Weeb Surfing, Or: How To Make Your Retro Computer Behave

[weeb-surfing]

Nintendo 3DS suddenly not displaying anything from SD card

I had a modified Nintendo 3DS that suddenly decided not to show any of its games or features from an SD card. The card was still detected by the 3DS, and checking the data options revealed that there was stuff on it. That SD card was able to be read in a computer, and all the files were there.

I suspected that some kind of internal database was corrupted, and it turns out the 3DS "title database" can get whacked fairly easily.

Using my Mac, I mostly followed the guide on this wiki page to rebuild the title database. I made a backup of the entire SD card first, in case it made things worse.

For the Python parts, I had to use a virtualenv to install the packages from requirements.txt (and you should too!) because my Python install is managed by Homebrew, which gets mad about installing any global or user packages.

Because osxfuse is deprecated, I instead installed the macfuse package from Homebrew when asked. It still threw an error about not being able to find libosxfuse.2.dylib, so I ended up doing sudo ln -s libfuse.2.dylib libosxfuse.2.dylib to create a symbolic link in /usr/local/lib.

Once everything was done, I put the SD card back into my 3DS and all of the programs were back.

[weeb-surfing]

Nintendo 64 hard carrying case: which way does it go around?

Nintendo released a highly perplexing carrying case for the Nintendo 64 console. It looks kinda like this.

It doesn't have anywhere obvious to put the Nintendo 64. Where you have to put it is on this little clip up here in the corner, so that the front right leg is held in place and the system won't fall out.

As well, everyone seems to have taken pictures with the insert being upside down. The Nintendo 64's controller ports should point towards the bottom of the suitcase when it is installed.

[weeb-surfing]

Changing a bunch of type/creator codes at once in Macintosh System 7

If you have a lot of documents that you need to change the type/creator code on quickly (e.g. MSWord documents from an IBM PC floppy,) try using BunchTyper. ResEdit works well to change one or two type/creator codes but BunchTyper is much faster at changing a bunch.

[weeb-surfing]

Make YAHDI work with Neko Project 21 Kai

I had to go through this recently, so I'll try to save some time for you.

Download YAHDI from the nfggames thread. Unpack it.

The resulting 542MB image is a raw image, meant to be written directly to a CF card for use in a real PC-98.

You need to prepend a header onto the disk image before you can use it in NP2Kai. The header is provided. On Mac or Linux you can do cat PC98-542MB.hed PC98-542MB.img > PC98-542MB.nhd.

Mount this image in NP21Kai using the options menu (SHIFT + F11 on my Mac) and select Hard Disk -> IDE 1 -> Open... - it should show up as long as you used the NHD file extension.

Reboot the emulated PC-98. It should boot into YAHDI.

Enjoy! You'll need to remove the emulator-generated header from the image if you want to modify the image or put it on a real PC-98.

[weeb-surfing]

Mahalito: Copying Floppies

Mahalito usage: mahalito e|a [-[2HD|2DD|2D]] [[-fFilee]|[-mNum]]iin [-o] [-c] [-v] [-n] [-p[-wDir]] var1 var2 var1 var2 A: dump drive to file dive: file E: write file to drive file drive: -f: specify cylinder format with a file -m: number of cylinders (2HD: 77, 2DD:80, 2D:40) 2HD default -o:do not check same name file (valid for e) -c: continue processing as much as possible -v: verify when restoring/copying -n: do not validate when copying -p: archiver on A -w: output directory (only valid when -p is provided)

the files come out to two files a .2HD/DD/D file and one other, you just put in the first part i.e "DISK.2HD" you put "DISK" for the file name

unless you're getting wild you can get by just using mahalito a b: file and mahalito e file b:

[weeb-surfing]

Schematic for a RAM expansion board for an NEC PC88.

[weeb-surfing]

Pinout to wire PC98 analogue RGB DB15s to a standard VGA HD15 port. You will need a monitor that is capable of 24kHz horizontal sync.

[weeb-surfing]

Schematic for a VFO emulation board. If you are trying to replace an NEC 1138D PC98 floppy drive with a Gotek/HxC, the motherboard’s floppy controller will not support VFO (variable-frequency oscillation), and you need to build and install this board to make the Gotek work properly.

NEC 1138T computers do not need this board and you can just directly swap the floppy drive out for a Gotek (once you have wired a 26-pin to 34-pin floppy adapter).