Today I was thinking about React OS and how it is going. I remembered that about eight or ten years ago I tried this operating system in QUEMU and I really liked it and the idea behind it.
For those who do not know, React OS is a project started in 1996 that is trying to reimplement the entire Windows API from scratch to create an open source operating system that is able to run Windows applications and games natively.
The project is still "alive" but is still in alpha stage, and the public secret is that it will never get past that stage and would never get to beta stage at least.
The system is able to boot, is able to run the desktop and supports a lot of applications today. You can run almost anything, such as Blender, Age of Empires, Live for Speed... everything... but the system is unstable and not recommended for daily use, or for any use on real hardware, as it can corrupt the data on the HDD, so it is not recommended to run it even as a dual-boot.
And it is really sad, because I liked the project so much and hoped we would get a ...
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I have finished installing software and games to laprop from previous post, so I moved to another of the four pieces that have arrived.
This one is a Compaq Armada M700. It has a sticker with a Windows 98 licence, so I inserted my installer CD and set up the OS. Everything worked fine, the CD booted without a problem, but the cursor does not move (another faulty mouse). I tried both trackpoint and touchpad and nothing worked. I later discovered that the part that looks like a touchpad is just a piece of plastic that holds the buttons for the trackpoint.
The first thing I would do is try to get USB plug and play to detect and install USB disk drivers, so I would be able to try different drivers transferred via USB drive, as I have my PCMCIA card with CF reader packed somewhere in the basement after moving.
So I hope I would be able to make it work and not repeat the usuccessful attempt with the previous non-working touchpad. So..fingers crossed
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After the debacle with the previous laptop, I decided to tackle something that looked a bit easier, so I pulled out one of the four laptops that arrived a while ago. Specifically, the choice fell on the Compaq Evo N610c with 256 MB of DDR RAM (266 MHz) and an Intel Pentium 4 processor.
The laptop heats up like hell during any activity (thank you P4), so in the current cold weather the user is pleasantly warm.
Upon powering up it booted, presumably factory, windows XP Professional, still with the original COMPAQ wallpaper. Unfortunately, they were passworded, which could have been dealt with, but I have a habit of repainting collector's laptops anyway, to maintain the privacy of those who gave me these machines. Even the original label on the bottom of the laptop proclaimed Windows XP Pro, and provided a valid activation key. So the choice was clear.
So I prepared a bootable USB and started booting from it. The beginning was a bit difficult, because the BIOS is really exotic and didn't offer the option to enable boot from USB, but eventually I managed to activate the bootmenu display. This then admittedly only showed the option to ...
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I have received a Fujitsu Amilo PRO v2030. As I am waiting for a cable to connect notebook harddisks to USB to revive the notebooks from previous posts, I have tried to do something with this piece as it is capable of booting from USBs.
After many attempts, I managed to create a bootable USB with Windows XP setup. The installation went well, but the touchpad was dead. I was hoping that it was just a problem with the drivers, as it seems to detect "PS2 compatible mouse" in the BIOS during boot, but even after installing the drivers in fresh Windows XP, it does not seem to work.
The hardware manager in Windows Control Panel does not see it in the (un)detected devices, even when I have installed the drivers from the manufacturer's website. The previous owner told me that the touchpad worked after installing the drivers, but I am still unable to get it to work. I will see if I would be able to solve it, or it is completely gone...
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Some new hardware just arrived. Everything looks OK on first look
Some new hardware has just arrived. Everything looks fine at first glance. There are four notebooks, three PCMCIA LAN cards, one USB->LAN card, some floppies, a bag of RAM and some CDs with drivers for the notebooks.
I will look at each of the notebooks. I have tried booting them all. One of them has Windows XP password locked. I have not tried to hack the password as I am going to install the system that was originally on these laptops (based on the licence stickers on the bottom), one starts but Windows refuses to boot because of some "security issue". The other two boot, but one has no working touchpad/trackpoint. The second has Windows 98, which is locked by a password, but in Windows 98 you can easily log in to any account by pressing ESC or clicking Cancel on the login dialogue.
This one seems to have a problem with the hard drive, as it 'ticks' every X seconds, causing the system to lag for half a second. It may be necessary to replace the hard drive.
So I will check each of them and try to get ...
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There was a clean-up day at my company and I found this "gem". When I first picked it up, I was a bit confused because it was really light, so no battery is included. Luckily, after opening the lid, I realised that it can also be powered by 4xAA batteries.
The phone also has no charger. So I connected a lab power source to the battery connectors and switched it on. To be on the safe side, I started at 3V and slowly increased it to 6V (4xAA batteries). The phone was able to start, but the display is probably dead, as you can see on the following picture.
As I have an OCD to have only working phones and notebooks in my collection, I will try to repair it or exchange it with another collector for something else.
There is still a chance that there will be some oxidation on the contacts between the display and the motherboard, or maybe I will give it a bit of a head and then let it cool down to see if anything changes. I will see.
However, it is still a nice piece of old technology and even if I ...
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I finally got good source code from ai on the first try! Unbelievable, but true. And this is the resul
To be honest, I use chat AI a lot when I'm coding, but usually it's not that useful, especially when configuring any GUI. If you want to write some code, you have to specify very basic tasks and then connect everything by yourself, and then you have to hope that it works.
However, any complex tasks or GUI coding is usually absolutely useless.
Yesterday I had to make a menu for my new game for hryprodva.cz and I was really lazy, so I gave the AI another chance and today it worked. The picture at the beginning of the article is the result of the prompt:
"I need a page with a white background and a menu in the middle. The menu will be a grid, and it will be one third of the page size. it will be centered horizontally and vertically. the grid will theoretically be 3x3 tiles, but topleft 2x2 will be one big button, and the remaining corners will be rest 5 smaller buttons. The buttons should have different pastel colours and will be labelled by single ...
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I am experimenting with Adsense for my project hryprodva.cz. The project has consumed thousands of hours of my time and it is still in the red as there is no income. So I decided to try to place some advertisements and the easiest way seemed to be Google Adsense.
For the first try, I decided to place just two small ads, on the main page with the game list. The idea was to place the boxes with the same look as the game cards, with some advertising.
After three weeks of testing, it was still buggy and generating almost no income. On the PC, the ad appeared every tenth time, and on the phone it almost never appeared.
With a total income of around $1 after three weeks, I tried another experiment. I experimented with the automatically placed ads. There is a simple editor in the administration of the Adsense account where you can adjust the excluded parts of the pages and also select the types of ads that are banned. For example, the full-screen stickers are absolutely annoying...
Now the site is full of ads, but the income is many times higher. Now I have to find a balance between the ...
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I have received the solar charged power bank I ordered for "scientific" purposes. I am interested in the electronics for charging the cells and the safety mechanisms for overheating.
The picture presenting "perpetuum mobile" is just a joke. I remembered the funny video where the guy connected the extension cable to himself, then took the piezo crystal from the lighter, sparked the ground stick and established "never ending energy circulation".
I was suprised, when the Power Bank arrived partitialy charged and seemed to have some capacity. I have connected it to phone and tried it with the probe. It has been charged by about 1 ampere and it charged 560 mAh before it died.
I am going to give it a few charge/discharge cycles and will measure it. I want to discover it remaining capacity. Then, depending on the capacity i will possibly diassembly it and will make some test of safety mechanism. My question is, what wolud it do, when you leave it under the windshield in your car to charge it in hot summer, to be able to use it then to charge your phone. Wait for my next steps :)
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I have received a Galaxy Xcover 3 and PS1 slim as an exchange for an old PC HDD shaft and a couple of old SSDs.
The PS1 came with a demo CD and without any cables or controllers. I leave it for the long winter evenings and look forward to getting it working.
The phone does work though and is only missing the back cover. I will 3D print it later. The battery seems to be alive, it can be charged, and it has lasted tens of minutes of playing games without any significant drops in charge.
It runs on Android 5.1, and after the first start it seemed very old. I did not know that the Android interface has changed so much, as it still looks the same to me after each update. It may be that there are many small changes between versions, which is why the 5.1 looks so old.
Since Google Play only supports devices with Android 6 and below, I downloaded some really old .apk files for my favourite games that are no longer available on Google Play. For example, Slingshot Racing is a really great game that I bought many years ago, but it ...
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