mrau wrote on 2021-06-15, 08:13:

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-15, 07:41:

Windows 10 + WSL 2 with WSLG : best of both worlds.

did You try that recently? i saw a short technical review - quite interesting imho, even tui apps like vim should work i believe

Yes, it works quite well. The performance is very good.

Since I prefer Windows (which means I don't have to deal with the insecure and slow X11 server and its inability to change the GPU driver without requiring a reboot) for daily usage, but Linux for development (compiling C or C++ on Windows is still a nightmare. Also I can use Zsh and GNU tools directly on Windows), this is the perfect blend.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-15, 09:37:

mrau wrote on 2021-06-15, 08:13:

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-15, 07:41:

Windows 10 + WSL 2 with WSLG : best of both worlds.

did You try that recently? i saw a short technical review - quite interesting imho, even tui apps like vim should work i believe

Yes, it works quite well. The performance is very good.

Since I prefer Windows (which means I don't have to deal with the insecure and slow X11 server and its inability to change the GPU driver without requiring a reboot) for daily usage, but Linux for development (compiling C or C++ on Windows is still a nightmare. Also I can use Zsh and GNU tools directly on Windows), this is the perfect blend.

The last time I used MickySoft Windows you had to reboot it every time a video driver was changed. Is that still the case these days?

Just curious. XWindows run absolutely fine on my system from a Pentium 166MMX up.

I'm sorry you bad experiances with it.

No wait my memory was a bit faulty. My old Compaq CDS524 ran Xwindows with onlly 512k vram and 64 megs of ram.

Answering the title of the post, today I tested .NET 2.0 Framework performance... A product from 2005, that runs on Windows 98. That's retro enough, right ?

I wonder if a Doom port for Windows 9X and beyond using .NET2.0 / .NET 4.0 and GDI + WinForms would attract users. Probably not. :p
That's one of the millions of projects I'd like to do for fun

Doing stuff for fun is great. Especially when it is something folk insist cannot be done 😉

Like getting functional usb support on NT4. Something MickySoft insisted was impossible...

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-15, 17:35:

Answering the title of the post, today I tested .NET 2.0 Framework performance... A product from 2005, that runs on Windows 98. That's retro enough, right ?

I wonder if a Doom port for Windows 9X and beyond using .NET2.0 / .NET 4.0 and GDI + WinForms would attract users. Probably not. :p
That's one of the millions of projects I'd like to do for fun

just mixing up 9x (which can play regular doom) and .NET which is more associated with 'modern' windows would make it stand out!

I'm sure that there are several attempts, something dotnet oriented might be 'managed doom' at https://github.com/sinshu/managed-doom

Indeed Managed Doom is fairly complete, and it uses .NET 5 (which means C# 9). It's a very good port.
The main thing to do would be to "demake" it and make it use .NET Framework 2.0 (which means C# 2), and then fix all the broken deps (or rewrite them).

Just been sorting through my old stuff and "rediscovering" things I forgot I had 😉

Decided to try an experiment today. I wondered if the Cheetah Annihilator joystick, as provided with the C64GS, would work on the MSX. Particularly, it's weird non-standard 2nd button that only works with a handful of C64GS games. I did a quick google search, but couldn't see any reference to anybody trying this.

I connected it up and to my surprise - it does indeed work! I tested in a couple of games that require 2 buttons and the 2nd button worked as expected.

Not that the Cheetah Annihilator is a particularly good controller, truth be told it is horrible. Still nice to know it works though.

Caluser2000 wrote:

The last time I used MickySoft Windows you had to reboot it every time a video driver was changed. Is that still the case these days?

Since Windows 7/Vista (which means eons ago now), display drivers live in userland. Which allows DWM (Windows' window manager) to reboot it without losing anything (not even opened windows) in case of a faulty driver (and notify the user that their driver was just rebooted and that they probably should update it), or to replace it live (in case it is removed, installed, or updated).

On linux, Wayland still hasn't landed. Sad. (I was a fanboy of Archlinux for 10 years, but I was fed up in the end).

I tested my IDE cables, these are all faulty. This is just a reminder to everyone that even cables can go bad, not just the usual hardware.

I test mine from time to time and clean them with DeoxIt D5.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-15, 18:54:

Caluser2000 wrote:

The last time I used MickySoft Windows you had to reboot it every time a video driver was changed. Is that still the case these days?

Since Windows 7/Vista (which means eons ago now), display drivers live in userland. Which allows DWM (Windows' window manager) to reboot it without losing anything (not even opened windows) in case of a faulty driver (and notify the user that their driver was just rebooted and that they probably should update it), or to replace it live (in case it is removed, installed, or updated).

On linux, Wayland still hasn't landed. Sad. (I was a fanboy of Archlinux for 10 years, but I was fed up in the end).

Thank you that info.

I've just settled on Debian based distros because of the wealth information available. I never really distro hopped like some folk. Each one basically operated the same way, but with different clothes on. My first dip in the Linux pond was Red Hat 7.3 on a P20oMMX HP slimline desktop system with the ram and vram maxed out. I t was in a trash bin but I managed the important bits for the case. Had a lot of fun learning something new. Updated it manually, then using apt (which put me on the path to Debian) and chatting on irc chat rooms . I still do that on my Zenith 286.

I collect OSs as part of this. The only windows versions of installation media I don't have are Vista, 8.x and 10. Picked up a few box Linux versions over the years as well as well and OS/2.

I still have that RH 7.3 installation and fire it some times on my testing rig 😉 HDD hasn't died yet, touch wood.

seleryba wrote on 2021-06-03, 18:41:

Cleaned and tweaked the Toshiba Satellite 300CDT. I disassembled whole thing to the single screw, then cleaned deeply. Also, I'v […]
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Cleaned and tweaked the Toshiba Satellite 300CDT.
I disassembled whole thing to the single screw, then cleaned deeply. Also, I've changed the internal batteries and replaced the thermal paste.
Then, I replaced CCFL to the LED strip in the TFT module. After that, I assembled it again.

735ECF19-BEB2-4191-AE44-A890FAB2E66D.jpeg

Now it's beautiful and clean. Also the screen works perfectly with the LED instead of CCFL tube (tested this one by connecting to lab power supply). However, I don't have any step-up driver to pick up from the shelf, so Toshiba needs to wait a week for completing this restoration.

I received a few of cheap step-up modules, so I finally can add a followup to my previous post.
I have added the power module for the new screen's light. I needed to power the strip with around 8V (original was 5V)

It works just great with the new LED strip instead of the CCFL lamp.
The screen is a lot brigher than the original and it's not even a full power that I can receive from this LED module. Looks like the image is sharper because of that.
LEDs has caused a little shift in color (it's a bit more blueish now), but I don't mind. For the Windows, I can use PowerStrip or even the display colour schemes, built-in with the Windows.
Another cons is I don't have any software brightness regulation now, since I decided to do it simple way with just the power module and LCD LED strip. It's possible to use some universal inverter here just for that, but - again - I don't mind.

Nice to see another Toshiba fan. Yours packs a fair bit of power, especially the tft panel can do 16bit color.
But I have to ask, why did you change from CCFL to LED? My T4400C's CCFL does need a little 2 minute "warm up time," but after that it's crisp and bright. Whites are also, surprisingly, white instead of the warmer white you get from aging tubes. Guess mine wasn't subject to as much use.

yourepicfailure wrote on 2021-06-16, 01:44:

Nice to see another Toshiba fan. Yours packs a fair bit of power, especially the tft panel can do 16bit color.
But I have to ask, why did you change from CCFL to LED? My T4400C's CCFL does need a little 2 minute "warm up time," but after that it's crisp and bright. Whites are also, surprisingly, white instead of the warmer white you get from aging tubes. Guess mine wasn't subject to as much use.

Hi! The reason is simple: I've bought this Toshiba without the inverter and contrast board - someone just removed them. It was nearly impossible and totally unprofitable to buy those two boards.
Also the tube looked like it's going to die soon - a lot of black dirt around its ends.

I used some chinese LED strip for the small screens. It looks like that:

It's not ideal, as I said it caused a small colour shift to the blue side. Next time, when I will need to do similar thing, I will experiment with some backlight strips from the broken laptop LCD displays. I wonder if there will be any difference. I also wonder if there's any possibility to do the LCD colour calibration on hardware, instead of using colour profiles or PowerStrip.
But as I said, it's not a big deal for me, the screen looks just awesome even with that cons. I will redo this process for a 2 or 3 laptops I have, which tubes has nearly died and the image is shifted in orange-red areas.

You're right, I really like those Toshiba notebooks! But I'm not focused to the single company - it's just the love for good laptops from the 90s 😁 I also really like those white Compaqs from the time and other useful, but less common laptops, like Mitac 5033 or Siemens Scenic 710, which have perfect specs for retro gaming.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-15, 17:55:

Like getting functional usb support on NT4. Something MickySoft insisted was impossible...

Still is "impossible" to get in NT4 a full working WDM stack. What you get is some monolitic drivers made by Softex, a filial of Phoenix Technologies, which manage the USB bus in a private way, so only the drivers programmed for their internal api work with the stack. You can't use WDM usb drivers with it, nor program enhanced support for it. Even with USBSUPP package, you could in Win95 program limited extra support for some of your hardware, as long as you wanted to do extra VxD helpers for certain stuff which came later built on Win98. You couldn't do that with Softex stack.

Sure, MS could have backported part of the NT5 kernel to NT4 to get some limited WDM like in Win95, but when that support was in production state, NT4 was already on SP5 and they still had to support Alpha platform quirks, so they just decided to no waste time backporting features to an OS in already extended support stage. Specially when such still-in-test stuff wasn't important in enterprise environments back then.

Wifey demanded that I had to move some stuff back uot to the garage sniff sniff

It seem when I was mucking around with the Shuttle Xpc things got a bit out of hand.......

Microsoft never stated that USB on NT4 was impossible they just chose not to support it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20041204194823/ht … .com/?id=196661

https://web.archive.org/web/20091026192433/ht … com/mypublic99/
https://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/usb.htm
http://alter.org.ua/en/docs/win/nt4_usb/

Supposedly some stacks support WDM drivers.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-06-16, 19:24:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-15, 17:55:

Like getting functional usb support on NT4. Something MickySoft insisted was impossible...

Still is "impossible" to get in NT4 a full working WDM stack. What you get is some monolitic drivers made by Softex, a filial of Phoenix Technologies, which manage the USB bus in a private way, so only the drivers programmed for their internal api work with the stack. You can't use WDM usb drivers with it, nor program enhanced support for it. Even with USBSUPP package, you could in Win95 program limited extra support for some of your hardware, as long as you wanted to do extra VxD helpers for certain stuff which came later built on Win98. You couldn't do that with Softex stack.

Sure, MS could have backported part of the NT5 kernel to NT4 to get some limited WDM like in Win95, but when that support was in production state, NT4 was already on SP5 and they still had to support Alpha platform quirks, so they just decided to no waste time backporting features to an OS in already extended support stage. Specially when such still-in-test stuff wasn't important in enterprise environments back then.

I wondered how long someone would do a search on that and supply a responce. A bit slower than I expected but that is. It's a bit more complicated than that ol bean. I easily managed to get usb drive formated to fat16 or ntfs4. If you put the NT4 usb sticl with ntfs4 into a win2000 or XP box there would convert then to ntfs 5 (without losing your data) unless NT4 had SP6 applied and could read ntfs5 formatted drive. That was on a ye olde Dell system back in the early 200os. It certainly was the outfit you. Was it the first hit on a google search? IIRC it was some German outfit. Clever folks those Germans.