(Somewhat) Daily Blog #41 · 4:59am Aug 10th, 2017
DON’T DROP IT, LINUS!
Random Fact: The first computer mouse ever invented was basically a brick of wood with a button on top and wheels on the bottom. Seriously.
Thoughts & Opinions~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My glasses are still broken, but that’s nothing that a bit of superglue and tape hasn’t handled. It’s a lot more loose than before now, but it’ll hold until I can get new ones later.
Turns out the reason why the ATi video cards weren’t working in my old PC project was not because of BIOS incompatibility, but because of a design quirk of motherboards from that era that made it so certain cards would work in some slots, but not others. Two hours of manually pulling and replacing cards in different slots later, and I’ve now got a full variety of ports and hardware including:
- AMD K6-233ANR underclocked to 166 mhz due to BIOS limit
- 190 mb of RAM
- AT-style keyboard connector (Adapted for use with PS/2 keyboards)
- PS/2 mouse port
- 2 USB ports
- 10 mbps Ethernet jack
- Gameport/Line In/Line Out/Mic/Speakers via Soundblaster 16
- VGA via an ATi Rage XL card (Supports up to DX9, but limited by VRAM)
- and to top it off with some overkill, a 802.11n (AKA Wireless-N) USB wifi dongle that I also use on my main PC.
As of now, I can browse the internet at (somewhat) reasonable speeds, though limited by RAM when it comes to feature-filled sites.
Also, I can barely load and run 3DMark on the thing, but it complains that there isn’t enough VRAM on the Rage XL after the first test. Obviously, 8 megabytes of VRAM isn’t enough, but the Geforce fx5200 that I replaced has poor driver support, even though it’s got a spacey 256 mb of VRAM.
Now, if only I had an early Radeon card... 
I tried using the S3 Virge/DX card before, but I switched to the Rage XL for several reasons: The S3 Virge/DX only supports up to DX7 on Windows XP, it’s OpenGL support is utter crap even with the wrapper functions installed, and it’s only got a measly 2 mb of VRAM.
Did I ever mention that the S3 Virge series was so bad that they became known as “Graphics decelerators”?
That mouse looks like something you'd see in a prehistoric joke