Have you ever wished that you could go back to a simpler time? A time when things worked a worked well? I myself have wishes this many times, especially when it comes to cars. Now don't get me wrong, I like my car (a 1989 Toyota Corolla GTS), but it is beginning to show it age and various parts of it are wearing out faster that a cat that has fallen in the bathtub. Currently, one of the main issues with my Corolla is that the starter (original) has been going out and will refuse to work when the weather is cold...Read More

The Problem: I work for an eCommerce company and we have been expanding in to new areas of the warehouse attached to the building that I work in. In the past, we only used one of the six sections of the warehouse and were able to cover all inventory by the use of four cameras sending a composite video signal to a DVR with a 4 input capture card. This system worked but had way to many drawbacks. For starters, the capture card multiplexed the inputs to work with a single BT878 chip causing (if lucky) 1fps with...Read More

The problem I seem to have a bad habit of leaving my headlights on, and ultimately killing the battery. Usually this isn't too much of a problem since I drive a manual, but there have been a few times where I have been left stranded all alone at work, in the middle of nowhere. Part of the problem is that the car that I used to drive, an 88 Toyota Camry, had spoiled me by automatically turning off my headlights when I exited the car. A simple solution for a simple problem I decided that I wanted...Read More

Good day and welcome to part 3 of my Intro to NES Development! I apologize for the long delay for part 3, I have had quite a bit going on, I ended up moving my “office” down to the basement and have been working on finishing a project out at work. Here in Part 3 of the Intro to NES Development, we will be re-purposing an NROM NES cartridge to make ourselves a nice development cartridge. For this guide, I used an NES Baseball cartridge that I picked up at the local game trading business. We will be starting...Read More

A sad day at the office Today was a sad day at the office, after months of trouble getting started in the morning, a co-worker passed on. My Co-worker led a very busy life, from the time he joined the company in 2006 as a refurb unit, he has worked hard every day.... until he could no longer take the pressure and just blew his top. He was always a good monitor, with a nice 3:4 ratio and both D-Sub and DVI inputs. He is survived by both his partner, Acer wide-screen, and his parent Quad-Core Desktop. He will...Read More

Alright now, In Part 1 of Intro to NES Development, we went over setting up our development environment and did a quick overview of the NES hardware. Here in Part 2, we will be looking at both planning and coding our first NES Demo ROM. The Demo ROM we will be making is going to be a "digital" alarm clock that will keep track of time and allow us to set an alarm. While this may not have any real world uses, it will demonstrate the basic functions of the NES. When you are ready to dive deeper in to the...Read More

Welcome to my intro on NES development. In this multi-part post, we will look at different aspects of the home-brew NES development process. Setting up an NES development environment, planning your NES ROM, and assembling your NES ROM Creating an NROM development cart by re-purposing an actual game cartridge (or for a ROM swap) Creating a new development cart capable of running NROM, UROM, CNROM, and AROM using new parts from RetroUSB Programming (E)EPROM, Flash, or PROM chips for use with development...Read More

Finding the perfect corpse Back on December 17th I was browsing the local craigslist postings and stumbled upon a broken Williams Stargate cabinet for $100 and contacted the seller. He had bought the machine himself only a few months prior, only to have the monitor go out on him. He had contacted to repair/service centers here in Eastern Idaho and got some fairly steep repair quotes, so he decided to put it up for sale. I sadly did not have the funds to purchase the cabinet when I had first contacted the seller,...Read More

Background Story: About two weeks ago, my wife, son, and myself moved in to a new 2 bedroom house. One of the bedrooms on the main floor is being used as an office while the other is my son's room. You may now be asking yourself, "where do you sleep?". Sometime ago, the attic was converted in to a loft. Its a fairly neat room (though not a bedroom as it lacks a closet) and is awesome to live in.... except for one small detail. there is no heater register and no duct work to add on. This should not be a problem...Read More