What's up with Qwest?

Just a couple of things to announce. First of all, I will have the next episode of Let's Play The Legend of Kyrandia with an MT-32 up soon. I procrastinated for a while, but I finally got it recorded this morning.

It didn't help though that my DSL modem died. It happened yesterday around 2 in the morning. The power went out for about 15 minutes (bad weather seems to have knocked out a transformer or something in the neighborhood; there was a lot of that in the area this past week), and when it returned, I found the modem wasn't connecting to the ISP. No big deal, I know it's a bit flaky like that; usually after a few weeks it will no longer connect, and I have to reboot it. But this time, when I rebooted, suddenly I could no longer connect to it. No web interface, no telnet, nothing. All I could do was ping it.

So I rebooted again. This time, I noticed the LEDs were showing an abnormal condition. IIRC, the power LED went out, which it's not supposed to do. (I could still ping it though.) Corrupted firmware, perhaps? So I fired up the firmware recovery utility and tried it out. There's a special procedure involving the reset button to prepare it. (Separate non-flashable firmware code, or something like that? That's a good thing.) So it reflashed the modem and rebooted again. This time the power light was alternating green and amber, which I learned from a troubleshooting guide possibly indicates corrupted firmware or a problem with the power supply. Uh oh. If the firmware is still corrupt after reflashing, there must be a problem with the memory. Or was it the power supply? It was connected through a surge protector, and the protection indicator is still lit, so there shouldn't have been a problem there.

I tried the firmware recovery several times. After about the fourth or fifth time, I tried connecting my PC directly to the modem, instead of through the bridge I normally use. This time, it was successful. (Although, really, it shouldn't make a difference, as the bridge is a completely invisible device, unlike a router.)

But that's not the end. An hour or two later, the power went out again. This time, I was expecting trouble, and I wasn't disappointed. The firmware recovery no longer worked, no matter how many times I tried it. So I figured the modem is toast. Just to be sure, though, I called Qwest technical support. But no surprise, nothing they suggested worked, and they ended up recommending a replacement. Since the modem is a year out of warranty, I would need to pay for it. Fine by me.

But, you know, you should really rent it for $5 a month and get a perpetual warranty rather than pay $20 and own it with a 2-year warranty. (Uh, no I think not. Come on, Qwest. Do you think I'm stupid? I can do the math on that one. There is no condition I can think of in which renting would be advantageous. If it turns out DOA, either warranty should cover it. If it fails after a year, same thing. If it fails after the 2-year warranty expires, I have to pay for another one, but I still save a lot.) I politely declined. You know, you should really rent it for $5 a month and get a perpetual warranty rather than pay $20 and own it with a 2-year warranty. (That's not an editing error. They really did say the same thing over again, although I'm paraphrasing and adding my own knowledge that wasn't present in the script.) Really, I want to purchase it, thanks. (I'm glad One Eighty Networks provided dial-up as a backup for their broadband service, and that I kept that POTS modem I used before switching to DSL, or else I wouldn't have been able to look at Qwest's web site as easily.) Again, I declined to rent. So then they started to transfer me to sales, before realizing it was too late in the day (I guess they're on Eastern time). I'll just have to call back tomorrow. Oh, you know, you should really rent blah blah blah. *Sigh*. Yeah, whatever.

Finally, I called sales today and asked for a replacement. Alright, you can either make one payment of $99.99 or two payments of— Wait, hold on a second! I didn't ask for the Advanced modem. I want the Standard one (because I have no current need of wireless networking). Oh, but we no longer offer that. (Then why is it listed on their web site? And why didn't the tech support person seem to know anything about it?) So they offered two options. Either get the Advanced modem from them, or look elsewhere for the M1000; they suggested Best Buy or Walmart. So I looked. Sure enough, Best Buy has it for $70. What?? $70?? That's quite a markup. But you know, it's still less than the $100 I'd pay to have wireless functionality I don't need which would just be a needless security risk, and it's still less expensive than renting it for $5 a month for two or three years. Well, actually, since they're not offering it directly, I should compare it to the $8 a month for the Advanced one (whatever model it is). I ordered it online and picked it up at a local store in about an hour, which means I have broadband back much sooner than I expected. Thanks for the tip that saved me $30, Qwest.

And hey, I was pleasantly surprised to see a notice and a CD I'm pretty sure weren't included with the previous modem. It mentions the product containing GPL and LGPL software; the disc apparently contains the source code. Way to be compliant, Actiontec! I guess they got the message after that whole Cisco affair. I don't plan to modify any of the software; it's just good to know I can if I want or need to.

I'm not really surprised the people at Qwest acted the way they did. I know how they operate: push people to buy things they don't really need (or rent unnecessarily). I just decided I wanted to rant about it here. But enough of that. Next you hear from me ought to be episode 2 of LPLOK.

Next LP: Legend of Kyrandia

Well, I got a total of four votes for next Let's Play with an MT-32.  And the results are clear: 3-to-1 in favor of The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One. So here you go.

If you watched my previous LP, you may remember I set the CPU cycles to 500 for the initialization. (Actually, I discovered recently that 1000 works fine, too.) Well, for LoK, it seems the maximum value is somewhere between 150 and 200. It definitely seems to be written for a second-gen MT-32. Someone commented that they have no problem with buffer overflows. This person reported that he or she has serial 871041, which makes it an "old-style rev. 1", a later version that is still considered first-generation. I, on the other hand, have 836243, which is a rev. 0. Supposedly, all MT-32s before 950500 have the buffer overflow problem, but there may be subtle differences; I don't know. I'm not sure why some people like me have the problem and others don't. Apparently no one knows, at least no one who has said anything publicly.

By the way, I also speculated earlier on that Windows XP does some sort of buffering that prevents problems, because I had tried playing MIDI stuff from King's Quest V under WinXP and hadn't seen any buffer overflows. But guess what. I tried that with LoK music, and it does happen. So once again, I can't say for sure just what's going on, except that LoK's MT-32 driver is too fast for whatever Windows is doing to fully compensate.

Happy Halloween! Also, feedback requested

Well, I wasn't even thinking about Halloween when I started Let's Play King's Quest V with an MT-32. I just wanted viewers to hear how the music is supposed to sound, as opposed to the AdLib/SoundBlaster version that most probably know.

But about a week or so ago, I realized that the last area of this classic game happens to have an atmosphere appropriate to Halloween, and better yet, I looked to be on-schedule to show it off just in time for the holiday. And what do you know, I actually timed it just right. Here's episode 10. Enjoy!

And since this LP is just about over, there is the question of which game I should LP next. I have three in mind. Each one has its merits:

• King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella. This one has some pretty good music, which I think sounds at least as good as that of KQ5. There's no speech in this one, which you might regard as a plus or a minus. The intro seems a little on the sugary side, but I'm willing to look past that. Also, I've only played part of the game, so it would be semi-blind.
• King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow. Also good music, and really good voice acting ('cause they used professionals this time). I did a recording of the intro while manipulating the emulation speed so you can hear more of the music than you would normally. I'll upload that just before starting the LP. Also, I'd like to try to do all of the different paths in the game and involve you, the viewers in deciding which ones to do when.
• The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One. Fantastic sounding music and pretty good voice acting, although the sound levels can be a problem sometimes, at least in my experience (fortunately my recording setup allows me to balance the sound elements after recording).

So, dear readers, please comment and let me know what you think. Which one would you like to see next?