this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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Built to last (europe.pub)
submitted 8 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 162 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

If you're wondering what this is about: The PS4 used to require its internal clock to be correct to play any game, even disc based ones, and the only way to do so is to connect to PSN, meaning that in a distant future when the PSN goes down (or Sony no longer allows PS4s to connect to it) all your games would become useless. And the worst part? They did all of this because of trophies.

Sony has fixed the issue on Update 9.0, but the fact that it was ever an issue and caused by a totally non-essential feature is baffling.

[–] Exusia@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago

Oh? They fixed the cbomb?

[–] jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 8 months ago

no way that's not related to drm lol

[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

how would it know if the time wasn't correct

[–] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If it can't get an encrypted timestamp signed by a particular private key then it knows it doesn't know what time it is

[–] BenLeMan@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Getting some strong the missile knows where it is vibes here. 😅

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[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

Probably it's like the Nintendo 3DS, the user facing clock is just an offset to the official internal timer, so when the user changes time, it's just an aesthetic change and has no effect to time/date game unlock mechanics (mostly lPokemon games). When CMOS dies, internal clock resets to 1970, a clearly invalid date where all the signing certificates are invalid, and the user can't set internal clock without hacking the console

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[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 75 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Remember when printers wouldn’t even warn you that the ink was out? They would just give you a weird magenta ghost of what you were trying to print.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 37 points 8 months ago (1 children)

[–] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I read printers use that ink to print nigh invisible text of the printer serial id for anti forgery, and tracking purposes

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That’s why I only email photos of bank notes from my personal Gmail to the library printer & drive past two hundred Flock Safety cameras in my Tesla using Waze turn-by-turn to pick up the printouts

[–] thejml@sh.itjust.works 13 points 8 months ago

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[–] Thatuserguy@lemmy.world 64 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Excuse me what's the ominous "71 days" on the Sonic Adventure game cover am I cursed now

[–] MeatPilot@lemmy.world 65 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

You have 71 days to share this picture with someone else. If you don't, Eggman will crawl out of this meme completely nude and covered in oil.

[–] Thatuserguy@lemmy.world 41 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's disgusting! Uncalled for! Truly despicable! How could they make me wait an entire 71 days for that?!

[–] MeatPilot@lemmy.world 34 points 8 months ago (1 children)

[–] Thatuserguy@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If anyone needs me I'll be hedging my hog

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[–] crank0271@lemmy.world 19 points 8 months ago

You sure know how to make someone not want to share this picture.

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[–] _NetNomad@fedia.io 23 points 8 months ago

the artist, keith stack, uses to do daily comics leading up to major releases, hiding a countdown in each comic

[–] Furbag@lemmy.world 47 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

Sega Dreamcast is not an example of a console that I would describe as "built to last". I had two and both of them died in the same way - the optical lens cracked from heat stress and stopped reading disks. There was never any warning it was about to happen, and no way to prevent it as far as I knew.

As unlucky as I was with the Dreamcast, I made up for it by only ever having to buy one Xbox 360. I still own my original console which was never refurbished and never red ringed on me.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They should've picked Playstation. Those things are near indestructable.

[–] Persi@lemmy.zip 8 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I'm not sure where this idea comes from, the PlayStation had a bad reputation even when it was new.

The optical drive would often fail and need replacement. There was a whole meme about people using the console upside down to combat this.

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[–] __nobodynowhere@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The lasers can also weaken over time leading to issues reading discs. There is a small trim pot that can be adjusted to recalibrate it. You do want to be careful and only make very very small adjustments though.

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[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 40 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Okay, now I know why my Dreamcast keeps asking for the time and date every time I turn it on. Always wondered, but never checked because it worked regardless.

[–] brax@sh.itjust.works 29 points 8 months ago (5 children)

The battery is soldered in, but it's dead simple to desolder and replace with a proper battery holder so you can easily replace it down the road. Just make sure 6ou remember to use a rechargeable.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, if I ever did that, I'd rather take it to someone who knows what they're doing. I have little experience soldering and I don't want to destroy something in my Dreamcast by accident.

[–] brax@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's fair. I'd consider myself fairly new to it all, I'm not passing judgment but it's worth checking out a vid on how to do... If you've used a soldering iron once or twice you could probably handle it.

You may also want to (or have your person doing the work) replace the single-shot resistor fuse with a self-healing one while they're in there. Both parts are on the controller board. The fuse is notorious for blowing, and that can make the whole system unable to detect your controllers.

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[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 38 points 8 months ago (4 children)

But god forbid you unplug a controller while the console is switched on. Better know how to replace that fuse on the controller board!

(If you just bridge it with a wire, I won't tell anyone).

[–] WaterWaiver@aussie.zone 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I was young and did not have access to soldering irons. So I bridged the two pins with aluminium foil and sticky tape.

It would slowly peel off and my controller would suddenly stop working mid game. I couldn't reboot the console because I couldn't save (no VMUs). So I'd fix it live -- I'd leave the screws out of the case, jiggle my fingers in there and fix it.

This was fine, worked for most of a year. Until I killed the console by accidentally touching the controller PCB to another PCB whilst doing this fix. I still have the corpse somewhere, to this day I still feel awful about it.

[–] BenLeMan@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Live modding, huh? 😂 Takes me right back to my first PC, whose loudspeaker prevented me from covertly playing games when I was supposed to be sleeping. 😇

So I opened up the case and figured out that the PC speaker lead had a detachable connector. And the case was flexible enough that if I didn't put all the the screws back in, I could just reach in and plug or unplug the speaker. 👌

Worked great, except for that one time I got shocked while blindly trying to finagle in the connector⚡🤯 (probably by the CRT assembly; this was one of those PCs that had everything incorporated in the case).

Thankfully, it must have been all volts and no amps so I was OK, even though I let out quite the yelp. 😁

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[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 30 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Game Boy cartridges not saving games due to dead battery is sad.

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[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 27 points 8 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, there are tio many arcade boards from that exact era that have draconian DRM measures where if the CMOS dies, the decryption key is irreversibly lost, and it becomes ewaste

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[–] n3cr0@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago

Setting the clock on each boot, after the rechargable CMOS battery died, sucks. I speak from experience with Dreamcast consoles. Best you solder in a battery holder and put in a new rechargable coin cell. ... or add a diode and put in an ordinary non-rechargable.

[–] lpinfinity@retrolemmy.com 13 points 8 months ago

Then there's the og Xbox and it's clock capacitor. Nothing like grabbing your console out of storage to find out it blew a cap and dissolved some of the traces on the PCB.

[–] Zook3y@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Man, I remember when I used to play the Dreamcast and awesome games like Power Stone 2 and Super Magnetic Neo! The little cartridge inside the controller was awesome too.

[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

When it came out, Dreamcast legit felt like it was from 5-10 years in the future.

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[–] tio_bira@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

Nothing bad even happened to a Dreamcast... Right ?

[–] pasdechance@jlai.lu 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Back in the Nintendo era we picked up a copy of Final Fantasy I when the local rental shop went out of business... The battery in it was 100% dead. So my brother would just leave the Nintendo on.

I don't think I've had a console affected by this though.

Recently I had an Evercade cart die. It was the flash memory that gave up, though. Not the battery.

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[–] kratoz29@lemmy.zip 8 points 8 months ago

The CMOS battery of my PSP 3000 died years ago :(

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