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| Kawaoneechan |
Posted on 20-04-21, 21:38
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Secretly, I'm J.R.R. Tolkien
 Post: #481 of 599 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 196 days Last view: 4 hours |
Posted by tommanCan confirm! |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-04-21, 21:52 (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
 Post: #670 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
Porting from Win16 to Win32 (VB1~3 -> VB4~6) is mostly straightforward - all you need is to: - Have installed at least two different versions of the same obsolete product, because later VB versions can't open forms saved in earlier versions UNLESS you use the earlier version to save forms as text+binary, instead of a monolithic binary blob because pretty much every binary format circa 1993 was actually "a raw memory dump of whatever internal structures were used in that exact version" in disguise (same story as Office formats, really) - Source replacement OCX (ActiveX) controls for whatever weird custom VBX your original sources were using. Sometimes it's as easy as "get rid of the offending VBX because 3D look is native to Win32", and sometimes is as hard as "proprietary blob, original developer got bought, then merged, then double bankrupted, and now sells real estate in Michigan". If your program was a good citizen and stuck with whatever VBXs shipped on VB3 Pro, you're golden... as long as you have your VB/VS6 CDs handy (or know well your $SEARCHENGINE-fu) - Upgrade your external API declarations. Most of them are just matter of renaming libraries ("kernel" -> "kernel32", "user" -> "user32", "gdi" -> "gdi32", and so on - luckily API names and parameters remain mostly unchanged, aside of Integer->Long promotions that you must be well aware of), but there are plenty of 16-bit only cruft that got thrown under the 32-bit bus (hello, GetWinFlags!) so you must figure how to cope with loss. But that got NOTHING on the dreaded "Old World VB" -> .NET switch - you're supposed to take a decade of code or so, incinerate it, and start over! That's pretty much the main reason of why I left Visual Basic behind, why projects like GenRomSuite died, etc. Stupid moronic wish: Nutella's MS, pretty please opensource classic VB3/6, incorporate Win32 API as part of the core language classes, and port it to non-Windows targets. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| Kawaoneechan |
Posted on 20-04-21, 22:08
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Lying Dutchman
Post: #482 of 599 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 196 days Last view: 4 hours |
Posted by tommanIt might be more version-specific, but at least the later DOC files are more reminiscent of some sort of hard disk image than a memory dump. But that got NOTHING on the dreaded "Old World VB" -> .NET switchAnd that is why even the .Net team jokingly refused to call it "Visual Basic", and possibly related to why it's on the way out. pretty please opensource classic VB3/6oh yes please 🤤 |
| Nicholas Steel |
Posted on 20-04-22, 11:44
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Post: #357 of 426
Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 499 days Last view: 14 days |
So... are you going to mention what games/software you're working with Tomman? Or just the process of dealing with mystery content? AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64 |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-04-22, 18:38 (revision 2)
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Dinosaur
Post: #671 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
You can do it yourself at home, you know~ You only need to be extremely bored. Oh, and knowing some Visual Basic helps. So far, I've tried with the following random pieces of VB3 shareware: - Cubix v1.0 (Scandere Software, puzzle): This is something that we would call today an "crowdfunding pitch", as there is nothing to unlock, just a bunch of unfinished code and the promise that "the more people pay, the faster we can finish the game". Does not use external controls at all. - Four Seasons v1.06 (Randy Rasa, cards): This one even has sounds! Oh, and the regcode is hardcoded inside the application code - how nice of him~. The decompiler barfed its guts during the late stage of decompiling, but I was able to pick up the bits and build a working executable. Uses PicClip and Sheridan's THREED controls. - KASINO KENO 2 v?? (Dennis Pipes, lottery): Meh, I don't understand Keno. No regcode, all you need to unlock the "Due System" (whatever that means)) menu is to just click the "Games Played" label - that's all. Does not use external controls at all. - Lottsa Lotto Picks! v?? (Stephen F. Nannini, lottery): Man, why all those lottery simulators for dumb people that has more money than common sense!? But if you just paid $12+$2 for shipping, you wouldn't even have needed the decompiler anyway! Nothing to unlock, but try typing "ZAXXIN" while you hould CTRL+ALT on either the main window or the about dialog. Does not use external controls at all. - AHORSEX v1.0 (Juan Carlos Torres Navarro, wordgame): Yay, an H-game with love... from Spain?! Well, you get real pictures of tits (scanned, not drawn!)... and an lameass Hangman game. All this at a rather heavy 2MB executable (and that's for the original VB3 build!), which was certainly a luxury back in the 14400bps BBSes, and the game ships with no documentation, timebombs or anything, but it does look like it has some hidden function to load your own words from external files. Does not use external controls at all. But those were straight-up decompiling jobs. For extra fun, I tested my luck with some random non-game stuff, and found a stupidass caller ID tracker application (kinda useless in the post-modem era) which came with some kinda overengineered license key validation routines. So overengineered that they're actually BROKEN and will cause the application to hang on an infinite loop if started up with the default placeholder shareware key, "Unregistered Demo Version", as the routines expect to only validate all-caps and numbers. Seven forms: a nagscreen, four dialogs which tell you how wonderful life would be if you order your own 25-character license key for yourself, an about dialog, and the actual application window itself (which contains more broken code for configuring your modem). I guess B***d B***n and Company should be working now for Microsoft Product Activation :D Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-04-24, 15:28 (revision 3)
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Dinosaur
Post: #673 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
Fun, the Soviet Bolivarian Supremo is now blocking Cloudflare:https://bgp.he.net/ip/104.26.10.39 => AS13335 104.26.0.0/20 Cloudflare, Inc So yeah, while you 'muricans bitch and moan about Trump being Trump, our very own Donkey-at-Chief just broke half the Internet. Also, that's what you get when people decide that centralizing everything behind the "sekuritah" excuse is an awesome idea. UPDATE: Only the services/hosts under 104.26.0.0/20 seem to be actively blocked right now (wondering which opposition-led website pissed off the druglord regime enough to disconnect an entire /20). Other ranges work as usual, their 1.1.1.1 UPDATE 2: Managed to check from a working CANTV DSL link: 104.26.0.0/20 is reachable and affected sites DO work fine. Apparently it's only Movilnet that its blocking this part of Cloudflare, maybe due to a broken router somewhere in the Caracas HQ. Sites I can't visit anymore: - Danbooru - HDD Guru forums - GBATemp ...so basically, there goes the three sites I most use daily :/ Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| creaothceann |
Posted on 20-04-24, 17:05
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 Post: #268 of 456 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 44 days Last view: 1 day |
This guy is hilarious... My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10 |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-04-30, 16:05
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Dinosaur
Post: #678 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
Good ol' Raymond Chen talks about Windows update formats: - Full updates - Delta updates (which aren't actually "delta" patches!) - Express updates - Quality updates (the ones introduced during Windows 7 late lifecycle, and which looks surprisingly similar to BPS patches, since these updates can also use the source file as patch data - wonder what encoding they're using under the hood) ...and why tampering yourself with application or system files is a bad idea (they break patches, of course!) Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| Kawaoneechan |
Posted on 20-04-30, 23:16
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A bit of a failure
Post: #484 of 599 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 196 days Last view: 4 hours |
But the Delta updates sunset date has passed. You can forget everything you learned about them. Use that brain space to remember the names of more Pokémon characters or something.This is why everybody loves Raymond. |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 20-05-01, 03:54
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Custom title here
 Post: #871 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 63 days Last view: 20 hours |
Posted by KawaBOOOOOOO!!!! --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-05-08, 01:10
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Dinosaur
Post: #679 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
Speaking about Visual Basic Classic (and not New https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-basic-6/visual-basic-6-support-policy But as coins have two sides, at the other side, the IDE hasn't been supported since April '08, and even back then it has already been abandoned since Relevant read: this guy wrote a book about doing stupid things with VB while working for Microsoft, became crazy during the process, burned all bridges before Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| creaothceann |
Posted on 20-05-26, 19:44
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Post: #275 of 456 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 44 days Last view: 1 day |
Well, this looks a bit terrifying. My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10 |
| ndiddy |
Posted on 20-05-27, 02:04
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 Post: #21 of 23 Since: 12-13-18 Last post: 234 days Last view: 208 days |
While we're posting video recommendations this guy's channel is pretty cool, he shows how to see the world on the cheap. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgNqlRGqHdxNRPR6ycynWhw |
| creaothceann |
Posted on 20-05-29, 18:04
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Post: #276 of 456 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 44 days Last view: 1 day |
cdak by Quite & orange platform: Windows type: 4096 bytes demo release date: august 2010 release party: Chaos Constructions 2010 compo: combined 64k/4k ranked: 1st https://mega.nz/file/cFR3mQYR#QOqR-hfoUwhtYpk-QUn8bCbPIpYxE2BaSV418uY5fYM (best quality) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l0AkYfXDpM My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10 |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-06-11, 01:07 (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #724 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
In this episode of Bad Caps: The TV: Remember Saki's VRM woes? Last year, the onboard VRM on the M535/8 (to this date I'm not even sure what mobo I've got - all I know is that mine lacks the COAST slot) started pooping its pants, starving my Pentium MMXs from its precious life juice: in mid-2019 the 2.8V setting could barely got this P54C thing to boot beyond kernel panics or GRUB hangs, so I went and bumped it to 2.9V in -checks Samba panic logs- August 30, 2019. So far, so good. Those MMXs don't even mind the extra juice, and my stock Socket 370 Intel cooler manages to keep this thing almost ice cold. Plus, I do care about the yearly maintenance of my room aircon. Fast forward to last week, when daily blackouts made its return due to the (very delayed) start of rain season (we don't have four seasons, only "Eternal Summer In Hell" and "rain"). Of course Saki hates that because its ~22yo Taiwanese caps are in its last legs, and after the last 12-hour blackout today I got nothing but segfaults, panics, and more panics. The VRM is clearly dying, most likely due to those capacitors being run pretty much dry. Time to bump voltage again, because "2.9V" right now actually means "2.8V for no more than 60 seconds if noone is crunching numbers". The M535/8 series has the following voltage settings on jumper J9: - A: 2.5V (only for Cyrix CPUs) - B: 2.7V (mainly for K6) - C: 2.8V (default for Pentium MMX) - D: 2.9V (unused) - E: 3.3V (default for non-MMX P5 CPUs) - no jumper: 3.5V (unused) So there is no "3.0V" step, only the big 0.4V leap that in normal conditions would mean "fried MMX at POST". But nothing is normal at Soviet Venezuela anyway, so what the hell, let's try it - here are the possible outcomes: A) Fried MMX at POST. B) No POST. C) POST, boots... and severe overheating. D) "3.3V" actually means "~3V when the drunken onis party hard at the Trump Building", buying me a few extra weeks of life before the caps die because P55Cs are Toyota Tough™. Take your pick. Hint: the fancooler is barely warm. Too bad there is no retrocomputing scene here at Soviet Venezuela where I could just borrow another VX board for a few years :/ Ah well, Debian Jessie LTS runs into EOL in -checks on Debian wiki- June 30, 2020. Ah well, I'm fucked anyway :( No, I don't want to hear the words "Raspberry" and "Pi", thanks. ARM toys aren't compatible with Communism™. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 20-06-11, 01:22
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Custom title here
Post: #877 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 63 days Last view: 20 hours |
I wish I could get you a soldering iron and some new caps. Keep that socket 7 rolling for another twenty years. --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-06-11, 01:37
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Dinosaur
Post: #725 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
Fun fact: as you know, PC Chips only made junk boards, often using fake parts. Rebadged chipsets were one of their specialties: for them, everything was VX, TX, BX, or after Intel ditched the *X names, they just came up with nonsense like "GFXcel". The idea was to fool less-techy people making them believe that those noname chipsets were as good as the real Intel deal - sometimes trying to sell utter rubbish (VIA, SiS, Utron), or in rare cases, shadowing actually decent chipsets on their own merits (ALi). But once in a blue moon, they would actually came with legit Intel chipset solutions, like the VX/Triton II on my M535/8. Those are true anomalies, basically the best of crop from a otherwise unremarkable shit factory from Taiwan. My Saki is the living proof of that - sure, the VX was one of Intel lamest chipsets ever (seriously, 64MB caching limit so adding more RAM would actually make your PC run slower - all because the HX chipset was too expensive for econoboxes), but once again those things would basically survive the apocalypse just fine :P Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-07-01, 01:53
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Dinosaur
Post: #736 of 1317 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 3 hours Last view: 2 hours |
Some console hacking and emulation news: - Remember the GB emudev whose sole goal in life is to reverse engineer and emulate pretty much every GB/GBA accessory ever made? This guy has really ventured into the unknown, over and over and over. The latest achievement? Sewing machines. Apparently the GameBoy sparked the revolution of automated stitching and embroidery at home - some bits even reached American soil about 20 years ago! And now you can recreate this experience using virtual fabric and threads. You can now thread your fake thread into your CPU threads YO DAWG! - Speaking about dead but still popular consoles, this other guy managed to pull a Dreamcast on the good ol' PS2. After venturing with game exploits to launch homebrew from burned DVD-Rs, ROMkiddies complained loudly: "PAL-only?! Do I need to buy some long-forgotten demodisc from some eBay scalper? Fuck you!", he found yet another exploit... but this time on the PS2 DVD player application built into the system ROM. Say hello to the most legit PS2 Tetris DVDs ever made :P Yes, you can also anger Sony by using that to make your own self-bootable pirated game DVD-Rs... just like nearly every Dreamcast owner was rocking it in 2000! Well, I guess Sony will plug that one in the next patc-- wait, the PS2 is already out of production? Nevermind then. Mind you, this is not as convenient as HDD loaders, but then not everybody owns a fat PS2 with the requisite PATA+Ethernet adapter (and not all Slims can be modded to re-add the missing IDE port). But then, you don't need to buy a pre-hacked memory card or a modchip - all you need is a DVD burner and some blank media. Wait, are you a millenial that don't know what the hell is a "disc"? Fuck you then. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 20-07-01, 02:22
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Custom title here
Post: #890 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 63 days Last view: 20 hours |
I am kinda hoping the next step for the DVD-Video exploit is a DVD-V that installs the traditional memory card hack. --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| funkyass |
Posted on 20-07-01, 03:09
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Post: #144 of 202
Since: 11-01-18 Last post: 660 days Last view: 16 days |
Posted by CaptainJistuce its a matter of time, the paper goes over how to modify the iso to load a random elf |
