We've heard you, some improvements to TopRoms are coming!

Thanks everyone for sending me emails about TopRoms with suggestions and issues. I’ll be addressing them when I have some free time, probably near the end of this month.

Some of the issues you brought up:

  • TopArcade is missing some BIOS roms and some games can’t start.

  • Expanding the TopArcade game collection. (Thanks to one of my readers for providing a list)

  • The large collection TopIsos cannot be downloaded because Mega is requiring payment due to its file size.

  • Consider converting ISO to CHD format as it is smaller in size and more universally supported by emulators. I know this is possible with PS1 but not sure about Sega CD.

  • Some multiple disc PlayStation 1 games are missing the second disc.

  • The collections will move to a privately hosted VPS for direct download.

  • The collections will also be available via torrent. I’ll keep a seedbox running so you don’t have to wait for multiple seeds. One advantage of torrents is you can pick and choose what gets downloaded or not.

  • Curate TurboGrafx-CD ISOs. This system actually has a sizeable amount of high quality games

  • Finish curating the ROM hacks set. There is still SNES, GB, GBC and GBA that are missing.

Please keep these emails coming, I’m glad that you are enjoying the collection!

Issues with Live at the Intro (Solved!)

Dear Listeners, you may have noticed that the radio sometimes pauses in between tracks for several minutes or some tracks not being played at all.

I’m currently looking into this issue, seems like the hosting provider service has some problems while uploading some newer tracks.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Thanks for your emails for letting me know that your beloved station was acting up.

Live at the Intro is back in fully working order for your listening pleasure! After contacting the streaming service provider, turns out the uploading functionality had some issues. It was uploading blank audio instead of the MP3/OGG content and wouldn’t pick up the tags either. This wrecked havoc with the track scheduler.

I’m currently using Airtime.pro for Live at the Intro but it hasn’t been free of issues. It required quite a bit of fine tuning to get it to work like I wanted it to and the interface is not intuitive at all. It’s also quite expensive. I’m considering switching to Shoutcast if I continue to have issues.

One thing it’s missing is a good web player that shows more information than just the currently playing track. I currently have a custom JavaScript player in the works. Stay tuned!

Otherwise, I’m still hunting down for good content to add to the station. I’m aiming to add another 12 hours of music by August 2022. Again, if you have any suggestions, please send them my way to liveattheintro@cdahmedeh.net

As usual, you can listen to Live at the Intro on the project page.

I’ve resurrected my Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) install!

I purchased a large collection of addons back in 2009-2015 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 of a large variety and with much money. When FSX was released, all those addons were not compatible with it and became obsolete. Back then, FSX required very powerful computers and the poor performance made me return back to FS2004.

Later on, Lockheed-Martin picked up from where the ESP platform was left from Microsoft and released newer and improved versions as Prepar3d. The software was continuously updated breaking the addons that were purchased for the simulator.

Whenever an upgrade was released for the addons, developers often made users pay an upgrade fee. This is assuming that the addons are not abandoned by the developer.

I eventually moved on to X-Plane 11 by Laminar Research at the time where the addon market for it was starting to boom. Many simulations were very in-depth, study-level and so realistic that even pilots could use it for training. I purchased a couple addons for it. I was confident that I didn’t need my old sim anymore and deleted all my installers for FS2004 mods. My backup hard-drive failed and lost everything. I wasn’t upset because I thought I would only play X-Plane from now on.

When Flight Simulator (2020) came out, it revolutionized the way scenery was generated using photogrammetry and satellite imagery to generate a world so accurate that you could see your house in the game. However, this game is still in it’s infancy without a proper SDK. Hardly any serious addons have been release for it.

I realized that I was stuck with a bunch of addons purchased a while ago that I wasn’t using anymore. A sense of guilt ran through me because I felt that I spent money on nothing. I didn’t want to keep spending so much money (addons are getting more expensive these days) every time I upgraded. Therefore, this year, I decided to resurrect FS2004 and get all my addons back. It wasn’t that easy.

Screenshots

Finally! I’ve managed to resurrect most of my FS9 addons on Windows 10. The reason I did this was because I bought so many addons for FS9 back in 2009-2015 and I feel like I was putting them to waste if I didn’t use them at all. It took me two days to get most of my addons installed. I still have more to go. It's about 55 GB so far.

This time, I made backups for all the installers and keys on OneDrive and on an external hard drive. Despite all of this, I figure some addons are going to be eventually out of date.

Difficulty of Installation

Here’s what I discovered installing such an ancient flight simulator on a modern system:

  • Most FS9 products disappeared around 2016 from stores.

  • Addons with plain and simple installers that don’t phone home still work.

  • Flight1 Wrapper doesn’t always work with Windows 10. This is a known issue. Therefore, I’ve lost some addons.

  • Some vendors don’t provide downloads for legacy products anymore.

  • I had to contact some developers to get the legacy installers.

  • Manually generated keys are not done by the developers anymore.

  • Many products aren’t supported anymore (this is understandable).

  • Some activation servers are no longer online.

Due to the above, I had to resort to piracy to use products that I actually bought. I had to go through shady websites often in languages that I don’t understand. I sought refuse with VMWare, uBlock Origin, Sandboxie and VirusTotal to hopefully catch any malicious software. It made me reflect our reliance on online services these days. Once they’re gone we lose the software and our data.

What I miss from FS9:

  • 2D panels which are really easy to read and navigate through. They look ugly compared to virtual cockpits but they’re so much more practical and pragmatic.

  • At this point, after more than 20 years of hardware evolution, frame rate is incredibly high. I can run it at 4K at 60 fps all the time in any scenario.

  • Excellent and busy AI traffic with the proper addons. Easy to spot with labels above them.

  • Probably the simulator with the most freeware addons.

  • The collection of payware addons is much more varied, you can essentially find scenery for any location on the planet and a huge variety of obscure planes.

  • You can have windows of other views and put them on a separate screen.

  • You can have windows of some gauges and put them on a separate screen.

  • No VAS issues. Still need a patch to increase it to 4GB because by default, with more demanding addons, the sim still crashes.

  • Flight Path view and Replay.

  • Planes for early history are there such as the Wright Flyer.

  • Flight Lesson material is in depth and well documented.

  • Incredibly fast load times and startup.

  • Meigs Field

  • The graphics look way more natural than modern FSX and F3D. I find that the addons for the latter tend to look more cartoony and too vibrant.

What I don’t miss from FS9:

  • Gauges refresh rate is terrible, especially compared to X-Plane’s ultra-smooth panels. It’s even worse in VC where some planes where the refresh rate is probably 2-4 FPS.

  • No good camera tool for moving around and effects. There’s only F1View and Active Camera but they leave a lot to be desired.

  • Flight Dynamics are absolutely terrible. It feels like you’re flying on rails and turbulence doesn’t do much.

  • The virtual cockpits look so bad. Almost everything is 2D and you can really tell.

  • So many separate executables for load management and other features. They’re integrated into the sim in new simulators.

  • Comparing to the amazing scenery from MSFS, FS2004 looks extremely dated and horrible. Autogen is utterly terrible. Terrain resolution leaves so much to be desired. I can’t believe one pixel is used for 4 meters squared. Scenery drawn further away is blurry mess and mesh looks terrible.

  • Mesh is so low resolution outside of the US. Addons that add extra resolution are buggy because of improper airport altitudes and flat airports.

  • Almost all decent scenery is payware.

  • Again, it’s ancient software now.

  • Compared to modern addons, system depth isn’t that deep.

  • Need an external tool for flight planning. Forget about SID and STARS with the default one. I use SimBrief as an alternative.

  • The incredibly invasive anti-piracy mechanisms. Some they even detect false positives and do something like delete folders in your FS9 install or delete the addon. I had to use virtual machines to test some of them. I’ll leave this detailed in another post soon.

  • Need to run as administrator for most addons to work.

  • No HDPI support. Everything is tiny.

  • Selecting aircraft don’t always work

  • Default ATC is useless. (I mean, it still is in X-Plane 11 and MSFS2020.

  • The game is unstable and needs constant restarting.

After being spoiled by X-Plane and even more with MSFS, the FS9 graphics are really really starting to look dated. 

Conclusion

It feels like quite an achievement to get all this running and definitely worth the time. I now have access to most of the software that I purchased and learned to love in the past. Looks like this will keep me busy for a while.

I still play and enjoy X-Plane and MSFS and have a collection of addons for them too. I don’t believe that you should pick one simulator and live with it. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple ones as long as you have the disk space!

Recommended Addons

  • Level-D Simulations - The 767: This is a good balance between a study level and a casual simulation. Very easy to learn with nice documentation and example flights. Quite old but a classic.

  • iFly Jets - 737NG and 747: The old PMDG airliners have been discontinued. This is a good replacement and up-to-par with the current PMDG simulations.

  • Leonardo - Fly The Maddog SP2: Probably one of the most complex simulations for FS2004. It is a discontinued but if you look hard enough "online" you'll find it.

  • PMDG - MD-11: This is probably my favourite airliner simulation. You can find DVD of it on eBay but also "online". PMDG discontinued it because apparently, it didn't sell really well. I call bullshit on this and believe that it is due to a developer debacle. The main developer (Lefteris Kalamaras) of the plane left and they couldn't support it anymore. Here’s some help.

  • SSTSIM - CONCORDE: Very detailed Concorde with a very immersive feel. Simulates the majority of systems but not all of them. This is more in-depth than the PSS one.

  • Aerosoft - Piper Cheyenne: A really in-depth dual turboprop simulation.

  • RealAir: Citabria/SF-260 and Spitfire: Simple planes but very realistic flight dynamics. Plane rolls-over in stall and probably the only simulation that I've tried that simulates sideslips.

  • VRS - F/A-18E Superbug: If you ask the developer very nicely, you will get a copy for FS9. This is the most in-depth military aircraft even more than the DCS version.

  • PILOTS - FS Global Real Weather: This is a great replacement to ActiveSky Evolution. It's still supported and works with FS2004.

  • Matthias Neusinger - FS Recorder: A million times between than the integrated replay in FS9. Much smoother.

  • Pablo Diaz - HDEv2: This is freeware, you can find it on AVSIM. It enhances the sky colours and clouds dramatically. I find it to be less cartoonish and subtle than REX.

  • FSAddon - Glacier Bay Alaska/Canada: Another freeware that you can find on AVSIM. It replaces a good portion of Alaska and Canada with more detailed mesh, textures and landclass.

  • Flight One Software - Ultimate Traffic: My favourite AI traffic enhancement. I find it stable, provides good density and good performance. There are many freeware alternatives on the Internet.

  • Flight One Software - Ground Environment Professional: Replacement ground textures. Looks much better than the default but it won't work around the terrible ground resolution in FS9.

  • Flight One Software - Ultimate Terrain: Highly improved landclass, rivers, roads, etc for Alaska, Canada, USA and Europe.

Announcing TopRoms - A Curated ROM Set of High Quality Games.

Announcing TopRoms! A curated ROM collection of high quality games. This set aims to include only games that are worth playing according to the industry. A big search was done through blogs, sales numbers, multiple recommendation lists and top lists to find both well known classics and the gems that we forgot.

This is to avoid the inconvenience of having multi-GB ROM sets that have every game ever made for a given system. The majority of the games are of poor-quality and the collection is hard to explore. It’s not always practical to carry these sets on storage limited systems such as smartphones, single-board computers (such as the Raspberry PI) and portable game systems.

🕹️ Click Here for Collection

It is constantly evolving project and more and more games will be added as they are discovered. Feel free to suggest additional high quality games at toproms@cdahmedeh.net

There are currently several packages:

TopRoms: This is for cartridge based systems. Includes Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, SMS, Genesis, 32X, TurboGrafx-16

TopArcade: This is for Arcade Machines. It is compatible with MAME 0.236 and newer.

TopIsos: This is for disc-based systems. Includes Sega CD and Playstation. TurboxGrafx-CD coming soon!

TopHacks: Coming soon! A curated collection of homebrew games and ROM hacks!

Use your favourite emulator to play these games but we recommend the amazing multi-system open-source emulator RetroArch

Build a (Poor Man's) Arcade Machine - On a Budget of 200$ or Less!

I was watching a bunch of YouTubers who were creating arcade machines from scratch. What they did was really impressive but I didn’t have the handyman skills or equipment (or money) to match them. I still wanted to make a game machine however and ignore how scrappy it is. Whatever it ends up, I’ll be proud of my work. It’s all about improvisation anyways, right?

My goal was to build an arcade machine (that didn’t look like one) with things that I already have avoiding buying new parts. A rummage in the basement storage locker presented me with quite some surprises. I’m encouraging you to use as much as what you already have.

Just because you’re on a tight budget, doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. We’re stretching it thin and keeping the total cost under 200$. That’s much less than experts who spend thousands of dollar on tools, wood, expensive TVs, arcade controls and so on. I, in some way, envy them because looking at these builds make me feel skilless (and poor).

Keep in mind that this budget is for the minimum required to build a working machine. You may opt for higher end parts or have many of them already lying around. I personally didn’t have to make any new purchases since I had the components needed.

Let’s take a look about how you may find yourself into the way of fun without overdrawing your account.

The Parts You Need

The Computer

Obviously, you’ll need something to actually run your arcade machine and run the emulators and ROMs so you can play them. A local store, The Trailing Edge, sells refurbished PCs that office businesses discarded them. They had a pretty old machine that was priced for just under 100$. The reason I had it was for testing my software on a slower and older machines to see how it performed. I no longer needed it when virtual machines had support for reducing the execution cap thus emulating a slower machine. It sat in my closet doing nothing and collecting dust.

Some much cheaper alternatives are Raspberry Pi Boards. They provide a very compact system that is very inconspicuous and silent. These systems have become powerful enough to run retro games with no fuss. There are other single-board computers for about the same prices but I prefer the RPI because it’s the most popular one and has the best software support.

Don’t forget to check eBay for refurbished laptop and desktop computers for a very cheap price. You don’t need anything more powerful than a Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM. You could probably get away even less.

Check you’re existing inventory of computer devices. Over the years I’ve purchased many Raspberry PIs and single-board computers hidden in messes of drawers. Some old laptops were hanging around too but I’ve sold most of them.

Cost: 35$ - Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (1GB RAM)

The Software

Emulator front-ends have developed beautiful interfaces and easy setup. There’s so many choices and I’ll only list a few. Keep in mind setup can be a bit clunky and keep the official documentation handy and don’t be afraid to ask online for some advice.

If you’re using a PC, my favourite frontend is without a doubt LaunchBox/BigBox. It does cost some money but I already had purchased a license for my HTPC. There are some free alternatives with beautiful UIs such as Lutris and Playnite. There’s also EmulationStation which is very popular with Raspberry Pi users.

The games themselves are not that hard to find on the Internet but there’s huge moral concerns over obtaining them. While owning the game is usually enough, some take it far and dump the ROMs from the cartridges. Both solutions are expensive and it seems unreasonable that you’ll be chased around for software that’s more than 30 years old (unless you’re Nintendo).

One advantage of using a PC is that you can include other games such as your collection from Steam or whatever else you may have. Of course, the limited performance of these puny single-board machines that you got your hands on might not be able to play more demanding and serious games.

In the Gems section on this website, in the Piracy section at the bottom, you’ll find ways to obtain these ROMs. I’m also making a shameless plug for my curated ROM collection TopRoms which will shrink the footprint of having every game in existence rather than just the popular and high quality ones.

Of course, the frontends can’t actually run the game. While some projects like RetroPie and Recalbox will already have emulators configured other software will require you to download an emulator yourself. RetroArch is currently the most popular multi-emulator software with great compatibility and performance. One thing you’ll need to keep in mind, there’s a lot of manual setup to get things working properly so you’ll need to be stuck with documentation and using online queries.

The emulators and frontends currently available have never made it easy to get things up and running. The technical nature of these software caters more to those who have a good understanding of computing in general.

Of course, you can use the operating system of choice whether it’s Windows or Linux. Take a peek at AlternativeTo find the software that works for you.

Cost: 0$ - RetroPie

The screen

Many business are putting away their screens for something bigger and maybe better quality. Although virtually every monitor on sale these days are 16:9, this can be a little jarring since most classic games run at 4:3 aspect ratio. So the extra wide screen space won’t be useful.

There are many places where you can find cheap monitors for very low prices. Checkout liquidation centres, thrift stores and eBay. You may find something that costs less than 40$.

Personally, the monitor I had was a hand me down. It’s 10 years old now but It still works well. One frustration is that I lost the base for the screen and had to secure it by improvising with book ends and sticky tac.

Some purists may prefer CRT screens since they provide better response times and keep that authentic look because these older games were designed to run on them. You’ll usually find on them on classified ranging from free to unusually expensive prices.

One last thing to keep in mind, it’s likely that you’ll be standing while playing on the machine. As a result, the screen needs to be tilted very far back, almost at a 45 degree angle. It’s possible your screen stand that doesn’t move that far so be ready to improvise.

Cost: 35$ - Refurbished 17” Monitors

The Controllers:

I have to admit that controllers can make or break the gaming experience. So perhaps this is a place you can spend a bit more money. You can find cheap ones all over. In my opinion, the best bang for your buck is the Logitech F310. The buttons are firm, the D-pad reasonable and some nice shoulder buttons. Taking a quick at local stores, you can obtain one for 25$. If want something wireless, you might be paying double. But, if you want that authentic arcade experience, you’ll have to shell over 200$ for arcade style controls or buy a DIY kit which is only a bit less. I personally had some 8BitDo classic controllers lying around unused so they got connected to the PC.

Cost: 2x25$ - Logitech F310 Gamepad

Keyboard and Mouse

It’s almost certain that you have some old keyboards and mice lying around in a closet or storage room. You really don’t need anything fancy for the seldom cases where you need to configure the machine.

Look at local stores, thrift shops and liquidation centres. You can probably find a combo for less than 5$. The feel and accuracy of the mice and keyboard might leave quite a bit left to desire but it will enough for the rare times you will use it.

Another alternative is the air-mouse/keyboard combo that many HTPC enthusiasts use. I had two lying around from old HTPC projects. Finding one for less than 30$ is not impossible though.

Cost: 15$ - iCAN Keyboard and Mouse Combo

The Speakers

An acceptable set of PC speakers can be found for as low as 25$. You can also use Bluetooth speakers if you have one that you’re not using. Your screen may even have built-in speakers. The sound quality doesn’t have to be amazing, just enough to transmit the bleeps-and-bloops from our beloved classic games.

Cost: 22$ - AmazonBasics USB-powered Speakers

The Stand

This is the part where you probably have the most freedom. A quick look through Amazon and Ikea reveals many candidates for keeping your machine off the ground. Try finding high dining tables with casters, a small desk, a tall chair and so on. You’ll find furniture everywhere from thrift stores, to IKEA and many other places selling cheap furniture.

I personally used a sofa table with casters to keep things up. I was planning to use it for eating on the couch but it was too high. So it found new use after some minor changes.

Cost: 33$ - Furinno Just 3-Tier Turn-N-Tube End Table

The Odds and Ends

Remember you’ll need cables and power strips to get everything tied together. Some cable management ties might help keep your system clean. I tend to collect cables and I was able to find everything I needed. Otherwise head out to various online stores like Amazon and Monoprice and so on. Also take a peek at dollar stores.

Conclusion

There we have it folks, the total comes to almost exactly 200$ (192$). Taxes and shipping were not included since they vary based on your location. If you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably a technology nut like me having wasted much money on things that became useless and obsolete quickly. Anything that you’re not using is an opportunity to save money and reuse something that was destined for the electronics recycler.

This is what my system looks like after completion. It looks like a hack job but it does exactly what I need it to do, play games!

However, don’t forget to add your magic touch to your build and keep the pride of what you have managed to do on a shoestring budget. 

Feel free to share in the comments below what kind of setup you have managed to build. It would be awesome to share pictures of your masterpieces whether it was a glued together rush job or a fully fledged arcade cabinet. There’s no floor or limit here.