The image Josh tried to attach was broken - but how does an attachment work? 

When I try to view it it doesn't work. Looks like this could be used to attach files and documents to a post, though. 

Nope. The image gets corrupted as soon as you upload it - the download doesn't work, either. 

i am 12 and what is this

I don't respond to anyone who self identifies as "12" online. You'll have to find a nu start. 

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/im-twelve-years-old-and-what-is-this

Well, that is a meme that can only lead to bad places on the Internet. 

Mist or MiSTer or Collectorvision Phoenix? Which is your favorite FPGA? If you don't know what FPGA is.... ask me. I'll tell you. It was awesome, and retro. 

I have no idea what you're talking about, but something makes me think that I wish I did.

I suppose I should clarify. I'm going to bed early tonight... but I'll try and follow up tomorrow with a low down of all the goodness that is FPGA platforms for retrogaming. 

(still waiting...)

Been super busy. Trip to L.A. to drive down 7th Street and marvel at the decay of society into the vision of Ayn Rand. 

FPGA is Field Programmable Gate Array - modern hardware boards that can reprogram their gate arrays into discreet circuits, on the fly. They're not emulation. They're bare metal synthesis of the actual gate logic of the original retro machine "core" that you load into them. So, the device becomes a C-64, or Amiga. My MiSTer can become a 486SX25 running Windows 3.11. 

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

They tend to be cycle accurate, and because each circuit exists as a discreet, parallel subsystem they tend to run exactly like the original hardware. There is no abstraction layer, no translation from native to the host system - access to I/O is generally direct. They're popular with builders and DIYers for projects, too. 

The Best Free MS-DOS Games Now Available From the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive website is very slow.

http://lifehacker.com/the-best-free-ms-dos-games-now-available-from-the-inter-1839083458

Wow... I've never left a Citadel on autopilot for this long and came back to find it still more or less operating. 

Nice lol

Really. Every time I log back into it, I expect it to be down or dead or kernel panic-ed... but it is still here doing exactly what it is supposed to do. 

Even if it is just a medium for you and I to send PMs to one another in various different rooms, at this point. :) 

Field Gate Programmable Array computers are the future of reliving 35 year old machines. They're cheap, reliable, authentic, and evolving. Emulation sucks. MiSTer - based on the DE10 Nano FPGA card, is the best thing to happen to 50 year old gamers since the Amiga 500/2000. Buy one, now. 

So, the MiSTer FPGA project just released an update for the ao486 FPGA core. This core replicates an x86 i32 486SX running fast enough to handle many early Windows 3.x, Win 9x and most DOS titles. It has Sound Blaster, Tseng 5000 SVGA, mouse and PPP LAN/Internet (via null modem) support. This gives you a pretty robust DOSbox type of system with typical FPGA authenticity compared to emulation. 

It is a wicked blast of nostalgia installing and configuring - but there are some caveats. 

Initial setup can be a steep learning curve, especially if you're out of practice with Windows legacy platforms - which 25 years later, you probably are out of practice. 

There is no optical drive support as of now, nor can you mount an .iso CD image from the MiSTer file system as an optical drive image. 

Additionally, modern VM software like Oracle Virtual box is starting to have significant issues running 16 and 32 bit Operating Systems because 32 bit windows will choke on x64 processors, even with an emulated abstraction layer running as a VM between the code and the physical 64 bit processor. 

The best option is to use an older Core Duo or Centrino based physical machine to create a virtual machine on an older version of Virtual Box. Which you can find here: 

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds

Create a fixed size .vhd hard drive image (might as well go for the Max size of 8GB supported by Windows 98SE), install and configure your Windows build there in Virtual Box, and here is my advice...

with the cd .iso mounted in Virtual Box and the VHD set up - copy the ENTIRE Windows install CD to a folder on the .VHD you've created. 


In my case, because I am using Windows 98 OSR 2, I've created a folder C:/Win98 on my .vhd drive and copied the entire Windows CD into that directory. 

This will save you time and effort. In fact, if you have any problems with the VM Windows image booting when you move it to the ao486 core, just boot from a dos .img file, rename the Windows directory windows.old, load a boot floppy image in ao486, and rerun SETUP from this directory on the hard drive. Also, if you uninstall or reinstall components or add Windows components or otherwise need the original Windows disk during a software install - it will just look to this directory on the hard drive to extract the necessary Windows files. 

With Windows 98 OSR 2, everything should autoconfigure correctly during setup - although I haven't been able to get the built in Microsoft TCP/IP stack and null modem driver to work correctly. I've been using Trumpet Winsock 3.x for network connectivity. This won't allow you to map file shares and copy directly from your PC Lan to ao486, but gives you basic network connectivity for FTP and simple web browsing, telnet and other IP based applications. 

I'll post documentation with more detailed information, probably even step by step install instructions with screen shots, and links to useful sites where you can find boot image floppies and CD .iso images, later. 

Get your old PC games, categorized by year, which gives a decent idea what will run on ao486, here: 

https://gamesnostalgia.com/games/platform/dos