For the Love of Laserdisc

Why Laserdisc?

Plenty of obsolete formats garner a following because of nostalgia (I can't fathom why else anyone would actually like 8-track cassettes), and a few of them remain popular long after the sun sets on their era because they remain superior in one way or another to the thing that replaced them.

Laserdiscs kind of fit in both categories.  I didn't grow up with laserdiscs.  Heck, I only ever remember seeing a laserdisc player once when I was growing up.  But I sure knew what it was when I saw it.

Dipping My Toe

In the late 90's when DVD was on its meteoric rise as the replacement for both Laserdisc and the vastly more popular VHS, I dabbled a little with laserdiscs.  Being a 12 inch disc format just like vinyl records, the disc jackets featured a whole square foot of artwork.  They were just cool to look at.  So, like a lot of people, I bought a handful of laserdiscs before I even had a player to play them with.

Some time in the late 90's, My wife and I stopped into a rental store that was liquidating its laserdisc stock.  Most of it had been picked over by the time we arrived, but I managed to pick up the whole Ninja Turtles trilogy for about $15.  Sometime later I was browsing the case at a Goodwill and found a sealed copy of the T2 special edition (it was exclusive to LD at the time).

A buddy from work was a real AV enthusiast and was constantly educating me on the virtues of Laserdisc, and DVD.  With Laserdisc being replaced by DVD, people were selling their players like crazy so I picked out a player on ebay and eagerly waited for it to arrive.  My buddy lent me a couple of discs to break in the new player.  One of them was Con Air - I can't recall the other.

Well, the player arrived, I got it all set up, watched one movie, started a second and the player broke.  After a heated discussion with the seller I sent the player back and decided not to jump into the format after all.

Six months later I had switched jobs and was recounting the experience to a co-worker who offered to sell me his barely-used Laserdisc player for $100.  I took him up on it and I've had a great working player ever since.

Even so, I didn't really do a lot of collecting.  I picked up a couple odds and ends.  When the Transformers: The Movie was re-released by Pioneer Japan, I somehow got wind of it and ordered a copy which is still sealed to this day.  When browsing the LD collection at a local used record store I found a copy of Anne of Avonlea for my wife.  You get the idea.

Another Angle

About four years ago, I decided that I really wanted to try out the Pioneer LaserActive system - basically they made a Laserdisc player with an expansion port for video game hardware modules.  There was a Sega Genesis/Sega CD version and a TurboGrafx/TGCD version.  In addition to being able to play cartridge and CD games on the player, it was also possible to play special games on Laserdisc.  Because Laserdisc is an analog format, these games haven't really been emulated, and can't really be copied so unlike just about every other video game on the planet, these games can really only be played on real hardware from retail discs.  As you might imagine, these games and players are pretty rare and expensive.  I only own one game.

Renewed Interest

Earlier this summer a friend from work asked me if I knew where his buddy might buy a laserdisc player.  The buddy had just bought a copy of the Star Wars Definitive Edition on Laserdisc and didn't have a player to play it on.  I had been looking for an excuse to come over to his house and see his theater setup (140-inch screen was all I needed to know), so I offered to bring one of my players over so we could all watch some un-"fixed" Star Wars.

The experience turned out to be immensely fun and educational.  Firstly the deluxe box set of the Star Wars trilogy was just really really cool.  Secondly the ability of modern A/V equipment to clean up and scale composite video from a Laserdisc to 1080p is surprisingly good.

The theater was equipped with a contemporary Onkyo receiver that was 1 model different from the one I use.  I had never bothered to connect a LD player to mine because I assumed the picture would look like crap no matter what I did.  I incorrectly assumed this because my primary hobby is video games and connecting old video games to modern AV equipment usually does result in extremely poor picture quality.  I have to use a lot of specialized AV equipment to get a good picture out of old game systems on new TVs.  In the back of my mind I knew this was because old game consoles took advantage of characteristics of CRT televisions that weren't necessarily part of the video specification of the time.  When non-CRT televisions became the standard these tricks no longer worked because the scalers built in to modern TVs and AV receivers were not designed to process the out-of-spec signal.  What never connected with that knowledge until I was sitting in my friend's theater watching Star Wars on his 140-inch screen and wondering how it could look so good, was that this is EXACTLY what those scalers are designed to handle.  And boy do they do it well.

The event also opened up discussions where I was able to share my knowledge of the LD format - how it's recorded in composite and not RGB, how the CAV and CLV formats work etc... This got me onto the topic of AC-3 (also known as Dolby Digital) and DTS audio and basically where the Laserdisc technology peaked before its obsolescence.  Having these facts rattling around again reminded me that I had always regretted in the tiniest way never having been able to experience everything LD had to offer.  So, of course, 2016 was the perfect year to rectify that.

Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS

The LD format had a long and storied history and evolved quite a bit along the way.  The fact that the designers were able to take what started as a fully analog format and add digital audio, and then later multi-channel digital audio (Dolby Digital and DTS both supported up to 6 discrete channels of audio) spoke volumes about the versatility of the technology.  What was originally only able to handle less than 30 minutes per side of grainy muddy video was stretched and stretched and refined until ultimately each side could contain up to an hour of high-quality video.  But this evolution was not without its price.  The very first players couldn't play digital audio.  While most players manufactured from the early 80's onward do support digital audio, only a handful of them support AC-3 and DTS, and there's a huge catch even with the ones that do.

AC-3 is recorded on the disc on one of the analog audio tracks as a matrixed radio frequency signal.  It sounds like static when played as analog audio.  In order to actually get discrete 6-channel audio (so-called "5.1" because it carries 5 full frequency channels and a subwoofer channel with just the low-end frequencies) from AC-3 one was required employ a number of devices at once.  Firstly the player had to recognize the AC-3 signal and output it as radio-frequency (RF) instead of analog sound.  Secondly the RF signal needed to be demodulated - that is taken from matrixed RF to a digital bitstream.  Because it would make the players more costly and the number of discs to actually use AC-3 was relatively low, the circuitry needed to demodulate the AC-3 RF signal was never built into the players.  Instead users either had to buy an external demodulator (which weren't cheap) or buy an A/V receiver with the circuitry built in (also not cheap because it was a feature reserved for high-end receivers).  And finally, the digital bitstream had to be decoded - that is turned back into multiple analog audio channels to be output from your surround speakers.  Fortunately that last step is something that pretty much every digital A/V receiver ever released is capable of doing because the digital bitstream output by the decoder is the same format used by DVDs with a DD soundtrack.

To make things even stranger, competing with AC-3 was DTS.  DTS was also a 5.1 channel format but a decidedly simpler one.  Instead of using an RF-encoded analog audio track, DTS used both of the digital stereo tracks to carry a bitstream which could then be decoded by pretty much any A/V receiver.  This had the dual advantages of much higher bandwidth than AC-3 and the player didn't need any proprietary circuitry or really even be aware of DTS to support it - it just had to provide a digital audio output.  Higher bandwidth is a big deal with audio formats because less compression is needed, and less compression means wider dynamic range and higher fidelity.  Because of this DTS laserdiscs are among the most sought-after and most expensive ones to find used.

In order to support both DTS and AC-3, you would have to use two distinct digital outputs from a compatible LD player - an AC-3 RF output, and a digital audio output.

Plunging In, Head First

After doing my research and shopping around, I settled on a plan to start enjoying the full digital surround sound experience on Laserdisc.

First I followed this extremely helpful list of AC-3 RF Audio Gear: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receivers-amps-processors/652457-list-ac-3-rf-audio-gear.html

The most cost-efficient (but least space-efficient) way to demodulate the RF signal was to buy an old AV receiver which not only had the demoduator built in, but also featured a digital audio output.  Many of the higher-end models featured audio pre-outs so the receiver could be used as a preamplifier for external high-end amplifiers.

I found such an AV receiver on Ebay for a reasonable price and pulled the trigger.

Next I needed to get an LD player that supported AC-3 AND had a digital audio output.  There may be a handy list out there for that combination, but if there is I couldn't find it.  Instead I browsed through tons of Ebay listings and built a list of eligible models based on photos of the backs of the players.

I settled on a model, found a good deal and bought it.

My collection only had a single movie encoded with AC-3 (Braveheart), and none with DTS.  The cheapest thing I could find with a DTS soundtrack was Con Air!  How cool was that?

Lastly I needed to work out how to cable everything together.  I dug through my boxes of old cable and scraped together just enough to connect everything up and test with (that is to say, on the floor in front of my other receiver).  Then I headed over to Monoprice to order new cable in the required lengths so I could install it permanently.

About a week later, everything arrived on the same day.

Fixing Your Player Is Part of the Fun

Unsurprisingly the LD player was non-functional when it arrived.  If you ever get a wild hair to get into this hobby, this is just something you need to get used to. These players are old, and while they may be sturdy, they do not ship well.  The shipper had done an amazing job packing it, but the loading mechanism was stuck - probably because of a decade of sitting idle on a shelf somewhere.  I dismantled the player and started down a rabbit hole that was deceptively deep.  After studying the mechanism and getting a rough idea how it was supposed to work I managed to get it free, but this only led to the next failure. I'll spare the gory details and just say that I was able to get the player functioning again after about 30 minutes of tinkering.

By that evening I had experienced my first AC-3 laserdisc, and it was fantastic.  The Dolby Digital track on Braveheart sounded better than anything I had heard since seeing the film in the theater.  When I looked into why this might be, I discovered that, in practice, the AC-3 tracks on LD are generally far less compressed than they are on DVD.  The difference is amazing.  As to why it sounded better than even the Blu-ray release, I have to chalk that up to mixing.  My theory is that since AC-3 was a new and high-end feature during the heyday of Laserdisc, the audio was mastered with a slant towards showing off - adding a little extra reverb here or there or putting your subwoofer through its paces to remind you you're listening to "surround" sound.  Whereas with Blu-ray, discrete multi-channel audio is old hat, and the format has nothing to prove.  Either way, in my opinion, the audio really really shines on these babies.

All that was left, it seemed, was to collect a few choice discs and keep on enjoying.  One of the best places to buy LD's is discountlaserdisc.com.  The guy who runs it is great to talk to and he really goes the extra mile to make sure everything he sells is in good condition.  The prices are quite good as well.  The site inventory isn't always up-to-date so if you're looking for something he doesn't have listed, just ask - he might have it.

Buying laserdiscs on eBay is a bit of a mixed bag.  Out of 20 or so films I've bought that way, about 5 were defective in some way.  Oddly most of the "sealed" discs I've bought have turned out bad - which leads me into the next important thing about Laserdiscs. This hobby is not for the faint of heart. Getting into Laserdiscs, just like vinyl, will re-acquaint you (or acquaint you for the first time) with analog format idiosyncrasies that our all-digital lives have sheltered you from. In just the handful of collecting that I've done in the past year, I've come across about every major kind of flaw of the format. When you consider that I have about 40 films altogether, that's a pretty high failure rate.

There is no error correction for the video stream. Any dirt, smudge or scratch that will refracts the laser will show up in the image.

Crosstalk

The discs are so large that the possibility of warping is much higher than CD/DVD/BD sized discs - so much so that Laserdisc players incorporate a "tilt" mechanism that adjusts the angle of the laser to try to keep it perpendicular as the disc is playing.  A small amount of warping is normal as keeping a surface area that large perfectly flat is pretty tricky, but a lot of people made the situation worse by stacking them horizontally for storage.  These things are pretty heavy and stacking more than 7 or 8 of them this way will cause the ones on the bottom to warp under the weight.  When a disc is too warped or the tilt mechanism drifts out of alignment it leads to a picture artifact called crosstalk.  Crosstalk results in herring-bone like warps in the picture, and when it's really bad, the picture will flicker and roll - sometimes even superimposing two different images.

The Dreaded "Laser Rot"

Unlike modern optical disc formats the layers of which are fused by heating the acrylic plastic until it melts together, Laserdisc layers were actually glued together.  The reason this is significant is that if the disc wasn't manufactured properly, over time the glue will lose its seal, allowing tiny amounts of oxygen to leak into the edges of the disc and oxidize the aluminum reflective layer where the information is etched onto the disc.  This creates little bubbles in the track that refract the laser and prevent it from properly reading the information.  The result comes out in the picture as bright speckles or dots.  This is known as "laser rot" and among LD enthusiasts is like the bubonic plague.  The worst part of it is that it's a progressive degeneration.  A disc can play fine once, but a year later be so degraded it can't be read at all.

Contrary to superstition (yes, there is a lot of actual superstition about laser rot), not all bright speckles or dots are actually laser rot.  Laser rot is characterized by being worse at the beginning or the end of a disc side (where the physical edges of the disc are) and usually persists for several seconds to several minutes and clears up the farther the laser is from the edges of the disc.  The occasional random bright dot is not laser rot.  It's usually a manufacturing impurity or a spec of dirt on the disc surface.  The reason it's important to distinguish the two is that rot will usually get worse, but the occasional bright dot will not.

Hedging Your Bets

In perusing forms and ebay auctions, I didn't immediately understand why so many people kept 5 or 6 players around at any given point.

After about 3 months of light use, my shiny new LD player broke down.  Upon seeking support, I was surprised by how much information I was able to find online about troubleshooting and repair.  The Laserdisc collector community is an unusual to say the least.  The heyday of Laserdisc enthusiasm was largely pre-internet, and a lot of the information I was able to track down came from mid-90's style web pages with static html, blinking gifs and visitor counters.  For some players, service and user manuals are available freely to download, and others are hoarded like the last box of twinkies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  And there are still a ton of good places to go to get advice like the forums at lddb.com and www.vintage-radio.net. 

I couldn't find a service manual for my particular model of player, but I did find one that was just a couple of model numbers off and it gave me some decent clues about what to look for and a general idea of how the player worked.  As annoying as it was not to be able to watch all of the discs I had been buying up, the process of trying to fix the player was actually quite cathartic. At this point I've torn the thing down and put it back together so many times I could probably do it blindfolded in the dark.  In all I ended up buying 3 players in various states of disrepair, and from three broken players I ended up with 2 working units.  With time, patience and not a small amount of prayer, I might eventually fix the third player as well.

The Previous Frontier

It's probably been said already -  this is a rewarding hobby just not one for the faint of heart.  In my lifetime I've purchased about 7 Laserdisc players via Ebay, and only two of them arrived in working condition.  (I've so far been able to repair all but one of them). Out of 50 films I've bought three had laser rot to various extents (all were perfectly watchable despite) and three had been ruined by being stacked horizontally for too long.  Despite the difficulty, working on the players and watching the films in this archaic but surprisingly good format has been some of the most fun I've ever had watching movies at home.  If you don't mind working for it, and don't have to see every movie in the highest fidelity possible, definitely consider dipping your toe into the retro world of Laserdisc.

Vash

My Dearest Vash,

From the time I first met you, I've loved you deeply.  Before you we barely left the house.  But before we knew it we were going out for play dates and puppy playtime at the pet store. You were the apple of your adoptive mother's eye, bringing her joy and brightening our family with a light that will never fade though it shines no more.  That you loved her could not be denied.  You carried your burden with seldom a complaint, always eager and dutiful, bright-eyed and optimistic.  I will never forget being greeted every morning by a puppy who was so overjoyed to see me that he could hardly contain the emotion in his body so all of him wagged.  Your paws were so huge.  I had to start covering sensitive parts with my hands to keep you from punching me as you raised your paw in friendly welcome, though on the couple of occasions when I forgot and your "fist" connected, your mother laughed and you thought you had pleased me greatly - why else would I have bent over to give you access to lick my face?  We had such good times, I don't want to believe that they're over.

I made so many mistakes with you.  But you always loved me, and when I finally realized what I was doing wrong, you were still there, ever patient and willing to love me like it had never happened.  Thank you so much for not holding me accountable for the mistakes I made discovering how to be a good father.  Thank you so much for just being you.

Selfishly I had hoped that when the end came it would be sudden or inescapable, but life sometimes presents us with hard choices.  They wouldn't be hard if they were clear or inescapable.  No matter how necessary or merciful my decision was, I may never forgive myself for choosing to end your life.  What a wretched creature I am to believe that I have the wisdom to decide such things, and what a coward to wish against the responsibility of doing so anyway.  If you could have understood what was happening, not a shred of doubt resides within me that you would have loved me anyway and agreed cheerfully.  Perhaps it is an inadequate monument to my love for you, but the decision has set my heart and mind at war with one another.  Though I hate myself for it, I loved you too much to choose any other path.  But enough about me.

You were the most beautiful creature, at once elegant and fearsome, regal and rough. People used to cross the street to tell us how beautiful you were, and cross the street to stay out of our path.  I once had a random man walk up to me in the parking lot of a supermarket and offer me $500 for you.  No doubt he believed it was a king's ransom.  I didn't have the heart to tell him what we had paid for you.

You were on the news once.  A local animal ordinance was being hotly debated by the city council and a reporter thought you would make for a great clip so she stopped and asked me a bunch of questions, while they got some shots of you.

Your paws were so enormous that we thought you were going to be a giant, but you turned out to be the perfect size for your breed.

How much you loved playing tug-of-war with your rope, and catching full-sized soccer balls in your enormous jaw.  Your kill count for both of them had to be in the dozens.

Your bark was so resonant and fearsome, I once saw a man jump nearly two feet straight up in the air in reaction to it.  But you were such a gentle soul for your fearsome appearance - you never killed a single living thing.

You were there to greet each new addition to our family cheerfully and warmly.  You never complained or acted out as your adoptive parents' attention divided again and again and your portion of it diminished.  It took you the longest time to accept that not every new guest was a permanent resident - how hard you cried when they would leave at the end of their visit, and how jubilantly you recognized and welcomed them whenever they returned.

Once we heard you making an unusual and desperate whimper.  Our oldest son was just learning to walk and still leaning up against walls for stability.  You loved to lay in front of the sliding glass door, so when our son went to look out the window you were under foot.  When your mother came to investigate she found him standing on your testicles, and a look of shock and desperation on your face. "Get this kid off me!!!"  We couldn't believe your patience and long suffering.

You always used your senses and intuition for the betterment of the pack, howling at tornado sirens that weren't even audible to us.  When your adoptive mother was with child you were doubly vigilant and insisted on being by her side.

When you first came to stay with us, the snow was piled so high your mother had to dig a trench through the back yard just so you could do your business.  When the spring came and the ground began to thaw, I had a hard time getting you to even walk on the grass, and even when you did, you always sought out snow piles to do your business on.

You loved to play ball so much.  Once we went to the lake in early spring when the surface was still frozen over, and somehow your ball ended up out on the ice.  It was everything we could do to keep you from going after it.  You cried so desperately for it, that I eventually slid out onto the ice on my belly to get the ball back for you.

Your paws always smelled of freshly popped popcorn for some reason, so one of your many nicknames was "Popcorn Paws".

Your favorite place was always the bathtub.  I found you there so often that I used to call you "Tub Puppy".

When you were about a year old, we took you to Colorado with us.  How you loved it there.  Denver was such a dog-friendly town that we were invited everywhere.  I think your favorite was the leather goods store.

You were always so enthusiastic, sometimes to the point of silliness that I used to make up silly little songs while I rubbed your snout or scratched behind your ears.  Who is the foofer doodle dog? Vash is.

You most generous gift to us has been the memories which we will hold onto with all that is in us.  The hole in my heart is painful, but I wouldn't trade it for anything because it represents the privilege of having known you. You carried your burden with unwavering constancy. No one will ever carry it the way you did, and we will always wish we had more time with you, but rest easy, my friend, you burned so brightly and left this world a better place for having been here.

Goodbye, Puppers.

Casio VDB-1000/VDB-100 "Open" repair

Finally working again after 3 years of saying "OPEN"

Updated March 2019
Fixed my VDB-100 today. These watches (the VDB-100 and VDB-1000) were, in my opinion the pinnacle of Casio's innovation in the 80's and 90's. This model in particular has a touch screen and dot-matrix display and is more sophisticated than just about anything they've released before or since (android watches don't count as innovation!).  It's a bit of a long story, so if you just want to know how to fix the "OPEN" message, then skip to the last picture in this article.

About 3 years ago I changed the battery and when I reassembled the watch it perpetually had "OPEN" printed to the screen. When this happens none of the functions work and the touchscreen is unresponsive. The watch is on but effectively useless.

VDB-100 rendered useless because it "senses" the back cover is still open.

As popular as these old watches are, it amazes me there aren't better resources about them online. I couldn't find anyone who had a clue what was wrong with it outside of the usual "You probably lost one of the tiny springs when you took the back off" (Which I didn't - not even remotely possibly - I opened the watch inside a plastic freezer bag so anything that tried to pop or fall out would be captured. Yeah, no lost springs.)

I spent a couple of hours over the next couple of days playing with the springs, trying to clean stuff (how it could be dirty was beyond me but I was desperate). Operating on the assumption that the open check mechanism might be checking current through the metal watch back, I connected wires trying to simulate electrical contact, but nothing made any difference. So I shoved the watch in a box and tried not to think about it for about 6 months.

After that I started looking at buying a replacement from eBay, but these things are insanely expensive. Even the ones in really bad cosmetic condition with scratches and the print completely worn off go for an average of about $130, and in good condition for about $200, and then there are the people whom I can't take seriously who routinely list them for between $500 and $1200.

I knew this thing was about 20 years beyond warranty when I bought it, but I figured I didn't have anything to lose so I called up Casio's officially designated repair shop for my hemisphere - a company in California called "The Time Machine". They were helpful, polite and realistic - they said I could send it in and they'd see what they could do but they didn't really have parts or expertise for stuff that old. About three days after shipping it to them I got a phone call saying that they couldn't fix it and that I needed to pay them $10 for return shipping. The problem, they said, was that there was a piece missing "probably lost when the watch was disassembled". That didn't make sense because the piece would have had to have been missing since before I bought it, and the watch was working fine until the battery went low. Now, in their defense, Casio Data Banks do normally have a white plastic frame that sits over the back of the watch that you need to remove in order to swap the battery. These particular models did not but they evidently didn't have a proper service manual to tell them that, and it didn't help the confusion that the battery change instructions printed on the inside of the back plate generically mention a "white cover".

Update: evidently I owe The Time Machine an apology - though I've seen at least two VDB-100's with no "white cover", I recently bought a junk VDB-100 because I wanted to get an original watchband and lo and behold when I removed the back, there was indeed a white plastic piece that pushes that button in when placed over the back. Only two possibilities occur to me, 1: one of the previous owners of my watch must have snatched or misplaced this part before it came into my possession, or 2: Casio used a cheaper means to press that door switch in (I can't really explain the extraneous spring that was found in my watch when I originally opened it).

The elusive "lost" white cover for the VDB-100/1000.  The peg on the underside circled in red presses the door switch when the watch is reassembled.

So I paid my $10 and the watch sat unopened in its return shipping box for the last two years.

This morning I checked the prices for these things on eBay and decided it was worth it to have another go at fixing it myself.

Things started pretty much the same way as the first time - checking electrical connections - this time with a multimeter. There are three springs that contact the watch back - one unusually long one on the top above the battery, and two on the right. The two on the right are used to activate the watch "speaker" which is basically just a round metal disc glued to the watch backing. I didn't know what the function of the one above the battery was, but after testing it, it was not apparently to conduct electricity - the spring socket was surrounded by metal which very clearly contacted the metal bracket that supplied positive current from the battery.

Then I did something colossally stupid. I sprayed contact-cleaner into the back of the watch. I'll explain what I had to do to fix this later.

The next step was to remove the metal clip that connects to the positive battery surface. I was looking for some kind of door switch that would make contact when the watch was closed. I thought maybe this was the purpose of the little leg on the bottom of the metal clip just to the right of center. There were shiny copper spots just beneath it and replacing the watch back might just push it down onto those spots. After looking more closely, though, the copper beneath it was actually just a pair of resistors and not contact points after all.

The action of removing the screws from the frame allowed some of the still-wet contact cleaner to get between the elastrometric/zebra connectors and the pads on the PCB so the LCD started showing missing lines and display errors. (I only figured this out a little later).

But, after the metal clip was replaced, instead of just saying "OPEN", for a moment the screen flashed "CHECK" then "BATT" and went back to "OPEN". Progress!!! Something I did made a difference. A little more poking around finally gave me the answer.

Circled: the not-at-all-obvious door switch on the VDB-100/VDB-1000.  If this "button" is not pressed in, the watch will perpetually show "OPEN" and not respond to touch controls.

So, see that circle area above the battery? When I first disassembled the watch, I found it a really long spring sticking out of the center of it (pictured below) that would be easy to mistake for the coil springs used to complete a circuit, but that's not what it's for. It may have been intended as part "door switch" mechanism, but after having found another VDB-100 with the white cover I'm no longer sure my watch wasn't just "rigged". In any event, that whole metal "circle" underneath that hole in the clip is actually a door switch. I took the spring out, and pressed a toothpick gently into the opening and the whole plate pushed down like a button. Sure enough when I turned the watch over, I could watch it go from "OPEN" to "CHECK" to "BATT". I popped in a new battery and up came the time.

VDB-100 found with a spring in the center of the door switch button.  I don't know what purpose the spring serves as I was never able to get it to operate the door mechanism - it would not seem to press the "button" down to tell the watch the cover was closed.

If you're in the boat I was and don't have a white plastic frame to push that button in, you can get your watch working normally again by finding something to stick under the plate to keep that button pressed down so the watch stops believing that the back cover is open.

The "door button" rigged with the ball from a sewing pin. I chose this part because it is hard, non-conductive and won't deteriorate.  Also, the little bit of pin on the bottom fits into the hole in the center of the button and keeps it from rolling off as I close the back.

Now about that colossally stupid thing I did by spraying contact cleaner into the back of the watch. Hopefully no one else will be dumb enough to do something like that, but if you have or if water has gotten into the works and caused a similar problem, you may be able to fix it the way I did. After removing the metal clip, then removing the remaining two screws in the upper and lower right corners, the back part of the watch works will loosen. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REMOVE IT COMPLETELY. There is a tiny ribbon cable connecting the top of the PCB to the touchscreen. I don't know how to safely remove it, and I don't recommend trying.

With the back section of the works loose you can lift up the bottom edge of the watch to see the elastromeric/zebra connectors along the bottom and left. These are basically little strips of rubber with conductive channels that carry electrical current from the PCB to the LCD. I used a Q-tip and isopropyl alcohol to gently wipe the contacts on the PCB and the tops of the zebra connectors, then I used a hair dryer, being careful not to actually blow hot air into the back of the watch, but close enough to dry the air out next to it and evaporate any residue that might be left by the contact cleaner or the alcohol. Waited a good 5 minutes after this, and reassembled the watch. I count myself extremely fortunate that the LCD came back to life and is now fully functional - those zebra connectors are notoriously fiddly.

Justin - In Memoriam

I started thinking about how difficult it is to put into words what I am thinking, but concluded that it is not difficult, it is impossible. The best I will ever be able to do is to provide an approximation.

Justin and I had been friends for the past 13 years. Justin was my cat. Justin died today.

Every time I have to back up and re-type a sentence to refer to him in the past tense, it seems to get a little easier, but it still brings tears that I am unable to hold back.

In the past I have watched television shows documenting people who paid their life savings and went into debt to save the life of a pet. At the time I remarked on how irresponsible, crazy and silly that was. I talked about how people are insane to place so much importance on an animal. Today as I saw my friend, haggard, tired, and in pain from the kidney failure that had poisoned his body, I experienced what drove those people.

There is no commodity on earth so precious that its value is greater than that of love and friendship. And there is nothing I would not have done in that moment to bring my friend back, but it was too late.

Justin and I first met at my mother's house, she had recently answered an ad in the newspaper for free cats. He was born on a farm. The moment I laid eyes on him, I thought he was the most beautiful cat I had ever seen, sleek and pure white. He was more laid back than inquisitive - he just yawned at me when I knelt down to look at him. I told my mother that I would take him off her hands any time the need arose. It was not long before she had to move to a place that didn't allow pets, and Justin was welcomed into my home.

He was instantly comfortable, and set about catching mice like he was in a competition. He was also very smart. For a while I thought he might have been raised by dogs - he liked to play fetch, and he got so good at it you could throw ridiculous things at him and he would bring them back - like empty soda cans. He also had no problems drinking out of the toilet. He was very gentle, and would very meekly request attention when he wanted to play by gently tapping you on the shoulder or the knee with his paw. He liked to sleep on top of people. He had very curious eating habits - he used to meticulously lift a piece of his dry cat food with his paw, then dunk it in his water dish, wait a few seconds and then fish it out to eat it. He was affectionate, quickly finding a lap whenever one was available. My wife taught him to kiss - pretty hard to imagine a cat doing that until you see it. He loved to play with the mouse-on-a-string toys but after the first few minutes the first time he encountered one, he figured out that the string was what was really controlling things and started going after that and ignoring the mouse.

As I rode to the vet today to tell him goodbye for the last time, I kept thinking about all of the times he wanted to snuggle that I pushed him away because I was busy, and all the time times I could have stopped playing a game for five minutes to love on him. To be honest there weren't all that many, but I regretted every single one in that moment.

The vet ended his pain, and I felt the last few beats of his heart, under his soft beautiful fur. There could be no more moments.

If you have a friend like Justin, go hug him and hold him close (or whatever he likes), and cherish the time you have with him. It may feel like he'll be there forever but he won't. Don't miss a moment, because I promise you, you there aren't enough of them as it is.

Justin was a part of my life, and unique in the universe, and the universe has been lessened by his passing. He was a great cat, and a great friend, and he will never ever be forgotten.

Goodbye, Justin, you'll always be my Zurpookderufen...

On Conservatism

I have identified with Conservative ideology for most of my adolescent and adult life, and while I have made no internal changes to my beliefs, I have had to divorce myself from conservatism as a political persuasion. Do not misunderstand – I still consider myself a hard-core conservative in how I interact with friends and family, set the policy of my own household and in every way other than what I want in government. What changed was the clarity with which I have come to understand the role of government and the division between where it is and where it should be. I have always known in my very core that government had no place deciding or defining issues of morality, but the government has for so long and so thoroughly usurped this authority that it was not immediately apparent to me where the line should actually be drawn. One thing that led to the confusion was my personal identification with the principles that drive political conservatism. I agreed with what they were doing because it did not conflict with my own ideals. It was only when I started considering what political conservatism would look like if it consisted mostly of atheists or agnostics that the danger became clear.

I had always looked at conservatism from the wrong perspective. For me conservatism was about sticking with policies that were traditional because they worked. It was about striking a balance between my own morality and one that the majority of people could live with. I believed that laws against murder, for example, were universal because humanity shared a common basic morality – we knew instinctively that certain things were wrong, and so we made laws against them. I thought that if the majority of people opposed gay marriage then it should be illegal. Although I can only speak for myself for certain, I believe most conservatives believe they carry the torch for these same reasons.

The issue of morality in government always bothered me because it represented a compromise. I am a Christian, and to us, compromise on issues of morality is a very bad thing. I took this incongruence as simply a necessary evil of living in a world that has been corrupted by sin, and trained myself to ignore it because I could not bring myself to find comfort with it.

My change of understanding was a process rather than an event, but it started when I watched a video on the Internet that attempted to explain the concept of liberty through the founding documents of the United States and what they really meant. The first concept that I knew instinctively but had never articulated is the concept of rights. The Declaration of Independence very elegantly explains rights, but the poetry of the words had always distracted me from the real meaning.

I will not quote from the Declaration – you can read it for yourself if you like (and you should). And I will not try to explain in any amount of detail what is better explained by others who have said it before. But I will give a crude explanation of the realization that I had. Rights are something that we have because there is no earthly authority higher than ourselves to seek permission from. That is why “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” are mentioned in the Declaration – these are examples of rights that we have that we have by virtue of owning our own existence (the verbal acrobatics will make sense in a moment). Rights cannot be granted or taken away (though they can be violated and their exercise prohibited or prevented). Rights (ALL rights) are derived from the ownership of property. This is a bold statement that took me nearly six months of introspection and careful consideration to accept. But once I accepted it, everything else started to fall into place and finally fit. The most profound revelation that came with this was the realization that this truth was not relative to ideology. It was true of every known form of government, and in every recorded instance of human society. The reason that subjects have no rights in a monarchy is that the king literally owns them. Citizens of Communism are owned by the state (just read the communist manifesto – it actually spells out the dissolution of private property as a means to remove individual rights). Citizens of a Democracy are actually owned by the majority. In these types of governments, citizens do not have rights, they have privileges. Privileges are given at the whim of the owner (of whatever is in question), and are thus taken away at the whim of the owner. It is this concept of being at the mercy of someone else for your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that our founding fathers found unacceptable, and it is for this reason that the United States was built as a Republic. Citizens of the United States were meant to own themselves, and this was a unique concept in the world that made the United States truly exceptional. We are all sovereign kings and queens of our own individual kingdoms (the sum total of everything we own).

This epiphany lent me new understanding of the meaning of “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”. The purpose of government is not to ban dangerous dogs, make us wear seatbelts, spend our taxes, or make sure we don’t marry someone of the same gender. Its sole purpose is to secure our individual rights. With so many sovereign kings and queens roaming around, conflict is inevitable. To maintain the peace, our rights to our own property are unlimited except where they conflict with the rights of another individual or entity. That is the sole purpose for which we grant the government the privilege of authority over us.

As I said earlier, when I realized and internalized this, many things suddenly became clear to me. Murder was not illegal because it was immoral. Morality is subjective. In a society where law was based on morality, murder could be made legal. All it would take would be for the majority of citizens to adopt a morality that permitted murder. Thankfully laws against murder are not based on morality, but on the violation of an individual’s rights. In a republic, not even a unanimous vote could make murder legal because of the objective truth that murder is a violation of an individual’s rights. Individual rights are the supreme law of the land in a republic.

As a conservative I was always perplexed by the stupidity of liberals. Why would you vote for people who were going to steal from you to perpetuate entitlement programs? Why would you celebrate policy that replaced common sense with political correctness? What brought a person so far beyond reason that they would restrict everyone just to protect the lowest common denominators from themselves? How did we ever come to a place where prayer was banned from school, or the institution of marriage was insulted by same-sex unions?

I honestly fought the notion for a long time, but I finally had to try looking at conservatism from the point of view of an outsider. Call it common sense, or morality, or whatever you like, conservatism advocates using the law for purposes other than securing our individual rights. Specifically they are trying to imbue the law with their own sense of what is right and wrong. It took me a very long time to see this because I shared that sense of right and wrong. The fundamental problem with this is that, as mentioned above, morality is subjective.

Most conservatives I have spoken with believe that to abandon morality in the law is to espouse chaos and a lack of accountability. But that is not actually the case because of another important axiom that goes hand and hand with the supremacy of individual rights. While it is true that it is of utmost importance that personal liberty supersede even the collective good, I am not advocating a return to the wild west. There are two sides to that coin. All rights come with responsibility. The two concepts are inseparable. Every right comes with a corresponding responsibility – to exercise a right one must take responsibility for the ramifications. If you own your body, that means that you are responsible for what happens to it. If you own a gun, you are responsible for what happens with it as well. The law exists for when these responsibilities are not met by an individual – that is the nature of how our rights are secured. When a person has behaved irresponsibly with the rights they have, their ability to continue to exercise those rights are forefeit, conversely when a person has behaved responsibly with the rights they have, nothing can justify their violation.

From the point of view of a Christian (and I know the majority if conservatives are) the idea that morality is subjective would seem to be a misnomer because our morality is based on God’s law.  What could be more black and white? Morality, as defined by God, is definitely not subjective, and clearly superior to any form of morality devised by men (and I say that making no apology whatsoever to those who disagree with me.) However, there are still two very good reasons that we should not base any part of the law on morality – even the infallible morality of God. Firstly, most Christians would be very surprised to learn how little of the morality that they hold sacred actually comes from God, and how much of it is the subjective invention of men. Secondly, and certainly more importantly, not even God advocates violating a person’s right to disagree with Him. Although we are instructed to lead a moral life, to call our brothers and sisters in Christ to account for their immorality, and to call sinners to repentance, nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to force people to behave morally. In fact Revelation 22:11 tells us just the opposite: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” Everyone has to be judged according to what they have done with their individual liberty. In other words, morality that is forced on someone is no morality at all in God’s eyes.

Because it is not our place to force people to believe in God (or to behave as though they did), we have to acknowledge the existence of morality devised by men and women without God. People can base their own mores on anything they want to, and this, necessarily, makes morality subjective. What is immoral to me, is not to others, and vice-versa. If you can accept this, it starts to become clear that political conservatives, still believing that they are on a mission from God to make moral laws according to His true morality, and acting with the best of intentions, have inadvertently created the opening for immorality to enter into the rule of law. What is political correctness if not the epitome of collective secular morality forged into law?

If you are not willing to have someone else’s morals imposed on you (and I have a hard time conceiving of a person who would be) , then it is necessary to ensure that you do not impose your morality on others.

Now this will lead me to the topic of children. I'm probably going to step on some toes here, but it is important to establish how children fit into this paradigm, because much of the harm that has been done to our government and legal system by mixing morality with law has been done in the name of protecting children.

Children are a special, but not unique, class of human being. Children have the same inherent and unalienable rights as adults do.

As human beings, the first two things we own are our bodies and our identities – we obtain both of these the instant that our distinct DNA comes together from the RNA of our father and mother. Many people have labored to obfuscate this simple fact but they do so for the sake of an agenda rather than the truth. Although I find this to be a self-evident fact, I have endured many arguments on the topic, and so I will elaborate in the hopes that if you disagree with me, at very least you will gain something to think about.

As with anything garnering legal recognition, there must necessarily be a measurable beginning (effective date), and this is just as true of our rights as anything else we know. Some people want to mark this beginning when the soul first inhabits the body, but that is not a measurable event. Marking the beginning of life when we have a certain number of cells is arbitrary and a bit dishonest since even full grown adults will continue to grow and produce new cells. We cannot use the fact that the embryo could not survive outside of the womb to deny it status as a full human being because none of us could survive indefinitely without external support at any age and this would suppose that fully-born children who rely on life-support are less than whole human beings. Since we cannot base rights on survivability, marking this beginning at birth supposes that there is some quality of identity or distinctness that changes at the birth event. While birth is a volatile and potentially dangerous event, our hearts are already beating, and our brains are already working beforehand – there is nothing that makes us more alive or more human after birth than right before it – we are simply changing places. Saying that life begins when our hearts start beating, is based on an emotional attachment to that organ – it is to suggest that a person with a mechanical heart, for example, ceases to be alive. To base the beginning of our humanity on any stage of development other than the very first is to pretend that we do not have the potential to reach the next one, and that is simply not true. I reiterate, biologically we are first identifiable as human beings when we are conceived, and as human beings we begin to own our bodies and identities and the rights that come with them at that moment.

Since an embryonic human being is incapable of being responsible for its own life, the responsibility for doing so falls to the parents who conceived it – it is, after all, the result of something that they did with their own property. They ceased to own that property that became an embryo the moment it became a distinct human being. Instead they became its custodians.

If you still think there is room for interpretation of these facts for some reason, then you have resolved to believe what you have resolved to believe and that is your right. For the sake of moving forward, let us say that whatever else is true, parents must exercise and protect a child's rights until such time as that child is able to take responsibility for its own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. When it comes to morality, it is the duty of the parents to teach morality to their children – it is a responsibility that comes with the job. So when I say that it is not our place to impose our own morality on others, I mean other adults who are responsible for their own morality.

Just to clarify the point ad nauseum, sharing and proclaiming your faith is not the same as imposing your morality on others. The whole point of mentioning the freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was to clarify that.

As I said before, I impose and practice morality in my household because it is my right and responsibility to do so. The law does not and should not enter into it. If a law is made that says I must teach my children about Jesus, that law is wrong whether I want to do it or not, and tolerating it allows for the possibility that the law can come back later and prohibit me from teaching my children about Jesus.

Normally when I have reached this point in explaining why I am no longer a political conservative, conservatives begin to pose questions about how to deal with certain situations where they believe morality in law is a good thing. I will briefly touch on some of the topics I have discussed and the answers I gave (or would have given if I had had as much time to articulate my thoughts.)

Are you for or against gay marriage? When I was a conservative, I found the whole concept simultaneously silly and insulting to the very institution of marriage. But that was because I misunderstood the institution of marriage. Marriage is a moral and social institution, and the government should have never been involved with it in the first place. The marriage license was invented to impose the morality of racist white people on interracial couples. This is actually a perfect example of the danger of mixing morality and the law, because the people who first abused law to impose their own morality had no idea that they were making it possible for homosexuals to marry one day. But by mixing the law with morality they paved the way for secular morality (political correctness) to exert its own influence. It would be unjust to acknowledge one morality in the law but shun another, and therefore it is wrong to deny anyone the privilege of marriage under the state. I simply no longer recognize the state's involvement in the institution of marriage. Marriage is a church/social matter and subject to the rules and regulations of those institutions, not the law. To put it another way, when moral matters are removed from the law, then the conflict disappears entirely.

But libertarians believe abortion should be legal, how can you be a Christian and call yourself one of them? Like any political persuasion, you can't really expect to always agree with every other person who belongs to it. But in this case it is easy to reconcile. Abortion is not truly a matter of morality, but the scientific fact that demonstrates that has been overshadowed by politics. This is all a matter of establishing when personal rights begin. I submit that any libertarian who believes that abortion should be legal does so because he or she has been fooled by pro-choice rhetoric into believing that human life, and therefore individual human rights begin at some arbitrary point after conception. I have already explained why this belief is faulty above. All that is necessary to cause a libertarian to become “pro-life” is for them to understand and acknowledge that identity and therefore rights begin at conception, because to believe otherwise at that point is to undermine the whole concept of liberty.

Drugs should be illegal because children could get a hold of them and end up addicted or dead. It is not necessary to outlaw drugs to protect children from their harmful effects. To harm a child with drugs – even legal ones, violates that child's rights, so doing so is already illegal - morality does not have to enter into it. How does it violate the child's rights? Remember that the reason that children are not allowed to fully exercise their sovereign rights until adulthood is because they are incapable of taking on the corresponding responsibility until then. If exposing a child to drugs kills the child or causes physical harm, it violates the child's rights to his or her body – rights that the child has not yet been trusted with exercising for him/herself. Addiction similarly violates the child's liberty by subjugating him/her to a chemical dependency. The reason the same cannot be said of an adult who becomes addicted is because whether he/she was cognizant of the danger of becoming subjugated to a chemical dependency or not, and adult fully possesses all of the rights and responsibilities that come with that choice. Since harm can be determined without the need to drag morality into it, the law already provides as much protection for our children as it can - and this would not change if every conceivable drug were legal.

If a person is allowed to consume drugs and alcohol without limit, and get behind the wheel of a car and kill someone, what about the rights of the person they killed? Why would drugs and alcohol make the situation special? The person could just as easily have driven into the other person while angry and sober. We can argue about the likelihood of one event verses the other all day long, but the bottom line is that both situations should be treated the same way. The one person violated the other person's rights, and the law should determine action based on that. If someone chose to exercise his right to consume mass quantities of alcohol and as a result deprived another person of his rights, he acted irresponsibly and should be punished accordingly. To create pro-active laws to prevent these sorts of incidents is to punish people who were not irresponsible, and that diminishes all of us.

If [insert law based on morality here] saves even one child then I'm willing to give up my freedom for it. Then I say give up your own personal freedom for whatever you believe in, but you can't have mine. I don't recognize your ability to predict the future, and while I don't mean to be callous, children are still going to die or be hurt no matter how many of our freedoms are taken away.

In closing, I want to make it clear that I have nothing against conservatism as a personal philosophy. Unlike liberals who erode our rights with flagrant disregard, I believe that conservatives that do so are doing it unintentionally, and if they can be brought to an understanding of the ramifications of doing so, many of them will stop. I will still vote for conservatives in the absence of libertarians or constitutionalists because I believe many of them are like I was and simply have not yet discovered that they are libertarians. But I can no longer identify with political conservatism because mixing morality and law is responsible for almost everything that is wrong with our government today and I can not, in good conscience, support that any longer.

If after reading what I have to say, you have rational questions or arguments against the facts that I have offered here, I invite you to discuss them with me. No belief system that cannot stand up to criticism is worth having.

Tsar Bomba

Bride has been one of my favorite bands since the first time I heard them. Like many people, my first introduction to the band was the seminal "Snakes in the Playground". I'm not going to glaze over the fact that I haven't liked a lot of what Bride has put out since "Scarecrow Messiah", but Snakes and Scarecrow were awesome enough to keep me faithfully listening to their new stuff and exploring their back catalog for many many years. Other than the off-the-reservation rapcore "Fist Full of Bees" (which I thought was totally awesome) most of Bride's releases in the last 12 years or so have only offered one or two tracks I could really get into. It might be shallow of me, but I've been hoping for another in the style of "Snakes" or "Scarecrow" since those albums were released. Tsar Bomba doesn't deliver on that hope, but it may actually go one better - if I could set my nostalgia aside, I might actually consider it a superior release.

I just got my copy of Tsar Bomba in the mail this evening and finished listening to it. It's nothing like Bride has ever done before, yet unmistakably Bride. What's more, it is one of, if not the, best albums they have ever produced.

As I listened to track after track of crunchy, sweet, gut-pounding delicousness I found myself comparing it to the slick production quality of a "Project Band". Magdalen, RedSea, Liars & Theives, and Neon Horse spring to mind when I try to search for an equal to Tsar Bomba in terms of quality. It really feels like about three times the work went into this one than any previous release, and TLC seems to ooze out of every note. Each track is my favorite one. The quality, originality, and pace are relentless. IMO, Troy's guitar work has never shined so brightly.

I can't really pick out any individual songs to review because I think the album has to be enjoyed as a whole. Unlike most other Bride releases, there's no unifying musical "theme" here (except maybe raw coolness). You won't find a lot of repetition or same-y style on this marathon record, just infectious, crunchy guitar hooks, energetic multi-layered solos, and vocals that are all over the map. Every little corner of the music is filled with sonic goodness.

Tsar Bomba can be best described as two best-of albums, but with songs no one has ever heard before, stacked on top of each other with smoky maple syrup poured on top. There's so much going on, it really is like listening to two albums at once. The riffs and solos are amazing, Dale's vocals haven't lost any of their luster, and there's no skimping on the quantity. Super awesome sauce.

Bride's message is, as it has always been, one of salvation through Jesus Christ and the struggles of life through the eyes of a Christian. Throughout their long career they have never waivered in that. For fans that have been following the band, this won't be a surprise.

Speculation has abounded since their 2003 release "This Is It" that Bride was going to call it quits, but there has been no speculation with Tsar Bomba. Members of Bride's mailing list started getting messages from Dale Thompson that Bride wanted to do "one last album" before retiring, and called on the fans to help. I'm not sure if this has ever been done before, but the band started taking donations from fans that wanted to see one last album from the band. Donate $20 and get a CD in a year when it is finished, plus the knowledge that you directly contributed before-the-fact to the creation of that album. The fans spoke and the album was made - that really says a lot for the kind of following that Bride has inspired. Maybe this isn't the end for Bride, but if it is, they couldn't wish for a better send off.

Turbo Express Get!

I am a veteran of the console wars that raged through the late 80's and early 90's. At school the Nintendo and Sega fanboys would have such heated discussions that it would sometimes actually come to blows. I was a staunch defender of Mario and his ilk, and I could quote the NES and SNES specs by heart. The SNES color pallet blew the Genesis out of the water - who cares if the Genesis is fast if it's ugly...okay, I better change the subject. (Man, that's easy to slip back into!) So in the midst of the chaos came a relatively unknown. The Turbografx-16.

Like a stranger from out of town come to upset the balance between the two dominant gangs, the Turbografx looked almost as good as the SNES and moved almost as fast as the Genesis. But perhaps the thing that most set it apart was its penchant for paradigm challenging. Two things in particular stuck out in my mind. Firstly the system was the first to market with a CD-ROM add on - if it had not been so prohibitively expensive, that alone might have cemented victory for NEC's little contender. But the other thing that really stuck out was the Turbo Express - a handheld system from NEC that actually played the same games as the home console. Both of these revolutionary ideas were mimmicked by Sega later on, but NEC set the precedent.

I have had a Turbo Duo for some years now - I managed to score a brand new one from TZD.com before they closed up shop. But I never could bring myself to spend the cash on a Turbo Express unit. Despite being nearly 20 years old, the little handheld console never really dropped in market value. It was one of those rare items that went from being expensive because it was new and hot directly to being expensive because it was collectable.

I have been a member of PCEngineFX.com off and on for the last few years. As a former member of the now defunct R.I.G.G. I found them to be an invaluable resource for Turbografx/PC Engine fans. So when I saw a practically brand new Turbo Express on Ebay going for practically nothing because the video had failed, I stopped by PCEngineFX.com and sure enough found a repair guide for it. I bought the Turbo Express from Ebay and a $1 capacitor from Radio Shack and when it arrived, I went to work.

Things didn't turn out perfectly however. The capacitor that had to be removed was a "surface mount" capacitor, and it was very difficult to weaken the connections.

(This image is magnified about 8x)

The advice I read was to gently twist the capacitor with a pair of pliers. Well, gentle as I was, I still managed to lift the negative trace right off the board.

(Without the little solder pad there was nothing to connect the negative leg of the cap to...)

You'll probably notice the scratch marks where the negative trace should go. The printed circuit boards (PCB) in these NEC systems are multi-layer so i was digging in desperate hopes of finding the rest of the trace buried somewhere under the pad I had lifted off with the capacitor. It took me a while to notice the little trace that had lifted just adjacent to it because it was so small. It looked like a sliver of paint to me (you have to remember these photos are magnified a bit.) The trace went straight to the leg of the little transistor/MOSFET. That was what I needed to find an alternate soldering point.

(The negative lead is connected to the alternate soldering point)

I decide to "remote mount" the capacitor because the legs of the capacitor were stiffer than a couple of thin wires and the connection was extremely fragile - I didn't want to do a lot of twisting and adjusting after the leads were attached.

(Here is a greatly magnified view of the alternate solder point)

So, while the experience was harrowing, I was fully rewarded when I popped in Bonk's Adventure and the game screen displayed normally on the formerly blank console. It was worth the fun, though repairing these things probably isn't for everybody.

11:00 AM is Disco Party Time

I had always heard that having a new baby meant losing sleep. My new son has not been a disappointment. I fully believe that if I still worked nights, 8:00 am would be party time.

Infinite Undiscovery Review

After playing through Infinite Undiscovery I still haven't the faintest clue as to what the title is supposed to mean. It sounds meaningful, but the game is neither infinite nor does it challenge the player to "undiscover" anything.

Clocking in at around 20 hours, this game is hardly representative of its impressive pedigree. I can't recall a Star Ocean or a proper Final Fantasy game with so little substance. This is nearly unheard of for a game spanning two DVDs. But what is there is done well.

Extremely heavy on story, the narrative and characters are developed well. I happen to be one of those individuals who doesn't cry foul at plentiful cut scenes, but I must admit that this one started pushing the limits of what I thought was acceptable.

Perhaps my imagination is running away with me, but I couldn't help but notice some visual similarities with one of my favorite series: Ys. When he's in full armor Capell closely resembles Adol Christin, and Balbagon - an auxiliary character - appears similar to Adol's best friend Dogi. I have to wonder if this was intentional.

The music is ambient and fitting, but largely unremarkable, much like Final Fantasy XII.

Visually the architecture and cut scenes are a microcosm of Final Fantasy XII, with large sweeping camera pans across tall ornate buildings.

Gameplay wise, this game was very obviously using the same engine as Final Fantasy XII. It's as if someone took Final Fantasy XII, stripped out 75% of the depth and made it into an Action RPG. The character development and AI control of the other party members seems to follow a similar progression but the player is given very little visibility into or control over them.

The item creation system is almost as cryptic as it is frustrating. The items you can craft are dependent upon who you "connect" with. To connect with another character that character either has to be in your current party, or you have to locate him/her in a town or village. Trying to locate a party member in a town or village can be a lengthy and frustrating process. There is no way to tell which items a character can craft without actually connecting with him/her to view the list. The quickest option is usually to change out party members while in town and then exit town to get them to "connect". The problem with this is that, frequently, the story will not allow you to leave town. It also forces you to decide between who can craft the best items and who is the best in battle when choosing team members. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you look at it that way) the items available for crafting are rarely ever better than what you can buy in shops. Supposedly frequent crafting will cause your crafting ability to increase and make new items available, but I was never able to see any progress from this.

Changing party members can only occur while you are in a town, or at certain points in the game you are given a one-time option to change out party members. This can happen before a boss fight, for example. I would have expected the developers to at least give the player access to this feature at save crystals, but evidently that would be asking too much.

In a badly failed attempt to reinvent the oft mimicked Active Time Battle (ATB) system made famous by Final Fantasy IV, Infinite Undiscovery will not pause the action while you browse through a menu. Instead of adding another layer of strategy to the fighting, the game simply severely penalizes you for wanting to access your menu during a battle. For example, I purchased and equipped a sword with a water element. I had been using it for over an hour when I suddenly encountered a group of water based enemies that I was accidentally healing every time I attacked. They weren't particularly strong enemies, but in the time it took me to open my menu and equip another sword, my party was wiped out and I lost an hour of gameplay. The fatal flaw of this system is that when the menu is open your character is paralyzed. I can understand not allowing the player to attack while using the menu, but to not be able to move? What piece of reality is that trying to simulate? Also of annoyance is that there isn't a way to quickly exit the menu once you've done your business and want to get back to the battle. Instead, it is necessary to cancel out of every menu in the same order they were opened. If the developers had allowed the character to move around, and provided some sort of quick menu exit, this feature would have added the desired challenge without being a complete kick in the face.

Healing during battles can be painful to the ears. Left to their own devices the other characters will simply attack constantly. If you want them to heal each other or themselves it is necessary to hit the Y button. This doesn't put them in a first-aid mode where they keep healing until everyone is topped off or near it, no, it's only good for one heal, then it's back to attack attack attack. When dealing with boss fights where area effect spells hit everyone at once, it becomes necessary to repeatedly mash the Y button. This wouldn't be such a problem, except that it elicits a voice clip of Capell either imploring someone to do some healing, or asking if they have. This gets old very quick and was the single most annoying aspect of the game for me.

With so many negatives, it might be easy to get the impression that I didn't like the game, but that's really not the case. It was a decent game and enjoyable, but I see all of the ways it could have been done better and I can't help but point them out. It's definitely worth a play through, but not at $60. This game was obviously produced in a very short amount of time, and should have been priced accordingly at around $40.

Playing the "Heaven and Earth" series from Quintet

A couple of months ago, I was reminiscing, as I often do, about the good ol' days of gaming. And, of course, the good ol' days will vary from one gamer to the next, but for me, it was the heyday of the Super NES.

One game that held a special nuanced memory for me was Actraiser. It was one of the earliest SNES games and like all good early titles sought to show off the capabilities of the new hardware. To this day I think the phenominal orchestrated soundtrack, tight controls, and gorgeous colorful graphics make it a great demo piece for the SNES.

Like many good things, however, there wasn't nearly enough of it to quench my thirst. Just when the game started to hit it's stride, and I started to really get into the "zone", excited about what I'd be doing next, it was over. When the credits rolled, my heart sank. I rushed out and picked up a copy of ActRaiser 2 (I didn't play the first game until well after it came out, so the sequel was readily available). ActRaiser 2 disappointed me in that it departed from the original in too many ways to recapture its essence. I never finished it.

So a couple of months ago I remembered ActRaiser and happened across its Wikipedia entry. As is often the case, after reading the article, I started tumbling down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and ended up learning all about the developer that made ActRaiser, Quintet, and about another game as famous for its obscurity as for its quality - Terranigma.

I learned that Quintet went on to make another SNES game called "Soul Blazer" with a theme similar to ActRaiser. I also learned that it was unofficially the start of a series of games fans had dubbed "Heaven and Earth".

Amazed that I had never heard of this before, I immediately scoured the local used game shops for a copy of Soul Blazer. I found one and played through the game in a couple of days. The game told the story of a greedy king that sold the souls of his kingdom to the devil for money. He didn't see the foolishness of dealing with the devil until the devil came for his soul. The English adaptation didn't call him the devil, just as it didn't call your benefactor God, but that's what those characters were meant to represent. The game consists of defeating the demonized souls of the citizens that the king sold and restoring the world to its state before the devil took over. Although it was almost completely different from what I remembered of ActRaiser, it managed to capture some of the addictive gameplay and kept me hooked until the very end.

The next game in the series was "The Illusion of Gaia". I had actually bought the game years ago and never played it. I was on an RPG kick and bought pretty much anything I could find with the intention of playing it later on. It worked out remarkably well in this case. So the Illusion of Gaia was quite a bit heavier on story than I remember many SNES games at the time. The production values seemed a bit higher than Sould Blazer - better graphics, more action. But it played like a cheap knockoff of Seiken Densetsu II (The Secret of Mana). The difficulty of the boss fights seemed disproportionate to the stuff leading up to them, so I only really died on boss fights - some of which took upwards of 30 minutes to figure out. Kinda reminded me of Mega Man's pattern-based boss fights. Still the characters were compelling and the story, while still very Japanese in its unliklihood, was compelling. The rest of this paragraph is a spoiler. The game world is filled with references to actual places on Earth, but the references aren't exact. Instead of a continent, Euro is a large town. The Nazca lines of Peru are actually where India is located etc... There is a large comet careening towards Earth (Final Fantasy fans will find this very familiar) and its light is causing creatures on the planet to evolve into monsters. After defeating the monsters and collecting several mystical statues, you gain the power to confront the evil soul of the "Dark Gaia" - the horrific intelligence behind the comet. When the dust clears the comet changes course, but it expelled enough evolutionary light to re-order the continents and suddenly you've gone from a 50 B.C. like world to the world of 1994.

After that we have what some consider the end of the series, "Terranigma". This is a game with an odd history. Its primary quirk is that although it was officially released in the English language, it was never released in the United States. This makes it a much sought-after title for collectors. This is a trend reversal of sorts because generally Europe and Australia get screwed out of quality game releases. I never realized that half of the challenge of the game would be getting past the technical hurdles just to actually play the thing.

A couple of years ago I heard about Terranigma and tried to buy it. I even bought a Super Honey Bee adapter so it could be played on my U.S. Super NES system. But I was outbid on the Ebay auction for the game itself, so I was stuck with an adapter and nothing to adapt with it. Well, once I learned that the game was made by Quintet, and further that it was part of the "Heaven and Earth" series, I redoubled my efforts to get a copy. After winning my auction I spent a couple of hours digging through dozens of boxes and several closets filled with gaming crap to locate the stupid adapter. When the game arrived, however, I received a shock. The adapter that I had had for the last two years for this one purpose, didn't work. It did what it advertised it would do - it bypassed the lockout chip on the Super NES, but apparently the engineers at Nintendo had devised an additional way to stop people from playing out-of-territory games by the time that Terranigma came out. Terranigma was only released in English in Australia and Europe. Both countries use a different television standard than the U.S. and Japan. Long story short, the screens refresh at a different rate in Europe than they do in the U.S. The game checks this refresh rate and if it finds the system running at the U.S. refresh rate, all you get is a screen telling you that you can't play the game because you're out-of-territory. Of course, my SNES runs at the U.S. refresh rate of 60Hz - otherwise the TV wouldn't display it properly. So I started furiously digging on the Internet for answers - a game this popular, this has to be a known issue and there has to be a solution to it that doesn't involve emulation.

After searching and searching, I was surprised to find how little information there is out there about playing Terranigma on a U.S. SNES. In general a lack of information about something like this either means that it can't be done, or it's so easy, no one thought anyone would need specific instructions. After a couple of hours of searching, however I discovered two options, one was to buy a Pro Action Replay for the SNES as they are the only adapter cartridge that are known to work with that game, but it would have to be a specific version of the adapter, and they usually went for over $100 on Ebay. The other was to spend $5 on bits from Radio Shack and wire in a 50/60Hz switch on the console. Such a switch is usually installed to allow European and Australian gamers to play U.S. and Japanese games, but since the consoles are effectively identical, it works both ways. Since I have 5 Super NES's, including one that's already marked up by some joker who etched his name and social security number into it, I opted to go the cheap route and mod the console. There are plenty of sites that will show you how to add a 50/60Hz switch, just not many that will explain that that's what's needed for Terranigma.

So the mod worked and I can play Terranigma on a proper Super NES now. After playing through the first few hours of the game, I can say that this is, in fact, one of the most polished SNES Action RPG's I've ever played. The graphics, sound, combat engine, options, weapon and armor system, and in-game help are all on par with the best the SNES has to offer. While it's no where near "the best game on the system" as a lot of hype-monger fanboys would have everyone believe, it is a significant leap in complexity and depth over Quintet's other offerings. It's quite a bit better than several titles that did make it to the U.S. so I have to wonder why it was never brought here. My only guess so far is that Nintendo didn't like the sloppy job Enix did with the English translation. Normally when a game is localized from Japanese to English, a new "half-width" character set is added to the game's memory to take advantage of the fact that English letters don't need as much space on screen as Japanese letters. This is particularly evident in the text of games like "Secret of Mana". Terranigma is a perfect example of why localizers normally do this. All of the English text uses the same width as the Japanese characters so it looks like there's a space after every letter and two spaces between words. It's not a horrible thing to adapt to, but it does make it difficult to read the dialogue.

Finally I learned, that although Quintet dissolved for all practical purposes after the 16-bit era, they did re-form under a new name and spit out one last game that is arguably an unofficial sequel to Terranigma: Granstream Saga on the Playstation. That's another game that I picked up some time ago but never played. I won't know if it's any good until I finish Terranigma, but once again it pays to be a pack rat.

Summer 2008

I find it interesting to compare my expectations of the things I looked forward to all year and my thoughts after I actually got to experience them.

This year I was really looking forward to several movies.

The Happening -

Before: This looked like an intriguing mystery with a thought-provoking premise.

After: This movie is crap, and is easily M. Night Shaymalan's second worst film ever. The #1 in crapulence is, of course, and always will be the unwatchable "Unbreakable." The actors were underutilized for this snoozefest. We don't need any more movies telling us human beings how horrible we are being to the planet, we just don't. And we don't need any more MNS movies without any basis in possibility. From square one, the plot was a dud and it had me wondering if anyone is out there keeping these goofy writers in check anymore. The production values were non-existent. There were two scenes where the boom microphone is clearly visible hanging over the characters' heads like it was meant to be in the scene or something. Just poor work all around. Everyone involved ought to be embarrassed.

Prince Caspian -

Before: Although the BBC version was sufficiently interesting, I always wanted to see Reepicheep portrayed a little more realistically.

After: I've pretty much already gone over this one, but it was disappointing enough that I'm not really planning on buying the Blu-ray when it comes out. The writers should have realized from the success of the books and the first movie that there is no need to shoehorn in entirely new and crappy storylines in order to make the pacing of the movie fit into the "Three Acts" mold. Reep was pretty sweet though.

Speed Racer -

Before: The Wachowski brothers have been a big let-down since the first Matrix film. And although I wasn't really acquainted with the original television series, it didn't seem to be all that interesting. I had heard about the oddball cameras they were using to obtain eye-popping visual effects, and that was pretty much all I was looking forward to.

After: Not only was the movie thoroughly fun, but it was bright colorful interesting and fairly long (I hate 90 minute movies - it makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off). The racing sequences reminded me of one of my favorite video game franchises - F-Zero. Despite the kiddy dialogue (which I rather enjoyed) the plot is fairly complex, filled with secrets and double-crosses. The characters, while incredibly stereotypical and over-the-top dramatic, are very well developed. I'll definitely be buying this when it comes out.

The Dark Crystal (Yes the one from the 80's) -

Before: I had seen posters, and rental boxes for this movies for most of my childhood. It kept getting re-released, so I figured it must be interesting enough to compare with something like Labyrinth.

After: I know I don't technically pay to watch these movies when I get them from Netflix, but I still want my money back. This movie must have been a blight on Jim Henson's career, and looks more like a cry for help from a band of hopelessly chained drug addicts than anything approaching cinema. I suspect that altered states of consciousness are required to derive the implicit metaphysical meaning that just isn't there. One might argue that it's a kid's movie, but that's hardly a worthwhile defense since exposing children to such dribble is probably considered child abuse in most municipalities. The plot was straightforward and insipid. The protagonist was hideous, the pacing was terrible, and the cinematography had all of the hallmarks of being done by a blind man. And that's all I have to say about that.

The Incredible Hulk -

Before: My first thought was that there ought to be a law preventing a franchise from being "reinvented" more than once in the same decade. We just got a modern-special-effects Hulk movie back in 2003 so what gives? But at the same time, it does have Ed Norton, so it can't be bad, can it? Sure, it's got Liv Tyler of my-only-acting-ability-is-crying-scenes fame, but that can't drag it down too much can it?

After: I was very surprised by the quality of storytelling. Ed Norton makes a great Bruce Banner. Liv got her pouty-crying scene that she gets in every movie she's ever in, but it was ignorable (maybe I'm finally developing an immunity to her evil powers!). The special effects were interesting, not over-the-top or stupid like in the 2003 movie. And the little tie-in at the end of the movie caused more excitement than I would have expected.

Iron Man -

Before: I didn't really know much about Iron Man at all. I'd seen the comic illustrations and heard people talking about this movie for years, but it was just another in a long line of Marvel super heroes that were probably cool, but whatever. When I heard Robert Downey Jr. was going to be playing Iron Man, I thought someone got a wire crossed, but like a train wreck, I wanted to see what the hell that could be like.

After: This was actually one of the best comic book to movie adaptations I've seen since the X-Men trilogy, and Robert Downey Jr. was brilliant. I can't comment on whether the personality matches the comic book version, but it was definitely interesting enough to make me a fan.


I also had a chance to play a number of Video Games this year.

Metal Gear Solid 4 -

Before: I've been mildly interested in the Metal Gear universe since the first game debuted on the NES. Admittedly I still haven't figured out how to get past the first stage in that game. But when Metal Gear Solid came out for the PS1, I was instantly hooked on its interesting gameplay and intriguing plot. My enthusiasm for the series took a sharp dive when the majority of MGS2 was taken up with the whiny unlikable character "Raiden", and a plot that didn't make sense by itself. A lot of people lost faith in the series at that point. When MGS3 came out, there was barely any fanfare. My personal supreme disappointment with MGS3 was the fact that despite being technically sophisticated, Hideo Kojima had not seen fit to include a widescreen mode. I barely played more than a couple of hours before losing interest. Because of my mixed experiences with the first three games, I figured 4 would be a crap-shoot. It was hard to tell if it would be any good.

After: I haven't finished the game yet, but after pouring nearly 20 hours into it, I'm ready to cast my vote to nominate it for the award for "coolest thing ever". This game is singularly the greatest foray into interactive entertainment I've ever taken. It seems like all of the action games I've ever played up to this point were just practice. MGS4 takes an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that could have just as easily ended up being a messy frustration and blends it into a seamless action story, with some of the prettiest graphics I've ever seen. The controls are so natural and responsive, I never find myself fighting against them to get the game to do what I want. The story, which largely seeks to tie up all of the loose plot threads from the other games, features some of the scariest social commentaries I've ever seen. I find myself wishing that everyone was a gamer so that they could experience the beauty of it.

Haze -

Before: I had just finished playing some very solid FPS games like Killzone, Half Life 2: Episode 2, and Halo 3, and just finished the marvelous Ubisoft game, Assassin's Creed when I saw the trailers for Haze on PSN. The trailers were very pretty High-Definition and easily out-shined everything out there in terms of realism. I started drooling over this game back in September. It was supposed to be released in November. The game was delayed numerous times to "make sure they got it right." I remember thinking to myself how that was a good thing because the game should be even better than what was in the trailer.

After: Haze originally retailed for $59.99. Less than three weeks later it was marked down to $39.99. That's about matches the disparity between my expectations and what I got instead. The game wasn't in HD so most of the text was blurry from the upscaling effects. The frame rate still sucked, despite the sacrifices in the level of detail made to help the game run smoother. The arsenal was tiny, and the NPC dialogue was repetitive and annoying. This game is quite a bit worse than the tralier that drew me in for it several months ago.

Devil May Cry 4 -

Before: I have always been a fan of the DMC series because it borrows so heavily from the gothic themes in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Much like the Metal Gear Solid games, 1 was awesome, 2 was horrible, 3 was passable but I lost interest because it wasn't in widescreen. Knowing that 4 would be widescreen and high-definition, I figured it would be awesome. Despite some bad experiences with PS3 games, I decided to go with the PS3 version over the XBOX360 version because I thought the limited edition packaging looked cooler on the PS3 and Capcom swore blind that the games were identical on both systems.

After: I shouldn't have trusted Capcom when they said that both games were identical. The XBOX360 version of the game was slightly superior in terms of graphics - the PS3 version was full of "jaggies", and the PS3 game featured a 30 minute-long forced Hard Drive installation (because Capcom is too lazy to figure out how to use the Blu-ray drive properly). If that wasn't bad enough, the installation process has an undocumented flaw that caused me no end of frustration for the first four hours that I attempted to play the game. If you are downloading demos or videos from PSN while installing, the Hard Drive will interleave the data to speed up write speed. 99% of programs in existence wouldn't even notice this, but for some reason DMC4 absolutely has to be installed contiguously (ie. not interleaved) or the game will randomly crash. So stop your downloads before you install, thanks for the heads up, Capcom:P Anyway, the game itself was the testosterone-laden, demon-killing, sword-swinging, heavy-metal playing romp that I expected it to be and I thoroughly enjoyed it.