Mildly Disappointed

One dead pixel and one dead green subpixel on the AW2721D; Dell won't authorise an exchange for less than six, but at least they're not really noticeable... Let's see if any more crop-up over the next three years. The bleed from the local dimming zones is, however, quite noticeable unless you tweak application brightness along with the display's "Dark Stabilizer" and "Variable Backlight" settings. Despite all of that though, it's a very impressive monitor for the price. I've put a Dell U2311H next to it, and it's night-and-day.

The AC1750 Archer A7 and the AC1900 Archer T9E occasionally reach transfer speeds in excess of 1Gbps, but much more consistently achieve speeds only nominally better than AC1200 despite being less than ten feet away from each other in the same room. Oh well.

Finally, can confirm that the BDP-S560 only does photos over DLNA. It's not like I was really gonna use it for anything other than playing old Blu-ray discs - nor did I expect it to be able to decode any modern video formats - but it would've been a cool feature!

Features

Went back to the thrift store for fun, and this time I snagged a TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750 router for $7! Found-out when I got home that it had OpenWrt installed and an admin password had been set :\ Took me a minute to figure-out that I had to press the the "WPS/Wi-Fi On/Off" button to get it to boot into failsafe mode, but then it was simple enough to SSH in and soft-reset it. Next I was hoping to get it back to stock (I may have bricked it once or twice in the process) and TP-Link's vaguely-documented TFTP recovery solution is a nice feature - though that took a few tries before I figured-out that the Ethernet controller on my Lenovo just didn't seem to be compatible, and then that the Ethernet on my desktop was too slow to transfer a 16MB firmware file within the set window before the router would just continue to boot normally. Luckily, my partner's HP laptop worked great! Unfortunately, none of the TP-Link firmware files took, so it's currently on the latest OpenWrt release.

Now I'm comparing the three 802.11ac routers I have, trying to decide which should go where...

TP-Link Archer A7: AC1750, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0

Linksys EA6300: AC1200, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0

D-Link DIR-822: AC1200, 10/100 Ethernet, no USB

...But since I'm almost never transferring anything over my local networks, I'm not serving any kind of NAS, and my Internet connection will always be the bottleneck, I don't really see any real advantage to any of them anywhere. Maybe the Archer A7 goes wherever the Archer T9E goes? Whichever has the best DLNA implementation goes wherever the Blu-ray player goes?

Timely

AW2721D went on-sale for 37%-off in Canada today and Dell's offering an additional 10% off monitors, so $792 instead of $1400. Nice.

Native Linux gaming with modern distros on old hardware is... Fine.

Gave-up on Shadow of Mordor since it was never gonna run great on this GPU and my setup isn't officially supported anyway. The latest update to Inscryption looks for Inscryption.x86 but the included file is Inscryption.x86_64 - copying and renaming works. Borderlands 2 was next (never quite finished all of the DLC) and it worked flawlessly.

Unrelated, but recently helped a pal with their rural Internet access - fiber is coming and they're just out of range for LTE, so he's stuck on 10Mbps down/1Mbps up/700ms satellite in the meantime... Oof. They are on a waitlist for Starlink as well, which I learned has less latency because low-orbit satellites. Huh.

Underserved market or calculated gap?

What I want: A sub-$1000, 27~32", QHD+, DisplayHDR 600, adaptive-sync, 120Hz+ monitor.

What I can find: A sub-$1000 (in the US), 27", QHD+, DisplayHDR 600, adaptive-sync, 120Hz+ monitor - that costs $1400 in Canada, with the stupidest design ever or a reasonably-priced one with a much more subtle design that only comes curved.

Everything else remotely comparable is $1000...

Boom

Bought the Best of Boomer Shooters Bundle. Hedon is clearly made with love and runs well on Linux, but it's kinda rough. Project Warlock is great. DUSK is really good. Amid Evil feels way more grounded and focused than the trailers suggested, but is ultimately getting kinda boring as I progress. Ion Fury is good. Haven't gotten to Dread Templar, HROT, or Hellbound. Haven't used the ULTRAKILL coupon, but did use the Prodeus one and it absolutely lived-up to the hype; stellar game, and I can't wait for more.

More New-Linux-on-Old-Hardware Gaming

• BIT.TRIP Runner 2 - Beta fixes common audio issue, but seems to require a GNOME theme; didn't care enough to troubleshoot beyond that. Uninstalled
  
• DUSK - Works great, really slick game; better than it looks in the trailers.
• Inscryption - Beta works really well.
  
• Penumbra - So far, so good.
  
• Quadrilateral Cowboy - Runs fine; haven't dug-in yet.
  
• Serious Sam 3: BFE - Either runs like shit or looks like shit despite exceeding recommended specs; barely playable either way, which is disappointing because it's a good game. Uninstalled.
  
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Doesn't work. Various recommended fixes out there that seem to apply to a number of Feral Interactive Linux ports; most involve defining lib folders (either via launch options, symlinks, manual copies, compatibility releases, etc...) for specific package versions, but none worked reliably on EndeavourOS and most affected users seem to have turned to Proton. There's a 3GB beta update that I'm gonna try before giving up on it.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown - ...And this time, Feral nailed it!
  

Thirfty

Thrift store finds:

• TP-Link Archer T9E AC1900 PCIe card ($7)
• D-Link DIR-822 AC1200 Router ($8)
  
• 10/100 Ethernet ports though? Really?
• Sony BDP-S560 Wi-Fi DLNA 1080p Blu-ray Player ($15)

Gonna upgrade a bunch of stuff at my parents' house :)

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)