Breaking out the old NXT 1.0

[ryebread]

Nine-ish years ago, I got my first NXT kit. A year later, I got my second one. I've competed in FLL and FTC, I mentored teams, I volunteer at tournaments. Now, I'm in the Ohio State University's mechanical engineering program. These kits are what inspired me to become an engineer. I'd like to say thank you to the entire Lego Mindstorms community online; all your innovation has shaped the course of my life. I'm still in awe of much of what I've seen over the years from the advanced community: GPS interfacing, internet-controlled robots, video-processing, complex mechanical linkages and gearboxes, custom built sensors, and PID control to name a few. I used to spend hours on thenxtstep and youtube watching this stuff.

Anyway, I'm home for the summer from school, and I was hoping to finish up my last mindstorms project, which I've had sitting in a box for a few years now. Very loosely inspired by Brian Davis' OGRE robot tank and all of Sariel's cool stuff, I built this self propelled artillery piece back in freshman, maybe sophomore year of high school. The basic idea was to put a radar screen on the handheld NXT controller, user dials in a compass heading and range, and have the device calculate the necessary angle to elevate the turret to. I even did test fires to come up with degrees elevation to projectile range relationship. However, I never got around to programming it, and that's why I'm here today.

I read somewhere that Lego no longer supports NXT. I'm having trouble with them being recognized on my (relatively) new Windows 10 laptop. I found some drivers. I found NXT-G online somewhere. I found some firmware. Here is where things stand:
-Both my NXTs have been hard reset in an effort to get the various programming software to recognize them. BricxCC had no luck, despite the devices showing up under device manager. I did manage to get the drivers working, but neither BricxCC nor NXT-G could locate them.
-One of my reset NXTs clicks (as I understand it should), while the other doesn't.
-Since I can't get any software to recognize my NXTs, I can't install the default FW.
-I hope that I can get BricxCC to locate the device using the default FW, since that is the software I'd like to use, having used it before. I'm open to any high-level text-based programming though.

Sorry that's a bit stream-of-conscious. If anything needs to be clarified, please let me know. Anyone have any ideas or solutions for me to try to get these bricks working for one last hurrah?

Thanks,
Andy

[HaWe]

perhaps purchase a 2nd-hand PC with Windows XP 32. I recently have bought a couple of them for 25 EUR each.