Evans is injured I take it?

IMV the integrety of this season's League 1 competition is already damaged beyond repair. One team is bad enough, but for two to be going through this kind of situation whilst the season is in progress is outright negligence on the part of the authorities.

At this point the EFL are in a no-win situation with Bury anyway. Obviously if they are expelled then it is a massive black eye on the competetion and the EFL structure as a whole. If they survive and are able to start playing fixtures again then they have a lot to make up, which I assume will come in the form of midweek matches - difficult for Bury but also unfair on the teams who they're playing against, as they will now have less recovery time for their matches on Saturday.

£2m is less than we paid for Leon fucking Best. With that said, a condition of any bailout would have to be a strict overview of Bury's finances going forward and the installation of a new board to oversee those arrangements. That would obviously be difficult if not impossible to achieve. The alternative is bailing them out and then watching them sink again. Staggering that it's gotten to this stage.

I just finished a playthrough of Streets of Rage 2 in NTSC, and yowie wowie that was tougher than I remember. I swear there were more enemies this time around. Usually I get to the final boss with 3 or 4 lives to spare, but this time I only had one. It made for a fucking tense final confrontation, but nonetheless... That mofo went down hard Sweet success. I think I have to say that Streets of Rage 2 is probably my favourite Mega Drive game of all time. I love the Sonic games and a lot of others, but SoR2 is the one I go back to time and time again. Playing through it is still a challenge, but everything about it is awesome.

I don't know too much about PAL/NTSC, but I don't think it's anything to do with the quality of our TVs. As far as I can tell back in the day when TV was first coming into existence Europe and South America pretty much all went with a PAL signal, whilst America and Japan went with NTSC. I've actually read that there are a number of advantages to PAL, but obviously when console games got big it was driven by Japan and the States. Japan had the Famicom which was huge, and Nintendo rejuvenated the US gaming market with the NES (which was just a reskinned Famicom). In Europe we were more into microcomputers (ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro etc) and later systems like the Amiga and early gaming PCs. So when consoles came over here they had all gotten their start either in the States or Japan. As a result the games were all NTSC 60hz. It's possible to convert that to PAL and make it work fine, but for whatever reason (probably money related) instead we got games that weren't optimised properly and even though they did run on PAL hardware they were slower than they should have been. There are games specifically released in PAL regions that run fine (and will actually run too fast if they are played on an NTSC system) but most didn't fall into that category.

Most games were either made in America or Japan, or made with the intention of being sold primarily in those regions. So all games were optimised for NTSC 60hz, and not for PAL 50hz. The game's creators could have fixed PAL releases if they wanted to, but few bothered. There are a handful of PAL games that run at the same speed as their NTSC counterparts, but the vast majority run slower, sound slower and are squashed into letterbox view. You'll notice on my pics of the first MD I modded, there's an image with a silver chip that has "CX0-046 53.2034MHz" written on it. This is called the "crystal oscillator" and it responsible for the clock speed and frequency output to the TV. In technical language, from another website: So basically PAL games in 50hz run at a slower clock speed than NTSC, hence the reduction in both video and sound speed.

So assuming Bolton's game against Ipswich goes ahead tomorrow, does that mean they now have the power to just cancel midweek fixtures if it doesn't suit them?

To be honest the mod is simple, but if you lack soldering experience then it can get a bit messy. Keeping your hand steady when trying to solder to tiny contact points is very tough and frustrating when you screw it up. Fortunately the MD motherboard is very durable and despite having to resolder the contact points multiple times and even getting solder on other parts of the motherboard (which I did clean up) it continues to be fully operational (for now at least). It's pretty amazing to see the difference between PAL and NTSC. Obviously as a kid you would never know or care, but we certainly got a very different experience to the Americans and the Japanese. I'm connecting to the TV with a cheap MD1 to SCART cable I picked up a while back. If you used the normal RF/AV and then switched the console to 60hz then you'd almost certainly get a black and white image, but using RGB SCART you get normal colour. I found out the reason my 60hz picture is slightly to the right and goes a bit crazy at the start is because my SCART cable is cheap - a more expensive one would re-align the picture properly. It's not a big deal for me at the moment though. From what I understand you can connect the MD1 audio jack to a stereo system, so it'd probably sound pretty awesome. Obviously the MD2 lacks an audio jack so you'd probably need some kind of mod to allow it, but from what I've read the sound on most MD1 consoles is far superior to MD2 models anyway. I actually did mod the second MD I received on Wednesday. I had enough wire left over and an extra switch so I thought why not. The process was pretty much exactly the same, but it was a different motherboard revision so there were a few alterations. There was a capacitor over the JP1 jumper which needed to be removed (nobody knows what it's for, but it can cause interference when changing regions so better to remove it) and the jumpers themselves were in a different order. Other than that everything was the same, just much faster this time around. Unlike the first MD this motherboard did have a date printed on it - 12 April 1992. I did take a few pictures of the second motherboard. This is the Zilog Z80 and Sanyo chips. The Z80 is the CPU chip and the Sanyo is the Z80's 8k SRAM memory. The SEGA 315-5309 chip is the I/O chip. Not sure what the one below it is. Off the edge of the picture in the bottom right is the second I/O chip, the SEGA 315-5364. Above that you can see the JP1/2/3/4 jumpers, in a different order to the last model and with a capacitor sitting over the JP1 connection. This was removed. Here is the Sony CXA1034P headphone amp, totally buried under a pile of capacitors! If your headphone jack is malfunctioning it is probably just these capacitors that need replacing. Top left is the on/off switch and top right is the reset button. Bottom right is where the headphone jack sits. This is where the date is printed on the circuit board. Just below that is the M68K CPU, the Motorola MC68000P8. A shot of the motherboard with the wires attached to the jumpers, stretching over to where the switch is embedded into the side of the console. You can also see this console is a PAL VA4 revision. And finally a shot of the two Mega Drives side by side with their fancy little switches attached

Yeah, the public poll note was just an advisory, honest...

You voted "good". In a public poll you can check who voted for what by clicking on the vote count next to the bars.

Probably, but tbf I don't think that was the reason for 99% of people. We only really had evidence of Williams performing poorly as a full back, and it would have been foolish to take a handful of dead rubbers at the end of the season as evidence that Williams has what it takes to be a first team CB. The fact he's started off this season looking very good obviously bodes well, but nobody can claim they saw this kind of form in Del.

Tbf I can also remember people noting that they wouldn't want a lot of Stoke's signings, but regardless you have to imagine Jones will be out the door should this continue much longer. It doesn't get any easier for them as they have Leeds at home and Birmingham away. There's a very realistic chance they could end August bottom of the table with just one point. Looking at their squad there is surely no way they can continue being this bad. Jack Butland, Stephen Ward, Joe Allen, Mark Duffy, Tom Ince, Sam Vokes, James McClean, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Bruno Martins Indi, Scott Hogan, Sam Clucas, Kevin Wimmer, and others... something badly wrong there because with those players Stoke should be right up there.

Yeah Williams had a good run at the end of last season, but I still don't remember anyone saying they'd be happy with him as first choice this season. Most people from recollection were saying he'd make a good 3rd or 4th choice CB. Basically a Downing replacement.

Nathan Jones the next to be sacked? Stoke are in freefall. Losing 2-0 to Preston at the moment.

Personally I don't even think Evans is good enough as back up at this point. I don't want him anywhere near the pitch in a Rovers shirt. He's pretty much the only remaining symbol of our decline from the GB days and I'm looking forward to the day he's gone. Unfortunately probably won't be for a while as interest in his services was non-existent even when we were relegated, which I think says it all. Also the new contract and high wages will make a move difficult, so... yeah. Best we can hope for is probably a loan out somewhere, like Mulgrew. Depends whether Evans is happy to sit on the bench or not. If he is genuinely good enough to be starting and has any ambition then he shouldn't be.

Stopped watching as soon as the match ended tbh. Get much better points and debate on here (generally) than anything Sky come up with.

Not a single person on this board would have been happy with Williams as starting CB at the end of last season, so whilst it's fair for people to hold their hands up and say "I was wrong,", it's bullshit to go back and quote others expressing concerns about Williams as our only CB cover - unless you specifically defended him at the time, but I don't remember many if any doing so.

To be fair to Arma he's thrown up top by himself sporadically and never gets a run of games in that position, so it's hard to blame him for being a bit rusty, I think we're a work in progress but will improve as the season goes on. If we were playing Rothwell on the right and Graham/Gallagher down the middle I think we'd have the potential for a decent season even with Mowbray's limitations taken into account. However if we continue to persist with Gallagher/Armstrong on the wing and Bennett at right back then our right side will unfortunately sink us as the season goes on.

I don't consider it disrespectful, however as all Mowbray discussion is going into this thread I do agree that the title is probably inappropriate. I think it also winds people up before they even go into the thread, and you get the silly "still want Mowbray out lads?" or other inflammatory remarks after a win. To be honest I'd be in favour of changing the title but will let the other mods chime in with their thoughts first...

I didn't realise he played Arma up top against Hull last season as well. Interesting. That said we didn't see him up top much otherwise, so I don't think it'll be a regular thing. He's not wrong on Travis, makes the dark days of Evans and Smallwood seem a million miles away (other than cup matches...).

And indeed I do. I don't think we'll see the Gallagher/Armstrong experiment again personally, but we'll see. I don't think Armstrong has the intelligence to play up top by himself, as evidenced by his repeated offsides, and Gallagher is simply not a winger. Plenty of endeavour but he's better served in the middle. hah. I wonder how often he's swearing at Bennett during games?

Of course he gets credit for the wins. Doesn't change the fact we are still seeing some strange decisions in terms of our £5m striker playing ineffectively on the wing and Bennett repeatedly shooting us in the foot at RB. Nothing wrong with constructive criticism, it's the only way to improve. Tony's comments suggests he knows this though so it's fine.

Hopefully he's including himself in that. We aren't far away but the manager is still making some unnecessary team selections which are making things harder than they need to be.