this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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(page 2) 38 comments
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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (3 children)

in GTA 2, naming your player "GOURANGA" activates the cheat code mode. "IAMDAVEJ" gives you all guns.

in half-life 2, typing ent_fire !picker in the console makes the thing you are looking at catch fire. it's also the base command for a lot of other things; if you're looking at a door and add "unlock" to the command, the door will open.

when stacking firewood, always put the pieces with the bark facing up. that way, rain can't get the wood wet, and the logs dry quicker.

paper maps fold long side first.

the modern graphical interface of the personal computer was developed by Xerox and plagiarized by Steve jobs after he got a factory tour in 1972, but he missed the most important part of the computer that he saw: it was fully networked using what we today call Ethernet.

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[–] AWittyUsername 12 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

What did dqd stand for anyway? I know the spispopd and kfa/fa ones (though the doom wiki says it's full ammo, whereas I always thought it was firearms armor because it does both those things), but there's nothing on the wiki about the meaning behind dqd

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[–] Tehhund 11 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

3.14159265359 (ok the last 9 is actually an 8 but it's followed by a 9 so I round up).

Not exactly obsolete, but there's no reason for anyone to memorize that many digits of Pi except for trivia. Number of times it has come up in trivia: 0.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago

I used to stop there but just beyond it some small palindromes follow, so they're somewhat easy to remember (and gives even more useless nerd cred)

3.14159265358979323 (you got 535, then the 8 leads into 979, then 323).

[–] toiletobserver 33 points 1 day ago (5 children)

doom cheat codes:
IDDQD, god mode
IDKFA, ammo
IDSPISPOPD, no clip i think

[–] Pronell 15 points 1 day ago

SPISPOPD stands for 'Smashing pumpkins into small piles of putrid debris'.

Back in the usenet days I remember someone making a crappy freeware game with that title.

That's right, a cheat code in a game inspired the creation of another game.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

obsolete knowledge

doom cheat codes

The second article on [email protected] is about Doom (running on PDFs)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Can I use the cheats on the PDF doom? 🤔

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Unless they've removed it from the game, I assume so.

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[–] Zombiepirate 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Loading a program from disk on the Commodore 64

LOAD"*",8,1

I haven't loaded a game on that system since I was probably 10 or so, but I'll never forget the command.

I memorized it as L-O-A-D shift-2 star shift-2 comma eight comma one.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Fun fact: There's a common misconception that this would load the first program on a disk, but it actually loads the most recently loaded program from the disk. If the disk is detected as being freshly inserted (as determined by the 2-character identifier in the disk's directory header), that defaulted to the first program in the disk's directory.

Admittedly, most of the time that makes it a distinction without a difference, but if you'd loaded something else from the same disk first, and you then wanted to load the first in the directory, you would need to use LOAD":*",8,1 instead.

That extra colon is vaguely related to the colon in C:\ on Windows computers. A lone colon was taken as an abbreviation of 0:, because in Commodore DOS(es) the drive "letters" were numbers. Dual slot drives were possible and then the two slots were 0: and 1:.

"So what's the 8 for in the LOAD command?" you might ask; "Isn't that the drive "letter" "? No, that's the device number. Note that drives on the 8-bit Commodores were always external. The 8 was more like the drive's "IP address" on the serial bus.

"What about the ,1?" That meant to LOAD the program at the memory address specified by the program's header on the disk. Without that, the computer would ignore the header and try to load into BASIC memory.

The neat part about loading at any address meant that it could overwrite parts of zero-page where the computer kept pointers to important internal functions. Overwrite the right one of those and the computer could be convinced to jump to a routine in the program that had just loaded without the user needing to type RUN.

So, if you wanted to be i) certain of loading the first program in the directory of ii) the disk in the second slot of iii) a dual-slot drive on the serial bus identifying as device/address 9, and then iv) have the program load at its preferred memory location, you'd need to use LOAD"1:*",9,1

The number of people who found the need to type that command in earnest, even back in the heyday of Commodore, probably numbers in the low tens, but there it is.

How's that for an obscure info dump?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I choose to believe that the * means everything... but what does the 8,1 signify?

[–] Zombiepirate 6 points 21 hours ago

There's another user who replied to me who answered much better than I could.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 21 hours ago

Back when wr used parallel IDE, most motherboards only had two IDE connections. Each connection could support two devices, a master and a slave. If you had a hard drive and a CD-ROM, it was best to put them on separate channels. This is because only one device could talk at a time, and the slower CD-ROM would block the faster hard drive from operating. If you had to put them on the same channel, then the hard drive should be the master so it gets priority.

Then there's scsi. My family wasn't rich enough to have scsi shit when I was growing up, but I do know a few things. On paper, it's very simple; give each device a unique ID on the bus, and then attach terminator blocks at each end. I'm also aware that, in practice, this description is a cruel joke.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The password for the final level of Crazy Castle on the Gameboy is GIFT.

(I have a friend with hyperthymesia and this was the last thing we spoke about)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Wait I thought it was WXCJ.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Crazy Castle 2 I realize he meant. He probably never saw the 2.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

For all I know it could be both passwords. Who knows how that scene worked. Plus it might be a different level. I'm not positive that was the last levels password, but I thought it was

[–] [email protected] 11 points 22 hours ago

ZAPHODBEEBLEBROX is the code for level select in the wonderful game “The 7th Guest”.

[–] DigDoug 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

down, right, left, right, square, circle, square, triangle, circle, square, right, left

The level select code for Abe's Oddysee on the PSX. The last time I actually used this code was probably some time around 2002, maybe even earlier.

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[–] NeoNachtwaechter 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The 7 names of the antique greek Muses:

Calliope
Clio
Polyhymnia
Euterpe
Terpsichore
Erato
Melpomene
Thalia
Urania

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It wouldn't be antiquity if the 7 anything were actually 7 would it?

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 4 points 20 hours ago

Don't you complain when you have paid for 7 but got 9! 😉

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I might as well go first. A friend read this to me once over the phone in 1997 or thereabouts, and it stuck:
Cracked
09B9085A

..Sadly, winzip stopped accepting that as a valid reg key some time in the 2000's.

[–] Vince 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Lol, just reminded me about win XP CD key. Not 100% sure it's still accurate but:

fckgw rhqq2 yxrkt 2b7q8 8tg6w

Edit: aww, I fucked up the ordering of the last two

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

This is the first thing that came to mind, lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

The idqdd for the game ChexQuest (which ran on that engine) was "charlesjacobi". I assume this was a dev's name.

[–] ThatWeirdGuy1001 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

L1 R2 R1 R2 left down right up left down right up

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[–] Addv4 10 points 1 day ago

The model codes to 2nd and 3rd Gen Intel I series chips. Made figuring out what processors were in used laptops quite easy back in the day. Now I have to Google them (doesn't help that their naming scheme is more confusing).

[–] RoidingOldMan 8 points 1 day ago

Former NBA players Jarrett Jack and Chris Duhon are cousins.

[–] Quazatron 5 points 1 day ago

C9 means RET

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