@SolarPhasing 23 February 2022 edited

The old time of Computing.. and gaming! Day 14. (Day 13). https://read.cash/@SolarPhasing/because-of-being-a-night-owl-65d2b5d5 **Old time, good time!** I remember buying my first PC ("**Compatible PC**") in the late 1990s. I had owned an **AMIGA 600** for a few years and it had suddenly broken down. An infinite sadness for me, because the **Commodore Amiga** was a dream machine! No matter what you wanted to do with it. This will probably be the subject of a future article because I am sure that some of you loved this wonderful machine. But let's go back to that first "**IBM compatible**". It was a big tower with an **AMD DX 40** that I bought second hand at a reasonable price. A nice machine that ran **Windows 3.1** and was functional for office work. But for games it was not really the case! First because **Windows 95** had just been released and was a real revolution for multimedia, and I was still running Windows 3.1, a very unstable system and rather capricious with games. But the limitations came mainly from the technical characteristics of the machine, a modest processor: 40Mhz, very little Ram memory: 8Mb, and a graphics card nothing more basic. For example, when I ran **DOOM** for the first time, I had to disable the sound to get an acceptable frame rate.. haha ha. For a better reading journey: one of the more expressive guitarist, **Carlos Santana**. With **Revelations** and **Europa**, two beautiful instrumental compositions. Here, Live at Hammersmith Odeon in 1976. One of my favorite guitarist! :0) https://youtu.be/dzOMbUuBQ18 **Shareware?** There was this CD I got with a magazine that was a compilation of the best **Shareware** games. The principle of Shareware was to offer you the beginning of the game, generally one episode out of the three or more of the complete version. You could then play enough to get a good idea of the game and become addicted. At the end of the free episode, the contact information to buy the full game was displayed, and you could order by mail, or by BBS (a dinosaur that still hasn't died out). I was able to discover a multitude of gems of all kinds while playing enough to want to continue the adventure. This was the case of **DOOM** that I bought in boxed version afterwards. The Internet was just emerging, slowly. France often having a train of delay.. (It's what I feel, sorry) difficult to find an offer proposing services, moreover affordable.With probably 56k (?!) per modem! It was easier to buy magazines that offered CDs with contents. There were myriads of them compared to today. That was cool too! Do you remember games like **Eye of The Beholder**, **Wolfenstein 3D**, **Bio Menace**, **God of Thunder**, **Duke Nukem** (the first and the second) before **Duke Nukem 3D**, and many more.. **A rabbit named Jack!** Among the most outstanding discoveries was **Jazz Jackrabbit**, a **Sonic-like** platform game, incredibly fun and with a fine tuned gameplay. A cool green rabbit named **Jack**, a colorful universe, with crazy races, well thought levels with hilarious enemies. It was really a good slap on the PC. Jazz Jackrabbit is a game I still play without any problem today, and still with as much pleasure! It has not aged a bit. **Jack Jazzrabbit**, it's **Epic Megagames**. For the record, Epic MegaGames became **Epic Games** better known for the **Unreal** series, but also for the **Unreal Engine**, etc.. Today, they have also launched the **Epic Games Store**, which regularly offers free games. It's really worth it, just for that! Feel free to download the client if you like gaming. https://www.epicgames.com/store/fr/

Today you can find the complete saga of **Jack Jazzrabbit** on **GOG** at an affordable price. This **Jack Jazzrabbit Collection** includes **Jazz Jackrabbit CD-ROM version** and **Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare '95**. A preinstalled version of **DosBox** allows you to run it on any recent system: Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, in one click. And even more more fun, the **Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Collection** including: **Jazz Jackrabbit 2 - The Secret Files** and **Jazz Jackrabbit 2 - The Chritsmas Chronicles**! My favorite platform games, before **Sonic** (yes, it is!) or **Rayman**. https://www.gog.com/fr/game/jazz_jackrabbit_collection https://www.gog.com/fr/game/jazz_jackrabbit_2_collection

Thank you so much to @foryoubtc09, a new sponsor! **You Rock** the **Bitcoin Cash** galaxy! :0) **Command lines** It was quite an era with this computer, because games that used **MSDOS** had no problems. Well, let's say not much.. comparatively speaking. Haha. You had to be quite a tinkerer and try to understand the problems to find solutions. And often the creation of special DOS boot floppies was necessary for some applications or games. You said "Floppies"?! :0)) Note that this was an excellent school for the initiation to computers. I owned some Amstrad computers before the Commodore Amiga 600, a CPC 6128 and a PCW 8256, the CPM they had on board was a system relatively close to DOS in terms of commands. So I easily swallowed the DOS. **MSDOS 6.22**. I still have the floppy disks install. Today, I have built two dedicated PC for retro gaming, and old software archives. Once is enough, but I have two. Opportunities at really low prices. An another article to come about it. Keep in touch! From my last EP: **In Slow Motion**. The track **Orbital Phase I**. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMQewGRSZ6w Friends, see you soon.. Thank you very much for your support reading me! :0) Find my music everywhere: https://songwhip.com/solar-phasing/moon-dance https://songwhip.com/solar-phasing/moon-dance?fbclid=IwAR0xhdt-URLHz3_B4lVuGo5k5HQ1C45-FLFppNymzjfTaKs9GKQb2RFE8ws #carnetderoute #retrogaming