YOyoyoyoHOhohohoh,
Wow, it's quite an undertaking to try and get ms-dos and it's games working in a real execution environment.
So far I've been messing with zipdrives and zipdisks but got that working a s well, under real and virtualize environments which is kinda cool.
FAT16 was created on a 4 TB usb drive.
USB protocol specification was read but I still don't understand how USB ma ss storage devices are circumventing MBR and BIOS 2 TB limitations.
VMWare 8 cannot work with larger than 2 TB drives, partitions are also not working in that case.
I did buy a new internal harddisk to try and install windows 10 32 bit on i t maybe...
And bought about 4 or 5 usb sticks to experiment with other operating sytem s.
I had a scare with wrong zipdrive drivers from internet, virtualized my own floppy disk driver made it available see other post.
Some Turbo pascal 7 programs don't work in ms-dos on fast machine if they u sed crt, division by zero problem runtime error 200, tppatch can be used to fix those, still need to find crt replacement unit if I want to develop in tp7.
WinImage 9 don't work on windows 98, fortunately winimage 8.1 does work, to virtualize floppies, not really necessary, but nice anyway, is only necess ary for boot floppies I guess, otherwise files can just be copied, then aga in, maybe floppy image also copies floppy partition if such a thing exists ? not sure, could be usefull.
USB analyzer software failed to install properly first time, disabled usb m ouse and usb keyboard, fortunately ps/2 and ps/2 mouse was available and ke pt working allowing me to re-install this shitty trail software and eventua lly removed it, that shit almost nuked my windows 7, accidenly removed vmdk to vhd converter from t2ware software but reinstalled it later.
Turns out I already installed wireshark with usbcap or something and does a llow some analysis of usb protocols.
So far seen usbms (mass storage) and scsi protocol over usb but still hard to determine how this exactly works, will dive into this deeper maybe later .
usb 2 usb transfer cable seems interesting, might wanna buy that, but might need new software, I also found null modem cable lol, while searching thro ugh a whole bunch of floppy disks, about a 100 or so, kinda funny to see ho w many floppy disks we used to have back then, Though I swapped some of my best with somebody elses, there's kinda shitty and mine good, never got the m back, kinda regret that a little bit, but fortunately whatever is missing can be downloaded from internet, like dune 2 perhaps and others, though so me are still pay-ware wow... that kind sucks... I also found a dune 1 disk. .. would be funny if that could run and such... I also find some other slig htly interesting disks... an pcm magazine anti virus disk but it's probably very old and inferior to f-prot... this pcm disk is from 1992. Also found a funny floppy disk with junky virus on it, boot sector virus, harmless if put into floppy disk and scan it, and f-prot finds it... but don't restart computer and forget to pull it out otherwise virus boots from floppy disk a nd becomes active lol, almost forgot to pull it out on time lol, quite funn y, got lucky ! =D
It's a very good idea to install f-prot or some other as recent as possible ms-dos virus scanner if you are going to try retro gaming ! ;) =D
I still have to scan all the files/games I downloaded form the internet and extracted.
There is little risk to C drive I guess cause ms-dos can't see it anyway,bu t still, better be safe than sorry, for hardware too, but it would be quite funny to scan those files, see if there are any virusses in there! ;)
Now some bad news:
Realtek Audio AC97 has no audio drivers for ms-dos as far as I know, I did find some via audio ac97 audio drivers did not try them yet.
Creative X-Fi also has no ms-dos audio drivers.
There is fortunately still pc-speaker so that could at least give some joy to gaming.
Doom was tried and was quite funny to hear on pc-speaker.
I also look forward to duke nukem cause it has this iconic pc speaker sound =D
Another game I look forward to is captain comic ! I can remember that game, it was one of the first graphical games I had on the PC !
I completely didn't understand how to play it so I never get very far in th is game, so I hope now that manuals are also available on the internet to g et much further and see how far I get, though maybe I will find the game bo ring, don't know yet. I think this game inspired me to become a PC programm er, though I already was inspired by C64 and a programming book for C64 :) But still it needs some guts and convincing to program on a new computer/ar chitecture and this game probably did that =D
UFO enemy unknown which happened to be on one of the zipdisks for whatever reasons won't run on it, it will go to intro but then it won't show menu, d on't know why yet, maybe this distribution/files are simply broken or perha ps there is a deeper issue.
Loading from parallel port takes quite long but is kinda funny/amazing to w atch. VMWare can work with zipdrive by adding parallel port to it... I reco mmend not to run games from zipdrive parallel port version ;) :) Unless the y very small.
So far it was an amazing experience this trip down retro-lane !
I had to make all kinds of decisions, think it through, find virtualization solutions, tranfer solutions, all kinds of stuff, it's quite technical, am azing.
Best decision was to not try and install an usb floppy disk 7-in-1 drive ca use if I misplace the usb header *AGAIN* I would *AGAIN* blow up my motherb oard like I did many years ago and I certainly do not want that to happen e ver again, so that kind sucks the way that plug is designed but ok. It's ve ry tempting to install the floppy drive for easy moving of tiny little file s between computers, but today it kinda hit me there is also the risk of bo ot sector infection and that is probably not worth the risk, though I run s o much software, kinda crazy.
Anyway I don't even know if I have another usb header available, and this w ould add another 4 or 5 usb drives possibly to my system and that would be totally crazy cause I am already short on drive letters, so also for that r eason, better not, I will miss you floppy drive ! =D
But if I really need it I can read it from other computers ! ;) :)
Had some boot menu issues, boot menu would not show up, ps/2 keyboard would somehow freeze the boot process, this was quite annoying.
USB Keyboard better for entering boot menu.
However this was also some weird kind of electrical issue, probably motherb oard power leakage or maybe static eletric discharge from body/cloths onto chasis entering motherboard, maybe gsm/wireless interference not sure.
After 2 days of using laptop only and letting PC "cool down electrically" b oot menu worked again. Alternative would be to de-plug literally all cables and let it rest for 2 minutes onto floor or so, but was lazy and did other things with laptop which also was kinda cool.
Glad to be back in the saddle again with windows 7 and dreampc, cause this
10-year old PC has a pretty big software stack that new PC users can only d ream off, so that makes this old PC kinda quite powerfull SOFTWARE which is kinda funny.FEEEEEELS VERY POWEEERFULLL let me assure you.
Also nothing beat nice CRT or LCD monitors... bending neck down to see lapt op screen is kinda annoying.
Also laptops have f***ed up keyboards which is awfull to type on, literally AWFULL.
Funny enough though, laptop can also boot into ms-dos usb drive and I playe d doom on laptop with laptop pc-like-speaker haha, sounded funny.
Had some video of that, not sure if I am going to upload let me know if you want me to upload that otherwise I will have to make that decision myself, might be boring to watch, then again kinda interesting to prove all of thi s can be done on existing hardware, laptop from 2012, icore/hdmi and so for th.
Also laptop does not have any ms-dos drivers for it's sound chip as far as I know so that is also very unfortunate.
So far nothing beats real hardware. VMWare cannot scroll x-mode fluently, n ot on AMD X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz system, slightly surprising but not really, kind a expected it, still does run better than expected and window can be moved around and such which was funny to see, but it was also very convincing tha t real hardware is needed to get that true ms-dos dedicated CPU-vibe.
Sad to see no sound drives available for newer audio cards and chips.
I may have to fall back to pentium 166 and clean it's little cpu fan, which makes a lot of noise, probably out of oil. Would need to clean power suppl y as well just to be safe, bit risky to do that.
Or fall back to Pentium 3, 450 MHz.
And now comes a bit of a surprise. I also have my old parents PC which is a n Athlon 2600XP or something like that.
Forgot exactly what it is, never powered it on since it's in my appartment, don't know why I don't power on, cause I just don't like computers that ar e not "Skybuck-approved" or something, or just a weird little duck.
Bought that PC together with my dad at Makro, went for the cheaper option j ust to save them some bucks, wasn't a totally terrible decision, but I cons ider that PC a bit weird, it's a Hewlet Packard and it's PURPLE for gods's/ f*ck's sakes ?!
It just looks to weird to fit in my apparement wooden look I guess.
But maybe I should give it another look to see if it can do retro gaming.
That would be kinda funny. I am a bit curious towards it's audio solution/c hip.
It also had a very weird thing in the back ieee 1984 or 1994 not sure what the f*ck that is ?! maybe firewire or something ?? Not sure.
It has 256 MB ram if I recall while Pentium 3 has 512 MB ram, which I upgra ded a few years ago, didn't really get to use it that much unless dreampc i s down for some reason still nice to internet on it.
The 256 MB ram is limitting the atlon xp way too much to be of any serious use in todays windows world.
So that PC should have never been sold with that low ammount of RAM, haha, what a sham/shame ! ;) =D But ok, it was kinda cheap, now you kinda kn own why, and it was a very weird CPU duct inside of it which kinda freaks m e out lol, and it's powersupply probably also needs cleaning, cause I remem ber slapping the shit out of it cause I got annoyed last time I used it at "mother's/parent's" place. Hmmm, I am actually using it's LCD monitor was kinda went with it, though the original had CRT monitor with speakers which gave beautifull sound at least in that room, LCD was bought by a priest HA HA ! At first didn't like it, but this LCD from fujitsu siemens is quite co ol ! ;) =D
Perhaps it was this LCD monitor that kinda inspired me slowly to give retro a try or so ;)
I also watched the threadripper 3 64 core announcement, amazing to see thes e specs and also it's better than their server chips in some ways, which is almost crazy as seeing it's half the cost ! WOW.
So still lot's of work/stuff to do but slowly getting there, can't wait to play captain cosmic, but I am taking my time to do it right =D
I guess so far it's the journey to get there that I am kinda enjoying, this technical journey and usb protocol and scsi is/was fascinating the shit ou t of me and I really want to know how it's able to use 4 TB disks on Window s 7/MBR/BIOS that was pretty mind blowing yes when I started realizing what it is capable of =D
Multi-partition/multi-boot/multi-operating system is very risky though, bec ause of different operating systems and bugs and the way the handle/write p artitions and such that's why I went with many usb sticks for now, to circu mvent those issues and risks and to not have to learn grub for now, maybe i n future I will learn grub.
For only 4 primary partitions, not so sure it's worth learning grub and was ting time if operating systems overwrite partition/file/disk allocation tab les and what not, but might experiment with that too.
I also kinda wanna try ubuntu to see if it has zipdrive support build in or how easy it is to enable it, I tried with sparky linux and failed, driver might not be there, don't know how to download driver from internet and ins tall it, that kinda sucked, so I went back to windows and ms-dos and such a nd eventually had great success with it as written in differen thread ! ;)
Linux should get some "driver download store" for rare/historical drives or such. Instead of removing them from kernel never to be seen again ;) hint hint: (Windows-killer).
So yes that was also tried, trying to get zipdrive working under sparky lin ux ;)
So there ya have it folks, quite an undertaking.
I also learned ms-dos/windows xp/bioses have all kinds of hardisk size limi tations, but for now 2 GB should be ok for most bios based systems.
Bye for now, Skybuck.