TheronGuard

joined 2 years ago
 

I grabbed myself a BSP D8 Pro from the 11/11 sale on Ali Express and I'm pretty impressed with this thing. BSP is a line of cheap Chinese mobile phone controllers that's become known for being dirt cheap but mostly functional while also having neat features and great connectivity options.

This is the third of their controllers that I've owned and this is the first one that didn't immediately feel cheap or compromised in some way. In fact, it feels almost premium, which makes some sense since this is probably the priciest controller they've done so far.

The d-pad and face buttons all have microswitches, which could be a dealbreaker for some. Apparently some people just hate the clicky buttons on this thing. I'm just happy because finally one of these controllers has a really good-feeling d-pad. The box even came with an alternative Xbox style disc/shield you can swap in, but the cross key is perfect for the retro game emulation I do on my phone.

It's also got

  • rumble (though I haven't gotten it to work on PC or Android, it might only be for the Switch)

  • gyro

  • two programmable extra buttons

  • RGB lights around the sticks (that I immediately turned off)

  • analog triggers (not always guaranteed on cheap Chinese devices)

  • Hall Effect sticks

  • huge variety of connectivity options. It has different wireless pairing modes for iPhones, Android, xInput, the Switch and even apparently the Xbox 360. With a USB cable you can also use it with PS3s and PS4s (when connected via USB to a PC, it uses xInput)

The BSP D8 Pro was originally a 50 dollar controller when it launched, but I got mine for about 30, though it looks like I could've gotten one for about 25 bucks during the Ali Express Christmas sale. I would highly recommend this thing if you find it for 30 dollars or less, at that point it's a steal.

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Would they bother going back to add support for 10+ years old hardware though? Cool if they did but I doubt it.

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago

Speaking of finicky- just after my post, I tried switching back to the dedicated GPU with the Optimus app, at which point the graphics drivers broke completely, necessitating booting into the grub menu, opening the root terminal and deleting the nvidia drivers. Good thing I made a snapshot just before I started messing with graphics card switching think-about-it

I think I'll leave the GPU situation as is for now, but I'll keep your recommendation in mind when I start tinkering with it again.

 

I tried 21.3 instead of 22, and it had the legacy Nvidia drivers for my laptop's GPU that were removed from 22. I did some quick tests and it looks like my games are no longer running at half speed spongebob-party

Most of the other weirdness related to the display is also gone, like the non-existent secondary 4:3 monitor that appeared in Display Settings and the screen's backlight rapidly blinking on and off when adjusting brightness. I still can't actually adjust the brightness though. Neither the laptop's built-in keyboard shortcuts or moving the brightness slider in Power Management actually affects the screen's brightness at all.

EDIT: While writing this I downloaded an applet called "Brightness and Gamma" which has a brightness slider that actually works somehow. It feels like kind of a hacky band-aid that doesn't fix the underlying problem but I'll take it for now since actually fixing it seems pretty complicated.

I'm also seeing some screen tearing but apparently vsync isn't a thing with Nvidia on Linux. There is some work-around but that also seems fairly complicated so I guess I'll live with it for now.

~~It looks like I'm also unable to switch from the dedicated Nvidia GPU to the Intel iGPU. In Nvidia Server X settings, the Intel option is just greyed out while the hover text over On-Demand says it requires driver version 470, and I'm on 390. I guess it's Performance Mode 24/7~~ elmofire

Edit: Never mind, I found an Optimus app that I can use to manually switch between the two. Not sure if there's a way to make On Demand work.

So yeah, while there are still a few issues, at least I'm able to fully utilize my laptop's hardware now. Like I said yesterday, I also really dig the user experience with Mint and it's infinitely faster to boot than my old and bloated 7-to-10 Windows installation, so I'd consider this computer successfully liberated from the Microsoft regime. Thank you everyone for answering my questions fidel-salute-big

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

I'll be trying version 21.3 of Mint instead of 22 next and see if I can get more use out of my GPU with that, so fingers crossed. I'm not expecting incredible gaming performance or anything but I would prefer my GPU not completely gimped.

It seems this is specifically an Nvidia problem. The open source drivers for AMD cards are apparently great but since Nvidia are a bunch of dicks the community has been left to reverse engineer what they can. At least there is an option to keep old hardware going.

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I'm going to install the last version of Mint 21 that had those Nvidia drivers or Anti-X to see if they're at least better than Nouveau. Much respect to the community for trying to keep Nvidia's old cards running despite Nvidia's best efforts to consign them to the e-waste bin, but I would like to be able to do stuff that worked on Windows.

spoilerI guess I could also re-install Windows 7 sus-lovecraft

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

Like I remembered, no mention of Optimus or any other GPU options in the BIOS.

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You should have seen the custom color schemes I used to make on classic Windows when I was a kid, this is nothing stress

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

michael-laugh

I would've preferred something a bit more subtle, but that was the only truly red option that came up in the theme downloader so that's what I went with, since the accent color picker simply didn't satisfy my thirst for the color red soviet-huff

I need a red taskbar and title bars at minimum

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 5 points 7 months ago

I'll take a look in the BIOS when I boot next time. Nvidia Optimus doesn't ring any bells so I don't believe I've ever touched it in the decade+ I've had the laptop.

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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net
 

It's very user-friendly, easy on the eyes and new software is very simple to install. This old laptop also runs much faster, quieter and cooler now, though how much of that is simply due to the switch from HDD to SSD I'm not sure.

However...

It seems I'm kinda screwed when it comes to GPU driver support. The laptop is from 2011 and has a GeForce 540M, but LM 22 isn't compatible with the official legacy Nvidia drivers for it, which means I'm left with the replacement open-source Nouveau drivers, and it turns out those aren't meant for much more than basic desktop usage. Video playback and Youtube work though, which is nice at least.

Downloading Steam and the emulators I use was such a nice and seamless experience it's quite the bummer I can't make much use of them sicko-wistful

Apparently some guy has ported the legacy 390xx drivers for modern Linux kernels but from what I read success with those is hit and miss at best and you'd better be prepared to restore your system if you run into trouble. Installing the last version of Mint that had those drivers is also an option, as is apparently switching to something like Anti-X. I already have Anti-X installed on an even more ancient laptop, but Mint is much more slick to use and pleasant to the eye.

I also have a few issues that might be related to the display drivers. Adjusting screen brightness in Power Management does nothing, and using the built-in function key shortcuts makes the backlight blink off and on until I hard reset the system. There's also a phantom second 4:3 display titled "Unknown Display" listed next to my laptop's actual 16:9 display in Display settings.

In summary: Mint is cool but my laptop is more of a dinosaur than I had realized

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 1 points 7 months ago

Windows did at least sort of recognize them, at least enough to say they needed to be formatted, right? Reminds me of when I insert USB drives with live Linux installations, Windows does the same to Linux-specific partitions.

This'd be much easier to get to the bottom of if I had spare cards lying around. I'd love to see if Windows could use them after formatting

 

I have an older laptop that I'm in the process of turning into a Linux machine (thanks, Microsoft). It's got a full-size SD card reader that I've never used but that I figure could come in handy in transferring files from the current Windows HDD to the future Linux SSD and later as extra storage.

I'm not just sure how compatible it is with modern microSD cards. I have some SDHC and SDXC cards that I use in my Android phones, and I tried putting them in a microSD adapter and opening them in Windows, but all I get is a "You need to format the drive in E: before you can use it" pop-up. Unfortunately, all of my cards are currently in use on my phones so I can't format them to see if that would make Windows recognize them.

Apparently SD cards that are setup as Internal Storage on Android are encrypted, which could be what's giving Windows trouble, but I'm not sure. I guess try booting into a Linux live USB and see if I have better luck there.

Does anyone have any experience with SD card readers on older laptops? Have you gotten higher-capacity modern SDHC or ideally, SDXC cards to read? I saw a mention somewhere that as long as the system in question supports exFAT, it should be fine with SDXC, but I don't know how reliable that is.

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How's DualShock 4 compatibility with Linux? On Windows I use DS4Windows to use it with emulators and non-Steam games, and while Steam does have DS4 support I enjoyed having different profiles with DS4Windows for different applications.

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 11 points 7 months ago

That'd be good news for my desktop. Really hate that I'll be forced to upgrade to 11 on it.

[–] TheronGuard@hexbear.net 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Anti-X comes with several workarounds to watch Youtube videos but they get regularly broken by changes to Youtube :google-cool:

81
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by TheronGuard@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
 

Such flowery words for "please chuck your perfectly functional computer in the trash and buy a new one, you rube."

My Windows 10 (formerly Windows 7) laptop has just started getting this popup when I boot it up. I'm definitely making plans, but those don't include Windows. I'm thinking I'll get a new SSD to replace the 10-year-old HDD currently in this thing and install some flavor of Linux, which will probably breathe tons of new life into it. Seriously, this laptop runs like ass currently, most likely because it's got a decade-old Windows install that I upgraded to 10 when 7 ended support, and it was already slow as molasses back then.

As for which Linux distribution, I'm open to suggestions. I've been messing with Anti-X for a few years now after I installed it on a positively ancient WinXP laptop from 2003 just to get some Linux experience. The thing is though, I mainly picked Anti-X since my main requirement was to just have something that would run on a 32-bit system from the early 2000s. I haven't really done much with that laptop since it's so underpowered- even browsing many modern websites is asking way too much from it and you can just forget about Youtube.

Since I actually regularly use this laptop I want something that can fully replace Windows and also do some light gaming. I'd like to try out the Linux Steam experience and run the Linux versions of the emulators I currently use. This laptop is from 2011, so it's not exactly a spring chicken either but it was my daily driver and main gaming machine from 2013 to about 2019. Specs-wise, it's got 8 gigs of RAM, a GeForce GT 540M GPU and an i5-450M CPU.

I assume I could also do the stuff I want with Anti-X, but since I'm not presumably as limited by hardware with this laptop I'm open to trying out different distributions. "Gaming/emulation friendly" + "Windows-like UI" would be at the top of my wishlist.

Edit: Thanks everyone, I already made a live Mint USB and tried it out. It seems pretty nice, will install it on a new SSD later stalin-approval

 

I've been playing Outbreak, the semi-forgotten online PS2 co-op Resident Evil spinoff with friends recently and I've had a great time, but it'd be fun to play the games with others as well, especially now that I have some idea of what I'm supposed to be doing.

They're free, have low requirements (pretty much any semi-decent computer made in the last decade should run PCSX2 just fine) and you won't need to worry about exposing your Steam/Xbox/PSN/Nintendo username as you'd just be using a free Outbreak fan server account + an ingame alias and the game allows you to set up 3 different aliases per account.

There'd be no need for voice chat either if you want to have the classic PS2 Outbreak experience and rely on the ingame ad-lib system

You'd need

  • PCSX2 (Windows, Linux, Mac), XBSX2, (On Xboxes with dev mode unlocked) a PS2 or a fat PS3
  • Patched Japanese roms of Outbreak File 1 and 2 (easy to find)
  • Memory card files with the required online settings files ( also easy to find)
  • An obsrv account

Here is a tutorial video that goes over the setup process (for Windows). The memory cards mentioned above are linked in the description. Instead of patching the Japanese roms into English yourself, you can find them pre-patched on 💿Romance

 

I've had my BSP-D8 (the black controller) for a couple of months now and overall I really like it. In terms of ergonomics and build quality it's a VAST improvement over the D3 (well, mostly) and I would highly recommend one if you're looking for a cheap but decent Bluetooth controller for your phone and can get it for 20-30 dollars or less.

I got my D3 (the red and blue controller on top) back in May last year to play emulators on an old Android phone and while it mostly did the job it was a pretty compromised experience. The sticks and face buttons are tiny, with the latter having sharp edges that combined with the aforementioned microscopic size made it feel like the buttons on a Tamagotchi or a pager or some other tiny gadget. Even worse, to ape the design of a Nintendo Switch, instead of a dpad they just had a second set of these awful buttons, making any kind of dpad-heavy games miserable to play. The shoulder buttons and triggers feel cheap and flimsy (the shoulder buttons especially) with all being incredibly mushy switches, meaning no analog trigger functionality whatsoever.

The company making these is a machine though and by November they had already put out four new controllers building on the original design, the D5, D6, D7 and D8. (No D4 because China). There's already a D9 and I think there's a D10 coming out. These are a bit more expensive though, with the D9 costing about 50 dollars when I checked.

Like I said, the D8 is a huge step up from the D3. This might be mostly because it's pretty much a direct clone of an existing, more expensive name brand phone controller instead of an original design. It feels like an Xbox controller in a telescopic form factor and is really nice to hold in your hands.

The sticks and face buttons are a standard Xbox form factor and feel perfectly fine to use. The back of the box says they're Hall Effect sticks which has apparently something to do with magnets and means they're less prone to develop stick drift. Hall Effect sticks seem to be all the rage now so that's cool I guess.

The triggers are actually analog on the D8 but are shaped more like the DualShock 4's L2 and R2 than Xbox triggers. They're okay and a huge improvement over the D3. The shoulders are the least improved part of the controller, still feeling a bit mushy, but they're still better than the D3.

Most importantly though, the controller has an actual dpad this time around. It's not the greatest dpad ever, with the directions bottoming out and pivoting oddly when fully pressed in but it's certainly enough to make platformers, etc playable and I even managed to play some fighting games with it.

There's a couple of things the D3 has over the D8 though. For starters, the D8's Start and Select placement sucks, with Select being placed above Start below the face buttons, making pressing both at the same time basically impossible. I have no clue why they didn't just copy the placement of the Start, Select and the power/menu buttons from their earlier models. The D8 also lacks the programmable back buttons the D3 has which is a shame.

The D8 does have a rumble feature which the D3 doesn't but it's so comically pathetic I don't think it adds much- not that I have been able to get it to work on in any of my emulators anyway.

As for build quality, the controller feels less cheap overall than the D3, though the print on the face buttons looks very crappy in person. My unit came with one flaw right of out of the box- when you rotate the left stick, it doesn't feel quite smooth with a small bump at about 10 o'clock. It doesn't seem to affect circularity in any gamepad tester I've tried but you can definitely feel it. I'm half tempted to open this thing and see what the stick is catching on but I'm afraid of breaking it.

As for connectivity, the D3 and D8 have several different Bluetooth modes they can boot into with different button combinations, with each one emulating different controllers, including Nintendo Switch and a standard Xinput Xbox controller. You can also plug it in via USB-C to use it wired with a PC or PS3/PS4. Each mode shows up as a separate controller which makes using it on multiple devices convenient.

All in all, as far as cheap Chinese knock-off devices go, the D8 is pretty decent and it feels good enough to use that I've even used it on my PC a couple of times which is something I can't say for the D3. If you are on the lookout for a phone controller for much less than the 60+ bucks the big name ones are going for and can find one for cheap (and are also willing to brave the chances of getting a dud) I highly recommend it.

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