StarTropics for NES had a “letter from your uncle” in the manual, that you had to soak in water to reveal the submarine’s activation code when you reached Chapter 4. I think that was the only time we used the Nintendo tip line, because of a lost manual!

Some games let you keep playing without the correct code… until the difficulty automatically ramped up to impossible levels.

My friend’s dad worked at a local electronics store, so he was the only person I knew that had the “weird” consoles - Sega Master System and TurboGrafx-16. Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy were the favorites, of course… I liked how you got to buy your choice of weapons in Fantasy Zone.

Years later, I found my own SMS at Goodwill! I need to get a multicart because I only have Fantasy Zone, Ghostbusters, and R-Type.

The already compiled patches are available as .ips on romhacking.net, so you can use Lazy IPS CLI or GUI or Lunar IPS for Windows in WINE.

Big tech scandal, political scandal, policing scandal… 95% of them end the same way.

“We investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong.”

Problem is that they would still need to have some kind of authentication to avoid offline backups becoming clone factories. I used to give away Mews and Celebis by trading them and then restoring my cart’s SRAM with a portable backup device.

I hear this as often as I hear “jalapeno” (missing the eñe) 😑

Look, if he was dying, he wouldn’t bother to type “aarrggh”. He’d just say it!

Try booting with the HDD disconnected. Try disconnecting the battery and BIOS battery (where is it on this model?!) for a few minutes.

You would still need good RAM to get into the BIOS update…

GPU failure, since a text-mode boots but not much else?

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

A weatherman saying it went viral ~9 years ago, if anyone wants to hear the pronunciation:

https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM

Appease “the Base” and “own the libs”. Drive a deeper wedge and call it freedom and unity.

This isn’t normal.

“Abortion debate” and all other culture warfare is only to keep the masses busy fighting each other so they don’t engage the rich in class warfare.

Oof, well you know what you are doing. Good call on the pi-hole. See if the satellite provider has a box, convince them that the device rental is supposed to be already part of customer’s bill whether they need it or not. Otherwise it’s $5 per month per box where I am.

We’re at the point that trans people get arrested for being in either bathroom.

The US right-wing was constantly bitching about “cancel culture” and now that they are in power they are cancelling everything they can.

The general consensus seems to be “buy a dumb TV or at least the dumbest ‘smart’ TV you can find and never connect it to the net” and then “buy the media box that behaves the way you want.”

Where I am, cable and satellite TV providers still have you rent a box for their service.

Edit: the lone review on this page suggests there is an “old” TCL TV app. Another but they don’t have good reviews…

Thasaman.

I wonder if your K400 is defective. I have the old black & white K400r (refurbished?) and the batteries last for many months even when I forget to switch it off.