Projects:

1) Walked at circa 0530, both to avoid both expected rain (that didn't come to pass) and heat. Heart reading immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 94/66, Pulse 83.

2) Decided to hook up an ancient Athlon PC that's been sitting ignored beside the kitchen table for years. My idea was to fire up Ami Pro and convert important documents that exist only in its proprietary format. Alas, I never got that old rig to boot beyond a few seconds, when it shut itself down. Monkeyed with it for some time with no success. Finally gave up and yanked its three hard drives. Gonna try and pawn the PC, minus hard drives, on a local goodwill type agency, though what they can do with it I don't know. One thing for sure, it doesn't need to be sitting around the house taking up valuable floor space. Hoped to take removed drive apart and damage their platters. Alas, I lack the tools to do so. At any rate, the PC now sits behind the couch, waiting for me to move it to the car tomorrow morning. I'm also giving 'em a working flatbed scanner no longer supported by Windows and an old working 15" CRT monitor.

3) Scoured my PC parts drawer of stuff I have no earthly use for any more, like a myriad of IDE drive connectors, and serial and parallel port cabling.

4) Scoured my shelves of ancient PC software. Not only is there no use for most of it these days, but much of it is on 5 1/2" and/or 3 1/4" floppies. Little if any of it can be installed on modern Windows. I've much much more software to rid myself of, some one time valuable, such as WordPerfect 5.1 and Corel Draw back when it was one of "the" go-to drawing programs.

Projects for the day:

1) Figured out there is indeed a way to set speakers for four-channel mode with the new PC build. Did so.

2) Walked circa 0530. Both knees very sore starting out. Left knee calmed at about the 1/4th way point. Right knee calmed roughly halfway through. Both continue to bother me more so than usual.

3) Loaded ancient computer, monitor, flatbed scanner and cable junction box into car for (hopeful) delivery to goodwill/thrift agency. Didn't help my knees any, but what can ya do?

4) Showered and dressed for medical appointment.

5) Heart Reading at 0646: Blood Pressure 95/60, Pulse 81.

6) Maintenance appointment with Cardiologist, 0900. In preparation I printed out both the last two pages of my heart readings log and a revised listing of medication. I sometimes compose a special report for these appointments, but didn't this time, since my situation, heart wise, seems no different than it was during my last visit, for good or ill.

7) Dropped off ancient computer gear at GoodWill. They asked no questions. I offered no advice.

8) Picked up newly prescribed Nitroglycer at Walmart. (Replaces existing nitros now so old they are no longer dependable. I rarely use the stuff, and prolly don't need it then.)

9) Cleaned old PC hardware (graphics card, dial-up modems and so on) for storage drawers. (I should have done this prior to GoodWill.)

10) Debated which HDD to add to the new PC. Been trying to talk myself into a Seagate Barracuda for months, they being about half the price of an equivalent capacity WD Black. In the end I couldn't do it. Those WD Blacks have been super dependable and long lasting for me, excluding one that arrived DOA. NewEgg has the best price for the size I want. It figures they are currently out of stock. Now, I could order two 1TB drives rather than one 2TB, but I want to avoid excess cabling and save a precious SATA port. I lost two ports due to installing the M.2 nvme SSD. Only four to go, and one of which is already used by a DVD drive. I also need to allow for an additional SSD down the road.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jun 14 2017, 03:23 AM

Projects today:

1) Removed disks from boxes of Windows 95, 98, XP, and ME. Disposed of boxes. Will destroy CDs later.

2) Walked circa 0540.

3) Installed vanilla Oblivion on new computer. Made sure it starts okay. (Not sure where I'll go from here. Might leave my current play-through as is on the i7 930 and, for a while at least, start afresh on the new rig, experimenting with mods I'm afraid might ruin what I have now. We shall see. Observation: either I had forgotten just how slow installing the game off disks is or the new rig's DVD drive is subpar.

Oh yeah...made those minor changes to Oblivion.ini I deem essential. Disabled all four auto-save functions, and enabled screen captures. Yes, I remembered to change graphic settings to ultra-high and resolution to 1920x1080.

GAAAAAH!!!! You made the little yellow 'Cavator a target now? GRRRRRR!!!!





Congrats on your new PC, Decrepit!!!! ... wait, what is this?



GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH !!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I presume those are Windows OS CD's, or you'd be keeping them. (I thought 95 came on floppies - about 50 of them)

Yeppers, CDs. Well, CDs and a few floppies. I yanked two Win95 CDs from the box. One is labeled an Upgrade disk. The other appears to be a full install disk with added samplers including free games. The box also housed two high density floppies, one a CD-rom setup boot disk, the other containing "Microsoft Teletype for the Microsoft Natural Keyboard".

As to there being a floppy distribution: "Most copies of Windows 95 were on CD-ROM, but a floppy version could also be had for older machines. The retail floppy disk version of Windows 95 came on 13 DMF formatted floppy disks, while OSR 2.1 doubled the floppy count to 26. Both versions exclude additional software that the CD-ROM version might have featured. Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 was also available on floppy disks. DMF was a special 21-sector format that Microsoft used to store 1.68 MB on floppy disks rather than the usual 1.44 MB."

Gee, I'd have to keep them for a partition to play Dos Box games like "Chips Challenge."

Projects today:

1) Worked on BAIN packages for OCOv2 and its supplements off and on from circa 0150 until 0514. Also cleared Nights of the Nine ESP in TES4edit, then constructed a Complex BAIN package for the expansion, consisting of:

01 ESP - Archived original
01 ESP - TES43edit cleaned
02 BSA

I tend to always do as I did above with any mod that needs its ESP cleaned, create a Complex Package so that both original and modified ESP are easily accounted for. Better, it my opinion, than sticking original out of the way somewhere they'll be forgotten if and when needed. Not sure I'll make a Package for Shivering Isles since, according to BOSS, its ESP does not need cleaning. At least I didn't notice it flagged as dirty. I'll double check later and make sure.

2) Monkeyed with Oblivion character creation with all OCOv2 / body mods in place from right after breakfast until circa 0550. Wasn't satisfied with the results and needed to break for my daily walk so exited without saving.

3) Walked circa 0555. Heart reading immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 106/69, Pulse 81.

Age is taking its toll on my BAIN package creation ability, or so it seems. It's more confusing than it used to be. I needed to redo several package multiple times to get 'em working right, and never figured out why early attempts failed. (I worked around the issue by creating 'em as Complex Packages rather than a mixture of Complex and Simple within the same package.) To be fair, my "solid" install of Oblivion runs Wrye Bash 305. The new experimental install runs WB 307. There might be differences between the two I need to accommodate for.

With another mod I had trouble deciphering its, in my estimation, less that stellar instructions well enough to create a workable package. I finally decided that the texture options that confused me weren't ones I'd pick, so simply left them out of the Package. Despite it all I muddled my way through and, based solely on Oblivion's character creation screen, have OCO and its add-ons correctly installed. I only ever messed with OCO during its version one days. Version two looks to be a solid improvement. The question remains - will it suffice to design an acceptably decrepit avatar?

Even should I create an acceptable avatar, I'm far from having even a bare minimum of mods needed to actually begin play.

Projects, part 2:

4) Added more mods to the new Oblivion install. Almost all are hi-res texture replacers. Added Cava Obscura to make caves, dungeons, etc. suitably dark when not near a light source.

5) Traced why Oblivion wouldn't load to OSR. Switched to the older OSR version that runs like a charm on my i7 930 Oblivion installation. That fixed it. Gonna investigate further later on and try to get the newer version to work. Prolly just an incorrectly configured ini setting.


At one time I held this philosophy too, though I never did anything about it. Any more I feel that just about any old DOS / early Windows game I'd be interested in can be found on the net in versions that will install and launch on modern Windows.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jun 15 2017, 07:44 PM

Project from yesterday I forgot to document:

Starting to mod the new PC's fresh Oblivion install has at long last spurred me to finish up my neglected "Wilderness Textures Late-Load Combo BAIN package" project. That section of my BAIN installers folder was a convoluted mess, with a lot of packages large and small that were added piecemeal over the years. It was very confusing even for me, which is why I put off correcting the situation so long. Now all late-load terrain textures are housed in one admittedly large BAIN package.

In the future I hope to do things differently when auditioning potential terrain texture replacers. I'll create a clearly labeled TEMPORARY BAIN package with only those textures I want to test. If any prove more appealing than what I have now they will be added to the established BAIN package. If they don't pass muster the Temporary Package gets deleted pronto. That's the idea in any case.

Projects today:

1) Walked circa 0545. Heart reading sometime afterward: Blood Pressure 101/62, Pulse 73.

2) Deleted a ton of old OMOD creation and storage folders off my various i7 930 hard drives. They've been taking up a lot of space for the past six or seven years and would never be touched again, me having completing converted to Wry Bash and its BAIN packages. Also found and deleted other Oblivion related backups it makes no sense to save. It's amazing how many Oblivion related backups and work projects reside on my i7 930's two HDDs. Or did until this morning. I didn't rid myself of 'em all by any means. Not yet.

3) Deleted some no-longer-needed non Oblivion items off those same drives. Many should have been no more than temporary saves from the get go.

A potential project for down the road. Once I clear useless clutter off those drives I want to reorganize what remains, then delete several partitions and use the resultant empty spaces to expand remaining partitions. (I have software that makes partition manipulation safe and easy.)

As an alternative to collect them all into a single installer package, using LOOT/BOSS with a custom user list can put things where they're needed, and preserve the sequence. You'd still have situations where install order is more important than load order, but then you need to start considering bsa's as well.

Hmm....I'm not sure I "get" you, but then I could have been more exact with my terminology. By "Late-Loads" I meant that textures in those packages need to be final winners, overwriting all that come before them. No package contains an ESP to worry about, and least none of the Late Load Combos I've make thus far do. (Not that that would matter to Wrye Bash.) Maybe I should call 'em "Late Install" packages, but for my own usage Late-Load works fine. Or do I simple not grasp something you are trying to convey? Some function of BOSS I've never considered? I'm not the sharpest pencil in the holder, after all.

Unrelatedly, My project for the afternoon seems to be at last reorganizing my i7 930's two HDDs. It's been slow going, mainly because moving large amounts of files between partitions of the same drive is massively slow. Old as both drives are I suppose I can't expect 'em to be speed demons. There's a reason I elected to not transfer either of them to the new PC. heh

I doubt I'll finish the project this afternoon or today, but who knows?

Yes, late-install would have made it clearer, as load order won't affect esp-less texture replacers (which would have to be loose files, or the bsa's would get ignored.)

There are a few out there using an empty esp and corresponding bsa, where you can sort load order and the bsa order goes with it. I thought you were referring to those. Combining them means unpacking, and potentially re-packing a new bsa.

Projects:

1) Switched off and removed power cord from new PC's PSU. Transferred keyboard and Ethernet cable from new PC or what is currently my secondary PC. Reconnected that PC's power cord & switched up PSU. Fired up old PC. Transferred the one game my brother plays to death during his visits to a USB memory stick.

2) Noticed that Windows 10 had many updates available for the old PC. Am in the process of DL'ing them now. Which means no watching YouTube any time soon. I don't really mind except that I always watch YouTube during breakfast. It's the one meal I allow myself to eat at the computer, being small and simple. (Banana, toasted wheat bread with butter substitute and fat-free strawberry preserves, skim milk.) Looks to be a LONG download. With luck, all or most of it will be complete by the end of my morning walk.

-------------------------------------------

3) Worked on making sense of the partitions of my two HDDs on my i7 930 PC. Finally reached a stage that allowed me to re-letter them into their proper order. I've still lots to do. Many folders are not housed on their proper partitions. Partitions containing only files that belong there are horribly disorganized, often with much redundancy. I'll eventually sort it all out...I hope.

4) Walked circa 0615. Heart reading afterward: Blood Pressure 102/63, Pulse 78.

5) Finished Windows 10 updates on my older functional PC. Updated a few other things, then shot down machine and switched Ethernet cable/keyboard back to new i7 7700k rig. Installed brother's game on the i7 7700k.

6) More work on i7 930 PC partitions. Am now backing up (EaseUS To-Do Backup) my Oblivion install. Hope to make similar backups of most partitions before long. Some need to be better organized first.

Seems odd that I'm going to so much trouble for a PC that will soon become my secondary PC, and likely not often used...depending. But it needs doing. Plus, this will serve as a blueprint of how to set up the new PC's hard drive and a means of knowing what to transfer to it with redundancy.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jun 17 2017, 01:50 PM

maintenance report:


* Removed dirt and dust from the driver cabin using high pressure air
* Cleaned inside and outside with water + car soap
* Lubed and changed a few nipples

(pause for giggles)

* Cleaned air filter and radiators with high pressure air
* Filled diesel tank
* Parked in garage
* Topped hydraulic oil tank
* Checked coolant and oil levels

My i7 930 HDD reorganization and experimental Oblivion install projects continue. Added MoreHeap to Oblivion, a supposed game stabilizer I've never ran before. Construction Set Extender proved problematic. Spent several hours getting it to run. Turns out not all DirectX 9.0c files were installed. Downloaded an installer from Microsoft to fix that. Only, it kept terminating early due to an error of some sort. Finally, on its fifth or sixth attempt, it carried through to the end. All was well afterward, CSE wise.

Projects today:

1) Walked early morning. Heart reading at 0740: 100/64, Pulse 67.

2) Added ENBoost and renamed Beth shaders to my experimental Oblivion install. Question: Are those shader renames still needed? I made two BAIN packages. One with shaders as originally named. One with renamed shaders that purportedly improves graphic quality. So I can easily switch back to what Beth installed at any time. (I've used renamed shaders since at least the beginning of my second play-through.)

3) Solved an odd issue that arose out of the blue yesterday. After having launched my experimental Oblvion install quite a few times, all of a sudden a message popped up saying I needed to set the OBSE Launcher to Administrator. The actual EXE was already set. It was the desktop link I needed to set. I did so. Oblivion launched. Next time I attempted to launch Oblivion, same message. The desktop link was no longer set. Reset it. Oblivion launched. Next time I attempted to launch Oblivion, same message. The desktop ink was no longer set. Reset it. Oblivion launched. Rinse and repeat. Finally, following another such message, I noticed, on the link's compatibility tab, at the very bottom, a button to turn on administrative privileges for ALL users. Did so. Oblivion launched. The one time I attempted to launch the game since then it did so. Problem solved? Ain't Windows 10 glorious?

Windows security is like that. You're either nobody, or you're god. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to set up a security profile for the requirements of the game (can update this, can't update that) and run the game under that profile. So to allow Oblivion to run, you have to get permission to overwrite the OS.

Unix tends to be that way by default (too many processes running as root), but it at least makes it relatively easy to establish the tailored permissions, and use them.

Yup. I guess I'm not yet used to Win10. Win7 requires "run as administrator", but not setting that requirement for ALL USERS. In fairness, Win19 seems to NOT require the extra step when flagging exe files


Spent the afternoon getting Oblivion to launch on the new rig. Oddly, it launched okay several times with everything I've installed thus far in place. Then all of a sudden POOF, crash on game-save load. I finally traced the problem to Oblivion Stutter Remover, an odd choice as it was almost the first thing I installed, causing no issue up until right after lunch today. I suspect the true fault is a combo of the several similar mods I installed:

...Oblivion Stutter Remover
...MoreHeap
...EngineBuxFixes (which among other things claims to automatically fix the a-bomb)
...ENBoost

After some experimentation I found that reducing OSR's ini heap size setting from 1024 to 768 lets the game loads. (I also set MoreHeap's like setting to 768, as its readme states that OSR & MH should have the same heap-size when used together.)

An unfortunate side effect...Construction Set Extended will not load when one of ENBoost's files is present. I can obviously work around this as needed, but it's still a hassle. Luckily, I doubt I'll need CSE in the near future.

Turned out to be a busy day for me:

Walked circa 0545.

Drove to Walmart for an oil change, new wipers, and the brown rice I forgot yesterday.

Drove to the bank and cashed a $10 rebate check from one of my recent PC parts purchases.

Ate one of my rare sit-down restaurant meals, at my local Chinese Buffet of choice. Good as usual. Overate as is par for the course there.

Drove home and did a bit of work on my getting rid of old PC software project.

Rich lunch caught up with me. Crashed for the rest of the afternoon until around supper time.

Ate supper, which because of the heavy lunch was no more that a plain piece of wheat bread, a tiny Fuji
apple, and just enough skim milk to wash down those and my evening migraine preventative dose. Had the med not had a food/milk requirement I'd have skipped supper altogether.

Worked more on ridding myself of old PC software.

Mowed the lawn. Planned to do so tomorrow, but decided to get it out of the way. Getting hot enough that mowing takes a lot out of me. At least it didn't make me sick, as sometimes happens during hot weather.

Ordered a 2TB HDD and 2 CAT-7 Ethernet cables off NewEgg.

------------------------------------------------------

Had another bit of Oblivion screwiness yesterday after posting that day's project report. Went to edit Oblivion.ini, to remove the world border, only to find its formatting had be lost. The game could still decipher it. I couldn't. It's super easy to build a new Oblivion.ini. I, however, wanted to preserve changes made thus far, so restored all line breaks manually. Took hours! Now that I think on it, I might have began the day today finishing what I didn't get to last night. What caused the formatting loss??? I though maybe I was at fault. But while restoring the file I saved and exited and restarted and saved and so on any number of times without issue. I hope it's not something Wrye Bash did while implementing Bash Patch changes. It's never done anything like this before, but I'm using a newer version than is installed on the i7-930. Which reminds me I still need to make a good Oblivion.ini backup in case something goes amiss again.

Walked circa 0545. Heart reading almost immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 98/58, Pulse 82.

Created at Heart Readings fill-in-the-blank log with LibreOffice and printed one two-sided page. I should have done this years ago. I've been scribbling heart readings on paper since early 2014 when my chest-pain episodes began increase both in frequency and severity. (So far these pains have been attributed to a chronic lung condition and/or my chest-wall/ribcage. But the pains and other symptoms I get during episodes can also be a sign of heart problems, thus I feel it best to monitor my heart and log the results on at least a daily basis. During a particularly bad episode I've been known to take readings every 15min.)

Been noticing that some character shadowing on my experimental Oblivion install looks a bit wonky. Fired up my long-running second play-through and noticed that that setting is disabled. Did so in the experimental install, using the saveini command afterward to insure the change took.

Did a smidgen more work on ridding myself on ancient PC software no longer installable on modern Windows. I'm NOT getting rid of old games in that same category, only productively and utility software. Well OK, I did trash one game, a demo freebie given me that I had/have absolutely no interest in. Also, for the moment at least I'm saving the early Windows word processor Ami Pro. Man did I like it back in the day. It was, so far as I recall, the first truly WYSIWYG word processor available for Windows and maybe "IBM PC Clones" (as we called called 'em back then) in general.

Need to do more reorganizing of data within individual partitions on the i7-930 PC. The Oblivion Work Project partition in particular remains something of a mess. Want to have this project over with by the time the newly ordered i7-7700k PC HDD arrives.