Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Forum for discussing various mods for the VS-engine based upon Privateer. (Please play nice now, and extinguish all flaming materials.
Sincerely, The Management)
Wendy-J
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Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

If you've been around a while...A REALLY long while, WCU forums and VegaStrike Engine, specifically the first release of Privateer Remake, you may remember me. I even made the credits for the early releases, since I was around since the Alpha stages of PR. I miss my chats with Hellcat. Those started with a post something like: "HELP! It looks like Broken Glass!"

Turns out it was a barely usable off market video card that caused the problem and an eventual patch.

Looks like WCU as its own game is history and Remake is nolonger. Last I heard they were trying for hot gaming systems as their ultimate goal.

Anywho, the reason for the post is, I finally got a bit of scratch together and I'm building a new box or two. It's my first big box build in almost a decade. I''ve settled on an Athlon eight core and will need to find a video card to handle the graphics. My budget on that is in the hundred to MAYBE two hundred dollar range, although one fifty is probably closer to where I'm pointing.

It'll be a dual boot with doze seven and Linux Mint 13 Maya 64 bit. Planned RAM is 16G, although I may have to settle on 8 depending on options, finances and the like at the time i order the parts. I'm looking at about six weeks in the future for that. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

And guys, I really do ENJOY the choice.

Wendy
travists
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by travists »

Sounds like good bones.
Check out this thread, where I started to rebuild WCU/remake and ermo has taken over after I petered out.

Also, with a solid modern gaming rig, if you have not heard of Star Citizen (New game by Chris Roberts, the guy behind Wing Commander.) check out robertsspaceindustries.com. I know since phoenix mentioned it... gosh almost a year ago now I've been hooked.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

Thanks for the quick reply. The prob with most modern gaming rigs, which mine will not be, is that they go very heavy on the video cards, meaning several hundred for video alone. I was contemplating a Radeon 7750, 7770, or even a 7790 which are considered ENTRY level gaming cards. I haven't a clue what the GeForce equivalence would be, although they seem to run higher pricewise. I will say that there seem to be reasonable 78xx cards out there as well. Would one of those work do you think? I really don't need graphics problems and I'm tired of trying to land on Atlantis by doing a corona approach, meaning changing my heading after arrival so that i barely see the edge of the planet in the screen, simply because my frame rate drops to one to five frames per sec.

If those cards seem acceptable, then I guess that's where I'll spend the money. Like I said, I can prolly go to two hundred on a budget, but not much more.

I'm currently running with an intel 3.1GHz Hyperthreading single-core in 32bit mode, 2Gig SYSTEM RAM, with a EV3A Nvidia GeForce 6200 with 256MB dedicated RAM - PCI NOT PCIE, running Linux Mint 13 Maya, with a dual boot to doze XP. I prefer Linux to doze and spend most of my time in that OS.

If you have any suggestions on a joystick, I'd be happy to hear them.

I'll be happy to play-test stuff if you like. However, you need to update the compilation instructions for Linux. I can't seem to get VS to compile from SVN. I have several custom programmes I'm running from self-compiled source and had no difficulties getting those to run at all. I just can't seem to make VS do the same. I'm making due with O.5.1 r1 release offered in the Synaptic repositories.

Hope to speak at you again,
Wendy
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

When I saw this I started to giggle.
"For the record: I'm not a Privateer purest. I have the original game and it works fine through DosBox. If I want the original I'll play the original. I also have WC 1-4, Academy, and Armada. I never did get Prophecy, but at that point I was stubbornly hanging onto my DOS computer."

I only have Piv. Wish i had the others and I STILL have my old DOS box! an old 486SLC! Blasted HDD has died and there's no hope in getting an old ISA card that will run the new HDDs.

Reading the stuff you were writing about, I'd guess -- I still have a LOT of reading to do yet, so I'm only guessing -- one of the issues you were running into was the different formats in the old versus new CSV files. They were different column lengths and things were put in a different order.

W.
travists
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by travists »

Higher end entry level card should be enough for Star Citizen. An Nvidia GFX 760 is what I'm planing on putting in my new rig.

As for the reboot, we need data entry, testing, people that kind of know the code, everything.

For dogfighting games in general, I like the Logitech Extreme 3D pro.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

Vid Cards....
travists wrote:Higher end entry level card should be enough for Star Citizen. An Nvidia GFX 760 is what I'm planing on putting in my new rig.
I'll have to look and see. The cards don't go wild in price in the Radeon 7800 series until you get crazy with RAM and the like. Maybe I'll do that. The 7900s are getting there.

Helpers....
travists wrote:As for the reboot, we need data entry, testing, people that kind of know the code, everything.
Going on 40 years since I did any sort of coding. I used to programme in Pascal when C and C++ were little more than dreams. Yeah, there's a good bit more silver than brown up top these days. I worked for Bell when Bell still stood for THE telephone company, no Sprint, Verizon or what have you. It was a monopoly.

Tally whackers....
travists wrote:For dogfighting games in general, I like the Logitech Extreme 3D pro.
Heck! It's even in my price range! I LIKE!

Thanks!
The box as I forsee it:

RAIDMAX RX-1000AE 1000W P/S
AMD FX-8320 Vishera 3.5GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Proc.
ASRock 990FX Extreme4 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard.
SAPPHIRE 100355-1GOCL Radeon HD 7850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card OC Version.
Along with whatever 8Gig sticks work for 16Gig system RAM.
Case, DVDRW etc. are all sitting here ready for re-use. I'll get a bargain basement mid to full tower to run it in until I can afford better. I wouldn't call this a gaming box. I plan to use it for number crunching. My old P4 hyperthreading quasi-dual cores will wind up as file and video servers. I can't remember the last time i watched TV. I watch my canned bootleg library of Anime and other films, as well as several hundred DVDs & Tapes, all fed through one of my old Athlon IIs.

Right now I'm busy making a Thales that handles as well as my Llama.
Catch you later,
w.
loki1950
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by loki1950 »

You might need a beefy power supply as those new GPU's draw a lot of juice :shock: that and a 64 bit OS if you want to actually use all that RAM :wink:

Enjoy the Choice :)
my box::HP Envy i5-6400 @2Q70GHzx4 8 Gb ram/1 Tb(Win10 64)/3 Tb Mint 19.2/GTX745 4Gb acer S243HL K222HQL
Q8200/Asus P5QDLX/8 Gb ram/WD 2Tb 2-500 G HD/GF GT640 2Gb Mint 17.3 64 bit Win 10 32 bit acer and Lenovo ideapad 320-15ARB Win 10/Mint 19.2
Wendy-J
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

loki1950 wrote:You might need a beefy power supply as those new GPU's draw a lot of juice :shock: that and a 64 bit OS if you want to actually use all that RAM :wink:

Enjoy the Choice :)

Aaaaannd How! Linux Mint Maya 13 64bit. I always choose the LTS versions. Then I'm going with a dual boot with doze 7, Sapphire says: "Minimum of a 500 Watt power supply." That Raidmax is 1,000 Watts and I'll need every milliwatt.

{EDIT}
I need a board to accept my PATA Drives as well as my SATA drives. That's why I'm going with the MoBo I chose, given the darth of PATA controllers and PCI slots available today. I'll have 2 PATA drives, two 2-Gig SATA drives, and two DVD R/Ws. If the price is right, I'll even add a Bluray Writable. All in all, I figure it'll run about 900 for what I need to purchase. What's on the shelf here at home would add another three or four to it.

Loki, any hints on how to compile the SVN? Yeah, I know, it's BooBoo based and not Chappeau. Still....

I adore the choice. :mrgreen:
Last edited by Wendy-J on Sun Sep 15, 2013 9:42 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by pheonixstorm »

Nice to see you back :)

As for that old 486 you can probably find a good HD on ebay if the mobo ide controller works. But even an old isa ide controller can probably be found on there. If not.. try a flea market or call around to different thrift stores. Some might even have an old 486 they just can't get rid of. They are hard to find (and parts) but it is possible if you look in the right cracks. May even be able to get the parts for free since most times they are impossible to get rid of anyway.
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
Wendy-J
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

pheonixstorm wrote:Nice to see you back :)
Good to be back, Phoenix.
Like that old 486, I and this game refuse to croak. Well, when you get my age, I guess we all do a bit of that first thing in the AM. :lol:
pheonixstorm wrote: As for that old 486 you can probably find a good HD on ebay if the mobo ide controller works. But even an old isa ide controller can probably be found on there. If not.. try a flea market or call around to different thrift stores. Some might even have an old 486 they just can't get rid of. They are hard to find (and parts) but it is possible if you look in the right cracks. May even be able to get the parts for free since most times they are impossible to get rid of anyway.
I'll give that some thought. :wink: Last time I brought an old orphan in like that You want to see the face my husband gave me. I still have a rack of old software for it...not that any of those old single 320k and double density 720k 5 1/4" floppies or -- what were they, 720k 3.5" floppies single densitiy...or were those 1.2 MB? You know, the ones with the single hole for copyright protection, not double notch with the copy safe flick on one side -- are bound to be any good after forty some odd years. Still, If I could find Ancient Art of War in useable shape, he MIGHT go for it. :roll:

Still, while I do have DosBox and I DO know how to use it, there's something to be said for playing a 486 game on a 486 SLC 50.

Would you believe...I actually have 33SX and 66DX chips with a raft of 256K RAM sticks in a box over here? then there's the Cyrix 100 and....

I'm a PACK RAT! More crapola around here than I can shake a stick at.

Nice hearing from you.
w.
loki1950
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by loki1950 »

I'm a PACK RAT! More crapola around here than I can shake a stick at.
Same here lots of pack rats around here 8) and that Raidmax should do the job nicely I have had good results with Antec PS's.Building the svn is still fairly simple we use cmake now instead of the old GNU make tool chain makes dealing with multi-platform support much simpler.If you have any problems just post your problem we should be able to help.

Enjoy the Choice :)
my box::HP Envy i5-6400 @2Q70GHzx4 8 Gb ram/1 Tb(Win10 64)/3 Tb Mint 19.2/GTX745 4Gb acer S243HL K222HQL
Q8200/Asus P5QDLX/8 Gb ram/WD 2Tb 2-500 G HD/GF GT640 2Gb Mint 17.3 64 bit Win 10 32 bit acer and Lenovo ideapad 320-15ARB Win 10/Mint 19.2
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

loki1950 wrote:Building the svn is still fairly simple we use cmake now instead of the old GNU make tool chain makes dealing with multi-platform support much simpler.If you have any problems just post your problem we should be able to help.

Enjoy the Choice :)

Khuele, I'll give that a go then. TNX -- After I finish playing with my newly created cheat toy. Got hammered by a bunch of pirates. Now I'm in my new Thales that handles much like a Franklin. I'm out for pirate blood. Ha ha ha.... Grrr.... Had 6 AI cores too!
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by klauss »

Wendy-J wrote: Going on 40 years since I did any sort of coding. I used to programme in Pascal when C and C++ were little more than dreams. Yeah, there's a good bit more silver than brown up top these days. I worked for Bell when Bell still stood for THE telephone company, no Sprint, Verizon or what have you. It was a monopoly.
Hey Wendy. I was coding in Pascal when it was Turbo-Pascal, btw, and C and C++ was Turbo-C. Got my hands on a Wacom C compiler once... and it was "wooow".

Still. While you still beat my seniority ;) I have my share of 286 and *cough* 8086 *cough*.

Isn't it mind-numbing the amount of resources modern computers have? And still we figure out ways to eat them all and run out of RAM. Amazing.

Anyway, if you happen to install linux, since you have a nice Radeon, can we count on you to do the nasty debugging? VS has been having issues with radeons and linux lately, and since I don't own any radeons anymore (nVidia works a lot nicer with linux, even though they play foul politically speaking, their drivers do work nicely, so I tend to buy nVidia), we can't debug this. Having someone that knows how to debug running the hardware in question would be priceless :)
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
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Wing Commander Universe
Wendy-J
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

klauss wrote: Hey Wendy. I was coding in Pascal when it was Turbo-Pascal, btw, and C and C++ was Turbo-C. Got my hands on a Wacom C compiler once... and it was "wooow".
Hey, I remember when that came out! :lol: I was working with an IBM 8081D Mainframe at the time. 8)
klauss wrote: Still. While you still beat my seniority ;) I have my share of 286 and *cough* 8086 *cough*.
:mrgreen: Did you know that the most advanced processor chip on any of the shuttles was the 8088, NOT the 8086 -- which happens to be the NEWER processor? 8)
klauss wrote: Isn't it mind-numbing the amount of resources modern computers have? And still we figure out ways to eat them all and run out of RAM. Amazing.
Frightening, really. Remember when we had to do EVERYTHING inside of 64k? :shock: There was no such thing as extended RAM, VRAM, Upper Memory, or anything else! The way systems can utilise resources encourages today's programmers to ignore redundancies and global variables, writing local variables for everything. It's called Code Bloat :evil: . -- :twisted: Microsleeze :twisted: is famous for it.
klauss wrote: Anyway, if you happen to install linux, since you have a nice Radeon, can we count on you to do the nasty debugging? VS has been having issues with radeons and linux lately, and since I don't own any radeons anymore (nVidia works a lot nicer with linux, even though they play foul politically speaking, their drivers do work nicely, so I tend to buy nVidia), we can't debug this. Having someone that knows how to debug running the hardware in question would be priceless :)
There it is....
:!: It isn't IF I'll be installing Linux, I WILL be installing it. I'm running it now. In fact, it's what I'm writing this and playing VS on. Well, I'm playing VS on the Nvidia machine. This one uses an integral intel video chip. That one has the discrete card. I'd be running Fedora if it weren't for the fact that it's considered bleeding edge and runs afoul of all the issues, like Radeon driver problems. Then there's how the newer incarnations are forcing you to accept desktops I don't like and refusing a GUI login for Root and...well, I could go on, but then, that's why we "Enjoy the Choice". Those are the exact reasons why I'm running the Debian/Boo-Boo derivative Mint...and as I said, I don't go with the bleeding edge releases, I stick with the Long Term Support releases. The OS I'm running is based on Boo-Boo 12.04. Mint 13 Maya -- GNOME 2 -- Desktop.

The reason I'll be dual booting with doze at all, is because of my husband. He's a professor at the local college and they use doze boxes exclusively. That means I need idiotic incompatible compatibility, since I'm his tech guru. "Wendy! :!: I can't get this thing to...." "Wendy! :!: My students said they're having issues with...." "Wendy! :!: I keep getting this error message when I...." :|

At least I can get legal student licenses on doze 7 Pro through him for about twenty to twenty-five dollars at the school book store -- which wants to STOP carrying TEXTBOOKS. They say there's no profit in them. You see, I can make doze 7 look like XP, which I was able to make to look like 2k, which looked like '95 & '98 and I can still make it look like the "classic" doze desktop scheme. What was wrong with it? It worked! Maybe that's what was wrong. <--Shrug--> :roll:

:evil: I can't abide UIs or User Interfaces that take all the tools away, hence my insistence on GNOME. I can find what i want and need at a glance, or with a single click, rather than click on this, then stare at four bazillion HUGE icons that suck up all sorts of V-RAM while adding a ton of flash no-one wants or needs and mean absolutely nothing to me.

Sigh....
Sorry 'bout that, Chief.
Would you believe....

Gee, can you tell I used to code? USED TO.
It's been so long....

I would much prefer Radeon cards, for the very reason you stated, as well as it's NOT part of the wintel almost monopoly. However, while the community poo-poos Nvidia, you have to give them credit, they actually support the community.

Like you -- I don't want hassles and generally go with what is known to work well with Linux. That was the whole reason for this post, actually. I was asking which video card to purchase, not that i already had one. I'm running an NVIDIA card now and, to be perfectly honest, I'm not thrilled with how it performs -- rather poorly actually.

As I said before, the cards I'm still looking at have to meet several criteria. First and foremost, they need to install under Boo-Boo without a lot of hassles. That's why, I'm going with a tried and true, almost two-years-old, flavour of Mint that will remain viable for another three years or more. No hassles. When I run up against it, there's already someone who's experienced the problem and I can take my cues from them. No-one ever accused Mum's little girl of being stupid. Lazy, yes. Most assuredly. Stupid, no.

I suppose I can try to LEARN the code for this so that I can debug it. You can't debug without knowing what's going on, which also means yuo need to understand the system instructions and calls. I need to understand the syntax, command structure, which calls work where, when and why etc.... What I don't understand is, why people find it so hard to debug. That's the EASY part. Your logs tell you what happened and where. The problem with most of the software today is, you seldom see: "ERROR LINE 27689 -- IMPROPER SYNTAX, or what have you. It shows you everything it did and when, without the eyecatching all caps entries. What will make things go wonky? I don't know. Wich means I need to understand the engine and.... Eh...looks like a week or two reading the online stuff. I'll TRY. No promises. I still need to read -- a lot. I wouldn't count on me for much were I you. As I said, I haven't coded anything in decades and all I really know is Pascal and that only minimally at this point, it's been so long. This new stuff is so out there....

I'd really rather tweak the ships so that I can make a Corvette act like an interceptor. My Thales actually outperforms my Franklin! THAT was easy -- once i learned the trick of bringing the thrust to the very edge of acceptance for the SPEC drive.

Ah...I need to go kill some Luddites. I don't want to think about needing to read how to code again.

Y'know, if you guys didn't help me so often in the past....

w.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by loki1950 »

Glad you like LTS distro's using Debian 6.0 myself still with Gnome 2.whatever good enough for the IST(their moving from doze)wrote my first code on a IBM 1700 series in the late 60's in Forte a FORTRAN forerunner punch cards and batch processing still remember the fun when IBM released a new version of IBM360 DOS digging through the docs to find what was new :mrgreen:

Enjoy the Choice :)
my box::HP Envy i5-6400 @2Q70GHzx4 8 Gb ram/1 Tb(Win10 64)/3 Tb Mint 19.2/GTX745 4Gb acer S243HL K222HQL
Q8200/Asus P5QDLX/8 Gb ram/WD 2Tb 2-500 G HD/GF GT640 2Gb Mint 17.3 64 bit Win 10 32 bit acer and Lenovo ideapad 320-15ARB Win 10/Mint 19.2
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by klauss »

Wendy-J wrote: :mrgreen: Did you know that the most advanced processor chip on any of the shuttles was the 8088, NOT the 8086 -- which happens to be the NEWER processor? 8)
Yeah, I heard. I also know they only just recently started exploring the possibility of sending more modern technology, because they're still suck with core RAM. Because, well, it's the only one that can handle cosmic rays.

I hear.

So, fun stuff. You give your flash and HD and DRAM for granted, but when you go up all you have are 8088 and a few K of core RAM. That must be a fun place to work at :D
Wendy-J wrote: Frightening, really. Remember when we had to do EVERYTHING inside of 64k? :shock: There was no such thing as extended RAM, VRAM, Upper Memory, or anything else! The way systems can utilise resources encourages today's programmers to ignore redundancies and global variables, writing local variables for everything. It's called Code Bloat :evil: . -- :twisted: Microsleeze :twisted: is famous for it.
Well, rejoice, mobile rekindled the love of leanness. Even when you have phones with 2G of RAM, using it costs a lot of power, and drains the battery. So people are re-learning how to code efficiently.
Wendy-J wrote: Then there's how the newer incarnations are forcing you to accept desktops I don't like and refusing a GUI login for Root and...well, I could go on,
Well... graphical root is quite a bad idea. Most distros have ksudo and gnome-sudo properly integrated into the desktop, so you don't really need a whole desktop running as root.
Wendy-J wrote: but then, that's why we "Enjoy the Choice". Those are the exact reasons why I'm running the Debian/Boo-Boo derivative Mint...and as I said, I don't go with the bleeding edge releases, I stick with the Long Term Support releases. The OS I'm running is based on Boo-Boo 12.04. Mint 13 Maya -- GNOME 2 -- Desktop.
Well... they don't have LTS, but you still might want to try a live DVD with openSuse. I've always used it, it's friendly, it's current, and while it's not as stable as it used to be, it's got quite a healthy community. Worth a look.
Wendy-J wrote: :evil: I can't abide UIs or User Interfaces that take all the tools away, hence my insistence on GNOME. I can find what i want and need at a glance, or with a single click, rather than click on this, then stare at four bazillion HUGE icons that suck up all sorts of V-RAM while adding a ton of flash no-one wants or needs and mean absolutely nothing to me.
KDE

While a memory hog, true, it's productive, insanely configurable, and in general user friendly. And the flashes they introduce aren't just for show, they're actually comfortable and useful (ie: animations prevent your eyes from loosing focus on windows, so you know what's going on the screen quite intuitively).
Wendy-J wrote: Gee, can you tell I used to code? USED TO.
It's been so long....
What a better excuse to start again than having sighed ? ;)
Wendy-J wrote: I would much prefer Radeon cards, for the very reason you stated, as well as it's NOT part of the wintel almost monopoly. However, while the community poo-poos Nvidia, you have to give them credit, they actually support the community.

Like you -- I don't want hassles and generally go with what is known to work well with Linux. That was the whole reason for this post, actually. I was asking which video card to purchase, not that i already had one. I'm running an NVIDIA card now and, to be perfectly honest, I'm not thrilled with how it performs -- rather poorly actually.
The state of things is, nVidia works almost hassle-free (except when you have a bleeding edge kernel, where building the nVidia driver can take a bit of effort), but nVidia cards tend to be slower than same-priced AMD cards. AMD ones are blazing fast, but their drivers aren't nearly as mature.

Aaand... hardware-accelerated desktops are, while not new, relatively immature. Expect inconsistent performance, with OpenGL games that do crazy shit going at 200fps, and a stupid desktop lagging at 10fps.

I found KDE needs a bit of exploratory configuration until you find the setup that works best for your card, and it's not always the same. Sometimes, Xrandr works best, sometimes OpenGL, sometimes you've got to tweak them, sometimes defaults work. It's a chore, but once you've got it figured out, accelerated desktops can actually perform a lot better than classic ones, especially when multitasking.
Wendy-J wrote: I suppose I can try to LEARN the code for this so that I can debug it. You can't debug without knowing what's going on, which also means yuo need to understand the system instructions and calls. I need to understand the syntax, command structure, which calls work where, when and why etc.... What I don't understand is, why people find it so hard to debug. That's the EASY part. Your logs tell you what happened and where. The problem with most of the software today is, you seldom see: "ERROR LINE 27689 -- IMPROPER SYNTAX, or what have you. It shows you everything it did and when, without the eyecatching all caps entries. What will make things go wonky? I don't know. Wich means I need to understand the engine and.... Eh...looks like a week or two reading the online stuff. I'll TRY. No promises. I still need to read -- a lot. I wouldn't count on me for much were I you. As I said, I haven't coded anything in decades and all I really know is Pascal and that only minimally at this point, it's been so long. This new stuff is so out there....
[/quote]

Debugging GPU stuff is a whole different game. You've got no debugger, you've got no printf. All you've got are the hints of what's wrong on your screen.

Sometimes, you can use tried-and-true bisection. But when you have a bug that's been there forever, it's hard to figure out what's wrong. Sometimes, the GL state gets screwed up, but the game doesn't crash there, it starts misbehaving, first in subtle ways, then obviously, then crashing. By the time it crashes (or misbehaves noticeably), the problem spot is long in the past.

And you've got no debugging info for drivers. That's the thing. So you have to keep guessing. Debugging the kernel, while possible, is really hardcore.

So, in general, if it's shader-related, it's a matter of commenting out shader parts until it stops crashing, and then manually bisecting the offending bit.

But this Radeon bug I'm talking about, seems to happen on the fixed pipeline. That is, basic OpenGL stuff. So I have no idea how to start hunting for it, without looking at it personally. That's why having someone with the knowledge and wits to do the debugging really is so valuable: because you'll really have to guess where the problem is by applying all your knowledge.

And lotsa time. You've got to have lotsa time. If you don't... we all understand.

PS: still, you'll get the Radeon. They're good cards, and you'll get it, because you'll go for the highest bang for the buck, and they're it. And when you do, and VS crashes on you... can you resist the temptation of debugging? :twisted: We'll see... ;)

Still, really, it really takes lots of time. You might be wise to try something else when that happens. Like a cup of tea maybe.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

8088s and Shuttles
klauss wrote: So, fun stuff. You give your flash and HD and DRAM for granted, but when you go up all you have are 8088 and a few K of core RAM. That [NASA] must be a fun place to work at :D
It's like, so totally cosmic, Maan. <--Snigger--> Unreal. Think about it, the chips back then were huge heavy things. There was so much silicon an induced voltage didn't break the PNP & NPN barriers. Simple transistors were still the size of a pea, not a thousand on the head of a pin. Of course our new stuff won't hold up.

Then again, they were rather susceptible to static and teh new isn't. Then there's the technology for the HDDs. You can drop a SATA HDD and not sweat it. It's why they use them in laptops. Drop one of those old RLLS and you'll dent the deck plates.
klauss wrote: Well, rejoice, mobile rekindled the love of leanness. Even when you have phones with 2G of RAM, using it costs a lot of power, and drains the battery. So people are re-learning how to code efficiently.
Assuming it manages to port over to the desktop. Sony is going to stop making televisions. MAC sold, or is selling off, most, if not all of their desktop and laptop factories. They're investing in portable and uber-portable. How much longer before the desktop goes the way of the Main-Frame? I give it five years before we're stuck buying from second and third-rate hardware makers exclusively. intel and AMD will continue on, yet you can bet they'll be making stuff for your telephone, iPod and the like, not a healty robust UPGRADEABLE desktop. Look at the all-in-ones they're selling now. It's all in the monitor and with them being touch screen, you don't even need I/O ports. Scary that.

GUI root login
klauss wrote: Well... graphical root is quite a bad idea. Most distros have ksudo and gnome-sudo properly integrated into the desktop, so you don't really need a whole desktop running as root.
Nope. Not good at all. I've been known to disable my root account as well. HOWEVER...when you're configuring a brand new system, with nothing updated and all the fun things you want set up and running, how many times do YOU want to type a 16 character password? I set it up, configure the system, then -- get this -- I needed to use the root account so infrequently I actually forgot my sudo password! :evil: Grr.... Can you say, SINGLE USER MODE?
Wendy-J wrote: but then, that's why we "Enjoy the Choice". Those are the exact reasons why I'm running the Debian/Boo-Boo derivative Mint...and as I said, I don't go with the bleeding edge releases, I stick with the Long Term Support releases. The OS I'm running is based on Boo-Boo 12.04. Mint 13 Maya -- GNOME 2 -- Desktop.
klauss wrote: Well... they don't have LTS, but you still might want to try a live DVD with openSuse. I've always used it, it's friendly, it's current, and while it's not as stable as it used to be, it's got quite a healthy community. Worth a look.
To me, six months to a year is a VERY short time. Years get shorter as a function of age. I remember when a week was an eternity! Now a decade feels like a month did back then. I don't want to reconfigure my system every year. I like getting comfy. Every five years, your HDD needs to be replaced, need it or not, like it or not. They actually go bad sitting on the shelf. With how LTS systems are maintained for Five years, it makes a scary amount of sense. You're up for new hardware anyway, so give something new a whirl. I do use apps and programmes I port over from Open SUSE. I just can't see installing an OS, then three months later, since I was behind the times as usual, there's no more support. No updates, I can't watch videos because the needed codecs aren't available for the old systems and so on. I was perfectly happy with Firefox 3.68 Then suddenly I couldn't surf any more. YOU NEED A NEW VERSION OF JAVA and it's not written for the old, comfortable, very user friendly browser. You get the picture. I'm old and set in my ways. :lol:

Flashy screens....
klauss wrote: While a memory hog, true, it's productive, insanely configurable, and in general user friendly. And the flashes they introduce aren't just for show, they're actually comfortable and useful (ie: animations prevent your eyes from loosing focus on windows, so you know what's going on the screen quite intuitively).
I railed against Adobe FLASH! I told AT&T they were making a mistake when they went with Adobe anything. I spent more time reinstalling doze 3.11 because of it than you'd believe. Flash only got worse as time went on. It STILL refuses to release resources, even with Firefox 20 whatever it is I'm running now. Everyonce in a while I'll hear my system fan start to scream and I'm actually not even doing anything with the browser. It's just open and there's a flash applet on the page that's sucked up all 2G of my system RAM.

HARD BOOT.

WHat do I need a desktop that will do that for -- read to -- me? Besides, I can't find squat in that side bar. Give me back my panels. I KNOW where everything is there and I have the mini-boxes showing what's going on on all four virtual desktops and I even have a notify applet to get my attention. It flashes the icon demanding attention and that's in good old fashioned GNOME 2.0.

I really don't want to learn a new way of doing the same old same old, when I'm already comfortable with what I have. I tried the desktop that came with Mint. It lasted two whole days. I spent more time on the Internet looking up where to find everyday apps than I did using the blasted things! Yeah, it's a failing on my part. I STILL don't own a smart phone. Why should I go BACK to billing by the minute for Internet connectivity at modem speeds and a minuscule screen? My screen is my old 32" HD TV. It's a monitor with a tuner. THe specs are the same for that as they are my Hanns-G 22". I gave tiny screens and charge by the minute up in 1995 when I managed to go with broadband!

It's comfy, well worn and I'm happy with it. It really is a failing. I've beome my grandmother! :shock: YUCK!
klauss wrote:
Wendy-J wrote: Gee, can you tell I used to code? USED TO.
It's been so long....
What a better excuse to start again than having sighed ? ;)
I could give you my great-grandson's excuse when we tell him to eat his peas.
And I quote: "Don' wanna!"
:lol:
I even have my lip stuck out!
klauss wrote: The state of things is, nVidia works almost hassle-free (except when you have a bleeding edge kernel, where building the nVidia driver can take a bit of effort), but nVidia cards tend to be slower than same-priced AMD cards. AMD ones are blazing fast, but their drivers aren't nearly as mature.

Aaand... hardware-accelerated desktops are, while not new, relatively immature. Expect inconsistent performance, with OpenGL games that do crazy shit going at 200fps, and a stupid desktop lagging at 10fps.

I found KDE needs a bit of exploratory configuration until you find the setup that works best for your card, and it's not always the same. Sometimes, Xrandr works best, sometimes OpenGL, sometimes you've got to tweak them, sometimes defaults work. It's a chore, but once you've got it figured out, accelerated desktops can actually perform a lot better than classic ones, especially when multitasking.
Let's not talk about KDE. Want to talk about something that drags my current systems to their knees? Whisper KDE. Oh, it LOOKED great back when I got the P4 I'm using now. But that's it. It sat there and LOOKED at me, even with a discrete nVidia card. I coudn't do a bloody thing, yet it looked great. :) Calling it a 1-FPS Desktop was being generous. I'd click, get up, go downstairs, make a cup of coffee and some toast, root through the fridge, build a snack, then head back and see it still chugging away. That was all it took and I was back with GNOME.

Even with GNOME 2.0, I run into inconsistencies with OpenGL anything. Flaky now, dead later and working like a champ in the morning.
klauss wrote: Debugging GPU stuff is a whole different game. You've got no debugger, you've got no printf. All you've got are the hints of what's wrong on your screen.
That loud bang you just heard -- and probably felt -- was my head hitting the desk. (It's an old military surplus SteelCase, so it's substantial -- like the rock that just hit it.) You mean, do like setting up codecs used to be in doze? Disable this one, enable that, tweak the other and pray?
klauss wrote: Sometimes, you can use tried-and-true bisection. But when you have a bug that's been there forever, it's hard to figure out what's wrong. Sometimes, the GL state gets screwed up, but the game doesn't crash there, it starts misbehaving, first in subtle ways, then obviously, then crashing. By the time it crashes (or misbehaves noticeably), the problem spot is long in the past.
You DO mean that!
klauss wrote: And you've got no debugging info for drivers. That's the thing. So you have to keep guessing. Debugging the kernel, while possible, is really hardcore.

So, in general, if it's shader-related, it's a matter of commenting out shader parts until it stops crashing, and then manually bisecting the offending bit.
Hit or miss, so long as you go about it in a logical and orderly fashion? OUCH! The easiest way is to cut it all and start enabling one by one, but with 512 or more shaders.... Remember the BOOKS we used to get when we got hardware? You got the full instruction set. Those really were the days.
klauss wrote: But this Radeon bug I'm talking about, seems to happen on the fixed pipeline. That is, basic OpenGL stuff. So I have no idea how to start hunting for it, without looking at it personally. That's why having someone with the knowledge and wits to do the debugging really is so valuable: because you'll really have to guess where the problem is by applying all your knowledge.

And lotsa time. You've got to have lotsa time. If you don't... we all understand.
Let me see some of the issues, I'll read up on the OpenGL stuff and have a go in my spare time. IF I get my teeth into it, I get like a Terrier. If I wind up screaming, I may well say, no, but at least I tried.
klauss wrote: PS: still, you'll get the Radeon. They're good cards, and you'll get it, because you'll go for the highest bang for the buck, and they're it. And when you do, and VS crashes on you... can you resist the temptation of debugging? :twisted: We'll see... ;)
Yeah, it's like, why CAN'T a Clyde handle like a Franklin. What do you need to do to it to make it work?
klauss wrote: Still, really, it really takes lots of time. You might be wise to try something else when that happens. Like a cup of tea maybe.
Old programmer's trick. Note my cup of coffee, toast, cheese hunks etc.... Although, I don't usually take advantage of it until my eyes are bleeding and my brain is mush. Let me see some of the issues people are having and I'll dip my toe in. ONLY MY TOE, mind you.
Jeez, this was like a walk through memory lane.

C-ya,
w.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

I WANT to help. You guys helped me, it's my turn. Right?
klauss wrote: But this Radeon bug I'm talking about, seems to happen on the fixed pipeline. That is, basic OpenGL stuff. So I have no idea how to start hunting for it, without looking at it personally. That's why having someone with the knowledge and wits to do the debugging really is so valuable: because you'll really have to guess where the problem is by applying all your knowledge.

And lotsa time. You've got to have lotsa time. If you don't... we all understand.

PS: still, you'll get the Radeon. They're good cards, and you'll get it, because you'll go for the highest bang for the buck, and they're it. And when you do, and VS crashes on you... can you resist the temptation of debugging? :twisted: We'll see... ;)

Still, really, it really takes lots of time. You might be wise to try something else when that happens. Like a cup of tea maybe.
The more I think about it, the more I want to help and the less I seem to know.
I wrote programmes for payroll, not video games. Note my buying computers with number crunching in mind, not video games. When I realised I could do more with the hardware than I could the software, I started doing that and got a decent job.

The more I read about OpenGL the less I know.
Found this in my quest for learning using the google search prhase "Radeon Driver and debugging OpenGL in Linux"

AMD CODEXL http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks ... ng/codexl/ It's by AMD -- as if you couldn't tell -- and replaces gDEBugger. It does:
WHAT IS AMD CODEXL?
AMD CodeXL is a comprehensive tool suite that enables developers to harness the benefits of AMD CPUs, GPUs and APUs. It includes powerful GPU debugging, comprehensive GPU and CPU profiling, and static OpenCL™ kernel analysis capabilities, enhancing accessibility for software developers to enter the era of heterogeneous computing. AMD CodeXL is available both as a Visual Studio® extension and a standalone user interface application for Windows® and Linux®.

AMD CodeXL increases developer productivity by helping them identify programming errors and performance issues in their application quickly and easily. Now developers can debug, profile and analyze their applications with a full system-wide view on AMD APU, GPU and CPUs.

CPU PROFILING
AMD CodeXL has profiling suite that helps software developers to identify, investigate and improve the performance of applications, drivers and system software on AMD CPUs. It helps find time critical hotspots and diagnose performance issues, precisely with CPU sampling and call-graph profiling features. AMD CodeXL CPU profiling is ready to be used to improve the performance of games and media-oriented applications, transaction processing, and high performance scientific/engineering computation.

GPU DEBUGGING
AMD CodeXL offers comprehensive GPU debugging with the ability debug OpenCL™ & OpenGL API calls and OpenCL™ kernels. It enables developers to step through the source code to find bugs, optimize performance and reduce memory consumption. The debugger includes real-time OpenCL™ kernel debugging, which allows developers to step into the kernel execution directly from the API calls, debug inside the kernel, view all variable values across different work groups and work items – and all this on a single computer with a single GPU.

AMD CodeXL takes the mystery out of debugging OpenCL™ and OpenGL, allowing developers to peek into compute and graphic memory objects, monitor their contents, and detect memory leaks and code paths that caused it. Users can view and save the API call logs, find the deprecated functions and see the recommended alternative function calls.
And while that sounds LOVELY, since you can address individual shaders, see how the software interacts with the hardware and it even allows you to adjust the various shaders, yet that's for ths system it runs on. It doesn't seem to address the issues I've seen with video problems.

I'm feeling more and more out fo my depth as I go, yet I really do feel a need to do this.

HELP!

w.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by klauss »

Wendy-J wrote: a healty robust UPGRADEABLE desktop
People just don't understand when I say the same thing. It's annoying.

Wendy-J wrote:Can you say, SINGLE USER MODE?
Single user mode.

But... I don't like single user. I share my PC with my family all the time. I LOVE multiuser, proper user accounts, even sometimes multi-seat (yeah I've reached those extremes, only because it was fun to set up).
Wendy-J wrote:
klauss wrote: Well... they don't have LTS, but you still might want to try a live DVD with openSuse. I've always used it, it's friendly, it's current, and while it's not as stable as it used to be, it's got quite a healthy community. Worth a look.
To me, six months to a year is a VERY short time. Years get shorter as a function of age. I remember when a week was an eternity! Now a decade feels like a month did back then. I don't want to reconfigure my system every year. I like getting comfy. Every five years, your HDD needs to be replaced, need it or not, like it or not. They actually go bad sitting on the shelf. With how LTS systems are maintained for Five years, it makes a scary amount of sense. You're up for new hardware anyway, so give something new a whirl. I do use apps and programmes I port over from Open SUSE. I just can't see installing an OS, then three months later, since I was behind the times as usual, there's no more support. No updates, I can't watch videos because the needed codecs aren't available for the old systems and so on. I was perfectly happy with Firefox 3.68 Then suddenly I couldn't surf any more. YOU NEED A NEW VERSION OF JAVA and it's not written for the old, comfortable, very user friendly browser. You get the picture. I'm old and set in my ways. :lol:
While I understand your POV (I have the same issue, I stay behind all the time because... well... upgrading the whole distro is a burden, it's not like small progressive package updates), while I do understand your POV, openSuse's support spans a little more than 3 months. I think it's about 2 years.
Wendy-J wrote: I railed against Adobe FLASH! I told AT&T they were making a mistake when they went with Adobe anything. I spent more time reinstalling doze 3.11 because of it than you'd believe. Flash only got worse as time went on. It STILL refuses to release resources, even with Firefox 20 whatever it is I'm running now. Everyonce in a while I'll hear my system fan start to scream and I'm actually not even doing anything with the browser. It's just open and there's a flash applet on the page that's sucked up all 2G of my system RAM.
I didn't mean flash, tho. Accelerated. Like composited desktops.
Wendy-J wrote:Let's not talk about KDE. Want to talk about something that drags my current systems to their knees? Whisper KDE. Oh, it LOOKED great back when I got the P4 I'm using now. But that's it. It sat there and LOOKED at me, even with a discrete nVidia card. I coudn't do a bloody thing, yet it looked great. :) Calling it a 1-FPS Desktop was being generous. I'd click, get up, go downstairs, make a cup of coffee and some toast, root through the fridge, build a snack, then head back and see it still chugging away. That was all it took and I was back with GNOME.
You know, KDE did improve a lot over time. Take a live DVD and give it a whirl.
Wendy-J wrote:
klauss wrote: Debugging GPU stuff is a whole different game. You've got no debugger, you've got no printf. All you've got are the hints of what's wrong on your screen.
That loud bang you just heard -- and probably felt -- was my head hitting the desk. (It's an old military surplus SteelCase, so it's substantial -- like the rock that just hit it.) You mean, do like setting up codecs used to be in doze? Disable this one, enable that, tweak the other and pray?
Indeed.


Wendy-J wrote:I WANT to help. You guys helped me, it's my turn. Right?
There's no obligation. Only if you feel like it.
Wendy-J wrote:AMD CODEXL http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks ... ng/codexl/ It's by AMD -- as if you couldn't tell -- and replaces gDEBugger.
Yeah, nVidia has similar tools, but they're windows-only, and they don't run in wine. So I don't use them.
Wendy-J wrote:I'm feeling more and more out fo my depth as I go, yet I really do feel a need to do this.
Start small. Get VS to crash first (reproducing the bug is always the first step).

We'll see what to do then.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

klauss wrote:
Wendy-J wrote: a healty robust UPGRADEABLE desktop
People just don't understand when I say the same thing. It's annoying.
"I can put more RAM and a bigger HDD in it. Of course it's upgradeable!" Yeah, right.
klauss wrote:
Wendy-J wrote:Can you say, SINGLE USER MODE?
Single user mode.

But... I don't like single user. I share my PC with my family all the time. I LOVE multiuser, proper user accounts, even sometimes multi-seat (yeah I've reached those extremes, only because it was fun to set up).
It's what you use when you lose your root password. I think you misunderstood.
klauss wrote: You know, KDE did improve a lot over time. Take a live DVD and give it a whirl.
I did, I do and I have. It's still RAM Hungry. I'm running what amounts to a single core attempting to emulate a dual core and only with 2Gig of system RAM while sharing 128MB for Video. KDE does NOT a happy camper make -- not when compared to how fast things go in GNOME 2.0. GNOME 3 is as RAM hungry as KDE.
klauss wrote:There's no obligation.(to help with debugging) Only if you feel like it.
I wouldn't be here if I didn't.
klauss wrote:
Wendy-J wrote:AMD CODEXL http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks ... ng/codexl/ It's by AMD -- as if you couldn't tell -- and replaces gDEBugger.
Yeah, nVidia has similar tools, but they're windows-only, and they don't run in wine. So I don't use them.
Pity. Then again, while they support the community, they FORGET the community at the same time.
klauss wrote:
Wendy-J wrote:I'm feeling more and more out fo my depth as I go, yet I really do feel a need to do this.
Start small. Get VS to crash first (reproducing the bug is always the first step).

We'll see what to do then.
See IF it crashes on me? :twisted: I always get games to crash -- ANY games. Then again, more often than not the fun for me is in hacking the game, not in playing it. That ALWAYS makes a game crash. Do you remember when PU used to crash if you had too much cash on hand? I think the limit was somewhere around 200,000,000 credits or something like that. Then there were the issues with making ships go ten times faster than physics said they should go, putting mounts and turrets on craft that shouldn't have them, then having them shoot THROUGH your craft to hit the target.... There are always ways to make the game crash. Can I make X do Y when it's supposed to do Z? Let's see. It's why HEllCatV used to love me as a play tester. I FOUND ways to make the game crash.

First, I need to get that card, which means building the machine -- two of them actually, one for me and one for my husband. It's why I need to wait a bit. RIght now, I have about $1,200 earmarked for the machines. In two months I'll have closer to $2,000 and have enough for boot drives, MoBos, procs, P/Ss, LOTS AND LOTS OF RAM...and Video Cards. Let us not forget a USB joystick or two. Then I'll transfer my data drives over and be good to go. If you recall, it was something like 350 for P/Ss, 350 for procs, 300 for MoBos, 300 for RAM, 400 for Video Cards, about 250 for HDDs, 75 for cases and 80 for joysticks. That's a major OUCH.

Still, the last time I built a machine around the Proc and MoBo was back around 2002 or 2003, just in time for it to be obsolete for the first VS-PU alpha test. I actually had to do several upgrades to it in order to play! That machine finally died of old age and abuse last year. Or was it two years ago? Like I said, years are like months at this stage of the game. Since, I've been keeping things going by purchasing from the local university's trash to treasures programme. You get two or three 2 to 5 year old machines for about 50.00 each, canibalise(sp?) two of them to make one and pray it holds out for another year. I want a machine I can keep going for a while by installing a new proc, more RAM, different video and audio, maybe add a BluRay writer etc.... I figured an 8 core with 16 to 32Gig of RAM and a reasonable discrete video card and surround sound audio would do me for a while. When you consider most system packages sold for less than $1,000 today are dual and quad core and those comprise the vast majority of the systems out there, I should have a lasting machine. That last upgrade was the last time I purchased an OS for list. That was when I decided Microsleeze was getting way out of hand with how they rape the consumer and went with Mandrivel. I ran that for two years PAST when Mandrivel decided they weren't going to make a free Live CD I could turn into a working system. Now I use Minty-Fresh Boo-Boo.

Speaking of names, while I can appreciate what Ubuntu means, it's more than a mouthful and the base colour scheme is for the birds. Orange? Yuck!

Anywho, in a few more weeks, I'll be building and crashing things anew.

w.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by TBeholder »

Try XUbuntu, then. It got a fairly good theme as default (but why use default themes when you have the whole repository?) and instead of that "Unity" abomination it runs XFCE. Which have a few weak sides, but IMHO overall is the most practical - got a basic set of panel widgets more convenient than old Gnome/Metacity (Launcher menu, Quicklauncher, Directory Menu, Generic Monitor, separate custom menu) without becoming all bells-and-whistles-oriented like Compiz and/or getting too voracious (the only part occasionally eating >1% CPU is Sensors plugin).
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by loki1950 »

Another low resource desk top is LDXE it's now Knoppix's default though Klauss has added added Compiz to it for the terminally bells and whistles set :mrgreen: I always have copy of it about for repairing wonky systems have both usb key and DVD versions usually from some obliging magazine so I don't have to download the whole thing on this data plan limited cellular dongle I use for connectivity.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by pheonixstorm »

hehe did someone mention Turbo C++ and Turbo Pascal??

I still have my Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS and Turbo C++ for windows floppies. Turbo for windows (for those that aren't that old or never used it) included ProtoGen for creating windows apps. Or to sum it up... C++ Builder for win 3.1 This got me into some old DOS game programming with a heavy interest in BBS Door games. Ah to play Tradewars2002 again.. that would be fun.

hehe copyright 1987-1993... I miss my old 486 DX2 66. Complete with 2 (or was it 4)mb VLB graphics, Sound Blaster Pro, 420mb HD, and 4 or 8mb of RAM. Damn thing cost my parents 4k. Back when a computer was a major investment, not just another cheap throw away appliance. Privateer was my game (though I had played WC, Pirate, Kings Quest, Police Quest, and some B-17 flight sim before).

Though I think *the* most enjoyable game I found in those days was Multi-player Battletech on GEnie. Talk about by the hour charges... $4-8 an hour depending on the time of day.

As far as smart phones though... from what I looked at from the Android SDK they are pushing mostly java code rather than pure C++ for most apps.

As to linux... Beginning of 2000ish or so I almost got a tech job with LinuxGrooven(?) doing support work. Sadly before I could start or even go through the training coarse the companies owners raided the corporate accounts and the company went under. Would have been a nice high paying job for me.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by klauss »

pheonixstorm wrote:As far as smart phones though... from what I looked at from the Android SDK they are pushing mostly java code rather than pure C++ for most apps.
Yes, but they make you take tons of steps to keep the GC in check, so for the first time in years people are caring about memory usage.
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Re: Hello...Been a WHILE. Building a....

Post by Wendy-J »

Ooh...the days of sweating over DMAs and IRQs.
pheonixstorm wrote:I miss my old 486 DX2 66. Complete with 2 (or was it 4)mb VLB graphics, Sound Blaster Pro, 420mb HD, and 4 or 8mb of RAM. Damn thing cost my parents 4k. Back when a computer was a major investment, not just another cheap throw away appliance. Privateer was my game (though I had played WC, Pirate, Kings Quest, Police Quest, and some B-17 flight sim before)
I've a couple of DX266 chips and a Cyrix DX100, as well as a board. As for sound, I'd have to pair it up with an old multifunction I/O card I ripped out of an old Packard Bell machine. It's a Blaster 16 compat -- mostly. Heck, I even have the fresh install CDs with DOS 6.22 and doze for workgroups 3.11 and a DVD full of the updates for it, although I don't think you'll find a web browser that will work with it. It won't run much more than Netscape 2. I think I have an ISA modem card for it as well. As for video, I've an old 2MB PCI card for it. I don't THINK it has a vesa slot, but it DOES have ISA slots. I even have an FM tuner card to put in it. Then you could play all those games to your heart's content...assuming your floppies and the CDs are still good. As for a HDD, good luck. I MIGHT have a WD Caviar 4G and maybe even a 13G lying around here somewhere that still works, but finding a working controller card for them might be an issue...no...there it is! An old promise Ultra 66 will work in that board. That will get you going with a HDD. DOS will require you carve those up into 256mb logical drives though. I don't have any of the old off-set software to allow the OS to see the drives. :wink: Got you covered on RAM too. This old girl takes the old SD RAM sticks and I have at least one 32MB Ram stick that will work with it.

(EDIT) Dont forget the CD ROM. I have one or two that still work. (Edit)
(Edit-2) How abut Redhat 5.2? I have the CD for that and Star Office 5 if you want choice. I may even have a copy of Mandrake 6 that will work with it. (Edit-2)

:mrgreen: I kid you not, I have all that gear sitting on the bench behind me.

w.
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