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LGR Oddware - PC Action Replay ISA Card

🕑 Added 2020-02-17 22:09:44 +0000 UTC

Comments

LGR

Definitely not, it's such a fun device! And actually works as advertised, unlike most Oddware

LGR

Thank you! I never heard of it either, and I was PC-only back then. Sure doesn't seem to have received too much mainstream attention, at least here in the US.

LGR

Heh, can't say I have. Lots of offers for other random voicework, but it's not really something I'm looking to pursue.

LGR

True! Although the Version 4.0 release of this card claims to work even with protected mode programs, including those for Windows. Curious how that'd function.

Malbeth

Of course this works better in DOS games than Windows 98 games because Windows 98 had protected memory which prevented programs from modifying another program's memory.

Frederic St-Georges

Clint, with the way you say out loud the marketing blurbs on game and hardware packages, have you ever been asked to be a spoke-person for a company?

Chris Munch

I can't believe I never heard of this at the time - not that it mattered since I was a console peasant in 93, but this is super interesting. Great video as always.

LGR

Heh, yeah it just completely screws up the system if you try to turn on the AR trainer in protected mode. Hard reset required!

LGR

Yep! I actually have the rights to use it on LGR, all those early Foods videos are struck with copyright claims because of that music.

LGR

I'd be quite curious to try one of those sometime!

LGR

It's a box for Kai's Photo Soap, a classic image editing application :)

BadgerSquatch

I heard music from early LGR Foods episodes!

Robert Butler

haha you for an OS nerd, you know exactly why it won't run in Protected Mode, the processor would have an absolute FIT if you scribbled on RAM that was page-protected.

Vladimir Vyun

Wow, it is surprising to see how well this thing works considering the negative review shown in the video and how bad the previous Action Replay thing worked. And with the phrasing in the post "unfortunately I only had this on loan" and what Clint said in the end of the video, I have an impression that he reaaaaly did not want to give the device back to the owner :)

Deckard Games

Who you gonna call? Game buster 😁

Ezydenias

Is that a box of soap on your shelf behind you?

BastetFurry

I had GameWizard32 back in the DOS days, never got a full version and always used the shareware that only let you freeze one memory location. At least it let you mess with memory in the memory editor. But that AR debugger looks intriguing, i bet you can find codes trough disassembling, setting breakpoints and following what the program is doing, great if you want to learn reverse engineering. ;)

Uncleawesome

This is more like it :) This is more like how Action Replay works on Amiga. Very nice!

Seth C

Great video as always LGR! Can you and David make one of these for DOS Duke Nukem??? I'd buy that tomorrow!!! Save state is amazing to see on a legacy machine :-)

LGR

Ah, one can only wonder. Seems the core of their business moved away from computers and more into consoles not long after this.

LGR

True that! Heck it's still pretty useful for the kids at heart.

LGR

That'd make sense! There's more about how it manipulates hexadecimal values in the manual and readme files.

Joon Choi

Worth the price of admission for the save states alone. Wonder why they moved on from something so useful as this to the crap they sold later. Maybe not enough profit, even at $89, given all the cost of manufacturing the cards and printing the instruction manuals?

Kris Asick

I get the impression that the limit on two digits is because it's hexadecimal and limited to a single byte, so 00 to FF would be the range... That's still pretty wild to see a PC device capable of doing all of that! :o

Akselmo

This is impressive for teaching kids about stuff like memory addresses. Very cool.

PhotoSvein

That was cool 😀 *doink*

LGR

I imagine a bit of both, but it seems they couldn't help but include tons of niche stuff on top! They certainly sold it as a cheat device first, like they did with the Action Replay products for Commodore machines before this.

LGR

Yep, I've uploaded everything to archive.org as usual! https://archive.org/details/PCactionreplay1993

LJFox

That memory freeze is so cool. I know I would have used those save states so much back in the day... Amazing piece of tech this is; do you know if that manual has been digitalized? Would love to take a look at it. Thanks for such a wonderful Oddware ep.!

Wow, this thing is damn cool! I wonder if developers were the main market for these things? It seems like it was designed as a dev tool first, w/ a cheat engine slapped on top! Either way I want one!

The Enforcer

What a nifty device. It may be a bit cumbersome to use and to get stuff working. But at least it works. Save stating with DOS games. Truly, the greatest dream.