I still don't know when I'll change my computer (prices decrease but I still don't have enough money for it)
Well, sometimes you're forced to do things before they're planned...
Tuesday afternoon, my wife was using computer at home. She left the computer for a few minutes to go taking the children at school. When she came back, a burnt smell was in the house. Computer was burning inside.
She cut off the power immediately.
I came home tuesday afternoon, opened the computer and saw why : ventilator of the processor was bloqued. So processor burnt due to high temperature and made the motherboard started to burn too.
Computer is out of order. Buying a motherboard + processor + ventilator is not worth the buy compared to a brand new full computer price.
I took a day off yesterday and went to buy another computer. A nice one : Athlon 64x2 (dual core) 4 GHz, GeForce 6100 (not very powerfull but really much better than my good old GeForce2Mx of my previous computer), 2Gb RAM, 250 Go hard drive serial-ATA. Sadly, only computers with Windows Vista are available now, no XP. As I was wasting money I didn't have (I took a credit to buy it, no other choice), I also changed my screen to a 19 inches wide flat one. I installed it yesterday, tested it a few, installed FireFox and ThunderBird and a few other utilities. I didn't tested Stunts so far.
I tried to get back the programs, photos, games, saves, replays and so on I had on my previous hard drive, but it seems it suffered from the burnt. Hard drive is not recognized by the new computer. I tried on my very old one (the old Pentium 166 MMX), hard drive is not recognized too. Maybe it's a FAT incompatibility : old one is with FAT 16, the burnt one was with FAT 32, new one is NTFS. Dunno. I'll try at my job with the guys in charge of computers if something can be saved on the hard drive, but I fear it won't.
So, I lost numerous personnal files and photos not yet saved on CD... I feel sad.
Regarding Stunts, I lost all my tracks and replays archive since 2002 (I should have made a CD with all of them a long time ago...), I lost my Excel file with Stunts competitions list (I have a backup of an old version at my work, but I miss all updates made since one year or so), I lost all tracks made so far for Stunts career project (around 50 tracks), ... This is a bad week.
I also lost my recent replays. I was lucky to send monday evening some improvements for WSC, but I lost my unfinished new replays for Z75 and USC current track... I'll be able to race USC until deadline, but I won't be able to race Z75 until deadline tonight.
I also lost the last version of Z76 track (I should have sent it to Zak on monday, it was ready, stupid me). But I have the test version without all scenery, so I'll be able to make scenery and demo replay again in time for tonight.
All I still have is the Excel file of Stunts career project, with "decision tree", list of all tracks and competitions and rules planned for the project, web links of tracks maps and logos, the story, the way it's suppose to work with career points and so on because I copied it on my USB key a few days ago (lucky me for that).
I'll be able to get back the draft of Stunts career website from the web, and my previous websites (IMSA Cup and WRC Stunts) too, so this is not completely lost.
This mail is written from my job. I'll test tonight if Stunts can be played with Vista and/or if DOSBox and TrackBlaster work with Vista too. I can still play Stunts on my old Pentium in pure DOS mode in case, but I had almost no tracks on it and DOSBox doesn't work on it (processor is too slow to make DOSBox work properly). So, maybe I'll have to use again my system with my camera to prove noRH racing for SDR.
Also, this old computer is not connected to the web and does not recognize USB keys. I'll have to use good old disks to save my replays and tracks, but new computer has no disk drive. I still have my burnt computer disk drive but I won't install it on new computer : it's a yellow look while new computer is black : it will be ugly. So, in case Vista can't run Stunts, I'll race and desing tracks on old computer, copy replays and tracks to disks, use my job's computer to tranfer files from disk to USB keys and then have files at new computer from USB key to send them by mail. Complicated, isn't it ?
Since my wife saw Vista, she asked me not to suppress it, she likes the look (nice transparency effects) and the stability (especially compared to my old Win Me). So I think I will install Linux Mandriva on new computer apart from Vista, it should allow me to run Stunts and all OpenGL games without problems. I didn't test games but I fear numerous old ones I like won't be able to run properly with Vista... I'll tell you when I'll know more.
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