rebelpeon.com

Category: electronics

  • Getting Rid of the Cube

    Well, I was easily able to return the cube to best buy.  However, ebgames doesn’t take returns on cube accessories that have been opened (broadband adapter and memory card).  Plus, I accidentally disposed of the reciept for Phantasy Star Online 1 & 2, so they wouldn’t take that back either.  Talk about a bummer.  Well, off to ebay to sell them, or so I thought.

    Aaron Binford recently started selling his cd’s on amazon.com, while undercutting all the other personally sellers on there.  Turns out he’s already made close to $300.  Well, what have I got to lose?  I throw up the game, broadband adapter, and memory card on Sunday.  Today, just an hour or so ago, PSO sold for $55 ($10 more than what I bought it for, but $10 cheaper than the cheapest other seller on amazon.com).  Hopefully the other items will sell just as nicely.  One can only hope.  Now I just need to get to the post office tomorrow and get it sent off. 

    This is way better than taking a huge loss, that’s for sure 🙂

  • Gamecube Mistake

    Well, I finally got a GameCube.  Granted, the only reason I got it was because of the $100 Gift Certificate to Best Buy I received from my credit card company.  So, I bought the broadband adapater, memory card, and Phantasy Star Online for it.  I got it all hooked up and I was able to stream some of the games to the gamecube.  Most of the games worked fine, but granted, it’s a wee bit more of a hack than on the xbox.

    Now, this morning, I’m questioning my decision.  The system was free for me (minus tax), however, the other 3 things added over $100.  I think I’m going to return everything and just use the $100 Best Buy gift card to buy cd’s instead.  The nice thing about the xbox, is that I can use it for other things (i.e. streaming music to my reciever and speakers from my server upstairs), but the GameCube can only be used for games and I don’t game that much.  Once the initial fun wears off, it will just sit around collecting dust.  Heck, the xbox does that enough on it’s own.  Thankfully the xbox is easy to repackage, and I’ll just return it to Best Buy.  The other stuff (minus the game) might be a little harder, since it’s some great packaging that you have to destroy to actually get the product out. 

    Hopefully EBGames will take them back, otherwise ebay here we come!

    I guess this marks the end for the gamecube category.

  • Xbox Media Center

    I normally keep fairly up to date with releases of Xbox Media Center (xbmc), but lately I haven’t been because I found a version (the build released on January 5th) that was stable, and did everything I wanted to.  All I can say, is, DAMN!  I downloaded the latest release as of 2 days ago (the May 9th release I believe).

    First of all, they’ve gotten rid of the same skin they’ve been using as the default for a long time.  It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of the old skin, but this new one is so much more polished. 

    Second of all, the smb streaming is absolutely perfect for me.  However, that may be because of the new router that actually doesn’t reduce the speeds to the xbox to 1Mbps.  I’ll talk about my new router a little later though, because I don’t want to give it intensely glowing reviews, and then have something stupid happen a day later 🙂

    And finally, the greatest feature I think they ever could’ve added, is the addition of an http server.  Now, you may be thinking, why the hell would they do that?  Well, all I can say is, this http server allows you to control whatever xbmc is playing.  Yes, that’s right, you could essentially hook up your xbox to a reciever, speakers, and a network connection.  Granted, not all features are currently supported via the website, but you can easily add things to your queue, etc. 

    Now, the reason I think this is so damn cool, is that in my office, ever since we moved out the noisy rack, we contemplated getting some sort of jukebox setup that we could all connect to and add tracks to, etc.  This way we don’t all have to wear headphones, or have 5 different songs playing in the background.  A modded xbox is now a possible solution to our problem.  We could all add whatever songs you want to listen to to the playlist.  There are still a few things that would need to be tweaked (like deleting stuff that’s currently in the playlist, etc).  This is the exact sort of solution that I was thinking about for the office.  In fact, I had seen a similar thing at a party I had gone to a few years back at Presidential Towers.  I can’t remember the name of the company that was having the party, but they do a lot of training, and web developement.  Needless to say, they had a webapp that you could browse their music collection, and then add to the current playlist.  It was one of the cooler ideas I’ve seen for a small business/office.

    And now that xbox’s are $150, this means you can get a awesome little media center for around $200 (if you mod it yourself).  To all those with xbox’s, I say go for it because it’s so easy, and you can get so much more out of your black and green box.

  • A New Console Challenge

    After playing with the Xbox awhile, I think it’s time to move on.  Now, I’m not saying I don’t enjoy my xbox, but the whole “modding” fun of it has definitely worn off.  Now it’s time to move onto a new challenge: the Gamecube.

    The gamecube is more of a challenge for a number of different reasons.  First of all, there’s no built in NIC, you have to go purchase the broadband adapter (bba).  Secondly, the bba is limited to speads of 27Mbps.  Thirdly, there’s no harddrive that can have software loaded onto it.  And finally, in order to get into the gamecube you have to own Phantasy Star Online 1 & 2 (pso), which is a very hard game to find.

    Now, to get this to work, you load up PSO, and then on the pc you load up the streaming software (psoload, or psul).  Then, you attempt to connect to one of sega’s online servers, but you actually put your pc’s ip address as the server ip.  That way, pso is fooled into thinking it should be getting data from your pc.  Now, the pc software streams the game image to your gamecube.  Sounds easy enough in theory, but it’s definitely hit or miss right now.  What also makes it difficult is that there is practically no community what-so-ever that keeps software updated, or tries new things.  It’s as if when 2004 came around, all developement stopped.

    What makes this even more funny is that I don’t even have a gamecube yet.  I’m working with Aaron Binford and his newly acquired gamecube to all the testing and whatnot.  So far we’ve had great success, but we’re stuck on a couple of games, notably Luigi’s Mansion, which is a game both of us want.  I’ll keep everyone updated because I know YOU want to know 🙂

  • The Future?

    So I got James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing from gamefly this week, and I must say, DAMN!  This is how video games should be!  Now, I’m not referring to the media check that makes making backups a pain, but instead “movie” feel of the game.  Instead of making a new Bond movie, they decided to do a video game.  They have voice overs from all the people in the bond movies: Pierce Brosnan, Heidi Klum, etc, etc.  From the little bit I’ve played, I’m more than impressed.  The controls make sense, and I’m not getting overwhelmed by the amount of buttons on the controller in such a small area (something that has a tendency of happening with me, since I’m a computer gamer all the way).

  • It’s Alive

    Yay! I got the xbox working yesterday. It actually wasn’t that bad, I was just quite pissed about it on Wednesday when it happened. So, I’m going to make a great drawing representation for you, in paint! So, there’s the round area, that brings the trace down to a lower level, and the trace itself that’s supposed to connect to it. Needless to say, as you can see from the drawing, here, that the trace wasn’t connecting to it. Now, you’re supposed to solder a wire onto the round area, but since mine got so messed up, I ended up messing up the trace. So all I had to do was use the wire I needed to solder on to also connect the trace to the round area. Needless to say, after I made the hypothesis that that would fix it, it took about 5 mins to actually fix it. It’s a relief, that’s for sure.

    In other news, having Thursday as a holiday, and not Friday, is just asking for nothing not be accomplished on Friday. Needless to say, that is exactly what happened yesterday. However, we DID get the laptops that have been on order from HP for the last 2 months. I’m sure the people that actually ordered them will be happy.

    And one more thing, I just bought the Damien Rice – O album last night, and WOW. Talk about a great album. You should take a listen. No, really!

  • Happy New Year

    HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

    Well, I think I borked my xbox yesterday. Joy. It was just going to be a simple day copying stuff. However, Aaron Binford, a student worker at DIA, got a 250GB harddrive. However, we couldn’t simply get his bios to reflash enabling his xbox to see over 137GB. Well, we since mine has a 200GB drive in it, we decided to swap out my chip, and see if it works, etc. Well, needless to say, we finally got his working, but after I got mine all back together, it didn’t boot. So, I took it back apart and worked on it for quite awhile. Right now, it’s completely in pieces. With none of the modchip pieces hooked up, it STILL doesn’t work. So, I haven’t touched it since yesterday. I hope I can get it fixed. If not, at least I’ll know exactly how to get it working right the next time. I may try to return it to ebgames, since I did get the “no questions asked” warranty. I just feel kinda sleezy for doing that.

  • Operation DDR Part 2

    Well, I must report that the dancepad works. It’s not quite as good as at the arcade, because it has a tendency to move under you when you “dance,” but other than that it works well. Phew, you also definitely get a workout just for screwing around on it. It gets your heart pounding, and the sweat was starting to roll. All in all, not bad, for what amounted to $7 out of my pocket. I just wish you could add your own music and it would auto-detect the beats so you could dance to it. Maybe in the next version…

  • Xbox Games

    So, instead of renting movies from blockbuster, family video, or any other local establishment, I’ve started renting them from gamefly. It works pretty well. They have an INSANELY larger collection and they seem to have most of the games in stock. The basis of it is similar to netflix, where you set up a queue for the games you want, they send them to you in the mail, and then you send them back. You can only have 2 games at a time, and you just send the games back whenever you want. The games are shipped USPS one day, or something like that, so turn around is fast. It’s still not as fast as going someplace in town, but I can handle it. Amazingly enough, most of their games are available too without having to wait. That was one of the reasons I never got into netflix (I had heard they were horrible about having stuff in stock). So far, pretty much every game I’ve wanted (be it, it’s only been 4) have been in. It works really well when 2 of the guys in the office also signed up for it. We should be flying through games now. And all for $22 a month. I figure, as long as I rent more than 4 games a month, it’s a better deal than going to blockbuster.

  • Happy Turkey Day

    Ok, why does fedex think that my wireless xbox adapter needs to spend the WHOLE day in chicago? It got there at 6am this morning, and didn’t leave till after 5pm. Grrrr…

    Oh, and for those of you that have a modded xbox, and don’t really want to pay for xbox live, I’ve found a nice free alternative here. You can even use it if you don’t have a modded xbox, but it then requires you to start games for an PC. Whereas, if you have a modded xbox, you can start games right from your tv! Plus there’s a messenger client (for the PC) and you can use games that are saved to your xbox harddrive. I think I’m in heaven! Also, voice comm works, and it works with all 37 xbox live games. How can you go wrong?

    It’s almost time for Turkey Day, so if I don’t get around to updating it before then, Happy Turkey Day from all of us here at rebelpeon.com (and by that, I mean me).