Notices by Spindley Q Frog (spindleyq@mastodon.social), page 3

Ok, that worked. Backing up to a microSD card now.

While that all transfers, let's see if I can repartition my 286 to install QNX 2 on it without wiping my drive

NOTHING IN WINDOWS 98 CAN AUTHENTICATE WITH MODERN SSL AND IT'S KILLING ME

Last ditch backup effort is this super sketchy generic USB mass storage driver for win98 that required me to delete all USB devices from my device manager before installing and then looked for all the world like it replaced explorer.exe as part of the install

Toshiba has driver for PCMCIA wired ethernet card installed, Dell does not. Downloaded driver from sketchy website on a modern PC because no win98 browser supports proper https, uploaded it to an http domain I control, downloaded it onto the Toshiba using Opera, beamed it to the Dell over infrared

Ok that's way too slow but today I learned you can just... send a file to a Windows 98 box over infrared, and that box will not prompt for any kind of confirmation or notify the user in any way except making whooshing noises

@HihiDanni also it's taking forever so I think it's probably wired PCMCIA ethernet time anyway

@HihiDanni honestly I am 99% certain that everything worth keeping on this laptop is already uploaded to glorious trainwrecks

@daphny pretty sure this is the laptop I did the first Pirate Kart on

Also, oh shit, I just realized, there is a total of one game installed

It's Total Distortion

Not fucking kidding

Ok, I have figured out a solution to backing up the more interesting files from this laptop before I wipe it to put QNX6.3 on it: an infrared serial connection to my other win98 laptop!

"I know, I've got this Orinoco PCMCIA wifi card from like 2001, I should be able to connect to my network without any problems! Just enter my passw... oh right"

@thomasfuchs pretty sure I've complimented that shirt before, but damn, I want that shirt

@six it's actually a really good trackball! You can be very precise with it! I really wish they'd added another button!

Hell I might even make it my daily driver again now that I'm writing my own graphic editor...

Remember when I started this project in December? Today is when I finally have access to a working serial mouse.

Out of all the retro hardware I have had to scavenge I did NOT expect a serial mouse to be this much work!

Previously:
* completely nonworking Dexxa mouse, in box
* brandless 3 button mouse, unrecognized by CuteMouse
* unusably flaky 3 button Genius mouse (button would click randomly while moving)
* Microsoft EasyBall trackball, which, while ridiculous, worked, except no right mouse button
* 3-button QuickShot trackball, sticky when moving left iirc
* 2-button Logitech trackball. My sole usable pointing device until today.

@mirzaba this is the correct take

@darius the advice here is all extremely good and tracks well with my experience running glorioustrainwrecks

@coleoptera @shadsy I mean, I guess by definition everyone has a period of their lives where they have yet to hear anyone discuss the question of whether or not video games are art, and so have the potential to find such discussion novel and interesting

@HihiDanni Donkey Kong, but Mario can transform into Pac-Man in order to stop being affected by gravity

apparently it was also released as "Spider Kong" and NOPE NO THANK YOU https://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/pac-kong

how is this real, 1983 was wild