Not that I mourn its passing, exactly. It was a pretty darn ancient system, my old AMD Athlon XP 1800+ that I bought in 2003. Clocking in at about 1.18 GHz and backed up by 1.25 GB of RAM, it wasn’t exactly the powerhouse of the house. It did have a pretty decent video card, though. But anyhow, the system would appear to have well and truly “snuffed it”, as they say. The power supply is fine and everything is connected, but neither the processor nor the hard drives show any sign of life when the system is powered on.

So I’m thinking it might just be time to upgrade. As such, let’s haul out the old format for a bit and contemplate options. I’m thinking it’d be sweet to hook her up with one of these new “mini” computers that are becoming quite common these days. She doesn’t exactly need the computing horsepower, since she doesn’t use the computer for much more than a bit of music playback, checking her email, and checking various newsfeeds. Once in a while, she’ll watch an episode of House online.

Option #1: Asus Eee Box 1012

Specs:

• nVidia ION graphics chipset
• Intel Atom N330 Dual Core 1.6GHz processor
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 160 GB 5400RPM SATA II hard drive

Price: $429 (Memory Express)

Pros: Asus Eee computers are pretty well-known as far as miniature PCs and netbooks go. Asus itself makes pretty reliable hardware, in my experience, and the Eee Box itself can be fitted almost anywhere, so as to be unobtrusive.

Cons: Price, primarily. Though not the most expensive unit on this list, the Eee Box does cost $80 more than the Acer Aspire Revo, despite having essentially identical specs thereto. We can argue over brands, but since I’ve personally no objection to either Acer or Asus, I don’t exactly see why — if I am to choose between just the two — I should opt for the Asus.

Also, as Petrell pointed out in the comments, there’s no optical drive. I don’t see this as being the biggest obstacle, and I don’t imagine Grace would either…but you never know. It’s worth consideration.

Option #2: Acer Aspire Revo 3610

Specs:

• nVidia ION graphics chipset
• Intel Atom N330 Dual Core 1.6GHz processor
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 160 GB 5400RPM SATA II hard drive

Price: $349 (Memory Express)

Pros: Price, for one; the Revo 3610 is identical to the Eee Box (above) in terms of specifications, yet comes in at a lower price. That’s an important consideration for me these days! Personally, I’ve only ever had good experiences with Acer computers. And the size of the thing…sheesh, it’s tiny! I could hide it almost anywhere near Grace’s monitor, and clean up the cable mess I made when I set up her tower, and she’d have a better computer at the end of it.

I don’t imagine she’d complain.

Also, the Revo boasts one additional USB port. That sounds trivial, and I would generally agree that it is…but at the same time, I think we’ve all been in that situation where we have one more device to connect than we have ports available. Am I right? Nevermind.

Cons: The lack of an optical drive, again, as Petrell pointed out.

Option #3: Dell Inspiron Zino HD

Specs:

• ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics chipset
• AMD Athlon 2650e 1.6GHz processor
• 3 GB DDR2 RAM
• 250 GB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive

Price: $399 (Dell.ca)

Pros: This system offers more memory than either the Revo or the Eee Box, and a larger/faster hard drive as well. The hard drive capacity is a worthwhile consideration, since Grace is always happy to have more space to work with; the extra RAM would certainly improve system performance a little bit.

Cons: For one, the HD 3200 graphics chipset…isn’t really that good. In fact, as a general rule, it’s worse than the ION chipset. For $99 more, I could jump that to the HD 4330 chipset, which is markedly better (heck, Grace could probably run Mass Effect, which I’ve been encouraging her to play lately).

But that would of course boost the price of the unit from something that falls happily between the Revo and the Eee Box to something that far exceeds both units. And considering the fact that this unit boasts what appears to be a single core processor, rather than a dual core, it doesn’t seem to be that great of a deal overall.

Option #4: Mac Mini

Specs:

• nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics chipset
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz processor
• 2 GB DDR3 RAM
• 160 GB 5400RPM hard drive

Price: $649 (Apple.ca)

Pros: Well, it’s a Mac, for starters, which means the beautiful, easy-to-use thing that is OS X. Overall, this is a much higher-performance system than any of the other entries on this list, and yet is quite compact (smaller than the Dell, I think). The processor is a Core 2, rather than a netbook Atom-type chip, and the 9400M graphics are…decent.

Cons: The hard drive is nothing special. And then there’s the price. The Mac Mini is easily the most expensive computer on the list here (not that I’m surprised), and probably the hardest overall to cost-justify. Yes, it’s a beefier system overall, but does Grace need the power? Given her current usage profile, I’m doubtful.

In Closing

My gut feeling is to go with the Revo, both because it’s the cheapest system on the list and because it offers what will probably be the best system overall for Grace’s needs. Still, I’m open to some debate on the matter, so if anyone wants to chime in with a suggestion, please do so.

Produced by: Team Exult
Website: Exult at Sourceforge
Releases:
* Windows Binary (2.0 MiB, 152 hits)
* Mac OS X 10.3 (1.4 MiB, 121 hits)
* Sharp Zaurus (1.4 MiB, 88 hits)
* PocketPC (ARM) (246 bytes, 97 hits)
* PSP (2.0 MiB, 103 hits)
* Fedora - Game (1.0 MiB, 95 hits)
* Fedora - Tools (274.0 KiB, 86 hits)
* Fedora - Studio (254.6 KiB, 80 hits)
* Source Code (RPM) (1.6 MiB, 85 hits)
* Source Code (.tar.gz) (1.6 MiB, 79 hits)
* Nokia 770/M800 - Program (0 bytes)

Additional Files
* Black Gate Sound Files (4.6 MiB, 119 hits)
* Black Gate Sound Files (Roland MT-32) (6.2 MiB, 100 hits)
* Black Gate OGG Music Files (1 of 2) (12.0 MiB, 117 hits)
* Black Gate OGG Music Files (2 of 2) (10.9 MiB, 111 hits)
* Serpent Isle Sound Files (5.9 MiB, 126 hits)
* Serpent Isle Sound Files (Roland MT-32) (7.7 MiB, 105 hits)
* Nokia 770/M800 - Data (0 bytes)
* Nokia 770/M800 - Music (mono, low quality) (0 bytes)
* Nokia 770/M800 - Music (stereo, higher quality) (0 bytes)

Exult 1.4 (unstable)
* Exult 1.4 (Windows) (2.2 MiB, 131 hits)
* Exult 1.4 (PocketPC - ARM4) (1.3 MiB, 76 hits)
* Exult 1.4 (PocketPC - ARM5) (1.3 MiB, 91 hits)
* Exult Studio (Windows) (3.5 MiB, 90 hits)
* Exult Tools (Windows) (1.3 MiB, 91 hits)
* Exult 1.4 Source (4.3 MiB, 82 hits)
* Shapes Plugin for Photoshop (87.7 KiB, 88 hits)
* GIMP Plugin (50.4 KiB, 84 hits)
* GIMP Plugin 2.0 (47.0 KiB, 90 hits)
* SDL 1.2 Libraries

An amazing remake, Exult is a cross-platform reworking of the Ultima 7/Serpent Isle engine that allows the game to be run on modern operating systems with expanded memory environments. This is not the same as a Voodoo memory-manager wrapper program, and it works on many systems apart from Windows.

Exult 1.2 is the latest “stable” release – Team Exult is making massive engine changes, and subsequent releases are expected to have instabilities as a result. It has Windows, Mac OS X, Sharp Zaurus, and Fedora builds available. Also avaliable is the source code, so that people running other systems can compile and build Exult.

Pentagram, the remake that does for Ultima 8 what Exult did for Ultima 7, has posted news of their development progress for the first time since last December. The team, it seems, has been busy indeed!

In the last few months, interest in Pentagram seems to have picked up again. A number of bugs were fixed since the last update, including camera fixes, key handling, containers (backpack, barrels, etc.), and a fix for a problem in the German versions of the U8. The default key binding for stasis moved from ‘S’ to ‘F10′. The build should now properly support versions of autoconf greater than 2.60.

Mac OS X builds also received a lot of attention. They build system switched from XCode to a makefile-based system that builds Pentagram and dependencies using their traditional configure script and make methods. This allows us a greater amount of control over the builds and should help prevent changes to Pentagram for unix systems that break OS X builds and vice versa.

Just prior to this news update, I noticed that the Pentagram team had released updated snapshots of both their Windows and Mac builds of the game, and both of these updates have been added to the project entry. I’ve also updated the local copy of the Pentagram source code.

Produced by: Chris Hopkins
Website: 80s Gaming
Releases:
* ACK v3.2 (Windows) (20.5 MiB, 110 hits)
* ACK v3.2 (Mac) (23.1 MiB, 81 hits)
* ACK v3.2 (other systems) (18.4 MiB, 87 hits)

This is a comprehensive top-down 2D game development tool that allows for the creation of tiled RPG-type games, similar to Ultima 1 through to Ultima 5. It is now fully operable under both Windows and Mac OS X without need for emulation of any kind.

The Kit was completed in 1995, and was intended as Mr. Hopkins’ update to the classic Adventure Construction Kit of the 1980s. In about 2000, the Kit was released as freeware, and Joshua Lawrence has taken it upon himself to maintain a web presence for the Kit. The ‘v3′ update was released in early 2008.

Produced by: Eric Fry
Website: Nuvie at Sourceforge
Releases:
* Windows Snapshot (1.1 MiB, 147 hits)
* Mac OS X Panther Snapshot (751.7 KiB, 97 hits)
* Mac OS X Tiger Snapshot (1.7 MiB, 123 hits)

Eric Fry’s novel remake of the Ultima 6 engine is also going to be compatible with Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. Though currently being developed under Mac OS X, there are downloadable binaries for both Windows and OS X 10.3+ (the developer feels these snapshots might also work under earlier versions of OS X, however this is untested. It is the opinion of Aiera that they will not, simply because of some key API changes that exist between OS X 10.2 and 10.3).

The program source code is also available. Linux users will have to compile Nuvie from source.

Produced by: Peter Veenstra, Sjoerd, Tommy Frossman, Ulf Wohlers
Website: DOSBox
Releases:
* DOSBox 0.73 (Windows) (1.4 MiB, 89 hits)
* DOSBox 0.73 (Mac) (4.8 MiB, 75 hits)
* DOSBox 0.73 (Source) (1.2 MiB, 75 hits)

A handy utility that creates a DOS-like environment within Windows or Mac OS X, allowing older DOS applications that don’t work well within modern operating systems to be played under those environments.

DOSBox can be a bit processor intensive, especially when playing higher-end games like Ultima 8, but most modern systems should be able to handle it.

Produced by: Michael Trent
Releases:
* Map Editor (Mac) (325.8 KiB, 129 hits)
* Character Editor (Mac) (24.5 KiB, 134 hits)

A pair of utilities – a map editor and character editor for the Macintosh port of Ultima 3. Keep in mind that the only available port of Exodus currently available for Mac is not freeware, and must be purchased from its vendor online (see the Ultima 3 page).

Also keep in mind that these editors are quite dated now, and may only work under the Classic environment on Mac OS X.

Produced by: Lair Ware
Website: LairWare Ultima III
Releases:
* Demo v1.3 - suitable for 68k Macs (2.8 MiB, 132 hits)
* Demo v1.4.2 (3.7 MiB, 125 hits)
* Ultima 3 for Mac OS X (4.5 MiB, 171 hits)
* Ultima 3 for Mac OS X Cheater (296.4 KiB, 136 hits)

This stunning port of Ultima 3 to the Macintosh features 32-bit graphics, 3D-rendered fountains and shrines, the friendly Macintosh interface, and a wonderful musical score. It is shareware, so you will need to buy the full version from Lair Ware (current price: $15 USD) in order to be able to complete the game.

For those of you who don’t have a Mac but want to give this one a try, the Basilisk Mac Emulator is your best bet.

There was also a Mac OS X beta version of the software that was released in March 2007. During its beta, LairWare asked that no external site host a copy of the beta for download, but since it has now gone to market release I have added a download to Aiera.

The game, as with the Mac version, cannot be completed without registering (specifically, it prevents you from reaching Ambrosia), which still costs only $15. For a professionally-done, classical graphics remake, that’s a reasonable fee indeed.