I've noticed many people here burn out of this hobby by obsessing about it until they don't enjoy it anymore. That usually doesn't happen to me, in my case it's like waves that come and go... some times I play games or tinker with old hardware intensely for a while, then I move on to something else (or get busy with work/family stuff), then it comes back and so on. I never let it reach the point of saturation.

As far as taste in games, back in the day I was heavily into fighting and sports/racing games mainly because I played a lot with friends, but now I have no interest in those (and other "arcade-y" stuff in general where the design is centered around eating your coins). On the other hand, I'm trying to catch up with all the RPGs I've missed back then when I dismissed them as "slow" or "boring". Immersion and some kind of story (even if it's paper thin) is really important to keep my attention.

I have always loved adventure and survival horror games and that has not changed at all, but those genres are not exactly the darlings of most modern publishers these days. So that's why my attention gravitates towards older stuff, I am really unable to derive any enjoyment from things like COD/Fortnite/Destiny, competitive multiplayer in general and mobile slop.

It seems like my interests waned and I'm just a walking corpse at this point. I started playing Max Payne 1 in July and still haven't finished it.

TheMobRules wrote on 2025-09-09, 19:13:

I am really unable to derive any enjoyment from things like COD/Fortnite/Destiny, competitive multiplayer in general and mobile slop.

I haven't been able to get into anything involving other people (multiplayer) in a long time. NPCs are just better.

Mobile...meh, it's just not the right platform. Well I played Doodle Jump many years ago. The only other game I remember is Assassin's Creed: Pirates, but I mostly played that on a PC via Bluestacks. Still, I probably didn't get very far.

Well I asked myself first what do I NEED a computer for. And of course, being able to get on the internet is the top of the list. You have to be able to do that, no way to get around it.

There was a time when such tech was optional. Sigh.

gerry wrote on 2025-09-08, 16:27:

Malik wrote on 2025-09-06, 21:24:

After getting to know 86Box, I have unintentionally shifted my hobby to the emulation realm. Mainly, because I can experiment with even more hardware that 86Box emulates, right down to the BIOS level, and using real drivers to install and run the "hardware".

Another main reason is I don't need to deal with wires, space constraints and power issues. And I can run them anytime, anywhere in my laptop.

My current laptop which is running on AMD 8845HS CPU with Debian, can run up to a Pentium MMX 233MHz smoothly without speed drops, and have even installed Windows 95 and Win98SE running in their own configuration "machines".

I like the sound of that, though i don't have a PC as powerful. Is that about the modernity/speed needed for have smooth p2-233mhz performance in an emulated machine?

I've tried a few in PCEM, my machines - nothing newer than a budget mid 2010's - only manage a 486 or thereabouts

Yes, preferably a faster single core speed will help more. My CPU has a base clock of 3.8GHz. (And it's just a laptop CPU). And it also depends on the "machine" configuration in 86Box being used. Some "motherboards" supported by 86Box seems laggy than others when using the same emulated CPU.

I suggest using 86Box rather than PCEM. 86Box is quite far ahead in development and supports many more features and is more optimized. I'm running it in my Debian using the native Linux appimage.

Currently, I can emulate a K6 III+ 266MHz with the system running at almost 100% speed, at 99% of the time. (Again, depends on the motherboard.)

I agree x86box is perfect for testing things. I could not manage to get a stable OS/2 insall though.