Finally some MIDI pitch bending added to my Firejam (own C coded app), for all platforms: #macintosh, #wildbits K2.

I'll make it work for SID, PSG and OPL3 and the Mac sound Driver output as well in their respective ways.

oooo this plex bug made me nuts. this post is for anyone running the plex htpc client on an intel-based mac.

a week ago i swapped in an old mac mini 2012 as a plex media player. it did a perfect job with 1080p.

after five days of flawless operation, it started stuttering, turning the screen magenta on playback, and then inevitably crashing with a meaningless gpu-related crash report.

okay, i thought: nothing has changed with the machine in the past week. it must be some kind of hardware or OS issue that suddenly cropped up.

first stop: check the fan and heatsink to make sure the gpu heatsink hadn't detached. everything good.

okay, so maybe a Catalina compatibility issue magically appeared? i *had* recently upgraded it to the latest macOS security patch, which may have introduced some undisclosed gpu issues. okay, so i upgraded it (via OpenCore Legacy Patcher) to Monterey.

same behaviour. stuttering, 1-3 fps on playback in plex. everything else works great. so... an issue with plex?

i noticed after a few days of playback, Plex had quietly selfupdated. pieces starting to fall together....

... one search later: every person with an older Intel-based mac experiencing the same crashes with 1.71.1 🤬 https://forums.plex.tv/t/htpc-1-71-1-crashes-fails-video-playback/927580

the only solution: downgrade to 1.71.0. (which plex made almost impossible, because it buried its client downloads behind a web API.)

/user/adsyuk1991 did the hard work to scrape their API to pull down the right version. i've uploaded a copy of the binary to IA here: https://archive.org/details/plex-htpc-1.71.0.334-aaf-6bcca-universal

finally - critical last step: stop plex from selfupdating:

- Exit HTPC
- Open
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Plex HTPC/plex.ini

Find the [debug] section - add one if one does not exist

Add disableUpdater=true directly under the [debug] header

Save your changes

look, i get it plex. no one likes maintaining backwards compatible code forever. but a showstopper of this magnitude *has* to be patched even if it's tiresome.

#plex #macintosh

Surprise release of Nethack 5.0.0!

https://nethack.org/common/index.html

#nethack #roguelike #macintosh #retroComputing

as far as i know, i found a software preservation zebra this week: this bit of extremely obscure archival work blends together HyperCard, Sierra On-Line and edutainment.

back in the early 90s, a company named EarthQuest started publishing educational reference titles for kids using HyperCard. the early titles were nice hypercard stacks probably drawn in macpaint. this one doesn't depart much from that format, except with nicer art and more creative page layouts

now, here's where things get weird. when saw it on ebay, only one pic buried at the bottom captured my attention: a weird stamped label on the bottom of the box that read Property OF SIERRA with the Half Dome logo. i bought it out of curiosity, and it arrived today.

back in the 90s, the larger game companies routinely maintained their own on-site libraries of competitors' games. Origin Systems in Austin had one. EA Burnaby, when it was known as Distinctive Software, had one. These were kept so marketing folks and developers could get an idea of what other studios were doing.

thing is, i've never seen mention of a library at Sierra On-Line in Oakhurst. the On-Line part of the logo is critical: Time Treks was published in 1992, and this is the year before Sierra moved its corporate offices from Oakhurst, California to Bellevue, Washington.

i have no doubt that there are other games from the Sierra On-Line corporate library somewhere out there, but i've never come across one even once in 30+ years. feel free to share this post with your fellow Sierra collectors :) it would be great if we could figure out where/when the Sierra library existed.

https://macintoshgarden.org/games/time-treks

#hypercard #macintosh #vintageApple #sierraOnline #adventureGames #retrogaming

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #search #searchengine #frogFind #mac #macOS #macintosh #netscape #navigator #cck

Catch of the Day: The Corporate Time Capsule! 🏢💼

Hey Retro Fans!

Today, our Frog pond caught a guest whose browser ID looks like a secret message from 2001: Netscape Navigator 4.77C-CCK-MCD on a Mac!

What on earth does that alphabet soup at the end mean? That is pure nostalgia for system administrators!

CCK stands for the Client Customization Kit. This allowed companies, universities, or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to brand the Netscape Navigator with their own corporate logos, fixed bookmarks, and homepages.

MCD stands for Mission Control Desktop. This was a powerful Netscape tool that allowed admins to centrally control and lock down browser settings for thousands of employees across the corporate network.

The fact that today, 25 years later, someone boots up their old Apple Macintosh (probably running Mac OS 8 or 9) and uses exactly this customized, strictly regulated corporate or provider version to visit FrogFind is an absolute dream. A living fossil of early enterprise IT!

May your bookmarks always be centrally managed!

Your FrogFind Team 🐸

Colección de antiguos anuncios vintage de Apple publicados por la compañía en revistas a finales de la década de 1970 y principios de los años 80 #Anuncios #Retro #Vintage #Apple #Macintosh #AppleII #Computadoras #VintageAds #AnunciosAntiguos

https://momentosdelpasado.blogspot.com/2026/04/antiguos-anuncios-de-apple-en-las.html

Repórter Retro 124

https://retropolis.com.br/2026/04/29/reporter-retro-124/

#ReprterRetro #68000 #68020 #ActionRetro #AdrianBlack #Agfa #AmstradCpc #Apple1 #AtariSt #BareMetal #CalebeAdventure #Codeolences #DanielFalco #DNS #DockingStation #Emuladores #ENIAC #fMSX #GutBomb #IBM #IBMPCjr #Intel #Intel8085 #KonradZuse #LGP21 #MacSE30 #Macintosh #microsoft #MSXDev #NASDAQ #OldComputersSucked #PCXT #PowerBook #RaspberryPi #RetroCollective #RetroTechChris #SanderSouza #SBC #SunMicrosystems #Tan