iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/09/2026

I think it's something about the kart handling for me. It always felt like the karts were heavy on the back end and that there was a delay in turning. I'm not sure if it's just the "leaning" animations making it look like that but I could never shake the feeling.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 13/09/2026

Awesome #vcfmw this year as always. And of course I left with more than I came with. As usual. Here's a pic of some cold cathode lights I found on the free pile. I added them to the display rig right away. Neat!

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 12/09/2026

My posters are starting to look a bit worn after using them for a few years. Maybe it's time for new ones next time!

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 03/09/2026

September 12-13 in Schaumburg, Illnois. www.vcfmw.org

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 03/09/2026

It's almost time for #VCFMW! This time, at my table you can experience 4 different #OPL3 implementations playing simultaneously and switch between them at will! How different are they? Why not come hear for yourself?

Table map for VCFMW, showing Wafflenet is located in block B6, table B604.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 17/08/2026

Ugh. The intense storms hitting the Midwest finally did my basement in, and now I have water seeping out of the floor. Luckily my vintage tech is unharmed. However, it may be quite a while until they have a proper home again. Not much you can do to mitigate against 8 inches of rain over a few hours.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 01/07/2026

Used game stores are on borrowed time now. From a technical perspective, it would be completely viable to make a system where you can revoke a game license from your account and get a new, transferrable redemption code to resell. From a business perspective, nobody will ever allow it to happen.

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Reposted by MrKsoft

gorilla.bas @brassicgamer.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

RIP Robert Prince, credited on 71 games, most of them forming the soundtrack to my early teens. Absolute legend.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 03/06/2026

You either love to hate CQM, or hate to love it. Regardless, this is really awesome and can help us understand and actually express the differences between CQM and a real OPL3.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 03/06/2026

Things are so spread out which makes it hard. I'm in central Illinois and there is just nobody locally in the hobby so if I want to hang out and do retro stuff it's a long trip. VCFMW has a "LAN party" usually but it hits different with friends. Also I'm busy looking at all the cool exhibits there!

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 03/06/2026

This was a godsend for my LAN parties, made deploying StarCraft super easy. ...shit, the last one was 16 years ago. Feels like yesterday.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 03/06/2026

That would be great! I will try to get them added to the site, but I am super behind on updates because I've been holding them off for a major rewrite. The site's gotten too big to manage by hand so I am building a big database driven management tool in the background... and it's taking forever lol

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 03/06/2026

The OPL Archive will be returning to VCF Midwest this year! I know it's a bit repetitive, but the Archive is my unique contribution back to the community - more than just some computers everyone's seen before on a table. Maybe I can find some ways to freshen the exhibit up this year?

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

I did have to pull these ISA boards from the machine (they were in it when I got it) - two Equinox Megaport 12CS twelve port serial cards. Apparently they are EISA compatible somehow? But !EQX1011.CFG is lost to the ages. Does anyone have it? (and some drivers?? Equinox's FTP was never backed up)

Error from EISA utility asking for !EQX1011.CFG which I don't have and neither does mR_Slug's EISA cfg archive.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

I like the splash screen. Professional yet kinda quaint and amateurish at the same time.

The DEC System Configuration Utility for DECpc MTE

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

Wired up a new battery for the Benchmarq RTC chip over lunch. Now for EISA config!

A CR2032 battery piggybacked onto a Benchmarq bq4287 RTC chip

Modified chip in the socket on the motherboard

BIOS no longer shows "real time clock failure" and asks to run the EISA config

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

God, I had this too. I was already trying to make 2D games in Multimedia Fusion and the marketing made this sound similar but in 3D. Yeah, it wasn't anything like that.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

"Drill a hole in the side and wire it up" ... The working man's method :p

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

Honestly the original MT board is cooler in one way. While it has trash onboard video and only ISA slots, it also has the CPU on a card connected with some Eurocard like connectors. I wonder if they meant for it to be swappable with like a Pentium or Alpha card (not that I know of any)

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

Very easy swap, and it passed the smoke test! It's very obvious the case was designed for both boards. Now to deal with the stupid RTC chip.

PhoenixBIOS(TM) E486 Version 1.00
Copyright (C) 1985-1992 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
All Rights Reserved

DECpc MTE 486DX2 Version 1.02
Copyright (C) 1993 Digital Equipment Corporation
All Rights Reserved

640K Base Memory
7168K Extended Memory

Real time clock failure
Diskette drive A failure
Diskette drive B failure
Waiting for disk ready ...

080 To enter Setup press: . . . . . . . [F1]

Motherboard in the DECpc case with the S3 805 local bus card installed.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

And yes I know I'll have to deal with this stupid thing

A Benchmarq bq4287mt battery+sram chip. Ugh.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 19/05/2026

Getting myself into trouble. I have a DECpc 466d2 MT. It's okay, but slowish for a 486DX2/66 and only has ISA slots. But now I have ended up with the motherboard from the 466d2... MTE! With EISA and VLB! I'm sure this swap will go just fine...

DECpc 466d2 MTE board. It has Socket 2 with 6 EISA slots (one shared VLB) and a VLB like "local bus video" slot that "almost" fits a normal VLB card but they're blocked by the backplane. It pushes the video signal to an onboard VGA port. (I have the associated S3 805 card)

A standard DECpc 466d2 MT with the side open. The boring ISA only model with crappy S3 924 graphics.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 17/05/2026

I am not a Mac user but I saw this on my feed and wanted to say it is probably one of the nicest looking MIDI players I have ever seen. I'm kind of jealous. Bravo!

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 16/05/2026

FMV games are an acquired taste (and generally not a taste I have acquired myself), but this marathon of a video really helped me respect what they were trying to do. Incredible deep dive into Digital Pictures.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 10/05/2026

Interesting Amiga 500 with an internal hard drive mount that hangs off the keyboard. It also has a DKB MegaChip for 2MB of ChipRAM. Nice!

Opened Amiga 500 with an IDE hard drive hanging off the keyboard. The screen shows it has 2MB of ChipRAM

Side view of the Seagate ST3660A hard drive (545MB) hanging off the keyboard

Amiga 500 guts. Revision 5 board with modifications for supporting trapdoor ChipRAM, A501 board, DKB MegaChip with 8375 Agnus, and the ICD AdIDE piggybacking off the 68000 to add hard drive support. It's kitted out except for a lack of FastRAM!

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 29/04/2026

Yeah, hit detection is really spotty in this version. Imo in the PC version the difference wasn't really anything in the AI behavior but just the track symbol layouts, which tend to have more hazardous layouts in Hardened. (More ammo downs, slowdown arrows, other bad stuff to avoid)

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 29/04/2026

Compare vs the PC version, the palettes of the Novice and Hardened levels are different. Example, NewSan 1 is kind of bluish in Novice and more purple/maroon in Hardened (as they use different FMVs with different symbol layouts). The two modes in the CD32 version use those respective FMVs.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 29/04/2026

That does sound like what happened to me on Skyholder, but instead of making it through a lap, it played like one or two frames of FMV, displayed some glitchy frames, and then crashed. It could be a transient problem with the dump or emulation or even a memory leak, I suppose?

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 29/04/2026

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Reposted by MrKsoft

Martijn Frazer 🇳🇱🇪🇸🇮🇪🇮🇸🇸🇮 @martijnfrazer.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I don't get all the hype, I've been a prompting engineer for 40 years!

$Black screen with white pixely letters saying "Starting MS-DOS... C:\>_"$

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

Anyway that's what I found so far. It's not complete, for sure, but a lot works. If it is indeed a bad dump and we can get a better one, there might be more to see. Being able to decompress MEGARACE.DAT would also help inform us on how much was done. Now I should probably make a TCRF page...

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

Full level flow: Practice: NewSan 1 -> NewFac 1 -> NewSan 2 -> Particle -> NewFac 2 -> Maeva 3 -> NewSan 3 (messed up palette) TV Show: NewSan 1 -> Maeva 1 -> NewFac 1 -> Ngloop -> Skyholder (graphics glitch and console reboots at start of race) This might be because it's a bad dump.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

Looks like "TV Show" mode is more complete. The cutscenes are all present so far. Since there were rumors of the CD32 version cutting levels, it looks like they just excised a bunch of the Novice levels and called it "Practice" to accomplish this.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

So if you end NewSan 1 without defeating all the other cars, it gives you a "Game Over", but on later levels, it just passes you to the next level. Turns out if the enemy gets behind you and shoots you (which can't happen on PC, only on 3DO) you actually can die - but it just restarts the level.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

Level flow so far is NewSan 1 -> NewFac 1 -> NewSan 2 -> Particle -> NewFac 2, so lots of missing stages. Having trouble beating NewFac 2 because the number of opponents has been increased and they take more hits than on PC, so I run out of ammo.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

Update: Car damage might work on some levels cause I died in one? There are general inconsistencies in levels of completion between levels. For instance, sound effects are different in some levels (noticed ammo up/down symbol switches between PC and 3DO sounds depending on the level)

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

More findings... Doesn't look like the FMVs between levels are implemented. No music even with music selected as audio. Not sure if the crappy PCM streams from the 3DO version were going to be used, or something sequenced with Paula that wasn't added. Car damage doesn't work, so you're invincible.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

"Practice" and "TV Show" modes are actually the difficulty settings for this version, which are "Novice" and "Hardened" in the PC version. These use different FMVs since the track symbol layouts are different.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

Credits are slightly modified to credit Lionel Guillang for more than just the CD32 Program: It now also adds him for Motion System, and Compression. This seems to track with MEGARACE.DAT being compressed differently than the PC version which used Daniele Herbulot's HSQ... so couldn't extract it.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 28/04/2026

I also found that you need to set the ChipRAM to higher than 2MB, otherwise it would just reset when it was supposed to load the car select screen. Probably isn't optimized for a retail console yet. Overall, it seems to be a hybrid between the PC and 3DO versions in terms of gameplay "feel".

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 24/04/2026

I don't think there is any modern PocketPC emulation, but this would probably work in the "Device Emulator" from old (WinXP era) versions of Visual Studio. I think that may have been available standalone on Microsoft's site once upon a time, but it probably doesn't work on newer OS's.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 13/04/2026

What business? This is "bring your own 25-year-old copy of MacOS to run on a 20-year-old game console that isn't suited to run it", not a commercial venture like Psystar that was selling PCs and distributing copies of then-new MacOS with them that they weren't licensed to sell.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 13/04/2026

No graphics acceleration. The Wii U has kind of an AMD TeraScale variant (which was never available on OS X PPC), so that would be a pretty difficult undertaking.

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 12/04/2026

There's also a totally separate project called Wiintosh too, apparently. This one has 10.2-10.4 running on the Wii U. I tried it, and it's very impressive! And more useful cause the Wii U actually has RAM. github.com/Wiintosh/Wii...

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MrKsoft @wafflenet.com · 11/04/2026

Aha! I was struggling to remember where I'd heard that sample before. Thanks!

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