• PrimarilyPrimate@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    To tell the age of any horse Inspect the lower jaw of course; The six front teeth the tale will tell, And every doubt and fear dispel.

    Two middle nippers you behold Before the colt is two weeks old; Before eight weeks two more will come Eight months: the corners cut the gum.

    At two the middle “Nippers” drop: At three the second pair can’t stop; When four years old the third pair goes, At five a full new set he shows.

    The deep black spots will pass from view At six years from the middle two; The second pair at seven years; At eight the spot each corner clears.

    From the middle “Nippers” upper jaw At nine the black spots will withdraw. The second pair at ten are bright; Eleven finds the corners light.

    As time goes on the horsemen know The oval teeth three-sided grow; Then longer get - project before - Till twenty, when they know no more."

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      The phrase “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” comes from this. If someone gives you a horse, you shouldn’t look into its mouth to see how old it is because, hey, free horse.

  • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    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.

    • rodneylives@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Along these lines, I have several important memory locations memorized. POKE 53280 and 1 to change the border and background colors. 828 is the cassette buffer, and 49152 the free memory above BASIC ROM. SYS 64738 resets the machine.

      I also can recite the powers of 2 up to 65536.

    • Pronell@lemmy.world
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      14 days 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.

    • Hasherm0n@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      You could use the IDKFA code in MechWarrior 2 as well.

      If you did, it would immediately eject you from the mech and display a message something along the lines of “this isn’t doom you idiot”.

      • Klear@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Same in Heretic - IDKFA takes all your weapons and ammo, IDDQD kills you.

        And I think both codes do a similar thing in Earthworm Jim.

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    14 days ago

    The “Turbo” button on a 486 PC was actually a CPU clock speed limiter. It was necessary to play older games who had a hardcoded framerate that depended on clock cycles, because they would otherwise run too fast.
    But for marketing reasons, IBM labelled the toggle as “turbo” instead of a speed limiter.

    • Gurfaild@feddit.org
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      14 days ago

      well, actually… It usually changed the clock speed on 286 PCs, but on 486s it often disabled the L1 cache or introduced additional waitstates instead

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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    14 days ago

    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@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      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

  • lime!@feddit.nu
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    14 days ago

    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.

    • Rogue@feddit.uk
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      14 days ago

      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.

      I read this as being another feature of half life. I was very impressed by the level of detail the devs put into such an early game. Although slightly confused why log stacking would be part of a game

  • P00ptart@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Morse code. Did a science project back in middle school with wires, buzzers and tappers on a board. Then I taught it to my boy scout troop for a badge. Then lost some of it before joining the army in communications (as well as a ton of other outdated means of communication) and then in Iraq, me and another commo guy wired up our rooms for it so we could talk shit about our leadership even if they were in the room. Anyways, after working with it that many times over a stretched out time frame, I’ll never forget that. Or the phonetic alphabet.

  • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Morrowind on the original Xbox came with cheat codes. Put the cursor over the health, magicka, or fatigue bar, enter the codes with the black and white buttons then hold A until the bar fills. If you close the menu before you let go of A, it will continue to refill constantly until you open your menu again.

    Health: B, W, B, B, B, A

    Magicka: B, W, W, B, W, A

    Fatigue: B, B, W, W, B, A

    You could actually use the magicka code for all 3, but I liked that there were 3 different codes.

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeM
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    14 days ago

    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)

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Adjusting a carburetor.

    I was never really good at it, I never actually went through with selling my soul to Satan to gain true knowledge of that black art.

    • superkret@feddit.org
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      14 days ago

      If that’s your idea if fun, I can recommend the game My Summer Car. It’s basically a simulator for Finnish country life in the 90’s.
      You spend most of your time drinking, going to the sauna, driving a crappy old Datsun hatchback (which you first have to rebuild in excruciating detail) down country roads, and adjusting your car’s carburetor.

      • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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        14 days ago

        I looked up a gameplay series, and there is so much minutia remining me of Norwegian country life as well. The ticketing machine on the bus is exactly as I remember it from the 90’s.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Sounds like how I spent my summers in Canada, but substitute a Chevette hatchback and a hottub.

    • oozynozh@lemm.ee
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      14 days ago

      System FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem Failure