Quoting: slaapliedjeAMIX won't run on an A4000, it requires an A2000-A3000. NetBSD / Linux will run on the 4000, but I haven't tried it there yet.

I didn't know that they didn't do any updates to run Amix on A4000.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI was going to try NetBSD on my Atari TT030, (which is also where the Atari SysV Unix would need to be ran) but then I accidentally wrote the tiny image over a 3tb drive of data... so got distracted restoring that! (always make sure you're writing to the right device!!)

Mistakes are sometimes horrible for the data.

Can the Atari computer dual-boots Mint and Atari System V UNIX?

Quoting: slaapliedjeHa, if I could find the old posts from MURC (Matrox users resource center) I wrote the howtos for installing the Parhelia drivers in Debian. :P Pretty much just required build-essentials and linux-headers-`uname -r`. Pre-Parhelia cards pretty much worked right out of the box.

It starts to look similar to the installation process of Nvidia drivers on Debian Sarge.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI'd love to get a hold of an A3000 to run AMIX on though, looks sweet. Though out of all that era of computers, the best version of Unix was probably A/UX, as Apple integrated it with MacOS so you could run mac software and Unix stuff.

A/UX could run the software for Mac, which is awesome. Unfortunately, the last version of A/UX didn't contain any updates for System Software 7. In this case, it will probably run only early applications for System Software 7. It's still the only classic Unix that can run many popular games and applications from that period. We don't have to use DOS.

IRIX was cool for someone interested in running some popular applications. On the other hand, the prices of these computers are scary.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: HamishThey do ship a modified version including their own Matrox HAL library it seems though:
https://www.matrox.com/de/video/apps/drivers/graphics/download?id=143 [External Link]

This is a driver that I was thinking about.

Quoting: HamishI was working on another old computer with my brother the other week, and inside his big antistatic bag of old expansion cards was, unbeknownst to him, a Diamond Stealth II S220 (Rendition Vérité V2100) graphics card. While useless for Linux this is still a very collectible and historically significant graphics card, as the Rendition Vérité was the first series of video cards to support 3D acceleration in Quake weeks before the Voodoo did.

My brother had no idea that the card was that valuable, nor did the person who sold it to him at a flea market. It was actually part of the same $1 CAD lot of cards that my Sound Blaster 16 PnP came from.

EDIT: Not entirely useless on Linux as 2D support for the Vérité was released through the back door:
"I got on to the beta tester team with Rendition and they were constantly upgrading the drivers and making them better and faster but the manufacturers couldn't be bothered with updating their drivers ... I also got the Verite engineers to "leak" the 2D driver specs because there wasn't a way to make it work with Linux. So I tried shopping the specs around to different Linux distros (there were only a few back then) and Redhat turned me down flat and Debian did too after a few weeks but I finally got the interest of some German programmers at SUSE and they got them to work (2D only) in no time and because of the way Linux works you could download them from SUSE and they would work in Redhat or Debian or any other distro"
Source: https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/rendition-gone-but-not-forgotten.278896/post-2010465 [External Link]

Thanks for the story.

It's one of these situations. I remember that someone sold me GeForce 6200 512MB for 15 zł (= above 3 dollars). I was expecting getting a brick in the box. I got the dirt cheap graphic card, but it's still one of the weakest in the 6000 series.

It's an intersting graphic card, but problematic even on DOS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7zADH80vQA [External Link]

It's great that someone is working on the Linux driver for it.
The behavior of Debian developers is disappointing to me.

I live in a small town, which is two hours away from Warsaw. It's not worth even visit most of the stores with used computers in my hometown

Sometimes, it's much easier to get the cool stuff if you live much closer to the U.S.A.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: HamishCertainly by the time of Red Hat Linux 7.3 any Matrox G200 or G400 card should just work out of the box with DRI drivers. The G400 MAX would be a compelling alternative for Dianoga, but they are about as expensive as Voodoo cards are these days.

Thank you for the clrafication.

How good were closed source drivers for Matrox cards?

Sometimes, people sell old graphics cards for a few dollars because they think it's a piece of useless junk.

Some graphics cards don't deserve to be so popular like Geforce 4 MX 440 - they are horrible.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: gbudny

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyhow, love this series, makes me want to try on one of the old PCs I built recently.

I hope that more users start to build old PCs to play games for Linux.

I saw the AGP graphic cards like GeForce 7950 GT 512 MB or even 8400 GS 512 MB. My GeForce 7300 GT 512 MB isn't terrible. However, I like to see some room for the performance improvements in some games.

I have several Marvel G400TV cards, I am planning on going a different route with productivity on old PCs. Granted originally I wasn't thinking of using Linux...

But now that I think about it, I may very well do so.
Equipment list I'm going to be using to produce videos (when I get around to it)
Amiga 4000 Video Toaster (For old school effects)
I have two cameras that can do digital / analog for recording.
Marvel G400TV can be used for capturing some stuff (may use OBS or something and toying with doing live videos maybe?)
M1 Macbook for any post processing stuff.

For music/audio, I have an Atari Falcon+Cubase, and Logic Pro on the mac.

So my plans are really a mix of old tech+modern tech. The work flow is going to be really wacky, but fun I think.

It looks like the interesting way of combining different computers and operating systems.

I never had a chance to use Matrox cards Linux. I watched somewhere it was tricky to install drivers back then. In my opinion, Matrox Parhelia still looks like a nice alternative for the old PCs.

Did you try to run Amix on Amiga 4000?

I know there was a version Unix for Atari:

http://www.atariunix.com/ [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyhow, love this series, makes me want to try on one of the old PCs I built recently.

I hope that more users start to build old PCs to play games for Linux.

I saw the AGP graphic cards like GeForce 7950 GT 512 MB or even 8400 GS 512 MB. My GeForce 7300 GT 512 MB isn't terrible. However, I like to see some room for the performance improvements in some games.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Lightkey

Quoting: gbudnyI don't know if you have plans to write the article about Mobility for Linux. However, their refreshed website is back online after a few months:

https://www.mobility-online.de/download-registrierung/download [External Link]

I didn't expect it.

..and then they just point to Holarse for the Linux version instead of hosting it themselves, those freeloaders!
Seems like there was a lot added with later versions but not for the Linux version, sadly.

They didn't disappear with the registration keys, and more users could buy now this game for Linux.

I was able to run it even on Ubuntu 20.4, which is crazy.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Thank you for the article.

GarageGames was one of the pivotal companies for Linux users.

I hope that they publish the official DRM-free version of Marble Blast for Linux in the near future.

I want to point that out that one the of the games that used Torque 2D Engine was Galacticards from Killer Bee Software:

http://www.killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/gc/ [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: HamishYep, that would be correct. This is probably one of the articles that I spent the most time doing research on, and I ended up having a massive text file full of links. I guess I must have copied the wrong VOGONS thread over. I never did get XFree86 to launch at 320x200 by the way, but I was able to expand the Abuse window in the end.

Thank you for the article.

I waited for it, and I think it's my favorite article from your retro series. I like to read when users publish how to solve different issues with games for Linux.

It reminded me of this patch 640x480 for the old Linux version of ROTT from icculus.org.

Dave Taylor probably didn't spend too much time working on this version of Doom. I suspect that Doom for NeXTStep is similar to this one.

Inner worlds is another game that runs only using the root account.

It's such a shame https://happypenguin.altervista.org/ [External Link] removed old comments because they are useful sometimes.

I don't know if you have plans to write the article about Mobility for Linux. However, their refreshed website is back online after a few months:

https://www.mobility-online.de/download-registrierung/download [External Link]

I didn't expect it.

Quoting: LightkeyBernd Kreimeier! Squee~ *girlynoises*
A name I haven't heard in a long time. Sorry, I know this is getting off-topic, I only know him from his Loki Software days, where he was responsible for OpenAL [External Link] and as a German myself, from his science-fiction short stories in the c’t [External Link] magazine I was reading at the time.
I thought he wrote those just as a hobby but looking at Wikipedia [External Link], it seems it was his job early on, where he even wrote some novels that I should check out some time. Those are probably also the reason why there is only a German Wikipedia article for him. :happy:

Thanks.

I didn't know about it.

Quoting: HamishI definitely intend to come back to Abuse in a later article, once I can get my hands on a CD-ROM. The original registered version direct from Crack dot Com would be best.

It's much easier to find it than Inner worlds.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'm starting to feel old. I remember a time before Steam for Linux, back in the dark days even before the first set of Humble Indie Bundles, it's truly crazy how far Linux has come overall as a platform for gaming. 10 years ago today, Steam for Linux left Beta and released officially and what a difference it made!
Linux Gaming is no longer a thing that people will constantly laugh about. It's here, it's a thing and many people now with a Steam Deck likely don't even realise they're using Linux — that's just how good it can be.

Dark days?

I have to disagree with it.

Many companies tried hard to release more games for Linux before HIB. I think about Linux publishers (LGP, Loki, Runesoft, etc.), porting houses (Eon Games, IGIOS, etc.), porters (Ryan Gordon, Frank Earl, etc.), and companies that are well-known for just one game (Cipsoft, Laminar Research etc.,). We had companies with a long history of releasing games for Linux. Many of them were ignored like Kristianix games, InterAction studios, and so on.

We didn't have a good website that covered all the information about all commercial games for Linux. I must admit that it was hard to track all these companies before 2010.

On the other hand, some users felt that the Linux market was a joke. They had to choose between more expensive games from Linux publishers or indie games. When some users didn't want to accept it, they were forced to go back to using Windows.

It wasn't a perfect situation, but we constantly saw new games released for Linux. These companies and programers had to deal with users that wanted just Steam for Linux.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Thank you for the article.

I didn't know about these mods for Quake.

However, Malice looks similar to Sin, which is something interesting to me.

View this comment - View article - View full comments