iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

(Luckily, I take a MiSTer in my backpack for testing when I go to HardOff these days...) The Eizo monitor is really high quality, swivels for *TATE MODE!*, has no noticeable lag in DVI or VGA mode, and while it complains (2nd pic) and menu is disabled, it WILL display VGA @50Hz, and even 15Khz RGB!

MiSTer arcade core running. Will work through HDMI->DVI cable, or analogue RGB as in this case. The Eizo monitor rotates either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on how you install it in the swivel mount

Here, a 50Hz S-Video signal from my Commodore 128 is displaying fine after RGB conversion. Eizo monitor complains, and controls are disabled, but the picture is still shown.

I run my games through an X-RGB2+ which upscans and upscales to VGA resolutions. The Eizo monitor still makes it look great in RGB, despite the convoluted signal & digitizing path

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

At 26 years old, the NEC FE90 CRT monitor I use for retro games is giving up the ghost. It's hard to find CRT monitors nowadays that aren't even older, & that support VGA at 50/60Hz like the NEC. So perhaps CRT days are behind me. Luckily a HardOff I went to had an Eizo EV2336W for only ¥1600 ($10)!

At bottom is not the exact same model, but the NEC FE90 multisync monitor was a 19", high-quality VGA monitor from 1999-2000

CRTs are rare to find in the wild, but I kinda want one that supports 50Hz vertical refresh. Unlike this Mitsubishi

The Eizo is 1920x1080, and has DVI and VGA inputs. Looks very good as well!

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I've finished scanning each page out of my 1980s sticker album and put it on Internet Archive, in case anyone's interested. (It's nostalgic stuff to me & my brother.) archive.org/details/chri...

Thumbnails of a 1980s sticker album. Scratch-n-sniff stickers, some TV & movie characters, an Apple Computer sticker, etc.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Did anybody else growing up in the '80s have this book, Amazing Days? (actually 366 days...) Each day had some historical note or fun project to do, plus a diary writing space. I finally found this one after a bit of searching...

The Kids' Diary of 365 Amazing Days by Randy Harelson

two pages showing the Amazing Days book inside. Making an origami boat, "halfway day", and Canada (Dominion) Day

two pages showing the Amazing Days book inside. Sci-Fi celebration, wax paper drinking straws invented, and Braille

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

HardOff shop in Kokubunji had this KOYO KTR 1661 multiband radio (from 1965!) for an amazingly low 1000 yen. It's in rough shape, but still received FM and shortwave when I tested it -- a no-brainer to snap up! It picks up airplane communications as well, but rather low sensitivity. Still, a beauty.

A KOYO KTR 1661 multiband radio from 1965

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Some more pages from my old '80s sticker album, now I've scanned them all in...

Some A-Team, superhero, and... Jacksons? stickers from 1983-84, wow.

If you're from Vancouver, you saw these logos everywhere in the 80s

Yup, I kept the sales sticker from my family's first VCR...

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Why buy a cow for your home when you could just rent milk from the fast-talking huckster as he passes through your town?

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Question to retro tech/dev people: does anybody know if GOTEK drives can have commands sent to them (eg. disk # change, etc.) through the FDC while inside the host device?

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Random game Saturday: I sent myself some old games, magazines, and that sticker album I had kept in storage for over 20 years. Among them was this great 4-in-1 bootleg MegaDrive cartridge. One great game, 2 decent ones, and then Street Smart. :D

A 4-in-1 MD cartridge with Wani Wani World, Juju Densetsu (Toki), Alien Storm, and Street Smart

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Some more of my old sticker album pages from the mid-80s. E.T. & Labyrinth really date these ones. The Transformers stickers probably came a bit later. The Beachcomber and Warpath ones have an outline that glows in the dark. 🕶️🔦

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

The sticker album scanning shall continue until morale improves.

A scanned sheet from my '80s sticker album, mostly with scratch 'n sniff stickers, but some M.U.S.C.L.E. ones as well

Batman, Green Arrow, and Mr. T puffy stickers from the mid-80s. Yes, colours are accurate.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Hi, all. Can you smell this through your screen?

A page of scratch-and-sniff stickers from my old '80s sticker album. Tons of memories. I'm just sorry that so many of these are scratched into oblivion.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I put my Greaseweazle and Y-E Data floppy drive back into its nice case & covered holes/panels with layers of folded-over plastic (works OK all things considered). The GW has vias to wire external LEDs, but no matter which LED I tried, they were all quite dim. I stuck with the original unit's LEDs

A repurposed MS-21D-FD drive for reading via Greaseweazle

Rear of the MS-21D-FD. Don't look too closely!

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

This is an odd one... your reg. 3.5" floppy drive from TEAC or whatever runs at 300rpm, but the YE Data drive from the MS-21D computer rotates at 360rpm. Greaseweazle can read and write disk images & flux just great from it, but HxC seems to hate it. (No seeming way to adjust its speed too.)

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

The MS-21D-FD contains a Y-E Data YD-686C floppy drive which has 5V on 3 pins on the ribbon connector; definitely not good! I found a jumper (highlighted pink) that disconnects those from 5V power, soldered in my own power pins. Also had to move a jumper (green) from '0' to '1' for it to respond.

Location of jumper on Y-E Data YD-686C floppy drive to isolate 5V from the pins on the ribbon connector

Y-E Data YD-686C floppy drive underside showing 3 offending 5V pins (yellow) and a jumper I had to bridge for the Greaseweazle to communicate with it

Y-E Data YD-686C floppy drive label. 1991 year

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

I received a Greaseweazle this week to work on backing up & analyzing floppy disks. Works great! I also happened to find a Japanese "Microsystems MS-21D-FD" proprietary floppy drive for an old obscure computer. Beautiful red & black look but it needed some modifications to run as a regular floppy...

MS-21D-FD disk drive runs on 100V AC. It looked like it communicated via serial or parallel but those are just 2 breakout ports for the host computer. Interesting...

Inside the MS-21D-FD. Broken AC power supply; and power is delivered to the floppy via the 34-pin ribbon connector.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Not a lot of info about this GB floppy copier. Made by CCL in 1998-99ish. As I had said, when writing games to floppy, it just clobbers over existing formats with its own 16-sector/track format (standard 1.44 FDs use 18 sectors/track). Old SNES copiers can read the disk, but modern Win PCs HATE it!

Image taken from online console database. Thanks! Note the different button colours from the real unit's R,Y,G,B.

ROMs are saved as "GBC_GAME" with a .1 or .2 extension with files that exceed 1024K. Save RAM also gets saved with the .sav extension

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

A white unicorn has appeared! The "GB Smart Development Kit" was a standalone GameBoy cartridge copier that saved dumped games to FDD, and could load them onto a rumble SmartCard. Really primitive FAT functions that formats as it writes the ROM to 16-sector-per-track High Density FDD only.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Here's something wild: I thought I found a bug in my FAT12 LFN (long filename) code, but it turns out that the checksums for the files "GREEN.SMC" and "SUPERF~1.BMP" both add up to 0x48, causing a bit of an identity crisis. How did OSes like Windows handle these cases?

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Other miscellany in my storage back home: a sticker album with tons of mid-80s scratch-and-sniff stickers; my childhood origami book; a Canadian variant of Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

My old binder also had tons of design patents for the NES/SNES/Gameboy systems, the Game Genie, etc. These were easily searchable from the US Patent Office's webpage in the late '90s. Are they still easily searchable?

Patents! Here showing how the Super Famicom is put together, and the Gameboy.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

In my storage, I found the large binder I kept for NES & 6502 programming, from the late 1990s. I printed out tons of pages of documents and this was a valuable reference. I decided to donate this binder to my best friend's game-loving programmer son.

The front cover of the binder showing an EPS Nintendo drawing I made, plus the NES' palette

The first page of the binder showing tabs or post-it notes separating documents and sections

An early printout of the NES architecture page by Marat Fayzullin

A printout of the early Disk System format doc by Goroh

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I've come back from a family vacation to my hometown, Vancouver, Canada. I had a little time to sort through some old bins in storage. Found the old boxed games! (Well, some of them.) The Dr.PCJr. box didn't contain the system, since I had taken it with me to Japan...

A storage bin containing NES, Turbografx, and Master System, etc. game boxes. Also the box for the DrPCJr Famiclone/computer.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Also, if someone wants to donate a Super UFO Pro SD to me, I can start working on getting at least LFN display working on it... 😁

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Been busy but have found some time to keep modifying & enhancing the Super UFO 8 floppy SFC copier. I made a help screen for all the added controls, plus I've converted the built-in Action Replay cheat codes to an .asm include file, in order to trim/add more codes.

Help menu describing controls for my modded UFO BIOS

A snippet of ASM code/bytes describing AR/X-T cheat codes

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

The UFO 7.2 J なにわ "Naniwa" version is in Japanese only. And the name なにわ refers to the area in Osaka; as such, messages in this copier are written in the Kansai dialect: Game save? おまへん(Ain't here!); How's the checksum? あかん(No way!); Disk in drive? いれてんか？ディスクガナイデ！(D'jya put one in? Ain't seein' it!)

UFO Bios 7.2 Naniwa on left showing some Kansai dialect; English UFO 7.3 BIOS on the right

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

A Super UFO 7 SFC copier just fell into my lap this week, and it's a kinda rare Japanese 7.2 なにわ "Naniwa" version. This one came with a protective hologram over one screwhole, so: pics! The BIOS is on a 32KB EPROM, whereas the 7.3 version adds built-in X-T cheat codes and is on a 64KB EPROM. Neat!

Cool UFO "High Technology Product" hologram sticker

The instruction manual cover for the *7.3* Naniwa version, distributed by GameTech around 1994? ~ 1996?

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Shrinkflation captured in realtime リアルタイムで捉えたシュリンクフレーション

A photo of two Doritos packages. On the left is the "old" package with a weight of 170 grams. On the right is the new one replacing it on shelves, with a weight of 160 grams. Same price.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

The "Pro Fighter X" series of SNES copiers has kinda stupid disk handling code: it doesn't filter out FAT entries on floppy disk that should never be displayed, like the Volume name ("CHRIS"), directories, and long filename chunks. This causes errors during display & loading. So I RE'd and fixed it.

It's displaying the volume name first, "CHRIS" then overlaying invalid entries into the file list. Also tries to load invisible files...

My disk fix code. Done through a bit of searching and trial-and-error, since these BIOSes don't run on emulators, and no SNES emu emulates floppies anyway...

Pro Fighter X file display fixed up! Also with a new tilde glyph added into the font, as well as a new custom SFC background

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

I did what the UFO guys never bothered to do: about a week ago, I read up on how Long File Names (LFN) work on FAT12 floppy storage, and programmed in a display routine for LFNs on my Super UFO8 FDD copier. Much more useful now!

The Super UFO 8 copier displaying long file names

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

The UFO 8 (FDD) Super Famicom copier has a realtime savestate feature which also lets you examine PPU backgrounds and sprites from the savestate. You also can view the Mode7 BG, but only *view*. I've added my own routines in the UFO BIOS to let you scroll, scale, and rotate around the Mode7 BG.

4 snapshots of the Japan map screen in SFC Ganbare Goemon rotating in Mode7, using my hacked program in the Super UFO

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

The BIOSes for the "UFO Super Drive Pro-6 Hyper Version" come in a 27256 EPROM, but only have the upper 16KB used. In addition, the copier uses an 8K bankswitching method, so these will probably never run in an emulator. So, using the 1bpp CHR graphics in the BIOS, I've made digital reconstructions.

Digital mockup image of the UFO 6 Jp version BIOS screen

Digital mockup image of the UFO 6 3.1 (English) version BIOS screen

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I found a UFO Pro6 SFC copier for cheap recently. The UFO line of copiers is great, and this one is a... primitive step along the way. While the UFO 7 & 8 had built-in cheat codes for games, the 6 didn't, so it let you store AR and Goldfinger codes directly in the 512-byte copier header of each game

A UFO 6 pic with box taken off the Web. Thanks!

My UFO 6 came with the Japanese "TOKIO" v3.0 BIOS, which I changed for the English 3.1 one. Both versions load disk games in normal or "hyper" mode w/ cheats on. The [*] star modes do the same as the top options, and I have no idea how they are different...

Aha, so this is what the 512-byte SFC copier header is for!
Golden Finger (ROM patch) codes saved in the UFO header of games stored on disk.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

I had a look at early SFC aging tests. The earliest 1.00 version is interesting. It has different sprites & BG examples from the 1.02 version, and also had a bug: when the 1.00 version goes from its mosaic test to the 512-pixel test, they forget to turn off mosaic (fine for 256-mode but not 512)!

Aging test v 1.00. Mosaic pixel size is left at 0 (1x1 pixels for 256-pixel modes) which shows up a bug seen only in 512-pixel modes! Not all SNES emulators emulate this...

Aging test v 1.02. Mosaic pixel size is disabled after test, fixing the bug seen only in 512-pixel modes.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

I had a couple extra days off this week, and I continued apace on fixing up/hacking/improving the Super UFO (SFC floppy copier) 8.3j BIOS. Highres interlaced modes work and I've added in a mosaic screen transition during logo fade-in/out

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I moved my hacks of the UFO Pro 8 (old floppy disk SFC copier) from hex editing to the 64tass assembler. So now I'm working on the BMP display of 240p images, and full highres interlaced (512x478) pixels in the VRAM viewer feature of the UFO. Also, no music, English and no floppy autoload...

The Super UFO startup screen running at 239p instead of the default 224p

Some of my code (rather than just byte editing in a hex editor)

BMP loading and displaying of 240 pixel tall images working!

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Has anyone ever noticed this? If you return to the SPECIAL zone in Super Mario World by pausing and exiting a stage (particularly 2nd from bottom-left), the bass guitar sample is much louder than entering the zone via the star or by completing a level...

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

European NES Mega Man and Mega Man II original art pieces at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

sorry about the glare/reflections. Well, it's better than the US version, at least

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Street Fighter II & Turbo original artwork at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

I've seen this so many times it's kinda looking amateurish next to the Turbo art

Probably the best of the three pre-Super SFII cover art pieces

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Forgotten Worlds and Sidearms original artwork at the Capcom exhibition, Tokyo.

sorry about the glare, kinda unavoidable

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Rockman 2 / Megaman 2 original art at the Capcom Exhibition in Tokyo. This was especially difficult to try to photograph without reflections, since it had at least 2 layers of animation cels on top of the background art board.

Rockman 2 / Megaman 2 original art close-up of Wily Castle

Rockman 2 / Megaman 2 original art close-up of robo-rabbit

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Rockman / Megaman original art at the Capcom Exhibition. Painted animation cels on art board (hard to capture!)

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

More original artwork from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo. Ghosts 'n Goblins (魔界村) art. 2nd pic... um, Prin-Prin needed a second going-over, I think...

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

SFII planning document for E. Honda's stage. This has many interesting tidbits, including: the character being named "E. Suzuki" and "Japan: Sumo" on the reverse of the paper. Also, several areas labeled 「すじ流れ範囲　ビョーン」indicating line scrolling areas that get warped, "sproing! zoom!" [sic] etc .

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Planning document for SFII from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo: Ryu's stage. Nothing special here, but the artwork is quite nice.

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Finally, for now, another close-up look at the texture of the acrylic on illustration board original artwork for Black Tiger/Black Dragon, at the Capcom expo/museum in Tokyo. Loving that glowing red brick work!

Black Tiger original art full piece. Sorry about the glass reflections!

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

SFII character Chun-Li stage planning doc at Capcom exhibition: Lots of activity meant to be going on in the background in this stage. And the location seems to be "Da'an Road" (大安路 Dà'ān lù) as per the sign bottom-right... is that a real place in Beijing/Shanghai, or Hong Kong etc?

SFII character Chun-Li stage planning doc at Capcom exhibition: Da'an road in China somewhere...

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

SFII @ Capcom exhibition: Character design for Zhi Li (智麗; not Chun-Li yet), where she still resembles Tong Pooh from arcade Strider

Character design for Zhi Li who later became Chun-Li

Moveset design for Zhi Li who later became Chun-Li

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

More SFII planning sheets from the Capcom exhibition in Tokyo. Dhalsim's stage has nothing unusual or incriminating -- the stage name just says "India". There are some cute sketches/stamps, though.

India stage design sheet from SFII arcade

some sketches done by SFII planning staff, including Koizumi, whoever that is

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Chris Covell @chriscovell.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

SFII character Guile stage planning doc at Capcom exhibition: On the reverse (and in large on the left!) was an initial name for Guile: Jinjin (じんじん), reportedly based on Jean Pierre from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure comic books. Both "Jean" and "Jojo" have too many 'J's to be a coincidence...

Guile's stage planning doc, with a never? before disclosed name of JinJin for him...

On reverse, it says "USA <Jinjin>" (アメリカ＜じんじん＞)

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