Unnecessarily Scuzzy

Overbuilt late-'90s audio production computer:

• 500MHz K6-2
• 320MB PC??? RAM
• MSI A5169MS
• ATi Rage 128 ???
• SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold
• AHA-2940W/2940UW
• 4GB Compaq SCSI HDD
• 8GB WD SCSI HDD
• Ricoh 6200S SCSI CD-RW
• Iomega V2000Si 2GB SCSI JAZ 2 drive
• Windows 2000 Professional

Getting it to boot from the SCSI CD drive was unintuitive and installing Windows was painfully slow, but otherwise works fine as a computer so far. Up next MIDI software and audio connectors.

Just Work

160GB array was faulty; turns-out my ~15-year-old spinning drives are dying 🤷 Got two 250GB drives going reliably, and I was really impressed with how everything just worked. The only out-of-the ordinary thing was switching-over to the non-HWE kernel... And then I tried to play some Steam games and the system crawled (reproducibly) to the point that I was opening a new terminal and killing processes just to get the mouse to respond. Did some digging, and seems likely it's related to the proprietary NVIDIA video driver; so now I don't really care about combing logs and troubleshooting that because that's not the point of this build. Maybe one day, but then maybe I'll take the time to get fakeRAID and 340.108 going on Arch :p

I need a new project. Was thinking of a K6-2-based Windows 2000 build that features an AWE64 Gold because I said it was a decent MIDI synth in an audio gear group on Facebook and they deleted my post... So now I have to prove them wrong and make some music on it.

Finally played Pony Island, and it was good. Stuck on a part in Inscyption - not because I don't know what to do, but because getting to that part feels a little too random after, especially since it slows-down progress significantly after such a fast-paced first few sections. thankfully, the gameplay is still satisfying.

Sisyphean

Finally got to:

• Blair Witch - Decent walking sim, got a few honest scares out of me, and thankfully brief. Didn't really feel the PTSD stuff, and that last section... Ugh.
• A Plague Tale: Innocence - Just started it, but interesting for sure.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Soulscharted? Wasn't really what I wanted in terms of gameplay, but fantastic exploration. Might actually play this one again some day.

Picked-up:

• DiRT 4 - Fun, especially for $5; but after playing various configurations, I've concluded that rally games aren't really my thing.
• Inscryption - It's rare that I enjoy a roguelike or a deckbuilder, and this one starts-off as both... But I'm hooked and committed to seeing where this goes.
• King of Fighters IV - Was on-sale, feels good to play (been following this series since the beginning), and some characters didn't make the jump to 3D as gracefully as others... Looking at you, K'.

Revisited:

• Burnout Paradise Remastered - Still ridiculous, still fun, still overwhelming.
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore - Still don't get it.

Process

Basically this... 

1. Downloaded 20.04.1 'cause I wanted to start with 5.4:
• http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/20.04.1/ubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
  
2. Installed offline
3. Ran:
1. sudo apt update
2. sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic
3. sudo apt remove --purge linux-generic-hwe-20.04 linux-headers-generic-hwe-20.04 linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04

...As in speech.

I started with Debian in the '90s, then Slackware, then Ubuntu, then PC-BSD, then CentOS for work, then Xubuntu, then Manjaro, then EndeavourOS. Now I'm trying to find the best balance for my old Q9450 + 8800 GTS, and it looked like Ubuntu was the way: Out-of-the-box NVIDIA fakeRAID support, native kernel support for NVIDIA's proprietary video drivers, and an LTS branch... But then 20.04.3 went to a newer kernel and the video drivers broke - there're patches for that, but I was kinda hoping for something that would just work. Tried 18.04 for fun, but it didn't entirely like the fakeRAID setup and now I'm thinking Ubuntu 20.04 on 5.4 looks like the safest bet to keep that late-2000s hardware relevant until 2030 - if I'm reading this chart correctly.

System is:

• Core 2 Quad Q9450
• EVGA 132-CK-NF79
• 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM (dual channel)
• 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS
• 2x160GB 7200RPM SATA HDDs (RAID 0)