Panic!

...Our second (older, from long before my time there) server died. It's a 733MHz Pentium III-based Compaq ProLiant ML330 running Windows 2000 Server. My boss informed me that there was no backup, which was bad because that server apparently handled all of our financial data (taxes, payroll, donations). We don't exactly have the equipment to handle that particular kind of failure ready in the building, so they almost sent me home with the hard drives (since I do happen to have the necessary equipment ready there). While it was tempting to go home and take the rest of the day (and potentially all night) doing work that they really don't pay me enough for, I went to the bathroom instead... Upon my return, I went through a six-hour process involving screwdrivers, ancient SCSI drivers on floppy disks, Windows password hacking, various hard drive recovery techniques (ended up getting things workable with "chkdsk /r" in the recovery console), convoluted network data transfers, and a hell of a lot of dust bunnies; my boss was shitting bricks the whole time. In the end, I recovered everything and decommissioned the old server. The data is now on a RAID 1 array and is currently being backed-up to a separate physical drive; tomorrow, I will make an archival copy on tape. The funny thing is that I'd been bugging them to let me do that months ago.

Anyway, I bought a SEGA CD game lot through craigslist on Sunday. I really only wanted Panic!, but the seller wouldn't break up the lot... So, for $50, I got Cobra Command (looks cool, but gameplay's annoying), Dragon's Lair (looks bad, gameplay's annoying), Heart Of The Alien (looks like its predecessor, but the gameplay's way more annoying), NBA Jam (CD music is great, but just about everything else is straight from the Genesis version), Panic! (love it!), Racing Aces (this may just be the worst game I've ever played), Silpheed (great twist on the shoot-'em-up genre), Sol-Feace (another sweet shoot-'em-up), Sonic CD (already had it), Space Ace (looks and plays much better than Dragon's Lair), and Wing Commander (it's Wing Commander), all complete and in great condition except for Cobra Command (just the CD) and Panic! (some damage to the manual). I'll be keeping Heart Of The Alien, Panic!, Silpheed, and Sol-Feace; giving Sonic CD to a friend; and trading the rest toward... Something else? I dunno, we'll see what I can find.

I finally got around to downloading and installing the New XBOX Experience today. It's pretty. The avatars are fine, I guess. Wheee.

I finished Crisis Core; expect a review. I'm trying to decide between Final Fantasy Tactics and Killzone Liberation for my next PSP endeavour.

I scored an official Dreamcast Arcade Stick for $40 over the weekend, and a free GameCube (with four games and a memory card) last night. The arcade stick overwrote my Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 saved data and the start button didn't work, but it was an easy fix (removed the bottom panel, repositioned the switches) and all works well now. I plan on trading-in the GameCube stuff on account of the Wii's backwards compatibilty, but it's still a pretty sweet deal :) I also happened across both parts of the PC Engine version of R-Type (the North American and European versions have all eight levels on one card, but the Japanese release is split over two), but they were each in two different bundles at two different stores that didn't want to sell them individually... I've got a word in with each shop owner and I should hear back from them this evening.

Moving on, did you know that BlackBerrys apparently delete things like old calendar data, text messages, etc... if they're running low on space? Did you know that Windows XP SP3 breaks Microsoft's own Remote Web Workplace, and if you've installed Windows with a disc that has SP3 slipstreamed into it, the usual workarounds don't work? How about the fact that if your VPN server and client both use the same IP address range for internal addresses (e.g. 192.158.1.x) that the VPN will effectively be broken? These are all things that I've learned over the past few days. I'd tell you more, but one of our servers' hard drives just died and it's not part of a RAID array.

To be continued...

I'm lazy

Rather than try to get more cash by selling them myself, I ended up trading in Bloody Wolf, Dungeon Explorer, Legendary Axe, Wonder Boy In Monster Land, and the North American TurboPad (which worked, but was kinda beat-up) for Ninja Spirit and Final Blaster for PC Engine.

1987!

So I did end up buying R-Type for TurboGrafx 16... And Shinobi for PC Engine. I looked into Japan-to-North America converters, and it seems to be much cheaper to just get a PCE. Most of the PCEs I could find, however, were starting around $80! Off to craigslist, where I found a nice little PCE lot for $75 even. I got the console, an AV Booster, power adapter, a/v cables, two controllers, and seven games (Bloody Wolf, Dungeon Explorer, Legendary Axe, Mr. Heli, PC Genjin, Ultimate Heli, and Wonder Boy In Monster Land). All told, similar bundles go for over $250 on eBay! It wasn't an official NEC power adapter and both of the controllers were TurboGrafx 16 TurboPads, unfortunately, but one of the TurboPads has a PC Engine controller plug on the end... Weird.

Anyway, Shinobi on PCE is great, and a few of the games I got are pretty sweet (specifically, Mr. Heli and Ultimate Heli); none are bad, either, which is swell because there're so many horrible PCE games :)

Oh, and I finally found out what the "Vol.xx" numbers on Japanese PCE games mean! Someone told me they were greatest hits re-releases, but I've since uncovered that they're actually release order numbers specific to different publishers and that not all publishers used them.

One last thing: My friend insisted on lending me his PCE game collection as well as his PC Engine CD-ROM², CD-ROM² interface, and all of his CD-ROM games. He has some cool stuff like Fighting Street, Red Alert, Y's I&II, and a few more, but most of them are better on other systems or unplayably Japanese. I'll be giving it back to him shortly ;)

Decisions, decisions...

I picked up Boogerman and Cyborg Justice (Genesis), Shinobi Legions (Saturn), and a Game Gear battery pack last week. The battery pack wouldn't hold a charge (damned NiCad batteries), which sucks because I'd really like to be able to take my Nomad on the subway with me. Finding a proper NiMH battery pack would be ideal, but is proving to be a challenge. I'm able to return the battery pack though, so I'm thinking of putting that credit toward the PC Engine version of Shinobi... But then I'd need a PC Engine. Maybe I'll just grab R-Type for TurboGrafx 16 instead.

I'm hesitant to spend the $25 on that PCI SATA controller I menioned a few posts back, so I'm gonna go with an IDE hard drive first. If that works, then perhaps I'll just stick with IDE. If the problem still exists, however, then it's back to Windows XP. If that doesn't do it, then the Athlon XP comes back.

Oh, and I've successfully migrated our e-mail server at work from an external POP3 connector over our DSL connection into a full-fledged internal SMTP server on its own T1 line, which is totally sweet ;) Now I'm looking into setting up a "catchall" account for non-existant addresses on our domain, but that's looking like it'll involve a bunch of VBScript work and I hate coding... Which is weird because I'm not all that bad at it.

What to do...

Neither the motherboard's integrated USB controller nor the CMOS battery were the culprit...

Gah!

I was sooo close to getting a Jaguar, a Jaguar CD, two controllers, and a hanfdul of games for $100 off craigslist yesterday! I repsonded within a day of the posting, but the guy said it was sold almost immediately :\

Freeing up the seond PCI slot didn't help matters in my problematic computer, so I've since installed a PCI USB controller and disabled the motherboard's integrated controller. Next step is to buy and install a fresh CMOS battery, followed by a PCI SATA controller, and if that doesn't work, then I'll install Windows XP. If that fails to solve the problem, then it's time to bring back the Athlon XP.

Damnit!

I just found out that there's a boxed version of World Of Goo! I'll always go boxed over digital if I have the choice...

Insecurity

I played around a little more with the new router, the range extender, and a D-Link wireless bridge I have hooked up to my XBOX 360, and finally got everything working reasonably well, but had to stop using WPA... So it's back to MAC filters and not broadcasting my SSID until I figure out something more secure that still offers a reliable connection.

I haven't really touched Spore, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, PAA:OTRSPOD-Ep2, or anything other than Crisis Core recently... Until I fired up World Of Goo. What a fantastic game! Phenomenal artistic direction that's reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, Tim Burton, and LocoRoco, while still managing to establish itself as something that is ultimately unique. Oh, and the gameplay is top-notch as well! I studied civil engineering for a while at university, and always thought it was interesting, but not really for me... Now I'm kinda wishing I had World Of Goo all those years ago to spark my interest, or at least that I'd studied harder in my static physics classes so that I could get better scores in the game ;) Seriously, World Of Goo is super-addictive and even offers aptly-named "OCD" goals for each level. Get it.

Now then, back to my computer that doesn't like starting-up properly. After reading all the Nehalem press releases this morning and the subsequent speculations regarding Shanghai, I'm reconsidering even the remote possibility of investing any significant amount of money in a new PC until those technologies start to trickle down into the mainstream. No point in putting down ~$1000 when we're on the cusp of a big step forward, so I'm back to coming up with theories. While the overclocked CPU and video card in the µATX case seem as though they'd be likely culprits, they seem to pass the test well enough. Now I'm thinking it's either the motherboard or the hard drives.  Since the hard drives are relatively new and have been in other computers without issue, they're less likely than the motherboard, especially if the earlier USB issue was with the controller on the motherboard and not the ports on the case. Factor-in that it's an older board with an early SATA controller running Windows Vista, and we may be getting somewhere. A basic PCI SATA controller goes for around $20, so that might be a solid bet to avoid rebuilding. I may also have the FireWire card in the PCI slot that shares an IRQ with the integrated ethernet controller, so that's the first thing to check. If all else fails, I'm prepared to repurpose the Athlon XP 3200+ (swap RAM, video card, hard drives) for the time being...