Quoting: gbudnyHow was your experience with the serial mouse on Linux?

Better than on Windows 98 as Red Hat still had drivers for it, so I just had to figure out the right serial device. Mouse was a cranky old beast as you would expect.

Quoting: gbudnySome people connected the SSD to old computers with Windows 98 and Mac OS X Tiger. You have this size limit, so I don't know if it will work on this hardware with the old version of Linux.

Ha, well, I do not even have SSDs in my main Arch Linux box yet; the two Western Digital 2 TB Greens and the 500 GB Blue that I installed 10 years ago are still going strong, so I never had a compelling reason to replace them.

Quoting: chickenb00I really love this series! Some like reading about repairing old muscle cars; I like reading about repairing period accurate 90s Linux desktops. Keep up the good work please, I need more!

I have a big list of planned future articles, and have a stack of games and boxes to work through yet. It is just a matter of finding the time for them. Cheers though.

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Further links and resources can be found on the official website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part32.html

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As usual further links and resources can be found on the official website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part31.html

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Quoting: gbudnyThese activation keys that require a server connection are annoying and make some games useless. On the other hand, it probably won't be an issue if you have a backup of the hidden folder from the activated game.

Sadly in the case of the Ignition DRM that was included with Marble Blast Gold not even that may be an option, as it also ties itself to your specific hardware configuration.

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Quoting: rustybroomhandleIndie does not mean amateur. A lot of indie studios are packed with industry veterans.

Sure, but it is a question of expectation management. You would assume more of a level of polish from the guys who made F.E.A.R. than you would from a true bedroom coder say.

Certainly my main interest comes as someone who has played Hubbard's earlier games going back to Shogo.

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I would not exactly call Betrayer that much of an Indie game though; it was designed by Craig Hubbard of Monolith Productions fame as well as whole bunch of other Monolith veterans.

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Quoting: gbudnyI see it on their website, but it's hard to say if it was included on the CD with the game.

Looking at more eBay listings it seems that the boxes that were published by Eagle Games (including the Annie Duke endorsed "Collector’s Edition") just have the Windows and Mac version on the disc, although I suspect the activation keys would also work on Linux, but a later "Tournament Edition" distributed by Encore (and endorsed this time by Phil Gordon) does actually mention Linux directly on the box.

Does this mean I have to learn how to play poker now?

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Quoting: gbudnyWhere did you find it?

It was actually stumbling across an eBay listing for Tournament Poker 2005: No Limit Texas Hold 'Em which was a retail variant of DD Poker that led me to Donohoe Digital that led me to War! Age of Imperialism.

Pretty sure only the Windows and Mac versions were actually included on that poker disc, not that it matters since DD Poker is a freeware game now.

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Again, the usual bevy of links can now be found at the dedicated Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part30.html

In fact, I have been going on a bit of a spree finding old Linux gaming coverage on the Wayback Machine and then adding additional links to the previous parts, so be sure to check those out if interested. Lots of period reviews and articles to be found there.

You can now also browse by featured games or topics from the index:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/index.html

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My usual bevy of links can now be found on the dedicated Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part29.html

Quoting: gbudnyI was trying to play Odyssey by Car on Ubuntu 20.4, but there was an issue with the fullscreen mode. I didn't spend too much time trying to sort it out. I switched back to playing Odyssey by Car on Suse 10.1.

Yeah, the issue there is that the game talks directly to the XF86VidMode Extension, hence why the later update of the game calls libXxf86vm.so.1 instead in an attempt to maintain this. As far as I can tell, the game does not use any kind of abstraction layer such as SDL to handle things.

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