Laserdisc player is dropping out the digital audio on both LD's and CD's at random and with alarming frequency. Analogue audio/video work fine. So I have no idea where to even start to diagnose the issue.
Fuuuuck.
(Cleaned the lens; it changed nothing. Player is Pioneer CLD-53, from 1994. There's a fuckton of capacitors on the thing to recap, if I decide to try that first. The caps are Nichicon, so probably rather high quality even if they are nearly 30 years old now.)
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 17 2023, 07:21
Last time I tried buying DDR2 RAM was when DDR3 became mainstream. I asked a retailer why is it more expensive than a DDR3 with equivalent capacity and he told me the wholesaler is using "item rarity" as an excuse to jack up the price.
Last time I checked, chemotherapy importers for fanbox and fantia are completely fucked and they won't fix them. I think recently patreon importer is fucked as well
From having gone through this with my Dreamcast and some crappy cheap blu-ray players: I think when these devices start having problems reading, it's usually the laser that is dying. So cleaning the lens doesn't help much (and will often make things worse) and I don't think the capacitors are the problem in this case either.
I don't think there is any true way to rejuvenate a laser, but supposedly you can extend their lifespan by increasing the voltage to the laser beyond normal, to compensate for their natural weakening over time.
From having gone through this with my Dreamcast and some crappy cheap blu-ray players: I think when these devices start having problems reading, it's usually the laser that is dying. So cleaning the lens doesn't help much (and will often make things worse) and I don't think the capacitors are the problem in this case either.
I don't think there is any true way to rejuvenate a laser, but supposedly you can extend their lifespan by increasing the voltage to the laser beyond normal, to compensate for their natural weakening over time.
You are certain it's the laser? Because it's usually not in my experience.
I have fixed at least five playstations just by oiling their spindle motors. The 'adjust the laser' meme is just that, in my experience so far. The problem usually lies elsewhere; I'd be likely to recap it before I blamed the laser diode itself. Unless it's an early LD player with the neon tube laser.
If all else fails I will probably try that, but I doubt it will help. I do at least have an oscilloscope, so I should be able to adjust it properly.
I think mechanical failures are far more likely/probable than the laser diode suddenly going from working perfectly to barely ever picking up digital audio. Or capacitors involved in the circuitry that drives the laser.
This is my first time even opening a laserdisc player, though.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 18 2023, 08:10
I really thought for a moment (and have trouble completely getting rid of that thought) that this thing was a good idea, never enough buttons on a gamepad to make up for a game that can also be played by keyboard/mouse. Except that I tried to look for alternative models, and guess what I found when sorting by price (because the thing cost less than 10 euros) ? That a whole keyboard is cheaper! I'm afraid my senility will make me buy a seriously complete trash sooner or later (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)
This post has been edited by uareader: Dec 18 2023, 23:09
I really thought for a moment (and have trouble completely getting rid of that thought) that this thing was a good idea, never enough buttons on a gamepad to make up for a game that can also be played by keyboard/mouse. Except that I tried to look for alternative models, and guess what I found when sorting by price (because the thing cost less than 10 euros) ? That a whole keyboard is cheaper! I'm afraid my senility will make me buy a seriously complete trash sooner or later (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)
Sounds like you need an Atari Jaguar controller with a joystick added on.
Tried to update my Gimp 2.99 (gimp 3 beta) build today; they switched to Meson sometime earlier this year.
I hate Meson. Just different enough from autotools to be annoying. Maybe it's a little better than CMake, though? - Jury's still out on that. Just talking about the perspective of someone trying to compile and configure the program, not as a programmer.
But that aside: the transition messed up my build directories badly enough that I had to do a complete purge of all the files in the sources and then do a new checkout, since some straggler files from the old build system seemingly were getting compiled and linked in, leading to bizarre bugs.
----
Now that I got the new build working, it seems to be working well. Noticed they've changed the PSD importer somewhat; it actually makes things worse than before if people use weird blending modes, but in a way it's also better because GIMP generates groups of layers (marked as "Added by GIMP") to try to approximate the original effects, and you can tweak the sub-layers' filter modes to see if you can find one that approximates to what you want. I've found the 'lighten only' and 'darken only' filters to be especially helpful here.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 19 2023, 02:42
Maybe because they don't have much space in their room for a whole desktop setup? Considering their profile states they live in Tokyo.
A desktop doesn't need to take much room. People have them in tiny college dorms. Granted, it depends how much other stuff you have in the room. In any case, I am useless when talking about laptops, because no one has made a good one here in a decade or more. The one I type this on is from 2008, and not suited for renders.
I don't know if there's a high performance Panasonic/Matsushita model, but if in Japan those are the ones I'd be most interested in for build quality reasons (The "Let's Note" line). If they offer any powerful ones, that's what I'd go for. Or the Toughbook line.
8GB of DDR2 RAM came in for my x61 thinkpad. Now it should be able to hold me over for a while. - it's about what I had in my X201 prior to this.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 19 2023, 18:57
A desktop doesn't need to take much room. People have them in tiny college dorms.
True. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) Had a desktop in my dorm when I was a student. It was a mini-ITX build with a Ryzen 3400G APU (no GFX card). With that APU, I can really minimize the case size for that build. Though the monitor and other peripherals still took up quite some space on my desk. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)
QUOTE(dragontamer8740 @ Dec 19 2023, 23:22)
8GB of DDR2 RAM came in for my x61 thinkpad.
Was that an upgrade for it? Curious to know how much performance they would get from upgrading the RAM on these old laptops.
True. :lol: Had a desktop in my dorm when I was a student. It was a mini-ITX build with a Ryzen 3400G APU (no GFX card). With that APU, I can really minimize the case size for that build. Though the monitor and other peripherals still took up quite some space on my desk. :unsure:
Was that an upgrade for it? Curious to know how much performance they would get from upgrading the RAM on these old laptops.
Oh, yeah - you're new. So I'll say welcome first! :)
Anyway, the RAM wasn't bought so much meant for a performance boost as a "don't run out of RAM while browsing as easily" boost. I have no swap space set up because I am paranoid about killing my SSD. This laptop had 4GB before, which meant that browsers didn't like to have a bunch of tabs open. I can browse much more comfortably now without worrying quite as much about closing tabs regularly. I don't think it runs too much faster now, but I am pretty patient with page loading and avoid heavyweight sites for the most part. So my standards for a "fast" PC might be different than the standards other people have. My thinkpad X201 tablet was certainly faster, but the screen aspect ratio and resolution is so much better on the older X61 tablet that I don't want to use the X201 anymore.
Some Thinkpad X61 tablet specs (trimmed to save space):
CODE
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 15 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU L7500 @ 1.60GHz stepping : 11 microcode : 0xba cpu MHz : 1595.965 cache size : 4096 KB cpu cores : 2 cpuid level : 10 flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm tpr_shadow flexpriority vpid dtherm ida vnmi vmx flags : vnmi flexpriority tsc_offset vtpr vapic bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit mmio_unknown bogomips : 3191.93 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
$ glxinfo Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer): Vendor: Intel (0x8086) Device: Mesa Intel(R) 965GM (CL) (0x2a02) Version: 23.2.1 Accelerated: yes Video memory: 384MB Unified memory: yes Preferred profile: compat (0x2) Max core profile version: 0.0 Max compat profile version: 2.1 Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1 Max GLES[23] profile version: 2.0 OpenGL vendor string: Intel OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) 965GM (CL) OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 23.2.1-1 OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
My newest PC is a mid-range full ATX desktop from 2012 or so (with a GTX 750 Ti GPU from 2014), and I still find that plenty powerful enough for everything I do on it (video encoding, streaming, some game emulation, waifu2x, Vulkan rendering).
I could probably get away with doing most stuff on my X61, but it'd take a while. I've dailied a Powerbook G4 running Debian before though, so I know I could definitely do it with the thinkpad (which is much faster and better supported).
It doesn't feel *much* worse than the X201 tablet I was using before, and I don't feel like I'm always being strangled by low CPU speeds or anything.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 20 2023, 13:12
Wait? So for a couple of years it has just been a firmware difference between bluray drives and 4k UHD drives?
Always has been. That's how people rip UHD discs.
Went down this rabbit hole a year ago when buying a drive for my PC (not to rip UHD discs, but for future proofing. Discs I was ripping were standard BD's).
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 21 2023, 15:20
Went down this rabbit hole a year ago when buying a drive for my PC (not to rip UHD discs, but for future proofing. Discs I was ripping were standard BD's).
Apparently I would need a flashed drive anyway because I have an AMD processor. Its kinda retarded to require an intel processor for UHD on PC.
Though my PC screen is only 1440p so I've only really used the 4Ks on my TV.
I think the disappointing thing about 4Ks is they vary so much whether they are any better than bluray.
Apparently I would need a flashed drive anyway because I have an AMD processor. Its kinda retarded to require an intel processor for UHD on PC.
Though my PC screen is only 1440p so I've only really used the 4Ks on my TV. I think the disappointing thing about 4Ks is they vary so much whether they are any better than bluray.
I have an intel CPU and flashed my drive anyway.
Some company or companies decided that they'd rather lock out anyone with an AMD CPU from watching their films than make it a little easier for people to make copies of the thing they paid for. IIRC it's some "trusted computing" related bullshittery.
I just rewired an old parallel-type joystick to communicate via a different parallel pinout on my PC-98. Now I can play Touhou with a Mega Drive controller and have both fire buttons work.
Actually I did it via a homemade D-sub adapter with DE9 connectors on both ends that just re-routes the fire and ground pins to their appropriate spots.
Planning to modify a Suncom TAC-2 joystick I also have to support using both of its buttons to send different signals (instead of them both being wired to send the same 'fire' signal regardless).
I also have a korean joystick that uses yet another pinout that I think I will also have to make an adapter for, but which feels nice (surprisingly) and also CAN send different signals for different buttons if a switch on the underside of the controller is moved to a specific position.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 23 2023, 09:44
I had installed a DS4-something program on my pc when I thought my gamepad wasn't working (when I just got the buttons to switch its mode wrong (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) ). I wonder if this may be the source of some issues I'm having now. Maybe despite uninstallation, the pc still use some driver-like (I tried switching drivers, but there were no other options, so it would be "driver-like) things from it, and it make my gamepad recognition flawed (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mellow.gif) But I hate installing (or reinstalling) new stuff or rebooting my pc, both being potential fixes (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif)
Some company or companies decided that they'd rather lock out anyone with an AMD CPU from watching their films than make it a little easier for people to make copies of the thing they paid for. IIRC it's some "trusted computing" related bullshittery.
Why is 'trusted computing' always, we trust everyone except the end-user and the 'owner' of the hardware?
edit: Original was so bad it was better than the second.
This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Dec 24 2023, 01:05
What is the last thing you thought?, Tech Edition
Dec 17 2023, 07:13
