Universal Video Driver for Windows

I’m stealing a post from my old blog because it’s still relevant (and also required updating).

Finding video drivers for Windows can be a real pain for old or obscure cards. I came across this gem which solves that problem. Drivers are available for both the 9x and NT families of Windows. As long as your video card is VESA-compliant, it should work.

The drivers are hosted here. Enjoy!

Beat that, Bro! for webOS

Before I talk about my app, I’ll give you some background first. There is a cheesy Ortega commercial featuring some awful lines, including Shawn Johnson’s infamous line and “Beat that, Bro!” One of my friends liked that line so much that he registered a domain for it.

Now on to the app! I recently purchased a Palm Pixi, which runs Palm’s webOS. One of its most attractive features is the ability to make applications using web languages like HTML, JS, and CSS. I decided to give this a try and install their SDK. Once I had that up and running, it took me a few minutes to modify the “Hello, world” application into something more… personal. ;) You can see the app in action below. I may make a new version with a picture and a link to the commercial later on for fun.

Don’t be an Administrator in XP

Windows XP automatically gives user accounts administrator privileges. This is REALLY bad because any program you run, trusted or untrusted, has complete access to your system. Even if you run programs you trust, such as your favorite web browser, someone could hijack it and take over your system using your admin privileges. Once Windows has been compromised, you can no longer completely trust it with your private information.

Other operating systems like Linux have long avoided this problem by having a root (admin in Linux speak) account that can make system changes, and a limited user account for everything else. That way, attacks against the user account have a tougher time taking control of the system. In the latest versions of Windows (Vista, 7), Microsoft employs this method with UAC. Most people seem to think UAC is annoying and useless (see Apple’s “Cancel or Allow” smear ad), but it is actually an attempt to accomplish this type of privilege separation.

I was so impressed by the way Linux protects system files that I decided to take a similar approach in Windows. I no longer use Windows under an administrator account. Sounds impossible, right? Well, it’s not. Windows 7 makes this incredibly easy, but XP is a bit trickier. I’ll give you a quick step-by-step to get you started. The following steps are for XP only.

1. First, you’ll want to make an administrator account. You will perform system changes using only this account later on. (Do this using User Accounts in the Control Panel). MAKE SURE YOU GIVE THIS ACCOUNT A PASSWORD!

2. Log out of your current account and log into the admin account you’ve just created.

3. Go to the Control Panel, choose Tools from the menu bar and click Folder Options. Go to the View tab and check “Launch folder windows in a separate process.” Click OK. This will allow Control Panel and Windows Explorer windows to open with another account’s privileges.

4. Go to User Accounts and change your original account to a “Limited account.”

5. Log out of the admin account and back into your original account. You are done.

I suggest the following tweak so you can easily access your Control Panel and make system changes:

Make a shortcut called “Control Panel as Admin” and give it this path/target: %windir%\system32\runas.exe /user:youradminaccount control

When you click this shortcut, a command prompt will ask for you admin password. When you get it right, it launches the Control Panel as if you were an admin. The drawback is, if you mistype your password, it will close and do nothing.

IMPORTANT: If you need to install something, or if some lame application needs admin privileges to run, right click your victim and choose “Run As…”, pick “The following user:” and type your admin account info. This will launch the application using the admin account.

Tips, Tricks, and Notes:

• As a limited user, you CAN NOT access files and folders outside of your profile within “Documents and Settings”. Neither can your applications. You also cannot kill nor change the priority of processes that your account did not start, run Task Manager as admin to do that.
• If you run Windows Explorer or the Control Panel as admin, you can enable the Address Bar using “View > Toolbars” and go to other locations with admin privileges.
• When you run poorly-made installers as your admin account, sometimes they will place shortcuts in the admin account’s start menu where you can’t use them. You must manually copy these over using Windows Explorer in order to use them.
• I suggest you have shortcuts to the following handy so you can easily get to them as admin: Control Panel, Windows Explorer, Command Prompt, and Task Manager.

Running XP as a limited user increases the safety of your PC by restricting access to crucial system files and settings. Most newer applications should work fine with this, but if they don’t, you now how have the tools to work around it. I hope this helps you keep your computer that much safer!

Sega Collection – Dreamcast

Brian requested this console, and beards get priority, so here it is! The Dreamcast was Sega’s final home console. It did not last very long (1999-2002) because the company was already weak from its past mistakes with the Sega Saturn and Genesis add-ons. It’s a pity, because I think the Dreamcast was the best console of its generation. If you’re into retro gaming, this console is an absolute must-have because it’s incredibly easy to get great games for it. Pictured below is a Dreamcast switched on with a controller and VMU plugged in, a bare VMU, and another Dreamcast flipped to show the ports and modem.

Under the hood, the Dreamcast has almost identical hardware specifications to its arcade counterpart, the NAOMI. This resulted in even better arcade ports than on the Genesis. For example, Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 2, and many, many others were ported to Dreamcast directly from NAOMI. Also, every Dreamcast (in the USA) came with a removable 56k modem and web browser disc, enabling online play. Toward the end of the Dreamcast’s life, an ethernet adapter was available, but a limited number of games supported it. The ethernet adapter is now incredibly rare ($100+).

In contrast to the Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast had a simpler hardware design and was easier to develop for. To make development even easier, developers could optionally run their games on top of a custom version of Windows CE with DirectX. However, Windows CE is not built into the console, it is run off of the game disc.

As a strategy to use cheap drives and combat piracy, Sega and Yamaha teamed up to create the Dreamcast’s GD-ROM format. GD-ROMs are essentially CD-ROMs with data packed more densely than normal. As a result, these discs could hold around 1.2GB of information and still be read by cheap, custom CD drives. Pirates initially had trouble duplicating the discs because they are unreadable using conventional methods. Eventually, pirates did find a back door in the console which allowed them to boot software from normal CD-Rs. This led to a huge Dreamcast piracy scene and helped Sega’s decision to kill the console. Fortunately, the same back door allowed people to make advanced homebrew software for the Dreamcast. Despite its failure to safeguard against piracy, Sega continued to use the format in some of their arcade machines. People have since reverse-engineered the format, and it is now possible to use a modified CD drive or a Dreamcast linked to a PC to read them.

One of the most innovative features of the Dreamcast was the VMU. The VMU was a memory card, secondary display, and a handheld gaming system in one. It included a connector that allowed it to plug into the Dreamcast controller and also exchange game saves with other VMUs. Once plugged into a controller, the Dreamcast could save your game data onto it, download a game to it, or show pictures and information on its built-in display. Once unplugged, you could manage your game saves or play special games using its built-in display, speaker, and buttons. One major flaw with the VMU is its battery life. With moderate game play, it would only last the better part of a day on two CR2032 batteries.

How about some trivia? Did you know people still release games for the Dreamcast? Did you know the Dreamcast had a microphone controller attachment for games like Seaman and Alien Front Online? Did you know that the Dreamcast has native VGA output?

My Sega Collection – Sega Genesis

To spice up my blog a bit, I decided to make a series of posts about my Sega collection. Due to popular demand (a staggering 2 people), I will cover the Genesis console first. Good choice, definitely my favorite. Instead of boring you with a list of games I have, or something else that has been done before, I will talk about what’s under the hood and some other lesser-known stuff which appeals to techies like you and I. These are my two Genesis consoles. I should have probably dusted them off first, but oh well.

The big guy on the left is the model 1 and the right is, you guessed it, the model 2. The only true differences between the both of them are form factor, different connectors, the headphone jack on the model 1, and the fact that the model 2 has cruddier A/V output. I flipped them over in the second photo so you can see the expansion port on their right sides. Also, the metal plating is not stock. It is included with the Sega CD so the Genesis fits tightly against it. There was a third model of the Genesis, but it’s shrunk down and all the interesting features are gone. I do not have nor want one. =P

Now I’ll get to the cool facts. Sega had the tendency to make their consoles mimic their arcade hardware at the time. The Genesis was based off of the System-16. This is the reason why Genesis arcade-to-console ports were so faithful. Wikipedia has a super-comprehensive spec sheet for the console, so I won’t list them all. I’ll just go over some highlights. The Genesis was mainly powered by a Motorola 68000 running at just over 7MHz. This is the same chip that powered early Macs as well. Remember how vibrant the colors looked in your favorite games? Well, only 64 colors could be shown at any one time. However, developers used some clever tricks (like stripes and flickering) to make it appear like there were more. The previously mentioned expansion ports were used for the Sega CD add-on. The Sega CD attaches to the side and adds a CD drive and other functionality to the Genesis (I’ll cover it in a later post).

One interesting fact that most people don’t know is that the Genesis was actually two consoles crammed into one. No, I’m not talking about add-ons. There is actually a Master System, Sega’s previous console, hiding inside of the Genesis. Using a mostly passive converter called the Power Base Converter, you could plug in a Master System game and the Genesis would give its Zilog Z80 chip (normally used for sound) control and run it. You can still buy third-party converters that will activate this functionality for you.

How about some trivia? Did you know there were two x86 computers released with built-in Genesis hardware (Mega PC, TeraDrive)? Did you know that the rest of the world calls the Genesis the Mega Drive? Did you know that the game Virtua Racing was the only Genesis game to need a separate chip (Starfox style) to render 3D graphics?