Look, It's Another Blog – Tech and Gaming, New and Old

New Livingroom PC

I know the PC market is in terrible shape due to the current AIpocalypse/RAMageddon. Despite that, I finally felt it was time to build a PC for my living room that everyone in the family can enjoy. This would be the first time building a PC since 2008 (my Ship of Theseus desktop doesn’t count). Making this more fun was a 1.5+ hour pilgrimage to the closest Micro Center to source all the parts. The store isn’t that big, but they had packed the aisles with as much stuff as possible. Even then, most of my parts were stored in the employee only “warehouse” section of the building. I wish I could had picked more pieces from a shelf than just the CPU and cooler. It was still cool to walk into a store and walk out with a cart of parts. By far the busiest section of the store was 3D printing. I couldn’t count the number of people who came in to buy filament or new printer to get into the hobby.

My system is a Mini-ITX system rocking the following:

The reasoning for the parts was pretty basic:

  • Must be in stock at the store
  • Mini-ITX case that I think looks nice
  • CPU cooler that will fit the case
  • Cheapest Mini-ITX motherboard that isn’t ASRock
  • 7600x3D CPU
  • Cheapest 32GB 6000MT/s memory kit
  • Cheapest 2TB SSD
  • Cheapest RX9070 GPU
  • Cheapest quality looking 750W PSU

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Running Stable Diffusion Image Generation on AMD GPU & Windows

AI image generation has been making a lot of buzz lately. It’s an exciting space due to the systems like DALL·E and Midjourney becoming available for people outside the AI world to play with. However, the one I find compelling, from a tech nerd viewpoint, is Stable Diffusion because it is open source and can run on local hardware. So, of course, I have to try it out and see how it worked. 

Getting Stable Diffusion running on my hardware is more complicated than at first glance. Out of the box, the project is designed to run on the PyTorch machine learning framework. That’s a problem for me because PyTorch only supports hardware acceleration on Windows using NVIDIA’s CUDA API. And I have an AMD GPU. Linux has a better chance of success because PyTorch supports AMD’s ROCm API, but that’s a project for another day. There is another option.

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Running Stable Diffusion Image Generation on Your CPU

AI image generation has been making a lot of buzz lately. It’s an exciting space due to the systems like DALL·E and Midjourney becoming available for people outside the AI world to play with. However, the one I find compelling, from a tech nerd viewpoint, is Stable Diffusion because it is open source and can run on local hardware. So, of course, I have to try it out and see how it worked. 

Getting Stable Diffusion running on my hardware is more complicated than at first glance. Out of the box, the project is designed to run on the PyTorch machine learning framework. That can be a problem because PyTorch only supports hardware acceleration using NVIDIA’s CUDA API, AMD’s ROCM API, or Apple’s Metal API (using MPS). What if you don’t have a system supported by those APIs, like most laptops? There is another option.

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Playing Star Trek Starfleet Academy in 2022

Recently I went on a kick of playing older games in my library. One of my favorite space sims was Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Released in 1997 by Interplay Entertainment, Starfleet Academy put me in the uniform of a cadet working through many diplomatic and combat scenarios in a simulator. Imagine the opening scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn where Saavik and crew attempted to rescue the Kobayashi Maru. Between simulator missions, FMV video sequences were used as choose-your-own-adventure interludes where I got to interact and help my crew mates, work with Chekov and Kirk, and even uncover a conspiracy at the Academy. Learning about the story’s different branches took at least two playthroughs. There was even an option to reprogram the Kobayashi Maru scenario and win.

Playing Starfleet Academy in 2022 from the original CDs isn’t easy. The game was written for Direct3D 3.0, a graphics API that doesn’t work on Windows 7, 8, 10, or 11. A software renderer version of the game is included on the disc, but it limits the resolution to 640×480 in exclusive fullscreen mode. And don’t forget, the game initially shipped on five discs due to the amount of FMV included. Most computers no longer come with disc drives or options to install them.

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Plex+Docker+Synology=❤

This post is either a cool idea or ridiculous. Having received a Synology DS220+ NAS over the winter, I decided to dive in to see how much stuff I could run on the system. Previously I used an old Ubuntu PC as a storage/print server, Plex server, and other various things. The system filled my needs as a home server for several years, but eventually, I ran out of storage space and needed to decide on the next stage of my home sever life.

All of this got me thinking about Docker. It’s not a technology I got to use a work, but software containerization is something I felt I’ll need to be familiar with going forward. With that decided, I dove into learning Docker and rolling out Plex on the Synology.

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The ConsoleMods Wiki

This blog post is a bit different. Rather than my usual how-to or info sharing, I will point you to the ConsoleMods.org wiki. This site is the brainchild of Bob from RetroRGB.com and Derf to be a source for all things game console-related.

What does all of this have to do with this post? Since the launch of the wiki, I’ve been working on migrating one page from Bob’s website: Nintendo 64’s blur. It was easy to take the original content and clean it up for the wiki. But I wanted more. Now was the time to add more information about how the console added blur to the output and minimize the effect. Specifically, I added info about how the N64’s Reality Co-Processor’s VI_STATUS register controls the system’s filters and anti-aliasing; added information from the ASSEMblerGames.org forums archive about how to manipulate the register; and migrated the GameShark code list from Bob’s Google Sheet and forum into a sortable table. Overall, the page grew from 5KB to 61KB. There’s always room for improvement, but I’m happy with this 1.0 refresh.

If you want to help or contribute to the ConsoleMods.org wiki, please join in on the fun. There’s a lot of information from RetroRGB.com that needs to be cleaned up. Many consoles have little to no information and need some love.

Have fun,
Tony

CrossPoint DXP Fan Replacement

In the perpetual quest to upgrade/change my AV basement setup, I purchased a used Extron DXP 8×8 HDMI matrix switch. After receiving the unit and performing a factory reset, I was happy to see it worked perfectly in my setup, except for one thing. Unlike the CrossPoint Ultra I used for analog devices, the DXP had a cooling fan. The fan wasn’t loud but was noticeable when was nothing playing. The location of the switch was next to my couch which made the issue more pronounced.

The DXP uses a standard size fan: 60x25mm, 12V, 3-pin. That made an upgrade easier. I decided Noctua’s NF-A6x25 FLX would be a suitable replacement.

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Apple PowerMacs are “Screwy”

If you’ve ever worked on a G4 or G5 PowerMac, you may have run into the issue of finding replacement screws. Despite looking like standard PC case screws, commonly called #6-32, the screws used by Apple were metric. Being metric wasn’t in itself a bad thing. Your local home improvement store may have carried what you need in their “special hardware” section. But, no, Apple went further and used M3.5 size screws in most of their systems. You didn’t know there was a metric screw size between M3 & M4? Neither did I.

After measuring and a lot of Internet searching, I came up with a list of the most common screws used in my PowerMag G4 Quicksilver system. I have to thank an old discussion thread at Apple’s website for helping figure out what size these screws are.

  1. M3.5x5mm, pan head
    1. CPU
  2. M3.5x5mm, flat pan head
    1. Hard Drive mounting bracket
  3. M3.5x6mm, pan head
    1. Motherboard
  1. CD-ROM cage
  1. PSU cage
  1. PCI brackets
  1. PSU cable grommet
Quicksilver motherboard highlighting screw locations
Quicksilver internal case highlighting screw location
Quicksilver exterior case highlighting screw locations

Have fun,
Tony

Resolve Port 1900 Conflict between Plex and Synology

I recently played around with a new Synology NAS and got the crazy idea to run Plex on the system, but from a Docker container (there may be a post about that soon). The setup process should have been simple. Most of the environment settings and port publishing were configured automatically. I just had to add a volume mapping to my media share. Except the Plex container would not start.

Docker can't start Plex.

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