1134
I don't remember the last time I woke up feeling this excited for a project! Unfortunately, other life things have interrupted working on it this morning, but soon…
Apart from excitement, I also realised that I need to temper my expectations slightly; sure, MM is working in Linux, but it will all be for nought if the most vital piece of the system doesn't work: the connection to the Garmin Geko 201.
I've been using the same GPS device for more than 20 years, and it has taken me on many adventures. When I first bought it, it used a serial cable to connect to the serial port that computers had in those days. Eventually I found a serial-to-USB cable made specifically for it (for the wonderfully-named company, GPSBITZ) which meant it could connect to many more devices.
…it wasn't totally USB though. The GPS still used a COM port, the number of which had to be correctly-selected in MM. This was achieved by looking up the serial device in Windows’s Device Manager, finding out the number of the COM port, and telling MM which number it was using (this needed doing each time because a different COM number would appear for each USB port, and I never seemed to plug the serial-to-USB cable into the same port on consecutive occasions).
It doesn’t seem to have a Device Manager, so I have no way of finding out the COM port number. Does Wine even have COM ports?
1300
Still haven't found my way back to the computer; I want to get on with this this fascinating new project, but is part of me scared to continue with it, in case it all falls apart…?
1647
The fires of desire have been quenched; the excitement has been tempered; the (low) expectations have been met:
The Memory Map dream is over.
It runs in Wine, but, as feared, the GPS won’t talk to the computer.
BELIEVE ME when I say I went searching for a solution, and found several people who’d faced a similar scenario, but my ancient & frequent LInux nemesis then popped up: presumed knowledge. People write all these helpful forum posts about how to solve stuff, but every time, there’s something in them that I’m not familiar with, which necessitates a fresh search for the answer to that.
And then, guess what? Same again! Sometimes there will be multiple “possible” solutions, some of which are distro-dependent. Occasionally, I’ll stumble upon a useful post (like those yesterday) where people write the actual Terminal commands they used, but even those will often include a step featuring presumed knowledge. I don’t know how to do (whatever) in Linux, so back to searching…
This leads to a branching chain of searching and forum posts, which is a very easy thing to get lost in.
So, I gave up.
The T60 still works, and I have a Windows 7 installation on a harddrive I can slot into a T410 as a backup, so the situation isn’t critical.
It was a pipe-dream anyway; I was high on the exuberance of working out how to run MM in Linux.
1944
Let’s focus on the positives: Wacup runs in Linux with Wine! And, just for shizzles ‘n’ giggles, I put Winamp 5.666 in there too.
One oddity has arisen… To run Windows programs in Linux, the executable file (e.g. winamp.exe) needs to be right-clicked and opened-with Wine (after adding it to the context menu). Or, in the Wine configuration program, you can add individual .exes that should then, theoretically, run when the files are double-clicked in File Mangler.
This doesn’t seem to work today, i.e. double-clicking the .exes does nothing, but right-clicking and opening-with Wine works (maybe it was working yesterday…?) but this is where it gets weird: I added Wacup to Favourites, which makes the .exe appear on the Start menu. Clicking it there then works and the program runs. Lolwut.
Anyway, I’m going to take what wins I can from these two days. I have not one, but TWO non-rubbish music players working in Linux!
Time to try the games…?
2034
Wellllll, that didn’t go great… but I have learned something: xkill.
I tried to run UFO by right-clicking etc. and it launched a fullscreen program, but locked at just black. Wine popped up asking if I wanted to wait or close it, but neither button did anything.
Fine, I’ll just ctrl-alt-del.
Oh right.
I could alt-tab, but it wouldn’t shift the focus to those windows properly (black was still on top), and I couldn’t Win-arrow keys to move the Terminal to another monitor.
Some frantic googling later led to someone suggesting alt-F2 to bring up a command box (very handy) to run xkill, which allows you to click on an offending program to kill it right off. LUCKILY I have a second monitor on the go, which allowed this command box to appear. Without that monitor, I reckon it would’ve been a hard power-off.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=231314
2111
Quite a lot has happened in a very short amount of time!
In probably literally decades I’ve never really questioned why I was running UFO in Windows. Sure, whenever I tried to run it in DOSBox, it would error and say “This program cannot be run in DOS mode” (oh, remember ‘DOS mode’?? Such nostalgia for those weird transition years…) but I never thought to ask why a game that was thoroughly from the era of running games in DOS would say that. I’d just run it in Windows, with various fudges and the helpful readme.txt files I would leave for my future self to get me through.
Those fudges and wonderful readmes were of no use today; no previous experience had prepared me for trying to run a DOS program in Windows in Linux. The game ran, but it wasn’t happy; there were resolution and cropping issues which would have become very annoying.
I recently stumbled upon a cache of DOS games (hence the DOS-gaming of late) and thought maybe I’d find UFO in there - yup.
Yeah, I should have thought of that sooner…
So, UFO is back working where it should: in DOS.
Even better, and only slightly shamefully, the old game editing (cheating…) program was simple to add and works too. Interestingly, whilst looking for the cheats, I found one of those readme files I’d written to myself. It described the origin of the GAMESNOT folder name (i.e. the folder containing all the non-DOS games) which was purely to run the UFO game editor; I had to get the folder name down to eight characters for it to appear properly in DOS (avoiding tildes). Even more fascinatingly, it seems I started that readme file the day after a somewhat traumatic breakup (cross-referenced with lifelog). Perhaps I was playing UFO to take my mind off things and really cement my new single-life. (Further cross-referencing was possible with photos to reveal that on that same day I bought a pair of bongos. Really leaping into distractions…)
Hmmm, it seems yesterday’s early Wine wins indeed got my hopes up: we’re fifty-fifty on wins-losses so far, with the only wins being two almost-identical music players.
Which way will Dawn of War fall…?
Actually, don’t answer that.
