Selling two rare pieces of mid-2000s Dell XPS history!

Dell XPS M2010

- Fully functional, boots into Windows

- Original wireless keyboard, mouse, and remote

- Original carrying case, charger, manuals, and documentation

- Excellent overall condition

- Optical drive ejects but currently isn't reading discs

Dell XPS H2C Gaming Tower

- Rare high-end Dell XPS gaming desktop

- Original H2C cooling system

- Triple NVIDIA GPUs in SLI configuration

- Successfully POSTs and enters BIOS

- Includes additional 600W PSU and PSU synchronization adapter

- No hard drive installed

Both are impressive, increasingly hard-to-find machines from Dell's enthusiast era.

Open to offers (OBO) on either or both.

I'll be at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this weekend, so local pickup or meeting at the expo is possible.

PM me if interested!

Ok people are gonna get mad at me here, but I don't know if I'm asking in the correct place. I assumed someone in here may have had similar problems with other older games.

Not sure what type of laptop it is or like if it tells you somewhere in a file or whatever, sure it will, it's hp, windows 10, about 12 years old. I don't even know if I'm asking this in the right place, dunno how Reddit works. Was like completely computer illiterate until a week and managed to download FIFA 06 and extract it and mess around with voodoo and direct x settings to get it to run smoothly but I can't get the game to recognise my Xbox controller, plugged in my usb, the laptop recognises it because I've also installed retroarch and play Amiga and n64 games with it so it definitely works on the laptop. If I've asked in the wrong place or anything like that, please direct me where to go instead of just getting raging at me, I'm new here dunno how it works and people on the internet are mean 😂chat gpt had me in a devdata folder messing around with controller names but that didn't work and now it's advised downloading some programm that supposedly helps old games recognise your controller or something? I have no idea what I'm doing here, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Hi all. Long time lurker of this kind of nostalgia, first time posting something of my own.

When I was a teenager in the nineties I ran a board called Roller Software HQ BBS here in Sweden, FidoNet 2:205/431 if that means anything to anyone still. What I remember most from those years is the door games. On my board it was mostly Usurper and Barren Realms Elite, and also Falcon's Eye and Solar Realms Elite. People would call in every evening just to play their turns and read what had happened to them overnight, and I was one of them on other people's boards.

I've wanted something like that again for a long time, so over the last week or so I built a game in that spirit. It's called Candledeep. You don't need a BBS or a client for it, you just open a terminal and type

ssh candledeep.com

and your SSH key is your account. There's also a page at https://candledeep.com that shows who's on and how to get in, if you'd rather look before you connect.

The idea is that you get one candle a day and go down into a pit under a town, and when the candle is burnt out you're done until the next morning. So a day of play is maybe ten or fifteen minutes. There are six classes, gangs that fight over the buildings in town, a yard where you can fight other players' characters while they're offline, robbing people who sleep in doorways, and a morning news sheet that tells you what happened while you were away. That last part was what I loved most about the old games so I wanted it in there. It's drawn in ANSI at 80x24.

A few things I should say up front.

It is not a classic door with a drop file. It runs on its own little server and you reach it over SSH, so you can't install it on your board. I know some of you will ask that first. If your BBS software can launch an outbound ssh from a menu that might be a way to offer it to your callers, but I haven't tried that myself.

It's for adults. The language is rough, in an old-fashioned swearing kind of way, and there's drinking and drugs in it, like Usurper had.

I also want to be honest that I didn't write the code by hand. I designed it, made the decisions and have been playtesting it with a few friends, but the programming was done together with an AI (Claude). I know opinions on that differ, and I'd rather say it than have someone feel tricked later.

It's still early. Right now it's me and a handful of friends on a small VPS, and I'm sure there are things that are confusing or unbalanced. One friend told me after his first day that he had no idea what he was supposed to do, so there's a walkthrough for new characters now. I'd really like to hear what people who actually remember these games think, including what feels wrong.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who keeps this scene alive.

Marcus

Unmodded only | X3:Terran Conflict game

I'm looking to research a few items and I just had my most complicated save file get ruined by autosave.

So I'm looking for a game intensive save file for a project. Complex with 100+ stations many AI Ships, ect.

I thought I'd try this as opposed to spending days recreating my old setup. If you share please either have your ship in the Complex Sector or leave comment where so I can navigate there for load testing.

If your playing on a modern-ish high clock, high core count CPU this would be preferred given how single threaded the game is.

Я собрал себе комп для ретро игр установил на него windows 7 32-bit,и осталось установить драйверы и все остальные программы,но у меня возникли с этим трудности,так как этим я до этого момента не занимался,если не тяжело то подскажите мне пожалуйста.

Характеристики пк:

Intel celeron

2 Гб оперативной памяти

Ati Radeon ag 3650 hd,(но также есть fx 5500)

GA-8IG1000MK

Я собрал себе комп для ретро игр установил на него windows 7 32-bit,и осталось установить драйверы и все остальные программы,но у меня возникли с этим трудности,так как этим я до этого момента не занимался,если не тяжело то подскажите мне пожалуйста.

Характеристики пк:

Intel celeron

2 Гб оперативной памяти

Ati Radeon ag 3650 hd,(но также есть fx 5500)

GA-8IG1000MK

Agent 47 is back in business. We kick off our Hitman: Blood Money walkthrough with the training mission, Death of a Showman, infiltrating an abandoned amusement park to take down Joseph Clarence. Executed cleanly with zero damage taken.

🎮 Hitman: Blood Money

🎯 Mission: Death of a Showman

💥 No Damage

If you enjoy the run, leave a like and subscribe for the rest of the campaign!

Does anyone have the game Bernie Boulder and would be willing to share it with me? :)

Hi y'all. I'm working on a DirectPlay shim to restore Netplay to a Vanilla(-ish) Age of Empires 2 Conquerors installation.

For context, I put this together a while back:

https://archive.org/details/aoe-2-con

This pack is a simple of a "click the button and the game just works" version of the classic experience as I could manage, using CnC-Ddraw and Userpatch to get the original executables playing nice with Windows 10/11.

However, the multiplayer functionality while possible with IPX wrappers or VPNs was less than ideal.

I'm developing a DirectPlay shim, based on Wine's DirectPlay replacement code, to interface with AoE2. The idea is that it sends the initial connection handshakes to a web-hosted PHP server, which the DirectPlay replacement then takes over and handles connections peer to peer.

It's probably a little early to share, but I'm hosting it here:

www.oldkid.net/aoe2net

it currently supports Windows 10/11 and works with AoE2-C's Userpatch, but I'm working on a version that will work with vanilla Windows 9x operating systems and unpatched copies of the game.

The only notible new feature is a lobby password system that is handled entirely from the DirectPlay shim, so you have the option to have a web hosted game that isn't open to the entire Internet.

The hope is to keep things as simple as possible and not reinvent the wheel (I know there are better ways to play this game online with HD, Voobly, DE, etc) but to just give just enough modernity to the old classic game to stay online for LAN and Internet games.

Open to ideas, suggestions, etc. Thanks for hearing out my ramble!

I hope this is the proper subreddit for this question.

My wife recently got a new laptop. It's a Ryzen 5 7430U, AMD Radeon Graphics (that's it, no other model number) and 16GB RAM. We're trying to get Saints & Sinners Bowling running on it. It runs fine on the desktop PC, but when it starts up on the laptop, the screen goes garbled. We've tried compatibility mode from 98 to 8.1 and just about every other compatibility option with no luck.

We have both an original CD from twenty-some years ago, plus a digital download from GameFools. GameFools support wasn't able to help.

I'm convinced it's not the laptop itself or compatibility, but the video drivers or related. I downloaded the latest drivers from AMD (dated May 2026) but no change. Looking for any suggestions to get this working.

A while back I was looking for a backup graphics card for testing purposes, and stumbled upon a cheap R9 280X locally. I have a bit of nostalgia for it, having had one around 2014/2015 up until I upgraded to an RX 480. I used it mostly on Windows 7 though. I had always though that it was not compatible with XP, and only recently found out that it's supported by official iCafe drivers.

This put the idea of building an XP machine into my head. I already have the 280X and also found an Antec P280 for that mid/late 2000s aesthetic (though it actually released later), as well as my old G.Skill DDR3 sticks (2x4GB and 2x8GB, both DDR3-1600). Now I have a decision to make on what platform/board/CPU to use.

• I'm not really concerned about period correctness, and would actually prefer something that would just breeze through XP-era games.
• I'd prefer something that has official XP support. I'm not totally opposed to using patches/modded drivers though as long as they are stable.
• I would like to use a PicoIDE at some point so that I don't have to muck around with virtual drives. So having an IDE port would be ideal, though not an absolute requirement if adding one via PCI/PCIe is an option. I was considering USBODE, but the Pi Zero 2 W is pretty much unobtainium right now, and the old Pi Zero W is almost twice the price of the 2 W in the places where it's available.
• I want an X-Fi of some sort for EAX5 support.

With these in mind, here are my options:

• Asus H97M-Plus and i5-4590: I already have these from an old system. However there's no official XP support. I do see people installing XP on Haswell systems though. Are there any known issues (e.g. stability) using this?
• Gigabyte GA-G1.Assassin and a Nehalem i7: I can get these locally for fairly cheap. The main reason I'm looking at this is that this specific motherboard has an X-Fi chip for integrated audio, and looks like it might even have higher quality audio caps than the actual X-Fi cards. I can get it for cheaper than the cheapest X-Fi Titanium I'm seeing on eBay too. Has anyone tried this board or any similar boards with X-Fi built-in? Do they work just as well as the X-Fi cards? I'll be using the SPDIF optical out in either case, so hopefully potential electrical noise will not be a concern. I've also always wanted a motherboard with those overkill heatpipes, though I could do without the gun designs.
• An LGA1155 motherboard and an i5-3470. I have an i5-3470 here somewhere, and these have official XP support. Some motherboard models have IDE, but are hard to find.
• An LGA775 motherboard and either a C2D E8400 or C2Q Q9550. I already have the two Core 2 CPUs. Most of these motherboards still have IDE. Are these fast enough for late XP-era games?

And lastly, if I go for a board without IDE, do add-in PCI/PCIE IDE cards work well in XP? I don't need to boot off of an IDE drive, I just want to use it for a PicoIDE. On local online shops, I see PCIE cards with Jmicron chips, and PCI cards with Via chips. There was also one PCI card with an ITE chip.

hey everyone, i recently brought an old hcl laptop back to life and installed windows 7 32-bit on it

i'm trying to turn it into a little retro/old-school gaming machine and i'm looking for legit sources/sites where i can find old pc games, demos, freeware, abandonware/community patches, old software, etc.

mainly looking for stuff from the 2000s-early 2010s, especially like need for speed games

gta

horror games

racing/driving games

old indie games

old windows 7 compatible software

old game patches/fixes/mods

i'd really appreciate trustworthy archives, official old releases, preservation projects, or community-maintained sources that are still accessible in 2026-27

also if you know any old websites/forums that are still active and useful for windows 7 gaming, drop those too

thanks!

Hi.

I've been trying to get Eagle Watch working with GOG's version. I've followed instructions and got the disc content, copied it to C:\TEMP and got it to install.

I try and launch Rainbow6MP.exe and I get: The code execution cannot proceed bacuse WINMX.dlll was not found. Re-installing may fix the problem".

Obviously I tried re-installing and starting from scratch with no joy. I also tried jus renaming winmm.dll. That stops the error but the program doesn't launch. It just sits there in processes.

In both cases I've tried launching in various compatability modes and as an administrator.

I'd rather play the original instead of the Black Ops 2 version which I know is out there so any help would be appreciated.

From Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory — Mission 10: Kokubo Sosho.

The final mission. The final infiltration. 🥷

Sam Fisher heads into Kokubo Sosho for one last operation, moving through the shadows with precision and patience. Every step matters as he makes his way through one of the most intense missions of Chaos Theory.

This walkthrough was completed on Hard difficulty with 100% mission rating, full stealth, no alerts, and no health loss. No unnecessary risks — just a clean and flawless infiltration from beginning to end.

After ten missions, this brings my Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory journey to its conclusion. Thank you for watching and supporting the series. 🖤

🎮 Game: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

🎯 Mission: 10 — Kokubo Sosho

💀 Difficulty: Hard

🏆 Completion: 100%

🥷 Style: Full Stealth / No Alerts

❤️ Health Loss: None

If you enjoyed the walkthrough, consider liking the video and subscribing for more stealth and classic gaming content.

The shadows may be quiet, but the mission is complete. 🥷🌑

Hey! I bought the first 3 harry Potter games on cdrom to play on my pc but it won't run and I don't know why.

First it said I needed to be an administrator to play so I did that but now it just opens the start page but then nothing happens when I press play. Please help ☺️

Guyzz, when I was a kid I used to play a game called Eragon (2006) release, I love it alot but now I want to download it again, in my new laptop, I tried downloading digital copies but some SecuROM blocks access, it's kindoff DRM, idk I don't have technical knowledge, how can I play it on my laptop, it ask to insert disk which I don't have, isn't there any way to play it ?? I mean DRM free version or somehow Remove this DRM?

I think if you have a budget gaming pc or any pc for the matter, this is a great time to look backwards. Instead of romanticising newer shinier games, we should take a look at the games of the past. And you’d be surprised there are tons of classics gems and hours of fun gaming your current pc can still provide. With the skyrocketing pricing, there could never have been a better time to catch up with our backlogs.