Virtual Bonkeydave

JagGD by RetroHQ – Beta Test

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Whoop Whoop, i have been lucky enough to have access to a JAgGD by RetroHQ – i have been a long time Atari user and pretty well know in the days of the Atari ST.

I have a pretty good Atari Jaguar collection already i have been collecting over the last 5 years or so, twenty odd games, 4 controllers etc with only a couple of games i have been unable to get hold of over the years.

The biggest issue has been price, like all retro kit there seems to be a massive up surge in demand which unfortantly pushes prices in the realms of ” Errr yeah wont bother with that “. Real shame however thats life and i suppose when you think about it shows there is a good cult following of the Atari Jaguar.

The JagCD , they are like gold dust and the price in the uk are well over £500 to buy one and i have never been able to get hold of one for a price i am willing to pay. Sad thing is if i have the money i have today i would have snapped one up when i was a lot younger.. Although not many JagCD games it did sort of open up the whole home brew scene…….

Thing to note with the JagGD, it does not currently support JagCD games; it may in the future.

I don’t plan on writing war and peace, its not needed as the JagGD is pretty self explanatory. Whole idea is to give a quick overview of using it and a few pictures etc.

 

Before we start, all the details about the JagGD are at RetroHQ’s website :

https://www.retrohq.co.uk/products/atari-jaguar-gd-flash-cartridge

Description

The RetroHQ Jaguar GameDrive cartridge allows you to play the full back catalogue of Atari Jaguar games and homebrew directly from a memory card.

The Jaguar GameDrive has full support for all games and sizes of EEPROM (used to save game progress). The EEPROM contents are saved directly to the memory card along with your game, so everything is stored in one place.

You will need to provide a memory card (FAT16 or FAT32 formatted) and your own ROM images (JAG, J64, ROM, BIN, ABS) to play. A selection of freeware games are linked in the resources section below.

The latest firmware for the ORIGINAL Jaguar GameDrive (recognisable by a different label from the one above) can be found below. For the new style Jaguar GameDrive, please follow the onscreen instructions as you boot the cartridge to access firmware updates.

 

Monday April 20th the post man arrived pretty late; was probably around 5pm. I do know where i have been living the postal service have been doing a great job in the current situation although postal deliveries have been getting a bit later over the last few weeks……

Opened the box and grabbed a 128gig micro SD card, fired up the Dell XPS laptop and the it had to happen my SD reader had given up. I am an Apple Mac person these days however i use the Dell for SD cards when i burn images for RetroPI. Amazon here i come to order one for my MAC which would add another day….

 

Tuesday April 21st, SD card reader arrived – come back to that in a minute

So out the box is a nice cartridge with nice art work and a small instruction manual, don’t forgot this is beta version so the official may come with a better manual ( no that you need it )

 

 

As you can see a micro SD card slot at the top with usual spring loaded mechanism.

There is a ” Getting Started ” section in the manual :

  • First thing you are told is that a firmware update is required, not sure if this will be needed when it goes GA.
  • Put cartridge into you Jaguar and turn it on
  • A QR code is displayed and a website to go too.
  • You have a choice, either scan the QR code or type the URL in.
  • Due to my my MAC being in a holding frame for work i ended up just typing the URL into chrome on my MAC. Yes i could scan in on my phone or iPad but then would need the hassle of getting the firmware upgrade file to my MAC.
  • Quick copy of a small upgrade file to the root of the SD card and i was ready to go.
  • Booted up and nothing happened, no firmware upgrade. Just sat there with QR code / URL Splash screen.
  • Spoke to RetroHQ, between us we figured 128gig SD cards don’t seem to work. Grabbed a 32gig SD card and copied over the upgrade file
  • Quick reboot of the Jaguar and the update is instantaneous !!! Thus the fact i have no pictures….
  • Menu appears as shown below

  • You use the cursor to navigate up and down and buttons xxxx to go back and forth.
  • It will happily navigate through folders and back and forth, just in case you want to organise you games into categories
  • Highlight the game and hit button xxxx
  • Loading window appears as shown below

 

 

 

  • Usual Jaguar red logo appears just like you where running a normal cartridge.
  • Game boots up as usual, i did not notice any difference in boot time from running a normal cartridge. Yes i guess i could use a stop watch to compare both however i don’t really see that being necessary. Zero complaints from me.



 

  • As you can see plays happy, i already own pitfall but was nice to see it running on the JagSD
  • One thing to note, there is no way to exit out the game back to the menu of the JagSD so you have to hard power off as if you where changing the cartridge. This would be nice in a future firmware to see this feature however i don’t know from a technical perspective whether this is possible.
  • Third Party / Home brew games work quite happily
  • Video running the bad apple demo

 

Summary

Forgive my rubbish audio / visual certainly not my forte.

The JagGD is a great piece of kit, ok its not the cheapest in the world however its not exactly the most expensive.

Its very easy to use so people should be up in next to no time ( don’t use 128gig SD’s ) with the whole experience as simple as it needs to be.

Certainly opens up the third party and home brew scene and with a bit of luck this might invigorate  a few more people to develop against the Jag. The original Atari 2600 has a sort of cult following with the harmony cartridge so fingers crossed this repeats the same.

Atari Age are going to be dealing with distribution, not sure when this will be. My advice is get on the waiting list as you wont regret this as an addition to the Atari Jaguar…

 

VMware Education Services – Remote Exams

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As we all know the way we do things currently is very much different than a few months ago things will get back to some type of normality in time i guess however i cant see that being any time soon.

 

Business’s are still functioning and i guess people studying for exams give them that extra purpose they have sort of lost with current lockdowns. However there was always going to be an issue of getting to a testing centre regardless if they are open.

The great news VMware Certification have  announced that remote proctoring of its exams, delivered by Pearson VUE, will be available starting April 20, 2020. Remote proctoring allows you to take the exam from ANY secure location, and will be a permanent offering, regardless of the availability of in-person testing centers going forward. The cost per exam remains the same.

 

Few things to note :

With artificial intelligence combined with live monitoring, these new exam options offer the most up-to-date technology, including enhanced security features such as: face-matching technology, virtual ID verification, session monitoring, browser lockdown, recording, and more. In order to take an exam remotely, you will need to have a web cam, show ID, have your camera scan the room, and be in a secure, quiet location. This is still a proctored exam, with a live proctor. As with in-person events, you will not be able to use any materials to take the exam.

After a simple download and system check, you’ll be up and running quickly, so that you can easily get to what really matters: the test. When registering for your upcoming exam, simply select the remote proctoring option to choose this convenient new test-taking option.

All exams will be available for remote proctored delivery on April 20, 2020 except for the VCAP Deploy lab-based exams; with a different underlying delivery infrastructure, they take a bit more work and will be available soon.

 

I have a few friends who have take Microsoft exams this way so i am going to ask for a bit of feedback and add to this blog post, hopefully in the coming months i would have scheduled an exam and give my own take on the process.

 

SteelSeries 9X Headphones

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As someone who owns multiple gaming machines ( Xbox, Switch, DS ) and lots of retro kit; actually most importantly i have a special edition Evercade on order. Actually if you have not heard of Evercade its worth dropping over to there website to have a read https://evercade.co.uk/

I have had some decent Turtle beach headphones X41 Wireless Surround Sound for my Xbox 360 which i then used on my XBOX X; headset was discontinued in 2011. They where pretty good at the time however obviously quite dated, plus i seemed to get drop out alot with my XBOX X. No idea if this was my XBOX or the fact the technology was a a tad old…..

Time to look for a new set of headphones….

When i looked i could see the usual suspects :

  • Turtle Beach
  • Astro
  • Razor

However SteelSeries seemed to come back as a new one on the block, ok not new and apparently well known on the gaming scene on the PC. However since i have done any PC gaining for probably 15 years the brand meant nothing to me.

Like any brand the price range is quite large, £50 for the cheapest right up to £180 for the SteelSeries 9x. However i thought well i want a good headphone that will hopefully last and i can use on multiple devices. Also i hate wires although a wire from the headset to the Xbox controller i was willing to accept; again if the headset was good.

Came down to a choice of two :

Arctis 3 Bluetooth

  • Simultaneous wired and Bluetooth
  • Perfect for Nintendo switch
  • ClearCast noise cancelling microphone

Arctis 9x

  • Integrated Xbox Wireless connectivity
  • Simultaneous wired and Bluetooth
  • ClearCast noise cancelling microphone

Price of the 9x’s is around £90 more than the 3 so it comes in around £189…..

I really like the fact it as an approved Xbox Wireless headset so it can use Xbox’s Wireless connectivity…. Guess thats what swung it for me, meaning no lead to the controller plus i like to try and buy the best of the best if i can afford it.

Set-up was straight forward however really poor it does not come with a 3.5 male to male lead so i could plug it into my Nintendo switch, ok £5 off amazon however i do think one should have been included for the price.

Sound quality and overall use is second to none; the virtual sound works really well. However if you want to use Dolby Atmos ( if you have an Xbox X ) then you have to have this wired to your controller… Doh !!!!!!!! It wont work over the Xbox Integrated Wireless connectivity which seems a bit thick. Must be some type of technical issue ? however i don’t know what this is.

All positive up to now !!!! Heres the negative, it just does not work with my Apple Mac laptop, yes it connects and then disconnects after a few seconds. A quick search on google, lots of other people complaining about this issue and little or no response from Steel Series….. Very annoying and yes a bit of a let down  considering how much they where. However my main use was for gaming on my Xbox and Switch not for Zoom conference calls with world. So not the end of the world however would have been nice to see Steel Series actively trying to fix this. I guess its one of these ” Watch this Space ”

So all in all a good set of headphones at a reasonable price of £189, yes sure the Astra / Turtle Beach ones are better however they cost a lot more money.

 

” Recommended !!! ”

 

 

Support each other in the current situation

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As everyone is aware, across the planet the world we live has changed very drastically over the last few weeks. The hustle and bushel of daily life, enjoying normal social interaction; things like going to :

 

restaurants
going to the gym
going to the park
Socialising in general
have become very restrictive very quickly.

 

Most of us are now in the situation of general lockdown, forced to work from home and with schools shut meaning home life and the working environment has also changed drastically.

 

Its very easy to become isolated / feel alone and generally worried in the current situation as such its never been so important to support both our colleagues as well as our friends and family.

 

Some people are lucky to work for a company that has adopted digital transformation which allows us to work from home, others not and for a great deal of people job losses are present. If you are still working then we all facing new challenges some of which we have not faced before. We now need to adapt our working practices at home to reflex the current situation. Take regular breaks, make sure you eat and take breaks regular and more than ever put some structure around your day.

We all have to SUPPORT each other, pick the phone up, check in with a colleagues and have a chat.

Speak up if you are struggling whether this is to a friend / family member or a colleague or your manager.

Utilise any HR support services on offer for the region you are based.

Use the vCommunity !!! there are lots of people who would to have a chat.

Support yourself and support your family.

vROPS 8, Install Mange and Configure

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I noticed while in a workshop that vROPS 8 install manage and configure course had gone GA. Very quickly I registered, just my luck – full however I was on the waiting list. A day later that email I had been waiting for “ there’s room at the inn, click now to be part of the party”.

I have not attended a vROPS training course since around 2013 / 2014 and was quite an earlier version of vROPS – lots has changed since.

I have a few customers who are going to vROPS 8 so i thought it would be pretty prudent to try and get myself more upto speed with the new features of vROPS 8

This was the first run on line of this new course, yes the odd hiccup around the labs not working correctly however nothing that caused any issues and this only happened on the Monday.

The only downside was there no actual timings for each of the lab tasks / sections so it was very much finger in the air and by overall consensus. This meant that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday where very heavy and long days. Thursday and Friday where very light in comparison.

Trainer was great and i really enjoyed the weeks worth of training, yes it was a live on line course. Some people like these and some don’t and i can the plus and minus points around them.

Staying away on a course for the week 

Plus Points

  • More detached from work
  • Social Aspect ( beer and some food most nights )
  • Networking while on the course whether this be coffee breaks or lunch
  • More conversation / interactivity within the classroom
  • All kit is there for you in an classroom so you will generally have 2 good size monitors

Negative Points

  • Travel and being away from home
  • Generally travel on a Sunday and wont get home till 10pm on a Friday
  • Extra costs from hotels and expenses, this can mount up into a hefty sum for the week

Live Online

Plus Points

  • No Travel, would hope you have either booked a meeting room in your place of work or your at home doing the training
  • No travelling down the night before and no coming home at daft o’clock on a Friday night
  • Zero Travel and Expense costs – this really can make a difference sometimes as to whether you are allowed to attend a course or not
  • If your doing this from home it is really just a matter of getting up and going into your office or where you work at home
  • Your own kit, you need a monitor as well as your laptop / desktop ( with monitor )

Negative Points

  • The networking at coffee and lunch times are not there as everyone is remote; fair play to the instructor this week he would try and get some conversations going with people at coffee breaks.
  • No social part of a night time
  • You have to be very strict with email and detaching from work, turn email off, turn skype off etc and make sure you have some cover on your Out Of Office for the week.
  • You need correct kit, defiantly need a second monitor, desk etc and a room thats quiet

So there you go it comes down to cost and personal preference, training is exactly the same as its normal trainers that would have if your attended a classroom event. Live on line has become a lot more popular and there certainly is a lot more dates available that classroom courses. So if your in a rush to get the training then Live On Line can really be of benefit.

I had a great week and got a great deal from the course, hard work starts now as you really need to go through the manual etc again. vROPS is a monster of a product and does take a bit of effort to get the most from it. Although vROPS 8 has certainly made a great deal of content available straight out the box which may well be enough for a lot of people.

 

Course details :

Overview:

This five-day course covers advanced capabilities like customizing alerts, views, reports, and dashboards and explains the architecture and different ways of deploying VMware vRealize® operations. This course explains certificates, capacity concepts, and workload optimization with real-world use cases and covers troubleshooting using dashboards and how-to manage compliance and configurations. The course also covers management packs such as those for or in the SDDC Management Health solution, Storage Devices Management Pack, and AWS Management Pack.

In general, this course explains how to use and configure most of the new features and enhancements in vRealize version 8.0.

Outline: 1  Course Introduction
•  Introductions and course logistics
•  Course objectives2  User Interface Enhancements
•  Describe how to use vRealize Operations to manage the software-defined data center
•  Identify features and benefits of vRealize Operations

3  Deploying vRealize Operations
•  Design and size a vRealize Operations cluster
•  Install a vRealize Operations cluster
•  Configure a vRealize Operations cluster for high availability
•  Describe different vRealize Operations deployment scenarios
•  Describe how to use vRealize Lifecycle Manager to deploy vRealize Operations

4  vRealize Operations Architecture and Certificates
•  Describe the functions of the components in a vRealize Operations node
•  Identify the types of nodes and their roles in a vRealize Operations cluster
•  Recognize how a node’s components interact to achieve scalability and availability
•  Identify ways that data is collected and analyzed by vRealize Operations
•  Describe vRealize Operations certificates

5  vRealize Operations Concepts and Policies
•  Identify the tasks that can be performed in the administration and product user interfaces
•  Describe dashboards and their usage
•  Use tags to group objects
•  Create policies for various types of workloads
•  Explain how policy inheritance works

6  Performance Optimization
•  Assess the performance of your environment to determine which data centers need optimization
•  Define the business and operational intents for a given data center
•  Automate the process of optimizing and balancing the workloads in data centers
•  Report on the results of optimization efforts

7  Capacity Optimization and Costing
•  Define capacity planning terms
•  Understand capacity planning models
•  Assess the overall capacity of a data center and identify optimization recommendations
•  Recognize options for rightsizing virtual machines (VMs)
•  Run what-if scenarios for adding workloads to a data center
•  Run what-if scenarios to plan the migration of workloads to the public cloud

8  Managing Configurations and Troubleshooting Pillars
•  Recognize how to troubleshoot issues by monitoring alerts
•  Use step-by-step workflows to troubleshoot different vSphere objects
•  Assess your environment’s compliance to standards
•  View the configurations of VMware vSphere® objects in your environment

9  Operating System and Application Monitoring
•  Recognize how the Service Discovery manager and Telegraf fits into the vRealize Operations OS and app monitoring
•  Deploy the Application remote collector
•  Monitor the operating system and applications by using Telegraf

10  Custom Alert Definition
•  Create symptom definitions
•  Create recommendations, actions, and notifications
•  Create alert definitions that monitor resource demand in hosts and VMs

11  Custom Views and Reports
•  Build and use custom views in your environment
•  Create custom reports for presenting data about your environment

12  Custom Dashboards
•  Create dashboards that use predefined and custom widgets
•  Configure widgets to interact with other widgets and other dashboards
•  Configure the Scoreboard widget to use a metric configuration file
•  Manage dashboards by grouping dashboards and sharing dashboards with users

13  Super Metrics
•  Recognize different types of super metrics
•  Create super metrics and associate them with objects
•  Enable super metrics in policies

14  User Access Control
•  Recognize how users are authorized to access objects
•  Determine privilege priorities when a user has multiple privileges
•  Import users and user groups from an LDAP source

15  Extending and Managing a vRealize Operations Deployment
•  Identify the management packs that are available to your environment
•  Install and configure a management pack
•  Monitor the health of a vRealize Operations cluster
•  Generate a support bundle
•  View vRealize Operations logs and audit reports
•  Perform vRealize Operations cluster management tasks

Arcains – Games Reloaded

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Twitter is a funny product, sometimes so much overload and you just cant keep up with the flow of content. Well by chance this website was retweeted the other week and i am so glad.

I am  massive retro gaming fan, i live in the north West and we are so lucky to have

  • Arcade Club in Bury
  • Retro Arcade Warrington

I have been Arcade Club numerous times and its a great cheap day out, family loves it. Still yet to get over to Retro Arcade in Warrington however i will make sure i get over some time this year

Going back to what i found on twitter, another retro arcade over in Liverpool

  • Arcains Games Reloaded ” www.arcains.co.uk “

Well I never knew this place existed, used to spend half my time when at university playing adams family pinball ( besides being in the student union bar ) at the arcade just outside Liverpool Limestreet stations

So i have another retro arcade to get to in 2020, looks great and a few really good reviews on youtube….

Mental Health Continuum

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We are all somewhere on the continuum and where we are can change during the course of our lives

Whenever i present on Mental Health i always spend a good amount of time on this picture. I always explain that lets be honest not many people are Excelling, i am not here to say people aren’t. However with all the pressures of life ( yes its constant ) we are generally balancing between Thriving and Unsettled. Every now and again we may dip out big toe into Struggling however we will move back into unsettled.

A Prime example is myself, i have had a difficult 2019 and probably spent most of my time struggling and unsettled. This is not me in crisis, this is purely me having a bad year.

Few pertinent points on this picture :

  • Mental Health is our emotional, psychological and social well being affecting how we think
  • Mental Health is not a binary state
  • The struggles of everyday life – divorce, illness, death of a loved one, problems at work – can have a big impact on your health
  • Its natural to go through ups and downs in life. Sometimes you bounce right back and sometimes you don’t. Please remember this, its so important we have natural ups and downs
  • Stress can be good for you, i get stressed before i am going on stage when i am public speaking. I prefer this as it means i am not over confident and always me to keep myself on my toes.

UKVMUG 2019 User/Con – National Space Centre 27th November 2019 – Better Mental Health in the Community Presentation

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Tiny bit late i know, been meaning to put something on about this a few weeks ago. Well lucky enough to get a slot to present on mental health, every better it was a Community cross company presentation between :3 people from VMware

Myself Dave Marley (@bonkeydave) Simon Conyard (@virtual_simon) Michael Poore (@mpoore) from VMware and Craig Dalyrymple @cragdoo from BrightSolid

Joe Baguley (@JoeBaguley) made a guest appearance and then joining myself and Craig at the end for a Q@A session

Presenting on this topic is pretty hard especially when you have personal stories included. Myself, Simon, Michael and Craig as far as i am concerned did a grand job on the day. I even has a few customers in the audience so a first for me with that.

Feedback after the presentation has been great and heartwarming, it really does show the community understands the importance of Mental Health in IT and that we are all here to support each other.

We are back presenting at the London vMUG in April and then the Yorkshire vMUG in May so hopefully we will get good turn outs at the sessions on the day.

Pandora Box 6 Jamma Board Part 2

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So this is the headline for the Pandora 6 if you look on any resellers …. what grabs your interest is the words add’s support FBA MAME PS1 ….

Arcade Version Pandora’s Box 6 1300 PCB board HDMI/VGA/CGA for LED/CRT Support add FBA MAME PS1 game arcade cabinet coin machine 

  

  

1300 games . and can add games yourself 

As you can see from the above picture they have certainly improved the power under the hood…….. However the most important addition and a first time for pandora boxes is the ability to add your own games to the USB stick that contains the games already. OK in the past you could hack it within reason and add your own games however i never ever got this to work.

I ordered one from my usual supplier however thought is this too good to be true. Received it within a few weeks, this time little choice in colour. It was either fashionable pink for Jamma versions or horrible green for home versions ( none jamma interface ).  Usual Jamma packaging arrived with the Jamma box in bubble wrap and a quick little instruction manual. 

As you can see from below, it certainly is Pink.

Few screws on the back of my bartop to allow me to lay the back of the cabinet flat on a table.

Removal of 2 screws to take my Pandora 5 out…. Then replace with the new pink wonder machine. 

As you can see below, it really is straightforward to swap over : 

  1. Couple of screws to fix it firmly to the back of your bartop 
  2. Plug Jamma interface at the bottom
  3. CRT plug

Thats it…. Pandora 6 swap over, took me about 10 minutes. Obviously depends how you have built your bartop in the first place, however if you have followed most plans available with a quick search on google then your probably reasonably similar.

Below shows the USB drive thats used for storage, my advice would be to get a long male to female USB extension lead. This means you can leave the USB drive outside of your bartop so you dont need to un screw things when you want to add/remove games to the pen drive. Couple of pounds on amazon and you can get a decent one.

Thats it…….

Moment of truth, power my bartop on

Thats it for part 2, next one will show a few of the new nice touches available on the Pandora 6.