Crow's Nest BBS (#MARCHintosh)

 

      Just in time for #MARCHintosh- The Crows Nest is back.

     Credit to Todd Knight on Facebook and Reddit, the Crow's Nest is hosted on a 40mhz 68040 IIci with a bunch of upgrades and modems added to it. Really cool shit, check it out!

Tales of Wedding Rings - Anime Full Series!

 

You have to marry me.. to be a hero!

     Tales of Wedding Rings checks an enormous amount of boxes for most anime fans:

1. Isekai - Or character transported to another world
2. Ecchi - Playful sexual interactions.. 18+ Seinen
3. High quality Dub available
4. Fan service, Harem
5. Does not quit after 12 episodes
6. Action is decent, writing is also decent

     I'm only a few episodes in, and I like the playful comedy of it, and there is not a ton of sex and nudity, if that makes you uneasy.. but it somewhat implied. Don't take this one too seriously, but don't miss it either. I have been trying to branch out in other genre's lately, and for those who like High School DxD, you may like this more than most. 

Watch the full series now for free!

PC Build and Initial Thoughts - RTX 5090 & Core Ultra 9 285k Series 2

 

     Retired is the venerable RTX 2080 and 10700k Combo that kept my gaming career alive the last 7 years, retired to the garage as a working and reliable substitute if ever we need it again. Much like a SR71 Blackbird- it will be reactivated when needed. 

PC Specs:

• Core Ultra 9 285k
• ASRock Z890-Pro Motherboard
• RTX 5090 FE 32gb DDR7 (HP Edition)
• 64gb Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 5600 XMP/RGB Heatsink Ram 4x16
• Samsung 980 Pro 2tb. Gen 4 NVME
• 360mm Liquid Cooler LCD Cap
• ASRock 1200w Platinum ATX Power Supply
• HP45L Omen Max case

Other Stuff:

• 2x Ultragear 31.5" Curved 32G6OWA Monitors
• Wacom One Tablet
• Logitech Extreme 30 Pro
• Razer Nostromo Chroma
• Razer Deathadder Elite Chroma
• Razer Cynosa Chroma
• Razer Kraken Pro 3.0 Chroma
• Yeti Blue Boom Mic
• Edifier W4 Pro Speakers
• Panasonic HC-770V camera
• Eureka Pro Aero Wing 72" desk

Why did I upgrade?

I had wanted to upgrade to 1440p and use our spare 4k monitor in the garage for gaming for some time, but the 2080 can barley cut the mustard when it comes to Ray Tracing and frame rate at those resolutions, so I was stuck with some good but old 1080p monitors. It was time to upgrade the monitors, but I had to get everything with the PC in line first. Unfortunately the PC was a little late, so the monitors were the first upgrade, as mentioned in a previous post.. for a steal. It's been over 6 years. It's fucking time. 

Why 5090?

I mean, why not. If you can get it for around MSRP, I think the answer is do it. You can spend over 2k for a 5080, but if you wait and do the research, you can get something you want for the same amount.. which was what I did for this particular PC. I know it's overkill, but the last time I had a cutting edge PC was over 6 years ago, I think its time to go flagship again and really play these new games how they were intended to be played.

• YOLO
• Same price as 5080 in my area
• Available at the time
• Want this to last me 6 more years
• Wanted to go big with dual 1440p or 4k monitors
• I heard 6 series wont be until 2027

Why Intel??

I know I'm going to get a bunch of shit for not getting one of the new AMD X3D processors that are beating the pants of anything for the same price. 2 year old processors from team green still can rate very highly in most gaming benchmarks. I get it.

• I like intel. IMO - No issues, compatible, reliable.
• My son has a 14700k and the thing is still a performance beast in anything you throw at it. The lifespan is pretty good. 
• Power draw and temps are lower
• Great for gaming and productivity both
• I think they will make more improvement down the road
• Known AMD issues with processors melting and getting sent back sounds scary to me
• Price was $100 lower than a Ryzen 9 9950x3d for very similar performance

Other Notes: On the surface, I really don't know what to say that I have not already. I'm doing everything I did before, but everything is just so much better. Fast, damn near totally silent. I never realized how loud my old PC was when things were ramping up. I feel like I could take on anything, any game, I never have to look at the graphic details.. just turn them all up to max. I miss this feeling. Do you want to play Cyberpunk 2077 on Overdrive? Yeah, me too, so here we are. There is a noticeable but very faint sound as the power supply turns on and off when I'm doing different tasks; this is the only perceptible sound I can hear from the PC at any time, even during gaming. Even when benchmarking on 3Dmark's Time Spy Extreme, I never hit 60c on the video card or the processor. I reran the benchmark twice without changing anything, my best score was 22858. With some light overclocking, I can see getting easily into the 25k range.

It's HP Parts dude.. and that review.

     How do you think I was able to afford this? All the discounts available, $1000 off the price of a new 5090.. the list goes on. You can buy this total build refurbished for $3899 right now, which is way less than the cost of the parts if you can get them. The parts I did have to complete this build were all bought on sale. I'm very aware of the review by Gamers Nexus, and made notes when watching it. Scam? I think that's a little harsh. I bought a new revision of essentially the same item, and have zero issues with anything out of the gate except for bloat, which took me 15 minutes to uninstall. Did I have to go into the BIOS and click the "Unlock" button to get all the features I paid for? Yes, and that was a 2 minute pain in the ass that I'm willing to deal with. Overall I thought his review was very exaggerated until the end, where he actually reviewed the PC with the performance unlocked, and everything worked fine. Criticizing the cooler was expected, and the case design, but was not very honest, because if you took ANY radiator out of the PC and aimed a fan at it, it would perform better outside the confines of a case. The temps on mine are always under 50c, and have never hit 60c in any testing. I saw the GPU get to 57c when playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for about an hour. Overall, I'm impressed and whatever issues people see in that video, I'm not experiencing that with this case or build. Whatever bios or software changes have been made since that review have fixed whatever issues Gamers Nexus complained about. 

*Edit* The price of this PC has been raised to $6999.

This is for you guys - Thanks for reading.

Teaser - New PC Build.. Coming soon.

 

Core Ultra 9 285k - RTX 5090 - Full Review next week if all goes as planned.

Blood [DOS] (1997) Full game in browser!

 

This game is just as badass as it looks.

     Think of a Doom and Duke, Hexen and Heretic... but refined, more features, and a ton more horror elements and gore. Blood was the first FPS games that used Voxels, advanced lighting effects, and far improved sound and level design. It retro-futuristic wild west feel was far ahead of its time, and has a last effect on gaming to this day. 

Play it now in your browser for free now!

Apple Pascal Poster- 1979

 Credit to Nanoraptor on Reddit for the recreation, full PDF available here. 

Awesome Games Done Quick 2026

 

     1/4/25 - 1/11/25 Let's gooooo

Click here to watch now!

Schedule of events

Monitor Upgrade: 2x LG Ultra Gear G6 32G60WA

 

Going curved, from flat

     Why upgrade? If you have been following along from previous posts, it's been quite a while since I've upgraded my monitor.. six years to be exact. I've been rocking the same 27" Acer Predator 272B with 240hz refresh, the shitty View Sonic 27" with decent color, and the Samsung frame above that.. for quite a while. I'm very happy with the Acer- it's been a capable gaming monitor now for that whole time, with zero issues at all. It is a little heavy, so not easy on monitor arms, but that is not a big deal and almost not worth mentioning. I just think it's time 1080p does not do it anymore for the games I'm playing. I realized I don't need 240hz for FPS games- I really can't see the difference after 150 or so that I'm aware of, and that I'm more sensitive to screen tearing and frame drops. After much research without the money to really do anything about it, I decided I wanted identical monitors, curved, and from what reviews and the general consensus says, 2k high refresh is where it's at, curved if you want to go that route. 

I found these on sale- $19.99 each.

     The price to upgrade made no sense when I was happy with the current monitor situation, but when I saw these two G Ultra Gear G6's out on clearance at Walmart for $166 each, I jumped at the chance. 32 inches, two of them, 2k, high refresh.. let's go. The monitor arms were also on clearance, and I'm still working on getting them perfect with tension. I think I'm at the very limit of weight and tension that they will allow. 

They look great at least!

     The bevels are really slim, the size is much larger than I'm use to, but the 74" desk was easy to accept the size difference without looking stupid. Getting the monitors to line up was actually pretty easy, the desk has a split in the middle so I lined everything up with that, and mounted the monitors in the same position, then fine-tuned from there. Overall, I'm really happy and think this is a significant upgrade from the previous configuration. I do plan on getting a whole new PC in February, so this was needed to bring me in to the next generation of computing.

Almost there. Need some cable management. 

Monitor review: 

• The unboxing was easy, and general set up was good, no issues. 
• HDMI only supports 2k at 144hz, and I've tried a very good cable, so had to switch over to Display Port, which is not really a big deal. 
• No matter which ones I plugged in, the PC would recognize the monitor order backwards from where they were previously, but that was an easy fix. 
• Power supply to the monitor is a large brick, as opposed to the previous standard PC power cable needed for the other two monitors, so I had to source another power strip and make that work.
•  These monitors do not have a USB hub, so I have to find out what to do with the 3 things I had plugged into the monitor, which was more work than it should have been. I miss that feature. 
• They look and feel like a premium product.
• Navigating options and menus built into the software of the monitor was easy, and had all the features I want. 
• I could sit the monitors farther back, and higher up, being they have the exact same mounting height, allowing me to bring my seat up into a high position
• 2k is a bigger difference than I thought it would be, even in the desktop, coming from 1080p. The physical size of the monitor makes up for the difference in window/text/icon size, so I have no problem seeing them. I find that I have more room now for tabs and windows, even more than before, allowing me more freedom when doing multiple things at once. I have no shortage of monitors, but this just seems better.
• I'm not sure I'm use to the curve of them yet. Windows seem concave at the edges to me. The glare is reduced, so the coating on the monitor is great, but there are 8 windows behind me, so there is now a bright-ish spot during some times of the day. Overall, I do like being surrounded by screen, and it does feel immersive. 
• I've tried gaming over both monitors with Nvidia surround, and while a huge pain in the ass to set up, (and it does not allow the Wacom tablet screen to work) it does perform flawlessly. I'm on the fence if I should buy the screen lighting bending apparatus to put between the screens to blend the edge. 

Just a quick video my son playing Doom over both screens for example

Legend of Crystania: The Chaos Ring (Full series)

 

Historical Badass Fantasy.. Go!

Legend of Crystania: The Chaos Ring is a well known series from a 1993-2002 series of novels, and is a sequel to the full length Motion Picture, released in 1998 on VHS. The dub is actually pretty good, and keeps the theme intact. I love this Record of Lodoss War-like anime series, and is easy to watch in the background. Don't get me wrong, this has everything you want in a anime of the time- Blood, violence, nudity, and that gritty 90's aesthetic. 

Cross-posted on r/animefulleseries with other free anime online.

Outlanders (1986) OVA

 

Mid-80's fan service at it's best

     High quality animation, tons of fan service, and a rockin' soundtrack. What else can you ask for in a great OVA of the VHS era? I would argue very little indeed, and Outlanders delivers. I just got done watching Harmageddon and decided I needed a palate cleanser, so I fired this up after scrolling around for a few. I love a good 40 minute OVA from the 80's and early 90's, and I'm finding more I have not seen all the time.

Hyper Combat Unit Dangaioh (1987)

 

For 1987, this anime is way ahead of it's time.

     In 1987, you do not expect this kind of quality of animation, music, and editing. Hyper Combat unit Dangaioh is often forgotten and left off many best-of lists in the day. The writing is what I consider top tier, and the characters are fun and memorable. Especially with One Punch Man Season 3 getting rightfully dragged, this is a good reset button for anime lovers looking for something new.

Robots, mechs, fan service, future stuff.

     This series is polished. The english dub (above in 4k) is missing the first episode, but you won't be missing anything as the second episode is a recap of what you may have missed. There was a Sequel to the series: Great Dangaioh which IMO, takes the series back a notch in quality of animation, but keeps high quality writing in check. Both series area available for free on youtube, so you have that going for you. 

Cross-posted on r/animefulleseries with other free anime online.

The Insanity of Blade Runner (1982) Movie Soundtracks

 

This version of the soundtrack is the official release, and also one of the most incomplete at the same time.

     There is so much written about this subject of Vangelis' Blade Runner Soundtrack, I don't think I will really do it the full scope of justice that it deserves, so I'll give my summary on the subject, some hot takes, and my takeaways. In 2002, Bently Ousley wrote a pretty good, but not definitive article on the matter with some great reviews and explanation. Since his article was written, loads more tracks, versions and history has been discovered so there is no real whole source we can reference. Vangelis Rarities has lots of pictures and track information with some details, and seems to update every so often. After reading some threads on Reddit recently, I think there could be dozens more bootlegs and missing tracks out there waiting to be discovered.

The Esper Edition, considered one of the best

So what do we know about the Soundtrack.. actually?

• Vangelis recorded the soundtrack at Nemo Studios in 1982
• He scored the movie by feeling and emotion while watching images on a screen, and clips of video on a TV, full Improved in the moment, sometimes reusing cues from other tracks he has designed.
• The instruments used were so varied and different, we don't really have an actual list, but the wikipedia page has some limited information about things we can confirm about Synth used. 
• We don't know how many tracks he actually recorded, but it's assumed in the 100's, with several hundred total recording hours.
• We don't know how many versions of the tracks that we have heard currently that could be considered alternate versions- with and without additions and/or subtractions of speech or instruments.
• We have no idea how many bootleg versions are out there, more are discovered each year.
• There were three releases that are official: First released 12 years after the movie was released in 1994 with 12 tracks, a 2007 release with 3 discs of 12 tracks each, and a Orchestral Release in 1982 that has nothing to do with Vangelis, but is considered official in some capacity.

I have no idea what version this is. 

     After the movie was released in 1982, people wanted the soundtrack, and there was no way to get your hands on a copy, until a Studio tape was leaked. It made its way around conventions and concerts for some time, being re-recorded several times.. and the audio was terrible. It was taken from a sound engineer's master that worked with Vangelis on the original recording, and was pretty popular all things considered. This by no means was every track in the movie, but it was some of them, and all fans had. At this point in the story, it gets really fucking wild. In 1990, a strange and VERY rare private release by FIC was leaked in Asia, which contained the entire movie underscore and sound effects with no speech. This version came from sound samples sent overseas to make a dubbed version where they needed clean audio, and was considered haunting and of higher quality. Several different versions of these studio tapes materialized in the 80's, to include tracks and audio taken from the Betamax and Laserdisc releases of the movies, trailers, and interviews recorded off TV both domestically and internationally. 

Surprisingly quality bootleg & example differences

     In 1993, before the actual release of the soundtrack by Vangelis himself, "Off World Music" released an 18 track, very high quality bootleg in small quantities, sourced from an unknown origin, but thought to be a Vinyl inside release from the movie studio that was unreleased, because you can hear the pops and crackles of the record faintly in the background. It even had tracks from the Blade Runner workprint that was rarely ever seen or known about, and had extended length versions of previously known tracks. From this point, almost every six months to a year, another bootleg release would come out somewhere in the world with new tracks, very high quality, and with polished packaging and inserts. The Gongo version added "Blimpvert" track, which was not known on any other releases. The Deck edition took this up to 27 tracks, again with insane new high quality material. The Esper edition, known as one of the best, took this to two discs, and included a ton of the full versions of the background music from individual scenes that was not thought to exist outside the movie. It was getting to the point where bootlegs would include tracks with isolated instrumental tracks recorded by Vangelis, expanding previous tracks, or different versions of those tracks altogether in varying different lengths. Some of the discovered tracks only had a few seconds of length difference in the known official version, and it's hard to find or spot the difference on the surface. An interesting version, "Themes 2", had a recording of the audio from the movie where Rachel is playing piano, and Deckard wakes up to join her, with the dialog intact.. except it's not the same. The underscore in the background was taken from an unreleased early cut from the movie. The sex scene has the Saxophone removed. Really erie when you hear it if you are familiar with the movie. Special Japan 99 Deck Music edition has alternate piano music cuts in minor key, taken from sound tests of early versions of the movie. The 2001 Edition has previous thought to be Vinyl only tracks from other versions, now in perfect clarity obvious copied from a new fresh source of unknown origin. Memoirs 12 has uncut audio and underscore cues and never before heard music sent to radio stations so they could make advertisements, has alternate dialog from trailers not known to exist, and sound effects heard for the first time. The list goes on, and on, and on. 

Deck Definitive edition

     You may be asking yourself: "How many versions and tracks are there?" From my count, and I know it's wrong, I see 43 different bootleg versions of the soundtrack released. Not just mixtapes, actual versions of the soundtrack that added tracks or has unique content to contribute with printed cover, inserts, and track information with a verified print run. The number of known tracks is in the 100's at this point that have some kind of original material that is known as Vangelis' own work. Where did all this music come from? Studio tapes, masters from recording sessions, audio engineer leaks, Vangelis' own friends or employees were confirmed to have taken some of his recordings and sold them overseas. Will there ever be one edition to rule them all? Who knows, but I'm so far down this rabbit hole, I want to see how far it goes.