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This is the first post for 2026. So what am I doing.

Our oldest is back at university after the holidays, our youngest has been studying and getting ready for wrestling, and we have been wondering what we will do with ourselves when they are both out in the world doing things and we are at home alone.

I know what I might be doing.

Just this evening I wanted to play with some old games and apps that only work on older versions of windows. Compatibility mode can only get you so far, and these apps were not cooperating. So what is there to do.

I have now installed and set up an emulated windows 98 machine running under 86box. I know that I could have used any number of virtual environments, or I could have even installed windows 98 on some older hardware that we still have, but this seemed more convenient. And more fun.

Now I have a stupid little Pentium 2 machine with all the ram and an absolutely massive hard drive for the time… 32 whole Gigabytes! I topped it off with a video card, sound card, and fast CD-ROM drive that would make this the most expensive machine you could possibly assemble in 1998.

Now, it’s not perfect. The emulation doesn’t always run at full speed. I have had to play with settings and swap out virtual components a few times. But I knew what I was getting into. This is what I wanted.

I set this emulated machine up so that I could play with some old apps and I haven’t really done that at all. I swapped sound cards and video cards. I installed drivers. I formatted virtual drives. I messed around with old windows.

That’s what I like to do. I like to mess around with weird hardware and software. And I like to do that when the hardware is software. It’s fun.

I don’t imagine that will change. I will always play with these toys, and there will always be new toys.