The Super Nintendo video game system had games stored on cartridges rather than discs or downloads. While the game system itself stayed the same, they could improve things by adding to the electronics in the cartridge. One of the things they did was add the “Super FX chip”. The chip enabled more advanced graphics by doing the processing inside the cartridge.
I wasn’t impressed. I declared it was just a math coprocessor, which computers had been using for a long time. And for some reason, they were putting one of these in each new cartridge since they didn’t bother to put one in the game system itself.
Putting an extra chip in every cartridge is a rather awkward way to add capacity to a game system. I never had a Super NES, though.
Complaint: For reasons known only to Google, I can no longer access YT videos on my main PC. Research indicates it's part of a wider crackdown on ad blockers, but I added a browser to my system with the result that I could play ads all day long but the video would never actually load so that I could watch it. I don't understand.
Thank you butterflyfish, miladyderyni_173d399f47, Richard Haseltine, and Torquinox!
I had a very happy birthday. My niece brought a chocolate chocolate chip bundt cake. So rich I could literally eat only a few bites. Way more sugar than a diabetic should eat, but hey, the docs want me to gain back some weight.
Perhaps they got Patek Philippe or Rolex to design the mechanism for them :-D
By the way, if anyone decides to give them a try, don't forget to remove the whilte plastic collar you see in the photo. Once removed, the despenser takes on quite a different look to what you see in the photo. I realised fairly quickly, but strangely there's no mention on the packaging that you need to remove it.
Couldn't resist (and I can tell you're all deeply fascinated by this stuff), so I've taken a photograph of my very first Hermesetas; an absolute beauty she is!
Rotated around 45 degrees to capture the top clicker, barrel, and inner mechanism design all in one go. She truly is the 'Swiss Watch' of sweetners :-D
Yep, even after examining the photo in close detail, I still don't know what the heck that is. It has something to do with artificial sweetners?
So in East Tennessee, artificial sweetners come in three colors; the pink stuff, the blue stuff, and my personal favorite - the yellow stuff.
The white stuff is sugar.
White is mine, or honey. I just limit my usage. I worked with an engineer who worked for one of those companies and got an earful of some ot the side effects and contents. Besides I can't stand the taste. But then I do not like any diet soft drink at all. Of course, I was thought to be hypoglycemic in 1982 and was taken off ALL simple sugars. Lost weight and felt better, and now I drink water, milk, coffee, tea with either milk/sugar (black) or honey (herbal). No alcohol. Yeah, I cheat a little. But I don't bake anymore either. My four-year-old hated it then, but he is now all about healthy eating as a middle-age man and parent.
So a fifth day of migraine but I also have to drive to the base to pickup meds for it and other refills. Hope tomorrow is better, a two hour MRI session in the late afternoon is on my calendar. And driving home in rush hour through Cherry Creek of Denver. My DAZ purchases will be tapering off, got the estimate of some dentist bills coming up over the next year close to $7,000.00 USD. Not covered by insurance but needed.
Regarding sweeteners: Despite the controversy over AI data centers, the technology is still pretty amazing. The following is my query to "GoogleAI" about the image given above. And the fact that I could have asked the same question by voice, is even more amazing.
Query:
In the US, sweeteners come in a display as shown in the attached image. What is the common name of each of the four types, and what is the chemical name of the active ingredient?
Reply:
In the United States, foodservice sugar stations traditionally feature a universally color-coded system. This allows customers to instantly recognize different sweeteners by packet color. [1]
The common name and active ingredient for each of the four sections (ordered left to right) are:
Chemical Name of Active Ingredient:Saccharin (specifically formulated as calcium saccharin or sodium saccharin)
OK, so far, so good. Then I attached the image of the partially revealed name of the European brand sweetener and asked the same question and got the reply in the image below:
@Garrett
True, and I went even further shortly after taking that photo. I fancied some coffee, and since I take three sweetners in coffee (to keep me as lovely and sweet as I am), I thought it'd be fun to try to trip it up by clicking three times as fast as I could. Now this is not scientific by any stretch of the imagination, but without the dispenser in my hand, I can manage around 9 thumb triggers pers second. This would suggest that the dispenser succesfully managed three ejects per 1/3 second, or in other words, 9 ejects per second - again - without fail.
Since the tablets are so light, there's no way that gravity alone is making it happen. I reckon there's a combination of reflex and passive pneumatics (air) at play.
@Tjohn
Yup, it's a sweetner dispenser filled with tiny sweetner tablets, where each tablet is equivalent to one teaspoon of sugar (and presumably one of those sachets of sugar). I've not touched sugar for over a decade now, I always use sweetner, and the benefit of course is that it's zero calories per sweetner, so what's not to like?
If you have diabetes, it might even be benefiical to switch to these things (although I'm not a doctor so don't quote me on that). But I personally use them for food as well, since the food over here is becoming more and more bland due (I believe) to sugar taxation practices by the government. Two perfect examples for me right now (since I am economising for a while), is that putting three of these in a Pot Noodle will restore it to tasing how they used to taste. And putting three of them per half-can of Baked Beans, transforms the 25p shop's own brand, into tasting like the 85p premium brand.
PS : I have passed-on the news to my Hermesetas dispenser, that she is now famous through having her photograph exposed to A.I. on the world wide web.
You have just made her the word's first celebrity sweetner dispenser :-D
More on sweeteners: I started a new session with OpenAI (it forgets everything when you terminate a session) and asked about cyclamates sweeteners (long banned in the US). Here's the new session:
The attached image shows a typical sweetener display in the US. We've already discussed the four types of active ingredients in the various colors. You've additionally reported that cyclamates are not permitted in the US but may be in various parts of Europe. When were cyclamates disallowed in the US, and did they have a specific color for packets of cyclamates before being banned?
Non-Complaint: Wheee..., free entertainment all day. The State(NY) has been re-surfacing the main road through town, all day today, from 8:00AM to now 3:15PM and it's almost done. Well, at least that part in front of my house. Not heavy repair, just icing(new, thin layer of asphalt or tar) on the already well maintained road. Traffic has been one-way through town all day. They're doing a couple of mile strip from the west and through town.
Side note: That white building with the square windows in the background is actually where I was born almost 78 years ago. Different building back then, but it was a little gas station & restaurant. It sat right next to the Erie Railroad track, which back then had a lot more daily traffic and longer trains. My first memory, was feeling my crib shake as the trains rattled past on old technology rails with gaps at the joints (clunka-clunka-clunka). Not the smooth, modern, monolithic, welded rails.
You got me cuirious so I did some digging and found the official description for the UK version. This is for the 1200 tablet version but it's exactly the same (in fact I'll be buying that larger version next time despite it costing £5). The good news is Hermesetas are the real deal, safe for diabetics, and I'm even happier after reading this :
Calorie-free table top sweetener based on Saccharin :
Great tasting, best value premium sweetener
1 Tablet = 1 Teaspoon Sugar
Calorie-Free Table-Top Sweetener
Sugar Free
Gluten Free, Suitable for Vegans, Vegan Friendly, Lactose Free
No Added Flavours, No Preservatives
Low Carb, Keto Friendly, Suitable for Diabetics
Mini 3 mm Tablets
Hermesetas Mini Sweeteners 1200 Tablets are great tasting & great value premium quality sweeteners. Calorie-free saccharin sweetener, giving you all the sweetness of sugar without the calories. Each mini 3 mm tablet delivers the sweetness of one teaspoon of sugar, making it easy to enjoy tea, coffee and other hot drinks while managing your sugar and carb intake. This extra-large 1200-tablet pack is the best value in the range, ideal for families and regular sweetener users who want a long-lasting supply for everyday, at-home use.
Trusted since 1932, Hermesetas is known for its Swiss quality, premium taste and reliable one-by-one dispenser design. These tablets are tooth-friendly, contain no added flavours, sugar or dyes, and have no effect on blood glucose or insulin secretion – making them suitable for diabetic-friendly, low-carb and weight-management lifestyles. Hermesetas has been delivering trusted Swiss quality sweetness since 1932, helping generations enjoy the taste they love with fewer calories and less sugar.
Known for its heritage, premium taste and consistent performance, Hermesetas is one of the world’s most recognisable names in sugar alternatives. Our range of mini tablets, liquid sweetener and granulated formats are designed to make sugar and calorie reduction easy – whether you’re sweetening your tea, coffee or other beverage with our Mini Sweeteners or other sweetening products, or cooking, baking or creating desserts .
Hermesetas products are calorie-free, sugar-free and tooth-friendly, with no added flavours, dyes or preservatives. Trusted for over 90 years, Hermesetas combines tradition with innovation, supporting healthier lifestyles without compromising on taste – delivering great value and reliable sweetness for every occasion.
Comments
Putting an extra chip in every cartridge is a rather awkward way to add capacity to a game system. I never had a Super NES, though.
Double Post!
Happy B-Day, TJohn!
I'll jinx it by saying this, but I haven't had a bad gateway in a while.
Complaint: For reasons known only to Google, I can no longer access YT videos on my main PC. Research indicates it's part of a wider crackdown on ad blockers, but I added a browser to my system with the result that I could play ads all day long but the video would never actually load so that I could watch it. I don't understand.
I'm on Firefox and use VPN plus two ad blockers. No issues using YouTube here.
Thank you butterflyfish, miladyderyni_173d399f47, Richard Haseltine, and Torquinox!
I had a very happy birthday. My niece brought a chocolate chocolate chip bundt cake. So rich I could literally eat only a few bites. Way more sugar than a diabetic should eat, but hey, the docs want me to gain back some weight.
Perhaps they got Patek Philippe or Rolex to design the mechanism for them :-D
By the way, if anyone decides to give them a try, don't forget to remove the whilte plastic collar you see in the photo. Once removed, the despenser takes on quite a different look to what you see in the photo. I realised fairly quickly, but strangely there's no mention on the packaging that you need to remove it.
Couldn't resist (and I can tell you're all deeply fascinated by this stuff), so I've taken a photograph of my very first Hermesetas; an absolute beauty she is!
Rotated around 45 degrees to capture the top clicker, barrel, and inner mechanism design all in one go. She truly is the 'Swiss Watch' of sweetners :-D
Check out that mech!
It's confirmed. You're a geek
Yep, even after examining the photo in close detail, I still don't know what the heck that is. It has something to do with artificial sweetners?
So in East Tennessee, artificial sweetners come in three colors; the pink stuff, the blue stuff, and my personal favorite - the yellow stuff.
The white stuff is sugar.
White is mine, or honey. I just limit my usage. I worked with an engineer who worked for one of those companies and got an earful of some ot the side effects and contents. Besides I can't stand the taste. But then I do not like any diet soft drink at all. Of course, I was thought to be hypoglycemic in 1982 and was taken off ALL simple sugars. Lost weight and felt better, and now I drink water, milk, coffee, tea with either milk/sugar (black) or honey (herbal). No alcohol. Yeah, I cheat a little. But I don't bake anymore either. My four-year-old hated it then, but he is now all about healthy eating as a middle-age man and parent.
So a fifth day of migraine but I also have to drive to the base to pickup meds for it and other refills. Hope tomorrow is better, a two hour MRI session in the late afternoon is on my calendar. And driving home in rush hour through Cherry Creek of Denver. My DAZ purchases will be tapering off, got the estimate of some dentist bills coming up over the next year close to $7,000.00 USD. Not covered by insurance but needed.
@garrett_3d vpn is worth a try.
I use a VPN, have done for the last seven years
Regarding sweeteners: Despite the controversy over AI data centers, the technology is still pretty amazing. The following is my query to "GoogleAI" about the image given above. And the fact that I could have asked the same question by voice, is even more amazing.
Query:
In the US, sweeteners come in a display as shown in the attached image. What is the common name of each of the four types, and what is the chemical name of the active ingredient?
Reply:
In the United States, foodservice sugar stations traditionally feature a universally color-coded system. This allows customers to instantly recognize different sweeteners by packet color. [1]
The common name and active ingredient for each of the four sections (ordered left to right) are:
Blue Packets
Common Brand Name: Equal
Chemical Name of Active Ingredient: Aspartame [1]
Yellow Packets
Common Brand Name: Splenda
Chemical Name of Active Ingredient: Sucralose [1]
White Packets
Common Name: Table sugar / Granulated sugar
Chemical Name of Active Ingredient: Sucrose [1]
Pink Packets
Common Brand Name: Sweet'N Low
Chemical Name of Active Ingredient: Saccharin (specifically formulated as calcium saccharin or sodium saccharin)
OK, so far, so good. Then I attached the image of the partially revealed name of the European brand sweetener and asked the same question and got the reply in the image below:
Thank you Mr. Data.

@Garrett
True, and I went even further shortly after taking that photo. I fancied some coffee, and since I take three sweetners in coffee (to keep me as lovely and sweet as I am), I thought it'd be fun to try to trip it up by clicking three times as fast as I could. Now this is not scientific by any stretch of the imagination, but without the dispenser in my hand, I can manage around 9 thumb triggers pers second. This would suggest that the dispenser succesfully managed three ejects per 1/3 second, or in other words, 9 ejects per second - again - without fail.
Since the tablets are so light, there's no way that gravity alone is making it happen. I reckon there's a combination of reflex and passive pneumatics (air) at play.
@Tjohn
Yup, it's a sweetner dispenser filled with tiny sweetner tablets, where each tablet is equivalent to one teaspoon of sugar (and presumably one of those sachets of sugar). I've not touched sugar for over a decade now, I always use sweetner, and the benefit of course is that it's zero calories per sweetner, so what's not to like?
If you have diabetes, it might even be benefiical to switch to these things (although I'm not a doctor so don't quote me on that). But I personally use them for food as well, since the food over here is becoming more and more bland due (I believe) to sugar taxation practices by the government. Two perfect examples for me right now (since I am economising for a while), is that putting three of these in a Pot Noodle will restore it to tasing how they used to taste. And putting three of them per half-can of Baked Beans, transforms the 25p shop's own brand, into tasting like the 85p premium brand.
And before I forget again, Happy Birthday!
@LeatherGryphon
Sorry, hadn't seen your post, that sounds interesting - cheers!
EDIT : I think they only have Splenda over here out of those.
PS : I have passed-on the news to my Hermesetas dispenser, that she is now famous through having her photograph exposed to A.I. on the world wide web.
You have just made her the word's first celebrity sweetner dispenser :-D
More on sweeteners: I started a new session with OpenAI (it forgets everything when you terminate a session) and asked about cyclamates sweeteners (long banned in the US). Here's the new session:
The attached image shows a typical sweetener display in the US. We've already discussed the four types of active ingredients in the various colors. You've additionally reported that cyclamates are not permitted in the US but may be in various parts of Europe. When were cyclamates disallowed in the US, and did they have a specific color for packets of cyclamates before being banned?
Still More on Sweeteners: And finally, I asked about "Stevia" products. Never heard of them.
The image below is the reply from GoogleAI.
Non-Complaint: Wheee..., free entertainment all day. The State(NY) has been re-surfacing the main road through town, all day today, from 8:00AM to now 3:15PM and it's almost done. Well, at least that part in front of my house. Not heavy repair, just icing(new, thin layer of asphalt or tar) on the already well maintained road. Traffic has been one-way through town all day. They're doing a couple of mile strip from the west and through town.
Side note: That white building with the square windows in the background is actually where I was born almost 78 years ago. Different building back then, but it was a little gas station & restaurant. It sat right next to the Erie Railroad track, which back then had a lot more daily traffic and longer trains. My first memory, was feeling my crib shake as the trains rattled past on old technology rails with gaps at the joints (clunka-clunka-clunka). Not the smooth, modern, monolithic, welded rails.
You got me cuirious so I did some digging and found the official description for the UK version. This is for the 1200 tablet version but it's exactly the same (in fact I'll be buying that larger version next time despite it costing £5). The good news is Hermesetas are the real deal, safe for diabetics, and I'm even happier after reading this :
Calorie-free table top sweetener based on Saccharin :
Great tasting, best value premium sweetener
1 Tablet = 1 Teaspoon Sugar
Calorie-Free Table-Top Sweetener
Sugar Free
Gluten Free, Suitable for Vegans, Vegan Friendly, Lactose Free
No Added Flavours, No Preservatives
Low Carb, Keto Friendly, Suitable for Diabetics
Mini 3 mm Tablets
Hermesetas Mini Sweeteners 1200 Tablets are great tasting & great value premium quality sweeteners. Calorie-free saccharin sweetener, giving you all the sweetness of sugar without the calories. Each mini 3 mm tablet delivers the sweetness of one teaspoon of sugar, making it easy to enjoy tea, coffee and other hot drinks while managing your sugar and carb intake. This extra-large 1200-tablet pack is the best value in the range, ideal for families and regular sweetener users who want a long-lasting supply for everyday, at-home use.
Trusted since 1932, Hermesetas is known for its Swiss quality, premium taste and reliable one-by-one dispenser design. These tablets are tooth-friendly, contain no added flavours, sugar or dyes, and have no effect on blood glucose or insulin secretion – making them suitable for diabetic-friendly, low-carb and weight-management lifestyles. Hermesetas has been delivering trusted Swiss quality sweetness since 1932, helping generations enjoy the taste they love with fewer calories and less sugar.
Known for its heritage, premium taste and consistent performance, Hermesetas is one of the world’s most recognisable names in sugar alternatives. Our range of mini tablets, liquid sweetener and granulated formats are designed to make sugar and calorie reduction easy – whether you’re sweetening your tea, coffee or other beverage with our Mini Sweeteners or other sweetening products, or cooking, baking or creating desserts .
Hermesetas products are calorie-free, sugar-free and tooth-friendly, with no added flavours, dyes or preservatives. Trusted for over 90 years, Hermesetas combines tradition with innovation, supporting healthier lifestyles without compromising on taste – delivering great value and reliable sweetness for every occasion.