Back to the future

I bought the Cybermaster back in 1998 since the the Mindstorms sets were not yet available. In 2007 I wanted to build it again (showing it to my oldest son). So I installed the Cybermaster software on my old Win98 machine; just the Cybermaster software, not DirectX 5, nor QuickTime 3.

When I ran it, it crashed (giving the hulfull error message 80CC0006). What to do?

• It is good to know that on the Cybermaster CD, in the directory D:\shared\build you find all the instructions. For each Lego design, there is a set of mov files (Apple QuickTime), each for one step of the building process. The files are made up of an abbreviated base name (e.g. 3whel), a sequence number (e.g. 016), and some suffix that I do not yet understand (either b, i, or t). These files play in all the versions of QuickTime I have.

  Trials
  Communication link	clink01b.mov
  3-Wheeler	3whel01b.mov .. 3whel17i.mov
  4-Wheeler	4whel01b.mov .. 4whel29i.mov
  Tracks	track01b.mov .. track22i.mov
  Crusher and Sting
  Crusher	crsh001b.mov .. crsh121i.mov
  Sting	sting01b.mov .. sting40i.mov
  Truck with tools
  Truck	truck01b.mov .. truck82i.mov
  Claw	claw01b.mov .. claw23i.mov
  Fork	fork01b.mov .. fork19i.mov
  Blade	blade01b.mov .. blade20i.mov
  Container	contr01b.mov .. contr03i.mov

• I ran DxDiag, the standard DirectX diagnostic tool, which told me I had version 8.0 of DirectX. I tried installing DirectX 5 from the Cybermaster CD. It didn't allow me to do that, because I have an English Win98, but a Dutch Cybermaster (with a Dutch DirectX). So I scanned the web for dx5eng.exe (found a couple which all had exactly the same content). So I downlaoded and ran it. It claimed success, but rerunning DxDiag indicated I was still running DirectX 8.0.
• I ran Apple QuickTime, Clicked Help|About, which confirmed that my QuickTime version was also much more recent than the version 3 on the CD (I believe that I had version 6.5). I tried installing version 3, but again, this didn't replace the newer version. I un-installed Apple QuickTime, and checked success. I was partially successful; QuickTime 6.5 was removed, but another version now became active (5.0?), so I uninstalled that one too (all via Control Panel, remove software). Then, I installed QuickTime 3.0 from the Cybermaster CD and bingo, Cybermaster software now worked!
• Unfortunately, each time the Cybermaster software is installed, one must run the intro completely. Once the intro has run, it can be interrupted with 'space'.