True. I know this - Intel doesn't - or didn't, around 2003 - consider themselves a technology company. They're a manufacturing company. They used to say, "We don't built technology, we build widgets - whatever we have to manufacture to stay in business, we will." 

It didn't have to be Intel core processors. They're an industrial company. 

Sun Mar 22 2026 17:51:11 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: RISC-V

Right, but Gordon Moore wasn't talking specifically about CPU or GPU or anything else, he was talking about fabrication process.  

Right, but Gordon Moore wasn't talking specifically about CPU or GPU or anything else, he was talking about fabrication process.  His metric was that the number of transistors that could be packed into a particular area was doubling every 18 months.  At the time, there were fewer metrics that affected computing speed and capacity, and that was one of the big ones.

Moore's Law ended quite some time ago.  Although incremental advances in process have happened, the majority of the "bigger/faster" in computing over the last decade or so has come from parallelization (multiple cores on the die) and from massive parallelization (doing work on the GPU with thousands of cores).

For "regular" tasks, that's why a ten year old laptop is still useful now.

I don't know - for sure. My last understanding goes back to when they FIRST claimed Moore's law was "broken," and other voices said, "Not really." 
But it wasn't about GPUs back then - it was something ELSE that suddenly leapt into fill the void on Moore's law on silicon. 

Basically, something ELSE was meeting the criteria - every 18 months. Then - people just stopped caring. At least, consumers. We've had plenty powerful enough CPUs for at least a decade to surf Facebook. Even a Pi 4 can do it. That is what average consumers care about. 

Wed Mar 18 2026 18:23:57 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: RISC-V

But OTHER technology is advising exponentially every 18 months.

Is it, though?

Modern silicon is dead. Moore's law is broken - at least - from a traditional perspective. 

But OTHER technology is advising exponentially every 18 months. So, it isn't REALLY broke. It just changed when we hit a ceiling. 

Thu Mar 05 2026 18:01:30 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: RISC-V

The fact that I still get plenty of use out of a 13 year old laptop should answer that question.  Computers are getting better but only incrementally.  They're packing more transistors onto each die, but they're not really increasing the density by a significant margin, which is why the big stuff now requires water cooling.  Regular CPU's have plateaued, GPU/NPU is a parlor trick of reducing functionality and packing more cores onto the die, but again, not at any increased density.  Quantum computing is perpetually in a state of "almost there".

And I don't think most people need to care.  There's no requirement for ever-increasing density.  Hitting a wall could actually be beneficial.

The fact that I still get plenty of use out of a 13 year old laptop should answer that question.  Computers are getting better but only incrementally.  They're packing more transistors onto each die, but they're not really increasing the density by a significant margin, which is why the big stuff now requires water cooling.  Regular CPU's have plateaued, GPU/NPU is a parlor trick of reducing functionality and packing more cores onto the die, but again, not at any increased density.  Quantum computing is perpetually in a state of "almost there".

And I don't think most people need to care.  There's no requirement for ever-increasing density.  Hitting a wall could actually be beneficial.

Do you think we're going to live long enough to see the next frontier in silicon? 

Serious question. Moore's law isn't "Every 18 months," anymore... and we don't have a lot of 18 month cycles, let alone 3 times that much for each quantum leap. 

Tue Mar 03 2026 03:52:04 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: RISC-V

That's interesting.  There was a lot of speculation that either ARM or RISC-V cores in high density could end up making a dent in the "AI computer" market -- maybe not for training but definitely for inferencing.  

Open source CPU is sort of the final frontier, isn't it?

That's interesting.  There was a lot of speculation that either ARM or RISC-V cores in high density could end up making a dent in the "AI computer" market -- maybe not for training but definitely for inferencing.  

Open source CPU is sort of the final frontier, isn't it?

Could be the beginning of the end for ARM...  and the beginning of RISC-V as a major player, outside of IoT. NVIDIA tried to buy ARM a while ago to get total control, and failed, if they went this route it would be the same effect. 

https://www.eetimes.com/nvidia-sells-arm-shares-signals-realignment-of-ai-portfolio

I mean, they're still building huge office spaces in a post-Covid workplace environment where no one wants to go back to the office. Good luck with that, I guess. 

I mostly buy PCs from the 80s, or new ones that can mimic ones from the 80s, these days. 

So not a real problem for me. 

Sun Feb 15 2026 23:10:23 UTC from DarfWader

Market Insiders:  "This spring expect a massive and extended price increase on storage, similar to being seen in the RAM market, due to rising AI data center needs."

First GPUs, then RAM, soon SSD..     Here soon, us average folks wont be able to afford getting new devices.

 

Market Insiders:  "This spring expect a massive and extended price increase on storage, similar to being seen in the RAM market, due to rising AI data center needs."

First GPUs, then RAM, soon SSD..     Here soon, us average folks wont be able to afford getting new devices.

He meant grams of bugs. He just said it prematurely. 

( ya, im not a fan of him either.  He talks a good story, but he really does not care about people, or the planet. )

Wed Jan 14 2026 03:01:57 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

After all, 640K ought to be enough for anybody,

What he said. The weird thing about getting really old is that you start understanding that the really old people you thought were nuts - simply had seen what you thought was "new" a few times already and were a bit jaded about it. 

Ig basically said, "you're not wrong, but it is probably a temporary thing." 

And I agree. I've got $6000 of GPUs in my two gaming PCs that I couldn't sell for probably $1000 right now - because GPU supply chains caught up again - but I wanted all that power at the peak. 

Fri Jan 09 2026 23:46:09 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

You're only saying that because it's true 100% of the time. :)

On the other hand, I remember when RAM was $30 per megabyte. Or further back than that, when the 64KB in your computer represented half of its cost.
I'm not going to panic. Nothing moves in the same direction forever.

Wait until the AI bubble pops. The landscape will change.

Its not just me that feels that way. The entire industry is in the same boat with me.   As far as conspiracy, tell me what the government does NOT have their fingers in manipulating things?  Nothing.

And ya i have paid high prices in the past too, but doesn't negate what is going on today, which is totally insane.

Mon Jan 05 2026 23:58:40 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

. 

I don't think memory is NEARLY as expensive as you think it is. 

 

There is this bias toward believing that everything is driven by some conspiracy. Corporate, Government - there is always some other agenda. Shadowy secret global government cabals bringing down the Twin Towers for... *reasons*. 

I'm not saying that these conspiracies are always wrong... but Occam's Razor is also a thing. 

I'm not really in the market for memory right now - and the curve that technology is on, at my age - a lot of things I like, I'm going to be fine with until I shuffle off this rock. I'm listening to 1984 on LP vinyl right now - and I'm 54. If I make it another 45 years - the equipment I have now in that regard should get me through - being that I'm going BACKWARDS with the technology, not forward. 

Same with computers. I spent as much time on 8 and 16 bits as with PCs. So, memory and cloud hosted Ai solutions aren't that big of a deal to me. 

I can't recall specifically, but I think I paid about $400 for 1.5mb of memory and a memory card f

Sun Jan 04 2026 22:03:23 UTC from DarfWader

Not that i count for much, but i have never seen it this bad..  And we have never seen it due to a reason like this.  Its not part of the normal cycle.

And don't kid yourself, the government IS involved.. to guarantee the big data-center players win, and us little folk, lose out.

 

Not that i count for much, but i have never seen it this bad..  And we have never seen it due to a reason like this.  Its not part of the normal cycle.

And don't kid yourself, the government IS involved.. to guarantee the big data-center players win, and us little folk, lose out.

Sat Jan 03 2026 03:46:46 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

This comes and goes in cycles. The market will correct. Exorbitant RAM prices will lead to innovation in a demand driven market - unless the GOVERNMENT steps in and starts regulating. 

Then graft and corruption means things will remain artificially expensive AND lame indefinitely. 

 

This comes and goes in cycles. The market will correct. Exorbitant RAM prices will lead to innovation in a demand driven market - unless the GOVERNMENT steps in and starts regulating. 

Then graft and corruption means things will remain artificially expensive AND lame indefinitely. 

Ya, its due to resources being moved from consumer to enterprise, and then jacking that price up since they will pay it ( well pass it down to the customers... not one company pays a dime of their own for anything, in effect. )  Damned AI centers.

And yes, that 2TB was Enterprise level. ( or at least they claim to be, i heard its a bit iffy on quality)

Mon Dec 29 2025 02:21:14 UTC from PanaSonic

Enterprise RAM isn't spiking as much as consumer, 

 

Enterprise RAM isn't spiking as much as consumer, and 2TB is usually purchased in enterprise .. but yeah, it's still going to be a big spike.  

Entire lines of consumer RAM and consumer SSDs being discontinued so that they can make more enterprise stuff.  Add to that crazy tariffs if you're in the US, and we've got a recipe for disaster coming.  When this started coming down the pipe, my IT guys were told to spend 2026's IT budget as soon as they possibly could, and maybe even crack into 2027's IT budget, because it's NOT going to be pretty if we have to order any emergency hardware a year from now.

Sun Dec 28 2025 23:03:03 UTC from Nurb432

Think RAM prices are bad now.. just wait.. going to triple next month it sounds like. 

And i heard today that 2TB of DDR5, will run you over $40k, IF you can even find it to buy, and no, that was not a typo.

Think RAM prices are bad now.. just wait.. going to triple next month it sounds like. 

And i heard today that 2TB of DDR5, will run you over $40k, IF you can even find it to buy, and no, that was not a typo.

So... I recently got a hankering for some good old Conan Novels. They're owned and published by someone else, and I bought all 3 "volumes" that claim, "in the original order, as intended, solely by Robert E Howard, returned to their original format... 

And it turns out, that isn't what I wanted. I wanted the 80s chronological order - with a lot more supernatural and sword and sorcery. L.Sprague de Camp seems to have been the prevalent  author shaping Conan in my youth - in the late 70s, early 80s. So I had to eBay all 12 books from the 80s - Some of the stories are exactly the same - some are the same with significant differences, and some are completely different - and those ones tend to be the ones I was missing in the pure Robert E Howard versions. 
$140 for all 12 of them - with a cover price of about $30 total - and I had them all at one point, and dumped them. Point is - I get rid of the stuff, and they change it up and it isn't the same, and so I have to buy back what I got rid o

I guess the RAM shortage is now expected to run into at least 2028.. Another reason to hate these damned AI data centers, as that is where its all going.

( and yes, i know, i have a friend who is employed due to this nonsense, but i can still not like its 'side-effects' )

I had several hundred albums before the great purge here a decade or so ago. Some exceedingly rare. I kept perhaps 5. Tons cassettes too. Dunno the total tapes ( or how many were recorded and how many were commercial ), it was a large box full of them.   I did keep my 100s of CDs and DVDs. Not real sure why, but i did.

Literally 1000s of books and magazines headed to the door too. Kept perhaps 30 special ones. ( some really old hand-me-downs from family and some art books )

100s of retro machines, including a box of HP calculators and a couple of printers. Kept 2. Made a few collectors happy. LoL.

Had a friend once, had a 12x12 ( approx ) room as his "music room". Shelves on all 4 sides, floor to ceiling, even above the doorway ( and no window, it was covered ).... all packed with records. Beyond counting, only guessing and doing some math ( i think i estimated around 1200 albums per shelf, and f course had 6 or 7 shelves, and then basically 3 walls of it  ).   He would pull one out every so often and play it "guess who this is" i rarely missed one.  I guess he worked at a music warehouse as a kid.. got stuff for free...  I'm sure its worth a few bills, if he still has it and is still around. ( not talked to him since perhaps 1991 )

Tue Dec 23 2025 05:13:53 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

I worry about... I have $10,000 worth of records, at purchase price. Value is significantly higher. 

And $50 was low price. My copy if probably a $150 copy. VG++. 

I worry about... I have $10,000 worth of records, at purchase price. Value is significantly higher. 

Same with my comic books.  I just looked up a title I remembered. $.15 cover price. Low price was $50.00 and I've got 1000 comic books. Not all of them are $50 low titles, but a LOT of them are. 

My daughter is going to get raped when I die by some vulture estate-sale picker. 

He'll give her $5000 for $30,000 worth of eBay items. I don't know how to tell her no to give in. 

Hmm a couple of older RISC-V boards escaped the last purge somehow. But not this one. Bye bye bye.

I have one for small things.  like why do i need 15 screwdrivers ( of the same size/style )  8 - 1/2" sockets? or even 2 - 2" ones ( across the entire size spectrum )..  or 4 hand-drills ( since i have moved to battery now i have my 2 + his 2... AND 2 battery powered ones.. ). Once the tub is full going to call family "hey... "  Then start filling it again.  lol.

Some of the bigger stuff has moved on to other family members over time, but i still have WAY too much.  

Its a process.  And im running out of time so i need to get my butt in gear.

( sorting sockets is a royal pain, its hard to read those things.. )

Sun Dec 14 2025 03:57:42 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

 and I'm starting a crate labeled "surplus tools" so that I can make up tool sets for anyone who needs one.

That is how i ended up with a garage of tools, 4x of everything..  My dad was as bad as I.  Or is it i'm as bad as he was? :)    ( we both 'worked' so having the tools made sense, but we would go overboard )

Wed Dec 10 2025 17:56:59 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

  The only exception is tools -- when you need a specific tool, you need it, and sometimes nothing else will do.

 

na, sentimental. i have most all my old stuff. much to my wife's chagrin. 

The first time you have to clean out someone else's house (for example, a deceased parent) you start to think about the clutter in your own home.

I'm in that space now.  Aggressively.  Lots of stuff is going away.  If it hasn't been used in a year, out it goes.  The only exception is tools -- when you need a specific tool, you need it, and sometimes nothing else will do.

I've got a pile of old Model M keyboards lying around that have various issues (mostly the infamous space bar wire).  I think I might try to ebay them as a lot "as is".  If I can get a hundred bucks for the lot it's a win.  Normally I don't bother to try selling my old stuff but these could bring in a decent handful of coin.

I knew I had offered to buy a Casio watch from someone, somewhere online. Couldn't remember here. Damn whiskey. At least it wasn't an e30 325i BMW... :D 

Tue Nov 25 2025 02:30:57 UTC from test2

na, sentimental. i have most all my old stuff. much to my wife's chagrin. 

Sat Nov 22 2025 03:33:27 AM UTC from ParanoidDelusions

 

na, sentimental. i have most all my old stuff. much to my wife's chagrin. 

Sat Nov 22 2025 03:33:27 AM UTC from ParanoidDelusions

Wanna sell it? PM me. 

 

Tue Nov 18 2025 07:55:16 UTC from test2

i still have my casio calculator watch-  with the game. 

 

 

 

 

Wanna sell it? PM me. 

Tue Nov 18 2025 07:55:16 UTC from test2

i still have my casio calculator watch-  with the game. 

 

 

 

i still have my casio calculator watch-  with the game. 

Sat Nov 15 2025 05:40:09 AM UTC from ParanoidDelusions

 

 

Support him. I just bought a Casio calculator watch. I was in Italy, a little store was selling retro stuff, and there was an original Casio calculator watch for $200. My wife was like, "Geek, you don't need that," and shamed me. So I didn't buy it. And regretted it. Came home and searched. Casio sells a modern retro calculator watch. $25. No game. I bought it. When I wear it, people go nuts. I should have bought the real deal in Italy. I shame her about it ALL the time - and she feels bad. She knows she was wrong denying me my UberNerd urges. Seriously. She has said, " you know your instincts on things like that, you shouldn't let my response influence you. You should have bought it." 
Which is nice. Too little, too late, but nice. ;) 

 

Tho im not fond of plastic, i actually did try.

I got on the waiting list, and when it was time i tried to buy it but just could not the payment to go thru. Tried it over a 3 day period even got my bank involved.. gave up finally.

Sat Nov 15 2025 05:40:09 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

 

Support him. 

 

Thu Nov 13 2025 18:33:23 UTC from Nurb432

So as i have mentioned before, not fond of electronics where it does not need to be.  One example: my wrist.

Go back perhaps 15 years, and i resisted the 'smart watch' movement. No thanks.    But.. a startup company called Pebble, were making minimalist ones, that had actual buttons. No touch screen crap.  Looked pretty interesting, even to me, and when they came out with the 'steel' version, i had to get one.

loved the thing. it was perfect for me. Did want i wanted, wasn't obtrusive, etc.

Then around 2015 they talked about getting into the health monitor businesses.. then in 2016 fitbit bought them to get rid of competition that made a better product.. killed the line, killed the apps, killed the back end infrastructure, all of it.  So all the 'smart' of it was gone, so no point, and went back to only my mechanicals.   They were a few months away from adding color to the 'steel', which looked neat and was on the pre-order list.

I kept it in the drawer for a long time. Got rid of it last year during purging. "this will never be useful again, why take up the space"

This year, totally unexpected, the original pebble guy rebuilt the company.. selling minimalist watches again ( tho not as nice as before, only plastic.. but gotta start somewhere ).. and just today announced the infrastructure is back for the old ones too.

 

 

ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

 

Support him. I just bought a Casio calculator watch. I was in Italy, a little store was selling retro stuff, and there was an original Casio calculator watch for $200. My wife was like, "Geek, you don't need that," and shamed me. So I didn't buy it. And regretted it. Came home and searched. Casio sells a modern retro calculator watch. $25. No game. I bought it. When I wear it, people go nuts. I should have bought the real deal in Italy. I shame her about it ALL the time - and she feels bad. She knows she was wrong denying me my UberNerd urges. Seriously. She has said, " you know your instincts on things like that, you shouldn't let my response influence you. You should have bought it." 
Which is nice. Too little, too late, but nice. ;) 

So as i have mentioned before, not fond of electronics where it does not need to be.  One example: my wrist.

Go back perhaps 15 years, and i resisted the 'smart watch' movement. No thanks.    But.. a startup company called Pebble, were making minimalist ones, that had actual buttons. No touch screen crap.  Looked pretty interesting, even to me, and when they came out with the 'steel' version, i had to get one.

loved the thing. it was perfect for me. Did want i wanted, wasn't obtrusive, etc.

Then around 2015 they talked about getting into the health monitor businesses.. then in 2016 fitbit bought them to get rid of competition that made a better product.. killed the line, killed the apps, killed the back end infrastructure, all of it.  So all the 'smart' of it was gone, so no point, and went back to only my mechanicals.   They were a few months away from adding color to the 'steel', which looked neat and was on the pre-order list.

I kept it in the drawer for a long time. Got rid of it last year during purging. "this will never be useful again, why take up the space"

This year, totally unexpected, the original pebble guy rebuilt the company.. selling minimalist watches again ( tho not as nice as before, only plastic.. but gotta start somewhere ).. and just today announced the infrastructure is back for the old ones too.

ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

Coming to a cornea near you,  digital contacts..

( i think i saw this show. )

Retina e-paper promises screens 'visually indistinguishable from reality'

https://newatlas.com/materials/retina-e-paper/

My guess is mostly landfills.  Most people don't know how to deal with this other than the garbage can.     Which is a shame.

"Windows 10 support ends October 14"

Too bad i'm not in the market for new-to-me hardware. Ebay ( and a few others, and landfills ) is going to be flooded with cheap but decent intel/amd based machines here soon i suspect. 

And bet prices will drop on some of the older ( but still good ) devices too.  Before i stopped buying and went to downsizing instead i noticed the 'tinys' were slowly going up in price. But all of them are locked out of win11, so the 'unwashed masses' wont want them and i bet go way down in price by end of the year.

I think i just saw the worlds worst featured laptop.

The track pad is where the number key pad would be.

Odd. Still works for me as of a few seconds ago.. But summary:

"In a paper published in the journal Nature, the team demonstrated a system of more than 3,000 quantum bits (or qubits) that could run for more than two hours, surmounting a series of technical challenges and representing a significant step toward building the super computers, which could revolutionize science, medicine, finance, and other fields."

If we really have that sort of tech running now, its going to change everything.. 

Sun Sep 28 2025 18:01:11 UTC from darknetuser

2025-09-28 16:28 from Nurb432
If true, this would be a seismic game changer.
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-physicists-quantum-bit-capable.html

I get a 404

If true, this would be a seismic game changer. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-physicists-quantum-bit-capable.html

Not sure the average person even knows the difference.  And 90% of what they do is online now anyway so the OS / CPU is a wash.      I think the cost is the only real factor. High performance ARM is still a bit pricey.   Cheap intel, 'is good enough' for most.

Gaming is the only real sticking point i see now, and from what i understand its moving to the cloud too.

Wed Sep 17 2025 14:23:55 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

. People don't seem to want Windows on ARM

And in lighter news than normal for me..

My 11 year old Galaxy Tab S 8.4" still works.    Its got an otter box case and was going to take it to a family thing later today since its pretty indestructible. Not had it on in years. ( at one point it became 'portable cat tv' but the cat tired of it )  still works, still had a bit of a charge even.    Just dont make things like they used to. 

RISC-V is already displacing ARM in IoT devices. That ship has sailed and ARM is now pivoting to AI workloads. And will fail in the long run.  While we dont 'see' that market in our face, it cant be discounted as its billions of devices.  And its what kept ARM alive all these years.

If it wasn't for Trump distrusting international silicon trade at a pivotal moment, we would have seen some pretty fantastic advancements in RISC-V next year that were on the board.   Now it will mostly be internal to China, due to intent to cut ties with the west, and while it will advance, we wont see much of it.

And to be fair, high end RISC-V today can match mid-range intel desktops now. Just are not real common in the west ( see above about trade issues )

Wed Sep 17 2025 03:08:42 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

We have not yet seen the peak of ARM deployment.  It's going to continue to grow, especially as people begin to realize that just about any ARM server runs way faster than a Raspberry Pi.  I'm still doing daily development on the RK3588, for example.

RISC-V will have its day, simply because cloud providers and device makers will relish the opportunity to save on licensing fees.  Today, however, it is still in its "science experiment" phase.  Apple will switch in 2030-2035 if its historical cadence continues.

We have not yet seen the peak of ARM deployment.  It's going to continue to grow, especially as people begin to realize that just about any ARM server runs way faster than a Raspberry Pi.  I'm still doing daily development on the RK3588, for example.

RISC-V will have its day, simply because cloud providers and device makers will relish the opportunity to save on licensing fees.  Today, however, it is still in its "science experiment" phase.  Apple will switch in 2030-2035 if its historical cadence continues.

.

Tue Sep 16 2025 02:13:57 UTC from SouthernComputerGeek

I'm beginning to doubt RISC-V will ever take over the way people thought it would. x86 and ARM will not be displaced anytime soon.

I'm beginning to doubt RISC-V will ever take over the way people thought it would. x86 and ARM will not be displaced anytime soon.

You've heard about how I tapped into the battery backup of my fiber terminal (ONT) and pulled off a 12 volt supply to run my router.  Today I added a 12 volt to 9 volt DC-DC converter so I can also use it to power my ethernet switch.

2099532871@Uncensored

Well NVIDIA "Thor" is out now.

Scary fast, with 128G..  But its 3.5k.   Not i cant afford it, but no way to rationalize that much for a hobby, that i hardly even do now.  My Xaiver spends most of its time in the closet now since im mostly non-tech these days other than music and video, and my e-reader.. on purpose. But man, it would fly....

ooo and they have a version coming that is pin compatible with the NVIDIA jetson xaiver series and about the same performance.   Cool.  Even tho im not really into that stuff anymore, if i can find one that isn't tariffed out of being reasonable, i might have to get one.  I might have a spare carrier board left in the closet still....

( Milk-V Megrez NX )

"milk v megrez"     new risc-v board from milk-v.

Not quite what they promised us last year with that failed to deliver product, due to not being able to make the chips due to all the damned tariffs and restrictions..    But not bad either, might be usable for daily life.  Too bad its shipping from mainland, so its price will be stupid after the Trump fee is added. ( unless its banned totally and have to get it via 'alternative sources' )

Not a speed demon CPU, but enough, and its got an acceptable NPU + onboard GPU, plus a standard PCI slot if you want to go all out on GPU.

Damned politics get in the way of tech once again.

Perhaps im less paranoid than i should be, but considering that monitoring this stuff via cellar is normal in that tech, i bet this is just a case of mistaken intent, to fuel the dislike for china. -> https://industrialcyber.co/utilities-energy-power-water-waste/us-energy-sector-at-risk-as-chinese-inverters-are-under-investigation-for-suspicious-communication-gear/

I have a feeling that worst case it was a 'should have disclosed' but it was really SoP, that everyone does at that level, so no one thought about mentioning it.

If im right, next up: "that ESP32 based smart outlet checked in with china for firmware updates.." um, well.. of course it did.

Could sort of go in several rooms... news clip i saw today below.   I also thought i heard it was being done it in another state, in the Midwest, limited runs.  ( not same company tho, i dont think ).    Sounds like long haul truckers are about to become obsolete.. and unemployed. 

Aurora Innovation has launched a commercial self-driving truck service in Texas, making it the first company to deploy driverless, heavy-duty trucks for commercial use on public roads in the US. These trucks are making deliveries between Dallas and Houston. The company plans to expand to other locations like El Paso and Phoenix, according to TechCrunch. 

You can thank Microsoft for that.

Tue Apr 01 2025 13:44:29 UTC from LoanShark

 only happened under Linux

I guess with older tech too.. Floppies, spinny drives, tape.. whatever.

But most of the time back then for me it was just 'poof' .. rarely got a chance to get stuff off.

Mon Mar 31 2025 13:41:23 UTC from Nurb432

 

Been there too many times with SSD.    

To me, it sounds like its struggling to stay alive.  Slowing it down is just a short term bandaid and it will hard fail next.

Been there too many times with SSD.   Suddenly starts slowing down trying to keep up with error corrections. Then dead. ( a couple of times before i could get the stuff off.   it died during that process )

Mon Mar 31 2025 13:23:33 UTC from LoanShark

It might take more time before I really know for sure, but so far, the PCIe bus errors from the NVMe seem to go away if I limit the link speed to PCIe v3.0. Not sure how I feel about that... I paid for v4.0 obviously.


Don't want the hassle of going through a warranty claim and transferring all my data to a new drive, either, though.

Back in the late 80s i got a call about a monitor that was not coming on. Since it was a tube, i had the guy flip the power as i looked inside the vents in the back, just to see if it was getting power at all.    Flame about hit me in the face. One of the resistors decided to cut loose.    "ok, ill get you a new monitor, hang on"  lol        I guess if i was able to smell, i might have noticed it when i entered the room.

Had a dell desktop do that too. About caught the wall on fire behind it.  Next day a laptop caught on fire, also a dell, due to its poor design.  Never been fond of them since.

Another time, same company as the flaming resistor, different area, one of the engineers that designed automotive chips called. "my monitor isn't turning on".  In this office the monitors faced away from the front door so i could see the cord was missing instantly. I walked in, went over to his machine, picked the power cord off the floor and plugged it in to the monitor, and didn't say a word...  He watched me do it.. turned bright red.. "oh god. im sorry "

Or the time i forgot to discharge the tube on a terminal, as i was busy talking to the user, and stuck my paw in it to swap out the board..   

Ah fun times. Kids today will never understand 

Sat Mar 29 2025 21:53:45 UTC from LoanShark

Decades ago, had a PS catch fire on a mini-tower ( 386 days ).

Back when I worked at a VAR doing PC builds and troubleshooting, every time we got a Packard Bell in we knew the PSU was likely dead. I worked on one that you could smell it burning up.

Packard Smell.

Wait, no, it might have been a 486..  or perhaps even a early Pentium.  its been so long i dont remember now.  20 years or so, and it wasn't new at the time..

I had a USB attached litecoin miner once. It caught fire. Literally, flames coming out of the fan. Thankfully i only ran it when i was home so i was 2 feet away when it did.

It took out ALL the USB ports on the PC it was connected to.

Decades ago, had a PS catch fire on a mini-tower ( 386 days ). Took out the mother board, CPU, RAM even the HD and CDROM drive was toast.  Never seen such a thing before. Sure, bits and pieces but not *everything*

the last couple have been. 

Fri Mar 28 2025 15:07:45 UTC from LoanShark

. But the current Intel generation is a dud,

Pebble is back. yay!

Because 95% of their customers will abide and give them the $. 

Sun Mar 09 2025 23:19:53 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

I can't understand why that would even benefit them. 

I ever mention that for a long time ( perhaps still? ) Lenovo whitelisted m.2 wifi cards?   Especially in their minis. Rather annoying that you cant simply upgrade to a newer card.  And the machine wont just ignore it or something, it will refuse to boot, flashing "illegal device found" and beeping like its on fire...  I have heard some people have hacked the bios.. but that is risky unless you are in need of some doorstops..

Normally i just ignore that limitation and move on, as the ones i bought were to have their CPU swapped out with Xeons and just be PVE server nodes. But now that i have torn down the farm, I wanted to turn most of them into desktops to give out to family as while they wont be running win11 due to the arbitrary version requirements so intel and AMD can sell chips, they are not bad little machines as long as you dont need tons of ram.  WiFi is pretty important in a desktop tho.  ( and yes, i know i can do tiny11 which has that CPU level limitation removed, but its a chance to get them off windows.. )

technically its not the riscv cores that matter, its the NPU/TPU cores and overlapping of RAM. 

With out the extra, its 'yet another cpu'. 

Mon Feb 10 2025 17:01:49 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

I wouldn't call it derailed. It's an open architecture and it's going to thrive no matter who builds it. If the idea of replacing GPU cores with RISC-V cores for large models has merit, the production of chips to supply that need is inevitable.

I know i hate NVIDIA and want off the GPU treadmill, but since RISC-V is about to be derailed to keep things out the reach of us serfs, someone get me a couple of 64G Jetson Orins for my birthday..

Finally got my old Xavier NX working properly with LLMs and while not a speed demon, its more than usable. AND does not suck up a KW like my AI server does.  But ts only 8 gb so rather limited.  

Oh and to be fair, which i try to be, Trump's appearance wont make it any better. In fact, most likely will make it worse in this area.

Thu Jan 16 2025 12:11:50 UTC from Nurb432

Well darn. 

The official statement came out on that RISC-V AI board we have been waiting on for a good year..     Its dead. Sanctions killed it.    Another F-Biden moment.

 

They may have just cracked the quantum computer error issue..   An 8 state quantum machine at scale is almost unimaginable what it could do.

"The new method encodes quantum information onto an antimony atom, which has eight possible states that enable data to be more safely stored than in a standard two-state qubit, or quantum bit."

Well darn. 

The official statement came out on that RISC-V AI board we have been waiting on for a good year..     Its dead. Sanctions killed it.    Another F-Biden moment.

From what im hearing, the mainframe division of their business is minimal anyway. Not zero, but it could vanish tomorrow and they would not go under.  Already got rid of the 'PC' division and they didn't collapse.

Its all about consulting, data centers, AI, etc.   Perhaps not the 'market owner' they used to be, but not hurting either.

Tue Dec 17 2024 14:19:17 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: PowerPC.. ooo

I wouldn't want to be IBM

cool.  not looked at details but supposedly DJI just dropped the hard coded 'geolocking' in their firmware.  Now you fly where you want to, not where the FAA tells you that you can.  

Not that mine had any of that nonsense, but that is a different story.

So intel just got rescued, in effect. 8 billion of our tax dollars because, well, money laundering..

From LXer's feed.  I didn't realize they were still making them...  Cool.

Until the security team locks down the BIOS and you cant boot anything that they wont allow :)

I think we do that where i am at. I still have that old un-managed mac, so not sure if its happened yet. But if not, its still on the planned list. Tho one side effect is that mac hardware can NOT get on the network, VPN, or directly use any of our non external-web-based services. Has to be via a shop managed VM in my case, at least for now. Soon i bet that stops working too. ( or i put osx back on, and let them control it. Which i doubt would work, since it cant be upgraded to whatever is current. its an X86..  last one  )

Sat Nov 23 2024 02:58:55 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: The Flying Penguin

Not too long ago, I put a Linux partition on my work computer, because it's the lightest machine I own (my personal laptop has a big screen and lovely keyboard but it's big and heavy and has no battery) and I want to be able to boot up into a non-work environment while traveling.  They've got all sorts of snoopware on the corporate image, and anyway it's running 'doze and therefore barely usable.

Recently I decided that it's too risky, that eventually they'd scan the machine and see an unauthorized partition, and my risk tolerance has sharply declined lately, so I deleted it.

 

Not too long ago, I put a Linux partition on my work computer, because it's the lightest machine I own (my personal laptop has a big screen and lovely keyboard but it's big and heavy and has no battery) and I want to be able to boot up into a non-work environment while traveling.  They've got all sorts of snoopware on the corporate image, and anyway it's running 'doze and therefore barely usable.

Recently I decided that it's too risky, that eventually they'd scan the machine and see an unauthorized partition, and my risk tolerance has sharply declined lately, so I deleted it.

pendrivelinux.com.  It uses UASP (which is SCSI-over-USB instead of the traditional USB bulk storage profile) and has a "real" SSD inside it.  I installed a full Linux image to it, with an EFI system partition and everything.  Now I can boot my work laptop into this and it works really well.  It can run the "super speed" USB at 10 Gbps so if your machine has a fast enough port it's just as fast as having the disk inside the machine.

I've tried the whole USB Boot Drive thing before, but was never satisfied with the performance.  This, on the other hand, works great.

And apparently I got it for half price because I bought it for about $40 and now it's listed for $80.

Might have mentioned it before elsewhere. 

HP.. Their 'mini' series.  I got one. Was working fine.  then started rebooting out of the blue. ( not OS reboot, hard power restart )

Thought it was my UPS dying .. nope.  brought it inside to beat on..   stress test until it was nearly on fire, not a blip.  Next day 3 reboots in a row.  Then nothing for a few days..  Even tho testing was fine, tried new ram, new SSD, same random results.   So bought a 3rd party power supply. A mistake.  these **** use DRM keyed power supply so even tho they have the same plug and enough juice, if they dont 'talk nice' so they are ignored. 

Against better judgment.. got an OEM one. Ran fine for 2 days. poof.. reboot.  Sigh. into the trash heap it goes i guess. 

Oh, and you cant freaking update bios unless you install windows. wtf? Last HP i ever get. 

Intel :  "We have this fancy FPGAi  ( FPGA for AI ) that is x% faster, uses far less power, and less cost per cycle % than the 'incumbent GPU company' ( lol ) bla bla.  And a dev board is only $10k ( ouch, but not out of line for what it is ). Oh, and if you want IP to run on it so it actually does something, that is licensed separately."

Bleh. Licensing development software to use on a chip-set you manufacture should be illegal.

Guy at work mentioned something the other day. I don't NEED it but fell victim to the "shiny object" factor

"Idodd virtual drive'

Its a 2.5" ssd or m.2 NVME ( depending on model ) portable USBC shell. Shove a drive in and you get external HD ( nothing new here ) but if you copy ISOs over, it will mount them as a virtual drive, you can even boot off the 'virtual drive'.   It also supports VHDs as well as virtual USB flash.  Has a keyboard and display to select what images you want to mount.   

Seems to do the job it says it will do.  I donno about long term. Have to test it with some ARM boot images as virtual USB, see if that holds up.

One downside is to generate a VHD or USB it seems you have to use their windows tool. I tried it using qemu tools but it bitched about needing to be defragged, even tho it was not even formatted. *shrug*.

I think except for edge cases, this is true across the board for anything that is even remotely recent. "ooo the AD says my new shiny PC goes faster and its got xyz super power!.. now let me go watch a cat video"   ( and why you see MS obsoleting millions of machines for zero technical justification.. its just to keep the chip people in business )   Much like phones, we have hit a wall where faster/better really does not matter, its just numbers at this point and no 'practical' improvement. 

And yes, Intel is dying a slow, painful death. Which i support.

Fri Nov 01 2024 10:17:08 EDT from LoanShark

my current system feels "fast enough" despite being several years old. 

once again ( for a different reason this time, not a drive failure ) copying ~ 4TB from a external usb2 drive. ( usb -> sata, is a usb2.. its just for emergencies and helping out others in need )

But net result. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz  for a long time..

I think that is the same as my old macbook. ( the first 'pro' but wasnt labeled 'pro' )

Pretty worthless to use on a daily basis at this point, but it has a DVD writer, so i keep it in the closet for that for when i need to rip or write a DVD or something. ( which is rare )

Mon Oct 07 2024 22:33:40 EDT from SouthernComputerGeek

I recently ordered a new (to me) computer, an HP Z-something with a six core Xeon and 64 gigabytes of RAM. It is not new but it will be worlds better than my 2009 Mac Mini.

I recently ordered a new (to me) computer, an HP Z-something with a six core Xeon and 64 gigabytes of RAM. It is not new but it will be worlds better than my 2009 Mac Mini.

Might have mentioned it another room i dont remember. But went ahead and bought that RK3588, that has a carrier board that takes 4, yes 4, M.2 slots.   And 32G ram on the module. ( and 256g eMMC on board )

Nice metal case arrives today.

Its long term future around here is to be a ceph based NAS. 

A bit more on Intel this week. 

2.8 B losses in a single *quarter*.. ouch.

And id like to see Altera be spun back off and be independent.  Would like to see AMD release xilinx back into the world to and not kept behind a walled garden.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Intel is better positioned to sell units like Altera and Mobileye than it is to seek a 100% acquisition, according to analysts whom EE Times contacted.

Last week, Qualcomm proposed a potential buyout to Intel, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. A 100% buyout of Intel would not be a good investment because Intel Foundry will continue to have difficulty competing with larger manufacturing rivals like TSMC and Samsung, the analysts said.

“We don’t think anyone else would really want to run [Intel Foundry] and believe scrapping them is unlikely to be politically viable at this point,” Stacy Rasgon, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research, said in a Sept. 23 report he provided to EE Times. “If it was just about gaining manufacturing, Qualcomm would of course be free to use them without the headache of owning them.”

Intel Foundry’s operating loss of $2.8 billion in the second quarter this year widened from the previous quarter. The company expects operating losses at Intel Foundry to continue at approximately the same rate in the third quarter.

I have not heard from him for a while now.  I think i registered on his BBS, but never really visited.    

Also, sort of related, did we lose our BBS list we had here, or am i just blind? Not looked for it in a long time, didn't even think of it until just now.

And in other depressing hardware news:

Intel and Qualcomm are in discussions for a buy out.  Not  a fan of intel of course and want to see them obliterated, and it could be worse and be Broadcomm instead, but still not a fan of this. Assuming it does not get shut down by the FTC.

Bleh, looking like that RISC-v powerhouse i have been waiting a year for..  wont be this year.   Heard they laid off staff, and while not 'gone' as they are still there, and selling current models, not a lot of news from them on status. And the chip isn't even in production yet, let alone the board to stick it on.

Originally it was slated for early-bird purchase this month.

That is a bit of cash...

"Advanced Micro Devices will acquire server manufacturer ZT Systems for $4.9 billion as the chipmaker looks to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities."

So the drive that died and i sent back, they just shipped the replacement.  No questions asked ( not that i did anything to cause it.. but you know how some companies are ). Will have to give them credit for standing behind their products.

Context not important, but got a flyer for a 'new and improved portable model'  Among other "advancements" ( like a microsd port  *yawn* ) it includes:  "179% faster processing: powered by the IntelⓇ Processor N100"

If a POS N100 is 180% faster i would hate to see what it used to be like ...   

Well, looks i get a replacement drive from the manufacturer   3 year warranty.  It was only a couple of days: "we are sorry it took so long to get back with you we have been swamped, here are the steps to get an RMA and send it back"

Point in their favor.

grrr wrong room for the above thread.  sorry.

Weird stuff afoot.  Restore completed 13 hours.  Not that the VMs change much, other than the NAS beast so i dont *need* to, but went ahead and doing some updated backups/etc anyway.  Backups from host server 1, most were running at 250m/s or so.  ( not yet backed up a new copy of the beast. still getting all the media updated first. backup was perhaps 4 months old so missing things )

Host server 2 ( mostly for testing/etc, or when i want dedicated horsepower ) was going to run a backup of a Debian desktop i use for incoming RDP. Same story, dont 'need' it, but figured might was well since the backup server is plugged in.  Doh, i numbered it wrong.  Did a full clone so i could reset the ID. 300m/s  ( ok, not great but not terrible, but to be fair its all on a 2TB m.2 in that box, SSD is just for 'stuff'. ).  Back it up. Started out at 230m/s, and quickly dropped to 80m/s. Sometimes even dropping down to 15m/s. Then back up, then down.. then sideways.. Ran much better and more consistent last time i did it.  ( and same here no vms running to reduce contention )

wtf.

( and i guess i should be happy it works. and that i have the stuff to bitch about in the first place. i  have more than many.  Perhaps ill just shut up. )

booooo my data ( not system ) drive died in my main PVE server.  The one that houses the NAS VM data... 

4TB SSD . Poof.  Even caused a hardware reboot. 

ya ya i know.. backups, ceph, bla bla     but other than occasional backups, anything else is overkill 

lol

Fri Jul 26 2024 16:35:19 EDT from LoanShark

Why do you suppose they are denying that laptops are affected? ;-)

Did not read the entire article as im busy, but apparently the 'fix' intel is putting out only apples if you have not had issues. If you have, your CPU is physically damaged. ( it was on the verge if anyone wants to look )

"If you have experienced crashing your CPU is irrecoverably damaged and should be replaced"

And they are still blaming voltages, and their microcode doing it. 

Also who is paying for these replacements? And what about laptops and NUCs, where you cant normally replace it?

Ya i tried stuff like reducing clock speeds and such early on.  No effect.     Also thought network for a while too, but no, that wasn't it.

I forget the exact errors i got on console when it didn't freeze solid but all running processes did, and it always seems to be related to one or 2 of the cores, so i thought 'why not give that a try and turn those off"  It was the 'power saving' ones, ( whatever its called ) so i was just assuming its power related after reading the stuff about 13 and 14 gen.    I also don't think it was bad hardware, as i was not the only person, and they had drastically different hardware, but same CPU... 

An i7. 12gen. Shoved in a NUC like box and at the time was a bit faster than most without spending silly money. ( and why i chose it )  Its a couple of generations old now as I put it away for almost a year as i was too frustrated and came close to tossing it. I had read about other people with similar issues with that gen, mainly related to core graphic drivers and such. None of the stuff they suggested worked ( for many people it seems, not just me ) so away it went.   When i brought it back out during some house cleaning, "lets try this again, but at BIOS level, before i finally toss it" mostly i disabled the 'efficiency cores' which of course would drop power use, so im 99% its related to the current issue even tho at the time i didn't know about that.  The other things i messed with, i doubt they really made a  difference. ( mostly pre-fetch and extension stuff, i was just trying random things, and most i turned back on anyway )

Disabling the cores sort defeated the use-case i had bought for it, now its 'yet another mid-range i7' but at least its not collecting dust and i can use it.

Thu Jul 25 2024 13:49:09 EDT from LoanShark

Are you running an i9 or something less? Apparently these problems affect the whole lineup, but they are worst with Thermal Velocity Boost (i9-only feature)

Sort of funny. Intel 13 and 14 gen core series CPUs crash on load.  So does gen 12.  ( i can attest to that personally...  i got mine stable finally, after disabling a lot of things, including all the 'power saving cores' so i lost 1/2 of what its supposed to be able to do )

Intel sux they need to get out of the way.

https://www.techspot.com/news/103876-intel-laptop-cpus-crashing-company-remains-silent.html

NVIDIA's days are numbered.  Generic TPUs are coming for them, and now this -> https://siliconangle.com/2024/07/18/openai-reportedly-holding-talks-broadcom-others-develop-new-ai-server-chip/

( broadcom and openAI are in talks.. )

I might have the numbers wrong, but the 2 i'm comparing and complaining about, i really dont see any size reduction. just a different ( incompatible ) shape. and lower wattage. 

Sure, if you saved a bunch of space, or it was magically waterproof or something, id say its 'ok' but i just dont see it here.  I think when i buy transformer dongles from here out out ill be sure check first to avoid it.

And yes i know its low on the list of things to be pissed about, but getting really tired of stuff like this "just because we can make you buy new stuff" . 

I meant to say 3 Pronged AC.  The 2 prong dont count for this mini0rant. But not had many of them. Just a handful. 

As always, I'm ok with change if you gain something, i just dont see any gain here.  In fact, with lower current ability, i see it as a loss.  Its not smaller, and less power..  

Mon Jul 15 2024 18:58:58 EDT from Nurb432

From your connector link i believe: C13/C14

it was on every AC powered device ( well, ones that were not hardwired ) i have had since the 80s..  until these dumbass flowery things started appearing. That dont even take the same amount of current. 

From your connector link i believe: C13/C14

it was on every AC powered device ( well, ones that were not hardwired ) i have had since the 80s..  until these dumbass flowery things started appearing. That dont even take the same amount of current. 

Dumb as i dont see any actual valid reason for it, other than to 'make more incompatible stuff'

Im ok with things when it makes sense.  but i dont see any advantage over the older style 

its dumb :) 

Thu Jul 11 2024 09:28:36 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

That's a C5 connector.  It's actually from the same series of connectors (IEC 60320) that has the C13 you're familiar with for plugging in computer equipment.

Here's a chart: [ https://www.stayonline.com/product-resources/reference-iec320.asp ]

 

That's a C5 connector.  It's actually from the same series of connectors (IEC 60320) that has the C13 you're familiar with for plugging in computer equipment.

Here's a chart: [ https://www.stayonline.com/product-resources/reference-iec320.asp ]

Oh all my battery charging transformers ( for those probable solar things so you can use line power ) are also the old style..      

You have the prong plug that goes in the wall like always on one end.  3 "pin" ( well 2 slot and one round, here in US at least other countries YMMV )

Normally the other end, which goes into the power supply/transformer/etc is a solid block with 3 slots. These newer things, instead of that its got round nodules and round pin holes .  They seem to be most common on external transformer type supplies  ( laptops and such, but i did see a PC with it too ) Most of mine, even laptops and these NUCs i have a plethora of, still have the old style, and i see NO advantage to changing.  It just doesn't make sense to me of why we are doing this unless there is some huge advantage im missing..

"Clover connectors" is what i see them being called, sort of silly, but i guess i do see where they get the idea from.

and i hate to do images, but:

Tue Jul 09 2024 18:19:39 EDT from zelgomer

I guess this could be a rant too, but a question:

WTF is the point of these stupid clover style power plugs? Why cant everyone just use the old blob style?    What does it offer that is better?        Long story but had one go dead on me. No physical stress, never imagined the AC side went out.   But it did. and of course since they are different, i don't have a bunch of spares laying around.( explains my pixel book troubles from a month or so ago. .i just could not bring myself to toss it yet.. and thought id try screwing with it again. )

Tossing old stuff today, including some of the few books/magazines i kept from the great purge.

Old "computer design' Magazine ( i think IEEE, i used to be a member around that time frame ). March 1, 1987.  Headline on cover: Future Computers to use optics and neural nets.

Well, not there yet for optical computing, but they were not wrong about the neural nets, and coming optics. 

Well that is cool.  OrangePI has come out with a CM4 compatible board with a real chip ( RK3588 ) and upwards of 16G ram, 256G eMMC.  Couple that with the 6 port 'cluster board' that is miniATX sized ( and it also adds 6 M.2 slots for storage ).. 

Would not be cheap ( my guess is around 1k ), but would be cool.

That 2.2k was for Asus, which is normally lower priced than most.  But just got an ad from Lenovo. Their base X model is 1.2k. Still more than id pay for a mostly useless toy ( if i wanted to burn cash, I'd spend it on more GPU for my AI server first ) but that is much more reasonable i think for an entry level model.

Well darn,the law suits aside, looks like machines with snapdragon X are still now hitting the streets, but a bit high on the $ side.

2200 bucks. While i guess its not THAT bad if you are looking for a new non-intel machine, and it is faster than the M3, i think ill pass. Not like i would have to skip meals or something to get one, its hard to rationalize that much for a toy that would rarely get used. ( even if i was still going into office, it would be 'used' .. but still just be a toy there, to use at lunch to look at email and watch video, which my 300 dollar Chromebook does just fine. 

sort of a shame, hardware we only could dream about not too long ago..  dont need it now. 

whoohoo my 3d printer still works. Not had it on since fall when i had to tear it down and rebuild the hot end.  ( filament leak. what a freaking mess )

Still not sure why my AI bot asked for access this afternoon, or what its printing... 

Apparently its not just me. Others have similar issues.  Something i may look into more someday and give the dev guys facts/ideas.  But will want to test on true server level hardware, eliminate any possible workstation level bus  bottlenecks.

If i ever go back to consulting, ill do some other form of backup ( perhaps images for the regular VMs and rsync for the NAS ). As convenient as it is, cant have a production box down for many hours on a restore that should not take long. ( ya, i know, 4TB isn't going to be quick, but still )

Backing up 4TB VM across the network, for a disk swap in a server...... Zzzzzzz      Donno why its so slow.  CPU on either box isn't taxed at all ( sub 10% ),  network is loafing @ 120mb on a 1g switch.. Every other VM is turned off to reduce bus traffic.  Drives are not high end but not super cheap either. Source is an SSD.. Destination drive on the backup server ( proxmox ) isn't the fastest around, it is a spinny disk to save cost but not slow either.   I forget the rates now, but i have tested the drives on the same hardware and it was several times write/read speed max and about ' average ' in the bigger picture.

Last time i did this it was onto an external USB as that was the largest disk i had handy ( 8tb ), so i did expect some slowness, even tho it was still USB3. But its about the same speed .. 

read: 123.3 MiB/s, write: 116.8 MiB/s   ( average update each block )

There is some compression going on, but with cpu so low, that isn't the bottleneck either.. 

Not end of world, its not like some mission critical NSA datacenter here..  mostly just my NAS and streaming front end so i can watch videos and music on the big screen...  just seems odd to me.

A few of my retro boxes seem to have increased dramatically since i tossed them during the great purge.   Oops.

weekly sale flyer from a 'surplus electronic component mail order shop' ( sort of like polypack, for those that remember that far back )

"just in high voltage fly back transformers" Um, i have never heard of a low voltage flyback.. it dont work that way...  lol. 

Let it run down.   Now its 100% dead.

Sigh. i liked that thing.   I'm sure its the charging circuit or dc-dc converter, which is on the main board, not worth the % to bring it back to life. ( plus ist glued together and like 25 screws too, so you end up destroying the back panel + battery pulling it apart. so more $. and the last thing i want to do is buy a battery..   fraud city.

Grrrr i think my pixelbook is F-ed.   Runs on battery. ( its around 60% so its not 'dead' )

Plug it into a "real" power supply, it powers down after a minute or two.   Plug it into a 'small' supply, it complains its low power as expected, ( and will slowly discharge ) but runs.

Powerwash, didnt help.

Grrrr

Ah then ya. no blip.

Some of those things a blip dont matter, so they dont plan for that.  ( actually, id say most use cases, a blip dont matter. )

Mon May 20 2024 09:19:44 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

From the web site:

"The Backup-Mobile UPS is designed to keep your equipment from losing power or rebooting during engine start-up, ensuring these spikes and sags in power don't shorten the life of your mission critical electronics. We do this by providing uninterrupted, clean, consistent power to your equipment, extending the life of your electronics up to 2 to 3 more years."

YES.. welcome to my world :)   Its not generating any solar power.. its a consumer of and storage of ..  ( now, if you want to talk about fusion generators, i might meet someone 1/2 way on that one. While technically its just releasing energy in the H2, its sort of generating in a 'traditional sense', and it is sort of making solar energy as its making light and heat...  )

And not disagreeing, it is basically the same and should work fine. But, is it enough wattage? And be sure to check if it cuts out as it switches over from DC in to just battery.  That was the one advantage of the solar controller, you could wire it so it did not do that. ( or choosing the right integrated unit, not all do and you do get that short blip on some.. but plenty of them will )

( and too bad about the used drive going belly up.. )

Sun May 19 2024 16:56:18 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

"solar generator" (ugh that term).

 

Well, the 800 GB drive has ~35000 hours on it.  That's about three years of continuous operation, and its mirror partner suffered an early demise when they were serving as the main storage in my desktop machine.  So I'm not going to give it any hard work to do.  I've got a backup of /boot/efi and I can throw any old drive in there if I need to replace it.  The other three disks, those are brand new.

I think I may have found my answer to the "little DC UPS" problem, without having to repurpose a consumer "solar generator" (ugh that term).

https://www.powerstream.com/d-sine-dc-ups.htm ]

"Self-contained automotive battery backup system with 5AH battery.  12 volt DC UPS module or battery backup (BBU) keeps 12 volt equipment alive in cars, buses, trucks and taxis using an internal sealed lead acid battery. Useful for vehicles with automatic start-stop features."

12 volts in, 12 volts out, SLA battery inside, 12 amps continuous rating (15 amps surge).  And it even has mounting tabs, perfect for my on-wall setup.  For USD$200 it's in the same price range as a desktop UPS and it'll take care of my 12 volt setup without wasting any energy on inversion.  That's my whole goal, of course, since computers run on low-ish DC it makes sense to avoid stepping up to 120 VAC only to step back down to 12 VDC.

May not be as fancy, but It would be about the same as i was talking.

Would be easy to test if its smart enough.

Fri May 10 2024 18:43:15 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Battery system is coming. Dunno when. And I'm wondering whether I was overthinking it. I have an extra car battery charger here. Perhaps I should just wire it to a deep cycle marine battery and then straight out to the load? The charger already knows how to back off when the battery is full, so it would seem that's all the sophistication that's needed?

Batteries. Project Phase 2. 

Wed May 08 2024 22:26:33 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

.

Feels good to be home again. And it will continue to feel good until the next power outage.

Speaking of SSD

Been having an issue over here that i thought was power related. System turning off at random times. Not just a freeze but actual power down.

Turns out its a bad SSD.. never seen that one before. 

Have

still have 8 of the mini ones, and 1 of the project i help start + the expansion bus board.

None of them are populated .  just shoved in a bag in the closet. I started to populate the fruit of my project.. but that is when i started losing interest in it all. So after a few caps, it was over. ( and the next month or so later, the retro-purge happened )

Wed Apr 24 2024 22:24:56 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

You had Z80 boards?

"day of the dead battery"

Boogie board on the fridge for groceries.. dead. ( but impressive, it had the original battery for close to 10 years i think. it was a gen1.. still going strong )

One of the security cams.. dead

My bedroom IP phone.. dead..

One of the cars.. dead..

Living room thermometer.. dead..

Boards went back into the closet to rot.

If anyone wants one....

And related, ran across the board from the z80 project i started on Usenet.. that another guy picked up and finished and went WAY beyond what i had planned.. ( i had to pause, eye issues for a while ).  Even still have the CP/M eeprom to go with it.     I never even planned for a PCB.. he did that, expansion bus.. bla bla.  became something impressive. 

And in the bag, 8 z80mbc2 boards i had made back in 2008 ( when seed studio was just getting going. they were the best priced at the time for PCB production ) I guess it was a pack of 10, minimum order, so i must have gave 2 away.. 

Back when this stuff was still fun.  

So the Z80 is being discontinued in June. Zilog is taking ' last orders '.

I didnt even realize it was still being made..  

Ok as much as i hate NVIDIA, for the time being i wish i had an A100.  or even a H100.  at least until the bigger T/NPUs are availble to the common serfs.

Trying to run some models today, just cant do it unless i at least have 24gb on ONE card.  It wont spread it across my 2 cards. 

that really isn't new or news.  Forgetting RISC for a moment, ASIC in the form of TPU/NPU/APU  have been around a while, but things are improving quickly and the advancements of LLMs and the attention they are getting now means there is a true market for big ones, not just little Edge stuff like we have had for a while, nearly everywhere ( just no one noticed )

Google ( home of TPU ) has data centers full of them.  " tensor processor unit " Tensors are the current 'thing' for language model AI, and pattern recognition.  I have a standalone Edge TPU ( they run tensor flow lite.. so reduced instruction set ) which is amazingly fast. 

GPU really only as a couple of advantages: is its here 'now' and true, you can buy huge ones.  right now.. . However its advantage is starting to crack as size and power requirements, ASICs eat GPU for lunch.   Just look at the crypto world. same thing happened there.  GPU got it going, and once the market was there, ASIC ate its lunch.    The only other advantage GPU will have is if the underlying architecture of LLMs change. ASIC will be useless at that point and have to start over. But GPU can adapt with code.

I know i have told these stories before about ASIC. but having lived thru it with crypto first hand, its taking the same path, so will have the same future. 

And yes.  NVIDIA can suck it.  But they are starting to add TPU like components to their high end GPUs, so even they see the light and are trying to adapt before its too late.

Wed Apr 10 2024 16:54:33 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

  Building inference algorithms that don't have to restrict themselves to instructions a video chip can execute?  Yes yes, please.  Rapidly speeding towards a state where massively parallel algorithms no longer require a room full of watercooled equipment?  Yes yes YES please.

 

After checking out Techmoan's latest RISC-V video I learned that it might actually be the next big thing in "AI" (always, always, always put "AI" in quotes because it is neither artifical nor intelligent).

And that makes sense.  High density RISC-V could commoditize massively-parallel computing faster, cheaper, and with more versatility per watt than that is currently being done with repurposed video chips.  Steering the market away from an Nvidia monopoly?  Yes please.  Building inference algorithms that don't have to restrict themselves to instructions a video chip can execute?  Yes yes, please.  Rapidly speeding towards a state where massively parallel algorithms no longer require a room full of watercooled equipment?  Yes yes YES please.

As has been the case with everything else, the big tipping point comes when it's in everyone's hands at commodity prices.  Just as the really cool stuff in computing happened after we moved off the mainframe, the really cool stuff in high density algorithms will happen after we move off the cloud.  As everyone knows (and as many agree), I absolutely abhor the idea of all computing being consolidated into the data centers of a few tech giants.

Figures. That company who was making some super state of the art NPUs have stopped selling chips. Decided just to build a data center and sell access to AI model running on them.  

Bleh. So sick of walled gardens.

ooooo ( from news i saw this morning ) assuming we dont all die from WWiii this fall, 2025 is going to be the year RISC-V really takes off and becomes mainstream for the masses.

Google has also contracted with sifive for all their "internal silicon, including TPU". so i assume that means slow migration of all their data centers, and AI stuff.

"X-Silicon Inc. (XSi) has created a new RISC-V microprocessing chip architecture that combines a RISC-V CPU core with vector capabilities and GPU acceleration into a single chip. The CPU/GPU hybrid chip is open-standard and will reportedly be open-source as well, Jon Peddie Research reports, and it's designed to handle a variety of different functions, including AI, which dedicated CPUs and GPUs would normally handle."

The ones 'for' solar normally only nativity charge via 12v since they are 'made' for solar, but can also handle car lighter ( err 'accessory' ) plug, 12v gas, whatever.  They normally come with 60watt or so wall warts for wall charging inside the house, but most will accept 100watt or more to charge from ( to accommodate larger solar panels )..  ( the one i built, i added 2 input charge ports.. )

My thought was just use whatever you were going to use for 120v to 12v for the servers in the first place and stick this in the middle to get it to be uninterruptible. 

Fri Apr 05 2024 23:41:59 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Oh and i tossed an egg your way for calling it a solar generator :P 

Hey, I put it inside sarcasm quotes! I have a real generator that runs on diesel fuel!

But yes, if I got one of those battery things and if it could accept 120VAC mains and 12VDC input at the same time, I could get a couple of solar panels later on and use them to offset the power costs. And I could tie it in to the 12VDC output of my (real) generator. Actually that would be pretty cool,


because my generator's 12VDC output is mechanically and electrically separate from its 120VAC output.

Oh and i tossed an egg your way for calling it a solar generator :P 

Right the inverter is totally optional on these things.  Dont turn it on, its not going t use any juice.  Sure, its 'there' but if its off.. does it matter?  And sure, you can build one, but once you add up cost of parts, its not much more to get a nice pretty package. Add a bit for your labor, you are in the hole. 

the only advantage of the one i built is i could always run wire to a bank of car batteries or something in a super emergency.  But its hacked together, heavier, and i saved perhaps 50 bucks...  ( in your case the 'box' dont matter, its going on a shelf, where i wanted mine to be portable, but you get the idea )

And not saying the one i sent the link for is 'it' but its one example of many.  Just choose the amperage you want, and make sure it does pass-thru... 

Fri Apr 05 2024 16:28:38 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

i suppose it would be possible. But its not running, unless you turn
it on.  I have a couple of different styles, and you have to

Well if you have to turn it on, then that would imply that "the switch" is already built in and I don't have to add it.

So about $300 for an appropriate size "solar generator." I still feel like there ought to be a way to float a charge across an SLA battery with just a few parts if the source and load are both already 12 volts.

i suppose it would be possible. But its not running, unless you turn it on.  I have a couple of different styles, and you have to intentionally turn that on....  so not sure why you would care. 

Mon Apr 01 2024 18:42:18 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

I wonder if it would be possible to add a switch to *really* cut the supply to the inverter?

I have, but these days id not bother id just get those portable devices and stick it on a shelf. In my case i do want the 120v, but the 12v works fine too.   

Now if i wanted to run a KW of machines in some sort of mission critical data center, perhaps id build it. But you were not talking much of a power drain. So why go overboard and over-engineer things? The one in the link would run several hours, and would not need more than one.  If i was in the same boat, personally its not worth the effort when all i would need to do is cut a few cables ( for daisy chaining it up the rack ). 

Tho my needs are slightly different here, it would serve the same purpose if i was going to tie them to the generator too for extended use ( i dont, let it go down ).  My real use case is just to get by the slight blips we have here often, and a controlled shut down if it dont come back.  At one point i cheated and got a cheap UPS for that, since its got the USB monitor. 

My real use for these sort of batteries is to power the fridge, wives O2 machine, couple of fans. etc. at night so i dont run the noisy ass generator at 2AM..  So simple + portable = win for me.   My generator has 12v out too, so i can charge up the batteries for that night if needed. But on sunny days solar is plenty, not so sunny or if i need extra power ( it will push close to 5k. not a lot but plenty for our needs ), then its generator.  But i will turn off all non-essentials in the house.   ( helps we have gas heat/cooking/water ). But with the 12v out.. seemed like an easy match for what you wanted. 

Sat Mar 30 2024 20:03:19 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Right ... I should have clarified that what I want to do would be in the spirit of a telecom rack, if you've ever seen one of those.

But if you really are just dead set on building one:

Some (12v ) batteries on shelves to supply enough current for the time you want it to run during blackout + a cheap ( 20 bucks ) solar charge controller to charge them = ups.    Don't need to add the inverter. Controller takes 12v DC like you want to feed it anyway, and will charge your batteries.  Ya it says 'solar' but that is only because its runs on 12v in/out, which is what most panels do.. Its not 'special' or anything, just convenient. 

Just be sure to tap off the charging side instead of the 'official output' to run to your devices then its pass thru. Most will drop "official output" power for an instant during the outage and you dont want that, but tapping off incoming takes care of that..

Now, id not be trying to run my house like that.. but for what you are doing, its fine.

Oh, and the 120v is totally optional.   the 12v/5v out works fine without ever turning the inverter on. Separate circuits. 

These have 120v, 12v, and 5v output on the front panel.  They charge using DC since they are made for solar charging, but do come with an adapter if you wanted to charge via 120 instead of your 12v line..  Now,  i wasn't meaning "GET THIS ONE NOW OR YOU ARE A LOSER" it was just an example of something that wasn't 1k.. and does have the 12v out you need for your devices.

Sure, it wont last weeks as its not THAT big.. but since all you are worried about was the down time before the generator came on, its more than enough.  And its portable. 

Sat Mar 30 2024 15:54:07 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Seems they are on sale. for just over 200 -> 
https://www.amazon.com/VTOMAN-Portable-Generator-Expandable-Regulated/

I was really hoping for something *without* a 120VAC stage. Strictly DC-to-DC-to-DC.
Like a car.

Perhaps he did have it all, at one point?

And ya, while most of us agree the centralized money suck/control the mainframes were was bad, IBM was not the worst..  it was to come after. 

Nice.

Fri Mar 29 2024 00:11:34 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

In case anyone cares, here's a photo of kremvax, the future home of uncensored.citadel.org and www.citadel.org and a bunch of other things:

2099378927@Uncensored

So we are now to be in the basement? How fitting :) 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099378910Fri, 29 Mar 2024 04:11:34 -00002099378910@Uncensored

In case anyone cares, here's a photo of kremvax, the future home of uncensored.citadel.org and www.citadel.org and a bunch of other things:

2099378901@Uncensored

I paid ~ 300 for the last few i got. Not sure where you are seeing 1k for small ones.   

Seems they are on sale. for just over 200 ->  https://www.amazon.com/VTOMAN-Portable-Generator-Expandable-Regulated/dp/B0BBDQ5NNN

Thu Mar 28 2024 19:15:23 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Those things seem pretty expensive. Over USD$1000 for even a small one. I can't imagine a passthrough charger, a decent battery, and a regulator could cost that much.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099378893Thu, 28 Mar 2024 23:15:23 -00002099378893@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099378536Sat, 23 Mar 2024 17:44:06 -00002099378536@Uncensored

Myself i woudl just buy one of those solar batteries, instead of a 'real' ups. ( i refuse to call them a generator :) )  They do the same job, and seem cheaper.  Most, tho not all so you have to read, will do pass thru charging.  Can get them in most any size you want, from enough to charge a phone a couple of times to running a house.. depending on how long you want it to run. Most have 12v native output along side 110

 

And i say buy it not build, as i did that a year or 2 ago myself for solar panels. By the time i got all the bits and pieces, it was so close to the same price it was stupid of me to hack something together.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099378531Sat, 23 Mar 2024 16:01:17 -00002099378531@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099378368Thu, 21 Mar 2024 16:51:41 -00002099378368@Uncensored

Wait until i get my RISC board this fall.  At that point im out of the market and dont care anymore.

Thu Mar 21 2024 11:34:30 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Well yes, we do need mega-tariffs to restore the balance of trade that they're manipulating. 

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099378353Thu, 21 Mar 2024 15:34:30 -00002099378353@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099377170Tue, 12 Mar 2024 02:06:22 -00002099377170@Uncensored

China is going to try that whether we sanction it or not. We need to cut off all trade with communist/socialist nations, it has cost us too many jobs and factories.

Sun Mar 10 2024 20:09:26 EDT from Nurb432

They lead the way for RISC-V, due to sanctions and such.     All those things do in the long run is make your enemy self-sufficient. 

Sun Mar 10 2024 14:41:05 EDT from msgrhys

Ugh China.

 

 

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099377063Mon, 11 Mar 2024 00:09:26 -00002099377063@Uncensored

They lead the way for RISC-V, due to sanctions and such.     All those things do in the long run is make your enemy self-sufficient. 

Sun Mar 10 2024 14:41:05 EDT from msgrhys

Ugh China.

 

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099377043Sun, 10 Mar 2024 18:41:05 -00002099377043@Uncensored

Ugh China.

Fri Mar 08 2024 17:59:01 EST from Nurb432

ooo  some cloud provider is offering data center level RISC-V for cheap.  TH1520 SoC, 16GB RAM, and 128GB eMMC storage, for about 20 bucks a month...

 

One source ->  

https://www.techradar.com/pro/worlds-first-aws-rival-launches-bare-metal-servers-based-on-chinese-risc-v-cpu-and-costs-only-cents-per-hour-to-run-but-will-it-live-to-regret-using-emmc-storage

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376954Fri, 08 Mar 2024 22:59:01 -00002099376954@Uncensored

ooo  some cloud provider is offering data center level RISC-V for cheap.  TH1520 SoC, 16GB RAM, and 128GB eMMC storage, for about 20 bucks a month...

 

One source ->  

https://www.techradar.com/pro/worlds-first-aws-rival-launches-bare-metal-servers-based-on-chinese-risc-v-cpu-and-costs-only-cents-per-hour-to-run-but-will-it-live-to-regret-using-emmc-storage

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376728Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:48:50 -00002099376728@Uncensored

ah so that explains the noise i heard.  Divide by zero is always disruptive.

 

:) 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376719Tue, 05 Mar 2024 03:24:59 -00002099376719@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376714Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:41:51 -00002099376714@Uncensored

Not surprised in the least..   But at least it can handle the non turbo mode and not reset. 

Mon Mar 04 2024 19:26:35 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Until I disabled turbo, the machine would reset every time the Debian install got to around 30% of the first phase.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376711Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:26:35 -00002099376711@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376471Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:34:01 -00002099376471@Uncensored You might have to go all the way down to a 35W TDP limit -- if your >board can be set that low. I'm looking at the manual for the motherboard now. (It'll be here in a day or two anyway, but just looking in advance.) There's definitely an option to turn off Intel Turbo Boost, so that would theoretically cap it at the base clock and therefore the base wattage. Can also disable some cores, but I'd rather not do that. Let's see what else is there... "CPU Thermal Monitor" (reduces core frequency and voltage when it heats up) "Voltage Optimization" (reduces power consumption) And a bunch of controls for undervolting specific components. So I guess I'll come out of the gate with turbo boost disabled, and take some power measurements. I probably shouldn't have bought this board, but it was CPU+motherboard+32GB for basically the price of the CPU alone, so I accepted the offer without thinking to check the power draw. Also there are apparently some Linux kernel settings that can perform finer adjustments. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376429Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:04:01 -00002099376429@Uncensored

Sort of funny, talking about such small wattage. A couple of my GPUs will suck nearly 300 watts each. 

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376428Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:53:04 -00002099376428@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376395Wed, 28 Feb 2024 22:10:11 -00002099376395@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376343Tue, 27 Feb 2024 23:32:51 -00002099376343@Uncensored

cutting it pretty close. 

Be easy to load it down with some benchmarks, see if it holds up, instead of theoretical calculations and WAGs only.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376341Tue, 27 Feb 2024 23:28:54 -00002099376341@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376301Tue, 27 Feb 2024 12:10:33 -00002099376301@Uncensored

kids and their fancy toys. in MY day, we.....   lol

 

Tho the other day when i had to find a heatsink+fan for that MB i pulled out of the closet. Not needed to pay attention for a while, but man they have become huge beasts.... was hard to find one small enough to fit in my case.  not the heatsinks when i grew up.

 

Now, get off my lawn!

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376271Tue, 27 Feb 2024 02:58:02 -00002099376271@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376252Mon, 26 Feb 2024 23:15:32 -00002099376252@Uncensored 2024-02-25 19:10 from IGnatius T Foobar >And I'm wondering how big a power supply I "really" need. My PicoPSU >is 120 watts. I could squeeze more power out of it by bypassing it for >the P4 connector and using a bigger brick. What does a modern computer >do if the power supply can't deliver enough watts? Does it just slow >down or does it go into Mr. Bonkers mode? It goes Bonkers. Typically it is individual components that go Bonkers. For example, if you have a slightly underpowered supply and you turn a machine with many devices on, some devices may attempt to initialize and fail. Sometimes the firmware retries. At least, that is the theory I was explained. It was common for underpoered disk arrays to attempt to spin all the drives at once, have some of them fail at the first try, and bring the whole array online on second try. It is bad for the lifespan of the components. Don't fall short. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376182Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:21:58 -00002099376182@Uncensored

Last one i had that was low on power, it just shut down.  ( my fault, i put too big of a CPU in it.. was just a tad more than the PS could supply )

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376181Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:10:50 -00002099376181@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099376064Sat, 24 Feb 2024 16:51:47 -00002099376064@Uncensored

The reason I find it interesting is because I may have a source for some "gently used" SAS SSDs.  If I can get them, and the backplane supports them, it would be worth buying a controller to get them running.

In case you haven't figured it out, I think about this project every day, but I am not buying the parts until after my truck is paid off in about three months, so it's a bit frustrating...

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099375553Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:44:13 -00002099375553@Uncensored

No guesses..  I have never seen that before either. 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099375548Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:01:53 -00002099375548@Uncensored

So here's something weird.  The mITX case I bought has a 2.5" drive cage with a very odd backplane.  Through a lot of exploring I've come to understand that it is from a company called AIC and it's some sort of "dual port adapter".  The side that the disk plugs into appears to be a SAS/SATA compatible socket:

I've never seen this before.  You can see that it accepts SAS disks because in the middle of the socket is the big gap and the small 7-pin receiver that attaches to the second channel of a dual-port SAS drive.  It looks like the side of the slot that is common to both SAS and SATA is wired to the first SATA port, and the SAS-specific part of the slot is wired to the second SATA port.

I've never seen anything like this before.  I'm wondering if the manufacturer's intention is for the system builder to use an SFF-to-quad-SATA cable like this one:

2099375117@Uncensored

Grrrr M.2 in my AI server. Decided to die this morning. 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099375081Sat, 10 Feb 2024 23:06:15 -00002099375081@Uncensored

ooo old apple time machine too ( 15 years + old ). i thought i have gave that away already. 

 

For a short period of time i used it as a router + backup, had some Linux tool that could manage it.  That ended up breaking so it went into the closet.  Same for my gen 3 ipod.. Linux tool to manage it... that quit.. so in the trash the device went.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099375076Sat, 10 Feb 2024 22:51:15 -00002099375076@Uncensored

More cleaning. Out goes the 10m switches..  WiFi G routers.. gone gone gone!

And lots of disks..  windows server 2008 licenses, ghost enterprise ( 25 year old )   and wow, they still sell ghost.. surprised... figured it would have been retired and replaced with Altiris suite when they bought them. ( and jack up the price )

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099375038Sat, 10 Feb 2024 14:25:45 -00002099375038@Uncensored

Silly question, still researching but thought id ask anyway.

New MB i just popped in a case this weekend. its got a couple of  PCIe X1 ports.  Thought about getting a USB C card, but wondering if it will work with Linux at all for starters, and if so, would it work with a USBC hub that has ports like HDMI, etc.. or just USBC data and that is it. If that is all it does, it makes it sort of pointless i think, unless you have no USB2/3 ports to use ( or need more ), and even then you can get a x1 card with tons of usb on it for cheaper )

So far i keep seeing 'includes drivers for windows x' but that is about it.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099374778Mon, 05 Feb 2024 23:47:52 -00002099374778@Uncensored

Depends on the chip. some have OSS solutions, others you are stuck with vendor. 

Mon Feb 05 2024 18:20:44 EST from zelgomer

2024-02-05 17:04 from Nurb432 <nurb432@uncensored.citadel.org>
that is a shame. Spartan 3 FPGA was a mainstay for hobbyists.  Sad
to see it go.

I think i still have a spartan II in my FPGA box.. 

https://www.eejournal.com/article/amd-discontinues-coolrunner-and-xc9 5

00-cplds-and-spartan-ii-and-3-fpgas-buy-em-while-you-can/

How do you program those things? Do you use the vendor HDK or are there open source options?

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099374775Mon, 05 Feb 2024 23:20:44 -00002099374775@Uncensored 2024-02-05 17:04 from Nurb432 >that is a shame. Spartan 3 FPGA was a mainstay for hobbyists.  Sad >to see it go. > >I think i still have a spartan II in my FPGA box..  > >https://www.eejournal.com/article/amd-discontinues-coolrunner-and-xc9 5 >00-cplds-and-spartan-ii-and-3-fpgas-buy-em-while-you-can/ > How do you program those things? Do you use the vendor HDK or are there open source options? ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099374752Mon, 05 Feb 2024 17:04:57 -00002099374752@Uncensored

that is a shame. Spartan 3 FPGA was a mainstay for hobbyists.  Sad to see it go.

I think i still have a spartan II in my FPGA box.. 

https://www.eejournal.com/article/amd-discontinues-coolrunner-and-xc9500-cplds-and-spartan-ii-and-3-fpgas-buy-em-while-you-can/

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099373164Sun, 14 Jan 2024 20:27:32 -00002099373164@Uncensored

Ran across an old BT speaker too.  ( i retired it as i replaced it with on that had a bigger battery + FM radio, in case of emergencies ). Testing to see if it still works, and charging.  Its been so long i had to go look up the light colors for when it was charged and it commented:

 

"Note: Battery will last up to 4 hours when connected wirelessly and up to 12 hours when connected through Line-In Audio Jack."

 

BT takes that much power ?  Really? I didnt think it was THAT bad..

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099373160Sun, 14 Jan 2024 18:09:39 -00002099373160@Uncensored

Its old but i dont think qualifies for ancient..  

 

Going thru old stuff and tossing again this weekend. Ran across my 'pocket edge' tablet thingie.

Great idea, well implemented.  Was a android tablet + a eink reader, that opened like a book. Ink on one side, LCD on other. Would fold all the way around back to back, and could be used as a stand in 'tent mode' ( like many chromebooks today. )  Even had a stylus that worked both on the ink and LCD..  which was rare back then. 

Really liked it, but the company folded just before i bought the larger version. 

They marketed to schools, which was the right market, but not yet..  in 2010 the world was not quite 'there yet'. 

Was in the same box as my Newton.  Another fail story, tho that was murdered by dick-head Steve Jobs as one of the first acts of his return. So, not for technical or marketing reasons. He wanted his future phone, and no competition from other BUs allowed. Really there was room for both and the market for that sort of device was going to explode in a few years.. I bet he hated to eat his words when he had to allow the iPad ( loved my newt, as you can tell )

Guess ill drill a hole thru it and toss it.. Not really useful for collectors its so obscure, and i dont do that anymore.  ( the Newt, no.. it stays )

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099372401Wed, 03 Jan 2024 23:23:01 -00002099372401@Uncensored 2024-01-03 12:05 from Nurb432 >Wow, just now hearing about this but Don Lancaster died last July..  > I think most of us here can appreciate what he did for the >industry.  > Thanks for bringing the story up. This guy comes from well before my generation. We don't make us like they used to. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099372361Wed, 03 Jan 2024 17:05:50 -00002099372361@Uncensored

Wow, just now hearing about this but Don Lancaster died last July..   I think most of us here can appreciate what he did for the industry. 

 

https://www.eejournal.com/article/don-lancaster-the-electronics-industry-lost-another-pioneer-last-year/

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099372112Thu, 28 Dec 2023 22:23:41 -00002099372112@Uncensored

Not going to get one, dont need it.

But.. ran across a couple of Chinese laptops that are doing it the right way. All laptops should be built this way.  A carrier board that runs all the peripherals, + a standard industrial SOM socket so you can stick whatever processor/ram/etc you want on it, AND upgrade, or downgrade, as you want. ( they are selling it with an RK3588 is how i noticed ).

Sort of how i wished the Pine Pro laptops were going to be..  but didnt quite work out that way.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099371396Tue, 19 Dec 2023 16:50:47 -00002099371396@Uncensored

Twitter was a cesspool to start with, I hate to use it as an example for anything.   And regardless of their title, I suspect most of the people let go were part of the 'disinformation management task force' 

Tue Dec 19 2023 09:22:20 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

You're not wrong.

Look at what happened at Twitter. Massive cuts to a mostly useless workforce.
And the company just kept going, just more efficiently.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099371371Tue, 19 Dec 2023 14:22:20 -00002099371371@UncensoredDevil's advocate maybe, but I will never question a tech company laying >anyone off. If where I work is any indication of the industry at large, >I estimate that most of the tech we enjoy is a product of about 10% of >the work force and the remaining 90% are pretending just enough to >barely stay employed. You're not wrong. Look at what happened at Twitter. Massive cuts to a mostly useless workforce. And the company just kept going, just more efficiently. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099371246Sun, 17 Dec 2023 14:52:06 -00002099371246@Uncensored

While i agree 100% ( no surprise there :) ) , we also still use the crap, and i dont see it changing anytime in what is left of my career.   We also still use citrix, which is in the crap boat. Both paddling off into the abyss of irrelevancy, due to their own mistakes and greed.

And while i dont personally like them any more than Microsoft, you also have AWS and G-cloud as valid enterprise level options for hosting. ( and of course oracle, but they suck as much if not worse than VMware as their licensing is even more draconian from what i have been told )

Id much rather see us pull it all into proxmox, use a % of the savings form Azure/AWS/etc and help fund the the project with a few extra million.. and perhaps give some cash to the ceph folks too, and get rid of our convoluted storage nonsense that always seems to break. Our support staff, i doubt would need to be changed much. We actually had to add MORE staff when we started moving stuff to Azure..  ( like email, AD, etc )

 

Now that said, one of the recently announced goals is to move in-house apps off native OS's and into containers which would go towards making our hosting agnostic ( and even tho i dont like containers at a personal level for my own things, i will fully admit its not a bad move in our case, and surprising coming from our management of late )..  But we hired AWS to help, and the team we have is incompetent. 

Sun Dec 17 2023 09:06:42 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

So why on earth would you run VMware at this point? If you want a commercially-supported offering, you go with Azure Stack. If you want the autonomy of an open source offering, you go with OpenStack or Proxmox.

VMware is toast. [And if you happen to know where I work, my opinion is not necessarily that of my employer.]

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099371245Sun, 17 Dec 2023 14:37:13 -00002099371245@Uncensored

While partially true, its still indicative of a hit taken by the company.  Even if its fluff they trim, they are still trimming it.

Where i work we invented fluff, and id say its more like only 70% here, not 90%.

Sun Dec 17 2023 09:10:16 EST from zelgomer

Devil's advocate maybe, but I will never question a tech company laying anyone off. If where I work is any indication of the industry at large, I estimate that most of the tech we enjoy is a product of about 10% of the work force and the remaining 90% are pretending just enough to barely stay employed.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099371239Sun, 17 Dec 2023 14:10:16 -00002099371239@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099371238Sun, 17 Dec 2023 14:06:42 -00002099371238@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099371177Sat, 16 Dec 2023 16:28:38 -00002099371177@Uncensored

Broadcom lays around 3K as they restructure and "shifting its focus to subscription licenses of bigger software bundles."  Well, of course they are. scumbags.  They, and their new acquisition VMWare need to be shut down. Forcefully, with fire.

 

https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/semiconductor-maker-broadcom-vmware-layoffs-almost-3k-new-york-virginia-california/702038/

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370951Wed, 13 Dec 2023 15:31:27 -00002099370951@Uncensored

ARM laptops can hold their own too.

While true, most ( but not all ) are still stuck being Chromebooks,  if you break out of that they will keep pace with the 'same generation' of x86, and run cooler and suck less juice. 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370949Wed, 13 Dec 2023 15:26:43 -00002099370949@UncensoredThis is so desperately needed.  We have 1 powerful architecture that >nobody can keep up with in terms of single-core purrformance (amd64) ARM is closing the purrformance gap quickly. Consider that an AMD64 is typically RISC on the inside with microcode surrounding it to handle the complexity, and the complexity is mostly there to handle the fact that the architecture is overengineered; this is a blank slate for sensible architectures like ARM and RISC-V to use their transistor count to just make the damn thing run faster. Consider the speed of a new Mac. It can hold its own against an AMD64 box quite easily. And as we discussed earlier, many of the new SBCs (particularly the ones that don't say "Raspberry Pi" on them) are incredibly fast. Combine that with the lower power consumption of these architectures and you have a recipe for a real shift. Finally! IBM still sells mainframes, but they're generally only bought by those who have an existing investment in hardware and software for that platform. Ye Olde WinTel PC is doomed to follow that path. It might take five years, it might take twenty years, but it will happen. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370936Wed, 13 Dec 2023 12:20:20 -00002099370936@Uncensored

RISC-V will win that war.  ( well not yet, but by the time it starts, it will be able to wipe the floor with the rest ).  ARM might come in 2nd, but the foundation's draconian recent license restrictions will spell the end of ARM, if its not changed.

But that said, i think that Intel has seen the writing on the wall, and is now involved in RISC-V.  AMD, will need to as well ( if they have not already, i am not sure )..   I dont think we will lose either of those players, unfortunately, as long as they adapt. They also will be the diving force to what i see as a market fracture, the one thing ARM has going for it to help prevent.

Wed Dec 13 2023 01:10:03 EST from LadySerenaKitty

  We need a new CPU war and I do think we are headed that way.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370917Wed, 13 Dec 2023 06:10:03 -00002099370917@Uncensored

This is so desperately needed.  We have 1 powerful architecture that nobody can keep up with in terms of single-core purrformance (amd64) and a few architectures that are way moar logical and actually make sense in their design, but they just can't purrform like an amd64 so they don't get considered.  We need a new CPU war and I do think we are headed that way.

Tue Dec 12 2023 13:31:52 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

The message to ARM, then, is clear: license your architecture on favorable terms or it will be replaced.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370867Tue, 12 Dec 2023 18:31:52 -00002099370867@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370863Tue, 12 Dec 2023 18:19:15 -00002099370863@Uncensored Hopefully, ARM is not the end stage, but a step towards something even >more open (perhaps RISC-V). Whatever it takes to get out of the >Intel/AMD64 monoculture is a good thing. > The fund who owns the ARM license tried to sell ARM to Nvidia, then was denied due to anti-trust concerns. Next thing they did was to announce and IPO and take a loan using 75% of ARM as collateral. If you don't know what this means, I will translate: They sold 10% in auction to the stock markets and then 75% of the firm at a known price to a Swiss bank which they might or might not rebuy. It does not look like the owning fund gives a damn about ARM anymore. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370684Sat, 09 Dec 2023 15:55:18 -00002099370684@Uncensored

and of course it wont support the ones i have... grrr  

Soooo they still dont get to see the light of day. I need to sell them.

Thu Dec 07 2023 16:14:43 EST from Nurb432

Well, perhaps NVIDIA has seen the light.. 

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370674Sat, 09 Dec 2023 15:42:14 -00002099370674@Uncensored

"compatibles"  i still have nightmares from those days...

Sat Dec 09 2023 10:38:41 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

That was true for the 8086 when it came out, too. Eventually everyone standardized on IBM's architecture.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370673Sat, 09 Dec 2023 15:38:41 -00002099370673@UncensoredOne thing I don't like about ARM is the lack of a standard firmware >and standard system architecture.  That was true for the 8086 when it came out, too. Eventually everyone standardized on IBM's architecture. It was also true for the 8080 when it came out before that. Eventually everyone standardized on Altair's architecture. Give it time. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370570Thu, 07 Dec 2023 21:14:43 -00002099370570@Uncensored

Well, perhaps NVIDIA has seen the light.. 

Being locked into ubuncrap is one reason i ditched Jetson..  ( well unless you didnt want GPU, which is the entire point of those things )

 

Announced this afternoon:

"With JetPack 6, you can now bring your own Linux kernel to the Jetson platform, enjoy a broader selection of Linux distribution choices, and upgrade your compute stack independently of the L4T BSP. These capabilities greatly enhance the flexibility and speed of development on the platform"

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370509Thu, 07 Dec 2023 01:35:59 -00002099370509@Uncensored

Yes device trees are a pain in the butt.  But, its not as bad as it used to be. And most manufactures do release their DTBs to the world. 

GPU drivers for 'generic' ARM have come a long way, and most of them are opensource now.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370508Thu, 07 Dec 2023 01:34:12 -00002099370508@Uncensored

One thing I don't like about ARM is the lack of a standard firmware and standard system architecture.  Anykitty can make (or port) an OS to any x86/amd64 box because the firmware and system architecture is known.  This isn't true for ARM.  There's over 2 dozen firmwares for ARM boards, device/memory/bus connection are always different, it's a mess!  Sure ARM is a great contender to beat out the x86/amd64, but the lack of a standard firmware and standard architecture is a big contributor to why desktop/laptop ARM hasn't exploded in popufurity.  You can see the results of this problem by looking at the FreeBSD images - so many images for different ARM boards, and some of those boards even have the same CPU!

Now if NVIDIA and/or AMD would port their drivers to ARM so we could have open-source graphics, that would be great!

Mon Dec 04 2023 18:17:49 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

ARM is a step up. Really, anything other than Intel/AMD64 is a step up. The fact that ARM stays out of the hardware business and licenses its IP to many different manufacturers is nice.

Microsoft branding its own ARM CPU is about the same as if it branded its own Linux. They don't own it, they don't have enough clout to E-E-E it, and it's no different than any other ARM anywhere else.

Hopefully, ARM is not the end stage, but a step towards something even more open (perhaps RISC-V). Whatever it takes to get out of the Intel/AMD64 monoculture is a good thing.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370330Mon, 04 Dec 2023 23:23:12 -00002099370330@Uncensored

I do believe RISC-V conceptually is the future. The risk ( that im predicting.. have been ) is that since there is no "base level enforcement body" like with ARM, everone will end up with their own version, and have special bits no one else has. Fracturing the market. The big players will have no incentive to be compatible with others.  OSS is a double edge sword at times.

Mon Dec 04 2023 18:17:49 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

ARM is a step up. Really, anything other than Intel/AMD64 is a step up. The fact that ARM stays out of the hardware business and licenses its IP to many different manufacturers is nice.

Microsoft branding its own ARM CPU is about the same as if it branded its own Linux. They don't own it, they don't have enough clout to E-E-E it, and it's no different than any other ARM anywhere else.

Hopefully, ARM is not the end stage, but a step towards something even more open (perhaps RISC-V). Whatever it takes to get out of the Intel/AMD64 monoculture is a good thing.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099370327Mon, 04 Dec 2023 23:17:49 -00002099370327@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099369276Sun, 19 Nov 2023 00:15:15 -00002099369276@Uncensored

Looks like Microsoft is soon going to be adding MS branded ARM CPUs to azure.  ( not just generic ones they started using a year or so ago )

Not sure how i feel about that.  Other than its nice to see Intel getting kicked in the crotch. 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099369210Fri, 17 Nov 2023 23:16:14 -00002099369210@Uncensored

So i have mentioned it before, i have been collecting lenovo tiny's and replacing the I5 CPUs with a xeon to use in my server farm.

And i mentioned that i started having some weird things going on, that i attributed to power but wasn't 100% sure.  Finally found a pattern.  It seems that a couple things are going on:

 

Cheaper SSDs as they get larger suck more power. And at some point the power just isn't there anymore.

Things like headphones work..  and regular USB flash so i knew it wasn't a 'data bus issue'

This keyboard i bought for the one i use as a desktop, doesn't help matters any. Gamer thing, takes up 2 usb ports to run.  Really? stupid thing.  But this power suck means smaller drive limit in the desktop. ( but not servers, they can still hit 4TB if i stick with name brand )

Larger USB devices, was hit and miss, and until this last week i didnt see the pattern.  But i did finally. Only the drives with that funky 2 port USB3 cable fail. Even if they had a power pack to go with them, which made me question my suspicion.. These cables are where the 2nd little connector piece is to provide, guess what, extra power.  So, got a older USB2 micro, shove it into the larger side ( its the same pin out ) and lo and behold the drives work. Years and years ago had a Samsung note phone i used a micro cable with ( instead of carrying around a 2nd totally unique cable ), so i knew at least the concept was good at least.

Also, means i wont try to solder on m.2 sockets to add internal nvme to go along with the SATA port..  not worth the effort.  Which is too bad, would make them great CEPH boxes. A tiny m.2 to boot, and a large SSD for OSD.

 

Not that most of you care about the hardware here so i am mostly rambling... but figured if anyone runs across drives that dont work that use those funky usb3 cables, that might be a solution ..  I bet newer devices have even less power availble to give out to devices. 

 

 

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099368699Fri, 10 Nov 2023 17:52:54 -00002099368699@Uncensored

Rumor there may be a Chromebook coming with the SnapdragonX chip coming in the not so distant future.   Man that will fly. it would eat my i7 pixelbook for breakfast. 

If its not too much and has enough storage space to decently run a Linux session, i may have to buy it. That would take care of any driver issues, since the ChromeOS would have those embedded. 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099368473Tue, 07 Nov 2023 19:41:41 -00002099368473@Uncensored

Hmm when you flash a SBC, be sure you read and use the correct image. Or you waste your time ( or, kill it, if you REALLY screw up ).

 

Grumble. 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099367972Wed, 01 Nov 2023 18:29:50 -00002099367972@Uncensored

Unlike apple, it wont be locked down. They wont be Chromebooks but actual laptops, running windows at first. ( and perhaps desktops )  However, you wont run 'of your choice' off the bat. will take some time for things like mainline Linux kernel to support it. 

 

Wed Nov 01 2023 13:43:18 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Not interested if they're locked down to the factory OS. I want to run the OS of my choice like on developer boards.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099367969Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:43:18 -00002099367969@Uncensoredhttp://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099367947Wed, 01 Nov 2023 13:10:09 -00002099367947@Uncensored

And related:  Qualcomms' Snapdragon X Elite that was just announced/released looks like its better ( on paper ) than Apple's just released M3.  And several companies are going to be making machines with it.. not just the one inside the walled garden. ( Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Honor, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface, Samsung, and Mi. )

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099367780Sun, 29 Oct 2023 18:34:19 -00002099367780@Uncensored

Armbian news letter "we now support  Lenovo X13s" 

Um ok, must be something special about that one.... Go search....  oooooo ARM.. 3ghz. 512 storage.. 16g ram.. 13"    Found one at backmarket for 400 bucks.. Must... not.. hit.. order.....arrgh.  ( ill skip it i guess, i dont need another dust collector )

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099367184Thu, 19 Oct 2023 15:03:41 -00002099367184@Uncensored

Im sure i bitched about it in another thread, about GoogleTV update on my tv box.  Since i dont have any stock generic android TV boxes anymore  decided to build one from one of the arm boxes i have collecting dust.( the generic boxes never get updated, so after a couple of years they are outdated and get tossed )

Couple of observations, most of which i had forgot from the last time i tried this, and why i ended up giving up and buying one.

Installing android on a ARM SBC is a real pain in the ass.  For most boards you cant just grab an image, DD it over to SD or eMMC like you can for nearly all other operating systems on them.. You have to use some freaking windows tool to write the image, and it does not work 2/3 of the time. What in the hell???

One of my board makers DO have an "auto flasher" you can just DD over to an SD card. Then when that boots it does magic and flashes the android image to internal eMMC. Why cant the rest? Lazy asses. But always preferred them over others anyway.

BUT when you do it this way, a lot of apps magically think you are on a phone and rotate the screen for you, even when the same app wont do that a dedicated TV box. I have never understood why.  You have to install a 'locker app' to prevent it as even the 'lock orientation' option in the OS wont stop it....   And several apps you have to use 3rd party stores to get them, as play store blocks generic devices for a lot of items. Neither are 'hard' to work around, just annoying.

And still hardware related, picked up a new remote control to use since what i have now is dedicated to the hardware i have now ( an xiaomi mi. Which was nice until GTV was installed )..  Fancy thing has a qwerty keyboard on the back..

 

( and no, i cant use kodi to avoid Android.   That was in the other thread, wherever its at. only option is android, or just a browser i guess but a lot more trouble dealing with a remote across the room )

 

 

 

Sort of funny, i just dropped xiaomi phones this fall.. now my TV box.   

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366698Thu, 12 Oct 2023 03:21:50 -00002099366698@UncensoredWe shouldn't be doing business with hostile/communist nations. >American industry is all but dead thanks to Bill Clinton opening up >trade with China. Agreed. Note however, that the best chips come from Taiwan. If the mainland chicoms make themselves enough of a nuisance, Taiwan could probably take their whole economy out of commission simply by bombing a few dams. ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366631Wed, 11 Oct 2023 11:14:55 -00002099366631@Uncensored

Which is most of the planet, including us. We are all hostile in our own way.

Realistically zero trade between nations isn't practical. Unless we all want to live in a cave wondering where our next meal is coming from.

Tue Oct 10 2023 22:45:05 EDT from msgrhys

 We shouldn't be doing business with hostile/communist nations. American industry is all but dead thanks to Bill Clinton opening up trade with China.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366612Wed, 11 Oct 2023 02:45:05 -00002099366612@Uncensored

 

Tue Oct 10 2023 19:34:26 EDT from Nurb432

and step 2 will be banning imports.   

 

We shouldn't be doing business with hostile/communist nations. American industry is all but dead thanks to Bill Clinton opening up trade with China.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366605Tue, 10 Oct 2023 23:34:26 -00002099366605@Uncensored

It will hinder development, and step 2 will be banning imports.   

Tue Oct 10 2023 18:32:25 EDT from msgrhys

 

Tue Oct 10 2023 18:12:38 EDT from Nurb432

And speaking of RISC-V  ... Well dammit this will set things back.  I did predict this. i was hoping i was wrong.   Calling for restrictions on RISC-V by our wonderful government.  Grr 

 

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-chip-technology-emerges-new-battleground-2023-10-06/

Well reading the article gives me the impression that the goal is to stop American companies from giving technology to Communist China, which I'm all for, assuming they don't slip something else in (and of course they will).

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366594Tue, 10 Oct 2023 22:32:25 -00002099366594@Uncensored

 

Tue Oct 10 2023 18:12:38 EDT from Nurb432

And speaking of RISC-V  ... Well dammit this will set things back.  I did predict this. i was hoping i was wrong.   Calling for restrictions on RISC-V by our wonderful government.  Grr 

 

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-chip-technology-emerges-new-battleground-2023-10-06/

Well reading the article gives me the impression that the goal is to stop American companies from giving technology to Communist China, which I'm all for, assuming they don't slip something else in (and of course they will).

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366591Tue, 10 Oct 2023 22:12:38 -00002099366591@Uncensored

And speaking of RISC-V  ... Well dammit this will set things back.  I did predict this. i was hoping i was wrong.   Calling for restrictions on RISC-V by our wonderful government.  Grr 

 

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-chip-technology-emerges-new-battleground-2023-10-06/

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366573Tue, 10 Oct 2023 21:16:26 -00002099366573@Uncensored

RISC-V is the future. 

Might as well get on the train early. 

Tue Oct 10 2023 16:04:52 EDT from msgrhys Subject: RISC-V vs Power ISA

I've noticed mainly two open source ISAs: RISC-V and Power ISA. Which one do you think has a better future? Which one do you think is technically better?

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366572Tue, 10 Oct 2023 21:15:30 -00002099366572@Uncensored

Ya, it does, just not as mature as lets say X86. But its getting there, fast.  

Power, to be honest at this point i would not bother. I think the only people making hem now is IBM, for their own stuff.  ( and this is coming from an ex-fan )

Tue Oct 10 2023 16:17:44 EDT from LadySerenaKitty Subject: Re: RISC-V vs Power ISA

POWER has decades of history.  rv is new and still doesn't have an established ecosystem.

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366561Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:17:44 -00002099366561@Uncensored

POWER has decades of history.  rv is new and still doesn't have an established ecosystem.

Tue Oct 10 2023 16:04:52 EDT from msgrhys Subject: RISC-V vs Power ISA

I've noticed mainly two open source ISAs: RISC-V and Power ISA. Which one do you think has a better future? Which one do you think is technically better?

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366558Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:04:52 -00002099366558@Uncensored

I've noticed mainly two open source ISAs: RISC-V and Power ISA. Which one do you think has a better future? Which one do you think is technically better?

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366201Thu, 05 Oct 2023 14:24:29 -00002099366201@Uncensored

this sort of qualifies for the scumbag room too, but i guess Intel is incompetent and now spinning Altera back off ( the FPGA company they bought about 10 years ago )    Great, id rather see them independent again, i dont trust Intel.  Now if AMD would do the same and set xilinx free again...

Link for reference ( ya i know, even tho i'm annoyed by the industry now, i still get and peek at the news letters.  But at least i dont pay for subscriptions and paper anymore. Baby steps. ) 

https://www.eejournal.com/article/intel-plans-to-spin-off-fpga-group-as-an-independent-company-nine-years-after-buying-altera/

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366056Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:48:13 -00002099366056@Uncensored

lol

Tue Oct 03 2023 12:05:39 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

 I was so excited until I discovered that it was only the nameplate, not the whole panel.  :(

 

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366036Tue, 03 Oct 2023 17:06:28 -00002099366036@Uncensored

https://www.recycledgoods.com/dec-df03-aa-modem-vintage-dec-modem-110v/

I had the -AC, not the -AA.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099366028Tue, 03 Oct 2023 16:05:39 -00002099366028@Uncensored

Cool.  My acoustic looks exactly like this:

2099365904@Uncensored

Another thought to add..  just ran into this today. trying to build a webcam streaming thing on an orange Pi i had.  Just bought a 60 dollar camera for it. grrrr.  ( and having library issues.. but it may not work at all according to this )

Walled garden hardware. NO. F-them.

 

Sat Sep 30 2023 11:30:09 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

So ... Raspberry Pi 5

Anyone checked out the specs yet? I was having a conversation with Nurb about the ARM board he put up for me to do development on, and how I noticed that it (a NanoPi) was much faster than a Raspberry Pi. I think the RPi is both the best and worst thing to happen, since they did an amazing job bringing SBC computing to the masses in a way that wouldn't have happened otherwise; while at the same time the boards released so far haven't really been all that great.

The 5 looks poised to change that. Faster CPU, faster video, faster I/O (much of which is due to a new custom southbridge), and it's even got one lane of PCIe to which you could attach an NVMe drive. Christopher Barnatt and Jeff Geeling both praised it in their reviews and it looks fast enough to daily drive.

Thoughts?

Not me either. 

But i do have a perhaps 1k bubble memory module kicking around still somewhere.

Sun Oct 01 2023 04:37:00 EDT from test2

peers! which one of you is holding onto my 16k ram core module!!

 

I had one until the great purge.  Black plastic, wood grain highlights.  Served me well for many years. 

Sun Oct 01 2023 06:55:26 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Hehe. I don't have your core memory, but I might have a 300 bps acoustic coupler somewhere.

peers! which one of you is holding onto my 16k ram core module!!

Sat Sep 30 2023 11:25:11 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

i helped decommission two CDC 3800's, it was a grab fest to get the
"core" memory modules.  alas.. i was low man in the room and wasnt

Nice. I'm so glad you're here. You're among peers. :)

RPI is still sub-par. They always trail behind the industry.  The only thing they have going for them is the ecosystem. 

Grumble.

So couple of years ago i bought another 'smart' watch. After being burnt by Sony "we decided not to sell watches anymore, sorry *poof*. And before that Pebble, after holding out for a long time in the first place. Well, not really pebble i guess but that f-ing "fitbit" when they bought hem out and discontinued the entire line. "no more pebble for you, oh and that new watch you were waiting on that you wanted, that was ready to be released.? Nope.. Oh and in a year, we will shut the servers down too, so your device wont work at all"  After the pebble thing, i went with Sony 'no one is going to buy them at least'... then 6 months later... doh.   Being burnt twice, i went back to only real watches. Should have known better.

Fast forward several years, and i really only got it as my mother was sick, so i would not miss a call while at work in a meeting or something. Worked ok, got used to it. and kept wearing it.

Year ago it started acting funny. wouldn't turn on after a charge when i had let it die by accident. I did their 'magic power reset' and it worked. moved on.  Today decided to erase it and pair to the new phone. One of the things it *forces* you to do before you can use it is to go they every freaking feature it has, which i had forgot how annoying it was.... "swipe left, right, left up down wiggle,wiggle, touch touch touch, swipe 20 more times"   got to where it says push buttons "push bottom .. bla bla..  now push top button".. nothing... arrgh

Button is broke. now i know why had problems last year.  BUT if i dont push the dammed button every time i touch it "press the button, jerk" pops up on the screen ( ok, not jerk, but you get the idea )

How frustrating. 

And ya, took it out back and hosed it down the best i could with contact cleaner. But no. Button is toast.  

i helped decommission two CDC 3800's, it was a grab fest to get the "core" memory modules.  alas.. i was low man in the room and wasnt able to grab one.  They were the full assembly - 64 modules of 16x16 wire matrix grids with cute teensy ferrite cores at each wire intersection. those turds were heavy. they looked like lamp bases you'd find in the living room. (the newly released album The Wall playing in the background) good demolition music.

We still have a 'real' mainframe on site.  Not sure what model/revision, but it is IBM.   Its going to be retired soon. ( that is what they said 10 years ago .... )

ya, i was there when they wrote the emulators and shut down the wafer fabs. then moved onto way more fun stuff. wireless- ground floor. sneaky stuff.

Sort of a rant too, but not exactly.

As i have mentioned before , i have been collecting those little Lenovo M93 tinys as for the cost they are great.  And you can replace the i5 CPU with a xeon. Normally in this market space, the CPU is soldered down.  They work great as s small PVE farm.  they also make decent dektops if you dont game ( onboard GPU ). 3 video ports, BT/Wifi, bla bla.  and as it sounds, tiny... 

I do wish they could support more than 16gb ram. But i understand why.  

What i DONT understand... They have traces for 2 m.2 sockets on the board, one can be used for storage the other i think is a 2nd network, but didnt bother to populate either. So unless you want to dig into it and do some surface mount work you are stuck with one drive.  They did the hard work.. why didnt they freaking put the socket and pull-up resistors on? So they raise the price a buck or 2, no one would even notice the cost... I would LOVE to have it boot off m.2 then use the SSD for storage only.  Be perfect for native Ceph machines, but you cant boot off your storage device, so you need that extra device.   But im not really in the mood to try add them. ( now, if they could take more ram, i might... )

Perhaps 20 years ago we had an app that was running that one of the BUs relied on for monthly reports/billing/etc ( some were reports that go to the Feds, honestly dont remember all the details now. been too long ).  One day we got a phone call "hey our stuff isn't working". 

Wasn't a server in the data center, so used all sort of odd resource to track it down to a contractors desk. He left 2 months prior. They came and recycled his machine. By the time we tracked the actual box down, it was on another persons desk by then. Reloaded.

i found a CD "code backup' in a drawer that was taken just before he went live, almost a year prior.  "sorry folks all your stuff is gone"

We clamped down on our polices after that :) 

Similar:  App i was hired to support at the same place. Tracked the hardware down on my 3rd or 4th day. Found it running on a desktop PC, laying on floor at the the bottom of a server rack. At least it was in the server room and they knew about it..

Job before that, guy i was replacing had been gone 2 months " the computer stuff is in the room is over there, here are the keys, i think he left some passwords in there, and his phone number, if you need to call him. good luck".  First task.. backups..   there were not any. ( had been running a DB prune on the tapes for months.. no actual data. ."ok, everyone leave me alone for a little, this is really important"

Job before that 2nd or 3rd day: "our stuff crashed come help" ( remote site ).  "sure, we are on our way"  got there, ok where are the backups. There was  brand new box unopened of tape sitting beside the server. " Um, ok, where the tapes you swap out every night ?" "we have to do that? How do you do that, he never told us that.. ( my predecessor, who also mis-labeled a kvm at another site.. I took a branch down like that..  my first time there at that location, wrong machine.. poof.) "well with luck we might.. oh.. tapes broke. been broke for months.. "       somehow i managed to boot the original 1/2 dead drive on a set of Linux disk i brought ( it was Windows NT, it was a novell shop and i was hired as, go figure, the windows guy...of all things ) and copy off the database and important files.  took me until like 2am but i saved the place from a disaster.

i still have my face mask and bunny shoes from when i worked in a class 10 clean room making mainframe CPUs. oh, ya... i still have a few of those CPU's hiding about. (A10, A15, A17)

Somewhere i have a disk from a mainframe. ( or at least i did ).

That was a funny story. 

Wed Sep 20 2023 22:32:57 EDT from zelgomer

I've actually extracted and kept the platters from a couple of old disks just for the off chance that some day I can show some whippersnapper and go "back in my day we used to store data on tiny particles of rust!"

I have the Apple 250MB hard drive that shipped with my Quadra 660av.  I don't use it, but it is an artifact.

My vote too.

Mon Sep 18 2023 23:28:44 EDT from LadySerenaKitty

Most likely, the drives were drawing a bit too much current for the LED to light up, and now that you're on SSD you have some current leftover to not starve the light.

 

No!  So the controller is responsible for the activity light.  On NVMe systems, the NVMe controller signals the SATA controller to turn the light on and off, because of course the PCIe bus should be used for such shenanigans. /s

Most likely, the drives were drawing a bit too much current for the LED to light up, and now that you're on SSD you have some current leftover to not starve the light.

Mon Sep 18 2023 23:20:10 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

It's the most curious thing.

[ Long and rambling story about various different SSD and Spinnydrives in my main computer ]

With the old drives, the front panel LED never lit, even when I was using the new drive I added later.

Now that the old drives are gone and there's only the new one (plus an old spinnyrust for backups of my machines up at the data center), the front panel LED glows red during disk activity.

Same machine, same motherboard, same operating system. These are all SATA drives because I am not cool enough for NVMe yet. What gives? Is there such a thing as a bug on an old disk firmware that would stop all drives from being able to light the controller's LED?

VisionFive v2.. now has GPU drivers.. 

took long enough..

I have yet to order those ARM modules i was talking about creating a ceph cluster out of.

lazy.

Wed Aug 30 2023 01:51:45 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

Yesterday my $1009.84 PCIe4 card arrived.  Microchip SmartHBA 1200-32i.  Directly attaches up to 32 SAS/SATA drives, and with additional hardware, can attach up to 1024 of them.  The single most expensive part of my storage server build is here.

https://twitter.com/LadySerenaKitty/status/1696594228430709162

Yesterday my $1009.84 PCIe4 card arrived.  Microchip SmartHBA 1200-32i.  Directly attaches up to 32 SAS/SATA drives, and with additional hardware, can attach up to 1024 of them.  The single most expensive part of my storage server build is here.

https://twitter.com/LadySerenaKitty/status/1696594228430709162

This got lost in the last DB crash. these people are tempting me.. 

https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/08/28/sipeed-unveils-risc-v-tablet-portable-linux-console-and-cluster/?amp=1

And pine 64 has their damned tablet..

https://pine64.com/product/pinetab-v-10-1-8gb-128gb-risc-v-based-linux-tablet-with-detached-backlit-keyboard/

LoL...  Sid update. .new kernel. now it wont boot again.   So frustrating. you have to laugh.. 

And into the closet it goes before i start making .223 sized holes in it. 

And to continue to saga on that POS box.. 

Since the POS OS was working, i tried installing Debian again ( via FAI, to minimize any network activity ) .  Stupid thing installed fine, no grub errors.  Updated the kernel to 6.4.0  as short of compiling it my self i cant go higher with Debian at the moment.  And while i can compile of course, i doubt he box would hold up. 

For the most part it works, as long as i dont stress it.  So, its still not 100% there yet, but better then it was with 5.x kernel. ( and of course 6.1.x no boot )

Ill keep tracking what version Sid is up to, and when it hits 5, ill update. See if its finally stable.  

Meanwhile as mentioned above, decided to eat my own dog food and no more x86 desktops for me.  AI server, still needs X86 due to GPU needs as there is no way im going to be able to afford that new NVIDIA chip for what is just a 'hobby/toy'.  Used to have web/file/etc on ARM.  will end up moving that stuff back later this fall..   My Chromebooks are ARM, and will need to dig out my Pinebook, which is an RK3399. 

Ill take 2, please.

"Nvidia’s GH200 has the same GPU as the H100, Nvidia’s current highest-end AI chip, but pairs it with 141 gigabytes of cutting-edge memory, as well as a 72-core ARM central processor."

You would think.  But not this one.   I can disable them but not remove them. it seems to keep the last 4.

Fri Aug 11 2023 03:26:00 PM EDT from darknetuser

From bios with NO drive it still shows older boot options and i dont
see a way to clear/delete them.  ( ami bios ). Soooo i assume its
storing some boot info somewhere in flash on the board and that is
hosing me.     Any one have any idea how to clear this sort of
thing?  ( if its flash , even pulling the battery, which is a total
pain with this thing wont work )

The UEFI configuration menu is likely to have an option to remove old boot options.

*(Y)*&#$

Locked up doing data transfer tests.  So not really any better.  

Sigh. 400 dollar door stop.

Normally the only reason i even care about kernel version is due to built in driver support. This is the first time i have ever had this sort of problem.   

Reading some today, looks i should be able to get network setup tonight. If so, ill put it thru its paces, see if its stable now. I'm crossing my fingers. 

Oh, and i dont trust Ubuntu.. :)  I have been using Debian pretty much since day 1 ( well that and armbian, which is pretty close ).  Started with Boot/Root ( remember that? tho , it wasn't really a 'distribution' in the traditional sense )  then SLS, went to Yggradsisl for a bit due to their handling of X.org, Redhat in the EARLY days since they were 'the thing'.. ( floppy .. ) but Debian was it once it was here. Never looked back.

Fri Aug 11 2023 11:25:01 AM EDT from LoanShark

I'm still running 5.15 LTS branch kernels. The moment ubuntu released their 5.19, it broke stuff, so I removed the HWE stack and haven't gone back.

Saw that arch is at 6.4.9 now..  so figured id try that. it booted, installer defaulted to 'systemd-boot' not grub. Figured what the hell..  It installed, no complaint this time.

Also it downloaded all its files from the network. something lower kernels would freeze up doing. 

Rebooted. Logged in... reboot. rinse repeat a couple of times.. it worked.. whoohoo a good sign

Move it up on the shelf. remove monitor keyboard, Power on...  NO freaking network..   Card is seen using 'ip' , so i guess it doesn't configure network by default ( really? who's dumb idea is this? ) so have to read up on how Arch does networking.

But this is promising.. 

Yes live USBs work ( as do dedicated installers, up to the point of writing grub )

Wed Aug 09 2023 08:16:20 PM EDT from zelgomer

Any chance you can get into a live USB? You could even put an old kernel on it if you have to. If you can make it into Linux you might be able to muck with the flash from there. Or the efivars. They might even be the same.

So i have my first true 100% uefi bios machine.  

Had some stuff installed. its a unstable POS. ( long story i have told, others have same problem with that series, older 5.x kernels work better than new but still unreliable. 6.1 wont even boot..... go figure ).  Ran across a Linux disro that has kernel 6.4.8 out of the box ( almost bleeding edge ) and thought id try it.  It seemed to actually work, tho it sucks as a distro.  But since it worked i installed it from its live iso to m.2

Thought id try to do a manual kernel upgrade so put Debian back on, or at least tried. to ... now it wont write the grub stuff so i get a no-boot situation. Stability issues it DID just fine before on installs. "executing grub dummy fail" i what i get  . Look around online, its due to left over stuff on the drive.  Ok, that makes sense. Manually erase the m.2.. same problem. New drive. same problem

From bios with NO drive it still shows older boot options and i dont see a way to clear/delete them.  ( ami bios ). Soooo i assume its storing some boot info somewhere in flash on the board and that is hosing me.     Any one have any idea how to clear this sort of thing?  ( if its flash , even pulling the battery, which is a total pain with this thing wont work )

Been looking online, but its like a needle in a haystack.

Forgot the Timex 2068s too.   couple of those

Just too much stuff to remember. 

The retro purge was many years ago, so its all gone, other than an Epson PX8 and a Newton.

Even my old calculators are gone now.

But it was a variety, Off the top of my head

• Apple ][+
• Apple ][e
• Apple ][c
• Mac Portable ( and who the hell designs a laptop that *requires* the battery... )
• Early power PC ( i forget model )
• M100 ( or whatever the original mac was )
• Lombard G3
• TRS 80 Mdl II ( with drive, printer, bla bla )
• TRS 80 Mdl iii
• TRS 80 microcolor ( 2 of them.  only one was originally mine )
• Tandy PC-8
• Tandy A102 ( i think.. pretty sure it was not a 100 )
• Amiga 500 ( i think, might have been a 600.. )
• Atari ST ( 512 upgraded to 4mb . was my daily driver for a LONG time ). My first ST i killed doing a memory upgrade.
• Atari 1200xl
• Atari 130xe
• Would have killed for a STBook.. or perhaps a Falcon..but wanted a Book sooooo bad 
• Sinclair QL
• Couple of Timex 1000s ( wait i still have one of those in the closet in the box )
• Osborne one
• Kaypro II ( this missed the great purge but left last summer )
• Ultra Sparc something or other.. ( forget model )
• Aquarius 
• Stuff im forgetting

Tue Aug 01 2023 01:04:32 PM EDT from LadySerenaKitty

What kinda vintage goodies?

 

What kinda vintage goodies?

Tue Aug 01 2023 10:37:59 EDT from Nurb432

From another discussion going on..  man i have too much hardware around here collecting dust.  ( some upgraded and kept the original 'just in case' , some for projects that never happened. some 'ooooo, i want that' )

Years ago i had a retro collection ( kept every device i used.. very few were purchased later for the collection ) over 100 machines.   Took up 1/2 my garage. Unlike that this new stuff is so small you hardly notice and its easy to get in over your head and not even notice.

Really need to stop.

From another discussion going on..  man i have too much hardware around here collecting dust.  ( some upgraded and kept the original 'just in case' , some for projects that never happened. some 'ooooo, i want that' )

Years ago i had a retro collection ( kept every device i used.. very few were purchased later for the collection ) over 100 machines.   Took up 1/2 my garage. Unlike that this new stuff is so small you hardly notice and its easy to get in over your head and not even notice.

Really need to stop.

This could go in a lot of rooms..  so i just randomly picked the first one that i observed  ( pun intended )

Seems Iran announced a single board quantum computer "the first product of the quantum processing algorithm"  ( whatever the F that means .. lol  ).  Turns out its a consumer level FPGA board..  They didnt even cover the logo .. morons . lol. 

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202306086480

of course far future may end up we 'serfs' dont get compute engines .. everything is a terminal

( almost there now, in effect with those damned phones )

the future is GPU/TPU/NPU

CPU will just end up being a dumb traffic cop and it wont matter what it is, or what it runs. 

Nope not that either. its a kernel issue. Going back to 5x seems to have fixed it.   ( tried a usbC network. crash.. so it clearly wasn't drivers or the network hardware )

Ran across a few post with similar issues after i backdated the install just to see what it would do and there are some parameters to be passed via grub that might fix it for 6.x   Will have to try that tomorow. 

Experimenting some more, it may actually be the Ethernet port. I shoved in one of my 'headless auto server installers' and didnt bother putting in keyboard or lan.   It installed. Have it now running memtest off that install, its been running for 30 mins straight. no errors, no freeze, cpu temp is fine.

Going to dig out a full install ISO and keep the cord out once im done in the kitchen ( gotta make the bread :) ).  See if that works.

*IF* that is the problem i can live with WiFi for its intended use.

Sun Jun 04 2023 02:34:22 PM EDT from zelgomer

For stuff like that I have used Linux's netconsole to send kernel messages to another machine. Just use netcat to receive on the appropriate UDP port, and now you get to see what sort of fire and mayhem the kernel is complaining about while your local machine is frozen (or half frozen and dying a horrible death, by the sound of it).

If I had to put money on it, sounds like you can't create new processes once you're in this state. Maybe forks are failing because the kernel can't page in more mwmory for some reason?

Well this is a new one. 

New PC.

Runs fine for a while, ( random time, doing same thing, so not heat related ) then 'freezes', but doesn't. The running process to install freezes, but desktop isn't frozen.  Can still launch a 2nd tab in the terminal emulator.  Cant launch a new application in it as it freezes after you type, or use the menu...  Really weird.  

Im hoping its slower ram.  Bought a barebone as i have ram and drives out my ears. Seems i have DDR4 2400 ram, it wants 3200...   I hope that is all it is.  Send it back is an expensive pain in the neck.

I have seen processes freeze before, and of course total system freezes but never this strangeness. 

Decided to finally upgrade my desktop from an old Xeon E3-1275L v3  to a I7 1260P.  ( still lower power requirements. no need to burn electricity considering i'm not a gamer. and my Stable Diffusion box burns enough power as it is )  Will be here in a week or 2... I do hope i see a difference and didnt just burn the cash.   

I almost sprung for an I9..  but i try not to go overboard normally, and i like to conserve energy. Not that im turning green on you all.. but means it runs cooler, so lasts longer and less power $$.

( and im still annoyed from losing $ on that Tesla GPU for the AI server.. grr )

Well that F-ed up ARM board i had waited on for a year to arrive..  it made a round trip from here to china and back in under a month.

They replaced the defective power IC. Booted first attempt.  Frustrating.  But, its working now.

and i ordered the wrong power transformer for something..  ( amazon, 'order another' button but forgot i had ordered a similar one for an odd-ball case that was NOT the same plug.. )

geesh. not that either were enough money to really care about, its just frustrating.. 

And then you have shoes... 'driving moc'  show up as 'steel toe work boots'. Wrong leather too so assumed just a total mistake, send it back, order anther. Check status " work boots" again.. wtf.. the 'store' does not list them correctly..      ( tho the 2nd pair did have the correct leather..  but no, i cant wear steel toe even if i wanted to )

( ya borderline rant.. but it was related to the CPU thread.. no pun intended :) )

So a Xeon  E3-1275LV3 is not the same as a Xeon E3-1275 E3 

Sigh. Burn $ like it comes on trees.

( but to be honest. i thought it said the same i guess i cant rea..  now i have a useless, to me, cpu in a drawer )

Yup

Tue Apr 25 2023 10:40:41 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

So the GPU is essentially a massively parallel compute unit optimized for calculations but without all the trimmings and trappings of a general purpose CPU? 

FedEx just delivered a 24gb NVIDIA Tesla GPU.

ya, i'm stupid.

unsure the details yet but a friend of mine just came home with 3 fairly new 3D printers "i found these in the trash"

That is like stories of people seeing Altairs and such on the curb for trash day..   i never see stuff like that.

Tho i have called them video cards a few times, technically they are not. No video ports or support to produce video. Only GPU.

Found some lower end referb 24gb titans for a really decent price.. but i dont think my motherboard can handle them, and im not going to start spending more on motherboards and stuff too.  hobby is not worth that much to me.. Already spent more than i should have. 

Reason it works so well is not that its a 'graphics processor' its a parallel targeted compute module that does math really fast, on several thousand cores. Just happens to also do well for computing graphics too, so was used in them traditionally.. It wont do well with general stuff and moving bits around, but just doing general math, yes.

Quick comparison of what i have, running for stable diffusion ( images ) 

• Xeon 12 core. Takes 35 minutes. 
• Add a 4gb video card to the mix and it drops it to 3 minutes
• Swapped it out with an older 12gb video card. Now its 15 seconds. 

Sat Apr 22 2023 12:32:00 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Man, wish i had a couple of A100s....

What's an A100? A search says maybe it's a graphics card? Or a van from the 1970's :)

Oh, I see ... people are using Nvidia A100 as high-density compute for "AI" workloads.

I have to admit I don't really understand the whole "compute on GPU" thing.
What is it about a graphics coprocessor that couldn't be done better by some sort of high-density main CPU?

Real men dont shave :) 

Man, wish i had a couple of A100s....

Not that it matters much to anyone but me...  but my v2 RISCv board that was foobar, its replacement showed up today.  Booted first try. yay!

Sending back the hosed RK3588 board. they finally offered to take it back. i think anyway, as i'm going to see how much the shipping is this afternoon.

Oh, they are smart enough.  Its by design so you have to replace it, and not due to incompetence.

So many things we have today could last for extended time and do just fine, but then they wont get their constant 'upgrade' business..  so gotta make stuff die.

Wed Feb 15 2023 01:45:24 PM EST from nonservator

I'm tired of things that only run on batteries. And it's worse when the idiots who design them aren't smart enough to make it so leaving it plugged in doesn't eventually destroy the battery and the entire device.

I'm tired of things that only run on batteries. And it's worse when the idiots who design them aren't smart enough to make it so leaving it plugged in doesn't eventually destroy the battery and the entire device.

Oh i agree, but asking *IF* is lame :)

Wed Feb 15 2023 12:35:36 PM EST from LadySerenaKitty

 

Also, you'd be surprised how many people don't read the documentation for things.

 

Devices really don't care what the source of electrons is.

Also, you'd be surprised how many people don't read the documentation for things.

Wed Feb 15 2023 07:19:25 EST from Nurb432

On a SBC forum last night: " can i run this on a battery "

I think they need a new hobby.

"how much power does this draw so i can figure out what size battery i will need for the time i want it to run" i woudl be ok with ( even tho its in the documents.. ) but "can it" ? Really?

On a SBC forum last night: " can i run this on a battery "

I think they need a new hobby.

"how much power does this draw so i can figure out what size battery i will need for the time i want it to run" i woudl be ok with ( even tho its in the documents.. ) but "can it" ? Really?

since i got frustrated with that arm board i keep bitching about that i waited a year for... Bought an S series from another vendor ( orange pi ). In theory the only difference from my PoS board is i/o ( not as much on an S ).     This had enough i/o for a couple of usb ports, and a m.2 for storage ( but not enough for onboard WiFi )

While the GPU drivers are still a bit flaky ( that will correct over time ) the damned thing flies....  doing some basic perf checks it is equal to or exceeds my older i7 daily driver on most tests. true, that is not a real world comparison, but its a start.  Plus it has a 6 tflop on board AI TPU.. and my intel does not have that.    

Of course while its not really meant to be a desktop chip, the previous gen did 'feel' like an low end i3 or high end celeron desktop. So usable if you had to, but not speedy. Does fine in Chromebooks too.  This generation eats that for breakfast.   

This kind of strategy rarely works, and is one I have seen send companies into dissolution.  Silicon Graphics, Lehman Bros, Enron, the US Fed Gov (hol' up ...)

Mon Jan 23 2023 09:40:06 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

This does not end well for them unless they're simply planning to maximize profits in the short term at the expense of driving away all future customers.

Since its release, I have suspected the coming of RISC-V meant ARM's days are numbered.  With ARM's recent "you have to use our entire platform or nothing" decision is just going to accelerate their demise and then the real pressure for rv64 to have amd64-comparable purrformance will really ramp up.

Thu Jan 12 2023 09:54:33 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Actually if there is a transition to RISC-V it will take substantially *less* time than a transition to ARM. Or they will both be part of the same transition.
We're moving rapidly into an era where the ISA doesn't matter quite as much, as long as it's got a Linux or BSD kernel available for it, you're good to go. The era of requring a computer that is, to use an outdated phrase, "IBM Compatible" is waning.

The combination of open source operating systems and cloud technology are making all of this possible. And it's wonderful.

Agreed that ARM Holdings is throwing away all of the capital they've earned by being a solid, flexible, low power, and multi source alternative to the x86 monoculture. They're a leader but they don't exactly have lock-in. Add in the fact that RISC-V is zero license cost and they may have already blown it.

And yes, i know, i'm a borderline fanboy.  Its my EE background. 

So disillusioned with ARM holdings its not funny.   They had the goose in hand, with all those decades of work to get where they were, just to squander it due to (current) bad management.

Agreed it wont happen tomorrow, but with the sudden acceleration of things, i think it will happen far sooner than anyone expected.  I might even be around to see it.

ARM took decades to get where they are.  RISC-V, while isn't new, reached maturity much faster and market penetration almost overnight.

I think RISC-v had some things at play ARM never did.

• Chinese Sanctions.. That single event alone made it almost inevitable. Further developing RISC-V was the only real option.
• NVIDIA buy-out of ARM.   I may be in the minority, but i think that would have been their last chance of survival as the money flow and tech resources to improve things would have been immense.  Might have been some market concerns later for licensees/competitors of NVIDIA, but i suspect in the end it would have been OK as they want the revenue and governments woudl be breathing down their necks. 
• Changes in how ARM licenses after the failed buy-out.  Now if you license their CPU, you have to use/license their GPU and FPU, and TPU, and you cant use their own. If they try to do that to NVIDIA or Apple when they renew, its game over.
• General cost / control.  Always better if you can pay less AND keep total control over your stuff.  ( see above item :) )

How long will it take to topple x86? Of course much longer than ARM.

Its begun.  Tipping point in 3...2...1....

Like them or hate them, google promoting RISC-V to tier 1 for android will change the game.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/google-announces-official-android-support-for-risc-v/amp/

Not tried it yet, but looks like Firefox is availble for the starfive v2.  

and a few other nice things like libreoffice and QT5.

For the IoT market, i think the Eco system is there. At this point plenty of options with full support across the spectrum. Now its just a matter of slowly eating away at the ARM market share. 

For end user devices, beyond the lower/medium end like i'm playing with it may take another year, but the momentum is there and its turning out to be a logarithmic curve now that its in-gear and the threshold was met, so to speak. Tho we will see when that tablet comes out, supposed to be this summer.  I expect to see competitive desktops summer of 2024.

Server side, i heard that some UK thing tied to the government just committed 300m ti start producing high-end 'chiplets' for HPC this summer.

And technically its not encumbrance free. The downside is vendors CAN add proprietary extensions on their own. If that starts happening it will fracture things, badly.

Tue Jan 03 2023 01:39:56 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Right, so it's at a point now where it is being used simply to avoid the cost of a license, which is where the open source software world was 25 years ago.
It has not yet become "the" ecosystem that is everyone's first choice becuase it is encumbrance free and permanently vendor neutral.

Hopefully we'll get there and it doesn't take quite that long. Software that is hard-built to a particular architecture and platform is not as mainstream as it was a generation ago. Open source infrastructure and web based software have made it easier than ever to jump around. Perhaps my current motherboard will be my last AMD64.

Oh, and at a micro level, RISC-v is in all NVIDIA products, apple silicon, western digital and a bunch of others.  its 'glue' at this point, but its out there a lot more than anyone really realizes.  Sort of how minix slowly evolved to be *everywhere* but no one noticed. 

For current boards i have seen/own: Embedded IoT device, a headless server, or a low-end desktop. Depending on which one you buy. in 2023 it will be competitive desktops you see and AI enabled devices.

i cant comment yet about my SF-v2 board with GPU as far as using it as a desktop, but i suspect more medium end level. intel i3 comparison is my guess. Just not that far yet. My v1 board worked, ran a desktop. Just was slow. But it wasn't meant to be a desktop really, just an early model to experiment with. No GPU or storage beyond SD. But it worked. it was neat.

Lots of IoT devices out there now ready for production use, and in-use.  Desktops/portables are next ( i bet mostly Linux and later android as they get into the tv box market ). 

IoT devices are both Linux based and bare metal, im sure other options will come. One of mine runs Debian, another is bare metal. t has a LCD display, camera, battery, grove ports, and a nice pretty case . I hear the small boards are already clawing at the IoT end of arm. and ESP32s have already switched over. The momentum is there.

One thing missing in the Linux desktop build was a decent browser. But it will come, we are still early in this game.

But to answer the question, i donno, assuming the V2 board is like an I3, what can you do? Well, what can you do with any computer ... 

Fri Dec 30 2022 12:02:11 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

So ... what can you *do* with a RISC-V SBC at this point? Is it just the thrill of playing around with a new and hopeful architecture? I like the idea of getting more of the world moved over to an open source ISA, but once it's up and running it's basically just another Linux machine, right?

It is pretty cool, though, that the presence of an entire open source software ecosystem makes this kind of thing even possible.

This summer perhaps, a RISC-V phone and tablet.   The new sispeed SOM that comes out in a month or 2, with a typical dev-carrier board ( which is pretty impressive according to the proposed specs ), but i guess they are going to start building things around the module on their own, and not just rely on 3rd parties.   

The planned 7 socket mother board sounds cool too.. mmm

Too bad it wont fit in my pine book pro..  different pin-out. 

oooooo out of the blue the VisionFive/2 arrived today.  Never got a tracking number or even a shipping notice.

Now the "fun" begins of trying to make it boot. THIS im ok with needing some extra effort as it is new technology, unlike the ARM hoard i'm still pissed off about.

I was an EE in a previous life. Earlier this year, i gave away nearly all my 'component' gear.  Parts, breadboards, chips, scope. generators, bla bla etc.  Several SBCs too

Only kept a couple of things, in case i ever got the urge to do 'something' but i know i was kidding myself if i ever thought id get out some resistors, caps, wires and stuff again and do it by hand... Worst case now id use an FPGA as the 'hard way' instead of discrete components, or one of my 'all in one' sbcs with grove style sensors and some python code.   

The  'fun' went away decades ago in all my hobbies. Part of it, i made my hobby my job back in the 80s. Big mistake. The other part, is just me i do realize, "fun" just does not exist.

I think i mentioned once that just after i gave away the last batch, i needed a resistor to test a sensor in the jeep. Just one 1k ...but  i didnt have *anything* left..  had to go ask the dude if i could have one back..

Sat Dec 03 2022 02:19:46 PM EST from zelgomer

LOL I mentioned in my recent Rants rant that I lack low-level embedded dev confidence when job shopping. This is roughly a yearly tradition for me. I have a bunch of eval boards and microcontrollers and other little goodies, and every so often I get the urge to pull out my breadboard and tinker with it. Sometimes I even make it so far as to actually turn something on and hook up to the UART. Then it sits there for a month collecting dust before I finally say "this is stupid, I'm not going to do anything with this" and put it back in the closet again until next time.

Well i was doing some rearranging of stuff today since i made a lot of room tossing the last of my dead-tree books last couple of weeks ( and some other things too ). Pulled out one of my FPGA dev boards. Set it on my desk.   looked at it for a while then put it back.   

Almost...  Perhaps next time.

i know i have not used spiny disks for a long item other than backup where i dont really keep track of time, start and walk away.... So i clearly have forgot, but man, its soooo different from even a cheap Chinese SSD..  ill never go back again.

Thu Dec 01 2022 10:23:50 PM EST from zelgomer

Thanks for clearing that up. I was reading this thread with my 7200s and feeling inadiquate and embarassed that I thought they were "the fast ones" when I bought them. I actually don't think I've ever seen a 10K RPM disk before.

Somewhere i worked at we had 10k drives in servers, and they were stupid expensive from what i remember.   Been a long time since i had to deal with hardware at the office.

I still remember when they were fast. Yes i know they make 10k and more, but its what i was given for free.

And yes, they are now on a shelf, can be used for off-line backups if i need them.

Wed Nov 30 2022 09:06:16 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I went to only solid state drives here a while ago.  I had forgot
**HOW FREAKING SLOW** spinny disks are.   geesh. i'm about to rip

Dude. You're using 7200 RPM disks. Those are the slow ones we use in our data centers as "cheap and deep" near line storage.

I have one in my main machine at home for backups. I use `hdparm` to make it spin down when it's not being accessed.

It may be, or it may still be f-ed up Uboot. But, i'm not the only one still in this boat. Many have managed to find PSUs that work ( its random.. but most dont ) or wired it up directly. And it does sill act 100% like a PSU coordination issue, not a dead board. I could wire up a serial terminal and watch it try, but i dont care that much.

The entire roll out of this has been a disaster.  

If they dont fix Uboot soon, i may just hardwire it, or set it on fire. This was just to be a toy, as i'm not really doing any projects now, so not going to spend too much of my time forcing it to work. But i am curious how well it does, as its the next generation up from my other arm chips which i'm found of ( they are RK3399, this is RK3588 ), and should be around the same functional level as a mid-range i5 + its got AI stuff too. So in theory, a desktop that fits right in the middle of most things out today in the x86 world.

in hindsight, i should have just cancelled it, but i sort of forgot it was still out there until it was coming. I pre-ordered in mid-January.. Stupid supply chain problems delayed these chips a good year.

I still have that RiscV sifive version 2 coming next month. No real need for it too, but the novelty of having it won over common sense. Sort of neat having fully open commercially supported hardware running fully open software. Never dreamed that was possible 30 years ago. ( this one adds 2 more cores + GPU + M.2 slot and an extra 8gb ram. A bit more usable than the v1 board i have now ). In time RIscV will eat ARM. 

Fri Nov 25 2022 03:35:07 PM EST from LoanShark

I probably missed some other posts on this subject, but this sounds like a bad motherboard.

OEM PSU arrived yesterday.

Guess what? Still wont boot, same thing powers up, loses power, reboots. repeat..  .  **(&T#^%W#)_

she was pissed when someone blew up her guidestones.

Sun Nov 20 2022 03:51:01 PM EST from Nurb432

Even before the drives she would be mad at me, pointing her finger and yelling 'how dare you'. this machine is a beast.

 

Might be fun actually.

Even before the drives she would be mad at me, pointing her finger and yelling 'how dare you'. this machine is a beast.

Might be fun actually.

there goes your electric bill.  gretta is giving you frownies, you don't want gretta unhappy with you

Recently i came in to possession of a few 7200 rpm server class drives.  Put them in my 'big' box in my cluster to put the storage up to ludicrous amounts for testing stuff and added them as shared storage to the farm. That machine normally is turned off. its just for when i need real horsepower for something, like AI stuff or video format conversions ),

I went to only solid state drives here a while ago.  I had forgot **HOW FREAKING SLOW** spinny disks are.   geesh. i'm about to rip them back out and toss them in the lake. just a simple clone takes forever...  

funny part was during a clone last night " what is that odd noise. something is up, that is a new noise " Thinking it might be the furnace or fish tank or something...went in the hall and living room looking and listening.. no its from the computer room..  "oh, dumb ass, those are the drives" between it being so long and the case is muffled from the 5 fans on the 2 video cards + cpu + power supply + 2 case fans..  damned thing is a helicopter 

Then you better get out the 3D printer and discrete components and build your logic from scratch.. Buying a ESP/Arduino ( or whatever, even FPGA ) and slapping some code in it is for amateurs. :) 

Oh, and blow your own glass to make nixie tubes from scratch too.  ( kidding aside, i have seen people do this, its pretty cool )

Tue Nov 15 2022 06:11:18 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 Something that not only looks cool but says "I made this."

The problem with a tablet is that it looks like a tablet.  There is zero coolness factor in that.

Here's a photo of my WWVB clock.  I deliberately chose a photo frame as its "case" because the point is to show off the electronics.

]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099316159Tue, 08 Nov 2022 15:08:00 -00002099316159@Uncensored

Hmm or a used tablet... 

built in network, display, battery....

Might look at a higher end ESP32.

Broke down and ordered one of their supplies, and should be here in 2 weeks.  Id even have ordered one with the board if they had told us they dropped the ball... I'm annoyed. Its not the cost, ( shipping was more than the supply ) its just that there really isn't an excuse for this from an established board maker.

We will see now if they get u-boot code fixed, or if the PSU arrives first.   The race is on!

Tried my last PD supply today, same results.      ( apple OEM i had at work, people were saying some models did work. )

So i either wait for the to fix the code ( im reading people tried moving the stuff to uboot, but its still broke ) or buy a regular supply and hardwire it, since i dont think i have any laying around now. I got rid of nearly everything like that this year. Even had to borrow a resistor to test a sensor in the jeep this summer.   i had nothing left. 

i suspect in the ARM sbc world everyone does it via software in Uboot, and not a chip. its 'just the way'.

.....and these jokers just dropped the ball and should know better.

cool ill read it after bit

I have one more PS to try before i just build one.

The way they are talking, its not, just they f-ed up the implementation and we have to wait for code fixes ( or the workaround of getting a stupid PD or make your own and hardwire it to the GPIO pins )   But either way, at least there will be a fix.   just frustrating as i waited almost a year to get this thing.. now it dont work.

and yes i did get out of buying these things as i dont do any projects that need SBCs anymore, but that was after i pre-ordered back January.   ( but this should be mid-range desktop level stuff with built in AI TPU, once it works )

Tue Nov 01 2022 07:41:59 PM EDT from LoanShark

Seems like that particular implementation might be an outlier.

Direct from their FAQ ( and a lot of others talking about the same thing of why its currently f-ed )

ROCK 5B supports USB PD power negotiation to higher voltage such as 9V, 12V, 15V, 20V to meet the total system power load requirements(around 30W with WiFi, SSD, USB peripherals etc). Currently the PD negotiation is implemented in the kernel driver, we need to boot to the kernel to start negotiation, however some Power Supply can not wait the ROCK 5B to negotiate and cut the power off when timeout, which cause the infinite boot loop. We provide the following suggestions:

Learned something yesterday abut USBC PD power.  I'm sure everyone knows and im late to the game, but i never needed to know this until now.

I guess when a device turns on, the power supply gives it a trickle of current, with the expectation that the device will actively 'negotiate' what it wants to fully power up.  And if it does not in x microseconds, the power supply powers down, causing the device to reboot and start the process over again.  

Most devices do this early on in the boot process,perhaps the very first thing, ( its inside UBoot if its ARM ), and if you are stupid and put this into the kernel, by the time you get there the power supply has already given up.

And if you are really a dumb ass company and not only put it in the kernel, you only test with your special supply that does NOT negotiate, so that when thousands of people get your fancy new product the last couple of days, everyone is stuck in boot loops, until you update code or we hack together their own powersupply. ( or just get lucky with having a 'dumb' power supply in your collection, that also can put out 30 watts on boot.  I do not. )

Grrrr   They should be better than this. they are not new in this market. Tho they are the ones that put a m.2 socket on *backwards* so the SSD points out the side of the board and not underneath....  "oops, look we came up with a new daughter board you can use, sorry it increases the height by 2x and requires a ribbon cable dangling out in the air... Hope you were not planning on embedding this board into a product or something"

And this time i wont blame them. Its the right move, once their license runs out. 

Rumor is they already use small RISC-v CPUs as 'glue' on their SOCs now.  As does NVIDIA.   

Mon Oct 31 2022 09:28:26 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

So they want OEMs to get ARM licenses directly from ARM? The cheap chinese chip fabs who want to ignore all of it must be absolutely loving that.

Cue the Apple announcement of yet another architecture change in 3... 2... 1...

ARM is dead.   The fat lady is warming up to sing

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/arm-changes-business-model-oem-partners

Well, this is cool, if you use common SBCs and need some 3D printed cases ( and in theory, CNC for metal versions ).  Supports tons of boards and their common accessories, and its CAD format so you can easily change it.

https://github.com/hominoids/SBC_Case_Builder

or my 8gb ARM modules..  

Sat Oct 08 2022 09:22:48 EDT from Nurb432

I still clearly remember upgrading my ST to 4mb and thought i was hot shit.

Look at us now, with our laptops sporting 2x 32GB memory modules.

I still clearly remember upgrading my ST to 4mb and thought i was hot shit.

its actually one of my PVE servers. i use it when i need some real power. Normally its not even turned on. It started life as a etherium miner.  ( but stopped when the DAG hit 3gb... geez )

Was adding another 4TB drive to it last night, and cleaning out the dust. ( why? why not :) )

Looking at it last night and was thinking how id never even imagine having such a beast some 20 years ago.. and now i hardly even use it and it collects dust....

Fri Oct 07 2022 10:02:13 PM EDT from zelgomer

Maybe with those specs you can finally look up and down.

so is this overkill for playing doom?

12core xeon, 16TB disk, 1tb m.2, 512gb ram. 1080 video card and a 1650 video card.   DVD writer.. 950 watt power supply.....12 or so USB 3 ports.  1gb Ethernet   some sort of high end sound card thingie.   oh, and blue lashing lights on the motherboard ,,,

I take it back. only 20 bucks, the shipping price.  ( amazon price i saw was for the non-pro, pro is ~20 bucks more, which is about right )

Still annoys the hell out of me, buying something i dont want or need.  I stopped buying 'toys/dust collectors'. 

it arrived the next day..  And to make it worse, apparently i overpaid by about 40 bucks.

( but trying to ship a single item back to china.. not worth the cost )

Rumor is that Samsung may buy ARM.  If they do, now you know why NVIDIA didnt get it. Politics. 

I think that i would rather have seen NVIDIA get it than Samsung.

This could fall under "rant" or "stupid things i did this week":

Man i wish i was not an idiot. New RK3588 box came out. I ran over to order it on Tuesday. it shipped next day. To arrive next Monday.  Went to download the drivers and stuff ahead of time, *wait, its a RK3399 ?!?!?!*  i got the wrong model number and bought the previous chip.. arrgh.   Nothing wrong with an RK3399 and i have always liked the chip but i have 3.. ( not including 3 laptops.. ).

Cool, looks like both my RK3588 that i reserved back in early January, and the v2 Risc-V may arrive about the same time. Merry Xmas for me.

Well i guess not November for me.... They just announced the 8 GB early bird, shipping in December.  Originally that was only going to be an option on the 'release' boards.

Everyone is changing their pledge, everyone wanted 8 GB instead of 4, but none of us wanted to wait 8 months.. its already been over a year..

Wed Aug 24 2022 05:43:44 PM EDT from Nurb432

So v2 board for Starfive is out on kick-starter and samples have already been shipped.  Like an idiot i got in on the early bird special, shipping in November.

Like i need another dust collector...  

So v2 board for Starfive is out on kick-starter and samples have already been shipped.  Like an idiot i got in on the early bird special, shipping in November.

Like i need another dust collector...  

Yes the ESP IoT targeted controller product line .

I was doing stuff in the late 80s and early 90s on the plant floor with 8031s, its amazing how far that world has come. Both in power/features and they are basically throwaway cost now.  I actually threw a away a box of ESP8266's recently.  I didnt even blink an eye.. Went to ARM for a while after 8031, even that is hard to toss.. But ESP, 'whatever'... 

RPI is still ARM based ( and lower end ). Most arm isn't a throwaway cost on your BOM, but super low end is pretty dammed cheap.  ( of course high end server and desktop stuff, is stupid expensive )

Micropython works on ESP32 too, and there is a native port of FORTH for ESP32.  For what that is worth, M5 Stack has some pretty cool IoT hardware, if you are into that sort of thing.

Mon Aug 22 2022 09:19:22 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

ESP as in the microcontroller? It's an interesting prospect. Even the Raspberry Pi people are doing microcontrollers now. I already know Python so I could write MicroPython programs.

The desktop of the future is probably going to look more like a Chromebook than like today's Windoze or Mac machines. Gadz, I had to use a Mac over the weekend and noticed how incredibly dumbed down the OS has become; it's basically just a slightly higher powered iPad with a keyboard.

A future where the CPU doesn't matter. Bring it on. It would make all sorts of great hardware possible.

ooo just read that ExpressIF ( esp folks, with chips embedded in *everything* ) is phasing out totally the current xtensa core for RISC-v. So that means RISC-v IS esp now.. so it won that battle already.

Armbian tool-set for Starfive - RiscV.  Cool.   Using both Sid and beyond into 'unreleased'  living on the edge,   no, past the edge :)

Still a toy at this point, but RiscV is coming for your desktop..  you can bet on it.    its already making in-roads in the embedded world, slowly displacing low-end ARM and eating into upper end esp32 territory....

Well that was scary.

New beta version of the OS for my Jetson.  Currently it boots on SD then 'flips' root to m.2 and runs from that.   Figured it was safe to boot off a new SD card, with no 'flip'.

Killed it..  no longer boots even with old SD card.   Or new one..  arrrgh! 

Ended up using the 'dev kit' on another machine and reloading it via usb, directly onto m.2 ( a new feature, boot from m.2 ). Now it boots.. no video from either port but i can SSH so i know its alive. Arrgh. Panic time. But put it away for the day.  Was going to stick the SOM on another carrier board and try again. BUT thought id try another monitor, one that is better about displaying out of band frequencies instead of 'no signal' ( just in case.. as that happened with my RISC-V board at first. )

It booted and displayed properly via display-port.. wtf. Tried the hdmi port.. video.. wtf

put it back on the original HDMI monitor. it boots and displays. .wtf wtf wtf.

Some days i hate computers.

( and running the dev kit means loading a new computer with Ubuntu 18..  they have yet to update support for newer versions, or anything other than Ubuntu. bleh. Oh, and wont work via a VM. no one really knows why, but it has to be real hardware )

I stopped reading El Reg when they got a bit too much San Franciso in their editorial style.

Was my biggest concern about RISC-V's long term future.  Glad im not the only one, and they are going to try to prevent it.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/01/riscv_fragmentation/

I realize its amazon, and they are evil, but still, a pretty cool service.  Didn't realize this was a 'thing" now.

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/f1/

the 2nd board is a bit more mainstream with its 2 cores and 8gb ram.  No GPU.   v2 is supposed to have that.

Thu Mar 24 2022 09:28:36 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

It's good, though ... the idea that you can now build a *usable* computer from unencumbered components is a Good Thing all around, even if it isn't the sooper-bestest machine.

After spending several hours of reading and experimentation, finally figured out how to completely build a RISCV system from scratch, including all the stupid uboot partition nonsense. So that little 25 dollar RISCV board i was about to toss out the window a couple of months ago..  now boots.. 

Not tried to get video drivers to work yet, but WiFi drivers are there and as long as you configure networking before you boot, SSH works fine.  ( and really with 1 core and 512mb ram, i may not bother with video. its really meant to be an embedded controller, video might be ok for status or something but i dont think i care as this was just to be a cheap plaything until i got better.. which i did get )

2099295813@Uncensored

Got an email from a PCB company that due to 'the virus' HK is basically shut down at this point ( fluvid v2, everyone panic and hide! )  and nothing is shipping for the foreseeable future.  While its poor English, i am interpreting it as they are shutting down at some point during those few days and are down until future notice.  Gotta love 'engrish' 

So if you are expecting something ( like me. arrgh! ) dont hold your breath.   Wonder if how it will effect the rest of the supply chain, which is already struggling.

"All shipments, PCBA assembly and PCB production have been suspended from 14th to 20th March until further notice"

Did not know anyone still made 65xx series processors. 

2nd riscV board showed. it actually boots..  ( still trying to get yocto to build. even the demo build fails.. not spent more time on it yet. ) 

Too bad it ships with Fedora.. Looking at how to build a Debian root FS for it. 

Not earth shaking but more than useable ..  2 64bit, cores, 8gb ram, hdmi, usb ports standard GPIO header, wifi, BT, bla bla. 

Sounds like a party i once went to.. 

Sat Mar 05 2022 12:52:14 PM EST from test2

team america, big ending.  dicks, assholes and pussies.

team america, big ending.  dicks, assholes and pussies.

So, here is the other thing about getting into Citadel in my mid teens and making "friends" that were... decades older than me. 


I'm 52 now, and I have Citadel friends who are in their 70s now. One of them has lost both his legs and has congenital heart failure. In the 80s, he ran a FRP game store and that was what his Citadel was about - and he... he seemed old to *me*... but he was really in the prime of his life. 

This generation isn't going to realize how cruel time is - because we don't allow them to have friends "our age" because we're hyper concerned that friends our age are going to fuck them. 


So they're never going to see their way older friends decline. They simply don't have them... and despite all their social justice posturing - they're "ageist" as hell. They don't know old people, they've just been told, "if they want to be your friend, they only want to fuck you." 

That wasn't MY experience - but maybe I was just a butt ugly kid.� ]]>http://uncensored.citadel.org/readfwd?go=Hardware?start_reading_at=2099294373Sat, 05 Mar 2022 06:34:56 -00002099294373@Uncensored

It is the internet. We've been doing this long enough we know not to jump to conclusions - and we know what we MEAN isn't always how people reading it take it. 

*resumes 1000 yard virtual stare*

Thu Mar 03 2022 17:19:02 EST from Nurb432

Okie, i just read it backwards. it happens :) 

Okie, i just read it backwards. it happens :) 

Interesting observation about being of an ethnic type, doing an ethnic type thing, and getting banned for basically "racism," when you ARE of that ethnic group. 

You probably got banned by someone of some other ethnic group, too. 

I got a ban on Facebook for calling MYSELF white trash at one point. 

This is similar. You've perpetuated an offensive NARRATIVE about your ethnicity that people of OTHER ethnicities find uncomfortable. It doesn't matter if you ARE that ethnicity, it doesn't matter if you BELIEVE that this stereotype applies to your ethnicity - it isn't allowed - because if they allow YOU to give the stereotype credibility - then the people of other ethnic groups who also believe that stereotype will feel empowered to continue to believe it. 

And that simply works AGAINST the narratives of identity politics and critical race theory. So... it isn't *really* about erasing injustice and tearing down stereotypes about your ethnic background. 

No, that was exactly my point. People are far more comfortable TYPING at strangers than they are speaking. Even if you altered their voice... your fingers have time to pause and think about the next word and ensure that what you say comes out as cool as you are capable of. Your mouth, speaking - you can't really do that. If you do, you look like a moron - if you don't, you look like a moron. There is more investment in SAYING something spontaneous than typing something that you can think about before you hit POST. 

Wed Mar 02 2022 17:02:38 EST from Nurb432

That is overrated.

Aside from the 'invasiveness' for many people, ( as its TOO intimate, its why many are online they dont want in-your-face with people and talking is damned close ) its 2022..  real time discussions are long gone.

Wed Mar 02 2022 02:00:10 AM EST from ParanoidDelusions

But.. there are problems with it. The first off, TALKING is far more intimate, direct and personal than *typing*. 

That is overrated.

Aside from the 'invasiveness' for many people, ( as its TOO intimate, its why many are online they dont want in-your-face with people and talking is damned close ) its 2022..  real time discussions are long gone.

Wed Mar 02 2022 02:00:10 AM EST from ParanoidDelusions

But.. there are problems with it. The first off, TALKING is far more intimate, direct and personal than *typing*. 

Not spent much time in 2nd life or On OSgrid have you?

Wed Mar 02 2022 11:15:51 AM EST from zelgomer

I also don't get the "your avatar can be whatver you want" aspect. Do people really want to play mini golf with a mechanized furry and a giant Chuckie from Rug Rats? 

Part 3/2 (heh). 

So, the chat was as weird as you can imagine. I'm not going to go bullet by bullet... but yeah, guy is a furry. He explained his anthro to me... I forgot exactly what it is... but it is a THING among his generation - evidently they've been hidden in scenes in MCU, like the Avengers End Game. I believe the guy is on the up-and-up on that claim... Marvel Comics is very pro LGBT+, and the Furries are kind of in the plus umbrella along with the Bronies. So I can see them inserting these icons of those cultures in their comics and films in a way that only those in the communities would notice. He has been in jail several times - for something bad enough that he can't BUY firearms, though he can be in possession of them. Some sort of felony. I didn't ask for more on that. He lives on his own, he is 28, he used to make an income from YouTube... but then they changed the monetizing rules and he didn't have enough of an audience to qualify. Now he lives on assistance - I suspect probab

Part 2/2 - on last night's experience. 

So, I watch this one guy interacting with this group of 3 other people - all of them wearing "Furries" avatars. And the one guy... is awkward and seems insecure, unconfident... but also... like... typical of the kind of misfit nerds that have ALWAYS existed in online communities. The guys who say inappropriate things, that try a little too hard, that try to be funny and don't quite get it. Just sitting there listening to their conversation for 10 minutes or so... I was picking this up. And people love to go, "You can't know all these things..." 

Having been involved with online communities and the kind of people attracted to these since 1986... yeah... I absolutely can. Today I was picking up a breakfast burrito from a local place and a guy walked in, wearing steel toe boots, rugged jeans, a vest over a T-shirt... shaved head, beared... and he could NOT stand still. Shifting constantly from one foot to the other as he waited for his order. Pa

So, I've quoted you mostly so I can reference your original post and jog my memory to hit your points. I agree with you on many levels. You're not wrong about any of this. 

On the other hand - MiniPutt absolutely had the best aspects of what made Wii-Sports such a killer-app for the Nintendo Wii. It is an engaging, authentic feeling casual sport simulation. Wii Bowling was really the *killer* app that sold that console and the WiiMote - and there is a genuine evolution from the Wii, its avatars, and that sports collection to this VR world and the reason something as simple as Mini Putt golf is the potential killer VR app. It also goes all the way back to why the 2 Player COMBAT game was the perfect original pack-in game for the Atari 2600. It made two people sit down and compete. Atari got this with their 4 player games from the start. They wanted video games to be a family-night replacement for board games. It was something they maintained for long after it became clear that video gaming was

Wed Mar 02 2022 11:15:51 EST from zelgomer

Growing up in the 90s I was fascinated with these virtual worlds. I played Active Worlds and some graphical but mostly-social MUDs. Every time I would try a new one, before too long I would realize how shallow it was. Eventually I grew out of it, probably because I reached an age where I could do more in real life than I could in imaginary life, but I've since reflected back on it and concluded that there is just no good way to do it.

I think that these things only appeal to demographics that want to compete socially. If what you wanted was to play mini golf, there are better ways to do that. If what you wanted was to decorate a house, there are better ways to do that. I think that is part of the reason why you see the cliques and the social marginalization of others. In that world, that IS the game.


I also don't get the "your avatar can be whatver you want" aspect. Do people really want to play mini golf with a mechanized furry and a giant Chuckie fro

So... I've been checking out VRChat... to see what it is all about. 

I mean... it is a logical extension of where this all started, right? It is just a wrapper on the same kind of telecommunications that The Source and CompuServe were offering in the late 70s. Citadel is part of it. Lonely and bored? Use your computer to find a community of people to form a tribe with. So... I feel like a lot of people... probably a lot of people on this BBS... are kind of shitting on this technology without remembering that SOMETHING drove them to hook up a 300baud modem to an 8 bit computer, load a dialer, find a computer magazine with a BBS list at the back, and plug in a number and start talking to strangers 30-40 years ago. 

It is actually what Citadel wanted to be at Citadel's genesis... a bunch of *worlds* full of rooms that you can go into and meet strangers and have adventures in. Citadel is a failed, primitive attempt to create a metaverse. 


But.. there are problems with

So i guess we still some physical servers in our datacenter ( not vm-hosts, "real" servers )

One went down this morning and some stuff in the email thread:

"thanks to security team we were able to get it running.. Since it was a physical box we had to either drive in or use the DRAC which requires a client that only works with Java6, which is not allowed on any computers now.  Except one old dedicated desktop that is in the data center, that you RDP into, to get to the DRAC client to get to a server console.. "

How convoluted. and stupid sounding..   If true, it sounds like we are WAY overdue for an upgrade of that.

I think they trace back to the early 80s even. I remember being surprised about it, and that i had not heard of them back then. When i was using eproms as sort of programmable logic to replace discrete gates in several projects, i would have flipped if i knew about FPGAs.

Sun Feb 27 2022 11:37:44 AM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Xilinx has been around forever. I remember seeing products that were little more than a big Xilinx FPGA and some supporting components (like a CSU/DSU back in the 90's)

So i guess AMD just closed the deal on xilinx.  And since Intel already absorbed altera,  no more independent ( large ) players in FPGA at this point. 

That is too bad. 

So as some of you might remember, 2 or 3 months ago i pre-ordered a 'usable' RISC V board.  Been waiting. Finally got notice late last night it shipped, and had a USPS tracking number.  'yay'

Went to sign up for notices this morning, and damned thing has already left HK and is in north America. Its now sitting in Ontario..  arrrrgh!

its why i always kept mine 'light'  and didnt worry too much about OT discussions. 

Hell, we only really need a Lobby - by that logic. :) 

I mean... there are easily over 100 rooms here. I bet more than 80% of them haven't had a new message in months. 


This has ALWAYS been the Citadel dilemma - though.  "We need the rooms to be on-topic... that needs its own topic... it doesn't really belong here..." 


Creates room. Topic dies. 

Months later - topic comes back up... lasts a few days... dies again... 

Months later, topic comes back up, but the focus is slightly different - someone creates new room that is dedicated to slightly different topic. Eventually Aides or Sysop realize that there was already a room appropriate to topic. Moves all messages to original room, deletes new room. User logs on, bitches, "why did one of the Aides delete my room?!?" 

Wash, rinse, repeat... call it Citadelphia. 

And not saying i'm an expert here and only been dabbling in 3D since the early 90s, ( anyone remember rayshade? ) but i am looking at Gadot.. Unreal Engine ( which is freaking unreal what it does ) is free to use up to a dollar amount of revenue, but not opensoruce. Unity, last i heard was commercial?

For the 3 of us? :)

Wed Feb 16 2022 12:23:17 AM EST from ParanoidDelusions

You need a VR/3D/CGI room. 

You need a VR/3D/CGI room. 

I'm pretty sure that VR is going to be the singularity... maybe the combination of VR and sentient AI - which I just saw speculation that AI might already be sentient. I didn't read the article... but the premise I saw seemed plausible. 


Anyhow... 

I've been playing with CGI for a while now - but the driving sims are what convinced me that in the right use model - VR *is* a game changer. It isn't just a gimmick like 3D TV and movies were. 

So, to that end, I've been checking out the early VR offerings - and they tie into things like Poser and Daz3d... CGI 3D rendering and animation... but really - Blender seems to be the most versatile of these kind of programs. 

Unfortunately - it also has a Photoshop level learning curve - maybe worse. I bought several courses, but was struggling with all of them and getting started... and I finally found a course - for free, on Youtube - that is getting me the fundamentals. So

Anyhow... bringing this back to hardware - I've been learning on my 5th gen Surface Pro i7 and it has been doing remarkably well with the Intel built in HD graphics... but I was starting to hit a wall. 

I've got an old i5 with a GTX 750 card in it... and just moved Blender over there... and it is a lot faster with renders - which is what I was hoping. DAZ3D is very Nvidia IRAY oriented - Blender is less GPU specific - but having a decent gaming GPU does make a difference. I have a couple of graphic workstations too with modern RTX cards (a GTX 1080 and a RTX 2080 in one, and a RTX 3080 in the other)... but I use those for gaming and graphic arts... and I'd rather keep Blender on something else until I am sure it is going to become part of my toolkit. But at this point, I'm pretty sure it will. 

But - I do wonder what Blender runs like on something like the Pi 400+... or a Mac M1... 

Blender being so cross platform - if I'm right about VR - could actually make Linux far more viable for a lot more users/creators/developers. 

Mine are blue, technically a gaming keyboard but no stupid back light..  Took one to work and everyone bitched about it. 

I have 2 M100 IBM keyboards in the garage that i think about converting to usb every so often..   never do start that project.

Doesn't everyone love the feel of a real cherry switch under their fingers?

Some of you like mechanical keyboards:  New Logitech mechanical keyboards are conservative in looks and price

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/logitech-debuts-simple-sub-100-mechanical-keyboards/

i saw that today too, and its the same chip + peripherals so basically the same thing bit a bit more $ than the one i got ( that i have yet had time to make boot. Stupid U-Boot )

I honestly dont worry about the 'made in china' risk.  Its no more or less risky than getting Intel or AMD here in the states, who we know have had stuff embedded for decades. ( vpro ). To me its a wash, as anything other than FPGA is compromised at some level.  And, CCP dont really care about me.. NSA, might.

Besides, if one is really paranoid, just watch traffic. Block it. 

Mon Jan 17 2022 06:17:24 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Is this a different RISC-V computer than the one previously mentioned?

[ https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-alternative-mango-pi-risc-v-sbc ]

The "
"mango pi" is RISC-V based and appears to be positioned in the same space as the Raspberry Pi Zero.

It has an "Allwinner D1" SoC so I have to assume that the system is fully integrated with Red China, so it's not something you'd put in a privacy-focused homebrew computer. Apparently, however, RISC-V support in Linux is moving into the mainline kernel, so that's good news.

If you are into such a thing, lenovo, 10" Chromebook $325 off. 

99 bucks, no keyboard.  ( and ya i ordered one.   dont need it but hard to pass up that sort of deal )

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/lenovo/lenovo-edu-chromebooks/lenovo-10e-chromebook-tablet/82am0002us?orgRef=https%253A%252F%252Frd.bizrate.com%252F&cid=us:cse:qza7ob&source=connexity&channel=cse&adcampaign=CSE_Connexity&cnxclid=16417541580478272958210080301008005&szredirectid=16417541580478272958210080301008005

Figures, my little RiscV board i was mentioning above will be here in a couple of days.  Then this is announced:

https://shop.allnetchina.cn/collections/starfive/products/starfive-visionfive-ai-single-board-computer

After using it for a full day, not so sure its an improvement from my i7 in 'real world' use.  I can 'tell' its faster but nothing real tangible. 

Now, moving from the original i5 it had, ya, definite impact.

Finally got around to replacing that i5 with a xeon in that spare lenovo tiny that i pulled out of my farm as a guinea pig.

A good 2x the speed, for ~ 100 bucks.  Its now faster than the i7 i have been using.  Enough it 'feels' faster and not just 'stats'.

Still on the low end, but seems like its complete enough for it to function.  Would be in older RPI territory i imagine.

https://liliputing.com/2021/12/this-5-dock-turns-the-17-sipeed-lichee-rv-into-a-fully-functional-risc-v-computer.html

Ordered 2 of them. 

Should be the same board as i was mentioning above :) 

Anything you buy is pre-compromised. Be it china, UK, USA.. 

Fri Dec 03 2021 04:57:24 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Looks like RISC-V is making a bit of a resurgence. Here's a cheap chinesium SBC whose manufacturer is declaring it the successor to the BeagleBoard:

[ https://www.techradar.com/news/a-risc-v-raspberry-pi-rival-is-about-to-hit-the-market ]

Although I'm not sure what good it does to have a fully open architecture if the board and chip are both made in communist china. Almost guaranteed to be pre-compromised.

Welp, that is the end of that.  Too bad. I suspect in the long run it would have been a good thing, due to the money NVIDIA has behind it.  Hard to say of course, as it could have ended bad for ARM IP holders, but wont ever know now now it was going to end for everyone.

I wonder if NVIDIA will switch to RISC-V instead, and create an proprietary IP set extension as F-U to regulators on both sides of the pond.  Then we all lose.

https://www.eetimes.com/ftc-tosses-monkey-wrench-into-nvidia-arm-deal/

Note its doing it under *full* emulation..   

Cool here too..  If i didnt already have a Jetson NX, id be getting one of these.  Reasonably priced desktop class ARM machine..

https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/11/23/phytium-d2000-armv8-mini-pc-runs-linux-supports-gaming-with-box64-emulator/

Not from Beagle, but the board may still come out.  That is a good thing.  Proliferation of cheap boards in the RPI/ARM marketspace should help with future mainstream adoption of RISC-V, outside of IoT.  

At least until governments realize they cant mandate backdoors on the chips and even outlaw its verilog...

https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/11/27/visionfive-v1-risc-v-linux-sbc-resurrects-beaglev-single-board-computer/

Im not going to get into the first batch, like i did the 'first' phonephone, but next year i will get a GA version.

IF its as i suspect, it could be both portable and desktop. Sure, it wont be eating Intel i5s for lunch, but that Rockchip CPU they are using is more than enough for a lower end desktop, especially since most people only need a browser these days.  Not all i agree, but most.

I dont have an i3 anymore to do a fair 1:1 comparison, but my RK's "feel" about the same to me as my old I3 using onboard video. The i3 i had, i blew up.. had a usb crytpo miner attached to it catch fire ( literally, 5" flames out the back of it )  and burn everything but the ram and SSD. even the CPU was gone. 

That same chip is in a few Chromebooks too. ( one of mine is running it. the one i carry daily ). 

There are people on eBay who care a lot. 

Mon Oct 18 2021 06:49:55 EDT from Nurb432

There is almost no one around here that cares now. 

There is almost no one around here that cares now. 

Yup, to all of this.

Byte and glossy Atari ST magazines have significant value in retro-communities. Don't just dump those.

Sun Oct 17 2021 10:56:34 EDT from Nurb432

More cleanup/purge today.

On the back cover of book " We predict in 10 years, computers will be the size of a TV set". Book was from the mid 70s.  They missed the mark, thinking in straight lines, not curves.

Bunch of old Byte, and glossy Atari ST magazines, back when you got a disk taped to the cover.   Times have changed so much.       ( anyone remember getting the little flexible plastic 'records' in magazines, and sometimes with cereal boxes? )

 

 

More cleanup/purge today.

On the back cover of book " We predict in 10 years, computers will be the size of a TV set". Book was from the mid 70s.  They missed the mark, thinking in straight lines, not curves.

Bunch of old Byte, and glossy Atari ST magazines, back when you got a disk taped to the cover.   Times have changed so much.       ( anyone remember getting the little flexible plastic 'records' in magazines, and sometimes with cereal boxes? )

Dammit Dammit Dammit  I dont need another phone..  Just got a new one last month.   They included an RK3399, i like that chip. have several things running it here.  ***fers just want my money :P

https://www.pine64.org/pinephonepro

Well, this is encouraging. linus ( the canadian tech guy, not torvalds ) just dropped nearly 250 grand to buy stock in them. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxbc1IN9Gg

Ya, the newt is too important to toss like those old phones and commodity tablets.  Was just surprised to run across it. 

The calculators were borderline special ( HP 32E, 41CV, 48G.  They took me from early high school thru college to my first job ) but they are not all that uncommon, and they did go to someone, not a dumpster. 

Do not get rid of the Newton. 

Send it to me before you send it to e-recycling or a thrift store. 

Sat Sep 18 2021 10:21:25 EDT from Nurb432

oooo my newton..   ( ya, technically ancient hardware but its part of this weekends purge )

 

Took down about 30 books down to local book reseller to get rid of yesterday, This round was mostly o'reilly books and a couple of doctor who books. "gtfo, we dont want them, but we will shred them for you".  No, ill donate them. 

oooo my newton..   ( ya, technically ancient hardware but its part of this weekends purge )

Took down about 30 books down to local book reseller to get rid of yesterday, This round was mostly o'reilly books and a couple of doctor who books. "gtfo, we dont want them, but we will shred them for you".  No, ill donate them. 

Going thru stuff again today, tossed about 5 old cell phones and 2 tablets ( none are worth donating, wont talk to current networks  ).  Old hard drive ipod was in that box too.  memories.  My sansa was in last week's box, now in the trash.

Ran across a tablet i forgot i had.  Glasses free 3D.  Had a lenticular display of some sort. Was not 'practical' but was neat. Trying to charge it now, see if it still works.

Neat. Not that GPU projects for risc v is new but this one is getting a lot of traction it seems and a CUDA port, well that is cool.

https://www.tomshardware.com/amp/news/risc-v-runs-cuda

I think this was mentioned somewhere else, i lose track sometimes in the rooms.

Reading more, this could be a mess for the future of ARM after-all.  A huge part of the market is the cheaper Chinese chips. If they really have lost access to future ISAs that means either the chips will become obsolete quickly, or they will venture out on their own and extend the ARM ISA, and no longer be compatible. Not sure if other Chinese companies can/allowed to work with ARM UK directly, or if it all funnels thru the Chinese ARM company that is in the middle of this mess. 

And throw in NVIDIA, they get holding a shorter stick than they had before. 

what a cluster-F

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326447-arm-china-seizes-ip-relaunches-as-an-independent-company

That's the right idea, now if they could only get all laptop manufacturers to agree on a form factor, like we have on desktop computers.

Interchangeable parts are always a good idea.  You'd think they'd want to do the "eco-friendly" thing and stop forcing consumers to throw away laptop computers when 60% of the machine is still perfectly good.   Then again ... Apple is still making iMacs.

Not quite to the level we would all want, but was updating the m.2 in my PinebookPro today, decided to take a picture.  ( finally found one that will fit properly. its so thin many bulge the case.  )

It is modular. Their intent is to offer new mainboards as time goes on. 

2099274258@Uncensored

Forgot there was a company who tried this before, even their 'CPU' was on a PCMICA card you shoved into the side of the device, like a modem, but it was the 'brains' instead.

Wonderful idea, but they didnt survive long. 

Agreed, it was a shame they used a 'traditional' MB form factor.

From the videos and stuff i have seen you can fairly easily remove it for upgrades, or architecture swaps for people like me, but making it a "module" you shove in the back like their USBC modules do would have been even better. 

Not the first attempt at something like this, but looks like they have a good chance.  If they make it to ARM and RISC-V support, i might just have to get one as that means they are going to be around a while.

But, they need to market and get some retailers involved.. i ran across this just by chance. 

https://frame.work/

when you want to rysnc ~400gb across 2 usb devices.  Be sure you plug BOTH into a USB3 port, not just one, if you want it to finish in your lifetime..    ( idiot )

Sort of funny to think. Here i am doing an update on an SBC that cost under 150 bucks that has more 'power' than one could even dream of having perhaps 20 years ago. Its got a 2 GB OS update today, and dont even blink an eye.

Some days its the little things.

Cool.  Pine64 released their watch.  Cheap too. 

https://pine64.com/product-category/pinetime-smartwatch/?v=0446c16e2e66

Don't underestimate brilliant marketing and dumb luck. 

Thu Apr 15 2021 15:49:55 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

That's ok, I know this company in Armonk that designed a personal computer that was so awful compared to its competitors that it became the industry standard design for all computers for decades to come.

Or smart people in other fields they dont understand.

Tho they had their faults EDS ( in the old days ) had that right.  They had you 'live' with the customers a while before you were allowed to do anything of any value.

Tue Apr 13 2021 14:09:33 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

*thumbs up*

Developers are often too smart to design things that work well for dumb, or even average people - 

*thumbs up*

Developers are often too smart to design things that work well for dumb, or even average people - and they've got short tempers for people who aren't smart enough to see how much superior the way they DID design it is, if you're smart enough to understand it conceptually. 



 

Tue Apr 13 2021 11:43:03 EDT from Nurb432

When i worked at ford back in the early 90s they had a plant floor system that people used on the assembly lines on a daily basis.  To avoid the problem most dev teams have ( siting in a cube thinking they do good stuff ) they had teams made up of both dev people AND people from the floor.  Really wonderful and usable stuff came out of a process when you include the actual users up front in the requirement and design phases. And to keep from getting stale, they would rotate people on/off the floor every 6 months or so, and move dev guys to different plants. 

After i left, i heard that to cut costs they dropped the co-op program and went back to isolated developers ( in another sate, perhaps country, i donno ) and the results were dismal. In a matter of months, everyone hated the system and started destroying the floor terminals again. Not traditional terminals, but dedicated use, huge NEMA style weather sealed cabinets that used touch screens. The first thing i noticed is now they required keyboards and mouse ( in a manufacturing plant..wtf ).  complexity of use went thru the roof.

When i worked at ford back in the early 90s they had a plant floor system that people used on the assembly lines on a daily basis.  To avoid the problem most dev teams have ( siting in a cube thinking they do good stuff ) they had teams made up of both dev people AND people from the floor.  Really wonderful and usable stuff came out of a process when you include the actual users up front in the requirement and design phases. And to keep from getting stale, they would rotate people on/off the floor every 6 months or so, and move dev guys to different plants. 

After i left, i heard that to cut costs they dropped the co-op program and went back to isolated developers ( in another sate, perhaps country, i donno ) and the results were dismal. In a matter of months, everyone hated the system and started destroying the floor terminals again. Not traditional terminals, but dedicated use, huge NEMA style weather sealed cabinets that used touch screens. The first thing i noticed is now they required keyboards and mouse ( in a manufacturing plant..wtf ).  complexity of use went thru the roof.

I think Ig makes the mistake that a lot of software developers make. 

"It is EASIER for the developers means it is better for the end users." 

Which is hardly EVER the actual case. Especially in the long run. It may start out that way - but eventually it turns into, "what is better for the developers is best, and the end users are locked in, so screw them." 



And the lock-in angle is another actual example of that. 

 It tends to cause the ebb and flow. Here is the deal - eventually these web based solutions are going to make mistakes and businesses and individuals are going to seek alternatives. More than that - offering a local alternative is going to be a market opportunity for some group of developers against an incumbent. Someone will INNOVATE and use local use as a value add to compete with using server side deployment. 

Nurb didn't even have to try hard to come up with one of the major liabilities of distributed computing and so

Tue Apr 13 2021 10:04:24 EDT from Nurb432

You forgot the lock-in angle too.

"you now get to pay, forever, to access your stuff"  Renting software out is far more profitable than selling it. And when you can hold their data hostage, even the better.

Tue Apr 13 2021 09:28:22 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

We don't put applications behind the glass because they run better there.
We do it because distributing software to all of its users and keeping every installation maintained is a gigantic nuisance.

Some things just run better locally. Games, graphics processing, video processing, stuff that needs high power and low latency, if you can get your own computer running it, it's just better.

But your ordinary information-based applications ... those are never coming back to the desktop. They shouldn't. They ran better centrally before the personal computing revolution, they run better centrally now, and it simply works better.

 

You forgot the lock-in angle too.

"you now get to pay, forever, to access your stuff"  Renting software out is far more profitable than selling it. And when you can hold their data hostage, even the better.

Tue Apr 13 2021 09:28:22 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

We don't put applications behind the glass because they run better there.
We do it because distributing software to all of its users and keeping every installation maintained is a gigantic nuisance.

Some things just run better locally. Games, graphics processing, video processing, stuff that needs high power and low latency, if you can get your own computer running it, it's just better.

But your ordinary information-based applications ... those are never coming back to the desktop. They shouldn't. They ran better centrally before the personal computing revolution, they run better centrally now, and it simply works better.

And we've been watching this ebb and flow for what... 60 years now. It should be obvious now... thin-client vs. local computing is like a tide going in and out. You may think thin client is winning NOW, and you may DIE thinking it won... 

But the tide will go back out - and the power of local computing will come in on the next tide... it is clearly cyclic. 

I don't think so. 

Most real work doesn't get done in the browser. The same problems that applied to thin-computing way back when that Oracle CEO was promoting it as "The Next Big Thing" apply today. 

Whatever you can do on your REMOTE computer that is WORTH doing... I can do better, faster and cheaper on my LOCAL computer. Inevitably. It is the same reason FPGA is superior to Software Emulation, regardless of the theory of tuning machines and enough cycles making it impossible to tell. It is the same reason that deep fakes are still detectable because they can't overcome the uncanny valley. The more abstraction layers between the immediate reality and the virtualized one - the cloud, the hardware abstraction layer, the CGI animated embedded face... the less *satisfying* the end experience is. The less convincing it is. The more distant it feels. 

You can't overcome that paradox. 

If I want "good enough", sure, I can edit a movie or design a 3D printed STL o

Mon Apr 12 2021 14:57:30 EDTfrom IGnatius T Foobar

They certainly won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory.

The real "browser war" was not between Netscape's browser and Microsoft's browser. It was the browser as a platform vs. Windows as a platform. The browser won, it won decisively, and it won big. Netscape unfortunately died in battle.

And that's ok, because all of the Netscape people I've met or read on the Internet have been monumental assholes.

I donno, if THEY did, but the idea did .. 

Mon Apr 12 2021 09:07:58 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

They know what we all know: desktop computing is in decline. Netscape won.

Here is the thing. 

Apple's hold on graphic arts has slipped tremendously in the last several years - in part because they didn't refresh their systems with current GPUs... and that the Surface actually gained significant traction in this market with their pen, which made the Surface an inexpensive and very decent graphic workstation compared to Macs and the Wacom Cintiq. A lot of artists who were dedicated Mac users have jumped ship because of this. My daughter and I are both currently pursuing general art degrees. The instructors, the students, and professional artists all consider Apple to have seriously dropped the ball. The move to ARM concerns them even more. They do not have the unquestioned lock in with graphic artists and they lost the 3D art market a long time ago. 

The ARM thing is responsible, as you note - for limited uptake. We all know the issues with Apple on ARM - including not being able to run *any* alternate OS on it, not least of all Linux. 

It is a

Sat Apr 10 2021 13:27:04 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

At this point it's pretty clear that Apple can build Macs with whatever hardware they want to. This will be their third transition to an incompatible architecture.
They know how to make the transition, and they know that their developers and users will follow along.

Who cares? People buy Apple hardware to run Apple software. It makes no difference anywhere else. That's why Apple can get away with it but Microsoft can't. Windows on ARM continues to have limited uptake. Consumers are aware that if you can't run the existing library of Wintel software, you might as well be on a Mac or Linux or Android or whatever.

That doesn't mean they won't ever change it. What it does mean is that it doesn't make that much of a difference anymore.

And I'm ok with that. Linux is the fabric of standard computing and it runs on everything.

Or something out of left field, like commodore or Atari ( i doubt apple could have done it. they are mostly followers, not leaders. sure they most often improve on things and 'commoditize' them for the masses but they dont drive the boat normally. Even this ARM thing, others did it first.. )..   All it would take is the marketing power of one of those 2, the right timing, and an open enough system to have been 'it'.

But alas, it happened as it did. so its all conjecture at this point.

( and yes, i was a cp/m fan )

Sat Apr 10 2021 13:22:36 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

But if that had happened, some other standard would have emerged, and we'd end up in largely the same place we are today. It might have been MSX, or more likely it would have been further convergence onto CP/M and eventually some sort of Unix running on the same hardware.

Meh. The move to PPC from Motorola made sense - and they had solid backwards support with OS X universal throughout the process. This is a much more jarring, sudden switch when a lot more rides on the cross compatibility. 

I think they are superficially similar - but the nuts and bolts are far different. They're counting on the idea that most business is web based, and that Microsoft is going to lose dominance - that the OS won't matter. 

I think they're premature. A lot of critical applications run locally - and there are huge trust issues with having particular apps running on someone else's computer - that are probably only going to grow. 

They don't have Steve Job's crystal ball. He was prescient in understanding how to be where the game was going to be, and that created difficulty for Apple - and even with Jobs, they weren't always right. For example - Firewire. They were too far ahead on that - and by the time it really became something meaningful, not only had th

Fri Apr 09 2021 14:41:02 EDT from Nurb432

Many said that when they dropped PPC.. 'this is the end of apple" and even i thought it was a bad move, dropping a much technological superior architecture and alienating their current app base..   After a few bumps along the way, and years past, hardly anyone even remembers the transition... For a company thinking long term that has the cash to weather the change, a couple of years of headache = nothing.          ( i did not feel the same when they went from 68x to PPC, not much choice if they wanted to still compete. Painful, but necessary )

I still feel ARM is the future of the desktop, just like it is now for mobile.. Wont be an easy transition for many, but Apple will have a head start.. 

 

( and i really hate giving modern Apple any credit )

Fri Apr 09 2021 11:19:10 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I think the M1 chip and the move away from Intel is Apple's Windows 8.

 

They abandoned Windows/RT but not ARM.  Win10 ( not WinIoT but the real one ) runs on some ARM machines now.   RPI being one of them.    Lenovo is making a Win10 ARM laptop too.  ( and someone else too, i forget who at the moment )

Fri Apr 09 2021 16:10:00 EDT from LoanShark

I still feel ARM is the future of the desktop, just like it is now
for mobile.. Wont be an easy transition for many, but Apple will have
a head start.. 

eh, did MS abandon the ARM-based Surface?

Many said that when they dropped PPC.. 'this is the end of apple" and even i thought it was a bad move, dropping a much technological superior architecture and alienating their current app base..   After a few bumps along the way, and years past, hardly anyone even remembers the transition... For a company thinking long term that has the cash to weather the change, a couple of years of headache = nothing.          ( i did not feel the same when they went from 68x to PPC, not much choice if they wanted to still compete. Painful, but necessary )

I still feel ARM is the future of the desktop, just like it is now for mobile.. Wont be an easy transition for many, but Apple will have a head start.. 

( and i really hate giving modern Apple any credit )

Fri Apr 09 2021 11:19:10 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

I think the M1 chip and the move away from Intel is Apple's Windows 8.

Didn't mean it would not happen eventually, just that they did do it. And it was by accident, as if corporate really understood what was going on down there it woudl have been killed off.

Fri Apr 09 2021 09:17:43 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

one thing that IBM accidentally brought to the table, a 'generic'
platform that everyone could 'use'. And why it blossomed.

It would have happened, with or without IBM. The "MSX" standard was an attempt to do so, and it had a lot of success in Asian markets. It would have started to penetrate the US market too, but the ascent of the IBM PC stopped it. Before that, CP/M was the standard.

It might be argued that CP/M did it better; you wrote to the OS layer because you couldn't count on the hardware being standard. MS-DOS (being a copy of CP/M) was supposed to be the same way, but developers discovered that they could make programs run faster by bypassing the OS and writing straight to the hardware.

I'm not going to worry about standard computing going away. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.

I think Apple's magic has diminished - much the same way that BMWs has. All it takes is the media to stop guzzling Apple's juice. 

I read things now about how the modern M series don't have the soul, don't have the connection, the feedback, that classic BMW Ms have - that they don't stand alone - that in fact, there are other cars, even domestic muscle cars, that challenge or exceed the experience of a BMW M now. That absolutely affects the cachet of a brand when in the past they were universally dominant as top ranked as the "ultimate driver's machine." 

And Apple has increasingly had the same buzz increasing about their brand. Openly critical *fans* of the brand saying that they've strayed from iconic things that made the brand head-and-shoulders above any of the competition. 

The M1 chip is divisive - and these huge limitations that further wall the garden are going to make it a tougher sell. Some people, for simply practical purposes, are going to have to either aba

Wed Apr 07 2021 14:04:29 EDT from Nurb432

If *everyone* does it. Wont have much of a choice if you want to push your 'product'.  Sure, right now you can still get generic appliance machines, but with how its going, and the cost barrier vanishing,  may even see it happening in the commodity PC market. Wont be tomorow and still have options for the foreseeable future, but the momentum is growing. First app stores, now this. 30 years ago, who would have thought this would even be a topic?

Related, i think that with all the good things it brings, RISC-V will be instrumental in making that happen.  With no one to stop them, everyone will make their own 'version' with far less risk than in the ARM world. 

 

And as a future prediction I think apple is going to prove that yes, people will, with their M1 chip  Last i heard, there may never be Linux for it ( or any other OSS operating system ). As its going to take reverse engineering for it to work, and if that happens, you risk lawsuits.  Doubt you see native windows either, like you can for the Intel based Apple devices. Even when windows runs fully on ARM  ( its close ) without drivers and permission, its not going to happen.

 

Wed Apr 07 2021 11:01:09 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Won't that just cause a situation where few developers are willing to code for the custom, restricted-use proprietary extensions? 

 

 

If *everyone* does it. Wont have much of a choice if you want to push your 'product'.  Sure, right now you can still get generic appliance machines, but with how its going, and the cost barrier vanishing,  may even see it happening in the commodity PC market. Wont be tomorow and still have options for the foreseeable future, but the momentum is growing. First app stores, now this. 30 years ago, who would have thought this would even be a topic?

Related, i think that with all the good things it brings, RISC-V will be instrumental in making that happen.  With no one to stop them, everyone will make their own 'version' with far less risk than in the ARM world. 

And as a future prediction I think apple is going to prove that yes, people will, with their M1 chip  Last i heard, there may never be Linux for it ( or any other OSS operating system ). As its going to take reverse engineering for it to work, and if that happens, you risk lawsuits.  Doubt you see native windows either, like you can for the Intel based Apple devices. Even when windows runs fully on ARM  ( its close ) without drivers and permission, its not going to happen.

Wed Apr 07 2021 11:01:09 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

Won't that just cause a situation where few developers are willing to code for the custom, restricted-use proprietary extensions? 

 

Won't that just cause a situation where few developers are willing to code for the custom, restricted-use proprietary extensions? 

I mean, we've already seen what happens with this, with Facetime. Sure - Apple has a lot of momentum and people stick with iPhone because of Facetime and the ease of connecting to their Apple contacts. 

But cross-platform open alternatives like WhatsApp have eroded Facetime's dominance - because they'll allow the same things between Samsung, and Google, and LG and Apple users. Facetime loses market share *because* of their walled garden. The Apple guys see all the Android guys doing the same thing, with EVERYONE, on EVERY phone and they go, "Oh... wait... that is actually better. Now I can include my non iPhone friends on my video, VoIP and chat calls..."

But beyond that - It is kind of like car manufacturers having their own engines instead of just all using Ford engines. Maybe someone does come up with something better - on the other hand -

Sun Apr 04 2021 07:44:23 EDT from Nurb432

Great. Even more vendor lock-in on the horizon.

Soon everyone will have t heir own custom chips, with their restricted-use proprietary extensions. Fracture the hardware market, remove options for developers and consumers: "which walled garden do you want to live in". I remember when this was the norm, and that was one thing that IBM accidentally brought to the table, a 'generic' platform that everyone could 'use'. And why it blossomed. Compatibility enabled and shaped the market for decades. We are on the verge of losing this. Killing the golden goose, so to speak.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/2/22364543/google-pixel-6-custom-in-house-processor-gs101-whitechapel-arm-report

oops, that really should have been in hardware i guess.   still techie, but it is chips im talking about.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/2/22364543/google-pixel-6-custom-in-house-processor-gs101-whitechapel-arm-report

Was moving around some boxes today today so drug them out..            Overkill? Can you tell i'm a fan?   :)

All 64bit arm : 4 - RK3399s 2  - 4G Jetson Nanos, A Jetson NX  and a Jetson TX1

2 of the RKs used to be my servers. One has a 2TB m.2 and was my main file serer, the other was running 'services' like openvpn, tor, citadel, guacamole, etc.   Great little boxes. 

The loose board on top, a RockPI 4c  must be one of the worst designed dev boards i have ever seen.  CPU is on the bottom, ( thus the huge heat sink ) making it really tough to stuck a fan on it. .and the m.2 slot points OUTWARDS from the side.. so your ssd sticks out the side of the thing unless you use some sort of adapter with a cable to wrap it back under the board. Sure its a a 'dev board' but makes it really hard to use it in a product, or even in a safe manner. Does have replaceable emmc, and thought it was going to be a less costly alternative for the other RKs back when they were still servers. But no, due to the stupid design and needing extra parts, no dice. 

Of course my Pinebook pro is a RK3399, really fond of that chip. Even if it does a run a bit warm. 

And ya that is the Rocinante sitting there, begging to be painted...

4671506@Uncensored

If you are a RISC-V fan.. this is affordable.   I will get a gen2 when they have a separate GPU.

https://beagleboard.org/beaglev

Random thought:

Back at one of the plants i worked in we had 'stack lights' as we called t hem. A bank of colored lights that told skilled trades ion the area they had work to do.   That way they didnt have to sit and stare a a computer waiting for work. Blue = electrician, yellow = millwright, etc. They would see their light, know there is work to do and head on into the maintenance room to see what was up and grab their ticket off the printer there. And where it was quiet enough to talk to plan..

( pagers didnt work in the area due to all the steel, and it was pre smartphone )

Perhaps something like that, out of view of most but where your guys can see. With timers set to flash them. Each color means something else for the set. Good use for a battery powered RPI or something.

No, it was great. But, i have always been a HUGE fan of Frank, and a fan of Dweezil.  Moon and Ahmet, not so much.

Just that they had Frank on the overhead behind them doing his piece, while they played the songs along with him.  So there had to be some sort of timing coordination going on.   Not every song, but several. 

With Frank it was obvious about coordinating the band as he "conducted" them ( sometimes overly with a baton, other times not so noticeable to the audience ).  But Dweezil doesn't do that, or at least not that i could tell. Possible there were visual cues i was missing out on due to just enjoying been there, or they may have been hidden from view.

Sun Mar 14 2021 13:12:45 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Not that it maters, but ever seen Zappa plays Zappa?

Is it as bad as Natalie Cole?

Not that it maters, but ever seen Zappa plays Zappa? they did something like that. Unsure how they did the sync tho.   But ill ask my uncle,     I'm sure it already exists. 

Nothing else a simple video editor and do it manually. Insert X at certain points where no one notices but them, like they used to do to warn the film jockeys in theaters a reel change was coming up.

Ah, well you can still get drivers from after they move on to newer and better.  Just if windows ever changes versions again, might have a problem then. 

I dont know enough from your description, but i can ask my uncle. hes a professional musician.. 

Sat Mar 13 2021 21:01:02 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

For what it is worth, Nvidia is recommended against by the OpenBSD
team because they suck as a company. Official nvidia modules are

I believe you. Doesn't matter though, because I'm going to run Windows on this machine.

It's going to be a cool project, actually. Without giving too much away, it's a project involving a retro cover band that will play in front of an immersive video wall. Some of it will be slide-show type stuff, but there will be video clips in the wall as well, and even some live video (crowd shots) if I can work that in.

My biggest problem to solve is that the band will *not* play to a click track to stay in sync with the video, so it has to be built in a way that can handle "cues" at specific points in each song. I'm actually thinking about using PowerPoint, unless any of you geniuses know of something more purpose-built for that kind of thing.

I'll bet I could even train PowerPoint to deliver cues to a lighting board, which would be great because that would eliminate the need to have another person at every show.

A few of the 23 bit dust collectors, that got obsoleted over time and replaced with higher power stuff.  Sad really. 

( most them are not PIs, just PI cases. )

Fri Mar 12 2021 13:43:25 EST from Nurb432

lol ruin. 

Fri Mar 12 2021 14:28:58 EST from Nurb432

I have a couple of 1650s in one machine, but never tried to ruin all 3 ports at once.  ( they were for mining until the DAG hit 4g... so really the ports didnt even matter to me. )

 

Figured that he would want something newish tho.  Thus my list. 

Fri Mar 12 2021 14:04:38 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I have a GTX 1080 and an RTX 2080 GPU in my i7. 

https://www.amazon.com/rtx-2080/s?k=rtx+2080

It sounds like something in the RTX range is what you're wanting. 

 

I have a couple of 1650s in one machine, but never tried to ruin all 3 ports at once.  ( they were for mining until the DAG hit 4g... so really the ports didnt even matter to me. )

Figured that he would want something newish tho.  Thus my list. 

Fri Mar 12 2021 14:04:38 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I have a GTX 1080 and an RTX 2080 GPU in my i7. 

https://www.amazon.com/rtx-2080/s?k=rtx+2080

It sounds like something in the RTX range is what you're wanting. 

I have a GTX 1080 and an RTX 2080 GPU in my i7. 

https://www.amazon.com/rtx-2080/s?k=rtx+2080

It sounds like something in the RTX range is what you're wanting. 

Should have said 'newish' arm. Last couple of years or newer.

I do have old 32 BIt arm in a box in a closet. Collecting dust.

Fri Mar 12 2021 13:35:27 EST from Nurb432

All arm hardware i have is running 64bit..  I cant be *that* much ahead of the curve.

Fri Mar 12 2021 13:18:34 EST from LoanShark

2021-03-10 10:00 from IGnatius T Foobar
Thanks :)

Linux on ARM is in a weird place right now, because the most common
operating system -- Raspberry Pi OS -- is still shipping as a 32-bit

How much longer will it be the most common?

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/

 

Sounds about right :) 

Fri Mar 12 2021 13:31:38 EST from LoanShark

2021-03-12 12:07 from Nurb432
To be fair, there are a LOT of things they dont recommend.

Like, actually using your computer. You're supposed to just sit around and admire how secure it is ;)

All arm hardware i have is running 64bit..  I cant be *that* much ahead of the curve.

Fri Mar 12 2021 13:18:34 EST from LoanShark

2021-03-10 10:00 from IGnatius T Foobar
Thanks :)

Linux on ARM is in a weird place right now, because the most common
operating system -- Raspberry Pi OS -- is still shipping as a 32-bit

How much longer will it be the most common?

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/

To be fair, there are a LOT of things they dont recommend.

Some of it for security and technical reasons, some of it for political.  Theo is a nutcase, remember.

Fri Mar 12 2021 10:21:52 EST from darknetuser

Nvidia is recommended against by the OpenBSD team

Yes there are risks for ANY hardware you choose. However not too long after a card comes out, OSS drivers do appear, and by the time a card is sunsetted the OSS drivers have improved and are fine. So you are not as screwed as it sounds. 

As far as i'm concerned tho, for GPU power no one else comes close, so if you care more about performance, you go with them. If you are more worried about long(er) term native support, then go with someone else.

Fri Mar 12 2021 10:21:52 EST from darknetuser

2021-03-11 13:15 from IGnatius T Foobar

High end NVIDIA should do that

I am not a PC gamer. What does that mean?

For what it is worth, Nvidia is recommended against by the OpenBSD team because they suck as a company. Official nvidia modules are tightly integrated to your kernel and GUI stack. When Nvidia decides to pull support from your stack or kernel (which is not that rare if you are a poor darknetuser in a screwed up country) then the graphic card is useless.

Example:

You buy card A and install Nvidia's official modules. A year later, you upgrade your distro and install the next official Nvidia modules. YOu upgrade once per year in this phashion until one day Nvidia comes and tells you that your card is no longer being served drivers for modern distributions.

So at that point you either have to get a modern card or you have to stop updating and keep using an old unmaintained distribution with that particular set of hardware.

And then somebody pops up and tells you it is your fault for not upgrading. Sorry man, if I could have more than 30 bucks in my bank accou

I have not done it so i cant tell you how pull it off from experience, but others have.  I'm not sure if you can emulate things like their GPU or WIFI, and instead ifs going to be generic peripherals i bet, but you dont care about that anyway. 

A quick search came up with this, and it seems simple enough.   https://azeria-labs.com/emulate-raspberry-pi-with-qemu/

Here are the current cards with approx prices ( and rankings, which you dont care about so much ). Id check budget then check on detail specs of which ever card they can afford. 

https://www.cgdirector.com/nvidia-graphics-cards-order-performance/

Thu Mar 11 2021 13:15:01 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

High end NVIDIA should do that 

I am not a PC gamer. What does that mean?

its a pi3, right?  ( i assume the 4 does too but not touched a 4 ) Just have 2 SD cards, one for a 32 build and one for a 64. ( even its a 3rd party OS )  Don't need another machine that way.

OR ( people do this for dev work i know )  Take your x86 and run QEMU with 2 ARM VMs..   Then you have instant snapshots if you hose it.  Wont be running Raspbian, but Armbian is pretty standard these days

Thu Mar 11 2021 13:14:44 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Pretty sure you can get 64bit OS 3rd party, for the PI4 at least.

You can -- and in fact there is a 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS in development, but it seems that they don't plan to release it for a while yet. And that's the problem. As some of you know, I have taken an interest in binary distribution of Linux software using the AppImage format. And you know that my software uses a nonportable on-disk data format that turns into binary sludge if you try to use it on an architecture other than the one that wrote it to disk.

x86 is easy. The move to 64-bit has been completed by just about everyone, and I can easily say "to use this package you have to be on a 64-bit machine, c'mon man, it's the current year". Any cave-dwellers who are still running their production systems on 32-bit (like ME) have to get with the times.

ARM is not so easy, because we're in the beginning stages of the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit. So my choices are:

1. Run my build machine in 32-bit mode, release 32-bit binaries, and force everyone to run the

High end NVIDIA should do that 

Wed Mar 10 2021 15:04:47 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

On a completely different note, I have found myself in a position where I need to spec a computer for a video presentation project. Who here knows their SuperMegaDoomDestroyer video cards?

I need to figure out what kind of video card to put in a machine that is expected to drive video playback on three (3) Full HD (1920x1080) monitors.
I know, that's a lot of power but I'm spending someone else's money :)

Pretty sure you can get 64bit OS 3rd party, for the PI4 at least.

Wed Mar 10 2021 10:00:47 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Thanks :)

Linux on ARM is in a weird place right now, because the most common operating system -- Raspberry Pi OS -- is still shipping as a 32-bit OS. We're in that weird space right now where you can ship 32-bit software "to be safe" but all the new machines are 64-bit.

I think x86 has passed that phase, for the most part. Just about everyone is running 64-bit, and we're at the point where it's safe to drop 32-bit support most of the time. I like that. I won't have to build multiple sets of binaries, and I won't have to deal with the Year 2038 problem.

It is interesting to wonder when, or if, 128-bit architectures will appear (not in weird places, but in mainstream tech). A 64-bit architecture can address 16 EB (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes). That's enough address space to memory-map the largest databases. Obviously we can't say "never" (the worst person in the world famously said "640K ought to be enough for anybody") but if a move to 128-b

worst case ill ship you a nano or something :)

Cool, if that ever changes just yell.

Tue Mar 09 2021 14:23:48 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Never thought abut it, but hey IG: if you ever need access to arm
machines to test on,  let me know and ill stick a Jetson or

Thanks for the offer. I'm good on ARM hardware for now, PD sent me an RPi 3 that I've been using to test those builds.

that should have said "latest citadel update"...

I know works already, and i have done it myself, but seeing the update just made me think of this :) 

Tue Mar 09 2021 12:56:40 EST from Nurb432

Noticed the blurb about ARM support in latest citadel.

Never thought abut it, but hey IG: if you ever need access to arm machines to test on,  let me know and ill stick a Jetson or something on Guacamole and give you an account. 

Noticed the blurb about ARM support in latest citadel.

Never thought abut it, but hey IG: if you ever need access to arm machines to test on,  let me know and ill stick a Jetson or something on Guacamole and give you an account. 

Tue Mar 02 2021 07:02:45 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

When you buy from Amazon, you're buying from HITLER!

You are correct, the cancel culture says so!
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56266514
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56266514

And supporting the destruction of countless acres of farmland for their damned warehouses.  They are destroying the town just beside me faster than you can blink. Its disgusting. They ran out a 3 generation fruit farm this last fall.  I think they are up to 5 or 6 buildings now. 

Tue Mar 02 2021 19:02:45 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

When you buy from Amazon, you're buying from HITLER!

lol fake libertarians

Thu Feb 25 2021 01:43:54 PM EST from nonservator

lol imagine calling Amazon a free market

How did Amazon get so big?  People chose to shop there.  No one forced people to buy online instead of the local store.  The government didn't force Amazon on us.

I believe you are right. 

Fri Feb 26 2021 08:40:52 EST from Nurb432

I'm thinking they are a Kroger subsidiary now. 

Thu Feb 25 2021 23:59:50 EST from ParanoidDelusions

Fry's is a Grocery Store and the Electronics giant in Phoenix. They're the same family. Two brothers. They're estranged. The one went out to San Jose and started the electronics store. They use almost the same font for their logos. It is confusing - but they're not related as merchants. 

 

 

I'm thinking they are a Kroger subsidiary now. 

Thu Feb 25 2021 23:59:50 EST from ParanoidDelusions

Fry's is a Grocery Store and the Electronics giant in Phoenix. They're the same family. Two brothers. They're estranged. The one went out to San Jose and started the electronics store. They use almost the same font for their logos. It is confusing - but they're not related as merchants. 

 

Ah, so it was a buy-out not a rename. They did seem like the same sort of store, so it made sense it was just a name change.   I olny went back once, long after the name change and after i saw the prices compared to their own online prices, and still remembering how i was treated before, i bailed and went down to the east side of town to a real electronic supplier, and paid 1/2 their price ( i needed cable to run in an office at the last minute ).  Fool me once.         The other store closed up couple of years ago. Some 40 years in business. Sad day.  

Not been to Microcenter in person, but driven past once on my way back home from a meeting in Cinci.  Looked like a good sized building, but i was flying past on i74 and didnt feel like stopping just to window shop. Bought some filament from them for my printer a few times, mail order.

Incredible Universe was a different gig. They were owned by Tandy, I think. CompUSA was a big box competitor at the time, too - and all basically fought in the same space. Best Buy came along and went, "let's make this a little more upscale. We'll charge more, but our Blueshirts will at least be friendly - and we won't carry no-name Chinese shit." 

When Incredible Universe failed, Fry's bought a lot of their stores. 

On your coast, if you've been to Micro Center - that is pretty much like Fry's computer department, except Fry's is huge and sells soda, has a snack bar, has aisles of general electronics gear, weird toys... a record section, exercise gear, drones... shavers and personal groomers, massage chairs... it IS a geek wonderland - and there won't be any place like it once it is gone. 

Fry's is a Grocery Store and the Electronics giant in Phoenix. They're the same family. Two brothers. They're estranged. The one went out to San Jose and started the electronics stor

Thu Feb 25 2021 18:11:32 EST from Nurb432

I know i mentioned it before, but they were the ones that sold me the wrong, old crusty video card that was broke in 1/2 and was shrink wrapped. i think anyway. The place was called 'incredible universe' at the time, but years later the sign changed to Fry.   Donno if it was the same company or just the same building/concept.

Bezos has gotten a bunch of small business men to work at his beck and call, as his unpaid employees - and gotten them to take on all the liabilities. 

If you can come up with a better idea - a lot of them would be willing to make you as rich as Bezos, too. 

Thu Feb 25 2021 18:11:52 EST from Nurb432

That was my thought too

Thu Feb 25 2021 13:43:54 EST from nonservator

lol imagine calling Amazon a free market

 

That was my thought too

Thu Feb 25 2021 13:43:54 EST from nonservator

lol imagine calling Amazon a free market

I know i mentioned it before, but they were the ones that sold me the wrong, old crusty video card that was broke in 1/2 and was shrink wrapped. i think anyway. The place was called 'incredible universe' at the time, but years later the sign changed to Fry.   Donno if it was the same company or just the same building/concept.

Their open box returns were notorious, their return process was a hassle. Their sales guys were hostile *and* uninformed. 

It was kind of like an Easter Egg hunt trying to figure out where the great sale item might be hidden in the store. 

Amazon offered all the cheap - with far fewer of the hassles. 

And Fry's drove out Mom and Pops tech stores when they arrived. 

Fry's spent a lot of time murdering themselves. 

Part of the problem was they made a reputation for selling cheap, gray market Chinese crap for CHEAP. I once bought a pair of headphones from Fry's, thought they were a wonderful price for Sony... got all the way home and realized they were "Coby". 

lol imagine calling Amazon a free market

The one here felt more like a larger best buy, with more selection.  But often times their online prices weer WAY lower.  Buyer beware.  

I wonder if they will keep their online presence. Or if the entire company is folding. 

Thu Feb 25 2021 09:21:47 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Not sure where to post this, but I suppose some of you have already heard ...

Fry's Electronics is closing all of its stores. Another retail icon murdered in cold blood by Amazon.

I've heard wonderful things about Fry's but as a northeasterner I've never been to one. And now I suppose I never will.

And yes, i'm a sucker.  the 7.8" color reader is on its way.

/me kicks himself.  Now its time to sell off a couple of my other ones to recoup some of the frivolous spending of late.   ( not that spending an extra 350 is going to make a difference, but i'm trying not to totally waste money out of principle )

Thu Feb 25 2021 09:21:47 AM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Fry's Electronics is closing all of its stores. Another retail icon lost to the FREE MARKET.

FTFY

I am sure I purchased my first HD (720p) video camera from them, online purchase.

For me, i dont like reading on LCD, it wears out my eyes after enough time with the constant glow. E-ink is a world of difference. Its a totally different technology.  I was a super early adopter.  However, until now if i needed color, LCD was it.  Now there is a widely availble option. ( previous attempts at color a few years ago, was mostly in Russia, and was not very good )

Note that not all use android. PB for example is their own OS.  But, its a reader, not a tablet replacement of any kind so i dont see that being a big deal.  I hear people complain all the time " refresh rate is too slow .. bla bla.   cant watch a video"  um, no, you cant, to buy a tablet instead and watch your cat videos.. 

For writing, you can get various screen protectors with different textures. 

( and i still think its funny i was trying to make what became e-eink, back in the 80s..   using static electricity to move ink droplets around to make a display..  same basic concept . another missed boat for me :) )

Mon Feb 22 2021 08:48:05 EST from DutchessMike

I took a look - they are interesting devices, and, as the prices fall, my interest rises.  My Galaxy Tab is overkill for taking notes and reading ePUB books.  This could be a lighter, more energy-efficient way of reading on a larger (than my phones) device without needing a full-blown mobile OS (even though they do use Android) and a 5G connection.  Note-taking, depending on how the screen feels and the application they use, could be a better experience.  I find that the softer screens that these e-ink devices use are easier to write on (for me).

I took a look - they are interesting devices, and, as the prices fall, my interest rises.  My Galaxy Tab is overkill for taking notes and reading ePUB books.  This could be a lighter, more energy-efficient way of reading on a larger (than my phones) device without needing a full-blown mobile OS (even though they do use Android) and a 5G connection.  Note-taking, depending on how the screen feels and the application they use, could be a better experience.  I find that the softer screens that these e-ink devices use are easier to write on (for me).

Figures.. Gen 2 screen @ 7.9" just came out.  and only $330... 

Oh, im sure it was. sex sells. Even when it makes no sense to associate it to a product.  But being who i am i didnt even notice the actual content, i just noticed the colors.. tech first :)    But then i noticed the price..  arrgh.     I guess there is now an 8" version. Which i think for most things the best size, but its 500+   

Perhaps in a generation or 2 the price would be justifiable, but having a 6", the Gen 1 color devices have a use case, but are not quite ready to replace a grey scale ink device for general use.  

Sun Feb 07 2021 09:40:15 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I think most of that was intentional. 

 

Sat Feb 06 2021 10:52:55 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Yeah, they should have chosen anything other than Cosmopolitan as the sample image.

 

I think most of that was intentional. 

Sat Feb 06 2021 10:52:55 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Yeah, they should have chosen anything other than Cosmopolitan as the sample image.

lol

Sat Jan 23 2021 06:23:09 EST from zooer

I looked at that page, saw "SEX POLL" as "SEX DOLL", thought the product was a Britney Spears sex doll and wondered why you were looking that up.

I looked at that page, saw "SEX POLL" as "SEX DOLL", thought the product was a Britney Spears sex doll and wondered why you were looking that up.

Arrgh. 1k is a bit steep.  

https://goodereader.com/blog/product/bigme-b1-pro-color-e-ink-10-3-inch-e-note-with-free-case

Con artists are always running cons. 

Thu Jan 14 2021 09:58:57 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

Heh.  Reminds me of a gift I received some number of years ago, an immersion blender that was purchased at Target.  When I opened it up, what came out was someone's old broken appliance that had been put into the box and resealed.  The person who gave me the gift was horrified, and then had to go to the store and explain that this really happened.  (Fortunately the store accepted the story.)

Heh.  Reminds me of a gift I received some number of years ago, an immersion blender that was purchased at Target.  When I opened it up, what came out was someone's old broken appliance that had been put into the box and resealed.  The person who gave me the gift was horrified, and then had to go to the store and explain that this really happened.  (Fortunately the store accepted the story.)

I'm not really an EE background - but as soon as my friend described, "It is called a Field Programmable Gate Array, it recreates the circuit logic at the hardware level," I knew it was probably going to be good. I understand that is basically what emulation is trying to do in a virtual machine abstraction layer - but you know how I feel about bare metal. ;) 

The more I've learned about it - the more it makes sense - for example, it is creating all the discreet subsystems and running them in parallel, where emulation uses brute force to run them sequentially so fast you shouldn't notice. Either can achieve cycle accuracy, theoretically - but there will always be inherent bottlenecks with emulation.

Tue Jan 12 2021 19:13:49 EST from Nurb432

Coming from an EE background, i love FPGA. I tried in a way to emulate them ( before they existed ) using EPROMS and truth tables. I was doing a lot of bread boarding, and thinking...

Coming from an EE background, i love FPGA. I tried in a way to emulate them ( before they existed ) using EPROMS and truth tables. I was doing a lot of bread boarding, and thinking, why am i doing this the hard way? its all predicable logic, i can do that with a look up table.. hey, an EProm does that..*ding* the light came on. Sure may take more than one to get the 'width' but i build the board once. .change it as i need on the fly. Perhaps not as fast, but fast enough.

An FPGA i can get for under 10 bucks now that is basically throw away, id have killed for back in the 80s..

Absolutely true. I am guilty of also tossing items that I now regret. It has made me afraid to toss anything. :) 

Worse thing I ever dumped was a nearly complete collection of 1st edition, red-stripe hotwheels in pretty good condition. Some of those go for tens of thousands of dollars now, and even in beat up condition, have a couple of zeros after their asking price. 

Some boyfriend of my sister who was a kid in the 60s gave them to me, and I in turn sold them to someone at a garage sale for $50 in 1987. 

FPGA is currently making a lot of retro hardware collectors dump their original hardware. FPGA is really, really good. 

Tue Jan 12 2021 16:19:46 EST from Nurb432

this was also 20 years ago, an apple ][ was not worth stripping and hoping the parts were ok. 

Today, might be a different case. Tomorrow, might not matter too. 

Tue Jan 12 2021 15:26:43 EST from ParanoidDelusions

 

this was also 20 years ago, an apple ][ was not worth stripping and hoping the parts were ok. 

Today, might be a different case. Tomorrow, might not matter too. 

Tue Jan 12 2021 15:26:43 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I understand too - but seriously - people have gotten to the point where they'll buy busted out systems with cracked cases and missing keycaps, *just* for the plungers or parts that might be salvageable. 
I suppose it has become kind of like an automotive junkyard - where a thing that has been out and rusting in the elements for 40 years might still have value, just because it is a place to START on building a replacement part to even have a bad ORIGINAL part... 

The only system that hasn't had much interest and still goes bargain priced seems to be the TI 99 4/A... They're easy to come by. 

 

Tue Jan 12 2021 13:50:23 EST from Nurb432

Right, but this stuff was no where near that. Sad to see them destroyed, but a dime a dozen. 

 

I understand too - but seriously - people have gotten to the point where they'll buy busted out systems with cracked cases and missing keycaps, *just* for the plungers or parts that might be salvageable. 
I suppose it has become kind of like an automotive junkyard - where a thing that has been out and rusting in the elements for 40 years might still have value, just because it is a place to START on building a replacement part to even have a bad ORIGINAL part... 

The only system that hasn't had much interest and still goes bargain priced seems to be the TI 99 4/A... They're easy to come by. 

Tue Jan 12 2021 13:50:23 EST from Nurb432

Right, but this stuff was no where near that. Sad to see them destroyed, but a dime a dozen. 

 

Right, but this stuff was no where near that. Sad to see them destroyed, but a dime a dozen. 

Tue Jan 12 2021 10:38:03 EST from ParanoidDelusions

High end later Amiga systems have been going recently for as much as $3000.

 

High end later Amiga systems have been going recently for as much as $3000.

A complete Commodore 64 system with a couple drives and display can bring in $400.

My Amiga systems will sell all day at $700.

Prices are insane. It is part of these kids getting into the hobby - but also, supply is very spare, now.

And I think a lot of the folks who restore the systems do it as a hobby - not really for a profit motive. Maybe a passion too... you should look at some of the "restored this C128 found in the skip," type videos. So... the challenge - I guess.

Tue Jan 12 2021 07:48:30 EST from Nurb432

 

While i agree in concept that 'anything can be done in theory', even if they could be brought back to life, the value/cost ratio would have made it ludicrous.  its not like it was skids of Altair 8080's or something.  

 

Mon Jan 11 2021 19:01:33 EST from ParanoidDelusions

 

As a whole, we are talking about rusted off traces, cracked plastic ( water soaked freeze/thaw cycles ) and a lot were caked solid with acidic barn poo. They spent at least one winter out there, most likely several. And no clue if any of it was working before it was auctioned off anyway... The auction must have been a decade or 2 after they were retired.,

While i agree in concept that 'anything can be done in theory', even if they could be brought back to life, the value/cost ratio would have made it ludicrous.  its not like it was skids of Altair 8080's or something.  

Mon Jan 11 2021 19:01:33 EST from ParanoidDelusions

Dead stuff will still sell today - or at least, you'll find someone who fixes it. These guys repair multi-layer circuitboards with surface mounted components that were originally placed with a pic-n-pull placer, these days. There are YouTube tutorials on how to learn how to do it, and I swear, these guys - the way you talk, you can tell some of them don't actually know what they're doing, they're just following along with tutorials. Some of the guys who fix this stuff are experts, though.

 

Mon Jan 11 2021 13:49:31 EST from Nurb432

Sad day really, several ][C+, some GS, even some laser clones.   All trashed. And hundreds more in the barn im sure. several skids worth. The 2 monitors they pulled out of the side building were ok. 

 

 

Dead stuff will still sell today - or at least, you'll find someone who fixes it. These guys repair multi-layer circuitboards with surface mounted components that were originally placed with a pic-n-pull placer, these days. There are YouTube tutorials on how to learn how to do it, and I swear, these guys - the way you talk, you can tell some of them don't actually know what they're doing, they're just following along with tutorials. Some of the guys who fix this stuff are experts, though.

Mon Jan 11 2021 13:49:31 EST from Nurb432

Sad day really, several ][C+, some GS, even some laser clones.   All trashed. And hundreds more in the barn im sure. several skids worth. The 2 monitors they pulled out of the side building were ok. 

 

 

LOL

When i was still collecting i had 2 story telling events: ( both a good 20 years ago now )

Guy on one of the usenet groups i was in decided to do a dump, sort of like i did later. " first one to call, gets it all" ( bunch of apple ][ stuff ). I was of course it. Was in another state, 3 hour drive.  Was 2/3 of the way there, thinking, WTF am i doing.. driving to some dudes house on my own out in the idle of Kentucky some where..  Of course i was armed.. but still.   Turned out well. Nice area, and ended up with a car load full stuff, real nice guy. Retired school teacher.

Another was on a YT "freecycle" list, some people had got some skids from a local school auction and was giving it all away. Local this time, just across the state. Turned out to be WAY in the boonies. drove up, chickens in yard, goat in the driveway i had to wait on, the works. ( not judging, i like farmer types. just setting the stage ).  I get there and out of the blue these 3 late teenage country girls show up with a look on their face " look, its a man "..  Really nice and friendly people.  Felt bad for them when they announced, 'we had these in the barn"... yep all totally ruined as it was an *active* barn and open to elements too.  "we have a couple of those tv screen things in this building over here" .  Girl opened the window, hopped in and waked across the acres of 'stuff' in the building, and handed me a couple of RBG monitors.  I still filled up the van with stuff making it look like more than it was, "well, i'm full, but i really appreciate this" and it totally made their day. Grinning

On the way home, swung by the dump and car wash.

Sad day really, several ][C+, some GS, even some laser clones.   All trashed. And hundreds more in the barn im sure. several skids worth. The 2 monitors they pulled out of the side building were ok. 

Mon Jan 11 2021 12:51:40 EST from ParanoidDelusions

So... the Pi 400 is kind of a homage to classic retro computing - and lends itself to modern platforms being used to relive classic retro computing experiences - without the hassles of - you know... meeting some dude with BO and a beard in a parking lot to complete a Craigslist sale for 30 year old computer equipment that might not work, and could possibly introduce vermin into your home. :)  

 

 

 

How about this... 

It is taking a fuel injection kit and wrapping it up in the aesthetics of a 4 barrel carb so that your engine LOOKS classic while delivering better performance. Sometimes those "gimmick things" work. Other times, they're fail - like the sound cards that used fake "tubes" that were aimed at audiophiles but were really just a cheap attempt to cash in on "steam punk" aesthetics. 

It is about aesthetics. It is a retro-inspired aesthetic. It is the superficial finish of a theme park that aims to convince you you're in the Andes or the Himalayans or the Amazon Basin, even though you're in a drained swamp in the middle of Florida. 

That is why all the modern pony cars have lines that take aesthetics from the classic muscle of the 60s and 70s. They're typically not remotely like the original cars as far as engineering goes. They're using lighter metals, they've got crumple zones, they've got advanced electronics and ODBC-II and computer controlled timing and

Mon Jan 11 2021 10:23:26 EST from Nurb432

Inspired by ill agree with you. but its still modern hardware. 

Since you used the car analogy ( i do often ) its like comparing a 4bbl carb to direct injection.. Sure, both are supplying fuel, but its hard to compare the two.

 

Back OT tho, the pinebooks are sort of like that 400 ( + screen ) as they use socketed RK somm modules. much as the PI uses the A-whatever 'compute module' ( A7? ). I forget who tried that first, a laptop with a user upgradable module. It didnt last long tho. might have been PCMCIA based, i really dont remember now.  Its too bad there is no standard connection for all these modules.  Then you could chose your 'box' then decide what CPU/GPU/Ram/etc you need for your particular project.  But i know, that is silly talk, 'universal hardware' cant lock you into a particular vendor.

Sort of like the friendlyarm modules i have. same form factor as NVIDIA jetson, but NOT the pin-out. Would be a great 'instant upgrade' path for a project. 

 

Mon Jan 11 2021 10:07:50 EST from ParanoidDelusions

No. The "All-in-One" format is a "retro design" though that hasn't been common. All the modern All-in-One machines put the brains in the LCD and still have a detachable keyboard.

The Pi400 is Retro the same way a modern Camero is retro - the design cues are retro. If you put a modern Amiga distro like AmigaPi on it, where it boots up into a Workbench Amiga and hides all the Linux - you've got a "modern classic Amiga," in a design aesthetic that reinforces the illusion.

At $100... opening it reminded me of the Timex Sinclair that used to sell at the grocery store for $100 that had 4k of RAM that I wanted so badly around 1980. Except, the Pi 400 has far better quality components and cost the absolute same in 2020 dollars as he Sinclair cost in 1980 dollars. Adjusted for the 1980s, the Pi 400 is a $20 computer.

with 4GB of RAM and a quad core processor and 16GB of storage default. But there is a legacy, a heritage, a history back to that machine that is clear... and cool.<

 

Mon Jan 11 2021 07:53:03 EST from Nurb432

And i agree old/new is becoming a blur for 'using' but PI type hardware isn't retro..

Sun Jan 10 2021 20:40:34 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I suppose shrink wrap doesn't really mean anything though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by ill agree with you. but its still modern hardware. 

Since you used the car analogy ( i do often ) its like comparing a 4bbl carb to direct injection.. Sure, both are supplying fuel, but its hard to compare the two.

Back OT tho, the pinebooks are sort of like that 400 ( + screen ) as they use socketed RK somm modules. much as the PI uses the A-whatever 'compute module' ( A7? ). I forget who tried that first, a laptop with a user upgradable module. It didnt last long tho. might have been PCMCIA based, i really dont remember now.  Its too bad there is no standard connection for all these modules.  Then you could chose your 'box' then decide what CPU/GPU/Ram/etc you need for your particular project.  But i know, that is silly talk, 'universal hardware' cant lock you into a particular vendor.

Sort of like the friendlyarm modules i have. same form factor as NVIDIA jetson, but NOT the pin-out. Would be a great 'instant upgrade' path for a project. 

Mon Jan 11 2021 10:07:50 EST from ParanoidDelusions

No. The "All-in-One" format is a "retro design" though that hasn't been common. All the modern All-in-One machines put the brains in the LCD and still have a detachable keyboard.

The Pi400 is Retro the same way a modern Camero is retro - the design cues are retro. If you put a modern Amiga distro like AmigaPi on it, where it boots up into a Workbench Amiga and hides all the Linux - you've got a "modern classic Amiga," in a design aesthetic that reinforces the illusion.

At $100... opening it reminded me of the Timex Sinclair that used to sell at the grocery store for $100 that had 4k of RAM that I wanted so badly around 1980. Except, the Pi 400 has far better quality components and cost the absolute same in 2020 dollars as he Sinclair cost in 1980 dollars. Adjusted for the 1980s, the Pi 400 is a $20 computer.

with 4GB of RAM and a quad core processor and 16GB of storage default. But there is a legacy, a heritage, a history back to that machine that is clear... and cool.<

 

Mon Jan 11 2021 07:53:03 EST from Nurb432

And i agree old/new is becoming a blur for 'using' but PI type hardware isn't retro..

Sun Jan 10 2021 20:40:34 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I suppose shrink wrap doesn't really mean anything though.

 

 

 

I've got one. ;)

Mon Jan 11 2021 08:03:56 EST from zooer

Shrink wrap machine's cost less than $100, very cheap.

No. The "All-in-One" format is a "retro design" though that hasn't been common. All the modern All-in-One machines put the brains in the LCD and still have a detachable keyboard.

The Pi400 is Retro the same way a modern Camero is retro - the design cues are retro. If you put a modern Amiga distro like AmigaPi on it, where it boots up into a Workbench Amiga and hides all the Linux - you've got a "modern classic Amiga," in a design aesthetic that reinforces the illusion.

At $100... opening it reminded me of the Timex Sinclair that used to sell at the grocery store for $100 that had 4k of RAM that I wanted so badly around 1980. Except, the Pi 400 has far better quality components and cost the absolute same in 2020 dollars as he Sinclair cost in 1980 dollars. Adjusted for the 1980s, the Pi 400 is a $20 computer.

with 4GB of RAM and a quad core processor and 16GB of storage default. But there is a legacy, a heritage, a history back to that machine that is clear... and cool.<

Mon Jan 11 2021 07:53:03 EST from Nurb432

And i agree old/new is becoming a blur for 'using' but PI type hardware isn't retro..

Sun Jan 10 2021 20:40:34 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I suppose shrink wrap doesn't really mean anything though.

 

 

Shrink wrap machine's cost less than $100, very cheap.

Back in the early 90s i saved up for a new VESA video card ( the dark days for me, I had made a bad career/life decision and had not yet crawled out of the hole i dug, ( and freaking jumped into it, head first ) and went to the closest 'incredible universe', about an hour away  ( later to become Fry's ) 

Was in shrinkrwap with vendor stickers on it. 

Got home, it was broken in 1/2, covered in dirt and dust and all the packing removed but taped to the box so it wouldn't rattle. They said i was trying to pull a fast one on them, no proof, and I had to threaten to sue them to get a refund.   From then on, i used credit cards for everything. 

And i agree old/new is becoming a blur for 'using' but PI type hardware isn't retro..

Sun Jan 10 2021 20:40:34 EST from ParanoidDelusions

I suppose shrink wrap doesn't really mean anything though.

 

And from a security perspective, it comes in an open box, no shrink wrap, easy to open, with an SD card preloaded with an OS on it.

These devices are an NSA wet dream.

"Hook it right up to your network and turn it on. Trust us."

I suppose shrink wrap doesn't really mean anything though.

Too tried to even really open it up and set it up, though.

So I just have it sitting here mocking me.

4644708@Uncensored

My Pi400 arrived today. Not sure how it beat your Pi 3B+ to you - but UPS says it should be arriving tomorrow. I did give it to a sketchy looking guy in a Budget Truck with a UPS sticker slapped on the side as he dropped a package off at my house - and he didn't scan it in, give me any receipt. After I watched it drive off I thought, "That guy is going to open that package, look at it, and throw it in the trash..."

But it looks like it'll get there... So you'll have lots of toys to play with this week.

Me too. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. Probably put RetroPi on it, or an Amiga emulation distro...

I feel like this is one of those devices, Eventually there is going to be some project for it that I want to try, and it will be after they're all sold out, and they'll be scalping them on eBay.

For $115 shipped... I'm sure I'll figure something out to do with it.

I think I'm in line for a Vampire V4 standalone too. That is 575 Euro. That is a little bit steeper for something to have just because I don't want to NOT have it once it is out of production... But... I think I might jump on that, too.

Hard to say if these posts belong here or in ancient computing. Modern hardware doing ancient computing.

:)

wow, i had totally forgot i had a sansa for a while. Looked like one of these, had like 16gb intenral i think, and some sort of mSD card i stuck in there ( forget the size ).  I liked the interface it had.  When i switched to using my phone i missed the simple 'wheel' ( actually, i did like the iPod interface too, just the rest of the apple ecosystem i hated ).  That was after the apple, and before phone.

Sat Dec 19 2020 08:23:50 AM EST from Nurb432

My beef was 5 or 6 CDs didnt go far, unless you made them yourself.  And if i remember right, mine refused to read CDr disks so no way to filter out the 'fluff' tracks wasting space.

I will agree with this, I had a single CD player along with CD storage attached to my visor.  I was swapping CDs far too often and board with the CDs I had.
Currently, I have a Sandisk sport plugged into the AUX port of my car stereo, it has MP3 player has 1,600 songs on it.  It seems to pick the same songs frequently in shuffle mode.

I used Sony mini disks for a long time too.  Before phones had enough storage. Went from the Sony to a Palm T/X + memory card for a bit, but I did end up with a Gen3 iPod, purely due to the storage size. I hated the iTunes nonsense, tho i did find a 3rd party tool to load it. And having to use their stupid fire-wire power pack if you ever reset it.. Really apple?   

Trying to do something similar in the late 80s with 'direct synth of music' using wave tables and such ( which never did work out.. not practical given the hardware of the day ) made me an early adopter of mp3, i wish i had kept my first gen RIO, with the DB25 parallel port cable.  Worthless now of course but neat to have in the 'retro junk box'.. it would hold an entire CD on a 'tiny flash card', some what mind blowing for a person that grew up with 8" floppies and tape.. Sure not same quality level as a cd ( we already comprised going from analog to digital anyway ) but a more than acceptable trade off for no moving parts, and battery life. And i could see eventually getting larger cards so you could carry around several CDs worth of music at once ( never dreamed of TB cards tho...  )

I bought all my CDs tho.. i still do. i like to support the artists. ( and since they are indi, they get most of the $ )

Back when tech was still fun and not just 'yet another toaster'. I miss those days. That was around the time i got burnt out, it was becoming a 'commercialized drag'. 

Sat Dec 19 2020 12:40:38 EST from ParanoidDelusions

Yeah, the quest to get your entire MP3 collection from USENET into your car was a thing between 1994 and whenever Creative and Apple came out with the iPod and Xen Jukebox and changed everything. 

 

Sat Dec 19 2020 08:23:50 EST from Nurb432

Or bodies.

 

My beef was 5 or 6 CDs didnt go far, unless you made them yourself.  And if i remember right, mine refused to read CDr disks so no way to filter out the 'fluff' tracks wasting space.

One car i had ( dont remember which, or if it was even an OEM stereo ) would read music on a DVDr.  4gb of music was plenty to not have to swap it often.

 

Yeah, the quest to get your entire MP3 collection from USENET into your car was a thing between 1994 and whenever Creative and Apple came out with the iPod and Xen Jukebox and changed everything. 

Sat Dec 19 2020 08:23:50 EST from Nurb432

Or bodies.

 

My beef was 5 or 6 CDs didnt go far, unless you made them yourself.  And if i remember right, mine refused to read CDr disks so no way to filter out the 'fluff' tracks wasting space.

One car i had ( dont remember which, or if it was even an OEM stereo ) would read music on a DVDr.  4gb of music was plenty to not have to swap it often.