#previous emulator

Hello folks as I have managed to get myself a quiet moment it’s time to check in with the blog.  As I said I will be a bit more sporadic with the posting here this is due to family situations.

So what have I being doing with Linux since the last episode.  Well my Kingston 120GB SSD I was running Linux on decided to have issues and for all of the attempts to save it I had to swap it out and replace it with my Integral 120GB SSD.

Luckily because I don’t keep my home directory on the SSD but on a separate 1TB Seagate hard drive no data was really lost.  So I had to re-install Namib Linux onto the new drive.  This was a bit odd but I got it working.

The installation went smooth but upon restart GRUB would start and then pixelate the screen as the video didn’t initialise correctly.  So I went in using mode 3 to just a text prompt but upon signing in this way MATE actually started which was odd but handy.

At first I could not update as Pamac would not download any of the required 538 updates from the base Namib.  So I opened a terminal and tried to use pacman.  First attempt using ‘pacman -Syu’ it just sat there after updating the main repositories as it failed to download just as Pamac had.

In the end the way I managed to get it working was to use the ‘pacman -Syyuu’ which forces the update.  So finally I managed to get the system updated and working.  I also managed to install the Nvidia drivers while I was there and all of the previous programs I was using which luckily was not many as I have been pretty quiet on Linux at the moment.

After installing Grub Customizer from the AUR I was able to put Grub into a mode that I knew would work with my ageing monitor.  I really must get a new one although this works it’s an old Dell 19 inch monitor with a max resolution of 1280x800 so it really is showing its age.  It works fine however and there is no pixel damage so I really can’t complain.

So within an hour I was back up and running and even managed to get my desktop back including my Cairo Dock at the bottom of the screen with all its icons restored and reworking including the Vulkan drivers and DXVK to get games working through Lutris.

However I have not really been playing games lately but it is nice to have that capability should I start using it.  

I have however been messing around with stuff.  I was playing with the Previous emulator.  If you remember I discussed this NeXT emulator before.  Well I managed to get a few programs installed using ISOs of the Peanuts Archive including a few games and a few applications.

I have also been messing around with DosBOX and I decided to have a bit of fun playing with some old programming stuff to see if I can remember any of it.  I honestly can’t but I installed Borland Turbo Pascal 6.0 for DOS and Borland Turbo C 3.0 for DOS and I was playing with them.

I vaguely managed to get a basic “Hello World” type program that cleared the screen and then waited for a key press to exit but it took me far longer than it should have as I have totally forgotten how to program Pascal and C++ and to begin with could not even remember the keywords.

This could be because the last time I actually did any programming in DOS has to be more than 25 years ago.  However I did have fun playing with them and although it won’t lead to anything serious.  Trust me I don’t desire to become a programmer as I just don’t have the patience, it is fun to mess around and do small things with.

I did create their own dosbox.conf files so they auto-start in DosBOX from a launcher and now they sit on my Cairo Dock bar along with everything else.  I’m sure in time I will kill them off but for now it keeps me vaguely amused in this tricky time.

Hello and welcome back to Linux Life, my eternal quest to find enlightenment via the world of Linux.  Well sorry I have not put much up lately afraid family life has been a bit hectic getting in the way of me sitting down at my computer.

So I am still intending to do a complete review of video editors but at the moment I have had very little time to write scripts.  Episodes have been planned and video capture started.  The project is still alive just letting you know.

However I have been able to do the occasional small project such as playing with Previous which is an emulator for NeXT machines.  It seems very similar to the Hatari emulator even the main interface is the same.  Don’t know if it’s the same people who wrote it I didn’t really check.

Using the emulator I am running NextStep 3.3 I did try doing that with Qemu but the results were not good.  Eventually I managed to get Openstep 4.2 running using VMware but Previous seems to run Nextstep 3.3 quite well.

Now the only thing about Previous is it is not in the AUR.  I had to download the source files from their server and build it.  Luckily because of the AUR I had all the dependencies so it built first time.

Must admit the 68040 emulation is definitely faster than Hatari.  So although it shares the same configuration interface it definitely seems to be coded better using more up to date UAE code.

Admittedly I am no expert at Nextstep as I have not really learned how to use it but it was always one of those operating systems that interested me.  In fact I was a bit of a geek about NeXT machines I just never owned one.

I have the Peanuts ISO archive down from archive.org but I can’t remember how to unarchive stuff.  I did get it working on OpenStep and once you have a pkg file (OS X uses the same extension as they have a similar base) but to be honest I have forgotten how I did it so I am yet to really try it with anything complex.

The other thing I have installed between my rushing around like a complete lunatic sorting out things for other people was a game.

The game in question was The Dark Mod now it is basically a homage to the game Thief.  It’s a full 3D first person environment where you have to steal certain things using stealth.  I also believe there is some characters you have to persuade to your cause.

I could be wrong as I have only tried the first basic tutorial level and not really put much time in on the game.  But on the Nvidia 1030 it seems to run pretty smoothly.

There is lots of missions you can play many of them provided by the community itself.  Reason being it also has a level editor you can download by the name of Dark Radiant.

One thing that is odd is how you install the game.  First you download the TDU Updater in my case the 64 bit version.  Set it to executable.  Now open a terminal and sudo as root.  Now you run the Updater and inform it not to update the updater as you are using it.

It will then download the files from a series of mirrors from around the internet some faster than others.  It can take a while to do so, so be patient.  Once installed it will install a 32 bit version and a 64 bit version of the game.

This will be automatically set to executable as you ran the updater as root.  now sign out as root and run the appropriate The Dark Mod file in my case thedarkmod.x64

It doesn’t install itself to any menus so if you want to run it you will either have to enter it manually to the menu system or create a launcher shortcut.  Obviously you can just run it from the terminal if in the right directory too.

I would like to play it more in-depth see if the game is any good so far I have walked around a bit and interacted with a few objects and jumped.  There is more to learn and there is quite a few keys/actions to remember.

Now one thing I will say of note is that I am absolutely rubbish normally at stealth games.  The last game I played which allowed stealth elements was Deus Ex: Human Revolution and I just massacred everyone in sight with guns if they got remotely hostile.  I was about as stealthy as a rhinoceros that has been been painted bright neon hot pink running thorough a china shop in broad daylight (but with guns).

So we will see how it goes with this one as I get caught for the nine hundredth time and have to fight my way out of everything in sight.  Even in the tutorial mission I buggered up there was this book you were supposed to read on a lectern in the second room.  Now I read the first book fine which instructed me basic movements which was pretty obvious as I had used them to walk up to the book.

However in the second room there was a book that was I think supposed to teach me how to pick up objects.  However the tutorial got overzealous and I picked up the book, could not put it down and was walking around with it.   I could not figure how to put it back down or how to read it if I was carrying it.  This is the basic tutorial people before I have even started the true game so I think I may be onto a bit of a losing battle.

However only time will tell.  Well I think that is enough waffle for this episode.  Sorry it took so long to get here and hopefully I should be able to post more regularly once things settle down a bit.