yungblood

I've thought about playing RPG's by e-mail... but I don't think you could ever duplicate the same feeling as playing with friends around a table. To me it would seem like any other mmorpg... *sigh*.It's too bad that playing games in person, any kind of game, seems to be a dying art. It's hard to even find a person to play chess with me without going online. I know one guy that likes to play cards in person, and we usually get together once a week for a couple hours.-YB

I just got this one: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ I use it for emu-games, and alot more. The only thing I don't like about it is that the pad on it is comletely digital. The last one I had that was simular, it could tell somewhat how hard you pressed, but this one doesn't. but for the price, and considering it can be setup as a 3axis 12but, or 4axis 10but, it's really good. It comes with a program to map the buttons (and d-pad movements) to key-presses for programs that don't have joystick capability. I use that program for my snes emu. It will work with both the gameport & USB. It comes with an adapter. USB only works with Win98+. I rarely use my mouse anymore, I have it setup with a program called joymouse, so that it controls my mouse pointer. It replaces so many keystrokes. Imagine a mouse with about 20 buttons. (one button in joymouse is like a shift button). I couldn't imagine going back to have to use the keyboard all the time again for simple window's functions. I've never had a problem with it, and I use it all the time. I've had it for about 2 months. It's better than the standard 4but gamepad, because it will handle 3D, like snes. And with the 6but for the right thumb, it works great for sega games. I find it's a nice button layout. The only downfall is that unless you use the windows program to map the gamepad to key-presses, it won't work for DOS games. But all in all, I'd say it's an excellent bargain for the price. And it's very comfortable!! -YB

Oh, also you can IRC through the web... check out these sites: http://chat.efnet.org/ http://search.mibbit.com/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Just another way to access IRC -YB

I've been a long time IRC'r, and an op on #mirchelp (EFnet). Is there anyway we can possibly have the Xisto channel be on efnet? Or even have a channel on both, and tie them together? (I've seen that done a few times, the setup can be surprisingly simple if the channel isn't too busy.) -YB*Addicted to IRC, and proud of it*/quit I'm trapped on the internet...

Damn!! I never would have guessed all that about google. Sure, any big company has people that are suspicious about it. I'm glad that I *only* use my gmail account to transfer split versions of (legally) publically available files! (Since I don't have a internet connection at home right now, I have a friend of mine split files so that they will fit on floppies, and he send's them to my gmail account.)I guess if all that is true, I'll have to add google to my anti- list. heh I'm already strongly anti-microsoft. I only use MS products when I have no other choice. There are a few other companies that I avoid.I've been recommending linux to alot of people just to help them get away from the evil MS!-YB

That's good to hear I haven't been able to find a group where I moved to, but I have played for years with one group that at one point was up to 12 people Now that's a blast playing with that many, but it takes a really good dm, and experienced players to make it work smoothly -YB

Ok, I admit it, I'm a pokêmaniac Well maybe not quite as much as I used to be, but I still love it My TCG collection is not as big as I'd like, but I don't have alot of money for it right now, I only have about 200 cards... I spent $40 bucks at 6 flags great america for an air brushed Pikachu shirt, I have some of the gold cards from when McD's had them in those balls... I am currently playing through Pokêmon Crystal right now I love trying to find hidden stuff, and new cheat codes. True, I haven't found anything that I haven't seen in walkthroughs for pokêmon yet, but I did find one new cheat code for one of the zelda games that isn't posted anywhere on the net. It's simular to the infinite life code already out there, but it doesn't affect you bad when you turn mine off. (Mine grants infinite life through the medicine, rather than frezzing your heart count at half). --- Just another Gamer looking For fun... -YB

testing

Um, I have been seeing this kind of info for 10+ years. Yea, the technology sounds great if they ever get past the problems. Both technical, and financial. Yea, they have been able to get holo tech to work, but it costs a fortune, and it's still not stable yet. :/ It will be nice to see larger portable storage. So far, the best that's out is BlueRay.-YB

No, I haven't heard of DSA. Where can I find out more about it? I always like to learn more about RPG's My personally favorite is Rifts (Palladium System). It's alot more flexable than D&D, but it's not that much more complex. The only thing I don't like about Rifts is the number of books you need to get. Although you don't need them all (I played with 12 books), I believe there are about 40 books to get. And that's just for character classes, and basic equipment. It's split up to different parts of the earth. But it is so much fun!!!!!!!!!!!! -YB

First, colored ribbons mean nothing. As long as a Ribbon cable as the right number of pins, and it's a flat ribbon, it will work just fine. Did you know that on most motherboards, you can use 2 drives per IDE port on the motherboard? With RAID controller cards, you can add alot more hard drives for a comparatively small amount of money. I have seen as much as a 12port RAID card, and it was only $700. Yea, that may sound like alot of money. But if you think about how much it would cost to buy specialty computers, or several computers and network them, it really is a cheaper method. RAID cards do have a disadvantage though. They only work good if all your hard drives on the card are the same size. (Preferably, same brand, same model) If you have different sized hard drives, it treats them all as if they are all equal to the smallest, assuming the one you get allows it. Another idea for getting more hard drives is etherraid. (check out coreraid) I do know of other methods, but they are more expensive. How many drives do you want in your system? Have you thought about just upgrading to a larger hard drive? or do you want more CD/DVD drives? -YB

If you don't even have an AGP slot, you need a whole new system if you want to do any serious gaming. One important question is how good of a gaming system do you want? Imho, there are 3 important pieces of hardware you should look at for gaming. Cpu, Vid card, and RAM. One magazine that I enjoy checking out that will help you select hardware is MaximumPC. They showcase a wide range of gaming computers. Anyware from $1000 to $10000+. -YB

Ok, here's a challenge that I know is possible, but I need a little help. I think alot of people would be interested in using this, once they realize the possibilities.First, I would like a way of getting online for *free* without doing anything illegal. I also want to be able to do so wirelessly.Here's the solution that I came up with. I have a cell phone that is on a family-plan. All calls between me & anyone else that has my service provider is free. The phone I have doesn't have the option of using it as a modem, so I would like to use my soundcard as a modem, use the cell phone just as a way of carrying the modulated data. I've taken a cheap headset, removed the earbud/mic, and attached 2 stereo plugs. If I plug them into my soundcard, any sound played from my computer is sent through the phone to the other person. And anything they say can be recorded by my computer. So I realized that if my computer can send/recieve sound from the cell phone, it should be easy enough to do the same with data. I know that ages ago, instead of a modem that just directly connected to the phone line, you had a box that you would place the handset of your phone on. That box would convert your data to audio, and the phone would transfer it.I know that copying the old bbs & terminal software would probably be the easiest for transfering data, but I want to go a step further, and have it talk tcp/ip. Yes, I know that a cell phone connection would probably be slow. I'd probably be lucky to get a 2400 baud connection, but for simple stuff, it'd be all I need. Certainly all I'd need for e-mail.My problem is this, I don't know how to write drivers for windows. I could do all the code talking to the sound card, that's easy enough. I need to know how to tell windows(95) that I have a new type of network interface. I could also use some help getting the most effecient transfer rate.I know that this is a rather challenging problem, but I think if it can be solved, it'd make it so that alot of people could take more advantage of the free connections that cell companies offer.-YB

I have 2 joystick related questions.The first is, does anyone know if there is a driver that will allow me to use my joystick (actually 12button/3axis gamepad) to control my mouse pointer in windows95? I have one program that will allow me to do that (very indirectly) using windows accessability & the program that camewith my joystick. But it is exceedingly slow, because it uses 2 forms of redirection. First it translates joystick movements to key presses (slow), then I use the windows accessability to translate that to mouse movements. But that is so slow, it's practically unusable. I'd like to know if there is anything that can do it directly.Also, does anyone know how to use windows calls to use a joystick? I know how to use a standard joystick by talking to the gameport directly. My problem is that the joystick I want to use is non-standard. It has a windows driver, so I need to know how to call the windows library that controls the joystick.Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanx! -YB

I have a question, I'd like to have a projector for my computer, but I'm concerned about both picture quality & refresh rate. I've seen some projectors that work *great* for movies, and other tv-type video, but when used for normal computer use, they perform extremely poorly. I would like to display on an entire wall, and use it for my computer, so I would need the resolution high, so that it doesn't look pixallated. Any ideas how I can do this without buying an expensive projector, or splitting the display? I know that you can use 4 (or more) low-res projectors carefully aligned to simulate one high res projector, but that would get expensive to drive that many projectors. Getting more than one vid card that could handle at least 2 outputs a piece.Also, I would like a refresh rate that is good enough that it would be possible to play a video game on it. Yes, I know that this would be a tall order, but I know it's got to be possible.-YB