I was installing Windows 95 OSR2.5 in a VM when I was surprised to see that I had the option to choose between Windows 3.1 (Program Manager) and Windows 95 interfaces during the install process. I have never seen that.
"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!
That is odd I've never seen that before with 95. Where did you get the image from?
chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-07, 18:47:That is odd I've never seen that before with 95. Where did you get the image from?
[LINK DELETED]
"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!
Interesting. I got my 95 image from them I'll have to try installing it and seeing if that pops up for me. Looking forward to trying this it sounds fun.
chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-07, 18:55:Interesting. I got my 95 image from them I'll have to try installing it and seeing if that pops up for me. Looking forward to trying this it sounds fun.
It's when you can choose things like monitor, keyboard language. It's the last option of the list - it says Windows 95 but there is Windows 3.1 when you press "Change..." before continuing.
But I don't think it's the exact same Windows 3.1 UI - probably just program manager with 95 UI, which is not optimal. I just gave up on Windows 95 after installing IE 5.5 SP2 - then after reboot the machine went kaput and never came back. Switching to Win 98 now.
"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!
SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-06-07, 04:14:Lost a Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB in the mail today. My current VLB VGA died as i expected would happen soon, and the Speedstar i […]
Lost a Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB in the mail today. My current VLB VGA died as i expected would happen soon, and the Speedstar i ordered a month+ ago didn't show up.
Thankfully seller gave me a refund. Now im back to arguing in my mind weather i wanna invest in another VL card or just give up on this DX4 build and put the cash towards my P3 project.
Right now my Pentium 3 machine is just sitting on the side as im not happy with it yet, iv been spending alot of my time on a P133 and i'd really love to do a "Tricked out Socket 5" build 😀
But at the sametime a part of my brain wants a DX4-100. and im limiting myself to two PCs here because A: Space, and B: I couldn't possibly see myself moving between 4-5 computers just to play different games.I really wanna do that 133 machine. But i have all these 486 parts lying around and i kinda feel like i need finish it to get my moneys worth.
Plus, anything that 133 could do, even tricked out, my V2 Sli P3 rig would hopefully do better anyway. But i have been developing a softspot for these early Pentiums...gah! So many choices ;-;
You never know, the card might unexpectedly pop up one day. As for the one that died, how did you know it was going to die soon? Did it exhibit any weird behavior? If you're lucky, it might need capacitors, which is pretty typical with old hardware, or maybe the VRAM isn't making proper contact with the card. Or it could be something else that is fixable, so don't give up on it yet!
appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-05, 21:26:Tomb Raider was a shit game when it came out. It aged terribly. Today it is about as fun as gauging my eye out with a blunt spoon.
Funny you mention that. I watched a speedrun of it yesterday and realized it really was trash. The controls.. were just so bad. The way you turned, strafed, back jumped, etc.. were awful. I remember playing it as a kid thinking it was cool.
So, a little while ago I was wondering how Gods by Bitmap Brothers was made (MS-DOS version). The game runs perfectly fine on my 286/16Mhz and when you start looking into the bandwidth required for a 320x200 256 VGA color mode side scrolling game, then you quickly realize that updating a screen that scrolls is basically impossible on such a low-spec system. The ISA bus simply doesn't have the bandwidth, and even 4 byte VGA video memory to video memory latch copies (unchained mode) aren't going to cut it...
So, I was breaking my head over on how they did this...
Then, a little white ago, someone, somewhere, can't remember exactly were, but I'm pretty sure it was a YouTube video, mentioned that the game is in 16 colors! I.e. mode 0x0D... What the...., it can't be!
So, the other day when I had some time, I dug out a screenshot TSR program for DOS and managed to grab a screenshot. The image looked garbled, but loading it into GIMP, yes, there it was, a 16 color palette. After a bit of fiddling I figured out that they resized the video buffer to be 352 pixels wide, i.e. the left and right side of the screen has 16 pixels extra each. This allows for smooth panning and, probably more important, they don't need pixel perfect screen clipping saving some precious CPU cycles. Anyhow, by adjusting the image width I was able to get the correct image to display.
To me this is absolutely amazing. The graphics artist's name is Dan Malone [1]. If you look at the palette, then you can see that there are 2 gradients. A grayish one and a brownish one. The grayish one is used for walls, armor, marble and bricks while the brownish one is used for skin-tone, the ladder, pickups, marble, score and energy. Then there are these 2 super bright colors, green and yellow, accent colors. The green is used to differentiate the bricks, the yellow is used on the gem pick up and the marble high-light. On other levels the gradients might be slightly different tones but it uses the same principle. I.e. in other levels the skin-tone might be slightly different but as a player, you won't notice this.
Anyhow, the game still sucks to play but it's, in my opinion, the best looking DOS game and knowing now that it's only 16 colors, even more respect!
Today went thru some of my archive CD's that I burned back in 1997 thru 2003. Found a ton of very good old stuff mostly from Usenet alt.binary groups as well as ftp downloads. After looking through hundreds of CD's realized how much it must of cost me back then between expensive burners and disks plus a usenet account. I added a zip file of the contents of a DOS game disk set grabbed in a posting flood in 2003. Am thinking of upping that set to an Archive under some CD archive name just in case I loose ability to read the disks....
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
I did the same thing a few weeks ago went through my collection of burned disks but sadly alot of them were school work from high school and college
solidus wrote on 2020-06-07, 23:21:Funny you mention that. I watched a speedrun of it yesterday and realized it really was trash. The controls.. were just so bad. The way you turned, strafed, back jumped, etc.. were awful.
That is true for many old games - but not because they are bad, but because we are used to different control schemes these days. Play any first-person shooter on the Dreamcast or the N64 and you'll blame it for its shitty controls, as there is no second analog stick.
Tomb Raider was a great game.
derSammler wrote on 2020-06-08, 06:08:Tomb Raider was a great game.
Agreed.
Despite the tank controls, I still enjoy replaying the original Tomb Raider. Those ancient ruins simply ooze with atmosphere, and the exploration aspect is superbly done. Also, unlike in the later games, Lara doesn't casually mow down hundreds of people in that game. Most of the enemies in TR1 are either wild animals or undead.
Just finally, f***ing finally, managed to build a vanilla Windows 98SE VM for a few games even though I do not have 3Dfx/Glide. I think just FIFA and NFS2SE requires this s**t. It’s running with a reasonable speed on my 2017 iPad Pro 12-inch, thanks to the UTM app, which is a Qemu wrapper for iOS. It should definitely be twice faster with a 2020 iPad Pro, but boy that thing is still expensive for me this year.
"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!
Last weeks:
- Wrote a script to join CLRMAME .DAT files.
- Wrote some tools to remove headers, cut, split, and xor ROM files.
- (Re)Wrote a program to convert snapshots from ZX Spectrum to tap files, using the loading schemes of transtape interface.
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...
Recapped a MX200 today as it produces unbearable permanent background noise and loud cracking pop every now and then. I did so in hope that new capacitors would fix the sound.
I carefully replaced all the SMD caps, and was darn proud of myself completing the task w/o a major hiccup. Thanks to newly acquired precision soldering tips, no components were damaged, and no caps were overheated. Ooo-Whoo!
Once seated back in, It played really nice for a while, like really nice; no noise, no pop, just as clean sound as a MX200 would give. Then it went dead.
wtf...
I guess it's time for a trouble shooting. Until then, into a storage box. 🙁
Saved 2 nice shiny golden CPU's from the scrapper: Pentium 75 and an IBM 6x86MX PR166.
They had a lot of bent pins but fiddling for an hour or so,made them fit in the socket and they still work so I'm a happy camper.
My retro collection: too much...
appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-05, 21:26:Tomb Raider was a shit game when it came out. It aged terribly. Today it is about as fun as gauging my eye out with a blunt spoon.
Are you young? Tomb Raider was anything but what you say it was back at release and why it became such a big franchise. It was actually a groundbreaking game in many ways. I personally love the game and just recently did another playthrough in DOSBox from the original CD. I mean, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but your opinion is in the minority and history shows that.
replace the two broken smd cap on the XW8000 mainboard, which is the reason for the AGP slot does not recognized any graphic card i plugged in 😁
the board still have some problem with cold boot... but it still nice that the AGP slot is now working.
liqmat wrote on 2020-06-08, 14:15:appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-05, 21:26:Tomb Raider was a shit game when it came out. It aged terribly. Today it is about as fun as gauging my eye out with a blunt spoon.
Are you young? Tomb Raider was anything but what you say it was back at release and why it became such a big franchise. It was actually a groundbreaking game in many ways. I personally love the game and just recently did another playthrough in DOSBox from the original CD. I mean, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but your opinion is in the minority and history shows that.
I love the game too, I played it when it first came out and never had issues adapting to the controls, enjoyed it a lot. And I much prefer the long levels with lots of exploration and puzzles than the action-heavy and short areas of the more modern iterations.
