Cyberpunk Mega Drive Game, RIP BioWare, RIP Atari VCS, DOOM On Things & More - Ramble 175

Good News For Cyberpunk Graphic Novel Fans!

Hello there, my plucky little ramblers, and welcome to another instalment of Rees Rambles, my weekly podcast all about the latest comings and goings, movings and shakings, and indeed all the rest of it in the worlds of vintage and retro computing, gaming and technology. Hope you’re all doing well out there, and welcome to another weekend. My goodness, these weekends are coming thick and fast just lately, aren’t they? Getting darker and colder and wetter here in the UK, finally, after that gloriously long hot summer that we have all just enjoyed.

But on a more serious note, just before we get into the more light-hearted ramblings for this week, of course we are being hit with the first two named storms of the season, I am hearing. I don’t actually remember the names of those. Probably should have made a note of them. If that’s important to you, maybe check your local news service or weather service or whatever. But yeah, they are hitting the south coast, and we’re already getting reports of trees down and people’s power off and flooding and schools closed, railway lines closed, and sadly all of the stuff that we have kind of started to come to expect from the British winters over the past few years. So please do stay safe out there and, yeah, wrap up warm, stay indoors and maybe watch some YouTube away from all of the horrors taking place outside your front door. But yeah, on a serious note, please, please do stay safe.

Anyway, this is the part of the ramble I like to refer to as the preamble. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about that publicly, but certainly in my notes, that’s how it starts: preamble, where I make a note of something I’ve spotted over the past week that’s taken my interest, or something going on in my personal life, or maybe an update on the new studio or something like that. But this week, particularly as this isn’t a sponsored episode, I want to sing the praises of a project, a friend’s project that I’ve known about for quite a long time now, and I am kind of ashamed of the fact that I haven’t mentioned this at all. It started all the way back in 2023, and he’s been working so hard on this. And, you know, he’s got a composer on board and a pixel artist on board, and it is growing into this absolutely fantastic thing that I know that you ramblers out there will be particularly interested in. And I’m not getting anything in return for this, I don’t get any kickbacks or anything like that. I just really love the look of this project, and I think it is the kind of thing that does kind of need to be promoted in this day and age. And you’ll find out why now.

So this is Chords, and you may have spotted on my desk I’ve got these little plastic characters here. We’ve got Champ, the kind of robotic-looking bulldog there, and Scamp the cat. And these didn’t actually come with any instructions. Is that one wider than that one? Oh, maybe it is, actually. I was doubting myself. I was thinking, have I put these together the right way around? But, you know, one is actually bigger than the other, so they do only fit together one way. Yeah, that is a fantastic design detail there, Matt.

And I also have these bits and pieces. So I’ve got this sticker sheet. We’ve got this character here with the purple hair, this kind of anime style. We’ve got the cat there again, Scamp. We’ve got this rather handsome fellow here who looks a bit like me, doesn’t he? I guess pre-beard. And this character here with the green mohawk. No idea who these people are, but I’m sure we’ll find out over the course of the game. And also this card, which I know Matt has been handing out at events and things.

So this is his first official release by Pixel Pusher Games, his new game dev studio. And the description reads thusly: “In a future where human creativity is law, a struggling band finds themselves caught in something far bigger than the battle of the bands they innocently entered. A cinematic visual novel for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, PC and other modern platforms.” We’ve got the original soundtrack by SuperJet Spade, we’ve got pixel art by Daniel “108 Stars” Horvath. And it is, of course, written and programmed by Matteusbeus, aka Matt Bennion, developed by Pixel Pusher Games, his brand new game dev studio.

And the reason I mention this is because he let me know – I mean, he sent me all of this wonderful stuff a while ago. Did I mention that? I’m sorry that I haven’t mentioned this yet. But the reason I mention this is because he pointed out to me this week that he has a demo coming out in the run-up to Christmas. Now, this demo is a fully contained episode in its own right. So it’s a prequel to the main game using the same engine, the same pixel art style, same composer, same music, all of that. So if you want a taste of what the game is actually going to be like, this is how to discover it, how to experience it for yourself.

There is a Steam page, getting to the point, and you can add this to your wishlist. This is Chords, so as mentioned, it is a visual novel. We’ve got some lovely screenshots here. I mean, look at the art style in this game, all hand-drawn by a pixel artist. This kind of predates this new batch of, you know, AI slop games that are coming out. You know, he has employed these people. He is paying them real money to work on this and kind of help him to achieve his vision. I know he went through quite a process to find the exact people that he was looking for, you know, the exact kind of style that he had in mind for this game.

I don’t believe I’ve ever played a visual novel. You know, my gaming taste is quite basic, I think. I think I started off with platformers and moved on to first-person shooters and haven’t really looked back. You know, some dalliances with rhythm games and, you know, stuff like that when they were kind of big at the time. But yeah, I am going to be playing this. I’m going to be talking about it at the time, of course. And yeah, there is a Steam page, as mentioned. It is releasing on other platforms. There will be a physical release for the Mega Drive as well, or Genesis if you prefer.

And there’s also a website with some nice screenshots and things. Obviously we’ve just seen some of these on the Steam page. And a bit more information: “Pixel Pusher Games is proud to present its debut title, Chords, a brand new 16-bit visual novel built for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and PC.” I’m going to get tired of saying Mega Drive/Genesis, but we’ll stick to Mega Drive, shall we? “Set in a 90s-styled post-cyberpunk world, Chords combines atmospheric storytelling, striking pixel art and an original chiptune soundtrack with a twisting narrative that reflects modern-day issues through the lens of a distinctly retro future.”

Oh, it seems to be raining quite heavily all of a sudden. Can you hear that? Bloody hell. Wow. Anyway, I will continue. Yeah, it’s – I mean, all the information is here. Just derailed for a second there.

And if you want to see a bit of behind the scenes of how this game is actually being developed, you can also check out Matteusbeus’ YouTube channels and also his Patreon as well. So yeah, Matteusbeus Retro Developer here, which of course again will be linked down below. Some interesting videos just about Sega dev in general and some history of some Sega games and things, but also some coverage of his own game as well, if you want to see what that is all about. He also has a second channel. Again, I’m also going to link to that, and a Patreon where he posts a lot more kind of in-depth, you know, blog-style updates, video clips and things like that. I’m not going to take liberties here and show you any of that kind of paid content. But yeah, you can join for free as a member, or you can pay. I think it starts at $2.50 a month or something like that if you want to support the development of the game.

I promise this isn’t a paid advert or anything like that. We’ve just been friends for quite a long time now, and of course move in the same kind of YouTube circles and stuff, and this is a real labour of love, this project. You know, a proper human, creative, artistic project, and it is the kind of thing that I think needs to be very much shouted from the rooftops. So you will hear a bit more about this as things develop, of course, when that demo comes out, and hopefully I will be able to slot time into my busy schedule for some coverage of the game as well. But with all of that behind us, I guess it’s time we got on with the stories for this week’s ramble.

RIP BioWare

And so, after kicking off this week’s ramble with some rather lovely news from the game development world, my first story is decidedly not that. Yeah, I don’t really know what to say about this. I have been reporting on the restructuring of various game development studios over the past year or so. I think Microsoft, and obviously their Xbox division, has been kind of the big news over the past few months. Absolutely ruthless job cuts and closing some really important historic names, restructuring, and of course all of those hardworking developers and artists and composers being kicked to the curb after all of their years of hard work, replaced by AI, of course – it’s kind of the elephant in the room, I guess, I can’t really not acknowledge that – and also a desire to maximise shareholder value and make sure that these company bosses that were already lining their pockets with millions and millions of dollars every year can make a few more millions of dollars, while the people that actually put the work in and created the games now can’t afford to even feed their families. Yes, I’m sure you can probably judge my feelings on this, particularly as I do have friends in the industry.

And as mentioned, lots of big names being shuttered for good. And in the past week, there has been another announcement, not from Microsoft this time, but from another big player. This is a story over on windowscentral.com about EA and BioWare. Yeah, that’s right, BioWare is officially no more. A story here by Jennifer Young: “EA officially shuts down BioWare and cuts 400 jobs. Mass Effect 5 has been cancelled.” Mass Effect 5, such a big name, a big series. “The death knell rings for BioWare,” continues Jennifer Young, “and with it, our hopes for a new Mass Effect game. Electronic Arts is officially closing the doors of BioWare, creators of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, as reported by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg. This comes as part of a corporate restructuring that will cut 400 jobs, the layoffs representing about 3% of EA’s total workforce, and include roughly 50 jobs at BioWare.”

Now, it says here that BioWare was working on a game called Anthem. “Anthem had great promise but ultimately failed to deliver,” reads this caption. I don’t actually remember that one at all. I don’t remember seeing an announcement about that, but there you go.

“BioWare, founded in 1995 and acquired by EA in 2007, leaves behind a profound legacy in the role-playing genre. Its future has been on shaky ground given the reception and well-reported behind-the-scenes issues surrounding its most recent title, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which missed sales expectations. This followed the failure of the over-hyped Anthem. However, I was one of many hoping for redemption with the promise of an upcoming Mass Effect 5 that was in early development. Unfortunately, that has now been cancelled. According to an internal letter from EA Chief Operating Officer David Tinson and Chief Studios Officer Cam Weber, the publisher is taking a hard look at its operations. The cancellation of Mass Effect 5 is included in a bunch of cancelled projects, as well as a planned The Sims game, codenamed Project Lotus, shifting focus instead to a venture called Project Evergreen.”

The Sims! Now, you would have thought The Sims is… I mean, I played the original. I think I played a bit of The Sims 2. Of course, LGR, my fellow retro gaming YouTuber, is a huge fan of the series and has his obligation to review every single game and expansion pack as it is released, which is always funny to watch. And I thought The Sims as a series was a real cash cow, actually. It seems absolutely huge with the normies, with the casual gaming crowd, so I was really surprised to hear that a Sims game has been cancelled and they’ve moved to a venture called Project Evergreen. Evergreen – is that, I don’t know, some kind of subscription-based rubbish, probably?

Anyway, back to the story by Jennifer Young over on Windows Central: “These sweeping cuts follow EA’s transition to a private company in August, prompted by a $55 billion leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia’s investment fund. The acquisition placed nearly $18 billion in debt on the publisher’s books, triggering a directive to slash up to $700 million in research and development costs.”

Ah, that’s interesting. So of course I talked about these restructures and, you know, maximising profits and all of that, but in this case, actually, it was bought out by the Saudi Arabian government, who saddled it with a load of debt and are now milking EA dry to cover the costs of that. Wonderful. Wonderful.

“Despite the closures, EA reaffirmed its commitment to its sports portfolio, Apex Legends,” of course, “and upcoming action adventure titles, including the next Star Wars Jedi game and Marvel’s Iron Man. EA will also continue developing Skate, although the team behind it will be downsized.” Really? Cancelling The Sims and carrying on with Skate? Okay. “Additionally, the Battlefield franchise will continue, with Respawn and DICE collaborating on a new project rumoured to be another entry in the Star Wars Battlefront series.”

And this story just talks about a statement here by BioWare, of course, which has been a victim of this. Of course, it was an independent studio when it was first started all those years ago, 30 years ago, became part of EA, and has now gone. So: “Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Anthem. Now, after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing, and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending. There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games, and supporting one another through this transition. What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember. These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with the characters and made these worlds your own. From all of us at BioWare, thank you for being the most meaningful part of our story.”

Official statement there by BioWare on the closure of the studio, the studio behind Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Anthem, which I hadn’t heard of. And yeah, if you have, of course, been affected by this, best of luck, of course, you know, genuinely and sincerely from me. It is very tough out there as a developer, and particularly as a game developer, in recent times.

RIP Atari VCS (With A Positive Twist)

As you are all no doubt painfully aware by this point, I am a huge fan of all things Atari, as represented here in my temporary studio setup by a collection of Atari-related objects on the shelves behind me. Stuff like my 7800 collection, my Lynx collection, my 2800 – very rare, Japan-only version of the 2600. We’ve got some press packs here that were very kindly sent to me by my very good friend Iain Lee off the telly. Big celebrity name drop there, and shout out to you, Iain, I know you’re a regular listener. Also the 5200, a console that was never actually released here in the UK, only available for, I think, a year in the US. And the pride of my collection, my Atari Jaguar and games, a console that I always really desperately wanted as a kid, reading about it, looking at those screenshots and things in ST Format magazine, and sadly my parents would never, never buy me one. So I finally picked one up as an adult and finally got to discover what all the fuss was about, and enjoy all two of the good games on that console.

That is a love affair, speaking of my childhood, that started all the way back in 1989, when I was five years old. You may have heard this story before, but I’m going to tell you again. It was Christmas Day. We’d gone to my uncle’s house, as we often did with our big family Christmases, and my cousin had just received his very own 2600 Jr for Christmas. I spent most of the day playing on it and left that Christmas begging and pleading with my parents to let me have an Atari. You have to imagine, as a five-year-old kid who’d never played a video game before, or a computer game, you know, moving that joystick and seeing stuff happening on the TV screen was pretty mind-blowing, and I thought it was going to be the best thing ever. But my parents had different ideas. You see, they didn’t like the idea of a games console. They thought it was all just a big waste of time, and thought I would be better off with a proper computer, one that I could use to do my homework and stuff. And so they went and bought an Atari ST.

I’m just pausing for a moment while the Amiga fans in the audience type out their inevitable comments about the Atari ST not being a proper computer. I’ve been doing this for seven years. I’ve seen it all.

Yeah, and of course, as mentioned, I have been doing this YouTube thing for seven years, and a big part of what I’m known for is my coverage of Atari stuff, talking about things in my collection and bits and pieces of knowledge, useless information that I’ve picked up about the company in my research over the years. In fact, I’ve always said if I were ever to go on to Mastermind, I would pick Atari history as my specialist subject.

And one of the bigger videos on my channel over the years was about this thing. This is the Atari VCS, but not the original version. I have, of course, covered those in great detail in various videos. This is the 2021 kind of reimagining, the relaunch, whatever, of the VCS – of course, the console that went on to become the 2600 – and also the relaunch of Atari itself, I guess, you know, the latest iteration under Wade Rosen. And I’ve been a big fan, to be honest, of the stuff that Atari has done over the past few years. They’ve made some really clever acquisitions, you know: Nightdive and Digital Eclipse and the Intellivision brand and Activision, a few other things as well. And also their hardware, the 2600+, the 7800+, really nicely done bits of hardware. And, you know, they just seem to be kind of ticking all the right boxes.

But again, the VCS perhaps wasn’t quite so fondly remembered. They made a lot of big promises at the time, and it took quite a long time for it to finally kind of come to fruition. And by the time it did, its Ryzen-based laptop chipset kind of left people wanting a bit. It kind of felt a bit underpowered. It had a notoriously noisy fan in it. And yeah, it didn’t really go down in history as something that was fondly remembered, but it does have an audience around it. You know, it does have quite a good community around it, and I know it certainly has its fans out there among my viewers. And I do include myself in that. I do actually think that it is quite a nice piece of hardware, provided you don’t expect a bit too much of it.

Now, speaking of YouTube and getting back to the point, I made a video about this a few years ago: “The Atari VCS Disappointed Me – But I Found A Way To Fix It”. And this is Antstream. Do you remember Antstream? Is that still a thing? Surely people don’t still play Antstream. Anyway, they’d sponsored, like, all the YouTubers back in the day.

But the Atari VCS had its own Linux-based operating system, and it came with its own bundled apps and things as well. It had its own storefront and ecosystem that was kind of separate to Atari’s, you know, console releases and PC releases. Let’s take a look at it here. We’ve got your essential gaming apps here, like Google Docs and Calendar and Google Drive. I don’t know. Of course, they also kind of pushed it as a bit of a set-top box type thing. You could get to Apple TV and Spotify and, you know, some of the streaming platforms and things on there as well. They were trying to cover all bases with it, to varying degrees of success, as I discovered in this video.

And as I also discovered in this video, you could install your own operating system on it. And I installed Bazzite, which was the beginning of another love affair for me, as you’re probably also aware. Bazzite is another thing that I bang on about quite a lot as well: a Linux-based, gaming-focused operating system based on Valve’s own SteamOS that they developed for the Steam Deck. Anyway, if you want to learn about all of this stuff, please do go and watch this video.

And finally, getting to the point, I think Bazzite is going to be quite useful for users and owners and fans of the VCS – all seven of you out there – because Atari has sadly made an announcement this week that they will no longer be supporting the software side of it. Although, although, to their credit – much as I like to talk about game preservation and, you know, when companies abandon these platforms, kind of handing things over to the community – they have made a rather interesting move around this, which, you know what, is kind of the sort of thing I’ve started to come to expect from the latest incarnation of Atari. So let’s go and read about that and, yeah, find out what the situation is.

So, story here over on VGC, videogameschronicle.com, of course, absolute titan of the video games news world. They’ve been around for quite a long time now. “Atari is ending support for its 2021 VCS console, will release a Homebrew App to let players keep making and adding games.” Well done, Atari. That’s actually genuinely a good move.

Posted here by Chris Scullion: “The stylish part console, part PC hybrid never really took off.” So it talks a bit about the history of the console and what it’s all about, which of course I have just covered, and its own storefront and library, which I have also talked about. Now, Atari has announced, writes Chris, that it will be ending support for the console and will be shutting down its store on February 1st, 2027.

“We are reaching out to let you know about planned changes to our support of the Atari VCS platform,” Atari community manager Carly Francis posted on the official Atari Discord server. “The Atari VCS has earned its rightful spot alongside the many console platforms Atari has launched over the past 50+ years. We took what was planned as a one-off Kickstarter program” – it was on Indiegogo, but anyway – “and turned it into a platform that we have collectively supported since 2020. We want to thank our dedicated players and creators for bringing great content to the VCS and for building a vibrant community. We are beginning the process of sunsetting our support for the Atari VCS. We’ll be shutting down the VCS store on February 1st, 2027. You will still be able to purchase games in the store through January 31st, 2027.”

While in the past the shutdown of some systems has ended in them essentially becoming unable to operate at all, Atari has told players it will ensure that they can continue to use their VCS after support ends. This will come in the form of an OS update which removes all need to connect to an Atari server, as well as a planned homebrew app which will let users continue to develop games and add new games to their console without the store.

“After the store closes, our plan is to make an OS update available that allows you to migrate all functionality to your local machine, removing any dependencies on Atari infrastructure for authentication and software,” Francis wrote. “Once that transition is complete, we will end support for the platform. As part of the transition, we intend to push the Atari Homebrew app to all players. This will allow everyone to add new games to your VCS independently, so developers can continue to build apps for the VCS and share them with the community. Early next year, we’ll post information that walks you through this OS migration and the Homebrew app functionality, so everyone has plenty of time to prepare.”

So, well done, Atari. You know, this was kind of the first offering from modern Atari. Sadly, it didn’t quite kind of live up to people’s expectations, perhaps, but as mentioned, all joking aside, does have quite a community around it. And I do think – I mean, the story talks about it not being fondly remembered, but I will always fondly remember the VCS, and I will continue to hook it up every once in a while to play some games on Bazzite.

But yeah, if only all of the console manufacturers, game publishers took this attitude. You know, just because they’ve stopped supporting the software side of things, you know, they could lock people out, lock them out of the storefront, to make it impossible for people to download the games that they’ve purchased over the years. But they’ve said no, you know what, we want to allow people to continue to enjoy the platform, so we’re going to open it up, we’re going to remove all the online requirements from it. And not only that, we’re going to provide an official way for people to be able to develop their own apps and games in the future for this, now, you know, a platform that wasn’t particularly popular in its heyday, but, you know, has now kind of fallen by the wayside and been discontinued. So yeah, that’s genuinely good news. Well done, Atari. My hat is off to you, and I look forward to seeing this homebrew app and how all of this comes about early next year.

The DOOM Shrine

I mentioned the rain a minute ago. I’m not quite sure if that’s the take that I actually end up using in this ramble, but I did. Maybe it ended up on the cutting room floor, I don’t really know. But yeah, after I hit stop recording that previous story, I heard this… I thought that was it again. This clattering and banging and howling going on outside.

And just a bit of background information: I have these metal shutters on the windows here in the studio. And when I first started using this space, my landlord actually told me not to open them, because they’re very old and they’re all overgrown. They’ve not been maintained properly, and they are electric, but he said that basically, if I open them, there’s a very good chance that they might not close again. And a few months ago, we found out that that was actually true, because there were some builders using one of the other offices in the building here. They were using it as, like, a site office, and decided to open the shutter, and we haven’t been able to get it closed. And of course, with all the stuff that I have in here, I don’t want people looking through the windows and seeing all my stuff. So I’ve never actually opened them.

So to see what was going on, getting to the point, I popped out into reception and stuck my head out of the front door. And yeah, it seems that Storm Austen has finally landed here in Warwickshire, and it’s looking pretty, pretty hellish out there.

And it’s also pretty hellish in here, because it’s time for the DOOM Shrine, my homage to id Software’s 1993 first-person shooter, the game that changed everything. Of course, we kind of have to picture the DOOM Shrine in our minds. It’s more of a DOOM mind palace at the moment, because the actual physical manifestation of the DOOM Shrine is packed away in a box awaiting reconstruction at the new studio. But it’s my collection, as you know, of DOOM-related releases and paraphernalia, dating all the way back to the original shareware release that came with our first PC in 1994. And I’ve also got some modern DOOM stuff, some DOOM 2016 stuff, some, you know, DOOM: The Dark Ages stuff, and things signed by the original development team, the original boxed release that you had to send off for, and all the rest of it. So yeah, picture that.

Anyway, tenuous link aside, let’s talk about some DOOM stories that have come up on my radar this week. And the first one is DOOM ported to the NES – the NES, the Nintendo Entertainment System. “A first-person engine for sector-based maps running on an unmodified NES: a 1.79MHz 6502 with two kilobytes of RAM, no multiply, no divide, and a video chip that can only pick tiles from a fixed set. Rooms with raised and sunken sectors, doorways into the next room, distance shading, billboard monsters that fight back, scripted triggers, music and sound effects. An MMC3 cartridge written in C and hand-tuned 6502 assembly.”

And one thing that I did want to point out about this project, which was pointed out to me when it was shared with me: no generative AI was used in the creation of this project, unlike a lot of the ports that we are seeing nowadays. So again, I wanted to bring attention to this. Authored by NancyGold and available for you to go and download over on itch.io. You can play it on your NES emulator or, hopefully, the MiSTer system – I haven’t actually tested this myself, but presumably it works on the NES core on the MiSTer – and of course also, as mentioned, on original hardware, if you have a suitable flash cart.

And yeah, I mean, looking at this, it’s about what you would expect from DOOM on the Nintendo. Oh, here it is, running in Nestopia, a rather nice NES emulator. I say it’s what you would expect – it’s actually better than, I think, what I was expecting. I think this looks actually pretty decent, to be honest, based on these screenshots. Very recognisably DOOM, and very recognisably E1M1, of course, the first level of DOOM. I don’t think there’s a video of this. Anyway, there is now also a feature that has been added in the past few days so that if you own the full WAD file for DOOM, you can import the entire first episode and play through that on your NES as well. Excellent stuff, NancyGold, and of course that will be linked down below in the description, as per everything else that I cover in these rambles.

Now, my next weird DOOM port is on a piece of hardware that you may be less familiar with. This is a clamp meter. Now, it’s a device for measuring electrical current, the flow of electrical current. I think I discovered these when I was messing around with solar stuff, but I’ve never actually used one or whatever. But essentially, you clamp it around a cable, and it uses magnets, I guess, to measure the flow of electricity through said cable. And this one, the FNIRSI DMC-100, has a colour screen and a rather capable CPU that has allowed this author, Artur Bieniek – I believe I’m pronouncing that right – to port DOOM to it.

So, DOOM running on the FNIRSI DMC-100 clamp meter: the DOOM engine – this is doomgeneric, derived from id Software’s GPL source release – on an Artery AT32F415 with 32K of RAM, 99K of flash and a 4MB SPI NOR flash without execute in place. It plays episode 1 of Freedoom: Phase 1, which is E1M1 to E1M9, with the title screen, intermissions, finale, menu and four save slots. There’s a 320 by 240 screen and sound effects on the meter’s buzzer. And you can use a DJI drone controller as a gamepad. The game logic is vanilla. It uses Freedoom’s DEMO1, scripted runs through every map of episode 1, plays tic for tic as in an unmodified doomgeneric, which the host test suite checks. That’s nice, and people providing these verification tools and things.

And also, if you do flash your clamp meter with this version of DOOM, it will of course replace the built-in firmware, and presumably you won’t be able to use your meter for its intended purpose, which is probably worth pointing out.

And this has led to another port of DOOM. Now, this is one that I think I reported on back when it was first released, and it’s one that’s well known and quite often touted in the DOOM porting community. But it’s hit a really big milestone as a result of this release, because this is DOOM running on a vape. Now, I don’t know if I’ve shared my thoughts on vapes in the past. I’m sure they have their legitimate uses, but anyway, some of them have some quite interesting hardware, like this one, which has a full colour screen and, again, a very capable CPU and some RAM and some flash memory. And essentially, this port originally – I was literally just showing the footage that I’ve just shown – was DOOM running externally, and it was basically just being kind of piped over a serial connection to this device’s screen. But as a result of this clamp meter, which apparently has very similar hardware to this vape, you can now actually play it natively on the vape itself, without a need for an external device, should you so wish.

So there you go, three rather interesting ports of DOOM this week. We’ve got DOOM on a NES, we’ve got DOOM on a clamp meter, and we’ve got DOOM on a vape again, but running properly this time.

And also, there’s another project I wanted to tell you about, because I have been contacted by a member of my community earlier this morning, letting me know that they are working on a rather interesting port of DOOM. Now, I can’t really talk about the details. I don’t want to spoil this, to be honest, because I’ve never seen anything like this, and that is saying something when you talk about weird ports of DOOM, because it has been ported to pretty much everything over the years. But yeah, I’ve seen some of the tooling that’s been created to make this possible, and heard a bit of the backstory about how this works, and it is fascinating. So I’m very, very much looking forward to covering that when it does go public, whenever that might be. It seems like it is working at the moment, so it hopefully won’t be too far off. But anyway, there you go: that’s our weekly visit to the DOOM Shrine, and also a bit of a teaser for you for a potential future DOOM-related story.

Making Your Smart TV Less Annoying… With AI

One topic that I have talked about at length in recent times is AI, of course, as is everyone. These LLMs, large language models, these agentic coding tools, Copilots and the like. You know, people prompting Claude and GPT Codex and Gemini and all the rest of them, telling them, you know, “Please make Quake work on the Atari 2600,” and then something bizarre coming out the other end, and then releasing that to the world, and then people inevitably sending it to me and saying, “Oh, we should talk about this on Rees Rambles.” And I’ve been inundated with all sorts of weird and wonderful ports over the past few months that have been powered by this technology, and by and large, they are generally not very good. I mean, I talked about that Knuckles game a couple of rambles ago. It’s just one example of many, kind of what this technology can lead to in the hands of people who don’t really know what they’re doing.

All that said, last week I talked about the Underworld Exhumed project, and how they had taken the original Ultima Underworld I and II games, decompiled them, and basically byte for byte recompiled them and made it possible to compile those games on modern operating systems, also adding some quality of life improvements and things in the process, and releasing an open source tool to allow people to potentially attempt that with other DOS games of the era. And the end product was actually really good. And, I think, a real bonus to the world of game preservation. So credit where it’s due, there are some rather legitimate and rather useful uses of this technology, and, you know, I think it’s only fair to admit that.

And I’m going to talk about another one this week. I don’t really have an agenda here, I promise. I’m just interested in this stuff, and this has been quite a big talking point on my Discord server this week, so it would be remiss of me not to talk about this.

Now, I actually have some experience in this field, because I owned an NVIDIA Shield TV years ago when it first came out. It was a little Android set-top box by NVIDIA, and you plugged it into your TV and you could fire up all of your apps, your YouTubes, your Netflixes, your Spotifys and all the rest of them. And I really loved that thing. It was really nice to use, until there was a firmware update that turned two-thirds of the screen into a giant advert. Usually an advert for Disney+, which I have zero interest in whatsoever. And basically, when you powered the thing up, you’d have to sit and wait while it lagged and jumped about and, you know, while it was loading all the ad stuff in the background, and no doubt trackers and all sorts of other rubbish. And that’s when I fell out of love with the NVIDIA Shield. But there was a community on Reddit who released various scripts and things that allowed you to fire up the Android Debug Bridge on that unit, connect a computer to it and go on, remove some of the stock apps, disable some of the stuff that was going on in the background, and replace the launcher with something that didn’t have a load of ads in it. And then I was happy again.

But of course, that’s quite a convoluted and involved process, and since then, smart TVs have taken over the world, and there are all sorts of very minor variants in these TVs in the way that they’re being set up. They’re coming thick and fast, and I don’t think people could be expected to keep up with all the latest models and the latest developments, the latest firmware updates, and all of the minor tweaks and ads and tracking and all the other rubbish that’s built into – I nearly said a rude word there – that’s built into these TVs. But it turns out that this is actually quite a good job for AI. This does come with a warning, you know: do please thoroughly research this before attempting it on your own TV.

But yeah, this is a story that is doing big numbers this week over on TechCrunch, of all places: “People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again,” by Sarah Perez. “The latest use case for AI: dumbing down your smart TV to get rid of the bloat. A number of developers and vibe coders have recently been sharing solutions for vibe coding your TV to get rid of sponsored ads, speed up the app launcher, redesign the home screen, disable tracking features and more. One such solution, called dumbtv, describes its mission on its GitHub page thus: ‘Your TV should do what you paid for: your apps, your HDMI inputs and nothing else. No ads from the TV itself, no watch tracking, no update you did not ask for.’ Another, cleanyourtv, promises to strip the bloatware from any Android TV or Google TV over Wi-Fi to replace the launcher with one that resembles Apple TV.”

“While hacking consumer electronics devices to gain more control over their systems is hardly a new idea, the latest advances in AI technology have made such efforts much more accessible to anyone. With smart TVs in particular, the hacks come at a time when people have grown frustrated with being forced to watch ads and put up with their devices surveilling their viewing habits. Modern smart TVs ship with a technology called automatic content recognition, which identifies what’s playing on the screen using screenshots, audio clips or other forms of digital fingerprinting.”

How terrible is this?

“If these dumb TV hacks become more popular among everyday consumers, they have the potential to disrupt the smart TV ad industry, which profits from selling viewing data to advertisers or using it to display personalised ads on their own interfaces. As the creator of cleanyourtv, Gathin T., puts it, the idea to clean up the smart TV interface started one afternoon when he got tired of seeing the ads on his parents’ TV set. ‘Vibe coded my parents’ TV this afternoon,’ writes Gathin. ‘It was showing a sponsored ad before you could even get to Netflix. Gave Claude Code the model number, it found the TV on Wi-Fi, removed 25 Xiaomi packages and wrote a new launcher. Looks like an Apple TV now lol.’”

Well, there you go. Look, there’s a link to a tweet there on twitter.com, and apparently I need an account to be able to look at that. Let’s just zoom in instead. There you go. Hacks. I’ve officially hacked the Gibson. Look at that. I mean, what a big improvement. That’s all I want from a smart TV. I just want my apps, so I can just go straight to Netflix or YouTube or whatever. I don’t want these massive ads at the top. I don’t want it recommending content to me. I don’t want this voice-powered, AI-powered search rubbish. And apparently, now I can get that very easily just by asking Claude to do it for me.

So yeah, this uses the Android Debug Bridge, as mentioned, and if there are additional steps to enable that, then of course your AI of choice will also talk you through setting those options and things. I think this is actually a really good use of the technology. Of course, you have to be really careful, really, really careful, because there is a very real chance that it could remove or disable something quite important to the functioning of the TV, brick the firmware, make it completely unusable. And I think that is quite an important caveat. So yeah, before letting AI loose on your smart TV, do please bear that in mind.

But I’m all for it. Reducing ads, reducing bloat, and particularly this surveillance stuff as well. Like, why does my TV manufacturer need to know what I’m watching and see screenshots of it so they can show me more relevant ads? I mean, what a world we’re living in. It’s a bit of a negative episode this week, isn’t it? Anyway, yeah, do give it a try, and if you do, please report back.

Definitely NOT Rees’s Pieces

And now onto the regular segment, which we very much don’t refer to as Rees’s Pieces, for reasons which I have discussed at length in the past, and so we’re going to skip the explanation this week. But all you need to know is that this is a collection of interesting stories that have kind of come across my desk over the past week or so that I wanted to share with you, because I’m sure you will also find them interesting, but I didn’t really have a great deal to add to them. So yeah, I don’t really want to sit and talk for 10 minutes on each of these. I just want to bring them to your attention, and if there’s anything that takes your interest, you know where the links are. Nice, short, snappy intro for a change.

So, diving straight in, here is a post on Twitter, or X, as I guess it’s called nowadays, by krikzz, which is a name you might be familiar with. krikzz, of course, responsible for the EverDrive series of flash carts, available now for pretty much every cartridge-based console that you can name. Very well regarded, well engineered, very capable flash carts. You can load all of your Game Boy or SNES games up on an SD card, stick it into an EverDrive, stick it into your console, and you can play those games via a really nice, easy-to-use menu system. Big fan of his flash carts. I own a few for a few different systems, and always interested to see what krikzz is up to.

And apparently, what krikzz is up to this week is optical drive emulation. So essentially, what he has already done for the world of flash carts, but with optical drives. So in this case, the original PlayStation. The original optical media, of course, deteriorating, bit rot and all of that, and the original drive units also failing as these consoles get older. So what you can do is unplug the original drive, plug one of these things into it, stick an SD card into it, load it up with all your favourite games and continue playing. And they are a very, very important thing for game preservation, so very glad to see these. I have the – is it the GDEMU? – in my Dreamcast, although it’s been quite a long time since I’ve played with my Dreamcast, but I was always a fan of those. And of course, there are other solutions available for the PlayStation, but this one is noteworthy because it’s krikzz. So best of luck to you, krikzz, in developing this, and hopefully it results in, you know, a nice end product that’s going to make PlayStation life easier for all of that console’s fans out there.

Next up, this is a USB 3 and Thunderbolt driver for Windows 98. This is being reported by Tyler August over on hackaday.com. “If there’s one thing everyone hated about Windows 98, it was the lack of USB 4 support. We remember vividly the cries of anguish at the launch party when we found out that 21 years in the future, the operating system wouldn’t support the then-undreamt-of speeds of the Thunderbolt-based fastest USB protocol. After two decades of living with this crushing disappointment, Yeo Kheng Meng has delivered the goods: the most modern of USB interfaces on some very much not modern versions of Windows.”

So these are xHCI drivers, or they were at least initially based upon xHCI drivers, which added USB 2 support to some of these older operating systems. But these add, as mentioned, USB 3, USB 4 – I’m not sure I was even aware that that was a thing – and Thunderbolt to Windows 98 through 7. And indeed, there has been some LLM involvement in this. So on Windows 98, USB 3 speed caps out at around 200 megabytes per second, restricted by Windows 98’s maximum request limit of 64K on USB transfers. But, you know, at least it supports USB 3. There’s also experimental USB 4 and Thunderbolt support. So yeah, that’s Windows 98.

I reported, of course – I think it was last week – about some NVIDIA drivers for modern cards on Windows XP. And this week, we have Thunderbolt and USB 3 and 4 drivers for Windows 98 through 7. Anything is possible nowadays, literally.

Speaking of which, these are the random tech ramblings of… what’s the name of the author of this website? It has just slipped my mind. I’m sure it will come back to me. Paula! There we go. “Electronics and synth nerd.” This is maddox.pro, and Paula has created this 6502-based laptop, which is entirely homebrewed, entirely built from scratch. Reminds me a bit of the Toshiba Libretto, but I guess quite a bit less capable. Some 3D printing involved, and of course some hardware and software development involved with the production of this. But this is a new and improved kind of second iteration, which Paula has been experimenting with. 1024 by 600 resolution, 10.1-inch screen, which is a whole inch and a bit bigger than the original. 10 megahertz instead of 8 megahertz. It’s got a SID emulator on board for all your lovely Commodore 64 tunes, and a Wi-Fi modem, and it doesn’t have an expansion slot as per the original. But still, I mean, what a hardware project this is, and you can find all of the bits and pieces, all of the information that you need to build your own if you want, over on codeberg.org. Let’s just click on that and check that out as well. I didn’t have that tab open. And a bit of a wish list for changes for a potential future iteration as well.

But people creating a whole laptop from scratch – I mean, it’s the kind of stuff that people could only dream of. And open-sourcing it all, so people can go and build their own, and indeed build their own kind of iterations and improvements upon this. Look at this board! And there we go, we’ve got the PicoROM in there running the whole show. Really nice and tidy design. That’s an ESP32 Wi-Fi module there in the corner. It’s all good stuff. Lovely, lovely stuff to see. Anyway, if you want to go and read about that and how that all came together, you know where the link is.

Next up, we have this. Now, I have talked at length about the Playdate, a console that I’ve always dreamed of owning. You know, the yellow thing with the crank on the side, and the interesting selection of games available that kind of take advantage of the console’s unique display and control scheme. And Adafruit, the company that do all of the lovely hardware for tinkerers – I’ve certainly bought some Adafruit bits and pieces over the years – have made something of an homage to that console called the Crankfruit. And you are, or at least you will be, able to build your own version of this in the near future as well. We can just see a version of Breakout running on here, or whatever you know this game as. Breakout, why would I go with that? Anyway, yeah, so this is a “Playdate-inspired lo-fi game player in CircuitPython on Fruit Jam,” and there is a guide to this coming soon as well, if you want to be able to build your own version. Looks like it plugs into an HDMI screen. It’s got USB controller inputs on it, and it also has this rather lovely custom-made control knob there. Cool project.

Next up, we have the Oliver Twins marking 40 years of Dizzy with a new Genesis/Mega Drive collection, and there is going to be a Kickstarter for this soon as well. I love the Dizzy games. I think Treasure Island Dizzy – I know it’s not one that was really fondly remembered because of some of the weird decisions they made when they released that game, but it’s the one that I played the most as a kid on my Atari ST – and I’m a big fan of Dizzy. Of course, local to me as well, the Oliver Twins, Codemasters and all the rest of it.

“The Oliver Twins have announced that they’re celebrating Dizzy’s 40th birthday with a new Mega Drive collection. The Eggcellent Dizzy Collection was revealed at the recent Crash Live event in Coventry” – also local to me – “and contains three games: Dizzy the Adventurer, Go! Dizzy Go! and Panic! Dizzy. ‘With Dizzy turning 40 in 2027, the collection celebrates one of British gaming’s most recognisable characters and the fans who have kept his adventures alive for nearly four decades,’ reads the press release, before adding: ‘The line-up combines fairy-tale adventure, colourful maze action and brain-teasing puzzles. Players can set out to rescue Daisy in Dizzy the Adventurer, tackle the arcade challenges of Go! Dizzy Go! and test their thinking and reflexes across the three puzzle challenges in Panic! Dizzy.’”

I’ve got some rather lovely screenshots here. Look at this. This is a rather beautiful-looking port of these – well, ports, I should say – of these games. Lovely stuff from the Oliver Twins, and nice to see them honouring one of my favourite British gaming series of all time. As mentioned, it’s a Kickstarter campaign. It hasn’t quite gone live yet, but you can find the information on that over on this Time Extension story.

It seems I have two more Time Extension things queued up for you. Oh, this is the Steam Next Fest. Yeah, I nearly made this into its own story in its own right, but decided against it, with another AI-driven story. I tried to dig out the ones that don’t involve AI, I promise, but this is, again, noteworthy: “Thin end of the wedge: Steam Next Fest under fire as demo festival drowns in a flood of AI slop. The most depressing Steam Next Fest I’ve ever seen.”

Of course, Steam Next Fest is a kind of yearly festival of game development run by Valve and Steam – of course, their game distribution platform. “Steam Next Fest 2026 has come under heavy fire from critics, commentators and players due to an overwhelming surge in half-baked, half-arsed and quarter-coded AI games, many of which seem to have little to no evidence of human endeavour whatsoever. Fall’s Steam Next Fest 2026 features approximately 8,200 demos in total, double that of June’s event, which rounded out at about 4,300. So either the developer community saw the biggest four-month surge in the history of gaming, or something lowered the bar for quality control.” Anyway, quite an interesting read here. Yeah.

And lastly: “‘Too big a risk’: indie dev Digital Sun delays ReVamp public playtest over AI cloning fears.” Another story here about the onward march into mediocrity that is the game development industry, thanks to these AI tools. And essentially, this is a game, an upcoming game called ReVamp, being produced by an indie developer called Digital Sun. And they were planning on releasing this playtest, essentially, but have got wind of, basically, people using these tools to clone other people’s games that are in early access. So you take a game that, you know, has been released in early access, and you say, “Hey Claude, turn this into a full-fledged game,” and it adds a load of features and a load of levels and story and stuff. Again, with varying degrees of success. And they have decided that they are going to limit access to this, and also delay it as a result of that, because they’re a bit worried, quite rightly, I think, that someone is basically going to clone their game. Depressing stuff.

Anyway, that’s that. If you want to read a bit more about any of those stories, you can find the links down in the description if you are watching this on my second YouTube channel, youtube.com/reesrambles, or indeed in the show notes if you are listening to this on your podcast platform of choice.

Videos Of The Week

And that, my dearest ramblers, brings us around rather neatly to my regular Videos of the Week feature, wherein I feature a video, or indeed multiple videos, that I have seen here on the old YouTubes in the past week that have entertained, enlightened, educated or otherwise just improved my life in some small way. Or indeed, they’re videos that have come up on my radar that I’ve added to my Watch Later list and haven’t quite gotten around to watching yet, but nonetheless thought that you might find them interesting. I have four videos for you this week, and they are all very much on topic, and they are all very interesting. And the last one in particular is… let’s see.

We’re going to start off with this from Jenovi, a really big and well-known name in the Sega Mega Drive homebrew community, particularly on the music side of things as well, really pushing the limits of what these systems are capable of. And a very good in-depth look at the 32X, which was Sega’s 32-bit add-on for the Mega Drive. Had quite a few Mega Drive stories this week, haven’t we? Good stuff. I do love the Mega Drive. But yeah, it talks a bit about the history of the Mega Drive, or the Genesis if you prefer, and of course the 32X add-on, and then goes on to explore the audio capabilities in particular of that add-on, because Sega did add some extra capabilities to it as well, in addition to the extra processing power, of course, and the potential unlocked from going to 32-bit. And not only does this serve as a technical explanation as to how it all works and what those new and improved capabilities were, but also a practical demonstration from someone who is very, very well qualified to demo such things. And it’s very interesting, as you might expect. I love people pushing the limits of this older hardware. Of course, the benefits of years of experience and modern tooling and everything else. It’s always really good to see what could have been with these older consoles and things. And in this case, a console expansion. So yeah, this is 12 minutes long. It’s a nice, quick, easy watch while you have your tea break, or perhaps, you know, while you’re supposed to be working, surreptitiously, in the office. “How Far Can You Push Sega 32X Audio?” by Jenovi. Also recommended by Matteusbeus himself, the great man behind the great game Chords. He’s the one who shared this video with me, so thank you, Matt.

Anyway, my second video of the week for this week is somebody running Windows 2000 natively on the original Xbox. And as I was a big Xbox fan back in the day, I always remember the stories about, “Oh, you know, it’s all Windows 2000 underneath. You know, if only there was a way to unlock it. You know, one of these days, before too long, somebody’s going to find out some secret hidden debug command or something that allows you to boot into the Windows 2000 desktop.” Of course, we now know that that isn’t really the case. But nonetheless, intrepid homebrew developers have gone and made this a reality anyway, because the OG Xbox, certainly in the past couple of years, has been blown completely and utterly wide open with all sorts of new chips and things, as I have covered on my own channel. Goodness, I’m tripping over my words here. Must be my nostalgic love for the original Xbox muddying my thought process.

Anyway, in this video, you can see DemersSh booting to the Windows 2000 desktop. It runs rather nicely. It runs at a native 720p, which of course is the highest resolution you can get out of the original Xbox. Also shows some video footage of the original CES 2001 reveal of the console, which again runs perfectly smoothly and nicely, as you might expect, and also messing about in Paint and Notepad, which of course is always par for the course when it comes to showing off these old Windows operating systems. But joking aside, yeah, an original Xbox running Windows 2000 natively. “In this video I show the project I’ve been working on, booting Windows 2000 on the Xbox hardware, running a desktop at 720p, playing a video and using Microsoft Paint. It’s a look at the progress so far and a chance to see Microsoft’s classic console doing some desktop computing.” Hopefully some more to come out of this project. There is a GitHub as well, if you want to go and check that out and download it and give it a try for yourself, perhaps have a fiddle with it, or maybe fork it and expand upon it. Maybe even try getting XP up and running on the old OG Xbox. That’d be quite interesting, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, third up, I have this. Now, I talked about this, I think it was a couple of months ago now, about some hardware manufacturers who have been reworking some of their products that were originally designed to use DDR4 or DDR5, kind of modern RAM. But because of the ongoing component shortages and all the rest of it, that RAM has become ridiculously expensive, and they’re actually re-engineering things to work with DDR3, which is a 20-year-old technology now. And Gamers Nexus, in collaboration with Wendell from Level1Techs, have basically taken it upon themselves to kind of explore what’s possible with some of these older DDR3-based systems, which for now you can still actually pick up relatively affordably. And as you might expect, if you are a member of this community and watch my stuff because I’m certainly very much interested in this, they’re still very, very capable machines. And, you know, there’s all sorts of modern-enough gaming that you can do on them, as well as other kind of practical uses for these older machines that might save you a bit of money if you’re looking at going out and buying a brand new piece of hardware and, you know, have come up against the inevitable ridiculous pricing as a result of these aforementioned component shortages.

So, a nice nostalgic look at this kind of era of technology if you are someone who remembers it fondly, as I do, but also some very practical and useful advice as well in this video. And interesting to see this technology being put to good use, and of course being saved from landfill as well, which is always a good thing. 25 minutes and 48 seconds long, video from Gamers Nexus: “DDR3 Rides Again”, featuring Wendell of Level1Techs.

And fourthly and finally, this is a video from The National Museum of Computing. It’s an hour and 37 minutes long, and this is David Lovett being awarded the Tony Sale Award 2026. Now, you’re probably sat there thinking, “I know that name, David Lovett. Who is that? Why do I know that name?” It’s Usagi Electric, of course, of YouTube fame, and well known for fiddling with old mainframes and, you know, some really ancient technology. And really incredibly passionate and knowledgeable, and, you know, puts together some really, really interesting videos – very entertaining and very well produced and educational videos on these systems, which, of course, can be quite a trying and quite a boring subject if they’re kind of not approached in the right way. And thankfully he does, and that’s why he has won this award.

And what this is, is basically an hour-and-37-minute-long talk from the great man himself, all about this computer, this particular project, which actually enabled him to win this award, so to speak. So anyway, the description kind of tells it in a bit more detail and a bit better than I can at the moment. “On Tuesday the 29th of September, The National Museum of Computing hosted the 6th Tony Sale Award, which, apart from the COVID years, has been presented biennially by the BCS Computer Conservation Society since 2012. For the first time, the five judges were unanimous in nominating David Lovett’s restoration of a Bendix G-15 computer. The restored computer is now on permanent display at the System Source Computer Museum in Maryland.” And goes on to talk a bit more about the award, and of course about David himself and his fantastic YouTube channel.

But it’s a longer video, as mentioned. It’s nearly two hours long, but, you know, I like to stick these on the TV while I do the housework and other stuff, cooking the dinner and whatever. And it’s Usagi Electric. I mean, if you followed along with his project – I need to remind myself again, the Bendix G-15, there we go – you will probably know a lot of what he talks about in this talk. But still, it’s so great to see a talk from Usagi Electric. Lots of great, you know, visuals in this talk, all sorts of historical footage and images and documentation, and all the stuff you would expect if you are familiar with David’s YouTube channel. And if you’re not, this is a great introduction to the great man himself.

So there you go, they are my videos of the week. We have number one, “How Far Can You Push Sega 32X Audio?” from Jenovi, a 12-minute-long video pushing the limits of the Sega 32X 32-bit expansion for the Mega Drive. Second video is Windows 2000 running natively on the original Xbox in 720p, showing video playback and Paint and Notepad, among a couple of other things. And the interesting thing about this is that it is an ongoing project with its own GitHub that you can actually check out for yourself. So this video is a great introduction to that. Only 3 minutes and 50 seconds long. My third video of the week is Gamers Nexus and Wendell from Level1Techs talking all about DDR3, and uses for old computers using that particular memory technology. 25 minutes and 48 seconds long. And finally, very, very deserving recipient of the Tony Sale Award 2026 at The National Museum of Computing, David Lovett of Usagi Electric. One hour and 37 minutes long, this talk, and it is fascinating.

So if you like the look of any of those, please do check out the links down below in the description if you’re watching this on my second YouTube channel, youtube.com/reesrambles, or indeed in the show notes, if such a thing is supported in your podcast app of choice.

…And Finally

And so, sadly, as is always the case every single week here on Rees Rambles, our time together now must draw to a close. So thank you for joining me, from the bottom of my heart. Of course, Rees Rambles is released every week on a Friday night, two minutes to midnight UK time, on my second YouTube channel, as mentioned, youtube.com/reesrambles, and also on the podcast platforms. One thing that I always forget is to ask people to subscribe. Please, you know, I don’t ask very often, but if you could subscribe on YouTube, or indeed on your podcast platform, that is actually genuinely helpful to me. Of course, maybe give me a little thumbs up as well.

And speaking of people who deserve a thumbs up, it would be remiss of me not to mention my Discord community. Link’s down below if you want to come and join us and talk about boating, gardening, pets, solar power, AI, basically anything and everything, really. But there is a Ramble Submissions channel in there for people to submit stuff that they think I should talk about here on Rees Rambles, and there’s also an Interesting Stuff channel, and I like to check those out before I put these rambles together every week.

And a few names from that community, people who’ve either submitted stuff this week or maybe been involved in the conversation: Analogue Sheep, Mike C, Steve Cooper from Steve’sTechShed, “All right. I am BaumInventions”, who seems to go by a different name every week, but nonetheless, your contributions around AI in particular are very much appreciated. Mx Autumn (PhotoGabble), AmigaPete, HardlyWorgen71, Matteusbeus, the retro dev, Matt, of course, with his wonderful game, Chords. One final shout-out for you, and of course that will be linked down below as well. OtherRetroMatt, TechNick, dbk, gravitone and Asan. And I don’t see any mention of mnemo there this week. Where have you been? Wherefore art thou, mnemo?

Anyway, yes, and finally, the And Finally segment. I have one more thing to show to you. I was talking a moment ago, as part of Videos of the Week, about the original Xbox homebrew scene, about some of the fantastic stuff that people are doing with that console. And this was also posted over on my Discord last week. It’s someone who has replaced the CPU. So of course, that originally had that Pentium III CPU. We’ve known about RAM upgrades for a while, and if you wanted to turn your OG Xbox into basically a debug console, a development console, you could double the RAM quite easily – well, if you’re quite good at surface-mount soldering. And people have now turned their attention to replacing the CPU, and actually socketing the CPU and trying to put more powerful CPUs in there. Of course, before, they were limited by the Xbox’s own OS and firmware and stuff, which really meant that they couldn’t unlock this extra capability. But thanks to modchips and custom firmwares and stuff, we are actually starting to see some really exciting things happening in this world, including, but not limited to, that Windows 2000 project that I just showed off.

But how about downgrading the CPU? This is a VIA C3, 1.2GHz. Yes, it is a faster clock speed, but if you remember these CPUs back in the day, they were cheap, you know, and they were all right for kind of office and business stuff, very basic kind of computer stuff, but they were kind of decidedly lacking, I think it’s fair to say, compared to the AMD and Intel offerings of the time. But still, why not shove one in an original Xbox? And this actually shows the console booting. This is using a third-party BIOS called Cerbios, which is quite a popular one in the Xbox modding community. It shows it actually booting up and, you know, running a game, which in this case is GTA San Andreas – or at least we get to see the title screen, anyway. So yeah, if you’re a fan of the original Xbox and the VIA C3 CPU, you can now get the best of both worlds, all in one console.

And that really is all that I have for you for this week’s ramble, so thank you ever so much for joining me. Oh, that’s that guy on the motorbike who seems to come flying past around this time every week. Very well timed, sir. That’s all I’ve got for you for this week’s ramble, so thank you, and hopefully I’ll see you in the same time and place again next week. Bye.