I do have a vague memory of Microsoft releasing some huge device that they called Surface.

@@JanusCycle I remember they hyped it for Dungeons&Dragons gaming sessions, like with RFID-equipped miniatures of player characters and monsters Dungeon Master would be able run game that would be basically "Augmented Reality". Pretty cool thing in my opinion. Too bad it never went anywhere, really.

@@JanusCycleSurface Studio, Surface Hub. Man on comment talking about Microsoft PixelSense.

I actualy used that thing once in 2012: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bLyWo7mKvrfeeKc.htmlsi=T0vvVA_o7dlj0M3N If I remember it ran Windows 7 and main app kept crashing on it Was wondering what brand off cell phone snd camera did this expect to be able to seamlesly share photos like that

I feel like if they marketed the 2007 surface towards professional artists like their current studio series, that windows might have made it as a tablet os

Windows 7 forever!

the reason i liked Windows 11 too! windows 8 and 10 were bland in comparation

I'm so pleased to hear that. You really lifted my spirits, thank you.

I didn't know about the better color accuracy. Cool, I appreciate this thing even more now.

I'm very curious about seeing more of the Bioshock universe after this experience. Thanks for the Bioshock Infinite DLC tip, and those other game suggestions. It's really fun to go back and play games that I missed out on. Very pleased you are enjoying the channel. It means a lot to me to hear that, thank you.

awh shiit its GHG I remember watching the Gateway Half Life pc when it came out ages ago! Love the channel. Great to see GreenHamGaming is still going

Good to see you here,love your videos :)

Interesting it was a DLC for Infinite rather than 1 or 2… Infinite otherwise seemed entirely disconnected from what I recall. I would be surprised if it used many assets from Infinite. Did they still call them “elixirs” or did they port over the 1&2 gene mods? (The name of which embarrassingly escapes me right now but I DON’T want to Google it.)

I would love to, but XP booting on a UEFI system would be tricky. And driver support, gosh.

@@JanusCycle i have here a Thinkpad Helix 1 - a dstant relative of your tablet... the only os that could get it right and still be usable was kubuntu but i supose win 7 works okay for games - on mine i love to play Torchlight and Stardew Valley,with unfortunalty doenst have touch support

@@JanusCycleanother game from the same era i love to play is fallout new vegas,on the right resolution it also runs okay =)

@@JanusCycle I agree. However, I do have an old laptop with the i7 3517u and it was oddly amusing to see it run XP on such a power house of a processor. Drivers were a mess but it wasn’t half bad either

@@JanusCycle on a different topic, I’d be glad if you could help me solve a hardware problem on an old laptop of mine. It has served us for over a decade and I hope make it last another decade if I can. But the bios chip kicked the bucket a while back and now I have a dilemma to handle. Let me know if you want me to proceed with the details.

Yes, in my experience 8.1 is the quickest with the lowest ram usage and I preferred it for its gaming performance more than 7.

@@zloboslav_ it even has dx12 support iirc, its also way better suited for a tablet than 10 or 7.

I do want to try Windows 8.1 one day when I find the right hardware to suit the experience I want.

​@@JanusCycleThe surface pro 3 is relatively cheap right now. It was the last surface pro to support windows 8.1 iirc

Great info there. I do want to try Windows 10 on interesting hardware. Your tips will be helpful, thanks.

Thanks for the tip, I am impressed by the sound in this game.

I'm pleased to hear you are enjoying this. I really appreciate 2000s era tech and I hope you find more to enjoy here :)

Great to see you here. Thanks for all your hard work. You are really helping revive this old tablet into retro magic!

@@JanusCyclehaha np

Yes, always good to hear about Windows 7 being used into the 2020s.

Awesome, glad you enjoyed this.

Nice, good to hear other people sticking with 7 into the 2020s :)

@@JanusCycle I still have Win7 here and use it for gaming some time, having mostly switched to POP OS which does most of my gaming on nvidia. I never want anything later than Win7 on my hw. And I disabled updates day 1 for Win7 and didn't miss anything coming down the pipe.

Thank you and hello!

Thank you for watching, I'm glad you are enjoying the videos. I'm enjoying exploring different types of music. It will only be scary if it fits. For example with the 'recording video on audio cassette' video. I thought that fitted well with the music. But really it's about experimenting and seeing what works, learning and getting better, and hopefully sharing a great experience :)

I appreciate hearing that, thanks!

I think it just depends on whether the Surface Pro supports CSM or not. I have tried this on my NuVision tablet, and Windows 7 will always blue screen at the logo screen as the VGA driver does not work with UEFI machines (the reset called during the post will always result in a BSOD). It is possible to patch this driver, however, I haven't been able to get much further even with a patched VGA driver. I am tempted to see if manually applying the image like Janus did would allow me to install Windows 7 on my tablet.

People have been previously trying to get Windows 7 on Surface for years without success.

No it would just lock up at the boot screen as it still requires legacy BIOS booting support to get past the boot screen, even when booted in UEFI mode. The Surface lacks that support all together.

@@datlaunchystark1385exactly correct

@@awgybop1 yup. Windows 7 requires CSM, so secure boot doesn't matter. i think it's a problem with vga.sys. The Surface Pro is UEFI-only. You can get 7 to boot from UEFI without CSM, but you have to somehow get past VGA.sys. i have already made a guide on how to install vista and 7 on UEFI-only machines, so look at that (it's not a definitive method).

I always wondered about those Surface RT tablets. There must be some hacks for them. Though it sounds like I might be quite disappointed if I ever got one.

@@JanusCycle You will literally are! the ARM32 Nvidia Tegra CPU basically made this thing trash. though it might be possible to run arm32 Linux distros with this but i didn't bother trying because i am not familiar with Linux

I found a video that showed a version of windows 10 for them@@araigumakiruno

Great score, I hope you enjoy it.

@@JanusCycle thanks kindly!

He certainly tells good stories about tech.

Glad you are enjoying these videos, thanks for letting me know.

cool, thanks

Interesting suggestions, thank you.

It could probably handle Crysis on lower settings too

​@@leonidas14775no, it can't. I have higher tier third gen mobile i5, half life 2 episode 2 is the most advanced game it can handle

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed this video.

Glad you are getting into it. Thank you.

2023 and we are finally moving on from Windows 7. It's been a great run though.

​@@JanusCycle as an OS it was so stable and usable when compared to its predecessors, and successors, that many of us grew attached to it.

Oh god, yes the music got me, guess it's time to learn piano now.

Great to hear from an original Surface owner. These seem like very capable machines for their time.

@@JanusCycle Yep, they were! I remember I pre-ordered mine and was probably one of the first people in Singapore to get a Surface Pro without buying a grey market import intended for the US. The sales rep at my local Challenger (where I pre-ordered mine) somehow read my mind and knew I also wanted the Type Cover too, so they reserved one for me to buy at the same time I collected my pre-order (as well as the TP-Link M5350 they included as a pre-order bonus and I used for back-up mobile data). Besides the games I previously mentioned, some of my other memories of it were also with 'Evernote Touch', Evernote's Windows 8 specific client that they had alongside their regular desktop app (since rebranded to 'Evernote Legacy' when they launched what I refer to as the Evernote 10 platform), as well as the Kindle app where I'd read e-books that were in colour or just wanted a larger screen to read on (than my original Kindle Paperwhite that I also had), and the free version of Autodesk Sketchbook which in turn might have been what indirectly led to the eraser head breaking off the pen (from me using it too much). Those were all Windows 8 full-screen apps, though I did also use some desktop apps. I remember I had around 200 notes on Evernote at the time, and now I'm fast approaching 2000 notes as my life changed in 2018 and I develop my ideas over time.

This really is such an intriguing game. Thanks.

Cool, the dualshock 4 support on Linux sounds very tempting. I will be doing more Linux installs in the future.

@@JanusCycle It would be interesting to check out *Waydroid,* which allows you to run Android applications and games on Linux. To do this, you will need a distribution with the KDE desktop environment, such as the preconfigured gaming distribution "Nobara". Why KDE and not, for example, GNOME - because it will be lighter than GNOME in terms of RAM consumption. Which will be useful for this device with 4GB of RAM. In addition, these are currently the only two desktop environments that properly support Wayland, which is a critical requirement for *Waydroid.*

Wow, you used a machine until the capacitors burst. That's some serious perseverance there.

@@JanusCycle I have to wonder whether it was age or some manufacturing defect. The mobo was manufactured around 2009-2010 so it wasn't the capacitor plague, but that's still not much more than 10 years before two identical capacitors burst at the same time. They weren't near any of the heat-producing components and I dusted the machine regularly.

Thank you, glad you're enjoying :)

Yes, @CathodeRayDude is such a compelling storyteller. I really enjoy his videos.

Great to hear from another 2023 Windows 7 hold out. Enjoy it while it lasts. But I also hope your new build goes well.

I still have Win7 here too. My current OS is POP OS - it handles most of my gaming needs even on nvidia with a machine similar in age i5 2500k. Linux gaming seems to be the way forward for those of us who dislike any MS OS post Win7 like me.

I'm looking forward to finding the right tablet for me for my Windows 8 experience.

You might be able to dual boot your Surface with Win7 and 8/8.1 @@JanusCycle

Great suggestions, I would love to try a Surface RT. It's not that I don't like Windows 8/8.1, it's that I've never tried them. But this has changed recently. I've installed Windows 8 on something unusual. It's a really interesting experience and I think it would make a good video.

I will be going Windows 8.1, when I find the right hardware for the experience I want :)

@@JanusCycle That's a good idea! If you ever decide to try 8.1 and want to test out Metro apps on it, I have developed methods to sideload apps (free trial and paid) and archived a bunch of the more popular ones, but it's possible to retrieve packages from the tlu delivery servers if you have the PFN or Catalog ID, so pretty much any app can be brought back if you can find the url or name. I had developed a tool that let's you extract update ids for windows apps on both 8 and 10 so you can even downgrade apps like on Android and iOS, if they exist in the datastore or have been archived. It's always a great experience to reuse older hardware and get the most out of it or see what it is capable of. That's why I love your content so much!

Nice suggestions, thanks.

Noted, thank you.

should have*

I checked on another computer and it seems to be working OK. Thanks for the info, I'll keep my eye on it. If it's still a problem please let me know.

Great suggestions, thank you.

Great recommendation, thanks. I've never really played any Civilization games. I would like to try them one day.

well thank you!

I've had problems, working to improve them, thanks for the feedback.

Fan certainly spins up but doesn't seem to throttle performance. I am in southern hemisphere winter as well.

That is fascinating. Thank you for that information!

Well, if there is no software method to get the BIOS on this phone then hardware it is. When you get somewhere with this, I will be very keen to try out your experiments as well. Even if it means accessing the hardware directly. I hope you are really digging this neat little phone. Good luck and keep me updated. Thanks.

It's never too late to mention an interesting game. This one looks really intriguing, I like the feel. Thanks for mentioning it.

Snappy driver installer origin is recommend these days. Snappy driver installer was handed over to another dev and has adware and is dodgy. Have to be careful with installing drivers through snappy. I ended up bricking my surface go and had to reimage using the recovery image.

@@dazzle187 Correct. I should have mentioned that he should use an older version of the utility.

(i am the author of the Vista and 7 SP1 ISOs) the problem i had with snappy driver is that there was no wifi so i cant get it to scan drivers. and yes, XP does work on the surface. I got the x64 version running on it Wednesday (x86 is impossible as the SP1 is UEFI-only and had x64 UEFI) Sadly, the graphics drivers are a bit weird on XP and Vista. If they are installed, the screen doesn't work at all even if you adjust the resolution.

Some great suggestions, thank you.

@@JanusCycle :) Np.

Very interesting, thank you.

quibble won't work on uefi class 3, at least not yet. i had to use EFI files from flashbootpro to get XP-7 working.

Great game, would suit a touchscreen well.

Interesting game, thanks for mentioning it.

Thank you for enjoying the music. I try and only include music that I personally enjoy in videos. It's extremely difficult finding tracks that I both like and have a licence that still allows me to monetize. Or video game music can sometimes be used without needing a licence if I'm showing off the game. Sometimes I find remixes that are not detected by the automated systems, e.g. obscure DM remixes. Technically I don't have a licence for them and could get demonetized, but so far it's been worth the risk. Sometimes people do complain, e.g. the title music in 'The Power Of Palm (Tungsten T5)' did scare some people. But honestly, I still love that opening sequence. When I find more abrasive music that I both enjoy and can licence then I won't hesitate :) I have considered using music from bands even if I can't monetize the video, just because the songs are awesome. For example the band Seabound. You need to listen to some Seabound. Seabound - Contraband kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Zrp5o5SJ29axZGw.html Seabound - Everything (EvvilKing Remix by Steril) kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hct6mKZhnZvJpnk.html

@@JanusCycle oh i sure love my self some futurepop!

@@JanusCycle contraband reminds me of my all time favorite Gridlock, especially there earliest stuff, but only slightly, thank you!

It's quite a unique experience, glad you enjoyed.

No worries, I've added the links in the description.

@@JanusCycle Thanks a lot :)

Same path for me too. Still can boot win7 if I need, but main is POP OS which handles most games.

I used to get a lot of people telling me off for using Windows 7, until I told them I had a fully up to date patched system using free Extended Updates. Not many people realized this was possible to do completely free for three years after 2020.

@@JanusCycleI just booted into it last week and my steam configuration precautionary changes made in 2023 ahead of the Win7 Steam shutdown have been tested out and this now is in Offline mode and runs pre-installed games fine. And on security, as long as your browser is kept up to date and you are behind a firewall, run unmentionable firefox additions and make consistently good browsing decisions - updates are rarely needed. Having offsite backups and local encrypted volumes helps too.

I have to agree about Win8.1, especially when it comes to the *Embedded Industry* edition (+ replacement of the hideous Start menu with "StartIsBack" or "Classic Shell"; and also the "Aero Lite" theme with minimal borders) - as it is extremely optimized for older systems built on x86 processors of 2006-2010. In most cases, when I installed it (Embedded Industry edition) as a pure upgrade from Win7, it outperformed Win7 (usually in terms of system startup speed from HDD) or was on par in terms of responsiveness and overall performance. Currently, it can be used in conjunction with a modern version of Chromium called *Supermium* , which is a fork with minimal changes to be used on Windows 7/8.1/Vista. It's still in WIP state, as a respected developer under the nickname "win32ss" is currently the only one behind this project. If you are a little confused by the WIP status of "Supermium" - you can temporarily (until the project leaves the WIP state) use an optimized fork of Chromium ESR v109 called "Thorium" which is available on 𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗵𝘂𝗯 in the "thorium-win7" repository.

I do want to try Windows 8 one day. When I find the right machine.