Hiii!
Took a while but I am back! Where was I? Ah yes - 6502. Making clock for R65C02 was harder than I thought. First I tried
my Arduino Pro Mini. Documentation stated that 4 us delay should be no issue for it. I got 6.5 us delay. Too much (I believe
that other parts of code made it so long). Then I tried my Raspberry Pi 1B. CPU there is 700MHz, many times more than
Arduinos 16MHz but I forgot Raspberry Pi is a full computer: Even if script was supposed to toggle pin each 1 us thanks to
kernel doing different tasks and pythons garbage collector I got toggle each 25 us...
Back to Arduino! Arduinos Atmel 328P is clocked at 16MHz. 16000000Hz - 62,5ns per clock cycle. Nanoseconds! New idea: Assembly.
Week ago I started doing research about it. Today it took me entire day but I finally managed: Simple script turning output on
forever after input. Then script to make output correspond to input and then I managed to make exactly what I need!
I had to do small rewire and add ceramic capacitor to button but now output D10 is constantly HIGH with ~1,5 us long LOW state
on button press! I might add extra few NOPs to also add software safety against button bouncing. I actually have a wire
connecting Arduinos output and 6502 clock input! Tommorow I hook up power, ground, hardwire NOP to data lane and begin readings!
In meantime WDC W65C02 came from Mouser. THE W65C02! Same as in Ben Eater's video. Somewhere in future I might replace R65C02
with it.

Rollercoasters!
I might have not said it in past but I am a big fan of Chris Sawyer's Games! Got Transport Tycoon, TTD and
Locomotion on my shelf and now Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 Deluxe Edition (it's European re-release with all DLCs) and
Rollercoaster Tycoon 3! All in Big Box! My ThinkPad 760ED and Windows XP computer can't wait for me to play them :-D

That clock for 6502 might be the sole issue why it took me some time. While thinking of solutions (and making will to keep
working on it) I started to play CS2 and Minecraft again. I also played Project Zomboid! Survived 9 days, cleared Rosewood
but new update spawned all zombies :-/
While I talk about the games: I disassembled Streaming PC. Or should I say I plugged peripherals out and stuck computer back
into desk. Streaming is pretty fun, and using second computer for it is even better, but I guess wasn't interesting enough
to keep people on chat, and that's the best part of streaming: Integration with people on the chat! Eventually streaming
would need from me so much energy I gave up on it.
That's how my last weeks went :-)

Logging out, Skilowi

Hello everyone!
Sorry for not writing so long. Lately my life has been work - stream - sleep. It's quite fun, interaction with people
trough chat while stupid stuff happens in the game, but might need third screen :-)
Anyway, there's new stuff happening! Two days ago I searched and found 4x AT26C64. It's 64k Atmel EEPROM! I bought it
loooong time ago. Now I bought something else, thing that should come to me today but didn't, and that is Rockwell
R65C02. Yes! CMOS 6502 CPU! I have been watching Ben Eater's videos for some time already, tried programming in x64 assembly
and did read about Altair 8800. I thought maybe I could try build something like that myself? Well, the computer won't be
supposed to reach complexity of Ben Eater's one (UART, Serial, sound, graphic/keyboard interfaces). I was thinking of
something primitive as Altair - LEDs. Maybe I'll add LCD someday, got that 20x4 Blue HD44780 collecting dust for too long.

I also got few design ideas for this computer. First is C&C Chip (Command & Conquer). 6502 has 16-bit Address bus, it allows
for max 65536 (64kB) of unique addresses. If I wanted to just connect one EEPROM it would be OK but what if I want to connect
more peripherals to my CPU? That's where C&C chip comes in. First 15 bits will be used for communication with given peripheral,
for example an EEPROM. 15 bits will allows me to address and access 32kB of data per EEPROM. Last, 16th bit will activate
C&C Chip which will hijack the first 15 address bits and decode them into what peripheral I want to talk with. That way
I could connect up to 32768 peripherals! 32768 EEPROMS 32768 Bytes each! My calculator calls it a gigabyte! Of course I am
not going to build such a monstrosity .;,;. but on paper it looks nice (as long as you don't get to planning on paper).
Of course C&C Chip would also pass more lanes than just address: Data, R/W, RDY and HALT if it's needed, maybe even RST.
As CPU clock I have chosen Arduino Mini. Rockwell R65C02 in comparison with WDC W65C02 has 3 missing instructions which is
no issue, Ben Eater's W65C02 has Vector Pull on Pin 1 while R6502C has Ground there and biggest issue: R65C02 while clocked
step by step (i'm going to probe Addresses and Data lanes myself like Ben) must have low pulse for maximum 5 microseconds (5us).
Other than that it is fully compatible with W65C02. Can't wait to finally get it :-) Gonna have much fun with it and might stream
my struggles while learning it.
I wonder if I ever could get a radio connectivity running on this machine.

And from the news about the website: Through entire existence of this blog only once I have added any extra media in a post
and it is YouTube link in Post #2. I was thinking about possibility of adding pictures to my posts but I was wondering how
would this look like? Of course it has to look like Windows 95 but of what program? Paint? Irfanview? Maybe Windows Quick View?
And what about the colors? Full palette or should I crush it down to 64k/256 Colors? And should I use .webp? Website is 1024px wide
so pictures should be 832px wide and around 624px long (Post window is 980px wide and content is 860px wide).
Eh, me and my ideas .;,;.

Logging out, Skilowi

Howdy!!
I finished setting up my Streaming Computer. All parts came and after some fighting with software and audio I finally managed
to setup OBS. It's still not finished but it's working. I will spare you entire story since I gave up on PCIe StarTech
CaptureCard and Windows 7 VM. I flipped between Arch - Debian - Ubuntu many times to find distro with newest OBS which will
work with plugins I need. Sound on my Main Computer is outputted via DisplayPort to my monitor and there I use jack to my
headphones. I duplicated the output to DP-0 and Line Out on the back of my motherboard. From Line Out Aux cable goes to Line In
on the motherboard of Stream Computer. So now I can capture sound output of my main Computer.
I bought USB - HDMI small screen grabber. I connect HDMI to my RTX4060 and with xrandr command I duplicate DP-0 output onto
HDMI-0 output. So now we have screen capture.
And what about microphone? Microphone I use is capacitance noname microphone needing 48V of "phantom voltage". For this I
bought long time ago some "Audio Device" working on USB. Mic works nice but since it is an input I have no idea how to
stream it to Stream Computer! On Arch/Debian I had PulseAudio but setting up server-client didn't work. (Connection worked,
I just didn't know how to stream Mic input) and now Ubuntu I use uses PipeWire which is absolutely unknown to me (thank god
pavucontrol works with it). Audio Device of this microphone has no jack output and even if it have - I can't connect next
microphone by jack to Stream Computer! Line In is already taken and on Linux pavucontrol you can only make soundcard listen
to Line In or Microphone connector (mobo has 6 jacks). I would need second soundcard! I have some SoundBlasters but they are
SoundBlaster Live! cards from 1999! They are for PCI! Damn my luck! Solution I made up for now is second microphone on USB.
I have one, but it's awful. Gotta replace it. And best solution would be obtaining second SoundCard for my StreamPC and
new Audio Device being able to also output analog jack signal.

Logging out, Skilowi

I have been hacked!
I came back from work, pretty happy because capture card came! I will tell you already it's working well (1080p 60fps) and now
I am fighting to setup OBS. Later I will add camera and do sound cables. Thing is setting OBS up has to go on second plan.
When I plugged card in I had to connect to computer by SSH. I forgot it's IP, happens since I it's my testing computer and I
change OS on it very often. I logged into the router dashboard and surprise - I have new laptop in my network? It was unknown
to me, it wasn't ordered my way (I order network hosts by setting their name like that: "NAME OF USER" + "DEVICE NAME"). It was
some default hostname? I wrote down all info I could find about it in router dashboard. I blocked internet access to it, banned
it's MAC. After some time it went away. I hid my SSID. If anything pops up again I will change password and security to WPA3.
I wrote a letter and hanged it on staircase. Whoever did this will have a bad time. I will try to hunt him down.

Logging out, Skilowi

Pentium is here!
Pentium 4 HT 3.0GHz came today! It was cleaned nicely and packaged properly. I bought it from other computer tinkerer, so I am
lucky to be treated properly like a shop client, without selling me trash. I installed it in my Windows XP Computer, put much less
thermal paste than last time. Colin McRae Rally 04 works a lot better, as long as you stick to asphalt road. I am surprised
Pentium 4 can't handle this game too well, it was supposed to run even on Pentium II! I ran demo in OpenArena and temperature peaked
at 44 degrees Celsius. I am wondering about one thing here. Pentium 4 was described as hell-hot power gobbler which ate 100W to turn
all of it into heat. Cases from back then even had special holes on side and funnels to make CPU suck up cool air directly from
outside. I have basic aluminium heatsink with copper core and silver foil on bottom? Not sure about that. I also have basic 80mm AVC
fan on top of it. Thermal Paste I used is Arctic MX-6. Why is my Pentium 4 so cool? I might try to run some proper benchmarking
software. If anyone remember these times, did you have some bad quality thermal paste? Or had none? Or my cooler is good/paste is
overkill? :-)
Also LightScribe DVDs came! They look wonderful!! For now they will decorate my wall unit, but someday I will find ISOs worth burning
on them!
USB CaptureCard is still not here. I have package tracking but its still not sent. If it won't come until Thursday I guess I will
enjoy it on weekend.
Anyways, enough of tech! It's making my head smoke.
I had sushi today! It was with pepper, soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger. This Wasabi so hot my eyes got wet, my nose got runny
and the spice was literally blowing from my nose. That was strong. Also since I am so clumsy I spilled a bit of soy sauce on my desk.
I cleaned it but smell is still here, I quite like it! With hot steam I removed the stickers off package with LightScribes.
One sticker has Alpine Thistle on it and second is Liverwort. They look nice. I might add them to photo frame which I already have
Windows 3.1 license in (I couldn't find other frame and I swear I had somewhere one free).

Logging out, Skilowi

Hello internet! I am tired!
As the title says: I give up! For over a month (or even longer) now I have been trying to set up Windows 7 virtual machine with GPU
passthrought. I have followed plenty of tutorials, tried many fixes. Changed GPU to AMD Radeon R7 340 (50% better than GT710 and
100% less pain to passthrought it) and yet no matter what I do things don't work out! USB devices stopped to work, after re-adding
them for 3 times Windows started to see keyboard and it can't install mouse driver! IT IS BASIC USB HID MOUSE!!! Why it can't
install the driver? Well you gotta click the damn notification! I HAVE NO DAMN MOUSE!!!!!! That's the second issue. First one was
that the GPU was locking on 640x480 and 6-bit color depth. It was detected as basic VGA controller. Then virt-manager started to
error randomly that multi-threadding on AMD CPUs is unsupported. Why was the GPU not detectable? I don't really know. I tried
various BIOS settings like SR-IOV (whatever that is), PCIe speeds, above 4G memory. What helped was setting allocated RAM for VM
from 8192MB to 2048MB. One MB more and enjoy your Windows 95 looking Windows 7 working like on Pentium III 500MHz. I have no idea
what's going on anymore here. I just give up. I have no idea how I should set this up, what I do wrong or what thing should I do
which is covered by maybe 2 tutorials in entire internet full of AI generated bullshit tutorials made by Indians. I just give up.
I spent 9,49 Euros on USB HDMI capture stick. I will simply run OBS on second PC, "stream" the OBS window to my main computer over
X11 and use it that way. It is being sent from next town so it should come tomorrow or on Tuesday. All of this took me 4x more time
than should and lots of frustration and pain.
From other things coming soon: I noticed the Pentium 4 - even if never reaching above 43 degrees Celsius - isn't working the best.
I have bought 3GHz Pentium 4 with hyper-threadding, hoping it will perform better. Games like Colin McRae Rally 04 are performing
awfully no matter the graphical setting and that's enough to blame the CPU (7600GT is a mid-end from 2005. OpenArena and CMR04
should be no problem). Even if I am wrong and it's actually GPUs fault it's still not a bad upgrade. If it really is GPU then I
will have to switch to PCIe graphics and this will need me to also change motherboard. If that happens I will already have better
CPU. (Though I will still be trying to get the AGP card, since the motherboard is so good).
And I finally will make use of my LightScribe burner! I bought 6 LightScribe DVDs: Teal, Gray, Pink, Orange, Yellow and Green for
12 Euros. Normal price for LightScribe, as their price oscillates between 2-4 Euros per ONE CD/DVD. I will also look for CD
versions to make my own fancy Windows installation media. Or I will use paper labels! All these things seem so fun! :-)

Logging out, Skilowi

Hi!
I might have mentioned it but Chieftec Uni Case had computer parts in it! Guy selling it didn't know how to open it so win on my
side :-). Inside were: 3 Optical drives (2 were flying in the case), 12V Ventilator mounted on slot, powered from Molex connector,
ASUS 9400GT, some weird Modem, PSU (flying freely) and motherboard AsRock P55 Pro and today I will tell you about this motherboard.
It came with stock cooler and i5-760. Motherboard itself was made in 2009 and is for socket 1156, that is first generation of
Intel Core i. It has 4 slots for RAM, DDR3, XMP profiles, 1600MHz with OC support (they printed DDR3 2600+ next to slots). I took
off the stock cooler and surprise! Motherboard supports 1156 and 775 coolers! I love that. 775 coolers (especially these I have with
copper core) are powerful and I even mounted one on 1150 socket (4th gen). It never went above 50°C. 775 my beloved. Back to the mobo.
We got here 2 PCIe 16x and 2 PCIe 1x and 2 olde PCI. Motherboard states support for ATI CrossFireX and Quad CrossFireX. Sounds
interesting! There are 7 SATA2 connectors! 7! With supports for RAID 0 1 10 and 5. There's also IDE connector and Floppy connector!
Crazy! There's also Infrared connector, Serial, HDMI_SPDIF, Firewire and TPM.
I/O are as following: PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard, SPDIF Video output, Optical SPDIF Optical Output. 8 USBs (6 more on the mobo!),
Firewire, Gigabit Ethernet! and 6 jacks for audio. Crazy setup for 2009.
Just by looking on paper I fell in love in it. From nice to have is extra button for clearing CMOS, Reset and Power buttons on mobo.
No need to short circuit random pins with screwdriver! :-)
There's also double 7 segment display for error codes! For now I changed cooler for 775 with copper core and bought 4x 4GB of 1600MHz
DDR3 RAM. Or I thought so, because apparently Kingston thought making 4G in KHX1600C9D3B1K2/4GX mean total capacity of kit, not each
RAM stick. But 12GB of RAM is still nice. Following Steam Hardware Survey in 2010 most people had 2GB, 2 cores and Windows XP 32-bit.
Like I said I am really looking forward what I can do with this mobo. Glad it's working, after making 250km with flying parts and
vibrations :-). I was thinking to maybe make Windows 7 dual ATI GPU setup? I also must buy some PSU! For now I was testing this mobo
with ITX 250W Chieftec because it's only free PSU I had with 2x 4 pin CPU power and 24 ATX connector!
And I must obtain some case for it! Ohhh I have good feelings about it :-).

Logging out, Skilowi

Howdy!
I would have sworn I wrote something previously this month here. I was wrong, oh very wrong...
But here I am and I will tell ya what happened lately in here!
First, I scrapped my two twin computers. Twin because they had 1:1 specification. I did hit the limits of their motherboards.
Motherboard were nice on their own: PCIe 16x, 2x PCIe 1x and 2-3 PCI (I forgot already .;,;,) and 4 slots for DDR2 RAM. And here
comes their issue! They gave 4 slots for RAM while installing chipset limiting RAM to only 3.5GB! DAMN YOU FUJITSU AND SIEMENS!!!
So yeah. No clustering on these. It's same situation like ThinkPad T60 where chipset also limits your RAM allocation to 3.5GB so
it's better to just install 1GB and 2GB sticks in there. With these 2 computer gone I acquired place for 2 more under my workshop!
Ill fill it someday. Now about the case for other computer: I got it! It is Chieftec Uni BA-02B-B-B. It's big. 4 wheels,
6 5,25" slots, 2 external 3,5" slots and 8 internal 3,5" slots. With 3.5" > 2x2,5" adapters I can put 16 Drives into this thing!
On the back you can mount two 120mm fans, 3 92mm behind HDDs and 2 92mm above the Motherboard. This is crazy! And I really love
the looks of it .;,;. There is also Chieftec Uni BH-02B-B-B which is smaller - computer user oriented - case having similar design
like the big one. Would be nice to have them both! :-) This big one is for server oriented appliances but thankfully has no
propriety solutions, full ATX compatibility (I'M LOOKING AT YOU IBM/LENOVO AND DELL).
Now about the VM.
That Chieftec case was for a computer running Arch Linux which will virtualize Windows 7 and trough X11 show screen of it on my
main computer. There will be PCI Passthrough of Capture Card and AMD GPU to it. For now my idea was:
Windows 7 runs OBS and with capture card record screen of my main. (GPU because OBS needs acceleration). That VM runs as window
on the Host system and it is shown on my Main trough X11 protocol. Now there's 2 problems: First one is that I can't run VM as
window on Host because I have GPU passthrough, and when using QXL with Spice to have that Window then ATI GPU throws Error 12.
Solution would be to somehow figure out how to virtualize second screen, make Windows copy main screen to second one and try
to capture second screen to a window on Host. Problem here is virt-manager always sets QXL and other VGA Adapter as primary and
I can't really get rid of that. So for now there's no go for it.
Second idea is to use TeamViewer or RDP DIRECTLY to VM. But then I must make my Windows 7 VM a normal partaker in my LAN and for
this I must bridge a Internet Interface to it. That's no problem to do, like 4 commands to write. What's problematic is that if
you bridge Interface to VM, Host can't use it anymore. If you have one Interface then you automatically lose connection with Host.
Solution is add second Interface! No problem for me: I have USB Ethernet D-Link adapter. What I don't have is free places on my
Ethernet Switch on my Desktop. YES! Trying to run Hardware running only under Windows 7 can take you to the point where your
Ethernet Switch is too small! What a madness!!
For now I wait for help from people of internet. Maybe are more experienced in this wizardy.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Arch Linux Wiki on their PCI Pasthrough Page describe UEFI Bios as necessity. What they don't mention is
with UEFI BIOS Windows 7 won't boot because EDK2 TianoCore doesn't have CSM parts Windows 7 needs for GPU initialization!
Thank you Arch Linux Wiki making me think I am doing something wrong for entire evening straight
and Thank You MattKC Wiki for explaining me what I am doing wrong and proper Windows 7 setup is BIOS + Q35 and GPU Passthrough
WILL still work!
Now when I finished my rant about VMs now it's time to talk about PBX!
You might not know what it is because this tech in long gone in some countries and households.
Basically PBX is a Router but for phones. Not Phones like your iPhone or Samsung or older Sony Ericsson. No, it's for real PHONES
like the one your grandma had hanging on the wall. Cable from it went to the wall and then? Never wondered about it hm? Well it
went to a PBX! Mine is Panasonic KX-TDA15. I found 32MB Panasonic SD Card in it. I also got some software for it to program it.
There's no manuals. Only how to use your PBX from Propriety Panasonic Phone but I am on a computer! Tomorrow is Sunday and I will
go to flea market. Hopefully I will find some old phones. You need this Phone to set PBX into programming mode to be able to
properly connect to it with USB-B cable (or that's what I believe I understood from Egyptian video on YouTube).
So for now PBX just like VM stopped as project.
Oh and in case if I didn't explain why I need a PBX: I want to try dial-up! .;,;.
Here where I live dial-up is no more existent and I wan't to give my old laptops internet access. They have no Ethernet and PCMCIA
connectors (PCMCIA =/= PCCard) so only way is built in Modem (if there is any). Such laptop connected to my home phone line would
call Windows Server 2003 computer which would be connected to my LAN and to Phone Line with modem to serve as server to internet.
But first I want to setup this PBX, then make a call with 2 phones, then try to connect 2 laptops together by it, maybe try a round
in Transport Tycoon Deluxe and then get to my actual targets.
That's what happened in my past time. I wrote now because all things I am doing are standing right now so things I write here wouldn't
be outdated by evening.

Logging out, Skilowi

Hello!!
Today I will tell you a story about the WORST thing I have read in this year, maybe even in XXIth Century. First I shall introduce
you into the context of all of this.
Someone asked in a post for help. He was copying files from CD to his Windows 10 computer. It was 0B file and process was
interrupted by error: Wrong MS-DOS function. This caused some "experts" in comments to say things as Windows is GUI for DOS.
ABSOLUTE CRAZY THING TO SAY IN 2026. If he was using Windows 98 it would be correct but its Windows 10...
Reading these statements made me enough pain to start sharing my knowledge about this.
In short: DOS IS DEAD. DOS IS OVER. DOS IS DEAD FOR 26 YEARS AND UNSUPPORTED FOR 20. NOBODY USES IT,
SELLS IT OR SUPPORTS IT. THERE IS NO DOS ANYMORE.
And for those wanting the longer version:

In 90s there were 2 families of Windowses living next to each other. The DOS based and NT based. Story begins in 1981, when IBM
releases IBM PC. Only problem about it was that they didn't have any Operating System for it! They only had BIOS.
IBM asked Microsoft for Operating System for their new x86 based computer and Microsoft sent back: MS-DOS.
In meantime Microsoft started to release their GUI for MS-DOS: Windows. Releases 1, 2 and 3 were standalone products which were
actual GUIs for DOS. In 1985 IBM woke up with hand in potty and dethroned from Leader position of Computer Market.
As a response they tried to make "second generation" of IBM PC: IBM PS/2. It was incompatible with previous IBM PC, expensive in
licenses and once again - with no Operating System! IBM again asked Microsoft for help and Microsoft said: We write new OS from
scratch. This is the birth of Windows NT. Work of IBM and Microsoft gave us OS/2. In meantime Microsoft released Windows 3.0 for
MS-DOS and it sold so good Microsoft started to be more interested in further development of DOS Windows than OS/2. They also
wanted to implement looks of Windows 3 to OS/2. All of this made IBM and Microsoft break their friendship, everyone took their
toys and went back to their sandboxes. Microsoft took OS/2 code with it, rewrote it, added Windows 3 GUI and so was made:
Windows NT 3.1!
In meantime Windows NT was developed into version NT 3.5. Then comes year 1995. New DOS Windows is released: Windows 95.
In 1996 Microsoft develops Windows NT 4.0 and borrows Windows 95 GUI for it. Later next there's Windows 98 FE and SE.
Then comes year 2000. Microsoft is still trying to keep the NT/DOS division. They release Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) and its evil
brother: Windows Me (DOS 8.0). Windows 2000 is pretty much forgotten because it was overshadowed by XP year later and Me is known
from being awful unstable software, sometimes mistaken with 2000.
Now you might ask why there was this NT / DOS division? Reasons are two: Our computers and software. Let's go back to 1993 for a
moment. Currently we have DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 on top of it. Current Windows NT was 3.1.
First issue was hardware: the DOS Windows 3.1 needed 1MB of RAM. The NT 3.1 needed 12MB of RAM! I could finish here but i'll
continue: DOS 3.1 could run even on Intel 286. NT 3.1 must have had at least 386 @ 25MHz. DOS 3.1 would fit on less than
10MB on your HDD while NT 3.1 needed 75MB!! In 1993 these numbers were crazy and no mortal had such setup. And that's our
reason two: Software. Since no statistical bread-eater had such setup and such system, very little games and user programs
were ported to NT back then. People were to stick to DOS because it was a lot lighter. NT series were thought for servers.
Now we go back to year 2000.
Me was a bad OS and had no reason to exist (i'll return to that in future). It introduced few new things which were later
fitted into Windows 2000 and XP. Microsoft understood that DOS based Windows have hit their limits and keeping it alive is bad idea.
Also what happened over time is peoples computers got simply better. In year 2001 when XP was released Microsoft has chosen to make
XP a general customer oriented OS, while for servers they were making Windows Server 2003 based off XP and 2000.
XP has it's own issues: before SP2 it was a hell of a virus magnet! It also wasn't running well for everyone. Some went back to
Windows 2000 as general use OS. Some had another reason for that: XP was the first Windows to require activation online. Putting
random key you got on flea market wouldn't be enough! Going back to 2000 wasn't the worst idea. 2000 had NT kernel version 5.0
while XP had NT kernel version 5.1. They were very similar OS in general! And that would be it. DOS based Windowses THANKFULLY
died and stayed in XXth Century, thriving on older hardware in rooms of nerds like me. After the XP we got Vista, but that's for
another story :-)
And that error from post from beginning? It was Windows 10 using it's some backward compatibility functions to try read the file but
CD was damaged so it failed. Windows XP up to 11 is fuuuuull of backwards compatibility stuff. You can't name folder "con"
even in Windows 11 because of MSDOS from 80s. Modern windowses also have drivers for parallel or serial ports, SCSi or even
floppy drives and modems! You think why your main drive is still C? ;-)
This is hella long lol, I hope not too long. Going to sleep

Logging out, Skilowi

Week without posts. Ugh!
Again nothing interesting happened in last week. Work > Games > Sleep. Repeat. But now things are happening!
I got reminded of Proxmox and clustering. I have two C2D E4700 computers, two 1:1 setups. I pulled them out, stacked one on
another on my workbench and got to work. After changing cables and wondering why computers give no image I realized that RAM
is missing! I took it out some time ago and forgot about that. I have 6 1GB sticks and 6 512MB sticks (DDR2).
Each computer will have 3x 1GB and 1x 512MB, making 3,5GB altogether. Not much but is equal. I tried to boot the computers
and only one gave image. After cleaning the ports and juggling the RAMs 2 1GB stick were dead. Ugh. Damn me.
So the second computer could have 1x 1GB and 3x 512MB sticks at best, making it 2,5GB RAM. That's not good.
I went to eBay and for 40 euros bough 10x 1GB and 4x 2GB DDR2 667MHz RAM sticks. Good price if you ask me. I should never ever
run out of RAM sticks.

From different things: My Windows XP computer might need GPU change!
My computers are as follow:
Windows XP PC (2004)
Windows Vista PC (2008)
Windows 7 PC (2014)
Date next to each computer is what year I target with that specification. Even if Windows 7 was released in 2009, my setup with
it is dated for ~2014. Primarily I wanted to make it slightly newer but my olde GTX760 fits is nice, no need to buy 980.
Anyways, back to the XP PC. As you can see I want this computer to be like from year 2004. Thing that bugs me is GPU. Currently
it is equipped with MSI 7600GT on AGP. GPU itself is from 2006. I was thinking of replacing it with some more powerful but
older GPU from ~2004-5. Maybe 6600 will be better fit (some 6800 cost more than new RTX). It also must fit to AGP. Mobo has no
PCIe. Maybe I will simply leave 7600 in it. Since it is no high-end model it can be nice equivalent of 6700.

Oh, and the title "RAM cookies" is what I did: bake RAM. As last resort I tried to bake these two sticks to maybe save them
or at least buy me some time until new RAM comes. Didn't work.

Logging out, Skilowi

That's what I did today: nothing.
Well, almost. I was thinking: if there's something wrong with me or I am meeting wrong people all life long? I really can't get
into socializing with people since I am 8. Once some kids did something bad to me, I went home and never went out again. Rest of
the story brought me here, so I would say it's not so bad. Design of main office site is my little opus magnum, one of best things
I ever created and most likely I ever will.

It is the 10th post on this blog today! If I were posting it consistently everyday it would have happen like a week ago but I don't
have always interesting things to say like today, because today I played RimWorld all day.

I trimmed my horse farm a lot: 4k of Leather and 13k of Meat. What a win. Freezer full. I also have 19-21k Rice and up to 4k Cave
Mushroom. Yeah, my colonists LOVE mushroom (and don't mind human flesh, why waste the corpses of those who attacked me?)
I also had a quest where I had to tank 5 Insectoid Nests for 800 Plasteel, Psychic Emanator and 8 glitterworlds. they only had to
spawn in my mushroom farm to easily cook them with one Molotov.
I have also sent a caravan consisting of 4 full Bionetic cyborgs with assault rifles and doctor with job of destroying enemy
colony. I really hope I can manage it with just 5 people, because previously I did it with 8 people but I was a lot poorer and enemy
was only armed in clubs, knifes and bows. A big fight is coming.

Logging out, Skilowi

Hi!
Sorry for not writing yesterday, I was really tired after school and couldn't get up from bed :-p
Yesterday I managed to do some play with parallel port on the HP laptop. First I had to cheat the computer with 3 jumper wires that port
is occupied, I did stick the oscilloscope probe into D0 and with LPT Tester I could switch the D0 HIGH and LOW. HIGH is 3.2-4V. Quite
far from 5V. Today I bought My Summer Car. I remember playing it looooong time before, cracked on Windows. I tried 3 times to finish
first day (wanted to make basic shopping): First time I left without saving (I thought sleeping is enough, apparently you must
interact with toilet bowl). Second time I fell in the side of road and tractor flipped (happens, my fault). Third time while going back
I made a stop to pee. While peeing my tractor magically flipped 180 degrees, landed on roof trapping me in top-right corner of map.
I was pissed off. I thought I should install GrabAnything mod just in case such things happen - MSCModLoader didn't work for me,
experimental linux binary neither. I was at 118 minutes of playtime at that point and was so angry I chose to refund the game.
Call it a skill issue but I awaited higher quality for that price (This game could easily run in web browser 10 years ago, Unity
Web Player, remember that?). I also came back to playing RimWorld. Took a while to remind myself where did I stop.
And I am still on search for ATX case which would fit (by design) on my desk (by how I feel when I see it). For now I saw very nice
case, cheap (5 Euros) and in middle of nowhere (200km 3 hours drive), but I was too late and when made account offer was already
removed. I found another nice looking case but I couldn't take it because it had no steel "construction" inside. It was only Styrofoam inside.
Nice for PC which doesn't make any vibrations but ONLY Styrofoam is not very convincing, and if I really wanted to suppress computer
I would use sponge clothes like I did on my main PC with HDDs.

Also the website is getting a bit looooong and big. Someday it will grow in size reaching hundreds of kilobytes and even megabytes,
making website slow to load. I will have to program this to load 3 posts and load more as user scrolls down. I only must find if
there is such possibility in HTML. Or I will divide this blog into few posts long pages - separate html files. On Lenovo EOL site
I noticed they have main HTML site in which you select your machine and model and then they embed another HTML file into the site
with all the drivers for that machine. Maybe I could do same thing with loading and embedding next HTMLs as user scrolls down?

As I write this I found what model was the case I missed: Chieftec Dragon CS-601. Yes I am actively searching for computer case.
Not the easiest thing. Simple people putting the offers often do not know how they should fill the category information about the
case, so best search method is just looking for "computer case" with no filters. Now I have to shovel trough all other offers with
~2008 cases which I can get at scrapyard in a price of 2 beers, cheap chinese ITX cases or "gaming" cases which look like
ThinkCentre lol. I even saw some Raspberry Pi and Fujitsu Terminal cases! There's also lots of "aquariums". Other few cases which would fit
on my desk were mATX. At page 20 offers are just Expansion Slot Covers. Ebay is so empty in computer cases. Nothing on local listings...
Gotta hunt.

Logging out, Skilowi

Howdy!
As title suggests I finally finished the Windows 7 Gaming PC! "Gaming" because specs aren't anything special, but I will get to that soon.
I installed games and nvidia drivers today. Yesterday entire day I was fighting with Windows 7 and to activate it. Had to turn off UEFI
and reinstall because old key burnt in motherboard BIOS was causing me trouble. Now Windows is activated. Then I had to fight with nvidia
drivers on Windows 7. Newer drivers do not want to be installed on Windows 7 because of expired signature. Installing slightly older driver
worked. Then I went to customization: I flipped trough all CDs from computer magazines (I have 3 boxes of CDs from years 2007-2014) and
installed all software I would use on Windows 7 computer in 2014, even if now is kinda useless (just a decoration for desktop).
Here are the specs of the computer:
CPU: i5 4590T 4/4 @ 2GHz
GPU: Palit GTX760 2GB VRAM
RAM: DDR3, 4GB 1600MHz + 4GB 1333MHz

Computer in its current form is ready, finished. Following Steam Hardware survey 2014 this specification is actually nothing special.
It can play games but there are some TODOs:
First one you could see on your own while viewing specs of this computer. It is changing the 1333MHz stick for 1600MHz one.
When I get one I will swap it.
Second TODO is to change optical drive. Current one is loud AS HELL, sometimes need to reinsert CD to read it and makes clicking noises.
Thankfully I have lots of optical drives, maybe even bit too much :-)

CPU didn't raise its temperature above 49 degrees Celsius. It is so good because on this 1150 CPU I mounted copper 775 heatsink. GPU is
different thing. It is a blower GPU. Blower GPU that probably has never been opened. During game it reached easily 80 degrees Celsius and
during games it was noisy like optical drive wasn't enough.
And as we talk about games. I don't have any games from around 2014! I only have Farming Simulator 2015 with two official DLCs.
I was offered to play Crysis on it (but can it run Crysis?) but Crysis is 2007 game so it belongs to the Vista Gaming Computer.
I was thinking about playing Hitman Absolution on it. I also don't know many ~2014 games. Minecraft 1.7.10 on mods?
I have some memories of playing Far Cry 4 on cousins Xbox 360 maaaany years ago. I would also like to obtain physical copies of actually
good games from these years (Big Box releases are welcome). Theoretically I should play GTA V on it, but computer is bit old and R* tends
to be annoying for PC. I don't know if their launcher will work on this dated OS. And don't even think about Steam. This WILL NOT run.
If some games will be less appealing for me I'll simply get ISOs from Internet. Now I must focus on getting new ATX case for another computer.

Logging out, Skilowi

Hello everyone!
Sorry for not writing lately, had lots on my head lately and it hurts now.
As in Post #6 I wrote I'll be fighting with Capture Card with no drivers for Linux or Windows 10. First I tried to make it run under Linux:
It was detected as "Philips Semiconductors SAA7160" with no kernel module loading for it. There were few saa modules but none worked
for this card. I tried to compile the non-official saa716x driver but I couldn't accomplish that. I also tried various Ubuntus from release 10 up
to 22 to check if card was supported somewhere in the past. Apparently it wasn't. Then Virtualization kicked in. I did read about PCI
Passtrough, in long story short on basic qemu machine I managed to pass Capture Card and install drivers - everything worked like butter
and GT710 GPU which driver gave Error 43 (god help me). Since motherboard is ASRock B450M and beside turning IOMMU on I couldn't
find any other settings which could help me, I took the computer to the workbench and scrapped it.

Plan is as follow: Change mobo and case of computer. New case will be some another old early 00s ATX case and new MOBO is
MSI B550-A. It supports two PCIe slots on CPU, so I won't have to fight with IOMMU Groups while passing both GT710 and CaptureCard.
I need to pass the GPU too because "generic VGA" is not enough for OBS to run, it needs acceleration. I'll also have to learn to use
libvirt. I need to load older version of Q35 chipset emulation, since newer ones bluescreen Windows 7 (and using 1996 i440FX might
be the reason for Error 43).

One of parts from disassembled computer is PSU. Previously I built ~2014 Windows 7 computer just for this CaptureCard, but because
it was just Windows 7 it's integration into my Linux computer was unsatisfying. It is an ITX machine with only one 16x PCIe.
I put new PSU in it and my olde Palit GTX 760. From now on it is my Windows 7 Gaming Computer. Tomorrow I will install system,
drivers and games on it while waiting for parts to come. :-)

Logging out, Skilowi

Hi guys!
First I wanted to name this post "Conquering HP" but that would make 50% of my post be titled with HP
and my war with that laptop didn't become that personal.

I bring you a success! I came back from work and went into full focus:
Installed Vista on laptop, 32-bit Home Premium version worked. It had drivers for most if not all hardware
right away. Damn you XP. I installed rest of drivers with SDIO, installed PuTTY and DosBox. I connected nc6320 and
760ED together with null-modem cable and tried the connection with HyperTerminal: It worked.
Then I installed TTD on HP laptop with DosBox, added serial port, set up both laptop with game and:
It works! Could play TTD in multiplayer on two laptops! Hell yeah! Too bad got no-one irl to play with me
but that's okay, it was just an experiment. No errors. No problems. Lucky day I guess. Next thing will be about CaptureCard and making it
work with my computer. I should mention, this card has drivers ONLY and ONLY for Windows 7.
No other OS in the world can run this card. It is going to be lovely.

Logging out, Skilowi

Hello internet!
Today after work I found energy to finally do something with this HP laptop. Windows installer didn't find any HDD
controller for 3rd time. This time I was done for good. I put installer CD into my main computer, ripped it into ISO file
and installed it directly on HDD using QEMU. After basic setup and first boot I plugged HDD into laptop and I got
greeted with "error while reading hard disk". Words cannot describe how mad I am right now. Apparently you can't install
Windows XP SP3 Professional 32-bit on this laptop. Tomorrow I will try with Windows Vista and if that won't work, I'll use Debian.
I might find more energy for it since it's weekend! :-). I am also having more good experiences with Vista.
Yeah, I prefer Vista over XP.
I don't like looks of XP and without Service Packs it was a virus magnet. Awful OS which compared with
Windows 2000 is bloated as hell. Vista had it's own issues like having to reactive the system after hardware change
and being resource heavy, but all you had to do is not run it on 90s Computer (it was 2006 not 2001 anymore duh).

Also you might be curious why I won't run Linux right away on this laptop and I am fighting so much with old Windows.
That's because it's 2026 and not 2018! Linux is not anymore a magic spell saving 2000s laptops. Especially these with
underpowered CPUs and Intel GMAs. Even my ThinkPad T400 with maxxed out specifications was struggling to run Debian with
lobotomized KDE Plasma. Currently I run Vista on ThinkPad T60 (which is also maxxed out) and my Vista Gaming Computer:
Intel C2Q Q6600, 2x 2GB DDR2 RAM and Palit GTX285. It's running like a charm.

Also because all of this madness is because of TTD, I must mention with new year OpenTTD 15 got released! Arch Linux repository
finally updated and new version is playable. When I finish this 1-Player TTD Multiplayer test I will run some trains in more
accessible TTD .;,;.

Logging out, Skilowi.

Holy! That was 5 days? Well I am back.
I am (unfortunately) an owner of HP Compaq nc6320. I could say it's a normal laptop from 2006. Whats nice about is connectivity:
It has 4 USBs, Ethernet, Modem, VGA, two Jacks, ExpressCard, PCCard, SDCard, FireWire, Serial, Parallel, S-Video, Optical Drive.
Basically laptop-orchestra. And that's not everything! It even has fingerprint reader, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Perfect laptop you might think.
And all of this begins 5th January. I have Transport Tycoon Deluxe on my 760ED. I don't have irl friends that live next to me
to play multiplayer together, but I wanted to try out the multiplayer over serial - you connect 2 computers over null-modem
cable on serial ports and game should run. My 760ED has serial, but all other ThinkPads that run Windows 9x in my possesion
have no CD drive. No CD - no TTD. HP Specifications mentioned that laptop shipped with Windows XP Home or Pro SP2 or Vista 32.
It even had FreeDOS as option! Supported OS are 64-bit Vista (if you have 64-bit CPU duh) and Windows 2000.
SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is labeled as "certified", whatever that means. anyways.
I wanted to install TTD on this laptop. TTD requires at least DOS. Windows 3.1 or 95 is seen nicely tho.
I installed FreeDOS (first tried Ventoy, had to switch to burnt CD because it didn't work off Ventoy).
TTD Installer did run, but could move mouse only on upper half of screen. Running English installer directly from files
has thrown error 4. What does Error 4 mean? I don't know! Ask MicroProse! Anyways, FreeDOS did not work.
I thought maybe Windows 3.1 will help game run with some drivers - apparently to run Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS you need
to recompile the kernel! I was already in time for sleep so I thought I don't want to do it.
I thought I need MSDOS. I have only one USB Floppy drive so installing MSDOS 6.22 would take looooong time.
I installed MSDOS 6.22 on QEMU machine, added OAKCDROM.SYS and installed Windows 3.1 on top of it.
Then I dd'ed .img of Virtual Machines HDD to laptops HDD and booted. MSDOS ran, Windows didn't.
Games installer did not load.
I was already pissed off. I thought maybe running Windows 9x and DOS isn't best idea on XXI Century Laptop.
I tried to install Windows XP Professional SP3. I did put CD into the drive, it booted. After ~15 minutes of
grinding the CD installer finally started - and said it couldn't detect any HDDs in my computer.
Reboot. And same thing again. Does this laptop need special driver to have HDD recognizable by Windows?
I once had to fight Lenovo and no functioning Ethernet because of no driver but this is new low, HP.
Do you even remember what I did all of this for? I put the laptop away and went to sleep.
Plan was to scrap this laptop next day or try Linux, maybe over Wine it will run and be able to access Serial.

Next day - 06 January - I was incredibly tired after work. I went to sleep right I came back home. Woke up for short while to
refresh myself and went back to sleep.
Today - 07 January - I did not touch this laptop. I don't have energy for it. I cleaned my computer, made some nice pics of it,
cleaned my Microsoft IntelliMouse 1.2A, brought all my thoughts back to write this post and soon I am going back to sleep to work!

I could end it here but I cannot not complain some more about this laptop.
BIOS is absolutely awful. At boot it might cry about CMOS Date & Time being wrong. But you can't set them or even view them in BIOS!
There's no such option! You can turn off second CPU core, turn off any extension and communication port you wish.
You can set weirdest settings for booting, but you can't set the damn date which laptop asks for.
Some stupid industrial standard I guess. Someday I will describe the medical computers from flea market. Someday.
This strawberry milk is good! Anyways,

Logging out, Skilowi.

Some time ago my Computer started to make drilling noises.
Moving it a bit was helping. Touching the case made the vibrations go away. Something inside was not doing well.
After picking up the CD I bought few sponge clothes and wrapped my HDDs in them. I also found loose screw under one HDD.
Who the hell built this? .;,;.
As I write this Takanaka is playing nicely and can't hear any vibrations. I could say entire computer got quieter. (I wonder why duh)
DHL has my SSDs in delivery. Soon they will come and website will go down for a while.
Also, few laptops got their Specifications and Descriptions added on the site. Go check that out! .;,;.

Logging out, Skilowi.

So this is how we begin new year: I woke up all sweaty, everything that was in the bed was on floor and my left arm hurts for hours now.
Courier came with new USB-SATA adapter. Tomorrow SSDs should come and I will go to town to pick up my package from Japan:
CD release of Finger Dancin' album by Masayoshi Takanaka. I waited loooong for it to come. I think I paid for it in November?
I know in December it's usual for all postal services to get overrun but I guess this year stuff began earlier.

I just did read my Post #1 and it is SDCard that died, not the Pi. Pi is doing well as you can see these posts .;,;.

Also I had few thoughts about blog itself. It's a bit like a YouTube channel - post to not get forgotten.
If I won't post with some regularity I will have to remind people of my website with each post.
I don't want to be annoying. But also people don't want to read about me playing RimWorld for 16 hours a day for 5 days .;,;.
I will see what I can do.
And one more thing about the "original" index on my website: It's abandoned. Sometime in future I will replace that website with this Office.

Logging out, Skilowi.

Hello World!

2 days ago my Raspberry Pi (server on which I host all of this) stopped responding. After some testing conclusion was simple: it's dead.
Well, rest in peace, you served me well working 24/7 for 2 years and 4 months. I didn't buy new microSD Card. I resigned off them.
Right now it's all running from 16GB SSD plugged on USB adapter. I bought 3 64GB ADATA SSDs. I think I will stick to SSD on USB.
Need backup? I will simply make iso file off harddrive and keep it on my computer. (gotta use that 2TB HDD).
I finished setting up all things on my server: apache, ssh and keys, no-ip, smb and let's encrypt.
I only have to setup openvpn as tunnel for smb - home netflix *wink wink*.
Yesterday I made the laptop website (which is still WIP) and just now I finished this blog website.
It might change looks over time. From time to time I will post something here.

Logging out, Skilowi.