Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 September 8

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September 8

SEGA 32X/Saturn mod-combo

Is it possible to mod these two 32 bit systems together, like how the Genesis and CD are both 16 bit and compatible, just one cartridge-based and the other disk-based? I am mostly interested in having a joint system play a combined library, without so many wires, etc. It seemed odd that SEGA hooked up the 32X to the 16 bit systems instead of the more obvious 32 bit combo with Saturn. The SG-1000 had a floppy disk drive, and the Master System had one planned, so it made little sense to stop providing both formats for each generation of games released. I see that the Dreamcast has no cartridge equivalent, unlike the Saturn. Obviously, this is no different than the XBOX and Playstation, neither ever having cartridge formats. Look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxoXNi_qCkQ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.43.123.234 (talk) 04:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't do hardware mods, but I must chime in to say that is awesome! :) Reminds me of the Sega Neptune (more here) that Sega had planned but canceled. As for a 32X-Saturn combo, it can probably be done... if you know what you're doing (though it doesn't look like anyone has done this yet, either.) Hardware isn't my strong area so I wouldn't know how, though. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 18:07, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I was reading that when I wrote here on the Refdesk. I don't think many people are concerned with hardware mods of the disk-based systems, Saturn and Dreamcast. More people would rather emulate, it seems. It's funny, because the disks used to be a peripheral format, but now, there are only memory carts as peripherals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.43.113.248 (talk) 01:56, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. And even those carts are eventually going to be completely replaced by internal flash memory etc... perhaps even one day all saved files will be stored on some sort of "cloud"; personally, I prefer cartridges. They are a lot more robust, for one thing. And also they're nicer to look at all lined up if you're a collector! ;) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:02, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I suppose it would be impractical to mod the disk systems going technologically backwards, but I don't see why the 32X cartridge might not be modded into the memory cart slot of the 32 bit Saturn. It makes more sense than combining the 32X with the Genesis and CD, since the last two are 16 bit. For the Dreamcast, I could see the memory cart slot being used by an emulation program in a flash format, archived elsewhere in the "cloud." The post-industrial marketplace you are alluding to has been discussed here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2013/06/09/xbox-one-and-playstation-4-could-be-the-end-of-video-game-consoles/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.43.118.168 (talk) 08:42, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Indeed the industry is evolving at a rapid pace - and in only a couple years the gaming industry may not resemble what it looks like today at all. FWIW I'm pretty much a complete retro gamer... I still buy new games from time to time but mostly I just seek out old ones I haven't played yet. Back to your original question about mods, if you are interested in these things then you should probably check out the Mod Retro forums if you haven't already. There's tons of cool projects similar to the one you descibed going on all the time there. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I know you are a Nintendo fan, but do you have any experience with the 32X? This is my problem, after getting it in the mail. I wrote to the seller on Amazon this:

"The 32X has all the parts, except it seems the AV crossover cable between the 32X and Genesis is an aftermarket product possibly not working, that came with it from you. I have seen the 32x manual showing an original arrangement of two conjoined cables, one from the 32x and one from the Genesis. The AV (stereo) out to the TV is still not working, but not from any defect. I tried another AV (mono) cable that works with the Nomad and there is no difference. The only AV working for sure in this link up is the RF line from the Genesis to the TV, so there is a difference when I unplug that, whether or not the 32X is connected. I have only one 32X game, and only half of the graphics are perfectly visible--the menus and text. None of the pictures otherwise are showing, but the audio is crystal clear. I found some advice online, directing one to clean out the circuit boards and make sure the flat white wires are firmly connected to both of them. I did that, but there is no difference at all, one way or the other. I am absolutely certain that this is a problem with the wiring and nothing else. See here for a related problem, and the solution dealt with the AV connection between the 32X and Genesis, so this is why I suspect the aftermarket cable you sent me. Either that, or it is really only half of a two-cable combination:"

http://atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28668

Definitely beware of aftermarket wires - they can be good quality a lot of the time, but belive me they can be terrible at other times. The issue here is probably as you think; and if you can't get it to work then you should probably demand a refund/replacement from the seller. Unfortunately I don't have first-hand experience with the 32X itself so I can't offer any advice further than that. Good luck, --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I found out on my own that the Genesis RF splitter is visible on Channels 3 & 4 while the 32X AV is visible on AV. I was even able to view the games on Component in black and white! I never thought there would be two proper settings for the same thing, but then again, these are actually two devices with two lines of connection to the TV. There was one other thing I was wondering about. There is a metal plate with a hole in the back of the Genesis with grooves suggesting a screw fits there, but I have no clue what would connect to it. I looked inside the shell and there is nothing there behind it. The plate falls out because it is not integrated beyond the shell itself. I thought it might be some kind of grounding device. It seems like something SEGA had in mind but changed plans on. I have not found anything about it online. The only thing people talk about is the original factory release with the Mega Drive Modem port that was removed for the NTSC marketplace. I do not remember there being a hole on the back of my Model 2 Genesis I had in the 90s, but here below the picture clearly shows it on both models:

http://www.gametrog.com/GAMETROG/SEGA_Genesis_1_2_3_Information_Specs.html

Glad to hear that worked out for you! :) I've seen that exact spot on my Genesis; looks to me like it could have been a planned audio jack (due to the shape) but then it got moved to the current location on the front of the console, but the hard plastic case was never modified to reflect this. Though, that's just speculation - your (and anyone else's) guess is as good as mine. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Linux help on windows 8

I need to set up 2 partitions on my Toshiba windows 8 laptop, problem is that it wont read USB boot options and I have no DVD's to load Linux mint as my 2nd OS. How do I set up mint on my laptop? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.42.31.250 (talk) 04:43, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Before you start messing with partitions, there is a possibility you could irrepairably damage your Windows 8 installation so make sure you have backed up and have a means to reinstall Windows and all your programs and drivers.

You can download the Mint installation ISO image from linuxmint.com and burn it to a blank DVD disk, making sure you create the DVD correctly and NOT simply writing the ISO to the DVD as a regular file. You can also use the same ISO image to make a bootable USB drive, using a utility like UNetbootin.

To make your laptop boot from the USB drive, watch during your PC's boot up for a prompt to enter the BIOS setup screen by pressing F2 - it might only be visible for a second or two. One of the BIOS screens will let you change the boot order to include a USB device. You could also try pressing F12 during booting, and see if it offers a boot from USB option, though that might only appear if the USB drive is plugged in. However, if your PC came with Windows 8 preinstalled, it probably has UEFI installed instead of the BIOS. In which case, this article is the place to go. Note that you might have to turn off UEFI#Secure boot in order to install a linux OS - but then again Mint is based on Ubuntu which claims to support Secure boot. Astronaut (talk) 04:16, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Khan Academy

I was tinkering around in the computer programming section in the Khan Academy and was wondering what language they use. It doesn't look like any of the languages I know. Does anyone have any idea? Is it some form of basic html coding? 202.65.133.122 (talk) 04:47, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

At https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/programming/intro-to-programming/v/programming-tour it says javascript. Rojomoke (talk) 05:14, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Admin problem

Hi, I am the only user and administrator of my computer running Windows 7 Ultimate version for 1 and half years. I was able to format pen drives and cds and dvds. But now, when I try to format any, it shows the message Windows was unable to complete the format. I can't delete or change any files in pen drives or cds. It shows you need permission for this action. What should I do?? Benison talk with me 07:32, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

What is "streaming" in this context?

Hi. I found an interesting interview with the art director of Grand Theft Auto V, Aaron Garbut. Everything he says makes me wish I could sleep for nine more days, but one part is also confusing:

On the streaming side we’re able to do so much more. That’s let us make the world not just a lot bigger but much more detailed than IV was. There’s just so much going on, not just on the backdrop of the world but in the life on the street.

After confirming my hunch that Google is absolutely useless for the terms I'd use, I came back to Wikipedia (where I found the article in the first place), and found Stream (computing). However, I'm basically retarded on computers and the jargon is scary, so I wasn't happy to see seven choices.

Can someone point me in the right direction, given Garbut's context? I'm not sure I can learn on my own from there, but I can try. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:11, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

My understanding of "streaming" when talking about expansive open-world games is like this: in "level oriented" games (e.g. Half Life 2) all the geometry and textures associated with a level are all loaded from disk into RAM in one go; when the player moves to another level there's a sizeable pause as a whole new geometry set, and a whole new bunch of textures, are loaded in (from the relatively slow rotating media). It's a bit of a pain in games like HL2, but the designer can choose where to put the breaks, so they're in places where the action and narrative are at a low ebb - it's like a change of scene in a movie. But in an open world game like WoW, Skyrim, or GTAx, this just isn't acceptable behaviour - you want the player to be able to walk, drive, and fly at full speed, in any arbitrary direction, forever (within the confines of the massive map), and never have a pause. So rather than have the world be a single, modest size mesh, an open world game was to segmentalise the world into thousands of mesh blocks. The game keeps in RAM all the blocks the player can see (the one they're in, the ones adjacent to it, and ones further away that make up the background). If the player drives north, the game has to load new blocks corresponding to the terrain north of their current position, and (because the blocks are held in a finite RAM cache) it may have to purge blocks that are no longer relevant. In addition to terrain meshes, this has to be done with textures, actor meshes (you get different cars in different parts of town), lightmaps, sounds, and maybe scripts too (e.g. there's no little having the railroad scripts in memory when the railroad blocks, the rail car meshes, and all the associated textures and sounds, have been purged from the cache). The trick with all this is doing this without it being evident. RAM is much (much much) smaller than the size of the world and all its contents, and the world is primarily stored on slow rotating media (depending on the game and console, a magnetic hard disk or optical media). There's only so fast they can pull that data from that media, and organising things so they can always guarantee to get what they need is a difficult data-structure challenge. Occasionally they fail to keep up (as GTA3 on PC did sometimes) and you see "geometry popping" (when objects "pop" into view, having been loaded too late, or change from a chunky low-resolution mesh intended for distant viewing to a more detailed one intended for close up too late) or "texture popping" (where detailed textures, which should have been loaded to replace chunky distance ones, don't make it in time, and things briefly look oddly SNES-ish). They use multi-scale assets (geometry and texture) so you can look at a wide expanse at a great view distance so (a bit like zooming in and out of Google maps) a given block might be represented at several different scale levels by meshes and textures at different degrees of detail. TL;DR: the world doesn't fit into RAM, so they have to cleverly stream chunks of it from disk and assemble them all together on the fly; if they're good at it, the world can be as rich and detailed as they want, and the player can move around as they like without noticing all the stuff appearing and disappearing just out of sight. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:46, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Finlay! More than I expected, and also clearer than I'd hoped. I'm even more pumped for this game, now that I know why. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:51, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

The trouble is that, once you know how they do this, you start to see the little slights-of-hand they pull to make it work, and (like The Truman Show) once you see the illusion, your suspension of disbelief is a little tarnished. You notice how the terrain in Fallout 3 is oddly undulating (to limit the draw distance), that it's always really cloudy atop Skyrim's mountains (so you don't see how chunky the land textures are), and how the urban canyons of GTA3 are hillier than you'd think (again to limit the draw distance). Games hardware, and game engines, are much better at this than they used to be, making the illusion much better (without forcing the designer to contort the world to make drawing it tractable) - Saints Row: The Third seemed to me to go out of its way to have very long straight flat city avenues, just to brag how good their engine was. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:07, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd already noticed things like this, and vaguely figured draw distance problems were somehow related to memory. Maybe now that the curtain is opened a bit wider, it'll bother me even more. From the screenshots and trailers, GTA V has solved the problem better than any PS3 game yet. Lights and textures in the distance look amazing. If it's even close to that in regular play, no complaints. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:18, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Just remember that they won't preview the scenes that look less impressive. If Rockstar's past work is any indication, it'll look great, but like any promo, they'll be careful only to pick the best sections for demoing. Mingmingla (talk) 17:01, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, no doubt. I actually hope they left a few clipping issues. I felt a real connection with Niko Bellic when the camera zoomed in to the backs of his eyeballs. And who doesn't like falling into the odd blue Hell? But no, no cautious optimism here. Too big to fail. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:58, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Too big to fail is right; its £170M cost is 0.1% of the entire GDP of Scotland. If that fails, we'll have to go back to scraping a living hunting for haggises. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

PDF --> Images?

Next in my series of PSP-media questions... although I've solved the problem of viewing .txt files on it (using "jpegbook" to convert a text file to several JPEG images for easy hassle-free viewing) I have but two PDF storybooks I'd like to read on there also. So pretty much I'd like a program that turns a PDF document into images... preferably one for each page. Anyone know of something like that? Thanks! --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 17:56, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

With Imagemagick:

 convert -density 150 in.pdf out%04d.jpg

although you'll probably get better results if your PSP viewer can read PNGs rather than JPEGs. Experiment with the -density value so you get readable text without producing giant files. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:07, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply, Finlay. Unfortunately I'm quite poor at using cmd tools, and got "Invalid parameter - 150" when I tried that. Probably should also mention right now that I'm on Vista HP SP2, sorry for not specifying earlier. What did I do wrong? Thanks, --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 18:18, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Windows, it seems, has its own convert.exe utility, which is for something quite different. So you need to explicitly specify the convert.exe that came with the ImageMagick install. It's probably something like

          "c:\Program Files"\Imagemagick\convert -density 150 in.pdf out%04d.jpg

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:32, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately I'm still getting the same error, even when I open the command prompt right in where I have Imagemagick installed (it's in a folder on my desktop) and when I tried to manually type the path into the cmd window it said the path couldn't be found... also, where are all the .jpegs going to appear? I don't see a specified output path? --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 18:45, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

What's with the "%04d" bit? I'd try using a more normal output-file name and see if that helps. --Trovatore (talk) 19:19, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

It's the name template for the output names. Because a PDF has multiple pages, and JPEG only one, this means there will be multiple JPEGs output, and we want to make sure that the names sort okay. With this, JPEGs will be called out0001.jpg, out0002.jpg, etc. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:06, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Well, then I wonder if Yellow might be running into problems with the Windows command shell. Maybe try escaping the percent sign somehow? --Trovatore (talk) 21:09, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I suspect it has something to do with the path... (because as I said before, I'm quite bad at using command utilities! ;)) though thankfully I've found an alternate solution (see below.) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:05, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

If it had been the path, the problem should have been resolved when you specified the path explicitly. I'm still betting on the percent sign. My guess is that the Windows shell interpreted the percent sign as meaning something, and passed something different to convert.exe than what you actually typed.

You might try putting double quotes around "out%4d.jpg", or putting a backslash before the percent sign. --Trovatore (talk) 04:43, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

When you initially said "escape" the character, I though to do the backslash too - unfortunately it didn't work (same error) and quoting it didn't work either. Thanks for the suggestions though, Trovatore. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 01:07, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Unable to get Imagemagick to work properly, I ended up finding this site which does the conversion quite well. I'm still curious as to why it wasn't working though. Oh well - at least my problem is solved! Thanks, Finlay! :) --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 19:14, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

USB Ports

After unplugging this USB end from my Toshiba Satellite series laptop running windows 7 (after waiting for it to eject), both USB ports immediately quit working. They don't recognize any device, and don't even register anything is plugged in. The iPod won't even charge. I've tried all the conventional ways I can find online to remedy the situation, including updating drivers, deleting the USB ports in devmgmt and restarting, searching for upper/lower filters, downloading Microsoft fix-it, but nothing could be found. Have I somehow disengaged them from the power source, possibly? I'm really at loss as to what to do without having to take it in; it's an aging computer, and I wouldn't want to have to spend too much to do repairs. Thanks --Hubydane (talk) 22:25, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

As you've mentioned, it's an aging computer - and unfortunately that means there's a great possibility that the USB port has simply quit from age. Sounds like you've tried a lot of methods, so this is probably the case; it happens with old computers, especially if you've used the ports a lot (charging devices etc.) Incidentally, I'm typing this on a 5 year old Satellite, but my USB ports can go a while without use (sometimes weeks.) Also, I would definitely not reccomend you try and replace them yourself (unless you're a hardware expert, that is!) so if you really need them then I'd take it in to a repair shop. Good luck, --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:13, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, if both USB ports stopped working at the same time then it isn't just wear on the USB sockets themselves. I don't own a Toshiba Satellite, but if the USB ports are together then it might just be a break where the dual USB unit is soldered onto the motherboard. (Possibly an easy repair for the computer workshop.) Dbfirs 08:05, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

After a bit more investigation, I noticed the black bit in the port that fits with the plug is missing, it appears to have broken off. However, the other port is still missing. I'm not sure the likelihood of them being connected, as they are separated by an Ethernet plug and are more than an inch and a half away from each other. So, I know four sure why one plug isn't working, but after some research soldering is the only option to replace the USB plugs; at this point it's whether it'd be worth it to replace or to just give in and buy a new laptop, since its about time for an upgrade anyways.--Hubydane (talk) 12:20, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I would guess that with that plastic bit missing, the pins are able to short against the grounded outside edge of the socket. If they are on the same power circuit, then neither one will work. I would expect the USB controller to detect the overdraw of current and shut down just one port, but it is possible that the design shuts down both. I'm surprised Windows isn't popping up a message to let you know about the problem - I know I've seen it before when a port is overloaded. If that is the problem you may be able to get by for a bit by sliding a piece of paper or thin cardboard between the pins and the side of the port, and if you're lucky the other port will start working again. I don't have a name (talk) 13:14, 9 September 2013 (UTC)