Thursday, June 14, 2012

Recent Adventures

I know that I have been absent from comms here lately, but let me tell you why. Just bare with me, in my usual Vettie fashion, I will eventually get to the point.

So here goes...

I have multiple computers, a laptop (that I use for nearly everything) that is a dual boot system with Win 7 and Linux Mint 12. My old gaming rig that is also a dual boot, Win XP and Linux Mint 12 and an even older machine that I use as a test bed before I elect to do something radical on either of my better machines.

This quick point, before I forget, comes in to play later in this post, but remember it, please. I recently moved to an apartment and I still have some things in boxes...(shocker right?)

The Linux Mint Community recently released LM13 with two types of interfaces, Cinnamon (basically uses applets (real similar to Apples OS)) or Mate (standard Gnome type interface.) I have read about Cinnamon and I also read where the LM team worked out many of the bugs and that LM13 (Maya they call it) had a pretty smooth Cinnamon interface IF your hardware and Cinnamon were compatible. I checked the list and all of my machines were covered.

I was interested in trying Maya, but as with any other OS, I really didnt want to screw up my 2 “good machines”, especially my laptop. That lead me to my test machine. It is loaded with Win XP and Linux Mint 9. The LM9 install was one of the prettiest, smoothest, most fun to work with OS I have encountered. I seriously considered make a triple boot.

Ok, so, I had a plan. Triple boot, not messing up Windows, or Mint 9. I downloaded the OS from the Mint website and burned the image onto disk. The check sum was perfect and the disc was operational and self booting. I should point out to any and all at this point, it is ALWAYS a great idea to back up stuff you want to keep, ALWAYS.

I had Windows running on the test machine and I inserted the LM13 disc. It came up. One of the options is to install the OS. To do so, you leave the disc in the drive and reboot they machine (making sure the BIOS is set to read from the cd first). I did and after the reboot the LM 13 disc began to run. I should point out here that the OS is NOT installed, merely running from the disc. This is a lot slower than if installed, but it lets you play with things and see how well you like the OS without actually installing it.

I played with a few things and I really like the interface and smoothness of operation (event tho slow running from the dvd). It does put an Icon on the desktop to INSTALL Linux Mint. I clicked it. Things started happening as you would expect, it comes up with the typical questions about where you are located, what language to use, time zone you are in, keyboard layout, you know, the standard OS install questions, user name, computer name, blah blah... After going through those motions, a splash screen comes up to tell you the differences from LM12 to LM13 and about the Cinnamon interface.

Normally, when there is a splash screen such as this, it changes as your install progresses allowing even a slow reader such as myself PLENTY of time to read the splash. I had read where a typical install of LM13 would take about 10 to 15 minutes depending on your hardware. As I am watching the splash and trying to keep up (it never changed past screen 1) it disappeared. Went away. Gone. I thought to myself, well, that was pretty darn fast, but I did notice that there was no re-boot notice. So I waited a bit. Then a bit longer. After 2 hours, nothing else happened, there were no disc activity lights blinking or even on, so I thought, hmm, must be time to reboot. I did.

I was expecting to see the “grub” where you choose which OS to boot into, but I didnt. On my test machine, to boot from the CD drive (even though it is set in the BIOS as 1st boot) you have to hit the enter key or the space bar. I didnt do this because I wanted to go into LM13 and play around. After some whirring noises and skipping of the cd, my machine went to the “C” drive (as expected) then then returned an error. The error was something about (computer language data) axxbbes blah (looked Hungarian to me (and yes I have been there and seen Hungarian words, notice I said SEEN, not read)) and finally, GRUB error, do you wish to repair?

Huh? I dont know anything about Grub, I thought they were big ol' nasty worms that you used to go fishing with, How do you repair that? So I opened one of my other machines and did some reading on Grub and how to repair it and gave that a try. It didnt work.

I re-booted again, just to make sure. No good. Same thing as before. So I thought, I could put my Windows XP Cd in and do a repair so it would at least boot into Windows. I did that. Followed the options to repair the windows install. The disc agreed with me that my XP install was corrupted and would attempt to repair it. After a bit, it said it had repaired my Windows install and that I need to re-boot, so I did.

It came back with the exact same error, computer jibberish that I cant read blah, Grub Error, do you wish to repair? So now I was frustrated and hungry. Made myself a fine turkey sandwich.

After this, I decided to try to repair the Windows MRB section to see if that would help, No joy. Same old grub error. In my mind, I thought, well LM9 was working perfectly, maybe I can use it to repair the machine and get it booted up again. I put the LM9 disc in and restarted. Same error. Ok.

I did a little research to see if others were having similar troubles on the Linux Mint Forums. Not really, but still some were having issues. One guy had almost the same set up as I do, said his install didnt work, but he re-booted and tried it a second time and it worked fine. So I thought, why not?

I put the LM13 disc back in and re-booted allowing it boot from the dvd. Started up and again I hit the install Icon. Started all over. I went through all the questions and finally got to the splash screen again where it actually starts copying files and installing the OS. Another hint for most users, DO NOT DO THIS AT 1.00AM.

Again the splash screen disappeared and the disc activity stopped. I waited for close to an hour and decided that it was messed up again. In my frustration and all due to NOT paying attention, on this particular attempt to install, I told it to install on the WRONG hard drive. I had wiped out my Windows HDD, and now neither the Mint install nor Windows were there. I said a few things, got up and walked around smacking my head. The Windows install actually had some programs on it that I had the paid versions of and installed many years ago. The updates were free, but you have to pay for another install. DOH!! (remember my warning about backing up stuff you want to keep? Yeha, I wish I had remembered that, again not don attempt at 1.00am...)

I looked over at some of the boxes I had not put away yet (remember me mentioning this above?) and in front of one of the boxes was an old HP Pavilion. From what I could remember, it was a 466 Celeron machine from the Win 95/98 era that I had updated to Win98SE. I picked up the machine and put it on my desk. I had no idea if it was complete or operational. I opened it up. Let me see, floppy drive (remember those?), dvd drive (I had replaced the original cd drive some years ago), hard drive, mother board, power supply, memory sticks, cpu and fan. Everything except vid card and sound card, nice.

At this point I remembered that I had some parts in another box. I rambled around until I found them. A Soundblaster PCI 128 sound card with install disc and a VooDoo 4 4500 (32mg – that makes you sweat with envy, huh?) Well before I installed any of this, I wanted to make sure the old thing would even work. It had on-board video, altho no sound card or chip. I hooked everything up and pushed the power button.

It fired right up. It took it a little bit, but it fired up. The BIOS came up telling me it had 192mg of ram and an 8 gig hdd. WooHoo! After a few minutes the OS started. It was Win98. Wow, I thought. I have all my original Mech Warrior games and some other old games I used to love to play but never could get them to work on XP or Win 7. Maybe they will work on Win98. So I defragged the HDD and then shut the PC down. I opened it up and put the soundcard in and rebooted. ( I learned long ago that with Win95 and 98, dont put too much new stuff in at once.) It came up saying it found a new device, blah blah, I canceled that and let it finish the boot. I put the disc in and installed the software. I got sound and it needed a reboot. Done. Sound card in and working. I thought, alright, time for the VooDoo. I put the card and realized I didnt have an install disc for it. I went to my other machine and did a search for Voodoo 4 Drivers for Win 98 and man did I find drivers. I finally decided on a set that looked like actual 3dFX drivers and downloaded them, burned to a disc and ready to go.

Started the Win98 machine and the screen was totally black. I could see the HDD light blinking and the sound was on so I know it booted, but no vid. At this point, I remembered that on the older BIOS, you had to switch the setting to the vid card you installed, it was not auto select. So I put the vid cable on the on-board output and booted into the BIOS. I made the changed and shut the machine down. Switched cables again and rebooted. This time it worked and discovered new hardware, I canceled and installed the VooDoo drivers and re-booted once again. Oh yeah, it was nice.

TO my surprize, the machine ran very smoothly. I got my old MW2 games and some others out to install them to see if they would work. All 3 installed without a hitch and all three worked. I looked at the clock and it was nearly 3.30am. I went to bed knowing I had a semi successful night.

At 7.00am. I woke with a great thought in my head. On the LM13 install, if I could just kill the splash screen the actual install may be running in the background and MIGHT continue to run, if for some reason, there is something amiss with the splash screen or the splash and cinnamon or whatever. I knew the command to kill the splash, I just didnt know the actual name of the splash screen, I looked it up and found the name so I thought I would give it a try (for those with similar issues, or if you run into similar issues that command is

Sudo apt-get remove ubiquity-slideshow-mint

with all the spaces just as typed. Also, you MUST run this BEFORE hitting the install Icon.)

I went through the same ordeal and before hitting the the install Icon, I ran the remove command and got rid of the splash. I then tried the install and it worked perfectly. At this point, I decided the reinstall Win XP then go back and reinstall LM13 so the grub and everything would be there (there maybe another way of doing this, but I knew how to make this work with little trouble and I needed Windows on there anyway so...). I installed Windows and before I let it start doing the zillions of updates, I went for the LM install. Again killing the splash and making it work. It installed without a hitch on the slave drive (which is where I wanted it all along anyway, lol).

When I rebooted, it went straight into Windows, no grub, no choice, just Windows. What now? What could it be? I went back to the BIOS and changed the boot sequence to boot from the slave 1st to see if the grub was on there instead of on the main drive. It was. When the machine came back up, there was my grub, my choices of Linux Mint 13 or Windows XP and the other items (mem tester and recover options). Boom it worked. So I updated Mint and installed a couple of items that I have used on LM12 and then went back to Windows to do all the updates.

After a few days of messing with Linux Mint Maya, I have decided that I will wait until they get some of the bugs out and them re-install it. I have since re-installed LM12 (Lisa) and all the Windows Updates.

On the Win98 front, I have been playing the old MechWarrior 2 series. Yeah the video is only 640 by 480 and yeah everything is kinda blocky, but the the games are fun. It is here that I learned of the mech world and about assigning criticals and all the neat stuff that brought those games to life. I also installed a game called Panzer General II, and old SSI game that is very close to a board game with visuals about many of the battles in WWII (excluding the Pacific theatre). You can play either side against the computer, against another human or even by email, lol! One of the other titles I installed was a great DOS game, The Age of Rifles. Again this is an SSI title that covers most rifled combat from early 1800's through just before WWI. Both Panzer General II and Age of Rifles have campaign games in them and they are not easy games to win (unless you set the computer player to low prestige (easy setting), and even then the little CPU is pretty cunning. Both of these titles have a fog of war setting that allows you to let the CPU hide its move until you stumble across the enemy, or in the case of Panzer General II, you have planes scouting ahead (but still limited as to what they detect).

So, if you have wandered where Ol Vettie has been over the past several days, well hes been revisiting the MW2 Series (fairly close to how I think the Mech Lab for MWO will be) and playing some old style computer war games and getting my butticus kicked (sometimes).

Any of you tried playing some of your older, but still favourite titles? 

3 comments:

  1. Hi Vettie. I often find that you get far more enjoyment from playing older games. I think its partly due to nostalgia. You remember what life was like (and how simple it was) when you first played a particular game. I also find it quite suprising how much you can remember, which units are best for certain tasks (I was a big RTS fan when I was younger). I think your blogs on Mechwarrior are awesome. Very insightful and great to read. Your clearly a fan of the game in the truest sense of the word. I downloaded the free 'all-in-one' Mechwarrior package a few months ago and was blown away by the sheer number of new mechs, especially those from the Inner Sphere and Clan mech packs. I been doing a lot of tinkering with the Kodiak Clan Assault chassis recently. The canon loadout from Battletech (see Sarna.net) is crazy. Clearly the heat scales for Mercenaries are way, way different to the original table-top game. Managed to design some pretty good configs though. Its got stacks of hardpoints of all types, so its fairly easy to configure as and how you please. I've had a look for a review of the Kodiak on your blog and never managed to find one. This could easily be me just being clueless. I'll have a more thorough look and post if I find anything. Keep up the good work, my friend!

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  2. Hi Vettie, I just install Mint 13 64-bit cinnamon edition and have no issue. I have another older Mint 12 laptop (I think I bought it in 2006) and I still use it to connect to my Popcorn Hour box. I'm new to linux btw, and have problem sometimes in 'sudoers' 'fstab' etc etc etc.

    Glad to hear from you Vettie, see you sometime in Mechwarrior playground.

    DSA_Cloud

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