asie

asie, 18 days ago to random

PSA: Do you have a DS/DS Lite/DSi etc. that can run homebrew? Do you have many? Do you have any with worn out touchscreens?

If so, you can help! I'm writing a new touchscreen driver for BlocksDS and want to test its behaviour on a variety of consoles. I'm worried I made it a little too complicated ^^ (I had a DS Lite with particularly noisy input, but this turned out to be exacerbated by a poorly applied screen protector.)

1. Download https://asie.pl/files/touch_input_20240614_2226.nds
2. Press RIGHT once to show the "Adjusted input" mode on the touchscreen, so you can see your touch input being tracked as you draw.
3. Take note of the Z1/Z2 values as you glide along/adjust stylus strength. In this build, they are repurposed to refer to the amount of noise on the X and Y axis. (For example, on my worn DS Lite, the difference is <10 samples, while in a specific area on the left border it goes up to 15-20 samples. For context, ~15 samples = ~1 pixel of noise.)
4. Let me know!

asie, 3 months ago to random

⚠️ Call to action: Use your retro IBM-compatible PCs to help the MegaZeux DOS port! ⚠️

In the late 90s/early 00s, MegaZeux introduced a mode called "Super MegaZeux": using an undefined behaviour of enabling 256-color VGA mode in text mode, it allowed the use of 256 colors on some graphics chipsets.

We'd like to know which graphics chipsets these are. Legacy compatibility lists are very limited and of poor quality, so we're building a new one. Here's how you can help:

1. Get your retro PCs out. The only requirement is a VGA-compatible graphics chipset; any 8086+ laptops and desktops are supported otherwise.
2. Download and run SMZXTEST.EXE from https://asie.pl/files/smzxtest.zip
3. Take a photo of the screen! (If you want, take another photo after pressing A to see if an alternate undefined mode works better on your machine.)
4. Reply with the photos and a description of the machine (which graphics chipset/card it uses; for laptops, a model of the laptop is also welcome).
5. Once verified, I'll add it to the list at https://www.digitalmzx.com/wiki/Super_MegaZeux#Compatibility

Thank you in advance and good luck!