Seeing what it can do...

 So the final build is:

• Core 2 Quad Q9450
• EVGA 132-CK-NF79
• 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM (dual channel)
• 1GB Radeon HD 5850
• 320GB 7200RPM SATA HDD
• EndeavourOS

...Removed jack2, added Remmina+RDP and Steam, and that's about it.

Steam works much better here than it did with the 8800 GTS, and I really wanted to see what it could do - so I installed some heavier games with native Linux support that would take advantage of the 5850. Started with Bound by Flame, but it wouldn't display anything; tried Painkiller: Hell & Damnation next, and it would crash after the splash screen; then I started troubleshooting and it turns-out both are apparently awful Linux ports that don't really work - so I played it safe and went with Portal, which ran great at 1080p w/max settings. Looking at what I haven't really played in my library, I'm thinking the Penumbra trilogy and Shadow of Mordor are the way to go. Next experiments might be to see what can be done with Proton on a GPU that doesn't support Vulkan, and how well Electron-based GeForce Now implementations work here; but the takeaway from all of this is that the C2D+3870 and C2Q+5850 make for solid Linux desktop computers with decent gaming options. Not sure I'd throw any real content creation tasks at them, but pretty happy with the results for spare parts and a free, modern OS.

For fun, I installed both the original Black Edition and the Hell & Damnation remake of Painkiller on Windows and... What the hell? The remake is awful! Why were reviewers so forgiving of that unnecessary trash, especially when the original holds-up so well!? Anyway...

Forza Horizon 4 Ultimate Edition and Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate were both on really good sales, so I splurged. Forza's nice, but the Ultimate Edition bonuses immediately gave me enough "influence" to just skip three of the four introductory seasons... Kinda wish I'd gotten to play more of those. Otherwise, this was the fastest I've earned an F40 in any game, my upgraded orange-on-white '73 Carrera RS is probably the closest I'll ever get to driving a Singer, and call me cliché but I love my Sport Quattro S1. Haven't touched Fortune Island or the LEGO stuff yet. As good as this all is, however, I think I'm ready for a new Need for Speed game.

MK11 is boring; I think the series peaked in 2011.

Traded-in a bunch of old/random/scratched/free PS2, PS3, Wii, and Vita games for Metroid: Samus Returns, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and a Wii MotionPlus... Though to be fair, one of the trade-ins was a sealed copy of Demon's Souls for PS3 that I got for free years ago and never opened :)

Bogus

Rad isn't fun. It looks great, combat feels alright, it's all random enough to keep exploration interesting, and the mutation mechanic is neat... But the first two worlds just aren't engaging enough after a while to justify the grind and the game is surprisingly unoptimised on PC. It feels like the initial character-building would've been considerably more enjoyable if more was carried-over between runs, but instead I just got bored after a few days of repetition and the whole game felt like more and more of a slog with each death. I only paid ~$7 for it and it was fun for a few hours, but I honestly just gave-up and uninstalled it... And then re-installed it because it got under my skin and I still want to see more. Looking through old reviews and Double Fine's Discord, I see I'm not alone in my experience :\

Wasn't so bad...

...Finished Mooncrash.

Got to try a bunch of Switch games:

• Mario Golf: Super Rush - Solid golf game, twist is interesting, kinda lost interest after unlocking all the courses.
• Mario Tennis Aces - Just started it; waaay deeper than I expected - still trying to wrap my head around the controls.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Neat, but the grind's kinda boring.
• New Pokémon Snap - Cute, relaxing; even if Pokémon isn't your thing, there's fun to be had here.
• Ultra Street Fighter II - The new-new graphics somehow look worse than SSF2T HD Remix, so I turned them off. Otherwise, really great package with a uniquely comprehensive version of the classic.
• Yoshi's Crafted World - Friggin' adorable and deceptively difficult. I love this series.

After patching Cyberpunk 2077 to 1.5, it was raining inside an elevator, a main NPC was ghosting and jumping around a cutscene, the dialogue choices still aren't indicative of the actual dialogue, and I swear Jackie's tuned ARCH sounds louder than it used to. Regardless, awesome world, great story, fantastic game.

The Ol' Switcheroo!

The more I think about it, the more the Core 2 Quad Linux system makes more sense with the Radeon HD 5850 and maybe a cheap SSD since the proprietary NVIDIA drivers don't seem to work so great with the old 8800 GTS and then fakeRAID support is the only limiting factor. For the Core 2 Duo, I still have a Radeon HD 3870 - and then the GTS can go into another Core 2 Duo E6750 system I have lying around that also needs a PSU.

Anyway, The Super NES Classic Edition is kinda perfect. First thing I did was unlock Star Fox 2, then played through Super Metroid (still holds-up), and now it's on to Mario RPG  - which objectvely looks best with the CRT filter. After that, I'm not sure... Likely Star Fox 2 and then either Final Fantasy III or EarthBound. Loved Yoshi's Island, but no rush to play it again.

Speaking of Nintendo, I finally finished Luigi's Mansion 3. Flawless art direction, oozing with character, technically impressive, genuinely intuitive treasure hunts, engaging and rewarding exploration, repetitive combat, and bafflingly boring/frustrating boss design; can't decide if the Gold Bones are an acknowledgement of that or not. Ultimately really liked it, but probably won't ever revisit it in earnest.

Also went back to Mooncrash; I think I may forego the all-five-in-one-run just because it feels arbitrary when so many of the crucial conditions are random; the further I got, the more exploration and experimentation felt discouraged - hazards, power outages, control modules, simulation corruption, etc... It all makes for an impressively-designed challenge, but also feels uncomfortably like a Souls-like speedrun.

Just for fun...

Finished Metroid Dread with 100% of the items. Last boss was tough - took me longer than I would've liked to get the patterns down, but was worth it to see the ending. Went back and played Zero Mission immediately after, and had a great time; kind of upset with myself for waiting all these years.

Tracked-down a brand new Super NES Classic on Kijiji for $120 CDN; stoked for that :)

Ended-up building this:

• Core 2 Duo E6750
• ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP
• 4GB 800MHz DDR2 (dual channel)
• 1GB Radeon HD 5850
• 320GB 7200RPM HDD

...And installed EndeavourOS. It's a really nice as a desktop/web/streaming/VPN terminal now.

...AND just for fun I got the Games for Windows Live DVD version of Gears of War running on Windows 10 21H2 on my CrossFire Pro setup. Finding all the patches and GFWL redistributables was annoying, but it works great!

Done for now?

Got the Zelda Game & Watch for Christmas, which is awesome (so many secret things!) and includes Link's Awakening, which is also awesome. Been reliving some great 1993 memories with that, while also playing the Switch remake - I think I prefer the original, but the countless quality-of-life upgrades, the expanded fishing game, claw game, and seashell search, as well as the dungeon builder are all really nice additions. Might dig-out my copy of DX and play that next, for research :)

Started Cyberpunk 2077, and it's honestly really good so far. Still overly-ambitious and pretty buggy, still full of questionable design decisions and a script in need of another round of edits, but ultimately a very impressive mash-up of Deus Ex and GTA. I'm in Act 2, and I'm hooked. Worth noting that playing on a PCIe 4.0 NVMe really makes the experience more enjoyable - long load times would've had me giving-up on it pretty early on.

Started Metroid Dread on a whim and immediately got sucked-in - and after a few days of on-and-off play, I think I've nearly finished it. Really slick, love all the little cutscenes, great traversal... Those unforgiving (optional) QTEs though, and those boss fights - didn't expect that in a Nintendo game; I have a feeling a lot of casual players aren't going to finish this one.

Otherwise, I added a Freeload cartridge to my Commodore 128, and I think I'm done with old computer projects for a while. The Commodore is better-than-new with Freeload and the SD2IEC carts; the DOS, 98SE, and XP computers are all done; the Core 2 Quad Linux project is done but underperforms thanks to NVIDIA's drivers and really only exists because I don't have any more Windows licenses; the unnecessary CrossFire Pro build is effectively just a second Windows desktop at this point; and the ridiculous AWE64-centric, SCSI-based MIDI workstation serves its purpose.

So now what? Hunt-down cache for the 486? Find two more matching video cards for the triple-SLI motherboard in the Linux computer and find a Windows License for it?

I'd really like to start using EndeavourOS as a daily option, but I just don't have the hardware for it - my 2nd-gen X1 Carbon's Adaptive Keyboard, detaching the base of my Surface Book, video games games on my 3070, the 2xFirePro V8800s in CrossFire Pro on my i7 950, fakeRAID on my Core 2 Quad... All of them just work better in Windows. From the parts I do have, I'm thinking maybe:

• Core 2 Duo E6750
• ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP
• 4~8GB 800MHz DDR2 (dual channel)
• 1GB Radeon HD 5850
• Whatever 7200RPM HDD I have lying around?

I'd go outside more, but it's been really cold :(

Endless

Decent deals in the Epic Holiday Sale + endless coupons:

• Cyberpunk 2077
• Graven
• Outer Wilds
• The Outer Worlds
• Red Dead Redemption II

...All for ~$85 CDN

Still playing Inscryption though :)

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)

I lied...

PS5 games on sale for $40~$60 CDN, and I haven't bought any. Did get Gravity Rush 2 and Fist of the North Star though... Did I miss anything?

Notice a theme?

• Mooncrash started to feel unwieldy as I got closer to the end and I've let it fall by the wayside.
• Almost done Payback but one of the off-road races feels incredibly broken and just stopped being fun after a few tries.
• Gears 5 is really solid but I ran into one boss fight that I had to quit before I got too angry at it.

Been playing:

• Pumpkin Jack is fun and light and looks great and it won't remember my VSync setting and sometimes forgets my RTX setting and the writing is cringey and the VO is worse and the cinematics are redundant.
• Battlefield V was fine; Nordlys was especially good.
• Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is really fun.
• Soul Calibur VI is ridiculous.
• Dead or Alive 5: Last Round and Dead or Alive 6 are just as accessible and satisfying as ever.

Got on sale:

• DiRT 4
• Flipping Death
• Glittermitten Grove
• The Sexy Brutale
• Street Fighter V Champion Edition
• Walkabout Mini Golf
• Zombie Vikings

Seems Reasonable

Paid ~$210 CAD for non-"PlayStation Hits" physical copies of:

• Bloodborne
• Concrete Genie
• Everybody's Golf (2017)
• The Last Guardian
• inFAMOUS Second Son
• The Last of Us Part II (new)
• MediEvil (2019)
• The Order 1886
• Shadow of the Colossus (2018)
• Until Dawn

Gonna go pick-up these two soon for ~$90:

• Killzone: Shadow Fall
• Persona 5 Royal (new)

...And I'm watching these two on eBay:

• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
• Gravity Rush 2

Will get to the actual PS5 games after these, and when they don't cost $90

Ultra Ultra, Echo... Safe to assume that was on purpose?

Missed Echo when it was released, got it on Steam recently, and very impressed so far. A little rough around the edges - audio mix made it kinda tricky to catch some of the dialogue so I turned-on the subtitles and caught a spelling mistake, lost dialogue altogether during one session, got an Unreal Engine crash message early on, there's some weird LOD pop-in, shadows projecting onto thin air, incomplete reflections (and if ever there was a game begging for raytracing...), no ripples in the water - yet I'm invested nonetheless. Such a cool premise and overall slick presentation, genuinely engaging and innovative gameplay mechanics; unless the infodumps get too convoluted or the difficulty spikes, I feel like I'm going to enjoy this one through to the end.

Went back to Prey: Mooncrash before trying Deathloop, and it's good. Didn't like how you unlock the security guard, but otherwise really impressive system overall. I still don't really like roguelikes though.

Got a PS5 Console for $93 CDN... $400 in points at the retailer, $100 in promotional points for spending $400 in points, and $37 in points toward future purchases. Never had a PS4, but since God of War, (maybe) Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection are out for or coming to PC, here's what I'm looking to pick-up:

• Bloodborne
• Concrete Genie
• Everybody's Golf (2017)
• The Last Guardian
• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
• Gravity Rush 2
• inFAMOUS First Light
• inFAMOUS Second Son
• Killzone: Shadows Fall
• The Last of Us Part II
• MediEvil (2019)
• The Order 1886
• Persona 5 Royal
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Shadow of the Colossus (2018)
• Spider-Man Miles Morales Ultimate Edition
• Until Dawn
  

...And maybe Returnal if it's cheap? Really though, Bloodborne, The Last Guardian, and The Last of Us Part II are the focus here.

Oh, and I finished both parts of The Ancient Gods; it wasn't fun by the end. Reddit says there was a bunch of nerfing and buffing since release, and it explains a lot. It was fine, but I very much preferred the main game.

Somethingsomethingjokeaboutthisonegoingto11...

In-place Windows 11 upgrade on the X570 desktop: Fast, simple, slick... Actually kicked it off by accident. Ryzen TPM enabled, no VBS.

Clean installation on Surface Book: Disabled Secure Boot to boot from USB and bypass unsupported CPU warning, had to side-load Surface NVMe drivers, language bar acted all kinds of weird... Wiped and re-installed again, and everything was great. 

Clean installation on 2014 X1 Carbon: Enabled Intel TPM 2.0 over discrete TPM 1.2. Worked fine after a bunch of manual driver updates, but couldn't get the Adaptive Keyboard working properly... Back to Windows 10.

You wait 16 years, and what do you get?

Psychonauts 2 is perfect. The final act of the game felt a little chaotic/contrived/rushed, but also still worked and left openings for all kinds of side-stories, DLC, spin-offs, sequels - phrasing this as such to minimise spoilers, but I can't wait to play as Lili tracking-down brains, or Bob and Helmut recovering bodies, or Lucrecia working for the government... Also, the Bob's Bottles level really got to me; didn't expect things to get that heavy. Couldn't be happier, and it was kinda cool to see my name in the credits.

DOOM Eternal The Ancient Gods - Part One is too difficult at normal difficulty levels. For the first time in my life, I'm tempted to turn the difficulty down; and I'm not happy about it. I'm not sure if the issue is that the game's systems are so incredibly balanced that there's no longer any room for error or if the balance is so far off that it's just not as fun as the main game, but I'm teetering on just not even finishing it despite being at the final Slayer Gate and almost done.

Quake Remastered is fantastic and the new episode is seriously impressive.

The Bethesda-sanctioned DOOM and DOOM II add-ons are really fun - I'd completely missed BTSX!

Went back and played-through Need for Speed (2015) and Payback - both totally solid.

Finally got into Super Mario Galaxy and... Yeah, I dunno. It's really good, but I had way more fun with Odyssey, Bowser's Fury (which was awesome btw), Sunshine, 64... Maybe I should've played it sooner?

That wardrobe, though!

Hadn't been all that focused on any particular game the past few months until I finally got around to Super Mario Odyssey, and then binged that one hard; 363 Moons in 48 hours, and still going. Not sure how I feel about the boss rush post-game content, but I'm gonna try to get to 500. Overall though? Killer app, masterpiece, instant classic, etc... You get the idea.

• The Missing Link was alright; not as bad as I'd heard, but I'd've been fine having never played it.
• Jensen's Stories were fun, but didn't feel as polished as the main game.
• Sam's Story was pretty good, but I preferred the main campaign and The Two Colonels.
• Enhanced Edition is cool, but I really only jumped to a few favourite scenes; not gonna re-play the whole game.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War was fun; single-player offers a solid story with some really cool moments, and the overall campaign has pretty high production values; but it all felt pretty short, and didn't really hold my attention. Did go for both endings though.
• Got DOOM Eternal The Ancient Gods, and it's good; though I'm finding myself getting more confused as they pile more lore onto us - which is disappointing because I really liked where they were going with it. Gonna do some more reading, I guess. Paused for now, while we wait for the RTX update.
• Finally got through DOOM VFR - Really good game, with just a few inconsistently very-frustrating points.
• Wrapped-up Half-Life Alyx, and it was fantastic.
• Walked through Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - VR Experience, and the control scheme... Oh god... Instant nausea. Not worth it.
• Started BONEWORKS, and it's not quite like anything else... Curious to see where they take this.
• Reinstalled Need for Speed Heat, bought an Aston Martin Vulcan, and almost unlocked the FXX-K Evo.

Decided to keep the Sound Blaster 16 and see what I can get for the AWE64 Gold - no bites so far.

Applied the NVIDIA Resizable BAR firmware update.

I dunno... Mostly just wanted to gush about Odyssey, a little. Still need to go back and play both Galaxy games.

Bouncin' around, bouncin' around, bouncin'

Took a break from Metro Exodus after completing the main game and The Two Colonels DLC; will get back to Sam's Story, but went back to Deus Ex: Human Revolution for a change of pace. After many false-starts over the years, I finally wrapped it up and it holds-up. Not bothering with The Director's Cut, and the DLC is fine; but I jumped straight into Mankind Divided before finishing The Missing Link and wow... Just, wow. Cannot believe I slept on that one for almost five years - it's one of the best games of the decade! Ploughed through that, started Breach and Jensen's Stories... So pretty, too! Maxed-out everything at 1080p except MSAA - 60FPS at 4x though. Then I guess it's back to The Missing Link, and then Sam's Story... But I also bought Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War because it was on-sale for $50 CDN and it's technically a new single-player Raven game!

Otherwise, I finally got around to testing my Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, and it works great... So now the question is do I try to get $200 out of that one or my complete Sound Blaster 16? Partial to the OPL3 on the 16, but there're so many more features on the AWE :\

Also, got $700 for my old 3930K+1070 PC... Dropped the price to $800 (seemed fair since you can find comparable new pre-builts for ~$1100) and I got tonnes of interest, but the vast majority was miners offering under $400 just for the video card.

Raptors! ;)

New computer is awesome; very quiet (better airflow in this case, Noctua fans), very fast (the 3070 is no longer bottlenecked!), and the build was mostly uneventful. The amount of pressure required to install AMD's Wraith Stealth is kind of terrifying, needed a BIOS update to get the DOCP setting on my RAM to work, and I accidentally removed my digital Windows license from my Microsoft account but was able to get it back by reviving the old motherboard and logging-in there with my Microsoft account... Microsoft support had told me I was out of luck, but I sure showed them 😅 Kept the PSU and three hard drives from the previous build, replaced the failing 1TB HDD from 2010 with a 2015 one I found in my parts bin, and since my VR headset works with the onboard controller on the new motherboard, the Renesas D720201 PCIe card I picked-up for the old one went to my brother's Z68 build so he could finally hook-up the front USB 3.0 ports on his Meshify C. Also, the power and drive LEDs don't seem to work on this case... Meh.

Speaking of  hard drives, I re-installed Anthem... But on the SATA SSD, so still not sure if PCIe Gen4 would help those load-times. Still fun to jump back into though; hit level 30, started playing the unlocked difficulty levels... Not really worth it; "Hard" seems to be the most casual fun that still yields decent rewards, in terms of currency anyway.

Tried Metro Exodus again, and it doesn't stutter anymore... Still kinda buggy in terms of mission completion conditions and lighting, but I wonder if the sudden performance issues were somehow related to the failing drive :\

Old computer is listed on Kijiji for $1000 CDN OBO; final specs are:

• MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G
• Intel X-Series i7-3930K (6C/12T, 3.8GHz boost)
• ASUS P9X79
• 32GB (8x4GB) 1600MHz quad-channel DDR3
• Intel BXTS13A
• 2x WD 74GB Raptor 10,000 RPM (RAID 0)
• Corsair CX500
• Lian-Li PC-68

...Only one bite so far, and they were looking to trade; which would be fine, but they didn't have anything I wanted.

Unrelated, but one friend who was looking for a 2060 SUPER or better for Premiere finally gave-up and settled for a 1660 SUPER... Except he couldn't find one of those either. I found two profiteers for him - a 3070 for ~$1000 CDN or a 1660 SUPER for $450 CDN - he went with the latter, and he's happy.