Media - retro things - Page 1

A photo of a black PowerBook G3 sitting on a desk, booted to the Mac OS 9 desktop. The machine is big and chunky, but also has subtle curves to it, and the trackpad is HILARIOUSLY tiny compared to modern Macs.

It's aliiiiive! And even though I know my current MacBook Pro is UTTERLY silent at all times, it's still very weird to have an OLD computer also being completely silent too. I'm subconsciously used to hearing all the clicking of the hard disk.

Posted on 13 April 2023, 17:17

A photo of a 128GB mSATA SSD and a caddy to convert that to a 2.5-inch IDE connection.

Current project: Installing this into my old PowerBook G3! I'm also hoping that I can create a disk image of the existing hard drive and clone it onto one of the old external FireWire hard disks I still have floating around. 🤞🏻

our house powerbook g3 darkroom retro things

Posted on 13 April 2023, 15:01

A screenshot from the first-person shooter "Marathon 2: Durandal". There's three humans in green jumpsuits holding handguns who are fighting four purple aliens armed with staves, and there's a fourth human who's in the middle of a gruesome death from one of the aliens. The aliens and humans are both quite clearly 2D sprites, though they've been upscaled so they look a bit less awful.

A screenshot from the real-time strategy game "Myth II: Soulblighter". It's a fantasy game, there's a formation of knights with swords and shields, two dwarves, and six elven bowmen all standing on a brown expanse of ground that's in the middle of a village. There's two enemy warriors approaching armed with round shields and swords, and one has just been hit by all six of the bowmen. On the ground there's a bunch of dead bodies with blood scattered around.

Current status: Getting my retro gaming on with Bungie's Marathon 2 and Myth II. So good, I spent SO MANY hours playing these when I was a kid. (...Is it still retro gaming if it's the original games but running natively on a current machine with high-resolution texture packs? 🤔)

screenshot gaming retro things marathon myth

Posted on 5 June 2022, 20:48

A photo of the box of a 450W CoolerMaster power supply.

Woot, replacement power supply arrived for my old Power Mac G4! Now I just need to get a molex extension cable so I can swap the pins around on it rather than directly on the new PSU so it fits what the G4 uses.

our house darkroom retro things nerd shit

Posted on 27 May 2021, 16:12

A screenshot from Bungie's Forge Marathon map editor showing a window with a grid background, and some white polygons in it showing where the bounds of the level are.

Same as the last screenshot except the polyons are a couple of different shades of red now, indicating the different ceiling heights of the various polygons.

A screenshot from the first-person perspective inside the bounds of the polygons from the previous screenshots, looking down a hallway with tall ceilings and two panels of light on the right side casting sharp lighting across to the left.

Current status: Enjoying how easy it was to make maps back in the day with Marathon Infinity and the included map editor Forge. The Marathon games weren't true 3D but 2.5D, so the map-making process was really simple! You'd start with a top-down view, put the outlines in of where the polyons should go, then fill them, set the ceiling and floor heights, and then go into Visual Mode for texturing and light levels.

mac os 9 screenshot gaming retro things marathon

Posted on 22 December 2019, 16:18

A photo of a Pentax Optio 230 point-and-shoot camera from probably about 2002, with the words “2.0 MEGAPIXELS” emblazoned proudly on the front.

I was poking through my parents’ box of camera gear, and right at the bottom was this beastly bit of kit, complete with a 32MB CF card in it!

darkroom retro things

Posted on 15 May 2019, 21:48

A screenshot of Software Update from Mac OS X 10.4.8. The Mac OS X Updated Combined to go to 10.4.11 is only 186MB.

On a lark, I dug my old Quad Power Mac G5 out and fired it up. After having to remove a bunch of dust from one of the temperature sensors which was causing the PCIe slots fan to run at full speed, it's all working! I reinstalled Mac OS X 10.4.8 from the original discs, and after restarting Software Update dutifully popped up, and man, those update sizes. So tiny! 😭

screenshot retro things

Posted on 2 November 2018, 20:38