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Here's a pretty extensive writeup that goes over what the hell happened. Allegedly it was something like a 16.4% failure rate - some estimates that it was around three million consoles returned - but there's no official figures and also this is slightly skewed by there being a cottage industry facilitating repairs with GameStop going so far as to refurbish broken consoles and sell them out. Microsoft lost something like $1.2 billion in replacing dead consoles with one couple famously having seven duds.
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Jul 23, 2015 09:45
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The actual failure rate has to be much higher than that, between people just plain not bothering to fix theirs, and as you mentioned, the booming third party repair business for them.
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Jul 23, 2015 10:13
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People were so mad about that, but at least they had a free fix for it. Nintendo never let me send in a blinking NES and Sony never let me send in a PS2 with DREs.
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Jul 23, 2015 10:53
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hailthefish posted:The actual failure rate has to be much higher than that, between people just plain not bothering to fix theirs, and as you mentioned, the booming third party repair business for them. And those notorious "at home repairs" that voided your warranty. But if it was already out of that period, pop open the case and tape those pennies to that heat sink!
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Jul 23, 2015 12:22
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Anyone had this thing for the Dreamcast? Some games had (some) textures with higher resolution when you used the VGA box. And even without better textures, games looked soooooo much better on my 24" monitor at the time. If you are still using a Dreamcast and don't have this box, get it!
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Jul 23, 2015 12:53
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Another article that looks at the various ways the 360 was breaking and some of the party tricks to fix them like the pennies and wrapping it up in towels in an attempt to re-flow the solder might have had the right intentions and why they don't work. It also turns out there's an 0.7mm height difference in the standoffs so the motherboard is just waiting to get heated up then sagging in the middle as it's not dead straight. The article also points out something that's obsolete - lead based solder. Europe has banned any lead in it's solder but America has a 60/40 mix. It's a cost cutting method to cover international sales.
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Jul 23, 2015 13:38
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My entertainment center is obsolete. It's a big massive wooden thing with glass curios on either side to show off all our precious stuff. There's a cabinet at the bottom that's supposed to hold all your electronics. It has one hole as a vent and that's also where all your cables enter and exit through. Wire enough stuff through there and you all but block it. I had my DirecTV HD DVR and first-gen Xbox 360 in there. About 20 minutes into Halo everything suddenly shuts down and opening the glass doors was like peeking into an oven. Amazingly the Xbox lasted another 3 years once I figured out what heat dissipation was.
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Jul 23, 2015 14:00
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Light Gun Man posted:People were so mad about that, but at least they had a free fix for it. Nintendo never let me send in a blinking NES and Sony never let me send in a PS2 with DREs. Turns out a blinking NES is a fix so easy you just need some needlenose pliers and a screwdriver. They didn't even use fancy security screws back then. Just got to clip a pin on the 10NES chip to disable it. The NES's version of DRM is what causes the blinking. It tries to connect to something in the cartridge to verify that it's authentic, and if it can't, it reboots the system and tries again, and tries again, and tries again. For whatever reason, that 10NES connection is way more sensitive than any of the rest of the cart. There are instructions all over the internet. I also got out and boiled(!) the 72-pin connector while I was in there to get it nice and sparkly clean and connecting tight again. Imagined has a new favorite as of 14:24 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 14:22
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Imagined posted:Turns out a blinking NES is a fix so easy you just need some needlenose pliers and a screwdriver. They didn't even use fancy security screws back then. Just got to clip a pin on the 10NES chip to disable it. The NES's version of DRM is what causes the blinking. It tries to connect to something in the cartridge to verify that it's authentic, and if it can't, it reboots the system and tries again, and tries again, and tries again. For whatever reason, that 10NES connection is way more sensitive than any of the rest of the cart. There are instructions all over the internet. I also got out and boiled(!) the 72-pin connector while I was in there to get it nice and sparkly clean and connecting tight again. Man I wish that Nintendo came up with a better design than that stupid ZIF mechanism. So many problems over the years could have been solved by going with a standard cartridge slot from the start. One solution that caught my attention was the Blinking Light Win, which replaces that mechanism with a vertical daughterboard that has a standard cartridge slot on it. It basically turns the console into a sideways toploader to eliminate the contact issues.
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Jul 23, 2015 14:31
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Imagined posted:Turns out a blinking NES is a fix so easy you just need some needlenose pliers and a screwdriver. They didn't even use fancy security screws back then. Just got to clip a pin on the 10NES chip to disable it. The NES's version of DRM is what causes the blinking. It tries to connect to something in the cartridge to verify that it's authentic, and if it can't, it reboots the system and tries again, and tries again, and tries again. For whatever reason, that 10NES connection is way more sensitive than any of the rest of the cart. There are instructions all over the internet. I also got out and boiled(!) the 72-pin connector while I was in there to get it nice and sparkly clean and connecting tight again. The ps2 disc read error was similarly easy to fix, i had to do it back in the day.
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Jul 23, 2015 14:32
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[quote="WebDog" post=""448066617"] Also to note in many ways piracy tends to set trends in how people want their media, for instance with the PSP everyone had game images loaded up on their memory sticks over lugging around cases full of UMDs. [/quote] Yeah, they loaded faster off the memory stick too. I own a lot of UMDs and made images of basically all of them, kept on a cheap memory stick adapter that takes two micro SD cards. It was like $20 for a 32 GB card that way. They learned kinda the wrong lessons from the PSP. Instead of making the Vita memory card impossible to create an adapter for, they should've focused on making them more reasonably priced. I understand locking down the OS but maybe they can offer the type of stuff people liked as home brew as small purchases through PSN? Emulators especially were huge, one could offer an emulator with one game for like $5 and additional games for that system for a buck or two. And the PSP had a huge library of games, allowing some way to play already owned UMDs on the Vita would've encouraged adoption from PSP owners and made the tiny Vita library seem less bleak. All I can imagine is a bulky unit that snaps onto the Vita like a backpack, adding a UMD drive that dumps the game to the memory card and performs random checks while the game is running that the correct disc is still there. If the disc check fails it deletes the game image but not your saves. Alternately let me trade in the discs themselves at a Sony store and have the PSN versions added to my account. I'll keep the cases of the SMT games I collect on my shelf and have access to games I already own on all my Sony systems. I'd even be willing to pay a small fee per disc. I have opinions. Opinions about Sony handhelds.
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Jul 23, 2015 14:36
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Zonekeeper posted:Man I wish that Nintendo came up with a better design than that stupid ZIF mechanism. So many problems over the years could have been solved by going with a standard cartridge slot from the start. What's really brilliant is how Tengen, who made the most famous unlicensed NES games, got around the 10NES. Instead of reverse engineering it or hitting it with a voltage spike like some other unlicensed companies had done, they conned the patent office into giving them a copy of Nintendo's lockout system patent, and used that to make a workaround. Of course, Nintendo sued them into the dirt, but they got a lot of games out before the thumb came down.
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Jul 23, 2015 14:47
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Slanderer posted:An unreleased emulation of an unreleased fighting game? Nice! I've got a collection of unreleased games.
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Jul 23, 2015 14:55
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When the Dreamcast launched I had a games shop and people generally just ignored it because they were happy with their PS1 and were waiting for the PS2. It was a strange time, the demo we had running of Sonic destroyed the PS1, graphics wise, but people just didn't give a poo poo.
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Jul 23, 2015 15:13
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Krispy Kareem posted:My entertainment center is obsolete. It's a big massive wooden thing with glass curios on either side to show off all our precious stuff. Remember these things?  My parents had a Sharp back in the early 1990s, except it didn't come with the CD changer.
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Jul 23, 2015 15:20
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peter gabriel posted:When the Dreamcast launched I had a games shop and people generally just ignored it because they were happy with their PS1 and were waiting for the PS2. The dreamcast also had arguably better graphics than the PS2, at least at launch. Having AA helped.
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Jul 23, 2015 15:45
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When I was a kid we had a hutch stereo a bit like this one here. Not exactly the same, but the same concept with a flip-up top covering a turntable and radio tuner. We still have it, it's just been moved out to the garage. It has RCA inputs for a tape deck accessory, so I have a cable to hook my ipod into it when working out in the garage. The thing has gloriously rich sound and still works like a champ. In a way I miss the days when electronics like stereos and TVs were built into fancy-looking furniture. Always seemed a bit more classy.
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Jul 23, 2015 16:19
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Enos Shenk posted:When I was a kid we had a hutch stereo a bit like this one here. Not exactly the same, but the same concept with a flip-up top covering a turntable and radio tuner. If you still use it via an adapter how is it obsolete. And there are a decent amount of people who are turning back to vinyls for their music listening habits, sure its on state of the art systems, but a vinyl record is uncompressed audio meaning for sound design work it is much better to work with then mp3 or FLAC. Just need a decent pin and clean vinyl on a new system to have an amazing sound.
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Jul 23, 2015 16:41
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lmaoooo
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Jul 23, 2015 16:53
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robodex posted:The dreamcast also had arguably better graphics than the PS2, at least at launch. Having AA helped. More on this: The Dreamcast and the original Xbox both had hardware antialiasing which made their games look a lot crisper and cleaner than the PS2's. But the PS2 could do motion blur in hardware, and I guess most developers though that blur was a good substitute for AA, which is why so many PS2 games are a blurry mess.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:01
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WebDog posted:
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Jul 23, 2015 17:07
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Enos Shenk posted:When I was a kid we had a hutch stereo a bit like this one here. Not exactly the same, but the same concept with a flip-up top covering a turntable and radio tuner. Holy poo poo that's gorgeous.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:19
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If you wanted to display your wealth and power in the mid 1970s one of these monolithic console TVs (with onscreen channel display!) would do the trick. I can see John Houseman watching one of these in his swanky Rollerball office. 
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Jul 23, 2015 17:23
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My cabinet is in a spare room. Just kept for the old CRT and consoles. I just used obsolete stuff, played time crisis on the original playstation with a light gun on a 20" CRT.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:25
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drgnwr1 posted:If you still use it via an adapter how is it obsolete. And there are a decent amount of people who are turning back to vinyls for their music listening habits, sure its on state of the art systems, but a vinyl record is uncompressed audio meaning for sound design work it is much better to work with then mp3 or FLAC. Just need a decent pin and clean vinyl on a new system to have an amazing sound. The bits about audio quality is horseshit because every single play degrades the sound just a little bit--you're rubbing a needle over the physical grooves, after all. As for sound quality of mp3, FLAC, or CD audio, well, that's a discussion for the "ridicule audiophiles" thread. I like vinyl for two reasons: 1. It is satisfying to put a record on the player and start it playing. 2. Listening to an LP means I hear the whole album intact and in order as the artist intended. If I listen to mp3s, I get tempted to skip around or just hit shuffle. Enos Shenk posted:When I was a kid we had a hutch stereo a bit like this one here. Not exactly the same, but the same concept with a flip-up top covering a turntable and radio tuner. I'm gonna try and find one of these, it would be absolutely perfect in my new place.
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Jul 23, 2015 18:12
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robodex posted:The dreamcast also had arguably better graphics than the PS2, at least at launch. Having AA helped. Yeah, it couldn't move as many polys as the PS2 but the AA and selective rendering could do some sweet stuff. Skies of Arcadia and PSO were pretty amazing at the time.
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Jul 23, 2015 18:34
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Dick Trauma posted:If you wanted to display your wealth and power in the mid 1970s one of these monolithic console TVs (with onscreen channel display!) would do the trick. I can see John Houseman watching one of these in his swanky Rollerball office. I think my grandparents had this exact TV/stand, with the decorative drawer at the bottom (kid me was super disappointed it was a false drawer). I don't think theirs had the channel number quite as large as that but I am fairly certain it did display all the time. They also sometimes referred to their old TV, a Dumont, which everyone else I've ever spoken to has pronounced "du-MONT" but my family pronounced "DOO-mont" because who knows. Seconding electronic/appliance furniture being beautiful. I guess it makes less sense to do that now since electronics get replaced so quickly these days. In the era where they were built into furniture, it was expected that if something went wrong you would call a repairman (or try to fix it yourself) rather than just junk it and get a new thing.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:07
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pienipple posted:Yeah, it couldn't move as many polys as the PS2 but the AA and selective rendering could do some sweet stuff. Skies of Arcadia and PSO were pretty amazing at the time. Soul Caliber was so pretty.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:37
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I hope you guys understand that console A/V stuff weighed a poo poo ton and for that alone I hate all of it. Having grown up in the CRT era I love how light LCDs are in comparison. My parents had a 30"+ Sony VEGA that weighed as much an adult male lowland gorilla and I almost stopped talking to them after I had to move it.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:46
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Imagined posted:What's really brilliant is how Tengen, who made the most famous unlicensed NES games, got around the 10NES. Instead of reverse engineering it or hitting it with a voltage spike like some other unlicensed companies had done, they conned the patent office into giving them a copy of Nintendo's lockout system patent, and used that to make a workaround. Of course, Nintendo sued them into the dirt, but they got a lot of games out before the thumb came down. "Conned" the patent office? The point of a patent is that the holder gets a period of exclusive use in exchange for making an invention public. It is literally the patent office's job to let anybody who wants one have a copy.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:47
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Dick Trauma posted:I hope you guys understand that console A/V stuff weighed a poo poo ton and for that alone I hate all of it. Having grown up in the CRT era I love how light LCDs are in comparison. My parents had a 30"+ Sony VEGA that weighed as much an adult male lowland gorilla and I almost stopped talking to them after I had to move it. When I moved across the country, I gave my parents my 55" inch flat screen and had to move their old Sony big screen out of the family room. Taking that thing down the stairs SUCKED.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:50
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Dick Trauma posted:I hope you guys understand that console A/V stuff weighed a poo poo ton and for that alone I hate all of it. Having grown up in the CRT era I love how light LCDs are in comparison. My parents had a 30"+ Sony VEGA that weighed as much an adult male lowland gorilla and I almost stopped talking to them after I had to move it. Yeah exactly, and the screens were smaller, and fuzzier. I do still think it's weird how high people mount their TVs when consoles were so low to the ground though.
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Jul 23, 2015 20:51
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Tubesock Holocaust posted:Remember these things? Oh yeah, bigass lovely plastic all-in-one stereos that tried to mimic expensive hi-fi separates. Those things were obsolete the very day they hit the marketplace. Pham Nuwen posted:The bits about audio quality is horseshit because every single play degrades the sound just a little bit--you're rubbing a needle over the physical grooves, after all. As for sound quality of mp3, FLAC, or CD audio, well, that's a discussion for the "ridicule audiophiles" thread. I like vinyl for two reasons: Don't forget the big cover art. Usually more effort go into LP covers because they know people are into that sort of thing, and included extras such as posters and limited edition colored vinyl. I know that's usually why I buy LPs, because the covers deserve to be as big as possible, and because of the reaons you mentioned. Most LPs these days are cut from the very same digital master as the downloads and CD, compressed sound and all, so usually there's no actual sound quality argument. What might happen is that the inherent limitations of the LP format kinda masks the harshness of the sound, making for more pleasant listening. But it sure as hell isn't as accurate to the master as a CD or download. For the best sound quality, you have to seek out the labels and sound techs who buck the trend and release well-mastered albums. Earache Records have been re-releasing some classic metal records as "Full Dynamic Range" editions, and they definitely sound better and more pleasing to me. I wish more records would do this. https://earache.bandcamp.com/
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Jul 23, 2015 20:55
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Pham Nuwen posted:The bits about audio quality is horseshit because every single play degrades the sound just a little bit--you're rubbing a needle over the physical grooves, after all. As for sound quality of mp3, FLAC, or CD audio, well, that's a discussion for the "ridicule audiophiles" thread. I like vinyl for two reasons: A better reason is that most modern CDs are mastered for low fidelity equipment (iThings, etc.) and undiscerning listeners and sound horrible by design. Even the CD rips of my Stratovarius and Dream Theater records sound amazing compared to the official CD releases despite being CD rips and subject to both the limitations of CDs and the limitations of vinyl and suffering inevitable degradation along the chain from the cartridge to the preamp to the ADC. There are some drat good CDs from the '80s out there, though. I have a few albums where the CD beats the vinyl hands down. As for vinyl records being direct transfers of brickwalled CDs, I guess I've been lucky because most of the modern vinyl I've bought was mastered for vinyl and sounds pretty great. The new Queensryche album is definitely a CD transfer though and so is Blind Guardian's big 4LP compilation--both sound terrible. Woolie Wool has a new favorite as of 21:51 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 21:44
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My favorite part about the evolution of television tech is that short period when they figured out how to get projection TVs thinner but LCDs weren't really a big thing yet. I got a used 36in projection TV through work for cheap and you'd expect it to be as light as an LCD but it's about as heavy as a CRT, it's glorious. Also it's a really lovely TV but I only paid like $50 for it, so
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Jul 23, 2015 21:44
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Enos Shenk posted:When I was a kid we had a hutch stereo a bit like this one here. Not exactly the same, but the same concept with a flip-up top covering a turntable and radio tuner. We have one of those at my house(different brand, but same sort of thing), my Step-Dad wants to get it working again, while my Mom hates it intensely and wants to get rid of it, personally I think it's pretty cool and would love to have a reason to buy some Vinyl Records(both new ones and the huge amount of used ones cluttering every thrift shop and antique store in town) We also used to have a more compact and even older model that you slid the radio and record player out of to use
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Jul 23, 2015 21:46
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robodex posted:My favorite part about the evolution of television tech is that short period when they figured out how to get projection TVs thinner but LCDs weren't really a big thing yet. I got a used 36in projection TV through work for cheap and you'd expect it to be as light as an LCD but it's about as heavy as a CRT, it's glorious. You got ripped off.
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Jul 23, 2015 21:48
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Woolie Wool posted:A better reason is that most modern CDs are mastered for low fidelity equipment (iThings, etc.) and undiscerning listeners and sound horrible by design. Even the CD rips of my Stratovarius and Dream Theater records sound amazing compared to the official CD releases despite being CD rips and subject to both the limitations of CDs and the limitations of vinyl and suffering inevitable degradation along the chain from the cartridge to the preamp to the ADC. My high range is damaged because of C-130s and I laugh at audio purists. I simply can't hear the nuances. mp3s at 128bit sound perfectly fine to me.
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Jul 23, 2015 21:59
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Zopotantor posted:"Conned" the patent office? The point of a patent is that the holder gets a period of exclusive use in exchange for making an invention public. It is literally the patent office's job to let anybody who wants one have a copy. "Conned" is my own wording, but I'm basing it on Tengen's wikipedia article: Wikipedia posted:With time running short, Tengen turned to the United States Copyright Office. Its lawyers contacted the government office to request a copy of the Nintendo lock-out program, claiming that the company needed it for potential litigation against Nintendo. Perhaps "con" is a stretch, but that certainly sounds disingenuous to me, since they only wanted the patent to do something they knew they'd be sued for in the future.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:10
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:My high range is damaged because of C-130s and I laugh at audio purists. I simply can't hear the nuances. mp3s at 128bit sound perfectly fine to me. I'm losing my high range and have to remind myself to not touch anyone's EQ anymore. Years ago I was visiting my brother and saw he was using the same stereo he had in college. I popped a CD in the player and holy poo poo there was basically no midrange. At all. His bookshelf speakers had clearly succumbed to many hours of blasting deathmetal but he hadn't even noticed, probably due to all the concerts he's been to. I expect I'll wind up like him as I continue to lose my hearing, unable to discern good sound.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:35
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