Looking back over August this blog post covers co-op gaming, tech purchases and salvaging a hard drive.
Introduction
This monthly post covers items that I might not blog about in a stand alone post. I think some of my tech activities just don’t warrant their own post, so my monthly posts allow me to mention them.
I’ve been unwell recently, but I still managed to play some games, buy some hardware and work. Whilst the hardware purchases mentioned might seem boring, for me they’re essential and they were not impulse buys.
Co-Op gaming
Last month I played a bit of Company of Heroes, but this month my health has deteriorated and I’ve only played a few games for a short while with my fiancée and a friend.
BroForce
My better half, my friend and I played this game via Steam’s remote play. It’s a game that these days I will usually only play for a short period of time. You either play on your own or I believe up-to four people.
The game is quite simple and involves you playing a character based upon an action hero, killing baddies as you move along the 2D level. Each character you play has a special weapon and if you’ve watched some old action movies, you might recognise some of the ‘action heroes’ the characters are based upon.
Gauntlet
Again with my friend, my fiancée and I played a co-op game. This time, my fiancée and I played the game using gamepads connected to my PC, whilst my friend ran his purchase of Gauntlet and joined our game.
I played the wizard and unlike in BroForce I wasn’t able to quickly get back into the flow of gameplay. I had forgotten quite a bit about the game, but enjoyed working my way through the levels.
TowerFall Ascension
My fiancée, friend and I played this 2D game as co-op via remote play and I think my friend was using a keyboard. It’s quite a fast paced game, shooting arrows and jumping all over the place.
I didn’t notice any issue with lag and my friend learnt how to play the game quickly. It was a fun twenty minutes.
Purchases:
Kingdom Bundle via Fanatical
I purchased the first two tiers of the bundle for what I think is an incredible price for some PC games. I’m a fan of Fanatical and remember them back in the Bundle Star days. I like Bundles and this particular bundle has five games that interest me and for the price, I think I got a great deal.
I also use Groupees, Indiegala and Humble Bundle, but I buy less bundles these days. I often look at IsThereAnyDeal.com to monitor bundle releases and price changes.
Though I have so many games now, that I could easily and happily not make another game purchase for a long time.
WD Red Plus 2TB SATA Hard Drives
I own a D-Link DNS-320L NAS which I purchased back in 2013 and I installed a couple of 1TB hard drives, but now one of the drives is faulty and I’ve not used the NAS in a while.
My plan is to upgrade the DNS-320L with custom firmware, then hopefully install the two 2TB hard drives I just purchased and use them in a RAID mode. I then want to use the NAS again to backup my personal and work files, such as email backups and photographs.
Targus Docking Station
I found the Targus Dock120EUZ-50 for what I think is a reasonable price second-hand on eBay, but I’ve not plugged it in yet to try it. I’m hoping I can use it with an old laptop, external keyboard and mouse, ethernet connection and a monitor.
Integral microSD USB Card Reader
I already own a couple of microSD card readers, but I liked the small size of the Integral microSD card reader and the price, so I decided to purchase it. Apparently it’s USB 2.0, which I’m happy to still use.
For a quick test I placed a SanDisk Extreme 128GB microSD card into the Integral reader and plugged it into my ancient PC and it was recognised by my Windows 10 PC.
SanDisk Extreme 128GB microSD cards
I was given one of these microSD cards as a gift and purchased a second card myself. According to the piece of cardboard that came with the card, it’s “Speeds up to 160 MB/s read and 90 MB/s write”.
I’ve placed one of the microSD cards in my Samsung Galaxy SM-G900T mobile phone. Using the ‘Cross Platform Disk Test’ application, I ran a test and the sequential write was 29.74 MB/s and the sequential read 39.85 MB/s.
I think the speed and write results could be a limitation of the S5 phone itself, but whatever the reason for the results, I’m happy with the read and write speed.
Kioxia TransMemory U301 16GB USB Flash Drives
I seem to use memory sticks a lot these days for various projects and I find them handy for transferring files. I decided to buy four more sticks and I liked the price of the Kioxia memory sticks.
I plan on using one of the sticks for booting an operating system and might see if I can use another for temporary storage for a thin client project.
Salvaging a hard drive from a set-top box
As part of clearing out unwanted items, I got rid of a Freeview set-top box, but not before I removed the 2.5” SATA mechanical hard drive.
I’ve removed hard drives before from set-top boxes and the size of this hard drive is 320GB, which I might find quite useful for various projects or even as a replacement drive in one of my laptops.
What’s coming soon?
I own a few old thin clients and I would like to restart work on those projects, but I’m not sure if I will publish about them during September or later on.
I will publish another monthly blog post covering various technology.