to show the high standard and how groundbreaking a lot of the titles were that did actually get a release.

Retr0gamer

I find it a weird consoles. There's a handful of groundbreaking games in it but there's also a load of stuff that doesn't hold up. On top of that there's not a lot of variety in the games released on the system, it's just not that interesting a library to explore. As a result I feel it's one of the worst Nintendo consoles, I'd probably put it above the virtual boy and below the WiiU. I know where the love for the console is coming from but also feel a lot of it is nostalgia from people that grew up with one.

I had a friend that had the N64 and it was literally weeks of rinsing everything they could get out of the last big release before another game came out months later.

CiDeRmAn

I got an arcade stick for the N64...

And there is precisely one game to play with it, Aerofighters Assault 64.

barryribs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121193132#Comment_121193132

Outside of the first party games on it, I never thought it was a great console - and I say that as someone who owned it. Goldeneye was great but even on the switch, its almost unplayable without the n64 controller. I never liked banjo or conkers and the frame rate on perfect dark was brutal, even with the expansion. I remember paying something like IR£50 for a second controller, 40 for a memory pak and every game being 60.

Inviere

Mad to see the A&R Marketplace there with zero active ads, I think that's the first time I've ever seen that (or noticed it anyway). The Vanilla move obviously took a large toll on the site, but I wonder has demand for retro warez died down among us (given we're all old now and have a lot of what we want), or is there something we could do to rejuvinate it?

Personally, I find filling out the opening template a chore and it puts me off using it. Ironic, given it was me who implemented that rule! Personally, I'd prob be a little more inclined to use it if we could simplify the creation of threads. Either no, or a much reduced template would be a start. I think I'd still support the minimum post count to post there, as it's nice to know you're dealing with a genuine user of the site.

I also think its remit could be expanded a but by now, given we've no connection to Adverts at all. It'd be nice to see a formal relaxation around stuff like Pi's, higher generation machines like the PS3 & Xbox 360 (the marketplace rules were established when these machines were a good bit more recent tbf), etc etc. None of that would suddenly cause the Marketplace to rise from the ashes really, but for us daily users of the forum, it might make itself a bit more appreciated?

Retr0gamer

I for one would approve of some changes. I guess it being quiet is due to the loss of active users. Ive also got a good bit to shift soon as I've to do a major downsizing of the collection so I've some purely mercenary interest in it

Retr0gamer

https://twitter.com/RetroBitGaming/status/1711781252087386417?t=wNW9ouA6qf7whvfFZ5H0GA&s=19

Looking nice.