Retro is fun

Just a quick post as an ode to how uh… fun… retro can be sometimes. I’m somewhat cursed I think that in just about every time I work on a retro project I end up running into road blocks. Case in point.

What was supposed to be just a simple upgrade of a computer and then some easy captures turned into a multi day project. To give the basic overview here is the timeline of events:

1. Upgraded CPU, set jumpers
2. Computer won’t boot
3. Lot’s of fiddling with jumper settings, re-seating computer finally starts up
4. Attempt to install game using ISO file
5. Iso file is having problems and won’t copy correctly (shows negative byte size)
6. Zip up ISO file and transfer it to computer
7. Attempt to unzip computer goes haywire, corrupted messages and shut down
8. Hard drive fully corrupted
9. Attempt to recover hard drive with no luck, non bootable and partition unrecognizable
10. Find new hard drive, preload it in modern machine
11. Windows installation errors out, unable to read setup files
12. Blow away partitions manually, reload OS from CD
13. Install the incorrect drivers for the sound card leading to blue screens
14. Fight for hours trying to uninstall the drivers until I realize I had read the model number on the sound card wrong. DOH
15. Computer finally is booting with proper drivers, install game
16. Install latest update for game. Game will no longer boot
17. Fight with updates for hours upon hours
18. Reinstall game from different sources, errors everywhere
19. Put a new DVD drive in computer, uninstalled game and literally cleaned the registry manually
20. Install game and it boots without updates but textures are BLUE
21. Find an older update which doesn’t crash the game
22. Game still is running after update. With blue textures. ARGH
23. Find a compatibility setting that fixes the blue texture problem
24. Profit/cry

So that’s just insane and it took days of tinkering. A simple retro project that went off the rails but I finally got there in the end but just about everything this machine could have done to be a pain… it did.

I love retro stuff.