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  • shdon 9 days ago | parent | on: The Size of Adobe Reader Installers Through The Ye...
    I'd been using Foxit PDF reader because of its small size and corresponding fast startup speed. That has ballooned to 200MB now as well, and I'm now using the PDF support built in to the browser (Firefox being my browser of choice). Firefox is, as of today, a 68MB download for the installer, and it does a while lot more than display PDFs.

    A little disgusting that Adobe creates a file literally 10x the size of a full-featured browser yet having a small subset of the functionality.

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  • shdon 13 days ago | parent | on: Microsoft publishes source to BASIC for 6502 (MIT ...
    An additional link from the Microsoft Open Source Blog: https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/03/microsoft-o.../

    As I've been toying around with a 6502 emulator, it's of particular interest to me at this time. Total aside: the 6502 is such a simple architecture and very well documented, doing an emulator for it is a great exercise.

    reply
  • shdon 33 days ago | parent | on: Creating the longest possible Ski Jump in The Game...
    That's some impressive analysis and reverse engineering.
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  • shdon 68 days ago | parent | on: Retro-gaming YouTuber PatmanQC has died, aged 53
    Post on his actual channel: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxlxGXbAp493rLsgFSTZkLyuz_dEw...
  • shdon 85 days ago | parent | on: How Frogger 2’s source code was recovered from a d...
    What that "data recovery" firm did to the tape should be considered a crime!
  • shdon 161 days ago | parent | on: How I ported Windows XP to the original Apple TV
    I wouldn't really call this a port, but it is definitely some impressive work in getting it to run on a platform this different from the target hardware.
    • dmitrygr 161 days ago
      I disagree. Custom HAL and bootloader were made. The rest of the OS was changed. This is a port IMHO
      • shdon 161 days ago
        From what I understand from his write-up, he's replaced several components with their counterparts from ReactOS (specifically the bootloader and the fallback video driver). Without access to the source code of the original OS and by using components from another, I'd call this an adaptation, rather than a true port. Your definition may differ, of course - and just for fun, I asked ChatGPT and it disagrees with me too 😂

        The part I would call a true port is how he changed the ReactOS bootloader to work with the AppleTV - looking through the commit history on that is fascinating, I can recommend it if you haven't done so. Check it out at https://github.com/DistroHopper39B/reactos/commits/AppleTV-D...

        To be honest, I'm actually more impressed by how he got XP to work almost entirely unmodified than if he had done what I would consider a true port of the full OS.

        • bmonkey325 160 days ago
          What do you call it ? a hack ? a bastardization?
          • shdon 160 days ago
            A hack seems an appropriate term, I could go with that. There's even precedent for that in how people got Mac OS working on the hardware that was not the official Mac and called it the Hackintosh.
  • shdon 166 days ago | parent | on: Working on twostopbits' code
    Hoping you'll make a quick CSS adjustment for the links in the top bar in dark mode. They're black on near-black right now, for visited links. I use custom CSS to fix that for myself right now.

    In particular, there is a line in layout.css that goes:

    .page-header a:visited { color: #000; }

    and should probably have an override in dark.css.

    • jgrahamc 166 days ago
      What dark mode are you using? I'm happy to change the CSS but wasn't aware this was a problem.
      • shdon 165 days ago
        I just go to my profile page by clicking on my username, and in the theme dropdown, I select "dark" and then click "update" (side note: regardless of the current selection, the theme dropdown always reverts to "default", but the theme does apply correctly)
        • jgrahamc 158 days ago
          Note to self that the theme selection doesn't stick because the choice function in app.srv has no way of knowing which of the choices was selected. Needs a total rethink.
        • jgrahamc 165 days ago
          Ah. I see that now. I'll take a look at why. Dark Mode really is dark!
  • shdon 201 days ago | parent | on: Command & Conquer Red Alert open-sourced
    Here is the blog post where they give more information: https://www.ea.com/games/command-and-conquer/command-and-con...
  • shdon 245 days ago | parent | on: Grand Prix 2: Modernized and Natively Running on W...
    Thanks for posting that! This is a cool project, and that comes across much better on a video than on the site, which lacks even a single screenshot.
  • shdon 249 days ago | parent | on: Microsoft Bob turns 30 today. It was terrible and ...
    Funnily enough, I think Bob has become so notoriously reviled that more people hate it (or are at least very much aware of the hatred) than have ever used it.

    And there's this, by Dave Plummer, who ended up being responsible for shipping more copies of Bob than ever sold: https://youtu.be/rXHu9OmLd8Y

    • bmonkey325 249 days ago
      Cool! well that answer my question about his still having the MS Bob t-shirt from day of yore...
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Two Stop Bits is a discussion web site about retro computing and gaming.