Bondbug

Thanks pal. Been a busy month and I just spotted this. The link was great and brought it all back Sensible Soccer - yep. I can still play that on DOS BOX. But Player Manager 1 is not a DOS game unfortunately . Nice thing about PM was that the made-up leagues were small and seasons did not last for ever. But you could design your own tactics. Good to see Settlers at number 1. Worth playing just for that superb intro. We still play that regularly. Later versions removed the ability to start with more or less random worlds and some of the cute simplicity of the cartoon images. Other games went the same way, much of the original game being sacrificed for fancy graphics. Colonization was an example of the total disaster that could be created like that. I play these when an on-line game is suffering a down-time I suppose I should really have posted this in the bar rather than Tech, but had faint hopes. I had no response from Cloanto or the other one. You would have thought that they would be interested in selling some gear. Cheers mate.

Does anyone remember the Amiga.? If so and you are up-to-date with Amiga Forever and Cloanto then I need some advice as I have a slight problem. Long, long ago I was hooked by a game called Player Manager (1990). I have recently downloaded a copy of this old game for the PC, and it is running. So far OK. But when I want to save .... there is still the old demand for a disk to save to, and I am lost. There must be some gadgetry to handle this problem, but I got lost in Cloanto's very full and very excellent documentation. I have sent off a query to their support service, but it occurred to me that someone here may also be taking/have taken a stroll down memory lane and be able to help. I have a stack of old Amiga games so this might just be the start of a better life when games were more content-orientated rather than hidden behind fussy and unnecessary graphics. Sorry Gogo, but age has not improved my computer skills or technical knowledge. Things have changed too much since my old Mac Classic and Amiga 500 - which I did understand. P.S. The question is not essentially to do with Player Manager, but with the problem of linkage between the PC and the disks required by Amiga. However I only asked here on the off chance. A reply would be a bonus, but no reply would be quite understandable!!

Thanks Spock. Nice and clear, and I understand it - which says a lot.

Irritating rather than life-threatening. I have played Oblivion for a long time. I love designing little mods, but that is "by the way". I have original disks, and have been using copies to preserve them. I got a bit sick at having to put the disk in the drive every time I wanted to play. So when the drive on the laptop started refusing to read the disks, I turned to GOG and bought their version - no disk needed. BUT .... OBSE Loader --------------------------- You have an unknown version of Oblivion. Please check http://obse.silverlock.org to make sure you're using the latest version of OBSE, then send an email to the contact addresses listed in obse_readme.txt if this version is not supported in the latest release. (CRC = E243684D) --------------------------- OK --------------------------- Much of the game runs without OBSE (I think), but it is an irritation. Works OK on PC. I tried to get new versions of OBSE but got in a right old tangle and gave up Anyone else had this problem?

I don't know how Podgie stands the pace! My laptop is an ASUS. I play anything on it that I can play on the PC; Oblivion; Morrowind, Lotro, Sacred 1 & 2, Neverwinter, Baldurs Gate; a lot of the oldies from GOG. No problems. I tend to play the games in their old original forms, as I find that all the follow-up versions concentrate on more detailed graphics at the expense of game plot and quests - Settlers 1 & 2, but nothing later, the original Colonization not the more recent disastrous version (only game wife will play, and preferably on the Amiga, which gave up when I tried to install a modern replacement mouse, WoW in the old version on Excalibur, and the rest. I was very very annoyed when WoW improved communications (update 7?) and robbed me of the pleasure of setting up links by running the gauntlet between major centres. Not everyone's choice of games but I enjoy them So while I can easily run Lotro on the laptop I can also run games back to SM98 - usually in GOG versions but often from the orignal disks. No laptop problems

Thank you Schot. I think that that should cover what I need. I have the user name and password. I have no great confidence in the French "Orange" service, but I hope I don't need to contact them again - my last visit to their Customer Service office nearly ended in a punch-up. I will follow the link you have given me when I can find time and let you know how I get on. Thanks for all your trouble

Ah. Indeed yes. This no doubt explains why, everytime that I see the telephone people fiddling with their main box out in the village street, I have to go and buy a new phone - which is of course never as satisfactory as the old one. As to the original theme of the thread it would only be possible for us to abandon the "land-line" if we could do without a phone. Celll phones which only work out in the village square are not a practicable option.

aha Good to hear from you friend. Your summary is spot on. Netgear Model number: DGN1000v3 Is a modem/router I intend to take only the laptop and the Netgear to Home 2. I note that it has not at any time asked me for my "identifiant" and my password for the Orange network connection, and I have not been able to find where that info might be input. I have an Installation Guide but that aspect is not covered. There is a "filter/splitter" through which I have connected although there is no telephone involved.

LOL Our land line down south is like that. Branches fall on it, the farmers take it down for access and put it back up again, looped on posts that lean all over the place. But it works. Mobile has no reception at either house which is why it doesn't get used very often. And, perhaps like yours Chattius, the house down south is an old barn, access at both floor levels and with the lower floor half cut into the rock in a hill that was largely used for slate quarrying. Nice a cool downstairs in even the hottest summer.

No doubt a very basic question from an old gent with a less than basic working knowledge of all these wonderful semi-modern gadgets. I have a good working set-up with a Livebox for the 3 computers in the house. For reasons which are not really valid here but relate to a temporary connection for a lap-top at a "second home", I have been trying to reinstate my Netgear set-up. Fortunately most of the original bits are to hand, except however for the original connection between the internet socket and the Router/WIFI. The router/Wifi installs fine, but claims that there is no connection to the internet! I have been disconnecting the internet connection from the Livebox where it works well and connecting the same to the Netgear box where it apparently does not function. I have a vague feeling that these modems need the internet connection supplied with them, but have been unable to identify any of the cables to hand as being specifically for Netgear. Polite advice welcome.

Only two years late -par for my course these days. I have a land line and a mobile (cell phone in your language?). Mobile drives me up the wall and is never "on", probably not even charged up, don't know why I pay for it. In theory it is for emergencies, but my wife has never learnt how to use it, and it is rarely either in the car or charged up. We pay a small monthly sum for this thing. Telephone only - no gadgets. We had a Blackberry at one stage with all sorts of weird functions, but when I discovered how much it was costing, for zero use, it went in the bin. The land-line, which was on a contract and only worked through the PC, was a pain in the butt too, only on when the PC was on. So this is now back to the old-fashioned separate socket on the wall and pay for the calls you a make - very few. Oddly enough this costs more than an all inclusive package (the PC/tv never worked either and is now on a satelliter dish and costs nothing) Wouldn't suit you hard working need-to-be-always-in-touch-with-the-world folks, but is oh-so-peaceful. Nice to be retired and "retreated".

Wonderful, and we have all the ingredients. I will print it out, show it to my wife in the morning, and we should be able to try it at the weekend. A treat for the New Year. The boar we already had roast. Probably farmed and lacked a bit in taste, but there will still be some about for the season. Game is not easy here. Plenty of wild boar, and plenty of hunters, but I do not hunt and I have no source fo supply at present. Gone are the days when we got rabbit for the price of the cartridge, and wild duck for a few shillings from the local village lads. When I was a kid and my father was captain of the local rugby team, many of his friends were farmers and he went out with them, but those days are, for me at least, lon,g gone. I like the look of this recipe and will surely try it as soon as possible. Thanks.

Many thanks Chattius. Certain things we cannot get here. I think we have discussed the clay pot problem before. However the Sossenlebkuchen sounds interesting and possible. Do you have a recipe or should we look it up on Web? Er ... in English please if possible!! Plenty on Sossenlebkuchen but all in German. LOL

It gets more and more difficult to find something interesting for Xmas dinner these days. The birds that were special treats are as common as muck, though the old traditional free range "capon" is still worth while. Ostrich, hippopotamus or whatever the strange recent fashions offer are above our price range, even if we fancied them. My wife, with always an eagle eye for "special offers" came home from supermarket with a "cuisse" (upper leg, thigh) of wild boar for the Xmas dinner. As this involves also feeding family who will be over from Canada, she is anxious to find a good recipe for roast boar and she has been hunting on Web. But it struck me that this is perhaps something where Hesse might have something good. So, what can Chattius offer from his vast family experience that will be much much more interesting than the Web bits :)

Good idea. Thanks.

Thanks yet again Flix. I can see now that I am being far too ponderous, and that, I think, all can be done much more simply. I think too, that I need to keep a copy of mods I have done to balance.txt and creatureinfo.txt on the desktop for re-use when I disable and reinstall the Diablo Mod, and that I need to be clear in "saves" which chars are for Sacred2 and which for the Diablo mod. But that is something I can cope with. Thanks for your help and patience PS I was called away before I could finish. I wanted to emphasize, now that the old grey matter has got that far, just how simple that magic GME gadget makes the whole operation.

I have had a great week trying out the Diablo Mod. While I find some elements I like, there are others I prefer in Sacred2 vanilla. So my question is ...is there any simple way of switching between the two versions, or is it a case of one or the other and stick with it. For instance I have always hated the seraphim (sorry folks) and much prefer the Diablo alternative, but there is one char on Sacred 2 that can call up as help whatever type whose head she has equipped, which I think is a brilliant idea, and I would play her on Sacred 2. Not a desperate problem as I have the game working on two separate partitions, but I wondered if there was a simpler way of switching from one to the other. Like it buttered on both sides.

Cancelled - I was two years late with my comment. LOL typical. I have your mod running now Flix and it is an incredible amount of work. I was never a Diablo fanatic, but, from what I remember of it, the chars show up, much better here.

I will look forward to that pleasure LOL. Thanks for all your trouble. It has been educational to say the least, if not terrifying.

I can't getback in to edit just yet. "I reformatted the obviously affected partitions" What I should have said was that I reformatted and re-partitioned the HD at the time, before installing XP, then W7.

Thanks Androdion. Think I will need a 1 year sabatical to sort that out. Real mess I will believe. I am only glad that the Recovery exercise didn't dig up Linux and W10 as well. I am sure that I reformatted the obviously affected partitions at the time, so what you say about hidden partitions is a bit of a shock to the system. Do I understand you to be saying that I should reformat the whole HD, re-partition, and reinstall both XP and W7 ? Is that the only way of dealing with these "hidden" partitions? I doubt if I could face that exercise at present. I am not sure if I have all the disks for the sound and graphics programs and I doubt if I could now find the paperwork from Microsoft for the codes for W7 and W8. I have the legal disks but in little paper envelopes. To update my position, I now have Sacred 2 Gold running in XP on the PC, and the Diablo mod on the laptop in W8.1. I am not using W7.1 for Sacred 2. I think too that I have perhaps pulled away from the main theme of the topic, which has become more a case of whether my set up is fit to run Sacred 2 regardless of the Windows version.

I played S2Gold quite happily on my laptop this afternoon in Windows 8.1. When I closed the game I found a dialog box with an error message hidden behind it on the desktop. Can't remember if I can post screen image here in .JPG so here follows typed copy:- driver: (nvd3dum.dll graphics card: (NVIDIA Geforce 840M) device: (\\.\DISPLAY1) cDX9Base::_initDX() CreateDevice failed! cDX9Advance::_initAdvance() initDX failed! SacredApp::setup() setupWindow failed! App::Setup() failed! It did not seem to have affected the game, but has anyone any idea what it means? More importantly does it indicate that there is trouble brewing in W8.1 as well as the blockage in W7? I am not running it in windowed mode.

No idea what was on this PC when I bought it, but it is an interesting line of thought. You are probably right that it was W8. Then I let Microsoft persuade me to let them install W10 which was a disaster from my point of view - far to pushy and "helpful" for a domestic leisure PC. I eventually managed to get rid of W10 (not easy!) by installing Linux over it, then reinstalling an older Windows. This, probably after a period of trial and error, would have been XP followed by W7 in different partitions. There is a 3rd partition used for general data storage. This has been working well as a dual boot set up. It was only when I used the recovery console, using W7, that this "W8.1 recovered/restored" appeared out of the blue. I would have installed XP and W7 on reformatted partitions, so am at a loss to account for this digging up of 8.1 What advice can you give me in this situation. I am unwilling to go through the hassle of reinstalling W7 which seems to be working very well apart from the Sacred 2 problem. Perhaps I can install W8.1 over it without losing all my files, as Sacred seems to be OK with W8.1? Can I install Sacred 2 Gold with XPPro and clear it from W7? I was hoping to put the Diablo mod onto this copy of S2Gold.

Sorry but the repair console did not achieve anything, except to recover a non-existent Windows 8.1 !! I have lots of games installed. Why should this be the only one which has produced this ridiculous error message, especially when it was running quite happily day before yesterday:)

Thanks. Yes, I was wondering about that. Nice to have it from someone that knows what they are talking about!!