ReactOS - Does anyone care...

[SilverWarior]

Recent attempts to install XP as virtual machine was not totally successful. That is the XP installed and ran but any attempts to register/verify the software failed; and after 30 days the XP refused to continue.

Since official support for WinXP ended a long time ago there is no legitimate way for activating WinXP. There are workarounds for this but are not considered legitimate.

Unfortunately I haven't saved other old hardware. Congrats to your excellent collection of legacy systems.

Not so excellent collection as I would have wanted. The oldest AMD K5 computer no longer work on original motherboard nor has original sound-card, due the fact that my father managed to fry both when re-soldering one of audio jacks on the sound-card. He manged to create a connection between amplified audio output and PCI lane. So bye bye awesome Creative Labs sound card with built in 2 W amplifier. Also bye bye to original motherboard with full ECC protection. This ECC protection was not only for memory but for other components and CPU as well. This allowed extremely stable system even when I overclocked the CPU from 100 MHz to about 140 MHz. I no longer remember what FSB and multiplier combination I used.

I have heard good things about WMware but never tried it. Used to use Hyper-V when on Windows (10, 11) and now I use KVM/QEMU on Linux.

Have you tried to use Wine (https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManag...ication&iId=42) in order for making Delphi work on Linux. Apparently many people managed to do so.

[Jonax]

I do have occasional access to an ancient XP laptop. Managed to install the Delphi 3 there. Though it's horrible to work on and makes some unfunny sounds when booting.
Delphi 3 and XP is not my future. But fun to see if some of it can still be used.

Sorry about your motherboard loss. I still must admire your dad's ambition. Good to keep tinkering with stuff. Though sad when it fails. For what it's worth I have fried quite few components too over the years. Even without soldering

I have occasionally used the Wine. Recently spawned a new VM for the latest version of Wine. Mixed results. Starcraft 1 runs great and some other games insalls but is not pleasant to run. Haven't tried the delphi 3 there yet. But programs I compiled in Delphi 3 runs under Wine. So yay for that!

[Jonax]

I revived one of my very early game attempts. The bVoid, which was intended to mean like bot-avoiding.
The idea is to guide your vessel from (dark blue) start circle to (light blue) goal circle. All in all there are nine levels.

How to play: give your vessel a tiny push with the arrow-keys at the right moment. Avod the bots who steals shield. More importantly avoid the wall. Very unhealthy walls. Each key-press consumes some of your fuel so don't waste it all.
On the screenshot the vessel is in contact with one of those bots. Intdicated by the orange color. Not good. The shield is weakening. But don't worry. There's still some shield and the goal circle is not far away. Besides the tiny light blue dots act as safe refuges on the way.

After each completed level you can upgrade one aspect of your vessel.

Hint: keep calm and don't overdo the steering. Calm and steady wins the race.

The game is supposed to be playable on win XP or compatible systems. I have tested it on the ReactOS.

The download is a zip file consisting of the bVoid.exe (acutal game) and an undocumented levelcreator.exe ( probably uninteresting but one never knows)

The whole download is 267 kB. Yes that's 0.3 MB. The files used to be smaller back then.

https://www.jonax.se/XP/bVoid.php

[hwnd]

I dont think I will use ReactOS for everyday work.
Im primarily interested how its made and how it works. Sure good way to play around with it. After all these years I havent installed or tested ReactOS.
There are rumors that its copied from leaked sources. But I dont care.

Im still using MSDOS, Windows 95, 98, XP, 7 for my hobby stuff.

[Jonax]

Congratulations to your access to legacy OS: For those who still got those old OS up and running there is not much need to explore the alternatives. I'm afraid I'm currently have very limited access to those old OS. For occasional MSDOS stuff I use that Dosbox.

[SilverWarior]

For occasional MSDOS stuff I use that Dosbox.

For occasional DOS stuff you should check FreeDOS https://www.freedos.org/
FreeDOS is an open source DOS-compatible operating system that in some cases performs even better than MS-DOS did. You can install FreeDOS even on somewhat modern computer where installing MS-DOS would certainly fail.
Based on my experience the biggest problem running FreeDOS on modern computers is finding working drivers for Sound Cards since modern Sound Cards no longer support operating in DOS compatible mode.
But on older machine from early Windows era you can install the original MS-DOS drivers for your hardware and it will most likely work like a charm.

[Jonax]

For occasional DOS stuff you should check FreeDOS https://www.freedos.org/
FreeDOS is an open source DOS-compatible operating system that in some cases performs even better than MS-DOS did. You can install FreeDOS even on somewhat modern computer where installing MS-DOS would certainly fail.
Based on my experience the biggest problem running FreeDOS on modern computers is finding working drivers for Sound Cards since modern Sound Cards no longer support operating in DOS compatible mode.
But on older machine from early Windows era you can install the original MS-DOS drivers for your hardware and it will most likely work like a charm.

Thanks for the suggestion. I haven't tried FreeDOS yet but it does sound interesting.