I left my job today, and one side benefit is that now I don’t need formal preclearance from my employer to do open source work. To celebrate, here’s the source code to classicmacdemos.com. It’s a little bit of a mess at the moment, but I’ll clean it up. I certainly have time to now! https://github.com/jcgraybill/classicmacdemos

@dotstdy I miss the free-wheeling old days of the Linux community from e.g. 2005 when people were spending all their free time making sick customisations, spinning cubes, wobbling windows, etc...

Goth song of the night: Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead

Happy World Goth Day everyone!!! :gothsparkleheart: 🦇

I can't believe I've not posted it in all the time I've spent on fedi before. I think today is the time for me to share the song that began it all :gothsparkleheart:

Stay dark, friends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy9h2q_dr9k

#krismusicposting #worldgothday #goth #gothic #gothrock #postpunk #music #song

So, I didn't expect to fly through Clock Tower for the #SNES
The game is much shorter than expected, so obtaining all the endings didn't take as long as initially expected, and a fair few boil down to the final action in the game.

For an early survival horror game, I personally think it is great, I have developed a bit of an obsession with it. The controls are a little clunky at first and take some time to get used to. Navigating the mansion takes a bit of time, not helped by the fact that the game randomises some of the locations of some rooms and items a little bit.

Death in the game is not all that punishing. The game auto saves after each room transition, though you can hit a dead end, especially if you don't grab the ham from the fridge. Thankfully, the game has a quick start function, skipping the intro sequence and throwing you straight in if you do need to restart the game.

I plan to do a Let's Plays of the PS1 version later this year.

#RetroGaming #RetroAchievements

@marioguzman What would be great: A curated SF-Symbols like app, but community driven and with colorful rich icons. 😃

When Mac app toolbar icons had color, depth, and detail… 😋 This was Aperture.

Introducing Mac Themes Garden

I've "launched" the Mac Themes Garden! It is a website showcasing more than 3,000 (and counting) Kaleidoscope from the Classic Mac era, ready to be seen, downloaded and explored! Check it out! Oh, and there also is an RSS feed you can subscribe to see themes as they are added/updated!
↫ Damien Erambert

If you've spent any time on retrocomputing-related social media channels,

https://www.osnews.com/story/142319/introducing-mac-themes-garden/

#macOS

Wir brauchen nicht mal ein Menschenleben, um zu vergessen, dass das Einteilen von Menschen in würdiges und unwürdiges Leben, in legale und illegale Menschen, in Gleiche und Gleichere eine moralische Katastrophe ist. Denn wenn wir uns erinnern würden, wenn wir „Gegen das Vergessen“ ernst meinen würden, dann bräuchte es kein Verbot der AfD, dann wäre die Brandmauer in jedem Kopf und jedem Herzen eine Selbstverständlichkeit.

#BosettiWillReden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5teBVB_a5c

This is diplomatic speak for Fuck You Rubio

#USpol #USpolitics

So wirkt's doch gleich noch viel eindrucksvoller.

#AfD #gesichertrechtsextrem

Hier ist übrigens die Pressemitteilung vom Verfassungsschutz, über die alle Medien heute berichten, ohne euch die Quelle zu verlinken.

»Das in der Partei vorherrschende ethnisch-abstammungsmäßige Volksverständnis ist nicht mit der freiheitlichen demokratischen Grundordnung vereinbar.« – Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, 2025

https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/pressemitteilungen/DE/2025/pressemitteilung-2025-05-02.html

Die Christlich Demokratische Union will in Teilen unbedingt mit einer gesichert rechtsextremen Vereinigung zusammenarbeiten

so after repairing that ps2 fat yesterday, i noticed that it wasn't playing back Ico properly. the disc would attempt to spin up for a half second, retry several times, then give up for good.

the disc was in perfect shape.

i noticed that it was a blue/purple bottomed disc, which made me curious. as it turns out, the blue discs are CD-ROMs. there are very few of them for the PS2, and then almost always cause read problems.

in the 00's teenagers figured out that if you put two pieces of masking tape on opposite sides of the spindle hole of a CD, the PS2 would read the game properly. i was perplexed by this, because i couldn't find any explanation of why the "tape trick" worked. was it shimming a gap between the disc and the tray?

as it turns out, a very young kid named Denzel explained it perfectly in his 16 year old 3gp cell phone video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaaRs_H5Fjc

the problem is caused by a weak magnet used in the tray that hovers over the spindle. seen below, this white piece of plastic clamps down on top of the CD's "clamping area" (the perimeter of the donut hole). it is meant to both hold the disc level, *and* prevent the disc from slipping on the spindle.

since putting downforce weight/pressure on the spindle is a Bad Idea (motors don't love this), engineers embedded a magnet in the white plastic: when the plastic came close to the metal spindle, the magnetic forces sandwich CD between the spindle and white plastic. with enough magnetic grip, the CD wouldn't slip at all.

it works great for DVDs that spin at 4x.

unfortunately the PS2 engineers did not consider at least three things:
- playstation CD-ROMs are much heavier and more difficult to spin than DVDs, requiring more friction from the spindle.
- the CD-ROM in the ps2 spins at 24x. the motor goes into jet engine mode when it detects a CD. it needs *much* more sticky friction to keep that CD from slipping when the motor is sending your disc off into orbit.
- the cheapass fridge magnet inside of the plastic disc would lose their magnetism over time - due to various factors (EM fields, shock, heat). even a tiny percent change was enough to let a CD disc slip.

the solution? i stole a tiny strong button magnet from one of my fridge magnet toys. it very easily centered on the existing magnet, without needing glue.

this is information now buried in hundreds of shitty youtube videos and reddidiots *still* telling people to stick tape on their CDs.

#repair #playstation #retroGaming

I've finally gotten around to adding support for #InfiniteMac's new Mac OS X virtual machines to the collection of magazine cover CDs at https://classicmacdemos.com/discs/ . Should make it easier for people to try out some of the game and app demos that were distributed with 2000's-era Macintosh magazines in their browser. Fun!

@Sarnau disassembled MIDI-Maze (one of the earliest FPS LAN game, on Atari ST), made it work on Mac and released all the commented C source code :owi:

Quite incredible 😮

https://github.com/sarnau/AtariST-MIDIMaze-Source

#retrogaming #atarist