The Lazarus Project; or, getting old ain't for sissies!

[kiwi_2005]

Originally Posted by Winston

Anyway, is does not sound like a HD problem. Seems to be having trouble with ram. You could try to disconnect the hard disk completely just to see if it makes a difference and to see how far it gets in the boot sequence.

I think winston hit it on the head, usually the hardware gremlin is Ram

Even with modern PC's faulty ram causes headaches!

[Onkel Neal]

Oh, boy. Better than ever. Ok, no luck with the old IBM. So, today as I was driving to the Bar-B-Que joint for lunch, I saw a little electronic repair shop, hiding between a hair salon and a pet food store...

... I felt a pull in the Force... and I veered into the parking lot. I went in and this place was piled high with TVs. There was just this narrow little path to the counter. In the back was this fellow and he came to the front when he saw me. I asked him if he had any old computers, by chance. He said, no, not really. I said I was looking for an older computer. He said, well, he had one in the back, but it was really old.

He brought out a Compaq 4504. I asked if it worked and he said it did, so I told him to get a monitor and power cord and let's have a look. As we were plugging it in he said he was pretty sure it was at least a Pentium 200 mhz with Win 98. Now that it appeared I might buy an old junker, he was still trying to keep me interested.

I said, "Windows 98? Awe, I was hoping for one with Windows 95."

He arched an eyebrow and couldn't resist. "Why do you want such an old computer?"

I leaned forward, locked eyes, and after a pause told him, "Research. Let's leave it at that."

The PC powered up, and by golly, it was Win95! Pentium 200. I checked the sound card, ES1887, no Soundblaster Live

Memory? A whopping 16MB, yes, that's MEGAbytes. Kneel before me

Aww, yeh-ah. Threw $40 at the man and sped home. Hooked it up, loaded Command Aces of the Deep, and we're in business.

So, next up, Wolfpack!

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Well, for a diversion, I have decided to pull my old 1995 Pentium 100 with Win95 out of the closet and thrust it back into action, playing Aces of the Deep, Silent Steel, Wolfpack, Silent Hunter I, and other pre-millenium subsims.

Nice stuff there Have fun, remember playing Fast Attack on a Pentium 166, 16 megs of Ram

RDP

[ASWnut101]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Oh, boy. Better than ever. Ok, no luck with the old IBM. So, today as I was driving to the Bar-B-Que joint for lunch, I saw a little electronic repair shop, hiding between a hair salon and a pet food store...

... I felt a pull in the Force... and I veered into the parking lot. I went in and this place was piled high with TVs. There was just this narrow little path to the counter. In the back was this fellow and he came to the front when he saw me. I asked him if he had any old computers, by chance. He said, no, not really. I said I was looking for an older computer. He said, well, he had one in the back, but it was really old.

He brought out a Compaq 4504. I asked if it worked and he said it did, so I told him to get a monitor and power cord and let's have a look. As we were plugging it in he said he was pretty sure it was at least a Pentium 200 mhz with Win 98. Now that it appeared I might buy an old junker, he was still trying to keep me interested.

I said, "Windows 98? Awe, I was hoping for one with Windows 95."

He arched an eyebrow and couldn't resist. "Why do you want such an old computer?"

I leaned forward, locked eyes, and after a pause told him, "Research. Let's leave it at that."

The PC powered up, and by golly, it was Win95! Pentium 200. I checked the sound card, ES1887, no Soundblaster Live

Memory? A whopping 16MB, yes, that's MEGAbytes. Kneel before me

Aww, yeh-ah. Threw $40 at the man and sped home. Hooked it up, loaded Command Aces of the Deep, and we're in business.

So, next up, Wolfpack!

:rotfl: :rotfl:

Ha! You cheated though! You still should build up your other computer, link the two CPU's together, and power galore! (or maby fried hunks of silicon galore!). I had my insparation in you, and you gave up! (I am planning on building my own computer for the first time, once I make my move to Atlanta)

[geetrue]

So, you couldn't wait for patch 1.3 ...
now you've got me interested in an old PII 400 for SH 1 ...

[donut]

Good find Onkel,return to base @ your discretion. Get UBI to communicate it's in there best interest.

[Tchocky]

Fond memories of my Pentium 150Mhz, ahhh

T'was a good machine, with all you could desire. Sort of

May keep my 1.83Ghz Core 2 Duo though

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Well, for a diversion, I have decided to pull my old 1995 Pentium 100 with Win95 out of the closet and thrust it back into action, playing Aces of the Deep, Silent Steel, Wolfpack, Silent Hunter I, and other pre-millenium subsims.

It has not been turned on in over 3 years, so of course when I plugged it in, it won't run. First, it tells me there is a 127 System Board Error
then it goes to the Set-up Utility menu and there are three other errors waiting:

161 Bad CMOS Battery (how could it be naughty, it's been asleep 3 years?)
163 Date and Timer Incorrect
1762 Configuration Change has occurred

Ok, so if I exit the setup utility, I get a black screen with a simple white diagram of a floppy poised to enter a drive, with an insistent flashing error suggesting I press F1. Now, I have seen this before, I think it meant the old fella cannot access the hard drive or the Win95 OS. Probably forgot where it put it...

So, I suppose I need a new CMOS battery, and I better check the hard drive connections. Tomorrow I will start Googling, but in the meantime, I was wondering about your experiences with something like this. A really old PC, being rudely jerked out of its blissful slumbers...

Neal

AHh...You don't even have an old Pentium 2 or 3 sitting around that could play this game (Thinking from a responsiveness side more than a speed side)??? I seem to keep all this old stuff. My oldest working system is a PIII 700, but if you dig in my box of old forgotten parts, you would find a ton of old CPU's. Digging in here, I see 3x PII 400's, 1x PIII 450, 1x PIII 600, 1x Celeron 366, and 1x unknown Pentium hidden under a fan I don't feel like prying off! Seems to be a couple GB of old forgotten RAM in here too.

Hahaha! I found a Voodoo 1 card! Orchid!

-S

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by ASWnut101

Ha! You cheated though! You still should build up your other computer, link the two CPU's together, and power galore! (or maby fried hunks of silicon galore!). I had my insparation in you, and you gave up! (I am planning on building my own computer for the first time, once I make my move to Atlanta)

Yes, I certainly took the easy way out But I still plan to keep working on the Aptiva IBM, I wanna see what goodies I left on those two hard drives.

Tonight! Seawolf SSN-21 ! Man, does that bring back memories... I had to make a boot disk just like the old days to config the EMS memory to get it to run. But that's all it took. Restart with the boot disk, naviagte with DOS prompts, and bingo--moody synth music, crew voices, smoking hot 256 colors. I remember you could not go any faster than half speed with the Towed Array deployed, and if you armed a torp, you had to fire it within 8 minutes or the nav battery would run down and you had to reload. Great game!

Tomorrow night: Silent Service II

[Skybird]

If you need the discs for Red Storm Rising, I think I have the Amiga version somewhere - but no more Amiga. That one i played a lot.

[Onkel Neal]

Tonight, I brought Wolfpack back to life (no sound, though ). Anyone here ever play Novalogic's Wolfpack?

I'm picking up a Soundblaster 16 card off ebay, will try to see if that will rememdy the sound woes.

[Wim Libaers]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Oh, boy. Better than ever. Ok, no luck with the old IBM. So, today as I was driving to the Bar-B-Que joint for lunch, I saw a little electronic repair shop, hiding between a hair salon and a pet food store...

... I felt a pull in the Force... and I veered into the parking lot. I went in and this place was piled high with TVs. There was just this narrow little path to the counter. In the back was this fellow and he came to the front when he saw me. I asked him if he had any old computers, by chance. He said, no, not really. I said I was looking for an older computer. He said, well, he had one in the back, but it was really old.

He brought out a Compaq 4504. I asked if it worked and he said it did, so I told him to get a monitor and power cord and let's have a look. As we were plugging it in he said he was pretty sure it was at least a Pentium 200 mhz with Win 98. Now that it appeared I might buy an old junker, he was still trying to keep me interested.

I said, "Windows 98? Awe, I was hoping for one with Windows 95."

He arched an eyebrow and couldn't resist. "Why do you want such an old computer?"

I leaned forward, locked eyes, and after a pause told him, "Research. Let's leave it at that."

The PC powered up, and by golly, it was Win95! Pentium 200. I checked the sound card, ES1887, no Soundblaster Live

Memory? A whopping 16MB, yes, that's MEGAbytes. Kneel before me

Aww, yeh-ah. Threw $40 at the man and sped home. Hooked it up, loaded Command Aces of the Deep, and we're in business.

So, next up, Wolfpack!

But if you're considering Subwar 2050, this one will be too fast ;-)

For the other PC, perhaps some connectors have corroded or moved a bit. Disasembling and reassembling everything might help. Also check for signs of damage or leaks on capacitors.

[ChristopherT]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Tonight, I brought Wolfpack back to life (no sound, though ). Anyone here ever play Novalogic's Wolfpack?

I'm picking up a Soundblaster 16 card off ebay, will try to see if that will rememdy the sound woes.

I've got Wolfpack Neal, but I used that on my old IBM XT clone (20mb HD!). I don't think I've ever gotten to work on my current system. (P2 Celeron, 300 mhz, Win98, 4gb HD.) I think I'll try it tonight and see what happens. I got SSN21 to run fine in Win98 without a boot disk, I'm curious as to how the DOS side of your Win95 machine might be configured.

Christopher

Edit: I got Wolfpack to play okay under Win98, but it's a tad fast for a good game.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by ChristopherT

I've got Wolfpack Neal, but I used that on my old IBM XT clone (20mb HD!). I don't think I've ever gotten to work on my current system. (P2 Celeron, 300 mhz, Win98, 4gb HD.) I think I'll try it tonight and see what happens. I got SSN21 to run fine in Win98 without a boot disk, I'm curious as to how the DOS side of your Win95 machine might be configured.

I'll have to look at the stock autoexec and config files but I think it says NO EMS or something.

Update: I loaded Grey Wolf: Hunter of the North Atlantic and played a couple missions, then Silent Hunter I. The intro movie does not work but the game plays great!

Then I got fancy and installed Fast Attack. The intro movie for this one plays, but then the screen goes black.... and no game So, the lucky run comes to an end, I'll have to roll up my sleeves and see what I need to do to get FA working.

Let's review, so far the SUBSIM Legacy machine has:

Command Aces of the Deep
Seawolf SSN-21
Wolfpack
Silent Service II
Greywolf
Silent Hunter

I have to get Fast Attack working then I'll tackle Great Naval Battles, Clancy's SSN, Das Boot, Silent Steel, and Fighting Steel. My goal is to have the most pre-2000 naval and subsims running on one machine in the world.

Neal

[ChristopherT]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

I'll have to look at the stock autoexec and config files but I think it says NO EMS or something.

Update: I loaded Grey Wolf: Hunter of the North Atlantic and played a couple missions, then Silent Hunter I. The intro movie does not work but the game plays great!

Then I got fancy and installed Fast Attack. The intro movie for this one plays, but then the screen goes black.... and no game So, the lucky run comes to an end, I'll have to roll up my sleeves and see what I need to do to get FA working.

Let's review, so far the SUBSIM Legacy machine has:

Command Aces of the Deep
Seawolf SSN-21
Wolfpack
Silent Service II
Greywolf
Silent Hunter

I have to get Fast Attack working then I'll tackle Great Naval Battles, Clancy's SSN, Das Boot, Silent Steel, and Fighting Steel. My goal is to have the most pre-2000 naval and subsims running on one machine in the world.

Neal

The only ones on that list I don't have are Clancy's SSN and Silent Steel. All the GNB's, Das Boot, Silent Hunter, Greywolf, and Fighting Steel work fine under Win98. For SS2 make sure your sound card has an Adlib chip on-board. My machine lacks that hardware so SS2 uses the PC speaker. (My XT did have a SB card with an Adlib chip on it and the sound was very good.)

Christopher