Playing backup CDs on older consoles
Ed: I wrote this last year and never finished this. I managed to complete the write-ups for Sega's first two disc-based consoles, but I got caught up in other things before finishing it. Enjoy what I've writen!
One of the unfortuante aspects of optical media is the fact that the media does happen to deteriorate over time. With that, they become virtually unplayable and thus become just useless pieces of aluminium and plastic. However, as computing power and abilities have advanced, this problem has been sort of solved with the usage of CD burners. It's fairly easy to backup the CD image to a large hard drive and burn them to a recordable disc for later usage. This prevents potential wear and tear of your existing originals and also prevents damage to the console in certain situations.
This page will provide some information on how to deal with certain consoles and their protection mechanisms. Some of the older consoles have no protections at all while others have some rather nasty systems in place.
Best Bluetooth Antenna Ever!
I needed a really cheap bluetooth adapter that I could afford to destory or lose. Seeing that going to Best Buy or any other big box store for one of these is just pointless, so I bought it through an online store based out of Hong Kong. I have ordered a tonne of items from them before, so I didn't care too much about what I was going to get. It was likely to be modified so I went with the larger one instead of the tiny one that basically ate a USB port full-time.
However, I have a bad habit of cracking open the items I receive from them--warranty status with these guys? Yeah right! However, I didn't expect this when I bought it...