I'm writing a review of ULTIMA UNDERWORLD for TheGoodOldDays.net. I played Ultima Underworld for a few more hours last night. Total hours is 12 now, since I'm going through each level thoroughly without a hintbook. I must say, I think even without Nostalgia glasses on this game still kicks major arse.

Oh, and I just got a "practice kit" for soldering micro electronics from CHINA. Holy crap, these are small components! http://www.ebay.com/itm/SMT-SMD-Component-Wel … =item3f3cc72abb

Bought a cheap CGA card on eBay. There are still people who describe items in such a way that they go under the radar. I also played WarCraft III very briefly and my son played around on my 286. He is too young to really know what he does but the images and sounds are exciting enough as is.

Iam still being busy with my laser vtech 8086.. Have connected my XT IDE WD95044-X drive to it with a WDXT-150 controller.. Also found the parking `PARKIDE.EXE` software for the drive.. In the beginning the drive was sound kind of weird.
Look like some some of a coil or something.. Also tried to get my 1.44MB drive working again on formatting diskettes.. Seems now it works better with the card edge extender removed..
Now iam looking on some older floppys and try to recover them by `copydisk`.. And write them to disks that already have losts its contents over years.. ( i think these floppy would be already more then 25 years old now)

Working on a Windows 9x project to do with storage 😀

Giving my OS/2 v3 box a work out.

The original HDD failed on my Packard Bell 812CD today so I had to remove that and order a CF card and CF to IDE adapter off ebay. 😒

Here's some pics of the 812CD and the HDD.

The sticker above the Conner label is the HDD Format number for restoring from a Packard Bell Master CD. It would be 556020.

Today I started an Internet mailing list/forum/group and project dedicated to shaking up and livening up the preservation / simulation / emulation scene for pre-CPU 1970's-era "discrete logic" video arcade games (and maybe eventually consoles as well) - if there even is a scene - and invited all the usual suspects. 😁

Finished with that DOS /Windows 9x storage project. Ran into a little glitch which cost me hours. When you don't have a floppy drive installed, but also depends on the BIOS settings, the Windows 98 SE Installation has two very long pauses at specific points and if you're inpatient you might think it's frozen / locked up and try all sorts of things. Just got to wait is the solution 😵

Iam now trying to recover an Seagate ST-251 MFM harddisk.. Previous owner didnt set the drive geometry right, so i had half of the drive space.. Also the head didnt want to go sector 0.. Removing the lid on the first place (no dust came in).. After set the geometry right the drives working better now.. This all iam doing on my Laser XT 8086 10mhz machine.. If this is done iam also going to trying out the Scsi side with two ST-296N drives..

I think i will stick with SCSI on my Laser XT 8086 if these scsi drivers are less loud.. Also the laser computer case have only one covered 5.25 slot for a big drive and a 3.5 inch HH size side bracket..

Edit: now iam testing my RLL harddisk. The downside of the MFM and RLL seems that controllers cant be mixed without re-geo them again with the different controller (downside is of losing data)

On those scsi drives, they where really bad.. One didnt recognize (only spins up) and the other didnt, but the string of the firmware doesnt say which REV it was..
I guess both drives have bad firmware i think.. I hope i can repair it if i find another one to rip the firmware from. For now they need to be repaired if its possible.

I played Defender of the Crown and one of the many Jeopardy CGA versions today.

I love cga cookies
some people think they are ugly
but I have always locked them

Farting around with capturing Wing Commander III just to realise the game / engine is locked / capped at 24 FPS (press ALT+F for fps counter).

King_Corduroy wrote:

The original HDD failed on my Packard Bell 812CD today so I had to remove that and order a CF card and CF to IDE adapter off eba […]
Show full quote

The original HDD failed on my Packard Bell 812CD today so I had to remove that and order a CF card and CF to IDE adapter off ebay. 😒

Here's some pics of the 812CD and the HDD.

<snip>

The sticker above the Conner label is the HDD Format number for restoring from a Packard Bell Master CD. It would be 556020.

I have a very similar Conner drive, slow as hell. You'll be so much happier with a CF 😀

smeezekitty wrote:

I love cga cookies
some people think they are ugly
but I have always locked them

ROTFL

I typed this from my new (to me) smart phone.

That was supposed to say
"I love CGA colors
Some people think they are ugly
but I have always liked them"

smeezekitty wrote:

ROTFL […]
Show full quote

smeezekitty wrote:

I love cga cookies
some people think they are ugly
but I have always locked them

ROTFL

I typed this from my new (to me) smart phone.

That was supposed to say
"I love CGA colors
Some people think they are ugly
but I have always liked them"

I liked the first version, I thought it was a haiku 😁

As for me, I am planning my first 486 build. I have a nice motherboard on the way but boy it's hard to find a period correct minitower.

Mucked around with a D-Link PCI Ethernet card, Windows 98 SE and my home network. Totally positively surprised. Installed the driver, entered in my network share(s) and I can access them 😀

Sneaker net might be a thing of the past 😵

You haven't tried that before Phil? As long as you have a well-supported NIC like a Realtek, accessing network shares on Win98SE is entirely painless. It's even more painless if your network share is a Linux box running SMB! These days, the only drivers I have on physical media are for my NICs so I can access the share and get to work, it's bliss.

No I was using sneaker net. And often miss-placing files on one of my many USB flash drives 🤣 Got to organise my shares a bit better now. Should make life easier...

Played a few levels of WarCraft III. Great game. Got my 5153 yesterday. I am now waiting for a CGA ISA to arrive. 😀

Fiddeled with my P1-133.
Changed the Vibra16 model s, with a SB16 CT-2910 and hooked it up to my stereo.
I must say that I was impressed with this card instead of the Vibra.
Allthough the Vibra has an OPL chip, the CT-2910 has better bass and no line noise.
Did not have any hanging note, wich is strange as the card should have it.

Then I resolved the issue that I have had since 1996. I got Dynablaster working with sound.
I just had to disable all cache, in order to get it to run as an 386dx40/486sx25 class.
How fast it is without cache, I can not say.

Then I tried some extra cards in this machine.... No luck in this one.
All ISA and PCI cards would make the SB16 die temporarly.
All these cards: Voodoo1, GUS-ACE, Realtek PCI and ISA cards... 🙁
I guess it is a matter of power consumption in my machine. Too small a PSU perhaps?
A shame, as I would have loved to check MT32 emulation on Gravis out.
Or just have a GUS upgrade on the SB16 card, to do awesome sound in MS-Dos-6.22.

The problem is in both my MS-Dos-6.22 and my Win95 installation on this machine.
The problem is not in software. Must be lack of power then.