Making RJ-11 and RJ-45 cable

Name: Ian
Lab: Report 3
Instructor : Joyce Quist
Date: September 28, 2004
Rev. 1.4 (fixed error with RJ-45 stating it was a crossover cable)

Report

RJ-45 - the straight-through cable



On Tuesday, Joyce assigned a lab report on cables. Each of us did cables individually. One cable was the straight-through cable which is a RJ-45 patch cable in discus. First, I must have a clamping tool to came the proper terminate jacks from the EIA/TIA/ANSI 568-B standard. I need to make sure my cable is no shorter than 10 feet so I took my finger, and hand and measured out approximately 10 feet.

For crossover cable I had to take the jacket stripper, and take the correct amount of jacket off so I could untwist the twisted pair wires. I did some extra clipping to make sure the wires were straight thus they would fit in the termination jack equally. What I used as follows from left to right before I insert them into the termination jack (sometimes called a plug) facing down when I clamp it down a few times. I sure hate for it to come off and have to redo it.

[ Sequence for straight-through cable ]

Orange white
Orange
Green white
Blue
Blue white
Green
Brown white
Brown

Since the opposite end of the cable should have orange white on the left side also and it doesn’t matter if the cable is twisted since the wires are going to end up in the same configuration on each end according to EIA/TIA/ANSI 568-B.

RJ-11 (British Naval Connector)



For the white flat cable, untwisted pair (UTP) I believe, this is very easily. I could easily strip the wire off because all I had to do is make a cut in the cable. Afterwards, I took my finger nails, and peal the ripper off on both sides. If my wires weren’t lengthy enough than all I had to do is make another cut and peal more rubber jacket off without harming the twisted pair wires. I made sure the cable was flat with Orange White wire on the left side and lined up like above, and paid attention to detail so all the wires would fit firmly into the termination jack and clamp it down with the special CISCO clamping tool. The RJ-11 can use the RJ-45 crossover terminator jack. As for the opposite end, I made sure the end of the cable was not twisted, and once I have all the wires in the order I want them, then I simply put another termination jack/plug onto other end so it would mirror my first end exactly. For flat cable, there is no reason to know the color order of the cable since it’s already in color order when it was made.



The last part (which I didn’t have a chance to do) is connecting both ends to the wire tester and run the Map-test test option on the wire. This should discover if the wire has any open wires (which aren’t connected to the tip of the termination jack), loss of signal (means that there is more attenuation in the wire than there should be), maximum bandwidth (peak Mbit or Gbit transfer rate), if all the wires are open (the cable is no good now). This concludes my lab report.

If the Map test showed no errors than this cable should pass.

Getting Sims 2 today I hope

Howdy. Wasn’t sure what to put so I wrote a bunch of stuff like school – seems that couldn’t be helped so I deleted that post and started over with hopefully a better post.

Today is Saturday. I’ve been waiting all week for it to be Friday. Friday is always my slack off day. Yesterday I was playing Star Ocean 3 (go figure) and am about 5 hours in it. Haven’t had a “Game Over” yet on normal so I guess I have what it takes. Key to success - like in all games - is to keep the HP higher than 75%. And obviously, the point of playing the game is to avoid getting hit. If it is low then that’s when I worry. I’ve never gotten myself in that bind – if I were, I’d skip all my battles and find a HP replenishing circles fast. I’m on the 2nd underdeveloped planet interesting enough they want the technology of that little crashed space craft that I’ve made in town. Woops. There goes that popular ‘world is flat’ analogy.

I know there is more in this game’s story, but most civilizations I would think – if they saw something fall out of the sky – wouldn’t people who live on it think that their planet has been invaded? I know if I saw a strange spaceship coming out of the sky I would be terrified. Then there is always the select few who themselves want to be taken on a journey or the like. Nah. It’s not like that. Everyone I known on any planet in this game didn’t come along. In this planet it’s not the case. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll run into a “20th century underdeveloped planet?” Maybe then I will get “the alien welcome”. You know – we want your technology deal. Why is every planet inhabited by humans? And if humans did inhabitant other planets why is there civilizations that don’t have space technology. Yes, there are all kinds of aliens in this game. Blue-Dophins, fox tails, etc. In Star Ocean 3, Earth has joined an allegiance with some other planets. All planets have enemies. Except in Star Ocean 3 at least 1 enemy has changed over to the good side and you met the former enemy early in the game. There (we have two it seems) is 1 human enemy and one alien enemy. Therefore, that leaves me with two enemy forces to worry about. I won’t have to worry about it in a sense because I get very few choices as in the story are the same regardless of what I do. Anyway, as the story begins - the planet that I was vacationing on was invaded than destroyed to nothing more than a waste land. Then we run into a couple enemy ships, escape to an underdeveloped planet with 14th century technology. Get saved by that former enemy that switched sides. I’ve got into another fight with an enemy battle cruiser, astonishing escape again with ‘warp speed’ to another underdeveloped planet. This one is set in the time of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table time period. (Not really himself). The main characters have been brutally wiped than they’ve been thrown into a prison where they get saved from the other side? This side is using runes for magic. Magic is good for those physical immune enemies on the planet. The locals call it runology (rune technology). Star Ocean gets stranger and stranger.

I finally tried out Power Archiver 9.02. I remember way back when Power Archiver was freeware. It supported many formats and was very stable. Then by 8.0 it has became shareware. I’ve been using WinRAR meanwhile. It’ll compress docs 75% in RAR format. That’s good enough for me. Power Archiver 9 has this new 7zip format. It’s supposed to have better compression ratio than RAR. I always thought RAR was the best. The difference is of an 887KB text file would be 294KB in RAR and 276KB in 7ZIP. Its difference is less than 20 kilobytes. Is it worth that much? However, WinRAR will read any 7ZIP file. Power Archiver 9 is great because it doesn’t freeze up or take that much resources as 8.0 did. They fixed the system resources leak plaguing Power Archiver 7x. Yeah!

I started to play some Bookworm Deluxe from Popcap Games. The game is basically a word game. You try to compete for a high score by creating as long words I can. If I happen to spell something to short one of the letter boxes starts on fire – and I must use that box in a hurry. My score was about 71,000 something. I got to the Senor Librarian Assistant level. Actually, it was mom whom made me download it so she could bring it too work next week. She works at a Minnesota hospital and well – the county hospital a few years ago was taken over by corporate sponsors and now is taking away her Internet – so she comes to be and asks me to put this software on CD. You must try this software. It may not be as addicting as a lot of commercial PC games these days – it’s supposed to enhance my vocabulary. I couldn’t image anything more horrible than no Internet privileges – Not!

Oh yeah I found out that The Sims 2 has been available for 10 days already. I may get this game either today or tomorrow so I can see what all the fuss is about. Sims? Sequel to best selling videogame of all time? Huh? Boy, it seems like people sure like to play with their virtual Sim’s minds. Is Will Wright (founder of Maxis and creator of Simcity, Simtown, Simfarm, SimTower, The Sims) a genius for knowing this? Yeah, well, IGN.com already gave it 9.5 out of 10. I imagine Maxis’s next Sims game will combine Simcity with The Sims. In fact, it is already in a way. I can import your personal character data from Simcity 4 into The Sims 2. Simcity 4 let anyone to create a family and the family would give you feedback from their area in the city. Crime reports, tax rate, the family’s needs, etc. Problem is I don’t have Simcity 4 installed. Gamerankings rates this game an 8.9 out of 10 over all. Graphics are in full 3D and a lot of polygons unlike The Sims. I know what I’m going to do – when I get the game, I’m going to go find some cheat codes for the game, buy the biggest house with my infinite money cheat and spoil my guy. Maybe I’ll get married and have children who want things.

[On Sunday] I’ve been playing with the Sims 2. I bought the DVD Special Edition version today. I was asked if I really want this game since it’s on DVD format. I said no problem. I can’t believe people who buy this game didn’t see DVD Special Edition logo in large font. I’ve been playing the Dreamers Family in Pleasantville. It’s made up of two people to be precise. The teenager gets good grades in school, but he has this girlfriend which he absolutely goes nuts over, and for some reason he likes a white girl. The kid’s black. I’m a little surprised. It seems that the game does everything right so far. The Sims are much smarter this time around, and don’t do as dumb of things as last game. My Sim in this game don’t miss work and doesn’t sleep in. Unlike in the original Sims, Sims don’t get as depressed in 30 minutes – not to mention it’s a heck of a lot easier to control my Sims in this game. The game looks much more realistic graphics wise, the furniture has 10 times the polygons as the original. It makes the game more fun I think now that it’s in full 3D. I don’t see how people can spend night and day on this game. It’s nothing to loose sleep over.

Later today (right before I wrote this) I was stacking wood and hopefully I get paid. All I need is 53 dollars to buy this game. Yes, another game, but a computer game none-the-less. Impressions maybe next time.

This is Ian signing off.

Shareware game of the day – Bookworm Delux 1.03 Pop Cap Games Homepage

PStwo, Quake 4, Elder Scrolls IV screenshots

I got awesome news I’m going to an Xbox party at school. That’s going to be something. I think their going to play Halo. I wonder if I’m going to be any good at it. I haven’t played my copy for so long. I’ve been more into those rally games. In my opinion – they are much more fun since you play all those cars over rough terrain. It’s harder than you think. But I’m almost mastered it already. I’ve placed 1st or 2nd in almost all the races.

Sony announces the PStwo and it’s about 1/3 the size of the PS2 height wise but it’s black like PS2. Its logo is going to be the PS2’s font and color, but spelled “PStwo.” It can obviously be set on its side like a PS2. Only thing bad about it is the fact I couldn’t hook a hard drive up to it to play SOCOM II or Final Fantasy XI. I’m guessing it’ll cost 99 dollars as a final price.



Game Informer Magazine showed a copy of Elder Scrolls IV – Oblivion. Elder Scrolls III was the first to go high-resolution. Although it has a state-of-the-art graphics engine, it fails to impress me who thought Elder Scrolls 3 had a very good graphics engine – it succeeded in being Xbox’s most beautiful games. I’m seeing round faces this time! There’s an improvement! Another improvement is improved candle lighting. Candle shadows that haven’t been done before. It’s been done with a blur but not actual candle flickering. Other than that I don’t see much difference between Elder Scrolls 4 and Elder Scrolls 3. Websites are getting too hyped about higher high resolution images. I’m not that hyped about it. I think I’ll buy it – if that’s what you’re asking? Is it just me or is the competition fierce. Ever since Final Fantasy 7 was a blockbuster hit – there has been at least 3 or 4 good RPGs out for PC or PS2. I mean not just good – but the ones you want to play this year.

PC

1. Dungeon Siege 2
2. Dungeons and Dragons Online
3. Everquest II (I’m not getting this one)
4. Final Fantasy XI new expansion

PS2

1. Kingdom Hearts II
2. Phantasy Star Collection
3. Phantom Brave
4. Star Ocean 3 – Till the Ends of Time

Anyway, to get back to Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion – this game will use hyper threading and I bet my computer can anti-analyze it at a 1200x960 resolution. The game looks very shiny! It seems that the water is actually shining off the walls – never done before. When all said and done – this game looks photo-realistic. Did I mention it looks kinda like Doom 3 which has twice as much polygons compared to Elder Scrolls 3 – Morrowind. The grass – especially doesn’t look painted onto the ground like it was in Morrowind. It’s a little hard to imagine, but Bethesda is aiming for a larger game than Morrowind. Morrowind has more out doors than any other game around. Just think in 6 years if some developer is working on a MMORPG so vast that it’ll be the size of a 4 Morrowinds, 4 Tribunals and 4 Bloodmoons put together! I expect Oblivion (word fixed - hate to confuse readers) to be the size of two Morrowinds. I’m afraid Morrowind was a great of difference between it and Daggerfall. Oblivion shares Morrowind’s game play with improved graphics. This is definitely on my highly anticipated wish list this year even though this game is coming out next year .

Quake IV looks so much like Doom 3. I think they both are using the same engine. Quake IV is being made by Raven Software – developers of blockbuster games, Star Wars Jedi Academy and Soldier of Fortune. Both take place in the future and both look darker than most games – I try not to say the “H” word on here to often. It gives a bad example. I think it’ll play like Doom except it’ll play exactly like Quake 3 Arena. And that’s nothing to complain about either.

Quake IV and Elder Scrolls IV screenshots
Real Quake IV screens!

Updated I.Q.B. again (version 2.0.5)

Ian's Quinnessential Blog 2.0.5


Did focused my attention on updating the blog to current.

Features:

1. Added new logo. Hope everyone likes it.
2. Added some favorites to left bar
3. updated blog contents
4. changed background from black to white

Be sure to check out my next update

Microsoft XNA Impressions

Microsoft Longhorn Latest Build

The Microsoft XNA – the PC / Xbox 2 hybrid console that can either be played on TV or with a standard SVGA monitor. I know I’m a little late about this subject since information on the XNA has been out last year. Whoa! A year already! Just imagine your Xbox 2 thinner (much like that of PC) hence the PC tower concept similar to the Playstation 2. The Xbox 2 will also have a SVGA port, but the XNA is meant to be played on a high resolution monitor and act like a PC. Microsoft confirmed this part last year. It will look like a thin box much like Playstation 2 with curved edges and have 4 controller ports in the front as well as at least two USB (universal serial bus) ports in front for normal pc peripherals (keyboard, mouse, analog game pad, digital camera, printer, 802.11B hub, external hard drive, MP3 player). It will also come with pc speaker output (remember the green and black jacks on your PC? They will be on the XNA as well.)

Since the Xbox 2 will have a 3.5 GHz IBM CPU on it, it’ll probably use it to play both Xbox and PC games. Interesting enough, Xbox 2 uses PowerPC agriculture to power it’s software because it’s cheaper than using a X86 platform. Xbox 2 is stated to have a 256-bit ATI GPU in it too. Here are the known possibilities:

1. The XNA will have a motherboard for two processors. One is the IBM Xbox2 CPU and the other is an IBM PC CPU. A CPU is more or less a microchip. Both will use the same memory and same GPU. Windows will recognize the GPU as a Radeon series and use an ATI Catalyst driver or more likely, Microsoft will give buyers a video card driver on CD with the package. This version will definitely have a hard drive. The system more than likely will have a eject button where you can stick a Xbox 2 DVD in it and it’ll play Xbox 2 games like a normal Xbox 2 console would. The Xbox 2 BIOS screen will have an extra option to boot Windows XP or Windows Longhorn instead or by default it’ll have an Xbox 2 BIOS screen.

2. The XNA will have a Xbox 2 CPU, motherboard, RAM, and video memory installed one on half, and have a X86 IBM motherboard, either a Intel or AMD processor, 256MB SDRAM on the other half. This is a possibility since to my knowledge you can’t operate a game machine that runs PowerPC components and a PC on the same hardware. In other words – can a G5 run Windows XP? Answer: it’s possible through commercial emulation via Microsoft’s Virtual PC for OS10. Saw it with my own eyes on TechTV’s The Screen Savers.

3. The XNA will have an Xbox 2 power pc motherboard, IBM Power PC CPU, RAM and memory. The console’s BIOS will recognize a Windows NTFS partition on it. In other words - the BIOS will boot the Xbox 2 information screen first and than boot NTFS or if Longhorn comes along the new WINFS file system which will act as a normal computer The BIOS will have to be pretty advanced to recognize Windows OS and play Xbox 2 games. This is where you can reformat the hard drive in NTFS or WINFS while still keeping the Xbox 2 operating system intact. If this is the case and it very well may be – the owner may dual boot Linux with Windows by inserting a Linux installation CD. The XNA would than be a favorite for hobbyist who likes to run benchmark tests on other things besides PCs. It will either emulate the X86 BIOS so that the BIOS can format a NTFS partition on the hard drive of the XMA or MS will actually have a Windows XP installation disc especially for XNA.

4. The XNA could have one master BIOS to boot the Xbox 2 bios or X86 bios. The Xbox Bios would of course boot the Xbox hardware as it would in Option 3. Then the Windows BIOS would take control and boot the X86 partition(s). It would have to be X86 hardware since PC games need PC hardware to run. The difference between #3 and #4 is that there is one master BIOS on control and two extra BIOS to control separate operations of two very different types of software. It will either emulate the X86 BIOS so that the BIOS can format a NTFS partition on the hard drive of the XMA or MS will actually have a Windows XP installation disc especially for XMA.

The easier question to answer is why would I buy it? For people who hate to switch from their Windows PC to their Xbox. In time a PC will be more powerful and less costly than the Xbox 2. A few years after Xbox 2 is released – you won’t have state-of-the-art console to play your PC games on. This is a question that people will ask themselves when they buy a XNA for 700 or 800 dollars. If I had an expert opinion on how the XNA is actually built - #3 would be my best guess. It makes sense to have one BIOS and one agriculture amongst the Apple line than a dual agriculture (Apple and X86). All Microsoft needs is a great X86 emulator that hardly sacrifices speed for performance. It’s great to run applications, but can it run games as well? Microsoft needs to find a way to refine “Virtual PC” to near perfection if they want to be successful in selling XNA. I think this is possible since hobbyist have Xbox emulators already running Xbox games on PC. Why can’t it do vice versa? Just because it wasn’t attempted before doesn’t mean future products will not benefit from both.

Xbox emulators for Windows (betas)

Xeon 0.7.8c (more updated)
CXBX 0.10

Go to Download Site

Microsoft knows that 40% of American’s play videogames of any sort. About 4 out of 10 Americans are below the age of 16 so this would make a lot of sense. I take it about one half of those teenagers are like me and enjoy playing videogames once in a while. The other half would be adults who grew up with the Genesis or Playstation, and haven’t stopped playing. I hear RPGs are selling at an all time high presently. That could be one reason. My reason is being born without anyone else so I don’t get out much with other people. Although I’m on the computer more than playing games. I like to talk about them and look up reviews or writing miscellaneous ideas. I spend more time looking at videogame reviews than playing. I play the most on weekends.

I plan on getting the new Nintendo console so I’m not going to get Xbox 2. I have other things to do besides playing games, not to mention I already have 320 videogames. Without PC games - I have approximately 250 videogames across 10 platforms. (NES, SNES, N64, GCN, Xbox, PS, PS2, Dreamcast, Saturn, Gameboy Advance).

There is another question – I am missing the concept of using high-end videocards like the Quadro FX that cost 1500 dollars online. All it is – is a PCI card that can probably do graphics better than a Radeon 9800 XT. A Radeon 9800XT or Geforce 4 Ti 6700 is great for gigaflop performance. You can max out your graphics setting with such high spec games like Far Cry, Unreal Tournament 2004 or Doom 3 with those GPUs. These cards can handle very high resolution graphics than Radeon 9800 XT, but for a 21” monitor – there is no need for it. The smaller Radeons have ¼ the memory bandwidth as the big ones.

Normal Memory Bandwidth (can do resolutions up to 2048x 1536, 1600x1200 in most pc games):

ATI Radeon 9800 XT (256-bit) = 24 GB / sec (this is mine)
Cost $399 online

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128-bit) = 8.8 GB / sec

PNY Geforce 5700 (256-bit) = 6.4 GB / sec
Cost $120 online

Workstation cards Memory Bandwidth (can do resolutions up to 2048 x 1536:

PNY Quadro FX 2000 (128-bit) = 12.8 GB / sec
Cost $1248 online

This message is for Bob:

Oh yeah, Bob if your reading this – why don’t you come over! You never answer your phone. Don’t you like me anymore? I know you have Angie and girlfriends need more affection than I. I know you like Angie more than I or Randy. Randy sees you more often than I do. I don’t really play videogames all that much – Bob. However, it would be fun if we go see a movie. To be honest, I would lie and say I am a big hotshot at school Do you believe I have 20 friends? Knowing you – you probably see through that as well. You being so clever – you would find out. So it’s no good lying to you – it doesn’t work – you know me too well. You can even live on your own and never get homesick. Fine - if we don’t see each other in 4 more months – I’ll just forget all about you okay! How does that sound? No more Ian to hang around with. Ya! I’m my own person now! Don’t need Bob to make me feel good – but you’re still welcome to be my friend. I’m giving you 4 more months - that’s January. Friendships sometime come to an end eventually. We’ve been friends for 8 years now.

This is Ian signing off.

Greatest games in my opinion

Today I am going to list off my personal favorites I’ve played for each console.

Top 5 Nintendo

1. Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros. is comes packaged with the NES and it’s reviewed by many as the best NES game on the console. While the graphics aren’t comparable to that of Super Mario Bros 3, it’s game play exceeds everything except maybe Final Fantasy or Metriod in sound.
2. Final Fantasy – the first RPG for any console. Final Fantasy has outdated graphics, but the graphics were above par when it came out.
3. Metroid– I played this one through Metroid Prime on Gamecube. It is made from Gameboy master-designer, Gunpei Yokoi. Metriod is said to be one of the first side-scrolling shooter. Everything about this game is cool. You play everyone’s favorite intergalactic bounty hunter (please don’t hate me for not saying Boba-Fett) none other than Samus Aran to save the galaxy from the mother metroid for the first time. Blaster and power suit come standard in her inventory. Graphics are about the best on the NES and the game is long and brutal. You can’t play this game at a novice level unless you’ve cheated.
4. Tetris – Tetris has been around for over 15 years. Everyone should instantly recognize this mind game. I find it fun trying to put the blocks in order. Every console from then on after had Tetris on it. In fact, Tetris Worlds has been released on Playstation, Playstation 2, Dreamcast, N64, X-box, and Gamecube. Since when has one game been ported across 2 generations? Super Nintendo had Super Tetris. N64 also had Tetris Attack and Tetrisphere.
5. Legend of Zelda – the Game that started it all. Who could forget Legend of Zelda? It’s stars Link and you save a princess named Zelda. Classic storyline.

Top 6 Super NES

1. Super Metroid – A game I almost bought at the game store today. It sells for 40 dollars. This game is recognized as Metriod 3. I do believe that Metroid 2 was on Gameboy. It has updated graphics, but does Metriod really need better game play which was so revolutionary in the first game? I played the rom and it played well. It’s suppose to have many secrets
2. Legend of Zelda – Link to the Past – My first Super NES game. The 3rd installment in the series. Once again Zelda gets kidnapped and you try to save her. Graphics are good in 1992, but in 1996, they were barely above average.
3. Final Fantasy VI – Probably the 3rd RPG that I played on Playstation, and it’s the best RPG for Super Nintendo. Likewise - it carries the Final Fantasy name. Extremely high profile budget. It’ll be another 3 years until another installment of Final Fantasy comes out. Cut-scenes, epic music, and over 5000 textboxes come standard.
4. Chrono Trigger – another game I have for Playstation. You play Crono and save the world with a princess, a frog and another warrior. You travel through time too. Since it’s a RPG, you get dramatic cut-scenes (harharhar - it’s from 1995 okay, don’t expect polygons), and lot and lots of text. Again, it’s made from Squaresoft so expect the best quality.
5. The 5th one is really hard. I was going to say Secret of Mana, but I decided that the English translated ROM of Star Ocean is better. Theory is if you have one of those ROM backup thing-a-ma-jigs for Super Nintendo you can play it on your Super Nintendo hence it being a Super Nintendo game. Star Ocean has really, really good graphics that surpass Final Fantasy VI. And it has audio cut-scenes in it! Never seen before. Game made by Tri-Ace and published by Enix. Only released in Japan.
6. Mortal Kombat II – I personally pick Mortal Kombat II as my favorite fighting game. I don’t own it but I played the ROM. My poll says Street Fighter Alpha 2 is the best SNES fighter. I haven’t seen it at the game store nor played it.

Top 6 Sega Saturn games

1. Nights – probably the most addictive Saturn game in my collection. I bought a 3D analog controller just so I could play it. It’s #1
2. Daytona USA – a port of the arcade game
3. Fighter’s Megamix – probably the most decent 3D fighter from Sega developer AM2
4. Virua Fighter – another good game
5. Gex – a good platform game – it plays like Donkey Kong Country.
6. Panzer Dragoon Okay game. You save the world with a dragon.

Playstation (I bought PSone so I call play Square-soft games so interesting enough my top 5 are all RPGs)

1. Final Fantasy 8 – My first RPG I’ve played so likewise it’s my favorite Final Fantasy game for Playstation. Spans 4 CDs. Over 40 hours long.
2. Legend of Dragoon - I know this game didn’t receive that good reviews, but I like the backgrounds and it’s the 2nd favorite RPG I own. Also spans 4 CDs and roughly 40 hours long. This game is developed by Sony Computer Entertainment and was the single most costly project for it. Cost Sony as much as Squaresoft to finance development of Final Fantasy 7.
3. Final Fantasy 7 – Now a classic Playstation game, but easily found at any game store that’s because there are so many copies around. Remember this game sold over 3 million in the United States. It’s still the 3rd best Playstation RPG to own. It’s not as much as a romance as FF8 was, but it does have music and the graphics were state-of-the-art at the time. Read a review or something. Thing game doesn’t need an introduction because most readers own this game I would think. It’s the first time a RPG had FMV and spoken words.
4. Chrono Cross – Sequel to Chrono Trigger. It’s about half as long as Final Fantasy, but still pushed the Playstation to it’s theoretical limits. Sources say the graphics engine runs at 60 frames per second.
5. Xenogears – another Squaresoft RPG. It’s also a space RPG spanning across 2 discs.

Nintendo 64

1. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time – Probably my single most favorite game for N64. At first I never bought this game because I heard it was too good. It’s the best selling videogame at Game Stop and Toyriffic. I bought my copy in 2002, which one of my recent N64 games.
2. Goldeneye – Best first person shooter for N64. Game developed by Rare. Uses full 007 James Bond license. Graphics were cool in 1997. Nothing else compared to it. I beat it on 00 Agent
3. Conker’s Bad Fur Day – Weird how this game got on the list. I bought it only a few months ago. Game also made by Rare. Played the Rom today actually. This game confuses the emulator I think – it crashed. After the opening sequence.
4. Super Mario 64 – It’s a classic and the first N64 game out. Still it’s like Super Mario Bros 3D. An above average technical demo in 1995 from what I heard. I completed it three times from what I remember. Fun game. Played it through many times.
5. Perfect Dark – 2nd First person shooter from RARE. Came out in 2000, and I bought it at that time. Since it had the memory expansion pack – it looked better than any other N64 game. I play the rom every once in a while.

Dreamcast

1. Crazy Taxi – I liked sending passengers to their destination. The graphics looked like Playstation 2 games and the game itself played well. I believe it had Slipknot on it
2. Rayman 2 – the best platform game for the Dreamcast
3. Skies of Arcadia – my favorite RPG for Dreamcast. Had graphics of early PS2 games. Very long - spanned 50 hours. Decent story. Random battles too
4. Grandia 2 – ever since I bought this game – I tired getting my hands on the original Grandia. This game brought the series to 3D (polygons) The DC version look better than the PS2 version. Played well. Got hard in the middle. Keep dieing. Came with an audio CD with Grandia 2 music on it. I rather Game-Arts included Grandia with Grandia 2.
5. Soul Caliber – probably the best 3D fighting game for Dreamcast. IGN.com gave it a perfect score.

Playstation 2

1. Star Ocean – Till the End of Time – probably the longest console RPG the world’s ever own. (not counting RPGs like Neverwinter Nights or Morrowind Game of the Year) Spans across two DVDs. That’s equivalent to 14 CDs! Since this game is the Director’s Cut and took 1 ½ years to hit North America, the graphics are a bit outdated. This is also my favorite since I’m playing it now. Star Ocean is set in 738 SD and has it’s own story loosely based on Star Ocean The Second Story.
2. Final Fantasy X – first Final Fantasy to be fully cut-scene driven. Gameplay is 40 to 60 hours if you play all the quests. Has this thing called Overdrive. You press the X button at the precise moment and you do up to 200% more damage. Also has this sphere grid where you level up and get to choice how to build your character.
3. Grand Thief Auto Vice City – Known to many as the best PS2 game ever created.
4. Xenosaga – Episode 1 – It’s a space RPG. In the game your attacked by an alien spices called the Gnosis who are form themselves to anything and deplete human’s vital signs for energy. They can also become cyborg if they have the necessary resources. The Federation develops a super weapon prototype called KOS-MOS which can destroy Gnosis where no ordinary human being can. The androids look like anime. Fine. 60 hour RPG – l o n g !
5. Jak and Dexter – the Precursor Legacy. – First game of the trilogy. In my opinion the best. I own two and the final installment is coming out this year. This game was developed by Naughty Dog which developed the Crash Bandicoot games for Playstation.

Gamecube

1. Metroid Prime – good Action RPG. Looks like a first person shooter with a gun. You’re the best own heroin bounty hunter in the videogame world, Samus Aran. It’s a first / third person adventure shooter hybrid game. One of Nintendo’s highest priority Gamecube games next to the Legend of Zelda franchise. Game developed by Retro Studios in 2002. Comes with Metroid as a freebee. Graphics are only surpassed by Legend of Zelda Wind Waker. It’s also a prequel to Metroid.
2. Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes – Get it Twin snakes as two games in one. Improved graphics over the PS2 version and a little worst then Xbox version. Game is two mini-discs long. I wonder if Nintendo will get MGS: Snake Eater in 2006? Silicon Knights which helped port the game over two Gamecube is no longer a 2nd party of Nintendo which means Konami will have to port the whole game themselves, which more than likely will not happen. What a shame. And this is the very reason Playstation 2 had sales over Nintendo Gamecube.
3. Resident Evil – You can’t own a Gamecube without owning “Resident Evil: Revisited”.
4. Legend of Zelda - Wind Waker – This game had to make the top 5. It’s a good 40 hour RPG. Nintendo’s best.
5. Legend of Zelda Promotional Disc– 4 Zeldas on one disc (2 NES / 2 N64).

Xbox (Xbox is by far the hardest)

1. Colin Mcrae Rally 04 – My favorite racing game
2. Rallisport Challenge 2 – another rally game
3. Fable – just got this game today (more below)
4. Project Gotham 2 - Bizarre Creations best game to date
5. Halo – the high profile first person shooter by Bungie for Xbox and PC.

Windows PC

1. Unreal Tournament 2004 – my personal favorite
2. Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction
3. Neverwinter Nights
4. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
5. Call of Duty

Yesterday I went to Toyriffic and looked around. I didn’t see anything I liked so I wanted to look to see if the store had Super Metroid. Super Metroid is a rare game, and I blew the extra money on Fable. So I could have bought Super Metroid, but didn’t due to the money. At Gamefaqs.com, I saw that this game has a bunch of 9s and 10s in the reader review section so I thought “Wow, people really liked this game!” I ended up buying Donkey Kong Country 3 and Wipeout Fusion. I regret what I bought now. I should have spent the 40 dollars on Super Metroid. Humph.

I went straight from Toyriffic to WITC for my class. I was about 30 minutes early. It was really good at first, but then for some strange reason I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t explain the facial expressions on people. I know it’s all small talk – but then it got into a pretty good argument about the Navy. I know nothing about the Navy, and it creeped my out how they knew everything about the Navy. How brutal the navy actually is. I stayed around a while. Didn’t feel right myself and eventually left 1 hour into class. Felt I couldn’t agree with anyone - felt tense so I had to leave. I knew that walking out was the last thing everybody was expecting. Joyce followed me outside and asked me what’s wrong. I didn’t answer, and walked outside. She wanted to see if I had anything against the class I’m coming back anyways on Monday – what’s the point of talking to someone if it’ll reveal that I got frustrated at one point, and creeped out from the ignorance feeling in my mind.

My friend Bob couldn’t come over this week or the last few weeks? He hasn’t called me for over a month for one reason or another. He says last week he was on vacation (don’t know where) and couldn’t come over to visit. I planned a Doom 3 LAN and I have it all set up. Everything is installed and works. I tested it so it really does work – guaranteed. Tomorrows Saturday and I bet he’s doing something again. We live about 14 miles from each other. I could go to his house any time of the day. Bob loves rock. He owns a Genesis and I wondered if I could play that so I could think about getting one myself. I own Dreamcast and Saturn, but not Genesis or Master’s System. Master’s System was junk in my opinion, but Genesis actually was more popular than Super Nintendo according to many sites – which is hard to confirm with most Nintendophilies ya know? They usually like everything Nintendo. I like being nonjudgmental when it comes to game platform so it’s easier if I buy all of them. Usually a used console is less than one game, therefore, owning another console would set me back one game. In fact I think I’ll just set the facts.

Toyriffic sells all their used consoles if only cleaned and play tested first. All of them come with a 1st party controller, power cable, R/F output or audio in

• Used Nintendo 64 /w controller $19.99
• Used N64 / controller / RAM pack $29.99
• Used Playstation /w controller $19.99
• Used PSone /w controller $39.99
• Used Dreamcast /w controller $29.99
• Used Gamecube /w controller $79.99
• Used Playstation 2 /w controller $112
• Used Xbox /w controller $112
• Used Saturn /w digital controller $29.99
• Used NES /w two controllers and copy of Super Mario Bros $49.99
• Used SNES /w controller $39.99
• RARE miniature 3rd generation NES $99.99
• Any Genesis $39.99
• Gameboy $19.99
• Gameboy Color $29.99
• Gameboy Advance $49.99
• Gameboy Advance SP $69.99
• Atari 2600 /w joystick 10 games $79.99
• Atari Jaguar /w controller $99.99

Some of the newer consolers are very decent priced. Heck, if you don’t have a Playstation and have 20 dollars to spend on another videogame – just get a Playstation.

Special Free Files of the Day:

Metroid - Redemption – a fan made platform shooter set in the Metroid Universe. Download Here. 1.2 MB

Ian’s Quintessential Blog 2.0 online

I made several improvements to “Ian’s Quintessential Blog” right before CISCO! It evolves a lot of premade backgrounds which wouldn’t be that difficult to get anyways thanks to the Print Screen button. If my site’s graphics seem overly compressed, that’s because I use a modem. I must sacrifice high resolution images for loading times. With slow loading pages, (30 seconds over a modem or more) people generally stop loading altogether. This is bad. It doesn’t look as good as some of my other modified templates. Still it looks better than Ian’s Quintessential Blog 1.1 I think. I’m going to upgrade my photo gallery to a macromedia flash one. You know – so I can do the fancy zoom in and out effect on the browser. I’ll add this later. I did this blog with Namo Webeditor.


Ian’s Quintessential Blog 2.0 (works best with Internet Explorer)

Fable for Xbox game out today. Fable is made by Lionhead Studios which created Black and White and published by Microsoft. It’s going to be the best looking Xbox RPG (Xbox doesn’t have that many RPGs to begin with) I thought about owning this instead of Phantom Brave. It was delayed for 1 year already. TeamXBOX.com gave this game a 9.3/10. IGN.com gave it a solid 9/10. Gamespy gave it an 8.5/10. It’s where you start out as a boy and every choice you make effects the game somehow later on, and changes who your allies are. There is also PvM and PVP in this game. I just bought Star Ocean 3 four days ago, do I really need it yet? Probably not.

20 Worst things to ask when you’re buying a computer:

• I want the Internet loaded on my computer! (This one is actually true!)
• I want to watch movies on my computer!
• I want to have spell checker on my computer.
• Does my computer come with a keyboard?
• I want a computer that can play 3D games
• I want my computer to play high resolution games
• Does my computer come with Microsoft Word?
• I want it so I can have a PC to surf the Internet only.
• I want a computer but, I don’t know how to use it – can you help me mister?
• I need this thing called the floppy drive because apparently they use it at work. It’s essential that I have one.
• I went into the Gateway store to ask, “Do you sell Macintosh?”
• What’s a processor?
• What’s a hard drive?
• What’s a DVD-ROM?
• Does my computer (PC) to come preloaded with Internet Explorer?
• What does PC stand for?
• You call Dell and ask the operator, “What’s your cheapest computer?”
• I want to surf the Internet with a virus proof computer and if I don’t have one than I won’t get one.
• I don’t want anyone to know I’m on the Internet.
• I want to send email on my computer
• Why are PCs and Macintosh/Power PC different?

If anyone asks these questions please ignore them, it is best if you leave their answers unanswered. It’s a good chance, these people ask these questions to annoy the operators or anyone else they're by. The reason being – any average joe could find these questions out from word of mouth. Once, I had these very same questions, but I matured and got these answers answered rather quickly before hitting middle school WITHOUT annoying people. I listed these because I thought they were really funny because there are bad computer users in the world, but everyone should know the answer to these if they are interested in using computers (unlike my mom). If you are one of these people, refrain from asking these questions, and find your answers off your user-friendly helpful search engine.

If you can think of any other funny ones, please comment.

Enjoy

Do Aliens use Snail Mail? Yep.

Uh-hem. I noticed about 11 months ago and 20 days ago I haven’t received any FAN MAIL! I know what you’re thinking – if I haven’t received mail for 11 months than why would I care? To answer this question – I wonder if other Modblog users get fan mail? Only copperman sent me any fan mail and it was a modified user image by him.

Firstly, I found some interesting facts about sharing Information. Putting data on CD and shipping it is must less costly to send huge amounts of data than Internet dialup costs. And my answer to this, “Screw who ever wrote that.” Think of it? Compressing data and putting it on CD and shipping it. When data is transported by trains, planes, ships and automobiles the price drops significantly. That’s 800MB+ worth of compressed data on the CD. Each bit of information would be less than a cent. Now that I think about it one 7 MB of compressed data is less than a cent if the postage shipment costs only 4 dollars. Now, if I ship DVDs which are about the same weight as normal CDs, I can save a lot more data per dollar, 28 MB per cent compressed. How the heck can anyone download more than 100 MB at once over dial-up? It’s impossible to download more than that in one day where I live unless you’ve got high-speed Internet via satellite. Yes, I live in the trees and corncobs are abundant. I have never done it. The editor of this passage is just stating the obvious. I had a good laugh after reading. I also agree with it, but it’s so damn obvious, I couldn’t stop myself laughing for 5 minutes nonstop. Do people remember how it was before high-speed Internet? Or did some people somehow forget? Oops. ET could - in fact – could have loads of information on his spaceship, therefore, it would physical data sent on a physical medium from his admiral ship (sometimes called his mothership) to all the smaller ships ranked below. Maybe the aliens don’t want us to known about their existence? (The green little martens with antennas sticking outta their heads and flew around in saucers) They have far more technology than we do and they don’t feel like sharing most likely is the reason. URL link - Does ET use Snail Mail?.

Oh yeah, I installed the official Microsoft Service Pack (SP2), and it works even worse. SP1 was better than the retail release of Windows XP, but this isn’t what I had in plan when I downloaded SP2. My expectations were high, of course, because it came from Microsoft. I’m now getting viruses left and right. What’s up with that? SP2 was supposed to be a security patch for Windows XP. My Dell Dimension XPS came with Windows XP Service Pack 1 with it. So far, with my next reinstallation, I won’t install the Service Pack 2 onto my PC next time around. If Microsoft releases a hot fix (patching the patch) to Service Pack 2, which would be really cool. What would be even cooler is if Service Pack 3 did some theme tweaking to the desktop like Windows Blinds 4, except it would be very stable.

As for music I’m listening to some classical for a change. Mozart, Brahms, Robert Schumann, or Beethoven. All of them having genius IQ. Ya, the music is brilliant alright. It’s suppose to sound good. How though? I ripped some of my classical discs to MP3 format about 2 years back. The MP3 files sounds a lot like the WAV file for the most part. Only noticeable lost in volume. I traveled to a videogame remixing site called Overclocked Remix – The Unofficial Game Music Arrangement Community . It’s where various DJs do remixes on videogame music. The Mp3s are all free. I got 350 MB full of this stuff which I downloaded in 2003. The Chrono Cross / Chrono Trigger remixes are great! The Secret of Mana theme soundtrack isn’t too bad either. I’ll download more at school today.

I’m about 3 ½ hours into Star Ocean Till the End of Time. I appreciate the graphics and watch all the FMV the game has to offer. I knew that evacuation on that starship wouldn’t be successful. The main characters were ambushed on a typical save the human race from another alien race storyline. I’m sort of afraid I’ll die too easily, I’m trying to level up in at the beginning so I don’t get killed. It’s one of those hack ‘n slash games too. The battle system is well made though. It seems to be very balanced. Unlike Star Ocean - The Second Story, all the cut scenes English voiceovers, not just the FMV. IGN.com says the voices are bad, but I think they say that because they compare the game to big budget films. I never knew videogame were supposed to have very good voice acting anyways? Their review says Metal Gear Solid 2 voice acting is exceptional and IGN.com isn’t the only one that believes this. As I always say, “As long as it’s in English, I’ll listen to it.” None of the videogames I own have horrible voice acting. I know a few years back, you were cool if you said MGS2 is the best game out for PS2! I don’t know about what’s the coolest now-a-days. Grand Thief Auto: San Audreas?

I tried taking the source code and opening the HTML file in Namo Webeditor 5.0 and play around with the source. I’m almost ready for my first attempt. If I am successful, I will have my first successful template. I’m going to create a large logo with some transparent images and run it off a different server.

This morning, I reinstalled my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 into my XPS. It can do 24-bit DVD quality sound whereas Sound Blaster can only do 16-bit CD audio. Most obvious, my older sound blaster does not have 5.1 Surround Sound support. It is missing the black jack for an extra set of speakers. Mp3s don’t usually surpass CD quality, but in any case the SBA2 enhances the sound with an onboard chip that does equalizing giving a good sound boost. I thought something was defective on the soundcard itself….with my luck, it works now, and my MP3s sound noticeably better with headphones.

VPN Interests Me

Today’s topic is how the heck I got 8 viruses on my computer today. I got rid of all 8 with Anti-VIR. My guess is when I leave my cable connection active – viruses come on my computer and download more viruses. I was wondering why my connection was used all the time. It’s a pain in the butt to have to start Anti-VIR every two days to see how many I got. Viruses make my browser “not respond”, and then my computer completely freezes. I have enough RAM to physically sort out the unnecessary CPU usage. This time I only have 1.65 GB of MP3s on my computer and from what I know no one can add a virus thread onto a MP3 file….yet.

In college today our class was learning about physical topologies. (bus, ring, star, extended star, mesh) Extended stars are the most common topology. What confuses me is Ethernet does not always need TCP/IP addresses to run. Ethernet can also run on token ring using the MAC address. The man who supposedly teaches the curriculum (whom I had last year in Micro Operating Systems) taught us about Intranet (not Internet) which is a virtual personal network (VPN). I find VPNs interesting. But I also agree more with the ‘other’ kind of Internet. The kind that everyone uses... Instant messengers are very much like VPNs in many respects although still apart of TCP/IP. They have a file transfer protocol, text messaging to any node in the world with an email address using the TCP/IP protocol. Well if not using a web browser, email clients such as Microsoft Outlook uses SMTP or POP3 protocols. It can be either.

I learned that satellite transmission are in fact TCP/IP signals that are, of course, sent out in space to arrive to a different host satellite so it goes back to ground. When I think of satellite….I think of Hawaii. I mean they can’t all get high-speed Internet on that tiny group of islands thus they need satellites to access Internet unless an anonymous Internet user goes through 56k dialup. We also had an interesting conversation on how to define “baud” which is actually an alternate term used by networks specialist to describe bandwidth in the old days. It’s really easy to figure out – 56K divided by 4 equals 14 baud. Everything is converted into bits and bytes. Storage and memory are KB, MB, GB and bandwidth and through-put speed are described as bits, kilobits, megabits, gigabits or baud. Not baud so much anymore.

I can’t believe I’m agreeing with people who say anything that’s point blank stupid. And some of what they say is – so I don’t know why they ask such silly questions. I would rather not have this part true (where adults can shout out random comments at the teacher), but I fear I have no other choice. I can not flunk this class for the very same reason I can not just ignore everyone. It’s just wrong and CISCO is very interactive in it’s nature. You must interact with the teacher to stay ahead of the party in my opinion. For example, Jeff gives instructions, and those other people in class confirm what the teacher said. Why? If they would just listen….they wouldn’t have had to ask in the first place. I don’t think anyone there is a moron…at least I try not to say that out-loud.

Now I shall speak gratefully about my growing RPG collection. If reading this bores you – please stop reading. I went into Game Stop to look around I knew I was either going to get La La Pucelle : Tactics or Phantom Brave. Game Stop had both – apparently the publisher of Phantom Brave published a limited amount of this game for North America. I liked this game but I was 5 dollars short or I’ve would of owned it. A used copy of La Purée Tactics just came in and I swiped it before anyone else could. The reason why I found out about Nippon Ichi was when I bought an odd game called Disagea - Hour of Darkness at Toyriffic 6 months ago. I looked like an import and I was half right. It’s an Import translated into the wonderful language that Americans use very day, the one and only English. IGN.com said it was a great game – 9.2 out of 10. La Pucelle Tactics got a final score of 8.8 out of 10. Phantom Brave got 8.6 out of 10. All three got a 5.0 or 6.0 in the graphics although all scored above 8.5 in actual game play. I own 46 PS2 game cases now. I am sure that all three of these games are going to be very hard to find in the future. I counted today, and I have a total of thirteen RPGS for Playstation 2. I couldn’t take the game and run – I would have gotten arrested. Besides, looting the game store is pretty bad. I like RPGs because I like the action time battle system and the traditional turn-based battle system equally. Star Ocean 3 is actually the first game that allows me to choose which one I prefer I hate being hustled. The game store teller asked me if he could help count my change – I had like 10 dollars in cents. Toyriffic told me that they do not wish to talk about Game Stop. Game Stop and Toyriffic are obviously in the same business. It’s MY KIND of business! However, it is obvious that these stores give gamers a chance to own a game that isn’t at the local Wal-Mart or Target or Shop Ko. I believe game specialty stores are paradise for old school game collectors. I happen to think I was one once, but now I’m having second thoughts on this old school collecting thing. I don’t play them – they’re worthless dead weight and I don’t play them – right? So, therefore, I conclude to only spend money on videogames that I play for week or more.

Anyway, I tried out Star Ocean: Til the End of Time for the first time. The intro was really good, it’s better than Star Trek, love the imagination that went into the metropolis. From what I heard off IGN.com the graphics were a little dated, but they looked fine to me. IT is comparable to that of Final Fantasy X and Xenosaga. I want to know if this game is another Xenosaga. Believe it or not Xenogears was developed by Squaresoft, but Xenosaga moved to Namco instead. Namco plans to make six episodes. Otherwise, Squaresoft would have had three Science-fiction RPGs. I think everyone on the face of the planet knows what the 3rd one is. I shall not comment no more.

It is actually not long ago I first owned Grandia II, technically my first RPG. I bought Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time in 2001 which is technically my 3rd. My second is Skies of Arcadia. N64 was the last console to buy if you wanted a RPGs in your game collection (speaking for myself) unless you wanted to own a great game such as Ocarina of Time as I have. It’s no secret it’s a well developed RPG. It was above average on all levels where other RPGs at a time were above average on just a few levels. In 1998, I can think of only Final Fantasy 7 or Xenogears which succeed in being fully 3D. As more average RPGs are released, more of them become above average and thus we have what’s called the “sleeper hits”. Sleeper hits, of course, are games that achieved technical achievement (graphics, gamplay, sound, presentation, story), but never had the publicity that high profile RPGs none other than Final Fantasy X had, but in reality it’s whatever make me happy, of course, which is why I take time to read multiple reviews on my new videogame strategy plan. It’s buying only RPGs above 8.0. Pretty simple…I think so.

This week I almost quit writing for Modblog. The problem with Modblog is I don’t know anyone, therefore, it is very hard to write to an audience which aren’t into the technical side of computers. My blog certainly attracts both the technical crowd as well as gamers, but not as much as technical geeks. I like putting my opinions on a public site, not because I’m always right, but because the point of the website is to attract attention. The web address doesn’t matter – it’s the content on the site. For example, this blog shows on the 3rd page on MSN Search Engine if you search keywords, “Ian’s Blog”. If you search keywords, “Ian’s Smashing Good Blog Site” with Yahoo, Google, or MSN Search, it’ll show up as number one! I only start searching websites through MSN Search a month ago. It clearly has everything that Google and Yahoo has, and my site appears on it. Oddly enough, if I type keywords “Toyriffic” into Google’s textbox. , this web log shows up on the second search page.

As for review sites…I’m have a little problem reading. Different gamers like different things…this is obvious. For every 8/10 and 9/10 there also has to be someone with a 4/10 or 5/10 rating. A good example of this is Gamefaqs.com. Go there and read opinionated stereotyped gamers whom write 3 pages reviewing their favorite games. If I had that time to write a review – I’d rather just read one of IGN or Game Revolution’s reviews. It’s hard to find a guy/gal on Gamefaqs whom really written a lot of reviews. Although Gamefaqs is a community site even more so than IGN - IGN has a very large discussion board with over a million signed up who post 1000+ comments every day. Apparently, they are the only one besides Gameshark.com or Gamespy which employees writers to work for them. Gamefaqs is known for it’s game walkthroughs – best place on the Internet to get a videogame walkthrough these days. There is also Neoseeker.com. I prefer Gamefaqs which I’ve used since 1999.

I'll see USA vs. Russia in 2005 if at XCEL Energy

Yesterday was the USA vs. Russia Hockey game at the XCEL Energy Center (first time the Olympics were played there). I want to see the Russians play the USA in 2005 if it’s at the XCEL center. XCEL Energy Center is in St. Paul, Minnesota, 40 miles away from where we live. The XCEL center is huge with a lot of lights. It opened before the first session of the Minnesota Wild. Dad and I aren’t hockey fans, but the US was playing RUSSIA, and I wanted to see the Russians play. RUSSIA is a big hockey country. 10 years ago the North Stars left Minnesota for Dallas. Many hockey fans were local to the North Stars now follow Dallas until recent years when Minnesota got a new expansion team. It’s interesting the Olympics pick the XCEL Energy Center as a place to match world leagues with American All Star Team. It’s exactly that, USA All-Star Team against world major league hockey. USA plays teams from foreign countries on the 10th too at the XCEL Energy Center. Not too say that other countries hockey arenas aren’t impressive. The Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden looks very big and state-of-the-art from what I saw on the Internet today. I did a little research. It is the largest sphere-shaped dome in the world. I personally prefer the XCEL Energy dome. Unlike the Minnesota Vikings, which are my favorite team of any sport, the city of St. Paul owns and built the dome for 130 million dollars. It was built by the St. Paul Arena Company. They knocked down the old Mets Hockey Arena and replaced it with the Mall of America. The Mets Hockey Arena was where the old Minnesota North Stars hockey team used to play in. In recent years the St. Paul Civic Center has been destroyed to build the XCEL center. XCEL was funded by the city of St. Paul, and state of Minnesota to deliver a very nice hockey arena for home-sick hockey fans.



Well it’s about 1 ½ months away from my birthday (November 01). I don’t know what I’m getting yet, of course. I’m asking for another computer for Christmas. That leaves my birthday free for anything. Maybe I’ll get allowance.

1. Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus nForce3 Skt 64 MB w/ Athlon 64 3000 310 dollar /w tax
2. Speeze / Socket 754 / AMD Athlon 64 / Ball Bearing / CPU Cooling Fan
3. Norcent DWD840 / 8x4x12x DVD+RW / 4x4x12x DVD-RW / 40x24x40x CD-RW / Sonic Software / DVD Burner (50 dollars)
4. 200 GB to 250 GB 7200 Serial ATA hard drive (200 dollars) 512MB is about half this
5. 1 GB of SDRAM (roughly 300 dollars with tax) Takes PC2000x series DDR or too ease up the cost pick 6.
6. Ultra 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory 130 dollars
7. Mercury TIGA Black/Silver ATX Mid Tower Case with Front USB Ports and 400 Watts power supply. (50 dollars)
8. Nvidia Geforce FX 5700 256-bit
9. 100 dollars to put everything together at “Computer Gurus”

If I get this than my processor might be an Athlon 64 3000! I think my dream machine is more powerful than my Dell Dimension XPS although it has about 1 GB less of RAM and a less powerful video card. Athlon 64s run hotter and aren’t ideal for servers, but for gaming - I think high spec games will look better on the Athlon 64 vs. my XPS. Building a PC is cheaper than buying a name-brand one and I get my choice of tower style. I like the transparent one with lights inside. Plus, I can upgrade from 1024 MB SDRAM to 2048 MB SDRAM again myself. I really want another ATI Radeon 9800XT, but I need to cut 600 dollars so my parents can afford a satellite receiver for high-speed Internet. I’m guessing my speed will be 512 kbits per second on a satellite.

I bought Square-Enix’s latest RPG, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, like I said I would. It was the last copy at Target. Wal-Mart says they have it at their website – although I haven’t seen the tag labeled Star Ocean on the shelf. IGN.com says this game has the best game play of any RPG out for PS2. The game really is two DVDs long. Apparently, Sony doesn’t use dual layered DVDs – only the standard ones.

Oh ya! Happy Birthday Dreamcast! Sega Dreamcast turns 5 on September 9th. People say Dreamcast is dead - it's just that mine still works. I know what you mean (a dead system no longer gets new games). Mine is still in operational status. I had little inner-conflict with myself whether or not I wanted to continue collecting games which would almost immediately be shelved or to continue on collecting - at a slower rate. I believe it's similar to smoking - got to kick the habit of buying cigarettes just as it would videogames. I have a long history of owning whatever I want - and for me - money does not grow on trees.

God day readers! I get lonely with no one around to talk to and play games with, this site is a way to express my feeling toward games and choices of college. Thanks DJ Adrenaline for signing my guestbook. I like your music off Internet DJ. Come back. I finished college with a good end. Now I have the whole weekend to have fun. I finished Final Fantasy X about too days ago. I guess I really haven't thought about it, but Final Fantasy X is just better then other RPGs like .Hack. It's just one of those games that is just great. It's old now. I remember when the Internet went crazy over the game. It' true. There are a lot of Final Fantasy sites on the web. Just try typing in Final Fantasy into Google.com. You'll get 1000s of results. In my opinion, generally speaking Final Fantasy sites look better then the average site on the web. Most of them have a fan base that no other game has. You have 10 big search engines that support Final Fantasy games. Fan art is incredible, there are some really talented artists who draw anime after Final Fantasy. I know there are other great PS2 games like Devil May Cry, Grand Thief Auto 3, Twisted Metal Black, Gran Turismo 3 A Spec Metal Gear Solid 2. But I'm not getting into why they are good. I mean there are some truth about what people say in the message boards.

Oh, I'm getting into looking at message boards before I write reviews for videogames.

My opinion about message boards. They call it the Interactive part of the Internet Language. I bet you all have seen short abbreviations of works like LOL! (laugh out loud) :0) (don't take me seriously) cya (see you) It seems that the one useful up to date interactive boards of the past for people with problems on their command line (Windows Prompt / Linux Terminal) turned almost entirely to a gamers prospective. I think that people spend to much time on it. There are groups of people who team up and build a web page complete with message boards and member logins on their page. I can find the tools necessary to hold my own, but I can't contribute that much information, contributing 5 hours a day on my web page. Internet gunus respect gaming boards as they call it. The number of gaming boards on the web is simply huge! Most of it is "I am hold up in this game" or "I like this game the best" or "This game is going to be better then so or so." I stop trying, I mean when I try to talk on these gaming sites like all the Nintendo Gamecube sites you see, I get absolutely no email response.

I am thinking of making this webpage similar. But I'm not going to change this web page, I'm going to hold the same information on a different domain so that it'll load faster (this won't be any concern to you high speed internet surfers.) I have put my college web page at this link. <Click Here> Look at the faster loading format. On this web page I'm thinking of having different, more dynamic menu frames. This page is made up of a bunch of independent tables which I can easily replace and edit.

I went out and got another PS2 game. The name is called Soul Caliber 2. I paid full price for it. Soul Caliber 2 is the sequel to the popular Dreamcast game Soul Caliber. I read that many people gave up their Dreamcasts and traded it in for a PS2. But some of them said that Soul Caliber was hard to part with. I haven't played my Dreamcast, or Soul Caliber for that matter, for 4 months. Particularly it's under my TV collecting dust. I could never part with my Dreamcast. It still has sentimental value. Plus I knew I wouldn't get half what I paid for all the games I collect. My parents know how active I was with the Dreamcast. I think they understand why I like them too. It's funny how parents can except those things! Well my parents were in their late 30s when Pac-man, Pong and Tron were cutting edge technology. I play those games sometimes through the emulator "MIME." You might guess that they were never into computers and games when they grew up.

I have yet to try out the PS2 game Thunder Strike - Operation Phoenix. It's kind of like Nuclear Strike and Chopper Attack for the Nintendo 64. It's much more like Chopper Attack then anything I've played. Thunder Strike is also better then Chopper Attack. I remember the old Genesis helicopter game, Jungle Strike. It's a classic. I played it on my cousin's Genesis when I was 11. Thunder Strike is a helicopter simulation for the PS2. It didn't get award winning graphics or gameplay. But I'll try it anyways. I like Apache helicopters. I heard of games like Jane's Attack Squadron, but the only real plane simulations I played was Air Force Delta for Dreamcast and Falcon 4.0 for PC. I wasn't great at those games. In Falcon 4.0, the pilot had to read a 300 page book on how to fly, fire and land a jet. The controls in that game were a little too realistic. I didn't have time to learn such a game. It was very buggy too, kept crashing on my PC. The graphics were okay though, the game could run at the highest resolution in high definition mode.

There is another game that I was interested in is Devil May Cry. IGN.com gave this game a 9.6/10. They said that the game is great, Capcom did a great job organizing the music in the game (punk rock/ heavy metal remixes) The gameplay was equally good. I could have bought this game a day ago for under 20 dollars at a store. But I picked the Ratchet and Clank platform game for 10 dollars more. Ratchet and Clank seems easy compared to many other platform games. The only other platform game I played this year is Super Mario Sunshine for the Nintendo Gamecube.

First real Playstation 3 Specs unrevealed

I joined IGN.com today and I added most of my videogames to the collection list and my collection is already worth 5,274 dollars. Just thought you want to look at it. Wisconsinite's Videogame Collection

I am really excited that Playstation 3 specs are now available. Sony is required to show a blueprint and official specs of the console. It somehow got onto the Internet. There is always a chance that these specs are not true and someone would just make them up entirely. The person who wrote this realized that the Playstation 3 was more powerful then Nintendo and Xbox. It is true the console specs are the complete opposite as they once were. The PS3 will be a little more than 4 GHz compared to the 300 MHz CPU the emotion engine had. The resolution sounds like it’s going to be 1200x1024, but more powerful than my home PC which can run games at 1600x1200. I agree with 1600x1200 has some unneeded polygons and on smaller monitors like 17” 1200x1024 looks better. A lot of times the text is too small to read at 1600x1200 on a 17” monitor. Let’s look at this at a realistic stand point. Playstation 3 looks like it’s only going to be 500 MHz faster than Microsoft’s new console according to the week old specs. The Xenon graphics will be very close to Playstation 3. The Playstation 3 will play FMV like Playstation 2 does, but with better compression. The quality will be better than PS2 partly MPEG4 can compress better at high quality per MB than the standard MPEG2 codec used for most PS2 video. Supposedly, Sony wants a BD-ROM in PS3 so when the new digital movie format comes out – PS3 owners will be a step ahead of the crowd! I wish all BD-ROM players also incorporated MPEG4 for the video.


Unofficial PS3

In 2006, when the “Xenon” is released, it’ll take 1st place as Dreamcast did. When the PS3 is finally released…it’ll double Xenon launch sales as PS2 did Dreamcast. Remember Dreamcast was TIME-Warner’s Product-of-the-Year of 1998, and PS2 was Product-of-the-Year in 2000.

Here’s the official specs off PS3 Insider :

• 8 Identical Attached Processing Unit (APU): ??? bits, Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD)
• Clock Frequency: 4GHz IBM’s “supercomputer on a chip” microprocessor.
• Integer Unit: 4 X Integer Units: 32 billion operations per second (32 GFLOPS).
• 4 X Floating Point Units: 32 billion floating point operations per second (32 GFLOPS)
• Multimedia extended instructions: unKnown
• Register Capacity: 128 times 128 bits
• TLB: unknown
• Instruction Cache: unknown
• Data Cache: unknown
• Scratch Pad RAM: unknown
• Local Memory / Storage or (LS) per APU: 128 kilobytes SRAM
• Main Memory: Main Memory: 64-bit XDR-RAM at 6.4GHz.
• Memory Bandwidth: (dual-channel = 102.4 GB/s)
• DMA: 1 channel per APU
• Direct Memory to APU Access: 1,024 bits wide per channel. (8 Channels)
• LS to Register: 128bits
• Registers to Floating Point or Integer Units: 384 bits per channel
• Floating Point or Integer Units to Register: 128 bits per channel

More PS2 specs I heard off some other forums. It includes Microsoft’s saying that “If Playstation 3 goes 256MB of RAM, we’ll go 512MB. If Sony doesn’t include a hard drive, neither will we” I heard some time ago.

• video memory - ATI 512-bit graphics processing unit at approximately 700 MHz
• RAM – 256-bit RDRAM at 500 MHz
• Sound – Pro Logic II supported 64 channel sound-chip manufactured by Sony
• Hard drive included in PS3 unit
• 10/100 Ethernet

Playstation 3 will have a hard drive. My guess is it’ll be 15 GB to 20 GB, twice as big as the one inside Xbox. The reason why I think so is hard drives, 15 GB hard drives are only 20 dollars at Best Buy. Every console should have a hard drive attached too it.. A PS3 hard drive will do exactly what X-Box has done in this generation. More then likely it’ll have a dual shock 3 – just an upgrade from dual shock 2. Playstation 3 can do 32 Gigaflops and PS2 only does 6.2 Gigaflops maximum. Surely, 32 Gigaflops is powerful enough to emulate Playstation 2. It’ll cut down the costs of putting PS2 and PS hardware into the console. A new feature is it’ll have a SVGA port in back so I can play on my PC monitor. It’ll also have MPEG 4 for a video codec. PS3 should have the new blu-ray technology which can store 25GB of data on one BD disc. The Dual-layered BD-ROM can hold 50 GB on a single disc. Some people think it’s going to be BVD-ROM because BD-ROM is missing ‘video’ in it. With Square-Enix, EA Sports, Take Two / Rockstar Games, Namco, Capcom on board developing games like Grand Thief Auto 5, Final Fantasy XIII, XIV, XV, Star Ocean 4, Suidoken V, Madden Football 2007, Xenosaga Episode 3, Winning Eleven Soccer 9, Gran Turismo 5, and Metal Gear Solid 4 on it - PS3 should do fine. But I think this is obvious since ever since Playstation did so well in 1997 and 1998 with Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid – no console manufacture could faze them in PS2 sales. All my friends have Playstation 2. Only my cousin, David, I know has an X-Box and a PS2.


First PS3 Tech Demo | Internet leak

The Last Ninja (seen above) is the PS3s first tech demo. I can see a slight difference between this game and Ninja Gaiden. Anyway, that’s real good. It is made by Studio 3 Studio 3’s official Webpage As you can see - it’s a cross between Ninja Gaiden and Onimusha.

Here is a site with a load of PS2 information gathered by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. NCSA’s PS2 Chemistry Project
Since when was PS2 considered a super-computer? The University of Iowa states that the PS2 outperforms 800 MHz Pentium 3s with a Linux terminal benchmarking program doing ‘ liner conventual algebra’. Studies came off of a modified v2.1.1 kernal running Red Hat Linux 7.3 on a tailor-made hard disk for PS2. The whole thing is very geekish. The point of this is the new consoles will be benchmark heaven for the NCSA, and many Universities which study ‘toy’ computers or commodity-off-the-toy-shelf products(AKA: COTTS). In short, whatever runs on PS2 can certainly run on PS3! University of Illinois’s Toy Computer Research Project

Today, I was just on my computer the whole day. The bank isn’t open on Sundays so I couldn’t get Star Ocean 3, another game by Square-Enix. I know it’s at Game Stop, but Wal-Mart I’m not sure about. It’s suppose to be really good from what I read off PS2 reviews at IGN.com I also played Winning Eleven Soccer 7. My skills at that game dropped since I last played. So I suck at it. Tomorrow is Labor Day. I think I’ll be studying CISCO at least for 5 hours tomorrow off CISCO Academy.

This is Ian Signing off.

Can videogame consoles play PC games? Yes.

Hello, look at my videogame collection! I had some pictures on my personal webpage [http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/] I compressed them the maximum compression without losing much quality. This means you can see the titles on the cases/ cartridges.

Here are all the links. Please click in order. Then comment how big of a videogame collection I have. Gamers - maybe one day your collection can look like mine. Please cut and paste url | I can not auto link these with modblog and have them show up, sorry.

| My Game Collection Pics |

• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/psonecollectionv2.jpg [102 KB]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/gcncollectionv2.jpg [76 KB]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/ps2collectionv2.jpg [ 102 KB ]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/snescollectionv2.jpg [ 32 KB ]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/xboxcollectionv3compressed.jpg [ 70 KB ]
• http://www.geocities.com/nightwalkers101/dccollection.jpg [ 90 KB ]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/dccollectionv2.jpg [ 82 KB ] (updated today! has more games)
• http://www.geocities.com/nightwalkers101/segasaturncollection.jpg [ 88 KB ]
• http://www.geocities.com/nightwalkers101/N64collection.jpg [ 80 KB ]

Well today I got back from DVR, and it went well. I meet this Jason, and he’s going to get me a job in the computer biz. He liked what he saw. I told him that I worked at the UofW, and his eye brows raised. He said, “Wow, I am really impressed with you Ian.” And I said nothing for I would only be hurting myself! Works out well. The DVR job center is in New Richmond. First of all I thought this guy would go “the give up something and you shall receive something in return” route. He was a nice guy. I knew he was testing me on my character and attitude towards him. All I had to do is sign a few papers releasing info to my parents and school and I was one of the first ppl subscribed and got registered. With some luck – I’ll have a job and be able to keep it.



Now for the main topic. I found out the 4th competitor in the console market. Known to many as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony as the only three. I just learned about this today. It’s made by VIA Technologies called the APEXTREME. Yes, this is the name. They named it after the worlds most popular DVD manufacture which so happens to be a silicon chip manufacture, APEX. Okay, I know Nintendo of Japan named it’s consoles: Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 – so it’s nothing new. One thing is this company does not expect too sell millions of consoles – only thousands. As in it’s probably a worthless piece of sh*t that guarantees to sell less than Dreamcast…except I like Dreamcast. Since it already runs on Windows, I’m sure they want to benefit on all the Windows applications that can run on it. It supposedly reads all the EXE files on CD so therefore, it may be able to install emulators like EPSXE and SNES9x. It automatically turns itself into a Playstation or Super Nintendo with a simple program. I don’t know if Nintendo will get in a lawsuit against VIA being able to play special programs allowing ROMS or discs to be played on it or if the whole thing is out of their control. For some odd reason I’d pick the last one. The thing has 4 USB ports (keyboard, mouse, PC gamepad, etc. I could use my Nyko Airflow PC with it and it’ll play PSone games. It’ll automatically install any EXE files for you on the hard drive. So if you play them at full screen then it’ll look exactly like a console. It doesn’t look like the Apextreme has the best hardware yet for home theater – and it doesn’t have to have to power of a fast computer to look good on TV. Xbox looks good on TV and it’s processor is only 733 MHz. VIA wasn’t afraid to release the official specs of the machine. With a simple TV tuner card you can hook up the SVGA output up to your TV. The official Apextreme specs are:

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2000 clocked at 1.4 GHz
• Dual Channel 256 MB DDR SDRAM
• Graphics: Nvidia Geforce 4 MX V8 8-pixel pipeline engine (Direct X 9.0a graphics accelerator) Probably a 64-bit GPU
• Hard drive (40 gigabyte)
• Audio VIA ENVY Audio (Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound.)
• DVD playback (more than likely the game media also) manufactured by VIA
• CN400
• Runs on Microsoft Windows R XP
• 10/100 Ethernet
• Four controller ports
• MP3 support in games
• Price $299 - $399 at launch
• Xbox is still going to have better games and a better price than VIA.
• Also plays PC games
• And it can record movies like TIVO
• Release Date Late 2004 (A console this year!!!)

The part that they don’t want you to know is – they say it plays like a pc – this is because it is a PC. Make no mistake. All you’re getting out of this console is a PC capable of high resolution and acts like TIVO – the digital recording console for tvs. I don’t see APEX being the next Sega, but that’s because Sega started out with Masters System 19 years ago and it didn’t sell well.


Alienware DHS

Now, for the extreme high end. Alienware Corporation - the company known for building extremely powerful gaming PCs for customers. If it’s on the bleeding edge of technology…Alienware probably has it incorporated in their PCs already. That’s their motto. I, myself, almost got an Alienware PC as a Christmas present. Now, Alienware is developing a new PC console at around 2000 dollars. Again, 3rd party PC corporations try to amaze you on your medium to low definition TV. Alienware, I heard you make great PCs, why a console that plays PC games? There is no point too it. Sure, it’ll play PC games in better resolution then Xbox – but console games are meant to be played with a controller. Ya, good I’ve straighten that truth out. You’ll never catch me buying a console PC unless it can also play Playstation 2 or Xbox games. This is why you should continue reading - because it will be true for Microsoft's new Xbox 2 / PC hybrid.

The weird thing is Sega of America’s former president, Peter Moore, is the CEO of Microsoft’s interactive software division (controls Xbox software and PC game marketing). Moore did it for money as any greedy money grubbing person would. Microsoft is making a ‘PC console’ of their own that will playPC or Xbox 2 games called the XNA. It’ll work by automatically installing PC games to its hard drive and also boot Xbox 2 software off DVD. This is the only PC console I agree with. I hear the console codenamed Xenon (Xbox 2) is 100% PowerPC. How can Microsoft develop a PowerPC to play PC games? That’s the million dollar question and it sounds like it’ll be answered next year. They would have to port Windows XP for PowerPC!! Is this illegal? They would have to get license from Apple Corperation. Technically Xbox 2 will also run Windows XP at its core. The OS is made by Microsoft and the console is made by Microsoft. Microsoft sounds like they have best of both worlds. I would mean that Microsoft has its own brand PC! Microsoft confirmed the price point of the XNA to be about 599 dollars. If you just want to play Xbox 2 games than it’ll bring it down to the industry standard of 200 dollars. Best of all it’ll come with a SVGA monitor output! The Xbox 2 won’t be called Xbox 2 because Microsoft Corp confirmed that they do not want to be inferior to Playstation 3.

Here are some names I thought up for MS new console code named “Xenon.”

1. Excaliber
2. X-cube
3. Mach 1000
4. Light-speed
5. Panther
6. Nitro X
7. Y-Box
8. Qube
9. Microsoft Q-Box
10. Microsoft Halo
11. Microsoft Supernova
12. Microsoft Jupiter
13. Microsoft Neptune
14. Microsoft Dream-Q
15. Microsoft Centauri X
16. Microsoft Dream-Centauri
17. Microsoft Nova-Matrix
18. Microsoft X-Cluster
19. Microsoft Alien Q
20. Microsoft Alien-box
21. Microsoft Area 51
22. Microsoft Roswell
23. Microsoft Firebird
24. Microsoft Qware
25. Microsoft Mars
26. Microsoft Xclipse
27. Microsoft X-Box 256
28. Microsoft X-Gene
29. Microsoft Blue-Gene
30. Microsoft Voyager

This is Ian signing off.

Found information on Xbox and PS2 disc backuping

Date: 9/2/04 at 8:16PM

I found some information on disc swapping as I was surfing the Internet for details on how to backup xbox games with Alcohol 120%. If this information is true and you can play game backups from disc. I think PS2 modding is more popular because there is no need to download the game through Ethernet connection. I learned off http://afterdawn.com that the Xbox version of 007: Agent of Fire and Mech Assault can actually be booted then quickly ejected so that a real backup game you made will work on Xbox. This doesn’t evolve modding the Xbox or buying a special boot disc that will first boot to bypass encryption than putting a backuped videogame in there. This is nothing new too me. I swap Action Replay discs with real games on both my PS2 and Gamecube. It’s nothing different than that from what I heard. I found ISOs off http://suprnova.org

For Playstation 2, there is MagicSwap 3.0. This works as a swap disc mechanism. I want one, but I can only own one from online stores. However, I really want a DMS3 modchip. DMS3 is the most advanced PS2 modchip in existence. More advanced means it can read more kinds of backups. I could just make my own images and remember it’s not illegal if you OWN THE ORGINAL GAME.

I got this information off TOTSE.com

--> Part A: Extract ISO image to hard-drive

1. Open CDRWin
2. Click the Extract Disc/Tracks/Sectors (Middle button on the top row) A new window will now appear. Here are the settings, shown in the picture here.
3. Extract Mode: Disc Image/Cuesheet
4. CD Reader: Select your reader
5. Image Filename: Select a directory and filename Reading Options
6. RAW, CD+G, CD-TEXT, MCN / ISRC all unchecked
7. Error Recovery: Ignore
8. Jitter Control: Disable
9. Subcode Analysis: Auto
10. Data Speed: Select your speed
11. Audio Speed: Select your speed
12. Read retry count: Anything from 2-10
13. Subcode Threshold: 300
14. Click Save Settings if you wish
15. Click Start!

--> CDRWin will now save the image to your hard-drive.

Part B: Patching Image
1. Open AddZer0 FrontEnd.
2. Browse for your input file. You just made it with CDRWin.
3. Do the same for the output file.
4. Select the type of patch to apply to your image.

Auto Mode converts the current Input Image to a 2048 ISO. The image is then patched, placing system.cnf at LBA 12231. This requires no other help from you.

Normal Mode functions just as the original version of AddZer0 did. If you select this mode, type the LBA of the closest file to LBA 12231 into the text box. (You need ISO Buster) This will move this file to 12232 and place the system.cnf at 12231.
Patcher Mode functions just like the 2SP Patcher did. It blindly takes the system.cnf file and places it at 12231. This will possibly corrupt data of the image which cause problems while playing the game. Therefore this mode is not recommended.

5. When you are happy with the settings, click Convert.
6. Wait for the process to finish (might take a while)

--> Part C: Burning image

1. Open CDRWin again.
2. Click the File Backup and Tools button.
3. Change Backup/Tool Operation to Record an ISO9660 image file.
4. Where it says Image Filename: Browse for the image you have just patched.
5. CD Recorder: Select your CD-Writer
6. Disc Type: CDROM-XA
7. Track Mode: MODE 2
8. Select your write speed.
9. Click Start.
10. Wait for CDRWin to write the image to a CD-R.

You should have successfully made a backup of your PS2 game.

(2) If you don't have a mod chip.
I suggest you use CloneCD or CDRWin to do a straight CD copy. This gives you an un-patched backup.
If you have CloneCD or CDRWin (UTFSE) here are the settings:

--> CloneCD

1. Open CloneCD.
2. Click the Copy CD Picture (3rd Picture along)
3. Read Tab
o Select your CD Reader.
o Select your read speed. I suggest you keep it low. Sorry if you have little patience.
o Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Checked
o Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Checked
o The other boxes can be left unchecked.
4. Image File Tab
o Browse for the directory that you want the image file to be extracted to.
o Check the Delete After Successful Write box if you want.
5. Write Tab
o Select your CD Writer.
o Select your write speed. I strongly suggest you burn at a maximum of 4x.
o Everything should be all right as it is.
6. Ignore the Global tab. It is not important.
7. Now click the Start Disc Copy button at the bottom.
8. CloneCD will then read the disc and when finished write to a blank disc.
9. Finished.

--> CDRWin

1. Open CDRWin.
2. Click the Backup Disc button (Second along)
3. Backup Mode: Copy To Image And Record
4. Image disk: Select your hard drive (Default)
5. CD Reader & CD Recorder: Set CD reader & CD recorder to the same (Always read with burner)
6. Reading Options
o Read: Raw Sectors
o Error Recovery: Ignore
o Jitter Control: Disable
o Subcode Analysis: Auto
o Data Speed: Select Your Speed (Keep it low)
o Audio Speed: Select Your Speed (Keep it low)
o Read Retry Count: Select How Many Times You Want CDRWin To Retry Reading Damaged Data Before It Fails
7. Recording Options
o Uncheck All Boxes On The Top Line
o Number Of Discs To Backup: Select Number Of Discs
o Number Of Copies: Select Number Of Copies You Want
o Speed: Select Your Burning Speed (Keep it low)
o Disc Transporter Mode: Disable If you want, select Save Settings at the side
8. Hit Start.

Choice B is much easier than using CDclone to make an ISO and CDRWIN to burn an ISO. I would use Alcohol 120% to backup Playstation or Playstation 2 games using the Playstation or Playstation 2 option in the encryption security override mechanism. The program will patch the ISO image automatically for me. Haven’t tried since I don’t have a modded PS2, but I have yet to try it on EPSXE. Supposedly I hear off the EPSXE.com forums, I can play PSX backups on the PC.
To backup Xbox games, first you must have a modded xbox. Then you must download EvolutionX 1.8 off Kazaa, Emule, Limewire. Evolution X allows the gamer to download the game through Xbox’s Ethernet JACK onto MS Windows through a normal FTP client or Internet Explorer (the same is done to Gamecube games). The Xbox Ethernet jack is 10 Base T so it would have a speed of 10Mbits per second maximum. Then I found this really neat Unity called Craxtion 4.0 [http://craxtion.com ]. This unity allows someone to backup 2 Xbox ISOs or more to combine them to form a new Xbox ISO with a dual boot screen. This is useful since I don’t have to waste DVDs. Once Xeon and XCBX plays commercial games off DVD-ROM on the PC, then I won’t need a modded Xbox at all.. The PC will always be able to emulate a console - eventually. Currently, no one has a powerful enough PC to emulate the XBOX so modding Xbox to play backups is the only way to go. You can’t say I have done anything illegal. I don’t have any illegal copies of console games nor do I have any modded consoles.

Good Luck on backing up games!!!!