That’s awesome! I’m all about upcycling. It’s amazing what people will toss without thinking about repair. Although sometimes it’s not worth the headache. I remember flipping my shit when I couldn’t figure out how to repair the read error on a PS2 I picked up. Ended up just giving up in the end. Also spent hours through the middle of the night jacked up on energy drinks pulling a laptop apart to fix an issue with the processor running too hot, only to put it back together and still have the same issue.

Ah, what’s the issue with the Game Genie? I’m buying an Everdrive, I think I heard that it had built in cheat support.

Yeah, nowadays I shy away from hardmods because of the experiences I listed above. I’d rather buy from someone with the time and experience if I need to go that route. Otherwise I’m completely fine with softmodding or flashcarts for my needs which tend more towards software. I wouldn’t mind seeing a RGB mod in person running on something cool like one of those “HD” Trinitrons that were used a video editing monitors back in the day. I hear they look fantastic, the highest fidelity picture you can get for CRT based systems.

I would always be jealous of my friends who would talk about playing a Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger. Here I was sitting in my room playing Pitfall and Enduro on my 2600, while they were jamming on their SNES systems. I had one friend who was lucky enough to have a PS1 when it first came out, seeing FFVII on the PS1 blew my mind at 12 years old. Eventually my parents did get me a other systems, first the SNES than the Genesis and later a PS1. My dad got in on the PS1 pretty hardcore (he was a big car fanatic and thought Gran Turismo was amazing). The funniest time as a kid was when my parents got us a Genesis, and we got the Sega Channel through the local cable company. My parents got so hooked on Shining Force that they’d play for hours and hours, a lot of times they’d hog the Genesis to where we kids barely got to play lol

Sweet! Thank you, happy B-day (or soon to be) to you too! The CRT is the icing on the cake, I love real scanlines in action. Sadly I didn’t pay attention to the listing close enough and purchased the console only so I don’t have the dogbone controller (was really looking forward to it too). I had to grab a generic NES one for now. Eventually I’ll be grabbing the dogbone when I can though.

Makes sense. The Famicom AVs on Ebay were anywhere from $95-$125, while the NES toploader was at least $140-160. That’s why I opted to get the Famicom AV instead.

It’s baffling to me why the toploader didn’t have AV ports in the first place. Hell, the US NES had them, I don’t see why they went with RF only on the first release. I wasn’t even aware of that fact until I looked into getting one, I always assumed the NES Control Deck had them.

I’ve read that it’s fairly easy to AV mod those US toploaders. I’ve seen people mention it online. Although, I know it requires some simple sodering to do. There are also RGB mods out there for it as well.

No, I never have. I’ve heard about it vaguely, but that’s it. I’ll have to check it out sometime.

Essential! I bought it from an older lady down the road months ago in anticipation of buying some retro consoles. I also have a PS2 phat on layaway at the pawnshop that I’ll be grabbing in the next month. It was suprisingly only $60. The cool thing too is there is a gaming shop downtown that sells retro games for pretty cheap. I spied Gran Turismo 4 down there for $8 (the only GT on PS1/2 that I never really got to play). Funny thing is, I’ve actually taken to preferring to watch stuff on the CRT with a DVD player versus using my laptop. I get DVDs from the library and with where the TV is positioned it’s more comfortable to watch from my bed. I don’t get great internet where I am too, so it’s often the only way to watch something. Definitely worth the $7 I payed for it :D

Haha, yeah. I even used to have a Mario shirt I loved that said “Down Since '85”. I completely spaced the connection until I bought the cart. Honestly, the earliest memories I have of gaming are of playing Super Mario Bros. over at the neighbors. My parents couldn’t afford to get me a console until I was 6, and the one they could afford was an Atari 2600 from the thrift store. The carts were something like 25 cents a piece though, so my mom got a crapload of them, I loved it, but was definitely jealous of my other friends who had Nintendos. On my seventh birthday though, they bought me a new SNES that came with Super Mario World, and to this day is the game I’ve beat the most times (I never did get any other games for that SNES since my parents couldn’t afford them).

The game you’re thinking of is Bangai-O Spirits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangai-O_Spirits. It was a DS sequel to Bangai-O on the Sega Dreamcast (another excellent, and imho the superior version). I had the DS version as well and it was a great game. If you ever get the chance (emu or native) I’d highly recommend playing the original on Dreamcast. Pure Arcade shmup goodness.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently as well. I decided that I wanted to ditch using any cell carrier in favor of a VoIP provider. I made a post here: https://lemmy.ml/post/26192657.

The two recommendations that came up the most were voip.ms and jmp.chat. Both require at least $15 to get started but you can port your old number over to both services too. From there jmp.chat is $5 a month, which comes with unlimited texts and 120 min a month.

With voip.ms the call and messaging is subtracted from your balance at a predetermined rate (per min and per text) which I haven’t worked out the math on how much mileage $15 will get you initially.

From what I could see jmp.chat looked like it was the easier option to setup, with the Cheogram app for your phone and a Jabber app for the computer. Here’s a wiki entry detailing how to setup jmp.chat: https://kb.above.im/jmp-chat/

I settled on discontinuing my mint service and setting up jmp.chat on my phone and computer, and then supplementing the limited minutes via Signal for calling. Seems like a pretty good alternative to me. I still have a week left on my phone plan, and then I’ll be taking the plunge. I’d been using my phone less and less lately so it wont be too much of a shock, and I’ll save myself an extra $20/month going from the $25 mint plan to $5/month jmp.chat plan.

After looking around their website I found the info on SMS. I do like that it has a minimum pay of $5, both VoIP.ms and JMP require $15 to start. Although, I saw for SMS KeepCalling directs you to their app on the play store. I wonder if it is possible to use their SMS service with a third party app? I would like to avoid using apps from the Play Store if I can help it. Otherwise, it might be a viable option to try out with such a low barrier to entry. I’m still leaning JMP since it seems like the easiest to setup and use between mobile and desktop (MX Linux in my case, using the Gajim app).

Ah, that’s a clever way to circumvent minutes. Signal can only call other Signal users, right? So, if I wanted to call my mom, for instance, she’d need to get Signal? It’s been a sec since I used it.

Does KeepCalling have SMS included?

JMP did look like it was much more straightforward to setup than VoIP.ms. The configuration of VoIP.ms looked pretty bewildering from reading the wiki. My only concern with JMP was the minutes. From what I read it said it was unlimited text but only 120 min/month. Is that accurate?