Smashy smashy

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(This statement deserves to be trapped in brackets as an unimportant final word: gave up completely on RA2 on Linux.)
 
So that was all a big waste of time, but it has taught me the value of giving up sooner on obviously doomed endeavours.
 
…but I hadn’t given up on wasting some of my life playing through RA2 again!
 
2110
…which meant a Windows machine, and the easiest one to use somewhere comfortable would be the (now, astonishingly, 10-year old) Dell laptop (the WOD). I took it to a spare workbench (our house is blessed with many) and booted it up.
 

 Oh, zarking hell.
 
As a special 10th birthday present for it, I’ve gone and smashed the screen. The WOD is even more W. I’m not particularly precious or gentle with it (as befits a laptop that should have died many years ago from heat exhaustion (or lack thereof LOL)), but I don’t exactly throw the laptop around. I think the fatal incident may have been during hoovering; I hate hoovering and anything that gets in the way of hoovering tends to be cast aside with alacrity, and impatience, but not with care.

 Sorry, WOD.
 
Funnily enough though, I’m actually typing this using that Dell laptop!
 
…well, what’s currently left of it.
 
I looked up how to replace the screen, using this guide:

 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Dell+Precision+3510+Display+Assembly+Replacement/200240
 
which was great, but it only goes as deep as removing the entire laptop lid assembly, whereas I was also looking at eBay listings for just the LCD. Anyway, I managed to remove the LCD from its casing without too much trouble (having spent a lifetime taking things apart …though not always getting them back together again). I’d quite like to preserve the original laptop lid, even if I do end up buying an entire assembly, because I’ve ‘decorated’ it with hundreds of barcodes which makes for quite a unique look.
 
As I say, I’m currently writing this using that (this?) ailing laptop, but plugged into an external monitor, which works quite well …eventually.
 
You probably haven’t read that iFixit guide - why would you? - but I have read it, and followed it, but I still paused in confusion for a second when I went to turn this laptop on and nothing happened. One of the steps in that guide is “disconnect the battery”... Ya fool.
 
…and then I had a similar moment of dimwittedness when the wifi wasn’t working …despite knowing that I’d disconnected the wifi antennae which are housed around the laptop lid.
 
It’s all working now: power cable plugged in (to the power socket on the laptop which isn’t screwed in, but is captive enough that it works), ethernet connected (though I had a little battle with the ethernet-over-house-electrical-wiring socket which I’d lazily plugged into an extension cable and it wasn’t happy about it), and HDMI cable going to the monitor.
 
The experience of using a laptop with no screen, or even lid, attached (as opposed to using a laptop with a non-functioning display, e.g. that T410 with the cracked screen) is a new one for me, and it’s quite satisfying; the whole computer is contained in, effectively, an over-sized keyboard, and one which has a bonus wrist-rest built-in.
 
I haven’t actually ordered a new screen yet. I’ve sent a cheeky low-ball offer to a company for a secondhand complete lid assembly, and there’s a cheap (because it has weird blobs of adhesive stuck inside the screen) touchscreen assembly available for £19. A FHD panel on its own is around £32, and those are new, so might be the most sensible option. I love this old machine, but do slightly resent spending money on a WOD.
 

Not even a virtual machine can save the day... Oh, Linux, why do you hate RA so...?

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Holy zarking kwonk, can you believe I actually tried to run RA2 again?? What a fool.

 I found yet another copy, and it seemed to work slightly differently when I ran it in Windows, which gave me hope (of the false variety, it was revealed later).

 Copied it onto the Linux computer, ran it (they always run, that’s not the problem), and, as usual, the game menu was all blank.

 

Aaaargh, why am I doing this to myself??

 

And the insanity doesn’t even end there! I’m now following a guide (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN1MWBa3yiw, but I’m attempting Win11 rather than 10 because I’m an idiot) to run Windows in a virtual machine to see if I can fool/force Linux into running RA2 properly.

 

Important: when VirtualBox is running the ISO, rightclick on the little ‘network’ icon at the bottom of the window (two computer monitors overlaid?, then click “NEtwork Settings…” and change the dropdown menu to “not attached”. We DO NOT want Win11 to be able to access the internet (see below)

 

This install was actually the first time I’ve hit the moronic Win11-needs-internet roadblock (having always used a Rufus-made stick to bypass it previously) so it was the first time I’ve had the joy of hitting Shift + F10 to bring up a command prompt, and then enter OOBE\BYPASSNRO (case insensitive). This restarts the virtual machine and makes the option “I don’t have internet” appear. Zark off, Microsoft.

 

Guide for getting through that nonsense:
 https://archive.ph/gDE9f

 

As an amusing aside, this is actually the first ever time that this old HP AIO has run Windows 11!

 

Anyway, how did it go? Can you guess?

 That’s right: obviously, it didn’t work. It was even more of a failure than just running it in Linux. (sigh)

 

Because I’m not quite done with punching myself in the head, I’m going to try a Windows 7 virtual machine next, so for the hell of it. Obviously, again, this isn’t going well, and the installation has already frozen once twice (requiring a ‘restart’ of the machine). And then it failed utterly. I’ll try Win7 again another time because I still have a stupid belief that I can run MM…

 

Right, so, what next? Let’s give Win10 a go! (punch punch punch punch)

 

https://superuser.com/questions/1613335/shared-folders-not-showing-in-virtualbox-windows-10-guest

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AwzaZmRNsI

 

 

No Ra-ra-rasputin, no RA2, and nearly no memory.

Tuesday, 14th of July, 2026 - 1209

 

Ah, the best laid schemes of hamsters & humans…

 

I really jinxed myself with “I suspect it’ll run great”! Obviously, it did not run great.

I tried the two copies I already had, plus got hold of another few copies (which all turned out to be pretty much the same but with different names. They all suffered the same issue: the game would start (one of these copies even allowed me to watch the intro movie, which I don’t remember ever seeing before, and certainly not in the last 25 years) but the menu options would all be blank, making it tricky to navigate. By random clicking around, I managed to stumble into playing (happened to be the tutorial) which seemed to work ok, but the resolution was abysmal.

Then came the absolute horror of the branching whirlpool of research into how to play RA2 in Linux. By the Maker, what a nightmare dive into incomprehensible Linux terminology that was. There was some talk about Steam etc. and I nearly went there and bought a brand new ‘copy’ of all of Command & Conquer, but there was no guarantee even that would work in Linux.

 

Obviously, I gave up, reasoning that there were better things I could do with my life: I wasted a few hours playing Civilization. 

 

So, no MM or RA2 in Linux, but overall, things are still positive.

 

In other news: the worn-out Dell (credit: Fountains of Wayne). Yes, the ailing Dell laptop continues to find new ways to lead me into believing it is finally dead; this time it was the RAM. I tried to turn it on, but nothing happened other than it blinking out one of its error-signalling codes using a couple of LEDs. SOme searching revealed this (two orange; four white) to mean a memory error.

In mid-2026, believe me when I say a memory problem is not a problem you want to be having…

As usual for the worn-out Dell (WOD?), it was time to take the (flimsy plastic) back off and see what was what. 

 

…nothing much to see inside, so I removed the single 8GB ram stick (probably worth more than the rest of the laptop put together) and reseated it. Twice, for good measure. After shunning Nintendo’s advice and blowing on the contacts (‘90s’ habits die hard).

 

Attempt a power-on: it’s fine again! I’m even writing this entry using it (on my lap, as it slowly burns my left leg).

 

Good ‘ol WOD.

 

Play the pain away

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Most of the time I've had on the computer in the last few weeks has been spent playing through UFO again. It can be very entertaining, but it can also be quite tedious, hence the cheating to increase the pace of progress. Maybe I should try playing it completely vanilla again sometime.

 

I also had a playthrough of Dawn of War! Wine had no trouble running a copy of the collectors’\definitive\remastered\whatever version and it was great fun.

 

It did leave me a bit flat afterwards though, possibly because it wasn't really a challenge. I don't think I like being challenged, but the feeling after playing an easy game isn't very satisfying. I suspect I mainly play computer games to take my mind off the crushing awfulness of reality, and a boringly easy game is just enough of a distraction that my brain can stop its incessant thinking for a few hours. Crucially, the lack of challenge means there's no stress-inducement, so it's just a flat, nothing experience.

 

What to play next to keep the brain turned off…?

 

Oh yeah, Red Alert 2! Good old Rah 2.

 

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I suspect it'll run great. Wine is proving to be a truly fantastic program and means the transition to Linux is going very smoothly. Ok, sure, Memory Map was a busy, but that didn't work in Win1x either, so that's not a step backwards.

 

Soundtrack to this writing session: Bleach by Nirvana. They really blasted out of the blocks with that album.