"Spotted by The Register's very own US editor in a New York arcade, an elderly Terminator Salvation arcade game is struggling to boot and reporting what is likely to be a borked motherboard battery. In days of yore, arcade hardware relied on exotic custom silicon - this writer has a particular fondness for the Sega System 16 and OutRun chippery, for example - but the borked screen here indicates that Skynet runs on some decidedly prosaic PC hardware."
"While the game itself uses light guns as its primary mode of user interaction (so hitting F1 or F2 to deal with the Terminator's problems is not really an option), the "Raw Thrills" on offer will likely come from attempting to change a CR2032 battery on the motherboard without attracting the ire of the arcade manager. Then again, perhaps this is indeed a sign of an impending takeover by the machines."
A Terminator Salvation arcade cabinet was spotted in a New York arcade struggling to boot with a Phoenix BIOS battery error. The error points to a failing motherboard CMOS battery that preserves BIOS settings. The cabinet runs on standard PC-like hardware rather than exotic custom arcade silicon. The game uses light guns for interaction, so keyboard fixes are impractical in situ. Replacing the CR2032 battery could restore function but may upset arcade management. The malfunction juxtaposes nostalgic hardware fragility with contemporary AI anxieties about machine takeover. The cabinet's 2009 origin contrasts with rapid AI and GPU developments by 2025.
Read at Theregister
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]