Geek stuff

[elfs]

So, I've migrated back to Firefox 1.0.7 from Firefox 1.5. Firefox 1.5 (aka "Deer Park") was too slow on my Linux laptop, which is a pretty small machine; it used (I might say abused) the canvas widget far too often, resulting in that last layer of abstraction that slows everything down to a crawl.

I also think my Palm V/m500 has finally started to show its age. Despite being reliable for the past five years, it has now crashed seemingly at random, taking all of its data with it. I'm now doing daily backups in the hopes I don't lose anything.

And I installed DOSEmu on my desktop. Is doing a full-blown emulation of an x386 with SVGA and SoundBlaster really the best way to provide access to ancient games like Powermonger and Dark Forces? I mean, other than actually running DOS, which would be, um, archaic.

Comments

[solarbird]

Isn't there some sort of VirtualPC for Linux? You could run that, and then run Actual DOS under it.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's what DOSEmu is. The problem is that it's slow. Even on a
2.1GhZ AMD box it's not fast enough to run some of the games that ran fine on
an x486. There are two emulators; I'm tempted to try the other one.

[solarbird]

If it's that much slower, it isn't using the AMD's processor virtualisation. Try another one.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm still quite happily using my Visor Platinum, which isn't exactly the same vintage as your Palm, but pretty close. I've thought about upgrading, but most of the stuff on the market now just turns my stomach. It feels like they took a clean, usable design and crammed it full of check-box features... color, ARM CPU, built-in camera, SD slot, mp3 playing, all of it bolted lopsidedly onto the sagging operating system.

I'll be curious when they finally figure out what the Linux-based successor to PalmOS 6 is going to be like. Will it manage to pull everything together into an elegant whole again, or will it just be more of the same?

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

I need to sort out something like that for my brother. He's got a lot of old DOS games that he wants to run so I've put a copy of VMware on his machine (VMware for windows) and I have to try and set it up as a DOS games machine.

The problem is that it's been so long that I can't remember all the little tricks like getting the sound working and the memory allocated correctly, etc.

Argh!

[kengr]

This is why a friend still has his old 486 set up next to his fancy new system.

Why emulate when the old hardware can be had for free with a bit of looking?

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Did I miss something? Why did you migrate away from Firefox 1.0.7? That you migrated back indicates the move away.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I migrated from Firefox 1.0.7 to Firefox 1.5. I found the latter to be too slow for my old hardware, so I went back.