eyelessgame

I had a hankering for old Ultima games. Partly cuz I think my kids would get a kick out of them.

To my chagrin, after pulling out my old 386 computer, finding power cords for it, digging out a keyboard -- I find that even this old machine lacks a 5.25" floppy drive. And the Ultima games are copy-protected, and came on 5.25" disks that need to be in the drive.

Anyone have an old 5.25" drive they think still works?

Does anyone want to give me a bit of advice? I want to purchase a low-cost laptop before mine gives up the ghost completely -- it appears at the moment to have an 11- activation roll to boot when turned on.

Circuit City has a laptop available for $549-after-rebate, which come with a wireless modem, wireless router, and an obviously cheapo printer.

I haven't purchased a computer of my own since about 1995 -- everything more recent that I own has been spoils from war. What, these days, do I need to look for? I don't run any big 3d games, nor indeed much of anything -- I run MSDEV 6, which can't possibly be a high-voltage application these days (though I might decide to start using .NET if the machine was uber enough to run it fast). Other than that, I mostly want to run Office and random text editors, probably install Cygwin, maybe use my office's VPN.

The big question I guess is how well the wireless modem actually works. Can Sherilyn sit in the next room and run Puzzle Pirates? what kind of modem horsepower is needed for this?

Does this kind of laptop probably have very slow memory? Will I be content with its performance over time? As you can tell I don't buy hardware often.

Anyone know where I should go for information about this?