Other What currently makes your life awesome?

Honestly, @Mister_Tad , I think the next challenge should be cabling.

At least a Neatpatch or something.

 

I wholeheartedly approve of this post. Will you turn the B&O on its side to play the vert shooters?

LMK if you need any Pi @ 240p config help. I can even sort you out with an Attractmode image if you like, which will play everything at the native (correct) resolution, courtesy of a pal of mine. Drop me a PM if you are interested!

 

Probably not, since I've got a bunch of retro systems hooked up to it now - PS1, PS2, Megadrive, soft-modded Wii, and Atari STe... Not all of them currently have decent SCART cables - PS1 SCART isn't fully wired and isn't compatible with the PS2, I need an RGB SCART for the Wii, and I'm not sure the Megadrive SCART cable is wired for stereo sound - but I do plan to try and find a decent quality fully-wired SCART switch. The TV needs repair though: there's some horizontal non-linearity at either side of the screen, the image is off-centre, and there's some pincushion/barrel distortion. I can open it up and re-cap it myself (as well as installing a service mode mod switch at the same time), but I'm concerned that there might be other faults which need a professional and might be prohibitively expensive to repair.

Plus the TV currently lives on the motorised stand, and that thing is freakin' cool .

Definitely will do. I haven't got the Pi2SCART yet and I may not do for a month or two but I definitely will do that, cheers

 

I wish I could move some of this to the loft, sadly during the summer months mine is approximately one million.

At the moment I just have a LTE gateway up there, and a US-8-60 serving those and a couple of drops to the office and an AP. I'm looking to grab a 2-disk Synology for on-site backups and throw that up there as well... probably not the ideal environment for storage, but for a backup NAS I'm not sure I'm too bothered.

As much as I'd like to, I really can't spare the rack space. There's a lacing bar/comb in the gap that's not really being used now, but will be once the 48p switch gets installed.
(re)cabling isn't too bad since everything is labelled at the switch end, the main pain of it is less the cabling itself, and more the access to the rear of the rack, anyway.

You know, the usual.
I'm a little bit my memory at the moment, and have only yesterday found another 2x8GB ECC unbuffered DDR3 kit on ebay where I felt I wasn't being gouged, so that will take it up to 32GB.

So right now, just bulk and VM storage, "cloud" drive sync, CCTV, Plex, Roon, backup server, PRTG.

 

Without looking at it, if the picture is good (colours, convergence blah blah), a recap would probably sort you out nicely. You'll probably (again I've not looked at it) be able to sort out the image centring/pincushion/barrelling with the service mode. That's just a momentary switch you put on the back isn't it? An arcade pushbutton will do nicely; a mate of mine had one, and just reamed a hole in the back of the case for the pushbutton. The decent RGB SCARTs I've got came from Robert at retrogamingcables.co.uk - he's a nice chap, and all of the cables I've had (SFC, MD2, N64, PlayStation1/2, Saturn, C64, probably others (I've got a habit, man)) are top notch. Depending on SCART switch budget, there are various on eBay, ranging from Mad Catz stuff, push button switches, that sort of thing, to Extron stuff. I'm lucky, my PVM has two inputs so I don't bother with a SCART switch now; I also found that you can get a bit of sync noise on some. YMMV.

Give me a shout whenever, no problem. We can then start a Bit-Tech Bubble Bobble highscore competition

 

Nicely done, sir

 

Nothing better than a company that truly stand beside their products. It's a dying trend.

 

That's exactly what I'm hoping. Picture looks good - damn good - aside from the distortions mentioned. My only concern are some... odd... noises I've noticed recently: an occasional crackle and an infrequent sort of hissing noise. Still, I only paid £10 for a BeoVision MX6000 CRT, so even if it does prove to be too expensive to repair I think I've already got my money's worth with it.

On this model it'll have to be. The service mode access on this one is via shorting two pins on one of the PCBs so, as you say, a pushbutton switch across the pins and a simple case modification should do nicely. Later revisions of the MX6000, and indeed later BeoVision models, allowed you to access the service menu through a remote control command but mine doesn't support that. It's just one of those jobs I keep putting off: this is a damn heavy TV, even for a CRT!!

Yep, already found retrogamingcables - they're recommended in quite a few different places .

Good quality SCART switches are getting pretty expensive these days. Back in the day I used to have quite a few of them (manual push-button affairs) that I paid a decent chunk of cash for, but they've all been thrown out in the last 10-15 years. I do have 2 SCART sockets in the TV but I'm pretty sure I recall reading that 240p RGB is only supported on one of the sockets, so I'll have to do a bit of reading first.

 

Hissing might be the flyback, they are replaceable, but harder to come by these days than they once were. HR Diemen (www.hrdiemen.com) still manufacture compatible flybacks (LOPTs), so if it does go, you may be able to repair it. Still, a cap kit is an excellent start. I've done all my CRT chassis! Just make sure it's discharged, or it'll smart a bit.

EDIT: In the event it does go, you want one of these: http://www.hrdiemen.com/reparation/flyback/model/6469

 

I was thinking more as a neat-freak than from a prospect of re-cabling.

What size is the rack?

 

That's a cracker. Also as rare as rocking horse poo, based on a trawl of all of the usual suspects of used gaming articles. Part of the 2019 main quest will be obtaining one of these, I reckon.

 

Yeah, I hear you, just can't make it work.

It's a 45u rack, but it's home to both IT and AV gear, and my access to the rear is via clambering underneath the kit, effectively turning it into a ~25u rack.

When I initially installed it I went full-obsessive with cabling tidiness which was wonderful... until a component changed. Now I have power cables loosely bundled on the left side, network cables loosely bundled on the top half of the right, speaker cables loosely bundled on the bottom half of the right, and short runs of HDMI just going straight from the devices to the AVR.

 

The part of me obsessed with cable-fu is sad for you and your rack.

 

All noted, ta .

Oh that is pretty indeed. Probably worth a decent bit of money these days...

 

To be with my kids that is what makes my life awesome.. planning to take them somewhere where we can have quality fun time.

 

Feeling pretty good today, son woke me up at 5:30am and I had to drop the missus to work for 6:30 so no more sleep for me!

Despite waking up with a bad back due to poop mattress and the inability to keep my eyes open I feel in general pretty well. I'm losing weight VERY gradually just by stopping some bad habits. I need to increase my exercise throughout the week but if the trajectory continues I should be on a pretty good path to feeling better physically and mentally day by day.

I've also put a lot of effort in recently to financial planning, understanding the lengths we need to traverse as a couple in order to be free from consumer debt has been depressing but fun at the same time. Planning how I can use my weekends and evenings to improve my current situation, learning, self development... Its all good stuff. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel which is always good.