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May 16th, 2023 | 1320 - 1418
It's the second cleaning week of the year. Not that these things are a scheduled event, I just go "man this place is a friggin' mess", but usually it takes me until June. I guess I'm just extra messy this year.
The house has been piling up a little more than I would like. I think pictures will illustrate the situation better than words, imagine this but applied to the rest of the basement, an entire two bedrooms, my dining room, and my living room:
So far, all I've really done is clean the workbench-shelf-thing area down at the end of that photo. It was pretty bad, I had about sixteen random systems and a good fifty games piled up in front of it. They're now all put back on shelves, organized into storage bins, or moved to near where they belong. It's going to be a while (probably Thursday or Friday) for the basement alone to be fixed up so things may go from "Cleaning Week" to "Cleaning Rest Of The Month".
If all goes well, I think this buys me space enough to get to working on modding the "crate stock" consoles. I'm getting really tired of seeing a mountain of Famicoms, I really need to get to getting it out to new homes.
With cleaning some of the mess, you can actually see this down at the end of the photo, I found room to set up the N5200! I got this N5200/07ADIII, well Colantia bought it then decided she didn't actually want it so it went to me, and holy heck is it wide. I don't think it's as wide as the original 9801 but it's a good bit wider than say a 9801VX.
I don't actually know things like pinouts so at the moment it is a little useless. I'm slowly working on figuring out pinouts as there's this funny internal DB25 connector marked "CRT" which makes life easy, no guessing which connector I need to pull from. Just sucks Japanese workstation didn't seem to standardize on one output pinout, it's not the same as a Sord M68 (1-7) or a FACOM 9450-II (3 5 7 13 14) which means I'll need yet another video cable. Oh joy!
In the same picture you can see the other computer project I'm currently focusing on, the Pioneer PX-V7. It's running hot (a known issue) so I'm trying to figure out heatsinks on major ICs and maybe also adding some sort of fan to the case without cutting anything. MSX-PG will happen, I've just been getting so occupied with other stuff that buying hardware went to the back burner.
It's looking like the next project up is going to be the 9821Ra266, I finally found a bus mouse and also bought a pair of BlueSCSI V2s. The USB card is coming out, a SC-UPCI is going in, and if Windows 98 runs nicer than the PIO IDE interface I think I'll finally have my "final" setup until CPU upgrade time comes around.
Oh heck, did I mention that the Laserdisc player in that photo works? The seller said it was entirely dead, nah it just doesn't eject the tray the whole way. The tray only spits out enough so you can grab a little handle which is there so you can slide it the rest of the way, they thought it was supposed to come fully out so they marked it as junk and I got it for cheap. I'm really happy because I think it looks really good with the PX-V7, I have no idea how to keep it alive for a long time (recap it I guess? there's very little info in the Laserdisc community on early players like these) but while it works I'll be using it to watch all sorts of random crap.
I finally got to play around with the ADAR today. Check this wooden idiot out:
This is an airsoft replica, not a real firearm. Just to make that clear.
It's a Tokyo Marui M4 MWS with some Aohate furniture, a BavTac 140% Nozzle Return Spring, and a BavTac MHN. It hops anything I throw in it, from .28s to .48s, the BBs drift out to a good 65-70m, at 50m I'm having little issue hitting a torso-sized target, I can dump an entire magazine on auto without cooldown becoming a noticable issue by shot ten, and in semi I can push something like two magazines per gas fill.
If I have any complaints it's honestly in the furniture, Aohate made the stock by using two halves glued together into a solid piece. This does work, no doubt about it the thing holds up to me lightly running around with it, but I do have some long-term durability concerns. I imagine if I shunt the thing there's a shot the stock ends up splitting down the middle which would suck (though the stock furniture looks (and feels) quite nice so I have no complaints if I ever have to go back).
One unrelated gripe, I got a Valken propane adapter and on the like fifth magazine fill I already bent the fill stem. Piece of junk...
I don't know exactly when I'll be able to go properly field the ADAR, maybe next month at RCA or going out to somewhere in Ohio?
I'd type more out, there's some random music stuff I've been playing with, but it's 1418 and I need to get myself going to work. Blah. Have fun!