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[Iduno]

Basic reason I am unhappy.

I have an old laptop that I want to use for retro gaming, that has a 320 GB drive. This is larger than 128 GB, and thus needs 48bit LBA.  The computer's BIOS does not support 48bit LBA.  Windows XP SP3 supposedly knows how to handle 48bit LBA natively, but the disk controller acts like it is on drugs, and refuses to enter DMA mode for disk transfers.  The laptop is a single core system, with a slow processor. *I DO NOT WANT THE CPU TO BE 100% UTILIZED, JUST BECAUSE I AM READING OR SAVING A FILE.*  Without DMA mode on, PIO4 is used instead, which-- as per above, uses the CPU to facilitate the transfers.

Fine-- I need a DDO.  Ok, I found one that works with windows XP.  But the CD wont boot. It hangs during the boot process, so I cannot install it on sector 0, and so cannot band-aid the problem.

The system is hell bent on staying in PIO4 mode FOREVER.

It's been well over a decade, but couldn't you get around the max disk size by partitioning the drive? It possibly required an OS that can natively handle sizes large enough to see the full drive, but we now live in the future (relative to fucking windows 98 - as it is properly known), and that's a thing we can just do.

Edit: although, if that works at all, you might need a lot of partitions. To be fair, you're running a 20-year old OS, and some weirdness is to be expected.

[wierd]

you misunderstand.

win98se runs with DMA enabled. Works great.

It is winXP that insists on being a whore. (also win7, just so you know.)

I have since managed to get the drive overlay to install (by being more clever than the damn cd), and now have the 48bit lba bios extensions going.

Since that is OS independent, I am installing win98SE again.  I am thinking I will abuse XMSDSK and drivespace3 again to have windows run out of a ramdisk loaded from the HDD at bootup.  This should get around several problems.

1) win9x is super fragile.  It breaks and turns itself inside out at the drop of a hat. Running it out of a "copied into a ramdisk and mounted" drivespace3 compressed volume file means that if it horks itself up, it's just a reboot from being fresh and clean again.

2) Insanely fast running out of a ramdisk, even with UltraPack compression turned on.

3) The host drive can be fat32. The ramdisk is always Fat16, and suitable for the operation, but the main disk partition can be fat32, and be very large.


We accomplish this little trick with some pokes in the registry, the command line copy command, and the command line version of scandisk. (there is a hidden/undocumented switch to mount compressed volume files.

[Reelya]

IT IS CURRENTLY 40 CELSIUS.

THIS IS FINE

EVERYTHING IS FINE



_{send help}

It is currently about 40F
Yeah I don't envy you, this is relatively fine.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/its-so-hot-in-australia-roads-are-melting-and-bats-are-1821870991?IR=T

Despite the heat, England and Australia played a major cricket match at Sydney Cricket Ground over the weekend. The final match of the Ashes, which Wikipedia tells my ignorant American self is a test series, went on despite England’s captain Joe Root being hospitalized due to dehydration and illness after temperatures peaked at 57 degrees Celsius (134 degrees Fahrenheit) on the playing field.

[Dunamisdeos]

DB-Legends, a mobile DBZ fighting game, implemented a higher "difficulty" fight wherein the AI will take literally no action whatsoever until you do, then counter perfectly the very next frame.

[dragdeler]

-snip-

[Rowanas]

I've lost my dice pouch, which is bad enough, but it had my wedding ring in it.  I haven't needed it in 18 months, but I still feel a little sad to have lost it.

[wierd]

So, an update to "No DMA mode sad"

Turns out there is a totally free PATA driver stack, called UniATA.  Completely replaces the drivers windows uses for the IDE controller, and does not take "no" for an answer when you tell it to use a specific udma mode.  Score! 

Only downside: Leaves ugly "unknown devices" in the device manager.  Oh well, I will trade the cosmetic issue for the functional issue.

Now the box is driving in udma mode 2. (the fastest that this laptop can handle.)

[Hanslanda]

Greatorder, I'm completely incapable of diving into water even though I know exactly how to. Brains betray us.


I wish I was more of a shitty person in the past. Weird sad, I know but meh.

[Kagus]

I remember doing a sort of "semi-bungee" at a zipline park one time. You stand on a high platform, hook into the rope, and make an assisted jump down to the ground below.

It took a good 30-40 seconds of convincing myself before I managed to actually hop off the edge. You meet a very remarkable "brain says no" wall when trying to do something like that, regardless of how well you happen to know that it's perfectly safe...

[scriver]

Insert little Britain "computer says no" .gif here

[Kagus]

Sleep schedule has been especially fucked lately. I opened the curtains up to help me wake up this morning, still spent a few hours tossing and turning trying to escape sleep's grasp. And now it's 11:30, and I feel properly wrecked.

Yeah, so girlfriend was up until 1:20 AM last night, but that shouldn't be enough to push me out all the way to the middle of the day.


Also need to go shopping for slippers, because the fountain house has instated a policy of indoor shoes/outdoor shoes to prevent mass dirtying of the floors. It's funny how many ways a simple shopping trip can end up not happening.

[Yoink]

Also need to go shopping for slippers, because the fountain house has instated a policy of indoor shoes/outdoor shoes to prevent mass dirtying of the floors. It's funny how many ways a simple shopping trip can end up not happening.

They'd be better off installing the doormat mod, surely.   

Also, ditto re: sleep schedule. Dx   

[Kagus]

Not everyone is equally proficient with using doormats, and as was pointed out in the discussion for implementing the policy; boots and the like with deep treads care not a whit about your puny doormat bristles, and will happily spend the rest of the day dripping sludge onto the floor.

Curiously, there is a cute kitten poster with an arrow announcing "This is where we clean our paws" set up just outside the entrance, but there's no doormat there... The doormats are downstairs, at the entrance to the complex itself.

[dragdeler]

-snip-

[Telgin]

More annoying than sad, but I'm worried Discord is going to slowly turn into Skype with its increasing bugginess with each update.  I just got past a couple of weeks of not being able to scroll the channel list on my desktop because it kept jumping to the last item, to now mobile notifications for every channel showing up as if they were a direct message from whoever talked last, making it infuriating to get context.

Guess that's what I get for telling my phone to update everything that wanted an update.