Ah, it’s LibreOffice Fontwork on my modern Linux desktop, just screenshotted and comically compressed to look that bad. I did genuinely consider installing my copy of Word 2003 on WINE to make this though, because classic Microsoft Word WordArt is funny as hell.

Do you think it might be worth finding some sort of proxy shipping service that can buy in another country and send it over? I’ve used a few when buying stuff from Japan to ship over here in the UK, and have found them to be pretty useful. Worst comes to worst, you could always try (insert somewhat shady Chinese marketplace of choice here, there’s a bunch) and hope you get a good battery.

Oh my

this is beautiful, and I hate it

If you need a replacement, there’s official Steam Deck batteries now available on the iFixit store. It is a bit difficult to remove, but it’s worth it to extend the life of your Deck.

Holy shit that is a blast from the past.

This is the sort of thing that leads to compression artifacts so bad even just black and white text looks like a snowstorm. It’s almost impressive, in a way.

The special sauce of the Deck isn’t really what it’s running (it’s just Arch with some extra Steam stuff on top), it’s more that it’s something you can just buy and use without even thinking twice about anything - a more console like experience. To get a Linux handheld with that kind of performance before, you would have to go through all kinds of hoops and trouble to get it working (a lot of people aren’t ready to reinstall the OS on a device they just bought), plus a lot of games just would not work well. Deck gave pressure on game makers to ensure Proton compatibility at launch, as it gives them an established market who would appreciate it.

Can definitely agree on the Fire Emblem. Me? Hundreds of hours? Never!

Microsoft are likely going to keep on trying anyway, Deck is too big of a threat to their Windows gaming monopoly for them to ignore it. Just look at how they managed to get so many Windows handheld models out of the door seemingly minutes after the Deck released with its Linux based SteamOS. Their worst nightmare is people having a viable alternative to their platforms.

Fair enough. Steam sales are a pathway to deals some consider unnatural, or so the saying goes. Especially with things like Humble Bundle.

People around me have a different sort of take. Most of them have big powerful desktops already, and Deck doesn’t really appeal to them, so they all ended up buying Switch 1s eventually for the exclusives and portable use, and will likely follow with Switch 2. Deck is still amazing value though, considering it’s a full Linux PC you can take anywhere and use how you wish.

I take that you might be interested in my little shitposting community !okbuddyborders@feddit.uk if you want more Ace Combat memes.

Ah, I should have made that more clear in the meme. Both NVIDIA and ATI messed up in this era, bad. Sony’s efforts with the Cell are always so fascinating - so much potential is in that (just look at the late PS3 era games), but they just could not get it to the point of supplanting the GPU.

If it’s a reflow, your PS3 is running on borrowed time. A reflow heats up the chip enough that parts of it expand enough to make the GPU work again temporarily (the solder bumps on the bottom of the silicon attaching it to the interposer line up their cracks again), but eventually you’ll be back to square one. The real fix is to replace the 90nm GPU with a later 65 or 45nm variant that has the fixed design (search up “PS3 frankenstein mod” for more). There is thermal paste both under and above the IHS - the one under for taking the heat from the silicon up to the IHS, then the top layer for taking it to the heatsink. Here’s an image of a delidded RSX and Cell to show (apologies for the quality, was the best one I could easily find).

PS3s did cook themselves, but not to the extent of the 360.

It is funny to see how there are probably so many misdiagnosed 360s out there with bad power supplies that have been subjected to being bolt modded (shudder) or something. It doesn’t help that the three red lights just mean “general hardware fault” without doing the button combination to get further information. I guess at least more helpful than the PS3, whose diagnostics were only made available recently due to a key being cracked.

Your description of the Starlet is more accurate, yes. However, its heat output consequently caused some of the issues with the ATI designed parts of the Hollywood, as it exacerbated the thermal issues the 90nm variants had, and that a better designed chip would have been able to handle.

The PS3’s IHS was not the problem. There was decent contact and heat transfer, maybe not as perfect as it could have been (there’s thermal paste instead of it being soldered into place, which is why a delid and relid is fairly essential if you have a working 90nm PS3 due to aging thermal paste), but definitely not big enough of a problem for a properly designed chip to cook itself at the operating temperatures of the PS3 (75-80 temperature target on the RSX on an early variant at full load). The Cell B.E. next to the RSX that uses more power (consequently outputs more heat) has a similar setup for its IHS, but IBM did not make the same design mistakes as NVIDIA, and so we see very few reports of the CPU cooking itself even in those early PS3s.

Those leather jackets won’t buy themselves!

Agreed, thermals were increasing faster than most manufacturers could handle. Only real exceptions in this time I can think of were IBM (because they had to, PowerPC G5 was such a power hog it pissed off Apple enough for them to switch architectures) and Intel (because they also had to, Pentium 4 was a disaster).

Wii was mostly okay, but boards with a 90nm Hollywood GPU are somewhat more likely to fail than later 65nm Hollywood-A boards (so RVL-CPU-40 boards and later), especially if you leave WiiConnect24 on as it keeps the Starlet ARM chip inside active even in fan off standby - most 90nm consoles will be okay due to low operating temperatures, but some (especially as thermal paste ages and dust builds) are more likely to die due to bumpgate related problems.

PS3s did crap out with yellow lights of death, although not as spectacularly as 360 red rings (lower proportion due to beefier cooling and different design making the flaws less immediately obvious, but still a problem). NVIDIA on the RSX made the same mistakes as ATI on the Xenos - poor underfill and bump choice that could not withstand the thermal cycles, which should have been caught (NVIDIA and bumpgate is a whole wild story in and of itself though, considering it plagued their desktop and mobile chips). The Cell CPU on there is very reliable though, even though it drew more power and consequently output more heat - it was just the GPU that could not take the heat.

360s mostly red ringed due to faulty GPUs, see previous comments about the PS3 RSX. ATI had a responsibility to choose the right materials, design, and packaging partner to ship to Microsoft for final assembly, and so they must take some responsibility (they also, like NVIDIA, had troubles with their other products at this time, leading to high failure rates of devices like the early MacBook Pros). However, it is unknown if they are fully to blame, as it is unknown who made the call for the final package design.

Yeah, pricing is not the greatest at the moment, most likely because there’s no reference card to keep other prices in check. Still (at least here in the UK) they are still well below the stratospheric NVIDIA prices for a 5070 Ti and are easily available.