373: This Jerk, Right Here

0:00:00What did you use before Google and modern like DuckDuckGo?

0:00:05Like what were your first web search engines?

0:00:08- AltaVista.

0:00:09And wasn't there a web crawl, something that was actually called WebCrawler, I thought, wasn't it?

0:00:13- That was one, I mean there were a bunch back like in the late 90s.

0:00:15There were a ton that were really getting off the ground.

0:00:18You know, Google really didn't take over and become the thing until like 2000 and later.

0:00:24You know, most of the 90s it was a very dynamic landscape.

0:00:28- AltaVista, we just talked about this on Rectifs.

0:00:30- Oh yeah, aw man.

0:00:32- I mean not much, I don't know how we got on the topic, but yeah we were talking about that.

0:00:36The search engines before Google.

0:00:38- Yeah, I think AltaVista was the best one for a while.

0:00:41I remember using that a lot.

0:00:43I used, I briefly used Ask Jeeves.

0:00:46- There it is, I was waiting for it, I was waiting for it.

0:00:48- There was like, you know, Lycos and I used Yahoo for a while.

0:00:52- Oh that's true, Yahoo, there was a window a time early on that Yahoo was actually very good and now it's not.

0:00:57- Yeah, Hotbot was a big one back then.

0:00:59There were a whole bunch.

0:01:01- That does not sound like a search engine anymore.

0:01:03- Yeah right.

0:01:05But yeah, it was a while before Google really took it over.

0:01:09I never used MSN, which later became Bing.

0:01:12Never really got into the Microsoft services side of things.

0:01:15- You know what I did use by way of my grandparents?

0:01:19My grandparents had and loved, and it actually was really good for them, and I say that with no sarcasm.

0:01:25They used and loved the Web TV, which eventually became the MSN Web TV.

0:01:30Did you ever see these, ever use these?

0:01:32- I remember doing web development and the worst browser to support was Web TV.

0:01:37- Yeah, it was extremely cool, extremely bad technology.

0:01:43And it really was a great introduction to my grandparents who at the time were in their probably 60s and had never really had a computer.

0:01:51It was a great introduction for them to the internet and to email and things of that nature.

0:01:57So I don't begrudge Web TV partly because I never had to develop for it.

0:02:02I mean it was a piece of garbage and it was terrible and it was slower than dirt, but it was very, very cool.

0:02:08And worked reasonably well for being a complete piece of garbage.

0:02:12- Well it was a reasonable idea because not only, you mentioned it was for your older grandparents.

0:02:18That was the target market really, it was for generally older people who were intimidated by the idea of getting a computer

0:02:26or couldn't afford a computer, but they already have a TV because everyone had a TV.

0:02:31So it would be like a gateway and maybe like a dipping your toe in the water.

0:02:36It's funny to think back, at different times of technology, different parts of the computing devices were very expensive

0:02:44and that would drive everything and during that time, screens were still very expensive.

0:02:49It was actually prudent to have a system where, you know what, we're gonna be able to let you use the screen you already have,

0:02:56which is your TV, and we'll just sell you some kind of small box.

0:02:59And I mean other parts were expensive, like memory, that was still expensive back then.

0:03:03But still, the screen was a big deal.

0:03:06Now, they put screens in everything now because it's cheaper than putting physical controls.

0:03:11Now you can get a color touchscreen for cheaper than it is to make a control panel with some buttons on it.

0:03:19Yeah, it's so true. I remember vividly, I feel like I just told this story on the show,

0:03:23but I remember vividly getting a 20-inch, I think it was like a 20-inch CRT that weighed about a billion pounds.

0:03:29And it was like, I think it might have been Trinitron, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, it doesn't matter, but it was beautiful.

0:03:35Yeah, most of them were, most of the 20 inches were Trinitrons.

0:03:37Yeah, it was amazing. And then I remember a friend of mine a couple doors down from me in the dorms at college,

0:03:43this was very early 2000s, like literally the fall of 2000, I remember he had an LCD screen for his computer.

0:03:51I thought, that jerk, he must be friggin' loaded, he has a flat panel display for his computer.

0:03:56Those things are a fortune, how does a college kid have one of those? I was so jealous for the longest time.

0:04:03The first ones, I saw them like the same year, so around 2001 is when you started getting desktop LCD monitors.

0:04:10And they were, I remember they were only 15 inches, and those were about $1,000.

0:04:15Oh yeah.

0:04:16Just for the monitors, just for a crappy 15-inch 1024x768 LCD.

0:04:21I wish I had, eventually, a couple years later I got one from Dad, and remember that Dad worked for IBM for almost my entire life.

0:04:29And oftentimes, there was equipment, and I don't mean that he stole it, I'm not trying to say that at all,

0:04:34but equipment that they didn't need anymore, he would end up finding, and again, this is sounding like he's stealing it,

0:04:39I'm not saying he's stealing it, but some way or another it ended up at home.

0:04:41And then it ended up at college for me, this sounds way worse the more I talk, so I'm just going to plow right along.

0:04:46But I had this ancient IBM LCD screen, and it had, again, there's surely a technical term for these connectors,

0:04:54but it had these connectors, it was like composite, but it was on the back of the screen, and you would like,

0:05:00it was like quasi-coaxial thing, but it was one of those things where you would, maybe that's what it was,

0:05:04and you would stick it in and then twist.

0:05:06Those are BNC connectors, that's probably RGB inputs, which I actually have a lot to say about later, for a totally different reason.

0:05:11But yeah, those were probably, because I think like professional video monitors back then would use RGB HV, and yeah.

0:05:19Our Color X terms at school had those connectors.

0:05:22Those were distinct from the regular X terms, which of course were not color.

0:05:26Yeah, I have a lot more to say about analog color inputs for monitors coming up later.

0:05:31You know, not to totally jinx us, but I'm actually very excited for this entire episode, I think this is going to be a good one.

0:05:38I have more to say about Casey's Computer Corner, but we have some related follow-up first.

0:05:44If you recall last episode, as we were recording, the Synology had rebuilt its entire 6-Drive RAID array, or so I had thought.

0:05:54It had marched all the way to 100%, I had taken a screenshot when it was at like 99%, thinking, "Oh, of course, this is when it's going to die."

0:06:00And no, it didn't die at 99, it started over.

0:06:04And it started over from zero.

0:06:07And several different people wrote in to talk about this and why this is,

0:06:11and they also said that Synology's on-screen, like, GUI display of what's happening is not the best.

0:06:18And what you really need to do is you need to enable SSH on the Synology, which I did not have enabled for security purposes.

0:06:26And what you really need to do is to look at the file in PROC, and the file is called "mdstat," so it's, you know, you would "cat/proc/mdstat,"

0:06:35and that will tell you with more detail exactly what is happening.

0:06:38So I did that, and I realized, okay, it is legitimately doing something.

0:06:43I have no idea what it is, but it's doing something.

0:06:45It told me that it was going to take literally a week to finish, which was very disheartening.

0:06:51And then I found from somebody else's tip, there's a place in around the same spot in the Synology where you can tell it,

0:06:58"I don't care if this uses a lot of, like, CPU power, just crank this thing out as quickly as you possibly can."

0:07:03And so it ended up finishing, I don't know, at some other point, we'll talk about that later, it doesn't matter.

0:07:08But the point is, there's a blog post about how to check the progress, and why is this happening?

0:07:15Well, and now I'm getting way out of my depth, and maybe, John, you can be my parachute and save me here,

0:07:19but apparently, SHR, which is Synology Hybrid RAID, is basically taking several different, like, RAID 5 or RAID 6 or something like that,

0:07:29volumes, and lumping them together using LVM, not LLVM, mind you, but just LVM, which is Logical Volume Manager,

0:07:36and making one big, like, logical volume out of all of these smaller RAID arrays.

0:07:44That is about as best as I can understand, so John, maybe you can help me out here?

0:07:48Yeah, I saw the same feedback you did, I didn't check up on it, but what it sounded like,

0:07:52I mean, the last show, Marco briefly described it as kind of like what Drobo does,

0:07:55but it actually seems like it's much less sophisticated than that, which makes sense if you look at, from the outside,

0:08:00what can Synology Hybrid RAID do versus what does its Drobo-type approach do.

0:08:04Synology Hybrid RAID is basically the same as a RAID 5-type approach, the only difference is,

0:08:09you can swap in disks that are not the same size, and if you eventually swap in enough of them, you gain some storage,

0:08:15whereas RAID 5 really wants you to use disks that are the same size, or build a new array in the traditional way.

0:08:21And according to this feedback, what it's doing behind the scenes is simply, when you put it in a new drive,

0:08:27making a new RAID array with, like, the newer changed drives, and then making these multiple RAIDs that it's managing behind the scenes

0:08:35look like one volume using logical volume management, that's what LVM is, that's what it does,

0:08:40makes perfect sense to me, it's fine, but, you know, understandably, if they are sort of accurately reflecting

0:08:48the rebuilding of each one of these RAIDs that they're maintaining behind the scenes,

0:08:52it can look like what Casey just saw, where the progress bar starts and finishes and then starts over again,

0:08:57because it's actually doing multiple RAID rebuilds behind the scenes.

0:09:01Exactly. But, yeah, it seems like everything's okay, and we'll talk about that a little later.

0:09:06Would one of you like to tell me about Dark Sky and location-specific data, please?

0:09:11Brian Brush had this notion that what Apple might bring to the table in the case of a weather app like Dark Sky

0:09:18is that everybody who has an iPhone is essentially a distributed barometric measuring device,

0:09:25because our phones do have barometers in them, apparently, and assuming those are accurate enough to be useful,

0:09:31it's not just that Apple now has a good weather app and can incorporate the prediction services and all that into its applications,

0:09:39but potentially, depending on how Apple wants to do this, they can use iPhones as measuring devices.

0:09:43I have no idea if that is founded in any kind of reality. I just thought the idea was interesting,

0:09:48that actually Dark Sky would gain some benefit from being part of Apple instead of just vice versa.

0:09:56I don't know much about weather or the barometer in iPhones, but I would guess the main value in that

0:10:03is not necessarily measuring absolute air pressure, but in measuring change,

0:10:09because that's probably a strong predictor of rain about to happen, isn't it?

0:10:14Like, oh, there's a big pressure drop. And so if you have a bunch of iPhones out in the field that you can tell,

0:10:18like, hey, the pressure just dropped noticeably in this area for almost everyone, then that would be significant data.

0:10:25So I bet they could do something with that if they wanted to. I don't know if they will, but that's a really cool idea,

0:10:30and it's a way that you can basically make the entire fleet of iPhones into a giant short-term weather prediction thing.

0:10:39Now, it's not going to give them, like, radar and forecasts and anything like that, but that probably is helpful.

0:10:45And I would guess that the barometers inside of iPhones probably are sensitive enough,

0:10:51because the whole point of them is to do things like measure when you've gone upstairs for activity tracking,

0:10:56like to measure flights of stairs. So I would imagine the air pressure difference between, like, one floor of a house

0:11:01and two or three floors up is not that great of an air pressure difference.

0:11:05So, again, I don't know anything about any of this stuff, but just going on a hunch here,

0:11:09I bet they are sensitive enough to at least know, hey, the air pressure is changing,

0:11:13and it's dropping for everyone in this area right now.

0:11:17It is definitely a very interesting idea, which I had not thought of.

0:11:20And speaking of weather data, Luke Schulman, amongst others, have pointed out that the weather data industry has consolidated,

0:11:28leaving only two major players in the United States. In 2012, IBM purchased the assets of the Weather Channel,

0:11:35which included software and data products, and the cable channel was later spun off.

0:11:39They, in turn, later acquired Weather Underground, which was run, which is basically a community of personal weather stations.

0:11:45The other major player is AccuWeather, which has its own data and media products.

0:11:49None of these organizations operate weather stations. They simply process and repackage data from the National Weather Service,

0:11:54which is available for free and in the public domain.

0:11:57So, I guess if you really wanted to go to the National Weather Service, maybe you could make heads or tails of it.

0:12:01One way or another, AccuWeather and IBM have for years been lobbying to Congress to change the law

0:12:06so that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the NOAA, model data is no longer released to the public.

0:12:12Of course they are.

0:12:14But basically, you can get this data if you really want to try hard enough, or you can use something, well, could have used something like Dark Skies API,

0:12:22which I guess kind of puts a nice facade in front of all of that.

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0:13:53Let's go through Casey's Computer Corner. I made some brief kind of updates earlier.

0:14:01Like I said earlier, the rebuild did complete.

0:14:04I think it finished on -- it was overnight from Saturday to Sunday.

0:14:11And so that is to say the restore began when that was begun Wednesday evening.

0:14:16It was finished three or four days later.

0:14:19So the way it stands right now, drives one and two, still time machine, still old drives if I recall correctly.

0:14:25And then I have three, four, five, six, seven, eight are all the big master volume, if you will.

0:14:31Drive five is that new 10 terabyte drive.

0:14:34Drive eight, still hanging on, still there, still working for now.

0:14:40Well, after everything was updated, the first thing I did was immediately re-Rsync everything to that 12 terabyte external.

0:14:47Make sure it's all as good as can be.

0:14:49The second thing I did was hook that 12 terabyte external back up to the Mac Mini and immediately sign it up for Backblaze with my own money.

0:14:58And it is currently uploading that 12 terabyte drive to Backblaze.

0:15:02And it is, I think, two or three terabytes in.

0:15:05And so what I wanted your guys' advice on is what to do next.

0:15:09And I tried to do this in Slack and Marco probably rightly said save it for the show, I'm not telling you.

0:15:14But here's my thought process.

0:15:16So currently I have about 10 terabytes of data on that big volume.

0:15:23Now it's a 20 or 30 terabyte volume, I think 20 terabyte, but I have 10 terabytes of actual data on it.

0:15:29Drives one and two together, they're currently RAID 0, so there's no redundancy, nothing.

0:15:35And all it is is time machine, so whatever, who cares.

0:15:38But drives one and two currently have, I think, only six terabytes, I can verify, but I'm pretty sure it's only six terabytes in there.

0:15:43But I do have a couple of brand new 10 terabyte drives sitting here waiting for me to do something with them, like if drive eight dies.

0:15:51So here's my thought.

0:15:53What if I destroy that first volume, drives one and two, I destroy that volume, I lose my time machine backups, whatever, I don't care.

0:16:01I replace one of those three terabyte drives with one of these new 10 terabyte drives and make another RAID 0 no redundancy array, a 13 terabyte or thereabouts, RAID 0 zero redundancy array.

0:16:13I duplicate everything from the big array into the little array.

0:16:18I think I probably should do that, irrespective of the next step.

0:16:23And then this way I would have two complete copies of my data, admittedly, on the same box.

0:16:27Like there's plenty of problems here, this is not foolproof by any means, but it's more than one copy, which is a good thing, right?

0:16:33Two is one, one is none.

0:16:35And so my thought is, what if I do that and maybe I just issue time machine forever, because I can't remember the last time I've done a time machine restore, and given all the friggin' computer problems I've been having recently, my computers are effectively ephemeral anyway.

0:16:49You know, I've gotten so darn efficient at reloading them that I can do that reasonably quickly and easily.

0:16:55So that's step one is, are you guys on board with that idea, and then there's a second step that I'd like to talk about first.

0:17:03Or am I being silly by throwing away the time machine volume and having a duplication of all of that data.

0:17:10Let's start with Marco, please.

0:17:12Is your backblaze backup finished yet? I already know the answer.

0:17:15No, no, no, no, it's not finished.

0:17:17So, the answer is, don't do a damn thing.

0:17:20Fair, fair, fair.

0:17:22Don't touch it. Back away slowly. Just don't touch it.

0:17:26Let the backblaze backup finish. And don't do anything else until it does.

0:17:32Well, and to be clear, the backblaze backup is being sourced by that 12 terabyte external. I do not disagree with you. I do not disagree with you. I think you're right.

0:17:40But let's assume for the sake of discussion, it is not done. But let's assume for the sake of discussion it is done.

0:17:44And I super pinky promise I will not touch anything until that backblaze stuff is squared away. What would you do then?

0:17:50Right now, you are recovering from a near disaster. You are lucky that you got out of this.

0:17:59So, step one is like, get your insurance policy in place. Get these backups done.

0:18:07Step two might be, start fixing things that aren't broken again, like John said last week.

0:18:13But, here's the thing. We're still in COVID-19 quarantine everything. It's slow and difficult to get new parts delivered to your house quickly right now.

0:18:24So, if things go wrong, or if you change your mind, or if your needs change, you lucked out with your Best Buy parking lot hard drive.

0:18:32But it might not be easy to get more stuff. So, if you do something and then three drives die in the process, I don't know. It could happen, right?

0:18:41How hard is it going to be right now to get new hard drives? It might be hard. It might be tricky. It might take longer than you think.

0:18:48This is not a good time to be making changes. So, I suggest that because it's hard to get supplies right now, this is not a great time to mess with it.

0:19:02Let the backup finish. Let this just continue the way it is going. And then, consider other options once you can get hard drives delivered same day or tomorrow from Amazon.

0:19:14Alright, so let's assume then that now we're in 2025 when all this is blown over. Then what would you do? Would you nuke the time machine? Would you issue time machine entirely to have a second copy of all this data?

0:19:27I actually like time machine. Now, it is incredibly slow and incredibly old and comically terrible in the UI.

0:19:39Like, things like missing progress bars. By the way, talk about missing progress bars. The new Catalina Finder integration for plugged in iOS devices to access their files. So, you know how iTunes forever had that section where you could actually drag files in and out of certain apps using iTunes?

0:19:59You can do that now in the Finder in Catalina, but it's so incredibly half-assed. So, we were trying to transfer our Minecraft game from Adam's iPad to Tiff's gaming PC.

0:20:11And this is the method that this was able to be done. You could plug in the iPad and Minecraft exposes it to Data Directory through that old iTunes file transfer interface.

0:20:23And you can drag the files out and put them on a different device. That's what I did. The directory I was dragging out was something like, I don't know, a couple of gigs.

0:20:32It's showing folders, but you can't actually, like, open those folders. You have to just, like, drag the entire folder out. So, you can't take, like, just a subfolder. You can't actually browse beyond the top level. That's limitation number one.

0:20:46Limitation number two is when you drag that folder that you have to copy the whole folder of out from the fake iTunes interface in Catalina Finder onto, you know, your own computer, onto, you know, some other folder.

0:20:57You drag it, you drop it, and there is no feedback whatsoever. Nothing. You have no clue what's going on.

0:21:06Now, if you're transferring a two gig folder, that actually takes a minute or two. Like, it's not an immediate thing. There is no feedback. There is no progress bar. There is no spinner. There is nothing indicating that anything is happening, except if you try to do it again, something weird happens. I forgot what it was.

0:21:24So, eventually, it pops in. Like, it shows up. It's just, like, I just love how, like, they didn't even code a progress bar. Nothing. Like, it's so gloriously half-assed. But, anyway, it's just one more way in which the breakup of iTunes actually made everything worse.

0:21:40Anyway, so going back to your thing. Yeah, what I would suggest, I actually like Time Machine because I hardly ever need to fetch anything off of it. I think I use it maybe once a year. And usually it's like, you know what? I had something working in a code file that I was working on.

0:21:59I've been there. I had it working last night. I didn't commit it. And I messed it up today. And I can't get it back to the way it was. Let me just revert to how it was at 10 p.m. last night. And I pulled that one file out. And that saves my butt about once a year. And I'm glad I have it.

0:22:17And it's slow as hell, but I'm really glad I have it during that time.

0:22:22That's a feature that Xcode should add that I sorely miss and it made me actually consider switching my editing from editing in Xcode to editing in BB Edit. BB Edit has this amazing feature that I wish Xcode had, which is that you can configure it so that every time you save a file, it saves a backup copy of the previous version of that file in a folder of your choice.

0:22:44Text files are small. It is a no-brainer. I have had this feature enabled for many, many years, maybe decades at this point. I have a giant folder on my computer with the old version of tons and tons of text files all organized by date.

0:22:58It has saved my butt so many times. Because, yeah, sometimes you forget to commit. Sometimes you don't commit. Bringing up the commit interface, even using a keyboard accelerator in Xcode takes time.

0:23:08And you have to think of a commit message because it makes you write one. I don't want to have to think about it. And I also don't want to have to restore code files from Time Machine. Never had to do that when I was using BB Edit.

0:23:18I was already using Xcode for a short amount of time. Occasionally I said I'd done it in the same situation. I forgot to commit. I'll just get it from the backup folder. Oh, no, it doesn't exist.

0:23:27So if you're listening to Apple and you work on Xcode, add this feature. It's so easy to add. You just make a bunch of folders by date and you put the file in there and you stick a timestamp on the file name.

0:23:38And maybe there's a little bit tricky logic about truncating for someone who has a 255 character file name, but honestly they should be punished anyway. So please add this feature. People will use it. It's great.

0:23:49Well, just make Time Machine better.

0:23:51That too. That's a different team.

0:23:53Yeah, right. Is there really much of a team there? Has Time Machine been touched?

0:23:59Yeah, but it's updated to use the APFS snapshots. Every time we've talked about this, even though progress is extremely slow and should be faster, it is still changing, which gives me hope that it hasn't been entirely abandoned.

0:24:13That someday, somehow we might get a version of Time Machine that takes full advantage of the modern technology stack in macOS. We're not there yet, but every version gets a little tiny bit better.

0:24:22Speaking of which, by the way, we didn't prepare to do this news at all, but there's a new version of Arc, the backup app, ARQ. It looks really cool. It uses APFS snapshotting to make the backups really fast.

0:24:33I'm going to upgrade to that. I'm going to check that out because it looks really cool. And Casey, it actually might be an option for you at some point in the future, maybe, because it supports fully now, or better supports Amazon's super cheap Glacier version and Google archive, because it's basically Google's Glacier.

0:24:53And I believe they each charge about a dollar per terabyte per month. So if you can make that work for you, that could back up your stuff actually legally for like 12 bucks a month.

0:25:04Yeah, I had heard a little bit about that and I haven't had a chance to look into it, but that does sound very, very appealing.

0:25:10You should look at what the restore prices are, though, because unlike Backblaze, they will not ship you a drive for free.

0:25:15Yeah, and I will say, the process of using Glacier with ARQ a couple years ago when I tried it was miserable, but apparently it is better now. But I don't know how much better.

0:25:26I just peeked in my BBA backup folder, by the way. Apparently, I must have started fresh in this machine because the oldest folder is from November 16, 2008.

0:25:34Wow, that's awesome.

0:25:36There's no reason why Apple can't do this with that, because we have that weird local time machine thing. I've never had a good concept of how and when and why this works, but there is that concept of local time machine snapshots when you don't have a remote disk or when you're not near it.

0:25:51Even if you do, it still does it. Even if you have a remote disk, it's always doing local snapshot backups now.

0:25:56Right, so in theory, it should be really fast and easy to, you know, some files that you modified last night to be able to go back, assuming you have any free disk space at all, to be able to go back and say, and just the OS should be able to do all that locally, just say, "Alright, give me this file from last night." I don't know if it's that easy in practice.

0:26:12Yeah, it is fast to do it if you do it from the command line and know how to do all the magic, but the UI, like you said, it seems silly, but when they got rid of the space vortex UI, it's like things went downhill after that. That was like the most frivolous, you know, fanciful, what was the word we're always using when we're talking about it?

0:26:30Whimsical.

0:26:31Whimsical, yeah.

0:26:32Yeah, interface, right, and it's like, well, maybe it's kind of too whimsical. Maybe they should just improve it only. What they did was they got rid of the whimsy and did not improve it in any other way, and now every time I go into the interface, I'm frustrated at how slow it is, especially with the, you know, Synology time machine backup over the network.

0:26:49So bad.

0:26:50Navigating that interface and getting to the point where you can initiate a restore can take forever, and it's bad, but anyway, you can do it from the command line. You can access those things. It's inexcusable that they don't have a very fast lookup of local snapshot stuff like Margo said. You should be able to right-click a file in the Finder and say, "Show me all the local snapshot versions of this file," and then just pick one and restart.

0:27:09Isn't there that revision system? I've never used that either.

0:27:12That's a different thing.

0:27:14Why is that a different thing?

0:27:15Because that was for saving file versions. It wasn't the same as like time machine local snapshots of your whole disk. They might both use ABFS snapshot at this point, but I actually honestly don't think they do.

0:27:29The file version thing started out using this weird SQLite database with diffs in it, and it was this terrifying thing that I'm glad more applications didn't adopt because honestly, it's just, meh.

0:27:39I agree with you that in a perfect world, I would prefer to have time machine, no doubt, but I cannot remember the last time I've restored anything from time machine, in part because it's so slow, in part because it's on the Synology.

0:27:50A lot of this is my own choices, but I am willing to sacrifice time machine in order to get a redundant copy of my data, again, understanding that it's on the same physical device, etc.

0:28:02Marco, you sound like you're not too keen on this idea, even in the future state where I can get a hard drive easily and all the backups have been done, etc.

0:28:13First of all, I don't think it's worth losing the functionality of time machine for a RAID 0 copy of this data.

0:28:21Sure, that's fair.

0:28:23Even though I do use a RAID 0 array for time machine, but again, that's because when I set this up, that was actually a large amount of disk space.

0:28:32Now, it's not.

0:28:34If I was setting it up again today, I wouldn't be doing this, but you are setting it up again today, and that's why I'm suggesting that you go with simpler solutions because drives are so big and so cheap, and your data usage has not grown with the size of drives.

0:28:49They've grown a lot faster, so I suggest still leaning towards simpler solutions.

0:28:56If you still want time machine, either put in one or two disks not in RAID and use that for time machine.

0:29:04They don't have to be very big because your built-in SSD isn't that big, so they can be pretty modestly sized drives, and you can put them in RAID 1 or just have a single disk and have that do time machine with no redundancy at all because it doesn't matter that much.

0:29:18But yeah, for your actual other copy of this data that you have, I still suggest getting another Best Buy parking lot drive if you can and just having it be on a drive that is basically put in cold storage that you unplug, that is not being run until this backup is done, and then you repurpose it for whatever you need.

0:29:38All right, Jon, at this point, what is your thought?

0:29:43Margo already hit the main point I wanted to, which is I didn't hear you say that you had gotten a second 12 terabyte drive.

0:29:51So that should be step zero in your thing. You didn't mention it. Margo, just do that for crying out loud.

0:29:56As for the time machine thing, two points on that. One, even after all the dust settles and the backplace thing is done, yada, yada, yada, it still never feels good to me to even momentarily, quote unquote, "momentarily" reduce the number of copies of files that you have.

0:30:15So saying, "Oh, well, it's a time machine anyway, and I'm going to rebuild it in a second so I can just get rid of these backups and then I'll remake a new backup somewhere, whether you use Arc or Time Machine or whatever."

0:30:26During the time between when you tear that down, you're like, "Ah, it's not a big deal, I'm just going to make it again," you've lost one copy of all the data that's on that.

0:30:33And so it's better to make an additional copy before you lose that one so then the number of copies of your data doesn't go down. You bring it up briefly, then bring it back down to what it was. That's that point.

0:30:41Second point is, I like the idea of you continuing to use Time Machine because for diversity of backup software, rather than having five super-duper backups, I'd rather have one super-duper, one Arc, one backplace, and one Time Machine.

0:30:58Because all these pieces of software have their own bugs and their own upgrade cycles and their own potential for mistakes and so on and so forth.

0:31:07Having more of them gives you more biodiversity in terms of if some plague comes and it only affects AWS or it only affects Backblaze or it only affects Time Machine, you always have something else.

0:31:19And in particular, the upgrades cycle. The Time Machine one changes when a major new OS comes out and it totally changes the way Time Machine works and I could totally bork your Time Machine backup, which is why it's good that you back up with something other than Time Machine.

0:31:29Same is true of Backblaze, same is true of Arc. If you have a bug in one of those things or super-duper gets hosed by some version, upgrade version of the operating system, but Time Machine still works because Apple makes that one.

0:31:41I'm very heavily in favor of keeping a Time Machine backup just because it's one more backup program. And also, by the way, it's the backup program that the SPAR is ostensibly supported by the platform vendor, so pretty much guaranteed to work.

0:31:55Yeah, I agree with all that, but again, I think the difference between the two of you guys and me is that I genuinely, and maybe I'm lying to myself, but I genuinely consider the data that is on my computers less valuable to me than the data that is on that Synology.

0:32:10I would much rather lose all the data on my iMac Pro than lose all the data on my Synology.

0:32:16So on that point, by the way, the recent versions of Time Machine have a checkbox hidden in the little options thing that says "Don't back up system files or applications."

0:32:25So if you check that box, it won't waste its time backing up your operating system, which is on a read-only volume anyway and you can't customize it all, and it won't bother backing up your applications, which it assumes you can redownload or get from the App Store or whatever.

0:32:36It will only back up whatever data you happen to have on the thing, and I know you think it's ephemeral, but you actually do produce data that hangs out there, and if you accidentally delete something that you had in your desktop yesterday, you're going to be happy to be able to get it back from Time Machine or wherever.

0:32:49Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I think it's just, from my perspective, if I have to choose one, even for just a little while while I'm doing some dancing around with data in the Synology, I would choose a duplicate of the Synology data.

0:33:00So, okay, so it sounds like you guys aren't going to like what step two was hypothetically going to be. So my hypothetical step one was nuke the Time Machine volume, like I'd said, put in a bigger drive so that I can get a over 10 terabyte array out of two disks, copy everything from the big six-disk array into this two-disk array,

0:33:23and then I was starting to think, "Oh, this bit rot thing is starting to mess with my head. What if I do indeed nuke at this point when I have two copies of the data on the Synology, I nuke the big array and redo it all with BTRFS or ButterFS or whatever it's supposed to be called,

0:33:40possibly even with two-drive redundancy if I can, and then I bring everything back from that RAID0 array to the new Butter file system, BTRFS file system, six-disk array, and then at that point if I want to go back to using Time Machine on that two-disk array, then so be it.

0:33:58And I was hoping that I would win you over here, Jon, but perhaps not.

0:34:01You can totally do that, but just follow the thing that I said before. Don't reduce the number of copies. If you want to do that, and I think you should, it's a good idea, you can't do that until you get that data to one more location.

0:34:11So increase the number of locations that data is stored. This is above and beyond the other 12 terabyte Best Buy drive that you're going to get.

0:34:17You're going to get one more of them now, and you're going to copy it to a third location, then you are free to nuke your thing, make a new BTRFS thing, blah, blah, blah, and put it back.

0:34:26This is the discipline, this is the system. Do not reduce the number of redundant copies, and as long as you follow that rule, you can feel free to experiment.

0:34:35Well, in my hypothetical, I am increasing the number, well, briefly increasing the number of redundant copies.

0:34:40But at the cost of killing your Time Machine backups, which you think you don't need.

0:34:43Yeah, but who cares? I don't care about my Time Machine.

0:34:45Don't you backup more than just your computer on Time Machine? Isn't the laptop backed up on there?

0:34:49Yeah.

0:34:50Don't you backup everything in the house to that one big volume?

0:34:52There's three machines going to that one big volume. It's Aaron's MacBook Air that's been underwater seven times, which probably needs a backup more than any.

0:35:01It's not just your computer, it's three. I'm in the same situation. The whole house's computers are backed up to my Time Machine thing.

0:35:08I'm a Synology, and I wouldn't wipe that thing unless I had redundant copies of all of those computers.

0:35:13Because if you wipe that thing, you're like, "Ah, I don't need it, it's fine," and then someone needs some file on that computer, or it finally succumbs to another glass of water, or whatever.

0:35:21It's like a slide puzzle, right? You're trying to find a free space. You've got to get more spaces. You've got to get more drives and put the stuff on it.

0:35:31And it won't be wasted money, because those drives, what was the email we got referred to as shucking the drives, like an ear of corn?

0:35:39I loved hearing that. That was so great.

0:35:42You peel off the outer layer, and you get— interestingly, someone also had feedback that occasionally you'll shuck a drive and the mechanism inside there will have some weirdness about its SATA connector,

0:35:53where it won't actually work out of the box if you take the mechanism and put it inside your thing, unless you customize the cable to— I forget what the details were, but there's some difference on the cables and voltages expected that won't make it work until you hack with it a little bit, which is super annoying, but still technically possible to overcome.

0:36:09All right. Fine, then. I thought you were going to be all on board with this BTRFS idea.

0:36:14We're on board with it, we're just not on board with you reducing your redundancy. Wait for your things to finish, get your second 12 terabyte backup, get in it, anything other move you want to make, you need to get a new square on the tile puzzle.

0:36:25Put the stuff there, and now you have a free spot that you can mess with.

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0:38:11Thank you so much to Eero for fixing our Wi-Fi and sponsoring our show.

0:38:15I actually am interested in talking about video game stuff, but we're going to do most of that later.

0:38:25However, you, Jon, need to complete or further along perhaps an arc that started many, many years ago.

0:38:34There is a new controller out, and I know you have not handled it in your hands,

0:38:40but continuing the classic episode number 49 of Hypercritical from January 6, 2012, eight years ago now,

0:38:48would you please, Jon, critique the new PlayStation controller to the best of your ability?

0:38:52There's a weird slow rollout of the PlayStation hardware reveal.

0:38:56Microsoft has revealed basically everything about their hardware, their controller, the box.

0:39:00We talked about it in past shows or whatever. Sony has been trying to challenge them with press release or press release,

0:39:06but not revealing as much. So they had a separate press release and blog post just about the PS5 controller.

0:39:12So they told us the PS5 specs, they told us the performance, they told us stuff about the 3D audio.

0:39:17They told us all sorts of things, but we still haven't seen it. Here now is the controller.

0:39:21I feel like these, the sort of, you know, I was going to say the big boy consoles or whatever, the non, let's say the non-portable consoles,

0:39:31because the Switch, Nintendo is all in on the portable hybrid thing or whatever, and thus far, Sony and Microsoft are not.

0:39:38Desktop consoles.

0:39:40Yeah, there you go. And among those, their controllers have not been particularly daring.

0:39:46Microsoft got burned by the Kinect, probably rightfully so. That turned out not to be the future of how we control our video games,

0:39:54even though it was really cool technology. But both systems have not really been interested in changing their standard controller much.

0:40:03And so the new PS5 controller, it looks striking and new. It's got this two-tone appearance. It's kind of futuristic looking.

0:40:12I was trying to discuss in one of the slacks, like, what does this look like? There's a sort of future look that has been used in movies and art on science fiction magazines and everything for decades.

0:40:24I was trying to think of where it originates. The sort of white outer shell with glimpses of sort of a black interior where the machinery is.

0:40:34So the white outer shell is very smooth and matte finish or maybe glossy, but very sort of smooth and, you know, characterized by joints and lines,

0:40:46and then with certain regions where you can peek into the interior. In some respects, like Eve from Wall-E is a little bit like this, but she doesn't have the thing where you see the interior.

0:40:53Anyway, that's what this controller looks like. We'll put a link in the chat.

0:40:55Like a Stormtrooper.

0:40:56Yeah, Stormtrooper is like that a little bit too, but again, it's not like you're seeing into it. They just have regions that are black.

0:41:01This is more of an outer shell type thing. You can find lots of examples.

0:41:04And I was wondering, is there one artist that pioneered this in the 60s or something? But it's I couldn't trace it to its origins.

0:41:10Every time I think I found an older one, someone goes back farther, depending on how you characterize it. Someone's like, look at this. Here's 2001 in the 60s.

0:41:17But the 2001 has the white outer stuff, but not the black inner stuff. Anyway, it's cool looking controller.

0:41:23All this is to say, fine, it looks cool. It has a very different striking look, but it's not actually that different from the PS4 controller.

0:41:32The PS4 controller, I don't remember if we talked about it in the show or I must have at some point.

0:41:37But anyway, PS4 controller blessedly fixed many things that were wrong with the PS3, PS2 and original PlayStation controller.

0:41:44But it still stuck to the basics. Two analog sticks in the lower middle part, a D-pad in the upper left, and four symmetrical equally sized buttons on the right.

0:41:57And then some triggers, and they've messed with that a little bit.

0:42:00This new controller is like an optical illusion. When I first saw it, I was like, oh well, at least they've gotten rid of one of my big pet peeves.

0:42:08When you make a controller as if it's a piece of art, or like it's interior space in a house or something, where you make everything at 90 degrees and 45 degrees, right?

0:42:21Because that's not what hands look like. Hands are not at right angles. They do not have sharp edges, and they are not all 45s and 90s.

0:42:30It looks good when you make a thing where the buttons are exactly at the four corners of a diamond, and the buttons are all exactly the same shape.

0:42:38But that has no bearing on how your hands or your thumb lands on a controller that you're holding in your hands. None whatsoever.

0:42:47And I've always been angry about all the buttons being the same size, because there are very few games where you use all four buttons equally.

0:42:54Most games have a dominant button, a second most dominant button, and a tertiary button. Anyway, all that aside, this looks like, oh, they finally made it so that the buttons and the D-pad aren't on these little perfectly circular, perfectly flat and level plateaus like they are on the PS4 controller, which is one of the few remaining parts of the PS4 controller that say, no, we can't get away with it.

0:43:19We love perfect geometry. We love perfect circles, right angles, perfect cones, straight lines, just because they look good. The PS4 controller did away with almost all of that.

0:43:29They said, let's make it a sort of bulbous shape that fits people's hands better, but still put two perfect circles exactly flat to host the buttons and the D-pad, and make those buttons and D-pads exactly vertical with the controller.

0:43:46Vertical and horizontal, north, south, east, west, like they're not tilted in any way, despite that they know your hands and fingers are going to be coming in on them in an angle.

0:43:53Which is not necessarily bad, especially since people are kind of used to that, but still, it's a jarring sort of departure from the design language.

0:44:00This one looks like, oh, everything is organic and curvy, no longer do you have these circular plateaus, and it looks like they twisted the buttons to sort of align better with your hands.

0:44:09Which, by the way, the Xbox controller does and has done for its entire life. Its buttons are laid out to try to be comfortable for your fingers, not to be perfectly vertical and horizontal when looked at in a plan view in a CAD file.

0:44:23But, I took out my trusty Xscope on my Mac and pulled out some guides, and lo and behold, all of the buttons are still exactly aligned as they used to be.

0:44:33They just look like they might be twisted, but they are not. So the circular plateaus are gone, but the buttons and the joysticks seem to be in exactly the same positions as they were before.

0:44:42The only thing that they've done to make a concession for increased ergonomics is they have tilted the triggers slightly.

0:44:49The triggers used to be more or less, again, completely like if you drew a straight line through the triggers at a 90 degree angle to their hinges, they would just go straight up.

0:45:00These look like they are tilted, again, like the Xbox triggers tilted slightly outwards because they know your fingers are coming from the sides on them and they want to tilt them a little bit so they are more comfortable.

0:45:11But other than that, and of course they moved the options button, they changed the touchpad shape, and they did some other stuff like that.

0:45:18They made the PlayStation button into a weird raised logo thing. There's a microphone built in, which I think is very smart. Although it probably sounds like garbage, but it's better than nothing.

0:45:26It's good to be built into the controller. Anyway, I haven't held this thing, but it basically looks like a dressed up PS4 controller.

0:45:35I hope it is as comfortable as the PS4 controller because I like the PS4 controller. It looks a little bit fatter and Sony emphasized that they had worked hard to make it feel slim even though it's bigger.

0:45:44The reason it's bigger, I think, is because they are hiding more haptic engines like Apple's little inductor widgety shaky fans.

0:45:57It's like a linear coil thing. It's a more sophisticated way to make things vibrate. They've put more of those and more sophisticated versions of those inside this controller, which take up room.

0:46:07They also have them on the triggers themselves to have tension on the triggers or something. There's more crap inside there, which is why they had to make it bigger.

0:46:16But honestly, I'm looking at it at all the different angles. It doesn't look that much bigger than the PS4 controller.

0:46:22Right down to the edges of the thing and the cut lines, it looks like it will not be a shock to anyone who has a PS4, which is fine. I like the PS4 controller fine.

0:46:33It could be improved. If the only improvement to this is that the triggers are a little bit more comfortable, I'll take it, I suppose.

0:46:40But anyway, that's that PS5 controller. It is not a disaster. It looks mostly fine. Still don't know what the console looks like.

0:46:47Now, Jon, you have or have not ever owned a PlayStation in the past. I don't recall.

0:46:51I have a PlayStation 3 and a PlayStation 2.

0:46:53But no, I'm getting myself confused. It's the Xbox that you're refused to buy?

0:46:57No, I have not.

0:46:58Okay, sorry.

0:46:59I have not owned an Xbox.

0:47:00Gotcha. No Halo for you because you played the original whatever it was called.

0:47:04I played Halo on the Mac.

0:47:05Yeah, there it is. What was that called? Marathon or something like that?

0:47:08You're the only person.

0:47:09No, I played actual Halo on the actual Mac.

0:47:12Because I was promised it at Macworld.

0:47:14And I did. And I played it. And the frame rate was terrible. But damn it, I played that game and I finished it. It was pretty good.

0:47:21We are sponsored this week by Linode, my favorite web host.

0:47:25Go to linode.com/ATP and use promo code ATP2020 for a $20 credit.

0:47:31Linode is just an amazing host.

0:47:34Whether you're working on a small project for yourself or your hobbies or you're managing an enterprise's infrastructure.

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0:48:12Is that they are the best value I've seen in the business and they've been consistently the best value for that entire time I've been with them.

0:48:19Not only do they start out with good value, they stay a good value.

0:48:22Because over time whenever they can make things cheaper, they'll do things like issue free upgrades to everybody.

0:48:27Or they'll introduce even lower cost plans.

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0:49:15So once again, linode.com/ATP get a $20 credit with promo code ATP2020.

0:49:21Thank you so much to Linode for hosting my stuff and sponsoring our show.

0:49:24I'd like to talk to you about my new favorite toy.

0:49:31And for me, I have fallen in love with the thing I've been waiting to fall in love with. I just couldn't find a reason.

0:49:38I love the Raspberry Pi.

0:49:41If you are not familiar, we talked about this probably a year or two back because you used a Raspberry Pi for your short lived question mark stereo thing, right Marco?

0:49:51Yeah, I did a few experiments with them back.

0:49:53I talked on the show about making a card record player kind of thing where I had this NFC reader that I could stick a card for an album in front of and it would start playing that album into my speakers.

0:50:07So it was kind of like simulating an old CD or record player but in a modern way.

0:50:12It's still sitting over there. I wonder if it's still working. I haven't gotten near it in a long time.

0:50:17Fair enough.

0:50:19So if you're not familiar with the Raspberry Pi, I might get the particular slightly wrong, but the general gist of it is it's a full, honest to goodness, Linux based computer that's at its most expensive something like 50 bucks.

0:50:31And granted, when I say 50 bucks, you're literally getting a motherboard and that's it.

0:50:36You don't have a power supply, you don't have a keyboard, you don't have a monitor, nothing.

0:50:39But you can get an entire computer for 50 bones. Like that's really not bad.

0:50:45And not a bad computer at that.

0:50:47Yeah, and it's not a bad computer. This is a computer that can drive two 4K displays for 50 bucks.

0:50:53Now it's Linux based, which obviously has its own long list of problems, but we'll get to that in a minute.

0:50:59But nevertheless, it is 50 bucks. You can get the Pi, so that's for the Raspberry Pi 4 and that's for the 4 gigabytes of RAM model.

0:51:06They have another one that's 2 gigabytes of RAM that's like 10 bucks cheaper or something like that.

0:51:10They also have a Pi Zero, which is a physically smaller and far less powerful Raspberry Pi.

0:51:17I believe it's $10 for the one with a wireless chip on it so you can get on 802.11d WiFi.

0:51:24And it's, I think, literally $5 for an entire computer if you don't want WiFi.

0:51:30It is bananas how cheap these computers are.

0:51:34And I've wanted one for the longest time. I couldn't figure out what I was just going to do with it though.

0:51:39Now put that aside for a second. I told you guys, I think like maybe six months or a year ago,

0:51:43I had installed Pi-hole onto a Docker container on my Synology.

0:51:48Now Pi-hole is a, it was originally, as far as I'm aware, originally was written to run on a Raspberry Pi.

0:51:56And what it does is, it's a DNS server where it will not reply to DNS requests for things that it knows or adds.

0:52:04So your computer, if it's using your Pi-hole as a DNS server, it'll go to say CNN.com.

0:52:10And CNN is adorned with nothing but ads everywhere you look.

0:52:14And so it says to the Pi-hole software running presumably on a Raspberry Pi,

0:52:18in my case it was on a Docker container on my Synology,

0:52:20"Hey, I'd like to go to ads.CNN.com" or what have you.

0:52:25And the Pi-hole would say, "I don't know where that is, Tough Nuggies."

0:52:29And so the net effect of that is, you don't see an ad. There is no ad.

0:52:33And so, among other things, it actually saves a little bit of bandwidth if you care,

0:52:37because you're not downloading whatever that image or JavaScript or gosh knows what is.

0:52:41So it worked out really well, but then, I don't know, maybe three or four months ago,

0:52:46Verizon Fios, at least where I am, started turning on IPv6, and all of a sudden I'm seeing ads all the time.

0:52:52And it turns out, maybe Fios was on IPv6 for a while, maybe it's that AdWords, Google's AdWords went on IPv6.

0:52:59I don't know what it was, but it seemed to me that something decided to turn on IPv6,

0:53:04and I was suddenly seeing ads everywhere all the time.

0:53:07And I started investigating, "Okay, how do I get IPv6 into the Docker container on the Synology?"

0:53:13And I'm sure that there's fairly easy ways to do that when you're not on a Synology,

0:53:17but when you're on the Synology, it was not easy.

0:53:20And so finally, finally, gentlemen, I have a reason to buy my $50 computer,

0:53:25because I want to run Pi-hole, and I want to run it on Raspberry Pi,

0:53:29where I know I have more control over the networking and so on and so forth.

0:53:32So for my birthday, I had asked for and received the KanaKit Raspberry Pi 4GB Starter Max Kit.

0:53:40And the reason I got this is because I knew nothing about what I was doing,

0:53:43and I knew this would have everything I needed within that box, which was completely true.

0:53:47If I were to do this again, now that I know sort of what I'm doing, I would go a different route.

0:53:52But if you're like me and don't really know what the hell is going on, this works out really well.

0:53:56You can get them on Amazon, you can get them directly from KanaKit.

0:53:58And so what it includes is the Raspberry Pi 4, it includes a microSD card,

0:54:02which is effectively the "hard drive" for the Raspberry Pi,

0:54:05it includes a microSD card reader for your computer computer,

0:54:08it includes a case with a fan mount and a fan,

0:54:11it includes a power supply, some heat sinks for the CPU, I think the GPU,

0:54:14and maybe the USB controller or something like that, I forget what else.

0:54:17It includes two micro HDMI to HDMI cables because the Raspberry Pi is so physically small,

0:54:23it's roughly the same surface area of a credit card.

0:54:27So in order to get HDMI out, they're actually little teeny tiny micro HDMI ports,

0:54:32and so they're two cables to go to regular HDMI ports.

0:54:35And it also, interestingly, it included a USB-C switch that just interrupts power if you want,

0:54:43because there's no power switch on the Raspberry Pi.

0:54:45And that was $115, so it was a little over twice the cost of the entire Raspberry Pi,

0:54:50which is silly, and again, I probably wouldn't do it again knowing what I know now,

0:54:55but ultimately, like $115 is not nothing, but it's not that much money.

0:54:59And I got the entire setup, and I'm happy as a pig in poop,

0:55:02and I put in my Pi-hole, I followed this really nice setup guide,

0:55:06and I did not use the "make your Raspberry Pi be only a Pi-hole" thing,

0:55:12I actually installed it myself on top of Raspbian,

0:55:15which is a Linux distro specifically oriented around the Raspberry Pi.

0:55:19And so now I can use my Raspberry Pi for other things,

0:55:21which is going to become relevant in like 10 seconds,

0:55:24but I gotta tell you, this thing is so freaking cool.

0:55:29Like, the Raspberry Pi is amazing, and I think what makes it so appealing to me

0:55:34is that I really am impressed with how good the ecosystem is.

0:55:42Like, when you install Raspbian, which is again the kind of default Linux distro,

0:55:48it includes XWindows, and in XWindows it has some stuff to get you going,

0:55:52like a Python IDE if you so desire.

0:55:55It has like, configuration that's specifically for the Raspberry Pi,

0:55:59but then if you drop down to the command line, if you don't like XWindows,

0:56:01hey, guess what? There's a command line, like a whole menuing system,

0:56:05for doing all the same stuff.

0:56:07So if you want to turn on or off Wi-Fi, or if you want to set up some--

0:56:11I can't think of any good examples off the top of my head,

0:56:13but there's all sorts of stuff that has this like, reasonably easy,

0:56:16reasonably straightforward user interface, even on the command line.

0:56:19Like even VSSH, you can do this stuff. It's amazing.

0:56:22And that's what I think is so cool about the Raspberry Pi.

0:56:24Like, you could probably create an equivalent computer for way cheaper,

0:56:28but the ecosystem around it is just amazing.

0:56:31And there's so many examples of, oh, I want to add a push button to run a shell script,

0:56:35and oh, okay, you need these three parts, and you need this shell script running in Python,

0:56:39and you'll be right as rain and ten minutes flat.

0:56:42It is amazing, and this is the coolest little toy I've ever seen.

0:56:45So I've been talking a lot. I will give Marco a chance--

0:56:48I would actually really like to hear, Marco, what your thoughts are,

0:56:50but very quickly, Jon, you do not have one of these in the house, is that correct?

0:56:54I think I'm in the same situation as you used to be in,

0:56:56and I think as Marco used to be in, is like this definitely seems cool to me,

0:56:59but I don't have a use case for it.

0:57:02And I've never been able to say, well, even though you don't know what you use it for,

0:57:05you should just get it, because then it would be like I would just set it up and just stare at it.

0:57:09So it definitely does seem cool.

0:57:12I think this is part of the--

0:57:14The Raspberry Pi happened because when you're not paying attention,

0:57:20as the price of compute goes to zero, computers can get very small and do lots of interesting things.

0:57:25If you look at the specs on this, these specs would be fantasy for a childhood version of me

0:57:31looking at the specs of computers.

0:57:33But this stuff is so cheap and so small.

0:57:36You look at what it includes.

0:57:38As you noted, the main problem with this in terms of the current technological landscape

0:57:41is that modern connectors, for as small as they are,

0:57:45are so big that they are the major hardware problem with this

0:57:48that you can't physically fit connectors of all the kinds that it can support.

0:57:53You have to have this little funnel of adapters going from micro HDMI to regular HDMI or USB-C to USB-A.

0:58:00So it's kind of funny.

0:58:02I'm hoping that all of our connectors will continue to shrink that much,

0:58:10because eventually they'll be about the size of the wires that they connect to.

0:58:14But that seems to be the major barrier here,

0:58:16because the price of compute and the price of memory and SSDs and all that stuff will continue to go down.

0:58:22If you're just doing something like running Linux on it with no major GUI,

0:58:26or even if you are running a GUI, doing basic stuff is very easy,

0:58:31which is why we have those conversations about, "Oh, can I do development on a Mac Mini?

0:58:34Can I do development on a MacBook Air?"

0:58:36Sure, yeah. Modern computers are very powerful if what you're doing is text editing and compiling and stuff like that.

0:58:42So I find these things fascinating, and I'm on the lookout for anything in my life

0:58:46where I might need something like this, but thus far, nothing.

0:58:50Marco, you and I have a lot to talk about that's kind of off to the side,

0:58:53and I'd like to keep that off to the side just for a minute.

0:58:55But with regard to the Raspberry Pi itself,

0:58:58had you really touched them in between the jukebox time and now?

0:59:04What is your Raspberry Pi situation at home?

0:59:06It's basically been like John's.

0:59:08I had that project I did back, whatever it was, two years ago, a year ago.

0:59:11Whenever that was, I did that project, and it was fun.

0:59:13I played with it a lot for a couple of weeks when I was doing that,

0:59:17and then I ran out of things to do with it.

0:59:19So I just kind of set that hobby aside for a while,

0:59:22until recently when I came up with something better to do with it,

0:59:24which will be our next segment.

0:59:26But we'll get there in a minute.

0:59:27But really, for me, it's very much like I didn't want to keep tinkering with it

0:59:32into like, "Well, what else can I do with this thing?"

0:59:34I had a specific purpose. I did it, and it was great for that.

0:59:38And then once I got tired of that purpose or I moved on or it was done,

0:59:41then I just kind of left it until I had something else to do with it.

0:59:45Yeah, and it's funny because as much as I do love the ecosystem

0:59:50and some of the incredible software tooling that Raspberry Pi and Raspbian have put together,

0:59:56you still can't avoid the fact that it's Linux.

0:59:58And so for me to set up a--

1:00:01and I know that there's a little bit of wonkiness with regard to IPv6,

1:00:04and I know that I don't know basically anything about it,

1:00:06but suffice it to say, I wanted to set up a consistent IP address

1:00:10on both IPv4 and IPv6 for the Raspberry Pi.

1:00:14So this way, I can have my Eros use the Raspberry Pi as the DNS server.

1:00:19So this way, when any of my devices come on my network,

1:00:22they will look to the Raspberry Pi for the DNS server,

1:00:24which means you need a static IP.

1:00:25Well, for IPv4, that's very easy.

1:00:27You can just go into the Ero app, and it's 30 seconds and you're done.

1:00:30But, ooh, did I have to dig and screw with config files all over the place

1:00:35in order to figure out how to get an IPv6--

1:00:37not reservation, but reservation squared away.

1:00:40I did get it, though, and it seems like everything's fine

1:00:42across many reboots and so on and so forth.

1:00:43But that's the thing, is I got the Pi-hole set up,

1:00:47and this is way too much Raspberry Pi just for Pi-hole.

1:00:49Like, I could have gotten a much cheaper and much simpler one.

1:00:52I probably could have gotten away with the Pi Zero.

1:00:55You know, I wanted an Ethernet port, but that being said,

1:00:58I probably could have gotten away with that $10 one

1:01:00just if all I wanted to do with it was Pi-hole.

1:01:02But I specifically got the best one I possibly could

1:01:06because I figured I might want to do something else with it.

1:01:09And after I'd finished my configuration of Pi-hole

1:01:12and didn't really have much else to do,

1:01:14I immediately needed a new project, like Marco was saying.

1:01:17And so it occurred to me, "Wait a second.

1:01:19I know people are using these for emulation."

1:01:24And I got literally the best Raspberry Pi one can get,

1:01:27all $50 of it, as of, you know, three weeks ago.

1:01:31Maybe I should dip my toe into this whole emulation thing.

1:01:35And, oh, my word, this has been a ride, and it's been amazing.

1:01:39-So Casey, what game console are you using right now?

1:01:42-Well, it's a miracle that I've participated in this show at all

1:01:45because I have all kinds of game consoles

1:01:49on my Raspberry Pi right now.

1:01:51I have been reliving my childhood on my Raspberry Pi.

1:01:55So very, very, very briefly,

1:01:57I think, like John, was brought up on the Nintendo.

1:02:00I was very envious of those with the Genesis, Marco.

1:02:04But I was a Nintendo guy through and through.

1:02:06And let me tell you, I have been going hog wild

1:02:10playing all these old Nintendo games that I loved.

1:02:13I haven't spent a lot of time on any particular one of them,

1:02:17but it's been extremely, extremely fun

1:02:19going through old NES games that I loved,

1:02:21going through all Super Nintendo games that I loved.

1:02:24I've even been able to play with reasonable amounts of speed

1:02:28Nintendo 64 games that I loved.

1:02:30Like, give me "Wave Race."

1:02:32I love that piece of garbage game.

1:02:34It was my jam, and I've been able to play it

1:02:37on this little tiny box that's about the size of a credit card,

1:02:41or maybe 50 credit cards stacked on top of each other.

1:02:43It is incredible.

1:02:45And I can even now play Genesis,

1:02:47or for everyone else in the entire friggin' world,

1:02:49what is it, Master Drive?

1:02:50-Mega Drive. -Mega Drive, there you go.

1:02:52I can play Genesis games.

1:02:53Like, earlier today, I sent you a message in Slack,

1:02:56"Sonic the Hedgehog, so delightful.

1:02:58I've only ever played, like, a couple hours of it

1:03:00because I never had a Genesis."

1:03:02It's so delightful.

1:03:04And so what I had done was, at your recommendation,

1:03:08I had gotten an 8BitDo or 8BitDO Bluetooth controller.

1:03:13And the particular one I chose,

1:03:15which I think was at your recommendation, Marco,

1:03:17was one that physically resembles a Super Nintendo controller

1:03:20but with two analog sticks.

1:03:22And I got to say, this is where Linux is still Linux.

1:03:27So I get this controller, I get this controller,

1:03:30and I go and I look at the --

1:03:32and the software that's doing all this emulation

1:03:34is called RetroPie.

1:03:36And I install RetroPie on top of Raspbian

1:03:39because I want to continue to use this thing as my piehole.

1:03:42That sounds really funny, but be that as it may,

1:03:44I want to continue to use the piehole software

1:03:48on my Raspberry Pi,

1:03:49but I'd also like it to be, you know, an emulator.

1:03:51And I installed --

1:03:52rather than dedicating the Raspberry Pi strictly to emulation,

1:03:56I installed all of it on top of, you know,

1:03:58the existing OS installation,

1:04:00which in years past on Linux was a disaster.

1:04:03This worked out no problem.

1:04:05But I go to set up my Bluetooth controller.

1:04:07I'd been using it via USB just fine, no worries,

1:04:09but I decide, no, I want to use it, like, via Bluetooth.

1:04:12That's what it's there for.

1:04:14And so I go and I look at the RetroPie documentation,

1:04:18and step one is, okay,

1:04:19go to register and connect Bluetooth devices.

1:04:21And you can select your Bluetooth device's Mac address from here.

1:04:24- [Makes noise]

1:04:25- What?

1:04:26- [Laughing]

1:04:27- Yeah, sure.

1:04:28And they include a screenshot.

1:04:29They include a screen--

1:04:30this is the official documentation, gentlemen.

1:04:32They include a screenshot that says,

1:04:34"Please choose the Bluetooth device you would like to connect to.

1:04:3666 colon 70 colon 85 colon E2 colon 14 colon 08 colon."

1:04:40That is their official screenshot.

1:04:42That's what they're showing you.

1:04:43And then it turns out one of them actually says

1:04:46"Nintendo blah blah blah" on it.

1:04:47But it blew my mind,

1:04:49as someone who has lived in the sweet, sweet land of --

1:04:51well, generally sweet, sweet land of living on Apple devices,

1:04:55I am literally looking at friggin' Mac addresses

1:04:58trying to connect my controller over Bluetooth.

1:05:02It is so barbaric, but yet, but yet,

1:05:06it did connect reasonably easily.

1:05:08And sure enough, it did show, you know, 8BitDo or 8BitDo,

1:05:11whatever it's called, blah blah blah blah blah on there.

1:05:13And so it actually wasn't as bad as I'm painting it.

1:05:15But it was just so striking and hilarious to me

1:05:18that that was the official documentation,

1:05:19was to look at a wad of Mac addresses

1:05:22and figure out which one was right.

1:05:24And then I was complaining to you, Marco,

1:05:26that the Bluetooth wouldn't work, it wouldn't reconnect,

1:05:28and I was asking you to show me what settings you were using.

1:05:30And it turns out I just needed to update the firmware

1:05:32on my controller, and then suddenly everything worked out great.

1:05:35Which is wonderful and also very Linux-y, right?

1:05:40Like, again, such a Linux problem to have.

1:05:43But I finally got that squared away,

1:05:45and then the only other major problem I had was

1:05:48I had no idea how to leave a game once I entered it.

1:05:51So what I did was I pulled the power on the Raspberry Pi

1:05:54for the first few times,

1:05:55because I couldn't figure out how to leave the game.

1:05:57And you said, "No, you go to the in-game menu."

1:05:59What? There's an in-game menu? Yes, you moron.

1:06:01Well, you didn't say that,

1:06:02but that's basically what was being said.

1:06:03Yes, you moron.

1:06:04- No, I don't blame you.

1:06:05This is documented almost nowhere.

1:06:07They don't tell you this anywhere.

1:06:09- It's so bad.

1:06:10But eventually I realized, okay, well, on this 8BitDo,

1:06:13you know, they have the standard four, you know,

1:06:15A, B, X, Y buttons, they have select, start,

1:06:17they have D-pad, they have the analog sticks,

1:06:19they have, you know, four shoulder buttons.

1:06:20They also have two other buttons

1:06:21that I never set up during the setup process,

1:06:23which in and of itself was wonderful,

1:06:26because it auto-detected the 8BitDo.

1:06:28It said, "Okay, do you want to use this one?

1:06:30Just hold a button, we'll start configuring it."

1:06:32Yes, great.

1:06:33I probably did this literally 15 times

1:06:37because I kept hitting the wrong button.

1:06:40It was entirely my fault, entirely my fault.

1:06:42It's very clear what button they want you to hit,

1:06:44but I kept hitting the wrong button,

1:06:45and there was no clear way to say, "Oops."

1:06:47And I felt like, for those of you

1:06:49who are as old as I am, I felt like dialing a rotary phone,

1:06:52you know, where it's like you're trying to dial

1:06:54one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

1:06:55one, two, three, four, now 10 minutes of a lapse

1:06:58doing that, five, seven, oh crap!

1:07:01- Hang up, try again. - One, two, three,

1:07:03yeah, hang up, try again, one, two, three, four,

1:07:05five, eight, ah!

1:07:07One, two, and eventually I got it, right?

1:07:11But it was exactly like dialing a rotary phone,

1:07:13it was preposterous.

1:07:14But eventually I got in there, and holy crap,

1:07:18like once you get everything squared away,

1:07:21and this is, I feel like Linux is usually good

1:07:25in this regard, once you get everything squared away,

1:07:29it has been working, knock on whatever wood I have nearby,

1:07:33it has been working very well,

1:07:35and the Nintendo 64 emulation is not perfect,

1:07:39but it's pretty good, and everything else is just amazing,

1:07:42and I have basically every video game

1:07:46I could ever want from the 90s on this device,

1:07:51and it is so cool, and it is so amazing,

1:07:55and what's even cooler is sitting Declan in front of it

1:07:58and saying, "Hey kid, you know that Mario Kart game

1:08:00"that you love on the Switch?

1:08:01"Well, let me show you where all that started."

1:08:03And the best thing is, he's actually enjoying it,

1:08:06which I don't think is unique to Declan,

1:08:07like I'm sure most kids would feel the same way

1:08:09that we're actually allowing him to sit in front of a TV

1:08:11and play video games, but still,

1:08:13the fact that he's not like, "Ugh, what is this garbage?"

1:08:17It's very, very cool to watch.

1:08:19Also, games were hard back then.

1:08:20- Yeah, oh yeah.

1:08:22- Games were really hard.

1:08:23I'm sorry, Marco, I've been talking way too much,

1:08:25I'm just so enthusiastic and excited about this,

1:08:27but what is your, 'cause you have, I think,

1:08:29both the same and different retro gaming setups,

1:08:31so take me through your world, if you don't mind.

1:08:34- All right, so, first of all,

1:08:36I've brought on a relevant guest.

1:08:38I can't talk about gaming alone, I'm not qualified enough.

1:08:40(laughing)

1:08:42- Oh, hi, Adam.

1:08:43(laughing)

1:08:44- Too late, he's in bed.

1:08:45- I kid, I kid, hey, Tiff.

1:08:46- Hey, I wouldn't let him talk about games without me.

1:08:49(laughing)

1:08:50I was like, there is no way you're getting away with this,

1:08:52I am busting myself into that office.

1:08:54(laughing)

1:08:55- Yeah, also, I'm talking about a lot of Tiff's games

1:08:57here as well, because as you mentioned, Casey,

1:08:59you were a Nintendo person, you envied the Genesis people,

1:09:02I was a Genesis person, I envied the Nintendo people,

1:09:05but who we both really envied

1:09:07were those jerks that had both.

1:09:09- This jerk, right here.

1:09:10(laughing)

1:09:11- That's true.

1:09:12- Big jerk.

1:09:13Had it all.

1:09:14- We went on this big retro gaming odyssey,

1:09:17it was kind of kicked off by Tiff's family,

1:09:21they had kept all their old systems.

1:09:23- Oh, that's awesome.

1:09:24- And I had my Genesis in the attic somewhere.

1:09:26Tiff's parents and brother had preserved these systems

1:09:30for all these years.

1:09:31- Well, they had them all set up.

1:09:32We had them all, at one point, we daisy-chained them all up,

1:09:35Marco helped us set it up.

1:09:36- We?

1:09:37- I just said, Marco just gave you credit, I watched.

1:09:40- One of my holy grails, which I'll revisit here

1:09:44in a little while, but one of my holy grails

1:09:46is I love not having to switch inputs

1:09:49between multiple systems.

1:09:50And with the old way, they would connect to TVs

1:09:52through those RF modulation boxes,

1:09:54where you would pick channel three or four on the box,

1:09:57and it would just shove the video signal

1:10:00into the antenna signal to the back of the TV,

1:10:03'cause that's the only input a lot of TVs had back then.

1:10:06And you could actually, those little RF modulator things,

1:10:11you could daisy-chain those.

1:10:12So you just put the output of one

1:10:13into the input of another one.

1:10:14- I don't think I knew that.

1:10:15- I mean, none of this is great for video quality,

1:10:18but it worked, and so you could connect

1:10:20a whole bunch of systems all daisy-chained to each other

1:10:22with those RF boxes, and just whichever one of them

1:10:25was front most in the line that was powered on

1:10:27would be shown on channel three.

1:10:29- Yeah, so they were all set up in my family's house,

1:10:31and through some family shuffling and moving around,

1:10:34they got put away and into storage,

1:10:36and just recently, we were home for the holidays,

1:10:39and they were like, "Hey, we have all these.

1:10:41"Do you want them?"

1:10:43"Of course, yes we do." (laughs)

1:10:45And so they gave us all these big bins,

1:10:48the original box to our NES, we have it, it's amazing.

1:10:52I felt so John Syracuse-a, like it's coming down

1:10:54from the attic, this original box, it's fantastic.

1:10:57We had everything.

1:10:58We even have a Super Scope in there,

1:11:00there was an Atari, everything, piles and piles

1:11:04of cartridges, so they came into our being,

1:11:07and they ended up in our house, and Marco took it on

1:11:11as a pet project to hook them all up for us.

1:11:14- Now, before we get to using the real systems,

1:11:17I do have, comparing it to emulation,

1:11:21there are a bunch of reasons why emulators are better.

1:11:24There's also a few ways in which emulators are worse.

1:11:27First of all, I must acknowledge that we are now

1:11:32entering crime-committing corner. (laughs)

1:11:36Because emulation, usually, the way most people do it,

1:11:39most of the time, it's illegal, because usually

1:11:42you're using a bunch of pirated ROMs,

1:11:44the BIOS from the system is probably pirated

1:11:47if it was a system that was modern enough

1:11:49to have a BIOS, et cetera, so generally speaking,

1:11:52the way most people do emulation is not legal,

1:11:55because it involves some degree of software piracy.

1:11:58I think the world of emulation is fantastic,

1:12:00for lots of reasons, and it has major advantages

1:12:04over playing a real system, so obviously,

1:12:06it's way cheaper, way cheaper, because if you want

1:12:11to actually build up, not only a collection of old systems,

1:12:13but a collection of games for those systems,

1:12:15that's gonna cost you a small fortune.

1:12:17Certain systems more than others, you'd be surprised,

1:12:20but anyway, it's also just simpler,

1:12:22like it's physically simpler, you don't have

1:12:24all these systems and controllers and wires

1:12:26and everything to deal with, much, much simpler,

1:12:28much smaller physically, so if you don't want

1:12:31to take up a lot of space or anything, great for that.

1:12:33It's also a good solution if you have a lot of systems

1:12:36you want to emulate, so if you just want to have

1:12:39your old NES, you can get an NES, or you can get

1:12:42your old one out of the attic, it probably still works,

1:12:44and you can plug cartridges in and it's fine,

1:12:46but if you want to have six different systems,

1:12:48that's a big setup, whereas an emulator, that's fine.

1:12:51You mentioned the Raspberry Pi, does it?

1:12:54And Retro Pi, the software that manages this

1:12:58on Raspberry Pis, Retro Pi is amazing.

1:13:01I can't believe how polished it is,

1:13:04even though things like Bluetooth require you

1:13:06to drop into the comical Linux underbelly,

1:13:08for the most part, the center path, the main path

1:13:12of using it, especially if you have a wired controller,

1:13:15is fantastic, it is so polished, it's so easy.

1:13:19The whole OS is designed for you to just stick it

1:13:22on an SD card, put that SD card in a Raspberry Pi

1:13:26and boot it up with a game controller.

1:13:28You never need a keyboard or mouse for any part of it.

1:13:32You can plug it in if you want to, but you don't have to.

1:13:34You can do the entire setup of the system with a game pad,

1:13:38and it can work with tons of different game pads.

1:13:41The first one I used before I got my 8BitDo,

1:13:44and by the way, the 8BitDo controllers are fantastic,

1:13:46I will get back to those, but you can plug in

1:13:49a lot of console controllers.

1:13:51We had a PS3 controller that we weren't using,

1:13:54and so I just plugged the PS3 controller over USB into it,

1:13:57and it worked unmodified, out of the box, just great.

1:14:00And I used that for the first couple of weeks with it,

1:14:03and it was fantastic.

1:14:05So emulation, it's practical, it's cheap, it's small,

1:14:09it is physically much simpler.

1:14:12It's also really good for systems where using

1:14:15the physical system can be prohibitively expensive

1:14:19to find or to get or to keep in working order.

1:14:22I always joke how, when we were growing up,

1:14:25you've never seen a Neo Geo.

1:14:28No matter what, everyone knew it was this legend.

1:14:30Everyone knew when they would complain on the playground,

1:14:33"Well, I have the Genesis, I have the Super Nintendo,

1:14:35"mine's better than yours."

1:14:36Always some kid was like, "Well, the Neo Geo's better."

1:14:39And none of us had ever seen one, including that kid.

1:14:42(laughing)

1:14:43Somebody would be like, "Well, my cousin had one,

1:14:46"and he was always lying."

1:14:47- Wait, Tiff didn't have a Neo Geo?

1:14:49- I did not have one, I did not have one.

1:14:51(laughing)

1:14:52Yeah, 'cause it was super expensive,

1:14:54the games were like $100 each back then.

1:14:56- And they were all just fighting games anyway,

1:14:58and if you're not interested in that genre, who cares?

1:15:00- Yeah, they were mostly arcade games,

1:15:01'cause that's the kind of company they were.

1:15:03But that was back when cartridges,

1:15:06memory on cartridges was very expensive.

1:15:09And the reason Neo Geo games were so expensive

1:15:11is that they just used massive amounts of memory.

1:15:13They were like 10 times the memory size

1:15:15of a typical Genesis, Super Nintendo game,

1:15:17but the economics didn't support that,

1:15:20so they were just super expensive.

1:15:22But anyway, none of us had ever seen the Neo Geo,

1:15:25and it turns out they didn't sell that many of them.

1:15:27So if you actually wanna buy Neo Geo's now, you can.

1:15:30They're like $800, and the games can be hundreds,

1:15:34or even in some cases thousands of dollars each,

1:15:37'cause there just aren't that many of them.

1:15:39So there's a lot of systems like the Neo Geo,

1:15:42or there are systems that didn't have enough games

1:15:46to really be worth owning, like the 32X.

1:15:49Not enough games that if you're gonna have

1:15:51a collection of systems that you're probably

1:15:53gonna buy one of these systems.

1:15:54The more obscure ones, the 3DO,

1:15:56you're probably gonna wanna use emulation

1:15:58for the more obscure ones, right?

1:15:59- One thing about emulation, though,

1:16:01you're talking about the advantages in emulation,

1:16:03disadvantages, we're in an interesting point in history

1:16:05where all the advantages you're talking about in emulation

1:16:08are real things, but pretty quickly,

1:16:10if we're not there already, we're gonna get into

1:16:13a situation where emulation alone can't give people

1:16:18the ability to play their childhood games,

1:16:20and I'm thinking about all the kids who grew up playing,

1:16:22for example, the Wii.

1:16:24There's no emulator that's gonna let you play the Wii.

1:16:27You need a hardware component,

1:16:29and it's not just a controller.

1:16:31You need the sensor bar, and now you're hooking up things

1:16:33to your TV, and now you've got wires running

1:16:35into everything, and I'm sure they'll make,

1:16:378BitDo will make your fake Wii sensor bar,

1:16:40but then you get to things like the Kinect,

1:16:42like, all right, now this is getting much more difficult.

1:16:44What if your favorite game is a kid with some game

1:16:46you played on the Kinect?

1:16:47Now I need the 8BitDo Xbox controller,

1:16:51plus I also need the Kinect thing and the camera

1:16:53and the PlayStation Plus motion thing,

1:16:56and maybe we're going back to a realm

1:17:00where that's not a big issue,

1:17:02because those things seem to have come and gone,

1:17:04but there is always this hardware component,

1:17:07and the hardware component, like, as it gets more diverse,

1:17:10like, this 8BitDo controller is, quote, unquote, great.

1:17:13I think it's an abomination, but great,

1:17:15because it has, it's an SNES controller.

1:17:20It's also an NES controller.

1:17:21It's also a PlayStation controller.

1:17:22They just shove everything on one thing, right?

1:17:25But it's not a Wii controller, and it's not a,

1:17:27I can't even remember, what was, Tiff,

1:17:28what was the name of the PlayStation 1?

1:17:29Was it Motion Plus?

1:17:31- Oh, I didn't have a PlayStation 1.

1:17:33- No, no, no, no, the motion accessory

1:17:35that Sony came out with for the PS3,

1:17:37anyway, we can't remember the name,

1:17:38but they had a really good ping pong game.

1:17:40Anyway, if you want to play that,

1:17:42you probably need some kind of wave around wand,

1:17:44and someone's gonna have to make a wave around wand

1:17:46that emulates the Wii remote and the Wii Motion Plus

1:17:50and also the PlayStation 1.

1:17:52It's gonna get more difficult before it gets easier again,

1:17:55so, you know, this is not relevant to our discussion,

1:17:58'cause I'm assuming you're not emulating Wii bowling

1:18:00on these things.

1:18:01Well, maybe you'll surprise me and tell me you are.

1:18:02- We couldn't get the Super Scope to work, which, spoiler alert.

1:18:05- Yeah, hardware accessories, and it's not just accessories,

1:18:08'cause arguably the Wii, that's not an accessory,

1:18:10that's core to the gameplay, but, yeah, anyway, go on.

1:18:14- Yeah, well, and also,

1:18:15the systems are also getting more complicated.

1:18:17I mean, it's fairly easy, you know,

1:18:20one of the disadvantages of emulation

1:18:21is that it isn't always perfect.

1:18:23Sometimes, emulators just, you know, they can't emulate,

1:18:25or they haven't yet developed enough to emulate

1:18:27all the edge case behavior of the system,

1:18:30and this is, you know, certain systems are simpler

1:18:32than others.

1:18:33We're talking about mostly, you know,

1:18:35what I'm focusing on on our setup here

1:18:36is mostly the mainstream cartridge-based systems

1:18:40of the, you know, early '90s to mid '90s,

1:18:42so it's like NES, Genesis, SNES, N64,

1:18:45like, that's really what I'm talking about here.

1:18:47I'm not going into the CD area, the 3D area,

1:18:50really much at all.

1:18:51In part, I'll get to some of the reasons why,

1:18:54but in part also because a lot of those systems

1:18:56you can't emulate very, very well.

1:18:58Some of them are just too complicated,

1:19:00and the demand is too low.

1:19:02Like, the Sega Saturn is very complicated,

1:19:04and I don't know if there's any good emulators for it.

1:19:06I don't think there are,

1:19:07'cause it's just such a complex system,

1:19:09and there's also not a lot of demand,

1:19:11'cause the Sega Saturn wasn't very good.

1:19:13Anyway, emulation, in most cases

1:19:16when you're doing these super old systems,

1:19:17you can usually get good, perfect emulation,

1:19:20or nearly perfect emulation.

1:19:21They're well understood.

1:19:22You can run them on cheap hardware,

1:19:23like a Raspberry Pi, which is amazing.

1:19:26It's also nice, again, going back to

1:19:28Crime-Committing Corner here,

1:19:30it's also nice that the complete ROM sets

1:19:33for these systems, ROMs,

1:19:34they're the dumps of the cartridges,

1:19:36so all the game files.

1:19:38Because cartridges were so small back then,

1:19:40a game might only be a few hundred kilobytes,

1:19:43or a couple of megabytes.

1:19:45- It's so preposterous.

1:19:46You're exactly right. - They're so small.

1:19:48And so you can get the entire complete ROM set

1:19:51of every game that was ever released for a system,

1:19:53and it might be a couple of gigs.

1:19:55We're not talking about large amounts of space here.

1:19:58And so it's very practical with very low hardware needs

1:20:02with today's hardware to emulate

1:20:04these old systems very, very much.

1:20:05Now--

1:20:06- Yeah, so real-time follow-up,

1:20:07The Legend of Zelda ROM, 131 kilobytes.

1:20:10(laughing)

1:20:11- Yeah, exactly.

1:20:12- The entirety of the original Zelda game, 131k.

1:20:16- Yeah, we're talking not large amounts of data here

1:20:19by modern standards.

1:20:21- I mean, for perspective,

1:20:22I think the peek-a-view icon in its largest size,

1:20:24is like 10 times that, or something like that.

1:20:27It's ridiculous.

1:20:28Carry on.

1:20:29- There are disadvantages of emulation.

1:20:31Again, number one, most of the stuff,

1:20:33the way we're using it is illegal,

1:20:35because you're using pirated copies of games and everything.

1:20:37That's not great.

1:20:38There also, you have this kind of overabundance problem

1:20:43that leads to a type of paralysis of choice for me,

1:20:46of like, when you have every single game available to you,

1:20:49it's often hard to know what you wanna play.

1:20:52Whereas when we first unpacked these systems,

1:20:55we had bins that included the systems and the games

1:20:58that kind of a combined Tiff and I had for these systems.

1:21:02- You only had the Genesis, stop pretending.

1:21:04- Well, that was part of the game.

1:21:06- Me too, me too.

1:21:07- Yeah.

1:21:08But you had for each system,

1:21:11maybe like 15 games to pick from,

1:21:13and so it was a narrow set,

1:21:15and it's like, oh, I wanna play that, I wanna play that.

1:21:17In a way, kind of similar to the appeal of vinyl

1:21:19that I discovered last year,

1:21:21whenever that was two years ago,

1:21:22even though we have these modern libraries

1:21:25of everything in the world that we can call up by voice

1:21:28to play any music that was ever made ever,

1:21:30I never know what to ask for.

1:21:32And maybe I only ask for the same three albums

1:21:34'cause I can't think of anything else.

1:21:36Whereas if you have a library of albums,

1:21:38that is providing you with,

1:21:40here's like 15 to 30 things

1:21:42that you have decided you like already,

1:21:44and so it's easier to pick one to play.

1:21:47And the same thing applies for games for me.

1:21:49When I'm looking at the giant list of all games

1:21:52that were ever available for a system,

1:21:54I have a hard time picking and going for any kind of variety,

1:21:58whereas when you have a bin full of your old cartridges

1:22:02that you have 15 to choose from, oh, I'll do that one.

1:22:05It's actually much easier to choose,

1:22:07and I end up playing a greater variety of games that way.

1:22:09- I think for me too,

1:22:11when we first open up all of those boxes of cartridges,

1:22:14it becomes a, I can hone in very quickly

1:22:17on the games that I loved

1:22:19because those are the ones that you owned, right?

1:22:21And it has this, we've had emulators for years,

1:22:24and just like you said,

1:22:25it's the excitement of rummaging through those cartridges

1:22:28and finding the game you wanted because of the artwork

1:22:31or you knew what system it was for,

1:22:33and so you're finding it, and it's so tactile,

1:22:36and it's real, it's present, and you're seeing the artwork.

1:22:39You're not just scrolling through a list of titles

1:22:42and then taking that cartridge out to the system,

1:22:45sliding it in, pushing it down, hearing the squeak

1:22:47of the spring and that satisfying little plastic clang

1:22:50of the closing lid and then pushing the start button

1:22:53and having the music instantly play.

1:22:55(humming)

1:22:57It's just, it's all so much more exciting

1:23:02than emulators for me, which I think that it kind of,

1:23:06when we were setting this up, sorry,

1:23:08Marco was setting this up.

1:23:10(laughing)

1:23:11- We have a headache.

1:23:12- We do have a headache.

1:23:14Credit, credit, credit.

1:23:15And it was like this balance of he got into the emulator

1:23:20side of it, but for me, I was like, oh, we've done that.

1:23:24We've done the emulator stuff.

1:23:26We had that fun.

1:23:28- It felt like college.

1:23:29- We did that in college, and I loved scrolling through

1:23:32the list of crazy named games that we never heard of

1:23:35and we would find them and then play them,

1:23:37but it wasn't the same as pulling out kind of an old favorite

1:23:40and putting it in.

1:23:41There's this one game for the NES, 1941,

1:23:44and it's like a plane game and you're shooting down

1:23:47other planes and some battleships.

1:23:49I've never gotten past the second level.

1:23:51And it's like this, I remember this game vividly.

1:23:55It's really very hard, but super simple.

1:23:58And Marco found it on the emulator

1:24:00and he found a predecessor to that game.

1:24:03What was 1931?

1:24:04- 1943 was the sequel and I was really good

1:24:07at that game when I was a kid.

1:24:08(laughing)

1:24:09- Oh, there it is.

1:24:10- There it is.

1:24:11But it wasn't the same pulling out that game.

1:24:14It was like, oh, that's cool that you found it,

1:24:16but it wasn't the, oh, sweet,

1:24:19this is the plane game I played all the time

1:24:22because I knew exactly what the cartridge was like

1:24:24and putting it in.

1:24:25It was a different level of joy and satisfaction

1:24:29and I actually liked the restrictions

1:24:32that it brought with it.

1:24:33- Yeah, and there are a lot of trade-offs with emulation.

1:24:38I think what you mentioned a second ago is super on point.

1:24:41When you plug it in, you put the cartridge in,

1:24:44if it's the Nintendo, you might need to put it in

1:24:47a couple times 'cause they have that wonderful flaw.

1:24:49- And then take it back out and then blow it in

1:24:50and put it back in and then take it back out.

1:24:52- By the way, blowing on it was always actually a placebo.

1:24:54- You still had to do it, it didn't matter.

1:24:56- No, you just had to put it in and out a few times

1:24:57'cause the cartridge pins would wear out.

1:24:59Anyway, or the slot pins.

1:25:00- No, I'm saying.

1:25:01- It was a very flawed design.

1:25:02- It's like shaking a Polaroid.

1:25:03It's just like you just have to do it.

1:25:05- Not supposed to do that either.

1:25:06(laughing)

1:25:07- Muscle memory.

1:25:08- But there is something like when you plug in a cartridge

1:25:11and you turn the system on with these old systems,

1:25:14the games boot instantly.

1:25:16There's no loading screens, there's no interface,

1:25:19there's no menus, you turn it on and boom,

1:25:22the game starts instantly.

1:25:24There's no OS.

1:25:25- They were all SSDs just like the PS5.

1:25:27- Yeah, I hope.

1:25:28(laughing)

1:25:29- That's their goal though, less than one second.

1:25:32No boot times.

1:25:33- I almost forgot that they did that when it happened.

1:25:35It was like I was prepared to wait and then I'm like,

1:25:37oh wait, the game's here.

1:25:38(laughing)

1:25:39- Yeah, because in reality, modern systems,

1:25:42they have OSs, they have software updates,

1:25:45they have online services, they have user profiles,

1:25:48then the OS gets updated, then the game has to get updated,

1:25:51then you have to download additional content.

1:25:53There's so much overhead in modern gaming

1:25:56of just going through menus, maintaining the system,

1:25:59maintaining the computer that is the modern console

1:26:02with web services and updates and everything

1:26:04it's a pain in the butt.

1:26:06Whereas you plug in 1943 into a Nintendo

1:26:09and you push power on and you're in the game

1:26:11in about a second and a half.

1:26:13It's so fast and simple, it's fantastic.

1:26:16- And there's no instructions.

1:26:17- Yeah, that's another thing.

1:26:18- No.

1:26:19- Because back then, games came with manuals

1:26:22and you generally read the manual in the car

1:26:25on the way home from the game store or whatever

1:26:27and so they don't explain anything

1:26:30about how to play the game in the game.

1:26:32- If I may interrupt briefly, I asked you to suggest

1:26:35some Genesis games to play and you suggested

1:26:38I think Super Bomberman or something like that.

1:26:40- Mega Bomberman.

1:26:41- I know this is peculiar, whatever the case may be.

1:26:43It was a Bomberman title and I had only ever played

1:26:45Bomberman like once at Mike's bachelor party.

1:26:48I just skipped Bomberman, not deliberately,

1:26:50it just happened, it just happened.

1:26:52And so anyway, I tried playing it and I had no frickin' clue

1:26:56what I was supposed to do because there was no explanation

1:27:00of any kind, it was just, okay, you're there, go.

1:27:04And I really wish I had the manual because I could have

1:27:07read for a little bit and figured it out.

1:27:09And I'd also like to just very, since I have the floor

1:27:11just very quickly, something you were saying about

1:27:13the paralysis of choice, I have loaded only like

1:27:1710 to 20 games for each system onto my Raspberry Pi.

1:27:20However, what I've noticed is I am bouncing between them

1:27:24like within seconds it feels like.

1:27:28I'll play like a stage or a level or a round of one game

1:27:32and be like, okay, yeah, that was fun,

1:27:34let's try something else.

1:27:35And I haven't committed for more than like 10 or 20 minutes

1:27:37to any particular game because I have so much stuff

1:27:40I can play, it's like all these memories are just flooding

1:27:42back into me, oh, I'm gonna play a little bit of NBA Jam.

1:27:45Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna play F-Zero.

1:27:47Oh, I really wanna play a lot of F-Zero.

1:27:48Eh, okay, I got through that one stage.

1:27:50All right, hurry up part time.

1:27:51And it's just like, it's nonstop, I must look like

1:27:53a crazy person, if somebody was watching me just bounce

1:27:56between all these games, it would look like I was bananas.

1:27:59- That's how we were too, for sure.

1:28:00- We're doing the same thing here, but with cartridges

1:28:02and it's just very noisy.

1:28:03(laughing)

1:28:04- Also like about two thirds of the cartridges

1:28:06don't work anymore, so there's also just like having

1:28:08to plug in and out, all right, does this one work?

1:28:10No, try the next one, does this one work?

1:28:11(laughing)

1:28:12But yeah, so before we leave, I have a few more things

1:28:15to say about emulators before we go into the main hardware

1:28:18here, but emulators to a large degree have a lot of these

1:28:22same problems that I'm complaining about

1:28:24with modern consoles.

1:28:25They have, they're modern software platforms,

1:28:27they're running on computer systems, so you have to install

1:28:30software, you have to manage configurations,

1:28:31you have to go through menus, lots of menus,

1:28:34and these are inevitably fragile things, especially,

1:28:38you know, the way the Linux world works,

1:28:40the way I complain about package managers, but like,

1:28:42software is always changing, especially hobbyist stuff

1:28:46like this, and so what works today may not work

1:28:50if you try to change something in six months, right?

1:28:52Like, I've already, so we did all this stuff in January,

1:28:55we set this all up.

1:28:56Casey was playing this this past week, so I was trying

1:28:58to tell him how to do certain things.

1:28:59I've already forgotten how to do almost everything

1:29:02that I set up with the Raspberry Pi that I made

1:29:04three months ago, like, it's very, it's a computer,

1:29:08you have to configure it, and while it is amazing,

1:29:11especially for something that, you know, people are doing

1:29:14this volunteer for free, like, it's amazing how well

1:29:16it works, but it is still a computer with a evolving,

1:29:19living software ecosystem that you have to manage.

1:29:21Whereas, you take your Nintendo out of the attic

1:29:24and you plug it in, and it works the exact same way

1:29:26it did 20 years ago, and there's no changes,

1:29:29it just instantly just works, and you don't have

1:29:32to do anything, you don't have to go through menus,

1:29:34you don't have to install software, you don't have

1:29:35to remember, oh, how do, what's the weird combination

1:29:38of buttons that I press to make it go into the menu

1:29:40to change the setting, like, there's none of that,

1:29:42it just works, and that's really nice.

1:29:44- You just have to remember the Contra code, that's it.

1:29:46- Yeah, right. (laughing)

1:29:48All right, so, before we leave emulation totally,

1:29:52I do wanna mention the world of legal emulation.

1:29:55This is kind of this new, newish, like, kind of halfway

1:29:58point between emulation and real hard work,

1:30:01it's basically legalized emulation in different ways.

1:30:03One of the most common ones is retro game sales

1:30:07for new systems, things like the Nintendo Virtual Console,

1:30:10where they'll actually make old games available

1:30:13for new systems, and what those are doing is emulation,

1:30:15like, they're just packaging up an emulator

1:30:17with their old game, usually making no or minimal changes

1:30:21to it, the downside of this is that only a limited number

1:30:24of games are available, 'cause it's like, whatever they

1:30:26wanna sell you, whatever they have the rights to sell you,

1:30:29a lot of these game companies that made games back

1:30:31in the '90s don't even exist anymore, so there's nobody

1:30:33around that you could even get the rights from,

1:30:37let alone, like, be able to negotiate a deal with,

1:30:40you know, to make them almost no money, you know,

1:30:43from whatever conglomerate has absorbed whatever assets

1:30:45were left over from these companies back in the '90s,

1:30:47but the way copyright law works, they can't just give them

1:30:50away without getting permission from something

1:30:52that was only around 20 years ago, so there's very few games

1:30:55for these systems that are actually available through,

1:30:58like, these modern resale kind of things, usually it's

1:31:01the first party games, like, the games Nintendo made

1:31:03themselves, they can sell you again, 'cause they own

1:31:05the rights, but, you know, not a lot of other games

1:31:08are available, so it's not a wide catalog.

1:31:10- Yeah, I was really surprised by that, because just

1:31:12in the last month or so, I finally ponied up the 20 bucks

1:31:15a year, which is really very affordable for the

1:31:18Nintendo Switch Online, and part of that is you get,

1:31:21you know, just like you were describing, Marco, you get,

1:31:23you know, some Super Nintendo games, some Nintendo games

1:31:25that you can play on the Switch, and to your point,

1:31:27it's emulation, it's legal emulation, but it's emulation

1:31:30nonetheless, and they definitely have some good games

1:31:32on there, like, they have F-Zero, they have Super Mario Kart,

1:31:35and I wouldn't say that the selection is bad, but it is

1:31:39not terribly robust, though, like, there's, I don't know,

1:31:42maybe 50, 175 games on here, and given that there is

1:31:47an unbelievable breadth of games for either one of those

1:31:50systems, probably hundreds for either one of those systems,

1:31:53and between the two of them, there's only 75, I was

1:31:55actually very disappointed, and I was glad to have some

1:31:58of the ones that I was really looking for, again,

1:32:00F-Zero, Mario Kart, you know, Super Mario Brothers,

1:32:02et cetera, but I was expecting to get way more out of it

1:32:06than I did, and I was kind of disappointed by that.

1:32:09- Yeah, and also, like, a lot of times, the emulator

1:32:12that they use is not actually very good, and so you might

1:32:15have issues with the emulation itself, it might not be

1:32:17perfect emulation of the original games, like, it's just,

1:32:19it's a fine solution for some games, but it's a very

1:32:23narrow solution.

1:32:25Similarly, there have been recently these mini console

1:32:29hardware releases, where it starts like the NES Mini,

1:32:32the SNES Mini, the PS1 Mini, like, all the major consoles

1:32:35now have been doing this, 'cause they can make money.

1:32:37There are also emulators, just, you know, packaged up

1:32:39in hardware, they're pretty good values, they're pretty

1:32:41inexpensive, but they have the same problem of, like,

1:32:44only some games are on them, 'cause the games just come

1:32:46pre-loaded, they don't read cartridges, they just have

1:32:48built-in games, and they're built in memory, and that's it.

1:32:51They have other limitations as well, so it's just,

1:32:54it's not great, and they aren't widely available.

1:32:57They go and get these limited releases and everything, so.

1:33:00And then finally, before everybody emails me about this,

1:33:03there's this company called Analogue that makes these

1:33:06FPGA consoles, they're basically FPGA-based emulation,

1:33:11so it's a whole different type of emulation, a whole

1:33:13different degree, it's very, like, very accurate emulation,

1:33:16it's focused primarily on accuracy.

1:33:18They're pretty expensive, they're like $300-ish each,

1:33:22but they provide very, very good emulation, and they play,

1:33:25they have cartridge slots, they play the original cartridges

1:33:28if you have them, so you can get all that stuff with those,

1:33:31and also they have lots of great video settings and filters

1:33:36and everything.

1:33:37Downside is, it's a lot of money, and you still need the

1:33:40cartridges, you still need the original cartridges to play

1:33:42on them.

1:33:43They're a fun option, but that's probably a better option

1:33:45if you want, like, the absolute best emulation of one system,

1:33:48and maybe you have a flash cart, which I'll also get to

1:33:51in a moment.

1:33:52- Are they actually emulating, or are they just

1:33:54re-implementing the actual hardware in their FPGAs?

1:33:57Obviously there's a bunch of crap around it for the

1:33:59HDMI output and so on and so forth, but do any of them

1:34:02essentially try to reproduce the NES hardware, like make

1:34:05a single-chip version of the entire NES down at the

1:34:07gate level?

1:34:08- I think that's what the FPGA thing is about.

1:34:11I don't know enough to say for sure.

1:34:13I think it's something like that, though.

1:34:15Certainly that's the purpose of using FPGAs, is to have

1:34:18more accurate implementation like that.

1:34:20- 'Cause an emulator is like you're running software that

1:34:22is reading the instructions for a CPU that you don't have,

1:34:25and you take those instructions and you, you know,

1:34:28either translate them to a different instruction set,

1:34:30but more likely you say, "When you see this instruction,

1:34:32"call this C function in my emulator," you know,

1:34:34and so on and so forth, but the actual sort of like

1:34:36hardware cloning is make a single, you know, 'cause if you

1:34:41take all the circuitry in the NES, you could put that on

1:34:43a single-chip easy 'cause, you know, the feature size

1:34:46was so huge back then and everything was all separate,

1:34:48right?

1:34:49But in various cases, there's like, you know, things

1:34:52stopping you from doing that.

1:34:54You don't know the actual circuit layouts of those things,

1:34:56or there's still something that's proprietary or you can't

1:34:58do, but my impression was, at least for the NES ones,

1:35:01that they're trying to make an actual hardware copy.

1:35:04So if you don't have your existing NES in your parent's

1:35:07attic or whatever, but you want the hardware experience

1:35:10and you don't wanna buy one on eBay, this is, I feel like

1:35:13this is what these systems are, the role they're trying

1:35:15to fill, so my understanding is they're not actually

1:35:17emulation, but I could be wrong about that, but either way,

1:35:19that, I think that will be an increasingly important market,

1:35:24like I said, for the Wii and for stuff like that.

1:35:26When these systems go out of fashion and if no one is making

1:35:29new ones again, someone will have to make work-alike

1:35:32hardware in some fashion, and especially if the hardware

1:35:35starts running software, like the Kinect is not just,

1:35:38like it'll be harder for 8BitDo to make a Kinect clone

1:35:41'cause that's a hardware/software thing, right?

1:35:44It's not as easy to make that as it is to make a controller

1:35:48that just sends a bunch of inputs and button presses

1:35:50and stuff like that, so, you know, trying to preserve

1:35:53the legacy of this kind of art, will this art just disappear?

1:35:58How much of this art has already disappeared, speaking of

1:36:00games that require a server component or whatever?

1:36:02We'll only be able to tell tales about insert massively

1:36:06multiplayer online game here that no one has its servers up.

1:36:09We'll just be able to tell people about that, unlike most

1:36:12other arts the human has ever made, if the painting is

1:36:15preserved, it can last hundreds of years, and of course,

1:36:18books can be infinitely copied and get more or less

1:36:20the same experience, and even movies, we have ways

1:36:22of preserving that more or less, but video games is this

1:36:24whole realm of art that is going to live for a time,

1:36:28but eventually be unable to be experienced by future

1:36:31generations unless we continue to do exactly everything

1:36:35you just described, make emulators, make these hardware

1:36:38clones, make, you know, ways to continue to experience

1:36:43this stuff into the future long after maybe even the

1:36:45companies that made them are gone.

1:36:47- Oh yeah, because like, one of the reasons why I love

1:36:52this era of systems so much, this like eight and 16 bit

1:36:55cartridge systems, plus N64 is kind of the outlier,

1:36:58but like, because it was still a cartridge system,

1:37:00but like, I love this type of system, this generation,

1:37:04because it was a lot simpler than a lot of the modern stuff.

1:37:07You know, as you mentioned, like, it's going to be hard

1:37:09to emulate a lot of the more modern systems for lots of

1:37:12reasons, but generally they're just much more complicated.

1:37:14These old systems, you know, they have all these advantages,

1:37:18I love this era of games for lots of reasons, as I mentioned

1:37:21like speed, like, one of the very first things, like when

1:37:24we got these hooked up and we pressed power on and the game

1:37:27booted instantly, even our son, he commented how fast it was

1:37:32that you're just in the game.

1:37:33He noticed immediately, and he has, you know, a nice, you

1:37:36know, current generation iPad mini and he's played Switch

1:37:39games a lot, like, he's very experienced with modern games,

1:37:43and yet he had never seen a game boot up that quickly, even

1:37:47on the iPad, like just boom, you're in the game, and he

1:37:50commented on that.

1:37:51And a lot of that is also just down to cartridges.

1:37:54Cartridges are great.

1:37:57Yeah, they were small, yeah, they couldn't have like, you

1:37:59know, full blown CD quality sound with the size they had

1:38:02back then, but for the time, and for a good deal of time

1:38:05afterwards, cartridges were the superior format to the

1:38:09early discs.

1:38:10I don't have on this list any first generation disc based

1:38:14systems, because they sucked.

1:38:16Like the Sega CD, the Saturn, the PlayStation 1, those

1:38:21systems sucked, because CDs were very slow.

1:38:25You had all these like load times, seek times, it was not

1:38:30a good time for gaming.

1:38:32Also, I would argue that all the first generation 3D systems,

1:38:37with the exception of the N64, the 3D sucked on those, whereas

1:38:41like what it was graduating from was really well done 2D.

1:38:46Like the 16 bit era of 2D was amazing.

1:38:50It was like the pinnacle of this art form of these 2D games,

1:38:54and then when we got into 3D, it took a couple generations

1:38:57before it didn't suck.

1:38:59Yeah, I gotta say, the PS1, it was the first game system, I

1:39:02was like, pass, hard pass, like I don't even want it.

1:39:05It doesn't look appealing at all, I'll stick with what I have,

1:39:08thanks.

1:39:09Yeah, the whole industry went 3D, but the 3D sucked.

1:39:11We're gonna get a lot of angry email about the PS1.

1:39:14People love the original PlayStation, because of the

1:39:16games.

1:39:17I agree with you about the 3D technology, but there's a lot

1:39:21of good games for the original PlayStation.

1:39:23And this is an area where emulation is actually

1:39:26potentially useful.

1:39:273D emulators are able to use better 3D filtering technology

1:39:33now to actually improve the way the games looked.

1:39:37And you know, so all emulators have offered visual filters.

1:39:40You can play an SNES game and turn on a visual filter that

1:39:44will scale up the graphics and soften the edges and upscale

1:39:49and blur and everything so it looks kind of like a painter

1:39:51drawing.

1:39:52That's great, I did that all through college, it was

1:39:54wonderful, but what emulators could do to N64 or PS1 games

1:39:59was way better, because they could actually render the

1:40:01polygons at higher resolution to begin with and do texture

1:40:04filtering tricks and things like that.

1:40:06And so these systems that look like hell on the real

1:40:08hardware actually look significantly improved in the modern

1:40:12world of emulation of these 3D systems, which is again

1:40:15another reason why in my hardware odyssey I didn't include

1:40:19those CD-based systems.

1:40:21I do have an N64 here, that's Tifton 64, but we'll get to

1:40:23that in a little bit.

1:40:24- Well, and just really quickly in the defense of the

1:40:26PlayStation, I am definitely looking with rose-colored

1:40:29glasses, because I haven't played an original PlayStation

1:40:31in what, 20, 25 years, whatever it's been now, but I

1:40:34remember the load times were awful and in that sense it

1:40:37was atrocious, but some of those games, I think John you

1:40:40had said this a second ago, some of those games were

1:40:42amazing, that was the first exposure I had to Gran Turismo,

1:40:44which was amazing, even though it wasn't as fun as everyone

1:40:47thought it was, it was still an amazing and technical

1:40:49achievement.

1:40:50That was the first time I'd played any Metal Gear games,

1:40:52like Metal Gear Solid still to this day kind of blows my

1:40:55mind and maybe there were other ones that were better or

1:40:57different before that, but that was my first exposure to it.

1:40:59And there were other games I can't remember off the top of

1:41:01my head, but I remember that being a very solid system in

1:41:05terms of the games that were on it.

1:41:07I don't debate that it was nothing but waiting for

1:41:09everything, I don't debate that it could have been way, way

1:41:12better, but I don't think it was quite as terrible as the

1:41:15arm and perhaps painting it at the moment.

1:41:18But yeah, I certainly did miss, having come off of Nintendo

1:41:2364, I absolutely missed the instant load times of the

1:41:26cartridge consoles.

1:41:29- Oh yeah, and there were lots of reasons why those are

1:41:31better left to emulators, like the other CD systems.

1:41:34For one thing, the old cartridge systems have no moving

1:41:39parts, with the exception of the NES's stupid cartridge

1:41:42pop up and down thing which breaks all the time, but

1:41:44otherwise, there's no optical drives, there's no CD lenses,

1:41:47there's no motors, there's no fans even.

1:41:49They operate in silence, they're all low temperature

1:41:52devices, most of them don't even have heat sinks on the

1:41:56processors, they're just very basic devices, they're low

1:42:01complexity, and they don't have moving parts.

1:42:04And so they're optimized really for longevity and

1:42:08simplicity, the only system that we powered on that worked

1:42:13last time we used it, but didn't work now, was the Xbox

1:42:17360, got the red ring of death like everyone else.

1:42:21- It took this long to red ring, I'm pretty proud of it.

1:42:25- Yeah, but it's been off for like four, five years at

1:42:27least, so anyway, that's the one thing that didn't come

1:42:30back from the dead.

1:42:31The Atari we couldn't get to work, the Atari 2600, but

1:42:34we don't know if it was working before, so otherwise--

1:42:37- It was working, in my heart.

1:42:40(laughing)

1:42:42- Yeah, but everything else worked, and I think in part

1:42:44that was because these are all super simple cartridge

1:42:47based systems with no moving parts.

1:42:50One of their advantages before I move on from this is that

1:42:52these old ones back, the simpler ones, the controllers were

1:42:57much simpler.

1:42:58- Yes, I wanted to talk about this.

1:42:59- The one system we have a bit of a problem with the

1:43:01controllers for is the N64, because this has been sitting

1:43:04in an attic and everything, and they were worn to begin

1:43:06with, and so the analog sticks are all kind of rough on

1:43:08all the N64 controllers, they're not in great working order.

1:43:12If you get a system that was before analog sticks, there's

1:43:16a lot less about the controller that can wear out.

1:43:19And so again, you're optimizing for longevity by going with

1:43:21these older systems if you want hardware, if you want to be

1:43:25actual playing on the original hardware, 16 bit and 8 bit

1:43:28and maybe N64, you're generally better off.

1:43:31- Oh, and they just feel so good in your hands.

1:43:34They are so tiny, it's almost like the old original iPhone,

1:43:38when you get hold of an old iPhone, you're just like,

1:43:41"Oh, you just feel really good, where were you?"

1:43:45And that's what those, the little NES rectangles feel that

1:43:49way, the SNES ones, because they're just a slight

1:43:52modification, but just the simplicity of having a few

1:43:56buttons to control everything that you need to do is

1:44:00wonderful, it makes you be able to play these insanely

1:44:04oddly hard games very easily.

1:44:06(laughing)

1:44:07And let me say, I don't miss a rumble pack.

1:44:10I didn't think for two seconds, "Oh, my controller's not

1:44:13rumbling, why is this, this is so odd."

1:44:15Like, not at all, I wasn't bothered by the cord into the

1:44:20system, because actually, their cords were pretty long.

1:44:23I gotta say, they thought that out, they had very long

1:44:26cables from the controllers to the systems, which I

1:44:29appreciated that, but we got them all tangled up,

1:44:31right Marco?

1:44:32- The N64 ones are real bad.

1:44:33- They're all over the place.

1:44:35But yeah, the controllers themselves felt way better in your

1:44:38hand, and I'm comparing this again to the emulators,

1:44:42where they always felt like there was some sort of a

1:44:45slightly something off about the interface, like

1:44:48interacting with these games without their actual

1:44:52intended controllers.

1:44:53Like, there's just, when you're used to playing them,

1:44:56like when you're used to playing these games as they were

1:44:58with these controllers to interact with them, and then

1:45:01going to an emulator and just having a generic controller

1:45:04for that, it was, it's a different feeling.

1:45:07It's like, "Oh yes, I'm playing this game, and I'm getting

1:45:09the joy of playing this game."

1:45:10That's all there, right?

1:45:12But man, there is a whole 'nother level.

1:45:15It's like your smile just brightens that extra little bit,

1:45:18because you're actually holding the right thing in your hand,

1:45:21and those red buttons are staring back at you, and you're

1:45:23like, "Yes, I get you.

1:45:25There's only one D-pad.

1:45:26Thanks, thanks for that."

1:45:28That's so, so nice.

1:45:29- It's because those emulator controllers, like I said,

1:45:31are an abomination, yeah.

1:45:32I feel like that's part of, I mean, make fun of, you know,

1:45:35Marco's weird vinyl whatever emulation thing with the

1:45:38cards for the music, but honestly, we've said this before,

1:45:41when you're playing a game, your experience is, yes, sight

1:45:44and sound, but also touch.

1:45:46Like, that is your interface to the game, is a thing you're

1:45:48holding in your hand, and you're like, "Oh, I want that

1:45:50experience of playing this old game."

1:45:51That controller is a huge part of the experience, and yeah,

1:45:54you can get, you know, some mongrel monster controller that

1:45:59tries to have all the things that you need for seven of

1:46:02these systems, but it will never feel like playing the actual

1:46:05system did on those controllers, even though some of them

1:46:07may be ergonomic nightmares.

1:46:09Presumably, you're not playing these for too long.

1:46:11And speaking of chord length, by the way.

1:46:13- You can't survive that long.

1:46:14You die.

1:46:15Like, they're too difficult to play.

1:46:17- You gotta get those skills back.

1:46:18The NES in Japan, the Famicom system, had extremely short

1:46:23chords on it, and they were, if I had memory serves, not,

1:46:26you couldn't, like, disconnect them to put in a bigger chord.

1:46:28Like, they were attached permanently at one end, and they

1:46:31were very short.

1:46:33I forget how long they are, but, like, my memory is like

1:46:35that they were, like, three feet long.

1:46:36Like, they would never work in an American home.

1:46:38Like, they basically forced the children to sit where your

1:46:40parents would yell at you for sitting, like, right in front

1:46:42of the TV.

1:46:44- So, suppose you want to game on your original hardware.

1:46:48You get out your old system in the attic.

1:46:50It probably still works.

1:46:51The games might work.

1:46:53They might not.

1:46:54You might need to clean the cartridge contacts or clean the

1:46:56cartridge slots in the system.

1:46:57They might have corrosion, you know, but otherwise, like,

1:47:00your old system probably still works.

1:47:03Controllers are, like, one of the very first things you go

1:47:04to, right, and everything you have just said, you and Tiff,

1:47:07John, everything you've said is correct.

1:47:10Like, there's so much about the feel and the nostalgia of

1:47:13the system.

1:47:15Part of the reason why you're playing on original hardware,

1:47:18if you've gotten to this segment, is that you want that

1:47:22nostalgia, and while I do love some of the aftermarket

1:47:25controllers for other reasons, for nostalgia, you can't beat

1:47:29the original ones, especially for the NES.

1:47:31Like, the Super Nintendo and Genesis have pretty good

1:47:34third-party controllers now.

1:47:36The NES doesn't.

1:47:37Like, nobody makes a perfect NES controller clone, and so

1:47:41the NES, I feel like you really need that original one.

1:47:43But one big difference is that cord length, and, you know,

1:47:46these systems were all made in the era where we had CRT TVs.

1:47:51You were lucky if you had, like, a 27-inch TV.

1:47:54Like, they weren't very big, and you weren't sitting very

1:47:57far away from them.

1:47:59And this was before wireless things were really prevalent.

1:48:02You had to have a wire to the system, but they didn't make

1:48:04them that long, because you weren't sitting that far from

1:48:08a 27-inch TV.

1:48:10Now, one of the challenges of running these on a modern TV

1:48:13is you're generally having much larger TVs now, and you're

1:48:16sitting further away from them than we did back then, and

1:48:18the cords are all too short.

1:48:20- The Famicom controller, by the way, was two feet long.

1:48:23- Oh my word.

1:48:25- Would that even reach, like, from some people's

1:48:27entertainment centers to the floor?

1:48:29- My phone charging cable is longer than that.

1:48:31- For Casey's TV that's on top of his mantle, it would

1:48:33just dangle.

1:48:35Casey would have to stand in front of his mantle.

1:48:37- On his stool.

1:48:38- Yeah, right.

1:48:39Yeah, so, like, one of the technological advances that I

1:48:43have moved to for some of these systems is that company

1:48:468BitDo, which people in the chat are saying it's pronounced

1:48:498BitDo, because it rhymes with Nintendo, which I guess

1:48:51makes some sense.

1:48:52Anyway, 8BitDo or Do, they make a bunch of controllers

1:48:56for all systems, including, they have versions of a lot of

1:48:59these controllers that have little receivers that are

1:49:03wireless that plug into a Genesis or Super Nintendo, and

1:49:06we have these, so I actually bought a pair of each of those.

1:49:08I have their version of the Genesis six button controller,

1:49:12I have two of those.

1:49:13Each of them has a little receiver that plugs into the

1:49:15Genesis and is powered by the Genesis, and so you have two

1:49:19wireless controllers that are always there, and the

1:49:21controllers occasionally need to be charged by micro USB,

1:49:24but very occasionally, and you have a wireless Genesis, and

1:49:27same thing, I have the same setup with Super Nintendo.

1:49:30It's wonderful.

1:49:32It's not as nostalgic as the NES controller, where it's,

1:49:35you know, long wire, but for like a clean, modern setup

1:49:39that you don't have to worry about being, you know, too

1:49:41close to the TV or pulling the console accidentally by

1:49:44the cable, like, it's actually really, really nice.

1:49:47So, that is one area where if you want to play an original

1:49:50hardware, but you want a nice modern day amenity of wireless

1:49:54controllers, you can do that with these, you know, 8BitDo

1:49:57and other companies, but I think 8BitDo is the best one.

1:49:59They make fantastic wireless controllers that will plug into

1:50:03the old consoles.

1:50:04Anyway, they're not quite as nostalgic, but they're very good.

1:50:07- One thing you're missing out on, though, I'm sure you're

1:50:09gonna get to this when you start talking about video, but

1:50:11part of the retro gaming experience is the wired controllers

1:50:16and RF interface to a CRT, mostly because the input lag

1:50:21in that system was so insanely short compared to any modern

1:50:24system, any modern system that, forget about wireless,

1:50:27which is gonna add huge delay, relatively speaking, but any

1:50:30modern system that goes through an HDMI converter that goes

1:50:32into your TV that has like 10 to 100 milliseconds of input

1:50:36lag just on the display device before you even consider any

1:50:39of that stuff, and then you add a wireless controller, and

1:50:41after you're dying in two seconds anyway because your old

1:50:43new reflexes suck now, don't memorize the levels anymore.

1:50:46Fine, but I feel like if you were gonna go to these lengths,

1:50:50and this is what the really hardcore people do, you need

1:50:53a CRT that's hooked up with RF to your thing with a wired

1:50:58controller.

1:50:59- I will get there.

1:51:00I will get there, especially if you want light guns to work

1:51:03and everything, yeah, trust me, I'll get there, but anyway,

1:51:05before we get too much into the video output section, which

1:51:09is significant, if you're gonna be retro gaming on old

1:51:12hardware, we have to briefly revisit Crime Committing Corner.

1:51:17- I feel like you are a person who's presenting like a 1950

1:51:20school video, hi.

1:51:22(laughing)

1:51:24If you would like this new modern technology in your life,

1:51:28follow these simple steps.

1:51:30- No, we are revisiting Crime Committing Corner to talk about

1:51:33flash cartridges, also known as EverDrives, because that's

1:51:37the brand of the most popular one.

1:51:40A flash cartridge is a cartridge that goes into an old game

1:51:44system that has an SD card slot on it, and you can load it

1:51:48up with ROMs for emulators and put it on the SD card slot,

1:51:52and then it shows a menu when you boot it up, and you can

1:51:55just pick from the ROMs and you can play any ROM file on

1:51:59original hardware.

1:52:01It's kind of a hybrid between the world of emulators and the

1:52:05world of original hardware.

1:52:06It has some of the advantages of each world, most of the

1:52:09advantages of the original hardware, but it opens you up to

1:52:13like, you know, one of the things about emulators is that

1:52:15you can play games that weren't actually released for the

1:52:18system.

1:52:19You can play things like ROM hacks, where fans have like

1:52:22altered old games to add levels or fix things or improve

1:52:27things, whatever.

1:52:28You can play home-drew games.

1:52:30Some hobbyists, granted not a lot, but some hobbyists are

1:52:33actually like writing original Genesis or Super Nintendo

1:52:36games today.

1:52:37It's a fun little world, and if you have--

1:52:40- Be careful, a few of those, they're naughty.

1:52:42- Yeah, oh yeah.

1:52:43(laughs)

1:52:44But if you have--

1:52:45- Don't test them in front of your kids.

1:52:47- Oh yeah.

1:52:48So if you have either an emulator set up or if you have a

1:52:50flash cart, you can play that type of game.

1:52:53It's also nice, like, a lot of these games, as I mentioned,

1:52:56are pretty rare and hard to find or very, very expensive

1:53:00if you do like find one on eBay or something, because

1:53:02they're rare or they were unreleased or whatever.

1:53:05And so this opens you up to be able to play games like that,

1:53:07that you either can't get at all or that are kind of

1:53:10prohibitively expensive to get.

1:53:11It also, it saves wear and tear on the cartridge slots.

1:53:15On some systems, this might not be an issue.

1:53:17I would strongly advise this is very recommendable on an

1:53:21NES, because again, it has that flawed cartridge slot

1:53:24design where the pins wear out, and there are various ways

1:53:27you can like, you know, you can get certain aftermarket

1:53:29things to try to fix that, but one of the easiest ways to

1:53:32fix that is to use a flash cartridge instead of using

1:53:34real cartridges, and then not only do you have all the games,

1:53:38but you also then don't have to constantly be like putting

1:53:42the cartridge slot up and down, up and down, up and down,

1:53:44and wearing out those pins even more.

1:53:46I also recommend if you're gonna be in this world,

1:53:49again, we're in Crime-Committing Corner, I'm sorry

1:53:51if this offends you, just skip forward 30 seconds.

1:53:54Trust me, look for things called EverDrive packs.

1:53:57These are complete ROM sets, but they are well organized.

1:54:02They are also editorially categorized, so like you'll have

1:54:06the A to Z folder, and then you'll have subfolders of like

1:54:10genre categorizations, like oh, here's all the action games,

1:54:13here's all the shooters, then you can have subfolders that

1:54:16are like editorially picked subsets, like the best shooters,

1:54:20the games that define the system, the best platformers.

1:54:23It's awesome, it's a great way to improve on that kind of

1:54:27paralysis of choice that you get with just having massive

1:54:29amounts of emulator ROMs, and just makes these things

1:54:32a lot more useful and easy, and it lets you discover

1:54:34good games instead of having to just go through the list

1:54:37of 500 and just pick randomly, so trust me,

1:54:40you want EverDrive packs.

1:54:42Search for those, you'll find them.

1:54:43Anyway, disadvantages of flash carts are,

1:54:46number one, they are illegal, like the same way

1:54:48emulators are, you're talking about pirating software here,

1:54:50pirating these old games, it's up to you whether that

1:54:52bothers you or not, I think systems as old,

1:54:55you're not really harming anybody, 'cause again,

1:54:57it's hard to even find anybody who would even have

1:55:00the rights to this, and to arrange any kind of payment,

1:55:02it's pretty much impossible.

1:55:04Other disadvantages are these flash carts are actually

1:55:07pretty expensive, especially like the N64 one

1:55:10is fairly expensive, you're looking at like up to

1:55:12$200 for some of them.

1:55:14They also, they introduce that similar paralysis of choice

1:55:17that emulators have, and it definitely loses some of

1:55:20the nostalgia value when you're not inserting

1:55:22them in real cartridges, so there are some disadvantages.

1:55:24I find that having a flash cart on the real system

1:55:29is a really good balance of modern convenience

1:55:33and having all those games available to you,

1:55:35while also having the nostalgia of playing

1:55:38the original hardware, but it's up to you

1:55:40where you might try that line.

1:55:42- This is very impressive, this whole EverDrive thing,

1:55:44so there's an SD card you said on each of these,

1:55:47and you would just pop that out, put a ROM on,

1:55:49and then pop that back in and you're good to go?

1:55:51- You pop it out, you put on the EverDrive pack

1:55:53of all the ROMs in the world and you ever touch it again.

1:55:55- Ah, fair enough, okay, I was gonna say,

1:55:57because you're still popping this in and out,

1:56:00but of course, I didn't even consider that,

1:56:01you would just put everything on there

1:56:03and just have to scroll through a list of a billion games.

1:56:06- Yeah, and like, I mean, the technical accomplishment

1:56:09here is incredible, like to make these kind of things,

1:56:12and they show menus and everything,

1:56:14it's just a wonderful hobbyist world,

1:56:17and you kind of can't believe somebody took the time

1:56:19to do all this, but you're so glad they did.

1:56:21It's so amazing, and yeah, it is legally iffy,

1:56:25and it does introduce some of the downfalls of emulators,

1:56:29but some of the Genesis ones can actually do save state

1:56:34and load state on the real hardware,

1:56:37which is something that you would think normally

1:56:39only emulators could do that, but no,

1:56:40they can actually do it on some systems,

1:56:42you can do it with the cartridge.

1:56:44It's incredible what these things can accomplish,

1:56:46it really is quite something, but anyway,

1:56:49now comes the big question and the big downside,

1:56:52video output, now most of these old systems,

1:56:55they natively were rendering 240p,

1:56:59old analog CRT TVs, if you ignore the tiny subset

1:57:03of HD CRTs, which I actually had one,

1:57:06it was, don't go there. (laughs)

1:57:09Anyway, if you just consider CRTs to be

1:57:12the old standard def ones, the US ones

1:57:14would take in roughly 480i, and by the way,

1:57:18listeners out there, if you don't know

1:57:20how analog TV signals work, it's actually fascinating,

1:57:24look it up on YouTube, there's some great videos on it,

1:57:27I like the Technology Connections guy,

1:57:30he does a lot of videos on this kind of stuff,

1:57:32the way analog and CRT TV signals worked is fascinating.

1:57:35So these systems render 240p internally,

1:57:38eventually as you got more advanced,

1:57:41like the Xbox would render 480p eventually,

1:57:44you get more advanced systems that render

1:57:46at higher resolution, but for the most part,

1:57:48you're dealing with 240p being rendered on a 480i screen.

1:57:52The way you would usually connect these systems,

1:57:55the way most of us did, as I mentioned earlier,

1:57:57those RF modulators, those channel three, channel four,

1:57:59black boxes that would plug into the coax cable slot

1:58:01in the back of the TV, and you'd plug the VCR

1:58:03or whatever back into the back of that,

1:58:05this is the way most people use their consoles,

1:58:07generally these are the worst video quality,

1:58:09but they have advantages, they're simple,

1:58:11they're easy to data chain, most TVs back then

1:58:14didn't have any other inputs, it wasn't until the 90s,

1:58:18late 90s at least, that you'd have a TV

1:58:20that might have a composite input or something like that,

1:58:23or maybe later on component, but that came much, much later.

1:58:26I'm trying to run these on a LCD 40 something inch TV

1:58:31that we bought probably seven or eight years ago,

1:58:33just some weird Panasonic LCD thing,

1:58:35it's not like a high end TV, and it's not super new,

1:58:38but also not super old, I could not get RF modulation

1:58:41to work on this TV, I suspect maybe it lacks

1:58:45the old analog tuner circuitry, anyway,

1:58:47I couldn't get RF to work, which is good,

1:58:49'cause it sucks anyway, but I did want something

1:58:51that I could like data chain and all the systems

1:58:53if possible, so that didn't end up working.

1:58:55The next step up from RF modulation in old analog video

1:58:59is the composite video plug, this is that ubiquitous,

1:59:02circular, usually yellow color coded plug,

1:59:06it's a circle with a stick in the middle,

1:59:09so it's like two conductors, it's called an RCA plug,

1:59:11that's that style of plug, the red and white ones

1:59:14are always audio, stereo audio, like the yellow

1:59:16was composite video, those are all RCA plugs anyway,

1:59:19so composite, this is one signal, it's a ground

1:59:22and one video signal, it squishes together

1:59:25into that one signal all of the color and brightness info

1:59:29and all the sync info to make that analog video signal work.

1:59:32All of these game systems, all these old systems

1:59:35can output composite easily, most of them have

1:59:38a port on the side or a cable that either comes with it

1:59:41or is easily available can output composite video,

1:59:43so this is probably the best option.

1:59:45Problem is, composite video looks like crap

1:59:48on modern TVs, it looks like total garbage.

1:59:51The main thing is when you have only that one wire

1:59:54blending everything together, all the signals together,

1:59:56you only have a certain amount of bandwidth

1:59:58where the TV's able to distinguish, like okay,

2:00:01can I just distinguish this color one pixel away

2:00:05from this color and have them not bleed into each other

2:00:08or anything like that, there's issues like that

2:00:10with composite where it looks like crap on modern TVs.

2:00:14- Is this looking like crap your version of looking

2:00:17like crap or the public's version of looking like crap?

2:00:20- Well it's like, the colors bleed into each other,

2:00:23the edges are blurry, you might have incorrect coloration

2:00:27on certain edges or certain patterns,

2:00:30you might have interference patterns where you have

2:00:32dots that actually don't belong where they're being rendered

2:00:35'cause it's like analog interference,

2:00:37there's all sorts of weird stuff,

2:00:38and then also there's a whole bunch of issues

2:00:40when outputting to modern TVs,

2:00:41which I'll get to in a moment,

2:00:43composite tends to exacerbate a lot of these issues.

2:00:46It makes it especially hard to see stuff in dark scenes

2:00:49and certain colors, like on our TV red is oftentimes butchered

2:00:54and it's like when playing Tetris on the NES,

2:00:57one of the levels, somewhere in the seven or eight range,

2:01:00one of them, it turns red and black,

2:01:02and it's so hard to see certain pieces on that level

2:01:06no matter what your brightness has turned around on the TV,

2:01:08like it just, the signal's just getting crushed.

2:01:10Anyway, moving up from composite quickly,

2:01:13there was a brief window of time

2:01:14where the world tried to use S-video.

2:01:17S-video is that little black multi-pin plug

2:01:19that's kind of like a keyboard plug but it's black.

2:01:21- I remember that.

2:01:22- S-video separates the color signal

2:01:24from the brightness signal,

2:01:26so you're going from one signal line to two.

2:01:28This is a huge improvement.

2:01:31All the colors are still combined into like,

2:01:33you know, there's brightness and there's color,

2:01:35so all the colors are still combined into one

2:01:37and they just like modulate differently to distinguish them

2:01:40but it's significantly better than composite.

2:01:42It's almost as good as you can get,

2:01:44but the problem with S-video

2:01:45is that almost none of these consoles supported it

2:01:47and almost no TVs have S-video inputs anymore.

2:01:49Later on, we had component video.

2:01:51This is those green, blue, and red RCA plugs.

2:01:55The Xbox, the first Xbox had an option for this.

2:01:59This came along later.

2:02:01It supported HD resolutions.

2:02:03Component achieves great quality

2:02:05because it separates the three colors from each other,

2:02:07so you have separate signal paths,

2:02:09there's no interference between them

2:02:10and you can get like tack sharp, you know,

2:02:13pixels next to each other.

2:02:14They don't bleed into each other.

2:02:15There's no blurriness.

2:02:16It's awesome.

2:02:17And so what these old consoles could do,

2:02:20since component came along later and wasn't around,

2:02:22the older consoles could use an older standard

2:02:25in some cases of RGB video,

2:02:27usually using the European SCART connector.

2:02:31I, like most Americans, had never seen one of these,

2:02:34but Europeans will possibly remember

2:02:36this giant rectangular connector with these vertical pins

2:02:40and it looked almost like a big printer cable

2:02:43with a diagonal connector coming out the side for the wire.

2:02:46It's a very strange looking connector.

2:02:49And again, as an American, I'd never seen one.

2:02:51But apparently they were fairly standard in Europe.

2:02:55The SCART connector supports RGB video,

2:02:58similar to component in that it separates

2:03:01the three color signals onto their own signal lines.

2:03:04So when you're dealing with these old systems,

2:03:06RGB is usually the best you can get.

2:03:08It's the best quality that you can get

2:03:10out of like a Genesis, a Super Nintendo.

2:03:13The NES has to be modded to output this,

2:03:18but it can and you can like find people

2:03:20who mod them for you on eBay and stuff

2:03:22or you can buy pre-modded systems

2:03:24if you want to go that route.

2:03:25It's not the cheapest thing in the world

2:03:26to go that route, but you can.

2:03:28And of course that's what I did.

2:03:30And let me tell you, using RGB output

2:03:33on these consoles looks incredible.

2:03:36It is tack sharp.

2:03:38It looks as good as the best emulators,

2:03:41but on real hardware on your TV.

2:03:44Now, how you get the video signal onto your TV,

2:03:48that's a whole different thing too.

2:03:50As John mentioned, these games were all designed for CRTs.

2:03:53If you can have a CRT for this setup

2:03:57and you can get a good one that will work

2:04:00and doesn't have problems and you have space for it,

2:04:03just do that.

2:04:04It's way cheaper than what I'm about to recommend,

2:04:07way simpler and in many ways better.

2:04:09It's more nostalgic, it's more authentic.

2:04:12The games were designed, the graphics were designed for CRTs.

2:04:16CRTs render things in a certain way.

2:04:18They have certain artifacts.

2:04:19These games were designed for that.

2:04:21And so in some ways, games look worse

2:04:24when they're not shown on CRTs,

2:04:26'cause they're being shown in a way

2:04:27they weren't designed for.

2:04:28If you can get a good CRT,

2:04:29you probably don't have to pay much for it.

2:04:30You can probably find one for free or for very cheap

2:04:32'cause people are always dumping them

2:04:33'cause they don't want them.

2:04:34The problem is that if you have a CRT,

2:04:37you're probably not gonna want to use it

2:04:39for anything else these days.

2:04:41You're not gonna want to watch your HD movies on your CRT.

2:04:45So you really need a dedicated retro gaming space

2:04:49that you can have your CRT set up

2:04:51if you're gonna go that route.

2:04:52We didn't want to do that.

2:04:53I don't want to do that.

2:04:54- We didn't?

2:04:55(laughing)

2:04:56- Well, maybe we'll graduate to that at some point,

2:04:59but setting up a giant, first of all, we don't have a CRT.

2:05:01We'd have to find one.

2:05:02- That shouldn't be too hard.

2:05:03I think there's one across the street right now in the curb.

2:05:05- Yeah, but also you gotta find one

2:05:07that's still in good working order.

2:05:09It's non-trivial, and they're really big and heavy.

2:05:13- Is it gonna be more difficult

2:05:16than ordering parts from Japan

2:05:18and all kinds of crazy things

2:05:21that you've been doing in that room?

2:05:22- Well, yeah.

2:05:24- Just putting it out there.

2:05:26- It would be a lot cheaper.

2:05:27- I'm here for the insight into the behind-the-scenes world

2:05:30of this whole discussion.

2:05:32- I endorse the CRT plan.

2:05:34They're not that big.

2:05:35You can get a small atom-sized one.

2:05:36This setup deserves to have a CRT.

2:05:38It's better off with a CRT.

2:05:39- It does.

2:05:40Listen to Jon.

2:05:41Everyone loves Syracuse,

2:05:42so they think he's right.

2:05:43Listen to him.

2:05:44(laughing)

2:05:45- Yeah, I don't know.

2:05:46We'll see, but anyway,

2:05:47and certainly for things like input lag.

2:05:49Again, I strongly advise,

2:05:51if you're nerdy enough to listen to this show,

2:05:52watch these videos on how analog video signals work.

2:05:55It's fascinating,

2:05:56and how these systems rendered their video,

2:05:59'cause keep in mind,

2:06:00these systems, they were rendering a 240p image.

2:06:02None of them had enough memory

2:06:04to keep a 240p image in memory themselves.

2:06:08They weren't rendering it to a frame buffer

2:06:10and then having some chip output that to the TV.

2:06:12They were rendering it line by line manually.

2:06:15Every single line that was rendered,

2:06:17the system would take most of its time

2:06:19rendering each pixel,

2:06:21and then in the very, very short interval

2:06:24when they were waiting for the scanning electron gun

2:06:26to change lines,

2:06:28that's when they would do the game computation.

2:06:30It's fascinating how these things worked.

2:06:32Anyway, look that up.

2:06:33It's a wonderful thing.

2:06:34I'll try to link to some videos if I can remember.

2:06:36So anyway, CRTs, though, make games look right.

2:06:39There are filters you can use on emulators

2:06:43and other solutions that I'll get to in a moment

2:06:45to try to emulate the look of CRTs

2:06:48on modern LCD or whatever TVs.

2:06:52There's a few different elements to this.

2:06:54One of them that's been getting around recently

2:06:57is there are these pixel shaders

2:06:59that will actually warp the entire image

2:07:02to mimic screen curvature,

2:07:04'cause CRTs were not flat.

2:07:06Even the flat fronted ones

2:07:07behind them was a curved surface of the glass.

2:07:10Just the front surface was flat,

2:07:12the back surface was curved.

2:07:13So there are these filters that will kind of fake

2:07:16the curvature of the glass.

2:07:18I don't like that.

2:07:20I think it looks too fake,

2:07:22and I don't love that at all.

2:07:24CRTs also, they didn't render pixels

2:07:27in a very sharp, precise way.

2:07:29They didn't even technically really have

2:07:3240 pixels across it.

2:07:33It didn't work that way.

2:07:34So when you look at images rendered on a CRT,

2:07:37they don't have sharp edges around each pixel.

2:07:39They're blurred.

2:07:40And so there are emulators and things

2:07:42that you can actually apply a blur filter,

2:07:45kind of just a gentle blur over the whole screen.

2:07:48To me, when I do that, it looks better.

2:07:51It looks more correct for the way these games looked.

2:07:54More advanced emulator shaders

2:07:56might also take advantage of the fact

2:07:57that when CRTs would render colors,

2:08:00bright colors like white,

2:08:02would actually bleed slightly into the surrounding pixels,

2:08:06more so than the way that a darker red might render.

2:08:11So certain colors would actually blur around themselves

2:08:14more than others.

2:08:15There is some effort out there now

2:08:17to actually replicate that behavior in pixel shaders,

2:08:20which is really cool for emulators.

2:08:22Now, the last thing I'll talk about in this area

2:08:24is scan lines.

2:08:26Again, if you look at the CRT up close,

2:08:28there are slight black gaps

2:08:31between the lines, especially, of the TV.

2:08:33Again, the way the horizontal and vertical rendering

2:08:36worked is different.

2:08:37Most of the time, this is visible

2:08:40as slightly dark gaps horizontally between the lines.

2:08:45So you'll have a very thin, hairline black line

2:08:48horizontally between each line of pixels.

2:08:50Emulators and stuff don't do this,

2:08:52and modern TVs don't have this.

2:08:54But there are filters that you can apply,

2:08:56even on the Raspberry Pi,

2:08:58and there's actually a couple of hardware solutions

2:09:00to do this on your TV

2:09:02to add blank black lines between the pixel lines

2:09:07to emulate the look of CRT scan lines.

2:09:09I thought, "That's crazy.

2:09:11"Why would anybody want to do this?"

2:09:13Then I did it, and I played a game,

2:09:15and I instantly fell in love with this effect.

2:09:17It sounds crazy that you would artificially add

2:09:21thin black lines between all the bigger, chunkier pixel lines

2:09:26that are being rendered,

2:09:27but to me, it makes these old games look right.

2:09:31That was the thing that popped in my head,

2:09:33and I even yelled at Tiff,

2:09:34"Oh my God, it looks right now!"

2:09:36- He did, that's true.

2:09:37- I still remember when I was doing,

2:09:39I first saw it on Mega Bomberman for the Genesis,

2:09:42and I played this game like crazy.

2:09:44The games I'm playing, I played for many, many years

2:09:48as a kid, and so when I first turned on that scan line filter

2:09:52on the Raspberry Pi, I was so happy.

2:09:55Oh my God, it looks right.

2:09:57It finally looks the way these games looked.

2:10:00And so some of these effects I thought were too much.

2:10:03The curving of the screen effect,

2:10:05that didn't look right to me,

2:10:07but a very slight blur, plus scan lines, looks great to me.

2:10:12Now there is a bit of a downside to scan lines in that

2:10:16if you're drawing black lines

2:10:18between all your blocky pixel lines,

2:10:20it's gonna make the overall image darker.

2:10:23So you're gonna wanna turn the brightness up,

2:10:25and depending on what resolution you're outputting

2:10:29is a question of like, well how many lines are there

2:10:33of color before you get to a black line?

2:10:36If you're outputting 480p and you're doing scan lines,

2:10:41then every other line is gonna have to be black,

2:10:43and that's gonna make a very,

2:10:45I think that kinda looks like too much of the effect,

2:10:48that doesn't look good,

2:10:49and it also makes the image very dark.

2:10:51It looks just kinda fake and dark.

2:10:53But if you're outputting 720p,

2:10:55then you can do every third line being blackened.

2:10:58That, I think, looks great.

2:11:00If you go higher, you go 1080p,

2:11:02you can do every fourth line.

2:11:03It looks even better.

2:11:04And so again, like the CRT,

2:11:06it had a thin hairline of blackness

2:11:09between each thicker line of rendered pixels.

2:11:11The higher resolution you're rendering at,

2:11:14the better you can render these CRT simulating effects

2:11:18'cause they depend on like sub-pixel level details

2:11:21of how it looks.

2:11:23There's actually devices out there

2:11:25that will take the input of hardware consoles

2:11:29and make them look this good on modern TVs,

2:11:33including things like scan line effects.

2:11:35So the main problem is that when you connect

2:11:37one of these consoles to a modern LCD, OLED, whatever TV,

2:11:41they have to read the signal,

2:11:43which they expect to be a 480i interlaced OLED,

2:11:47interlaced old composite video signal or something,

2:11:50and try to scale it up and render it

2:11:53on a natively progressive higher resolution screen.

2:11:56So they have these converter circuits in them,

2:11:58these upscaler circuits, that are assuming

2:12:00that they're being sent interlaced video.

2:12:03But these old consoles are rendering 240p

2:12:06and outputting it in a way that it happened

2:12:08to be interlaced in the output,

2:12:10but they're really rendering progressive content as 480i.

2:12:13And so the way these converters work on the TVs,

2:12:16it makes game content look bad.

2:12:18It has certain rendering artifacts or scaling artifacts

2:12:22that kind of mess with game content in weird ways

2:12:25and makes it look wrong.

2:12:26So there's this whole category out there

2:12:28of custom designed scalers that are made specifically

2:12:32to scale old game content onto modern TVs

2:12:35in a way that doesn't break the minute-use artifacts

2:12:38the way that the built-in scalers do.

2:12:40This goes from simple things,

2:12:43like there's HDMI converters for individual systems,

2:12:46there's one for the N64 that plugs into the back of it

2:12:48and everything.

2:12:49There's also a company called RetroTINK.

2:12:51They make one that's just a line doubler.

2:12:53So it's very simple.

2:12:54It takes in the 240p signal.

2:12:56It just line doubles it all to 480p,

2:12:59and that way your TV doesn't have to de-interlace,

2:13:02which is the part that introduces a lot of the artifacting.

2:13:06They're inexpensive, and that solution,

2:13:09like a line doubler, introduces almost no latency.

2:13:12The modern ones even have scanline filters built in,

2:13:15but because they are only doing 480p,

2:13:17they're making very dark lines,

2:13:20because they have to darken every other line

2:13:22instead of doing every third or everything

2:13:24at a higher resolution.

2:13:25So I wouldn't recommend this solution

2:13:27if you want a scanline filter,

2:13:28but if you want an inexpensive, good scaler,

2:13:30RetroTINK is good for that.

2:13:31There's a few other options in that price range.

2:13:33There's also the OSSC, the open source scan converter.

2:13:36This is like $200-ish.

2:13:38It is more complex.

2:13:40It's mostly a line doubler, like the RetroTINK,

2:13:43but it has a few more features.

2:13:44They have an experimental 3x720p mode

2:13:47that doesn't work with all TVs.

2:13:49It's kind of weird, but that's also a pretty good option.

2:13:52Kind of the Cadillac of options is the XRGB Framemeister.

2:13:57Of course, it's the most expensive.

2:13:59It's like $350-ish.

2:14:02It does things in a different way.

2:14:03It's actually doing a much more complicated scaling thing.

2:14:06It actually introduces, I think, one frame of latency,

2:14:09but it has really, really high-quality output,

2:14:11and it has the best scanline mode

2:14:13because it can render at 720p or 1080p,

2:14:16so you can actually have it look really good.

2:14:19So that's what I got, of course.

2:14:21I even got this -- I'll link to it.

2:14:22I even got this automatic RGB multi-input switcher.

2:14:26So now I have basically my daisy-chain console set up.

2:14:30It's called the GSCART SW.

2:14:32Like, just some guy makes it.

2:14:34Custom-made just for video game console enthusiasts

2:14:37who like RGB output.

2:14:38So this is like -- you got to figure this is not a big market here.

2:14:42But so far, I have three systems connected to it that have RGB output.

2:14:47I'm waiting on the modded N64 to get back.

2:14:49It's great.

2:14:50I have now my awesome setup.

2:14:52I have the XRGB Framemeister that is the scaler that adds scanlines,

2:14:57that scales everything awesomely to my TV.

2:14:59I have all the old systems.

2:15:01I have flash carts for many of them.

2:15:04I have wireless controllers for some of them.

2:15:07And I have an automatic switch that I can just turn on any of them

2:15:10that are plugged into it, and it just comes up on the TV.

2:15:13And it is the most ridiculous, over-the-top, like, needlessly complicated,

2:15:19needlessly expensive, needlessly large setup that I could possibly have come up with.

2:15:24But it's so cool to actually play.

2:15:27And this is probably more effort than any of this is worth.

2:15:30But it's so amazing.

2:15:32I'm incredibly satisfied with it.

2:15:34And I don't recommend that anybody actually do this because it is really ridiculous.

2:15:38But, man, is it fun.

2:15:40You're so excited about all this latency.

2:15:42A whole frame of latency just for your scaler, and then you have all this.

2:15:46You need to get a CRT.

2:15:48I'm not very good at games, Jon.

2:15:50The CRT automatically does all that stuff with the scanlines

2:15:54and dealing with the brightness or whatever, and it has no latency.

2:15:57Yeah, but then he wouldn't have had a month's worth of a project to do.

2:16:00You can get a CRT for much less than the cost of that scaler.

2:16:03Oh, I know, but where am I going to put a CRT?

2:16:07And how am I going to find a good one?

2:16:09On the floor in front of the place where all these consoles are.

2:16:12We're going to put it on top of the non-working CRT.

2:16:14Yes.

2:16:16No, again, this is a crazy, ridiculous setup.

2:16:21This is really for true, real enthusiasts of this craft.

2:16:26No, the enthusiasts have CRTs.

2:16:28I guarantee the enthusiasts have CRTs.

2:16:30You made a prosumer setup is what you did.

2:16:34There's this whole market of enthusiasts who seek out old, pro video monitors

2:16:38because they would actually have those BNC connectors,

2:16:41the case you mentioned three hours ago.

2:16:43They would actually have those.

2:16:45You could have your RGB output for super sharp color separation and everything

2:16:49on a CRT, which is the best you could possibly get, really.

2:16:52But the problem is, personal video monitors are way less common,

2:16:56and they were usually not very large, and they're very expensive.

2:16:59Really, if you want the Marco solution, it's to find a 30-inch PVM somehow

2:17:05that has RGB input and use that, but I'm not doing that.

2:17:08But it doesn't need to be 30.

2:17:10In 30-inch, you would start to see weird artifacts that you never saw

2:17:12on your normal-sized television as a kid, right?

2:17:14You just need a plain old 24-inch CRT, and you'll be fine.

2:17:18Would you do it?

2:17:20Christmas gift. If I was going to have a retro console setup,

2:17:22absolutely I would get a CRT.

2:17:24Wow, surprising.

2:17:26Where would you put it?

2:17:27I don't know. Where would I put a retro console?

2:17:29If I was going to do that, the whole point is,

2:17:31it would have to be original hardware, original controllers hooked up to a CRT,

2:17:35because that's what it was like.

2:17:37Some parents turn their kids' room into gyms.

2:17:40I think John's going to turn his first kid who goes off to college, his room,

2:17:44into a retro gaming room. Do it.

2:17:47Marco, in a rough order of magnitude, how much are you into this financially?

2:17:53Are we talking a couple hundred dollars?

2:17:55You already have all the systems.

2:17:57Are we talking a couple hundred dollars, a couple thousand dollars?

2:17:59As vague as you would like to be is fine,

2:18:02but I ask only because I am like 200 bucks in,

2:18:06and that's because I got the really expensive fancy Raspberry Pi dummy setup.

2:18:10If I had done the "you know what you're doing" setup,

2:18:14I would be like 100 bucks in.

2:18:16It sounds like you are in a lot deeper than I am so far.

2:18:19I haven't added up, but it's less than a MacBook Pro,

2:18:22but probably not a ton less.

2:18:24If you're just doing one or two systems, it's a lot simpler.

2:18:28If you are okay not having the fancy RGB output with the professional scaler,

2:18:35this is where a lot of the money goes.

2:18:37If you don't do a flash cart, and if you instead just get 15 or 20 of your favorite games on eBay

2:18:42that are fairly common, easy to find games,

2:18:45again, these are all things that can make it significantly cheaper.

2:18:48I just went the ridiculous route.

2:18:49You?

2:18:50Surprise, right?

2:18:51Your TV is too far away for you to play emulated games on anyway.

2:18:54Casey, if you want to get a cheap setup, buy a CRT.

2:18:57Get a used console. Boom. Done.

2:18:59Less money, and it will have better latency, and it will look right.

2:19:03I'm very, very, very happy with my setup here.

2:19:05I really want a second controller, which I'll probably order sooner rather than later,

2:19:09so I can play with Declan rather than one of us watching the other.

2:19:12But I cannot say enough good things about the Raspberry Pi and Retro Pi on top of it,

2:19:18and Pi-hole for that matter.

2:19:20I mean, this setup, for not that much effort,

2:19:24it definitely needed some tweaking here and there,

2:19:26and if I didn't already kind of know how to do this sort of thing,

2:19:30it probably would have been very infuriating,

2:19:31but for the kind of person that probably listens to the show,

2:19:35it's definitely within reason to put this together.

2:19:37And in terms of the physical assembly of the Raspberry Pi

2:19:40and putting it in the case and all that, it's basically like Lego.

2:19:42You just snap stuff in, and you're off to the races.

2:19:46So I am not trying to say that Marco's setup is not way better than mine.

2:19:51Marco and Tiff's setup is way better than mine.

2:19:53I'm not arguing that.

2:19:54I'm just saying for almost no effort and almost no money, kind of,

2:19:59I have a really decent setup that if you're not a super purist,

2:20:02and I'm obviously not, then it works really well,

2:20:06and I am very, very impressed by it,

2:20:08to the point that I'm wondering if I should get a new Raspberry Pi

2:20:11to leave in the office to do the Pi-hole thing

2:20:13and then move this downstairs to our big TV

2:20:16where I can play video games on it on this 4K OLED screen,

2:20:21which, as you guys have been discussing,

2:20:23is not at all what they're designed to be played on,

2:20:25but it's still, it's just fun. It's just a lot of fun.

2:20:27You should probably scale the effort and cost it to how much time

2:20:30you actually think you'll spend playing games,

2:20:32because the Raspberry Pi in the emulator is a great thing of like,

2:20:35"Wow, I'm just going to take a tour of all these cool games

2:20:37and have fun with them," or whatever,

2:20:38but eventually if you're not going to be like,

2:20:40"So are you going to play through the original Zelda and beat it,

2:20:42or do you just want to take a brief tour of games

2:20:44and you're not going to touch it again?"

2:20:45So if you invest hundreds or thousands of dollars into a big setup

2:20:50and then realize, "Okay, that's all I wanted to get out of it

2:20:53was making the setup, and now I'm not actually going to spend

2:20:56300 hours playing classic games."

2:21:00I mean, this equation changes, obviously,

2:21:01if there's more than one person in your house who wants to play the games.

2:21:03Maybe you have a kid who is actually going to dump 50 to 100 hours

2:21:08into a single game, in which case it pays off,

2:21:10but if you're just doing it as a cool, fun thing,

2:21:12consider whether KC's Raspberry Pi approach will let you

2:21:17sort of get it out of your system without making it a big, expensive project.

2:21:23Yeah, I mean, that's probably what most people should do,

2:21:26if I'm honest with myself.

2:21:27That's probably what I should have stuck with,

2:21:29but every time the emulator setup would act like a computer,

2:21:32and like, "Oh, now it's, you know, I got to like make the Bluetooth pair again,"

2:21:37or "Oh, now I got to like remember how I got from this menu to this other place.

2:21:41Where was that setting again? How do I do this?

2:21:43Oh, look, it just grabbed the input again because the HDMI CEC on Raspberry Pi sucks."

2:21:48There were so many computery parts of it that just made it feel like work

2:21:53that were just adding friction to the experience.

2:21:55I mean, you have the actual old system.

2:21:57There's almost no sources of friction at all.

2:21:59I mean, granted, before I got like the nice scaler to plug into the TV,

2:22:03I did have issues with like the TV showing the wrong aspect ratio

2:22:06or cropping off the corners because it didn't have overscan correction options,

2:22:10like stuff like that.

2:22:11Like I had a lot of problems like getting it to look decent on my TV

2:22:15before I went the pro route.

2:22:16Once I went the pro route, those problems disappeared.

2:22:18So again, probably the smartest thing to do is the Raspberry Pi.

2:22:22The second smartest thing to do is to get a CRT,

2:22:24but the dumb and ridiculous thing to do is to get all this crazy stuff,

2:22:28and I'm not saying anybody should do this, but it's pretty cool.

2:22:31So Tiff, how often are you and/or Adam playing any of these systems and games and whatnot?

2:22:37Oh, almost never.

2:22:38Well, the problem is that we set all this up

2:22:42about a month before we developed a family Super Minecraft addiction,

2:22:47so we haven't played them like this past month at all.

2:22:50But they're there. They're ready for us whenever we're ready.

2:22:53Minecraft should be easier to play in like 2055

2:22:56because its input is very flexible, you don't need any special controller,

2:23:01you're not going to need to keep around some sensor bar or buy another thing,

2:23:04and it's the type of game where it's probably not too onerous

2:23:08to just keep it running on every system.

2:23:10Like Minecraft is already run on so many different platforms

2:23:13and it will probably continue to run.

2:23:15I mean, this is the ray tracing version of Minecraft that people are playing with.

2:23:19It will probably be the next iteration,

2:23:21but Minecraft may actually still be a game you can buy

2:23:24when Adam is setting up his retro gaming system

2:23:27when he hits his midlife crisis, right?

2:23:29So that's a good thing about that particular game.

2:23:34So if you're going to sink time as a family into Minecraft,

2:23:37that will probably be time well spent

2:23:38and you'll be able to relive that experience later.

2:23:41Thanks to our sponsors this week, Hover, Linode, and Eero.

2:23:45We will talk to you next week.

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2:26:16You should really see Marco at Minecraft right now.

2:26:18He's amazing.

2:26:21I want him on my team all the time.

2:26:22Well, now I'm trying to take that

2:26:24my first one of those ocean fortresses

2:26:26with the big spike fish in them.

2:26:28And that's not easy.

2:26:29Whew, that is not easy at all.

2:26:31I don't want to make Marco feel bad,

2:26:32but I'm still measuring to see if Marco is matching up

2:26:34to Alex when he was eight.

2:26:36He's almost there.

2:26:39Oh, Adam is incredible.

2:26:40He just-- the stuff he knows.

2:26:42That's what I'm saying.

2:26:42You come to this thing late, but what

2:26:44is the main quote, "Adam was born into it"?

2:26:47He basically was.

2:26:48That kid was born from Minecraft.

2:26:50So I tried attacking the spike fish fortress

2:26:53by coming up from under it.

2:26:55I had an island a little while away

2:26:57that I had a little establishment on,

2:26:59so I just tunneled under the ocean

2:27:01and came up under the fish fortress, which actually is not

2:27:05a bad idea if you just want a whole bunch of those cool blue

2:27:07blocks.

2:27:08But it doesn't make it any easier to kill the spike fish.

2:27:10And I keep getting the spoon disease, where

2:27:12I can't mine anymore, from the big ghost spike fish.

2:27:15And it's really tricky.

2:27:18It doesn't make it that much easier to come from the bottom.

2:27:21You guys should graduate to creative mode soon.

2:27:23No, come on.

2:27:25I like that it's hard to get some of this stuff.

2:27:27It's going to happen.

2:27:28It's going to happen eventually.

2:27:30Eventually, when you start building your giant world-eating

2:27:32computers, you're in creative mode for a long time.

2:27:34You need to see the Dubai Friday server and the stuff

2:27:37that people have built in survival mode.

2:27:40It's absolutely incredible.

2:27:41Have you been on there yet?

2:27:42Me even though.

2:27:43What's wrong with you?

2:27:44I live this Minecraft phase already.

2:27:46My children are older.

2:27:47Right, just get on there and walk around and check it out.

2:27:50I did enjoy hearing Merlin joining the server

2:27:52and then walking into the water and drowning.

2:27:54[LAUGHTER]

2:27:56It's a very Merlin thing to do.

2:27:58Yeah.

2:27:59It's literally just walking into the ocean.

2:28:02I feel like it's much more impressive

2:28:04if you can do really cool stuff in survival mode.

2:28:08Because it adds cost.

2:28:10It adds difficulty.

2:28:11It adds resistance.

2:28:12Right.

2:28:13But eventually, your ambitions outgrow survival mode,

2:28:16and you need the freedom afforded

2:28:18by an entire universe in creative mode.

2:28:20I don't know.

2:28:21I think we're doing OK.

2:28:22It's amazing.

2:28:24The people want us to have a gaming podcast, John.

2:28:27People.

2:28:28Yeah, well, hmm.

2:28:29[LAUGHTER]

2:28:32That's what it would be.

2:28:33It'll just be me being like, John, isn't this great?

2:28:35And be like, hmm.

2:28:36That is accurate.

2:28:37No, I would be super into it if I

2:28:39could get an extra 10 hours in each day

2:28:42and/or not have a job.

2:28:44Eh.

2:28:45New job.

2:28:46Game.

2:28:47Jobs are overrated.

2:28:48Yep.

2:28:49[BEEPING]