topic Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago! in BreakPoint

Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

altenbach — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 17:03:20 GMT

On July 1, 2021 the new California energy standards (+ apparently some other states) for computers went into effect, and I just looked at a few fancy rigs and many all had the following disclaimer (this random example from DELL).

I don't think that there are any caps on max power under full load, but the rules require low power draw under idle and standby, etc. I am curious why they are still producing non-compliant models., they had years to find a solution and it should not be too hard. (Just eliminate the greedy loops!)

Of course I will be happy if my next desktop sucks less power on idle. My current one draws ~60W when awake but not doing anything. Seems like a gigantic waste!

What's next? Getting arrested for transporting certain desktops across state lines? 😮

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

AeroSoul — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 06:56:56 GMT

Next step is making your own "bootleg" PC 😄

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

altenbach — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 15:11:22 GMT

@AeroSoul wrote:

Next step is making your own "bootleg" PC 😄

Oh, yes, that was always my first choice and I've done it many times. Nowadays it's so easy, just a few items needed (Case, MB, PS, CPU, cooler, RAM, Video card, SSD) and the rest is plug&play.

I am assuming now that parts still can be shipped anywhere.

Was hard in the early days where everything was discrete and we had many more parts (floppy drive, CDROM, sound card, network card, dip switches, address ranges, interrupts and their conflicts, etc.).

Maybe one of these days I will again build a computer and name it "Moonshine". 😄

If I get stuck, I might find some information in one of my old books! Here is one of them, ~1500pages! Probably nothing useful today...

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

altenbach — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 15:15:24 GMT

This was a clever commercial back then! Anyone old enough to remember?

Dad, what's a dip?

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

Hooovahh — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 19:54:33 GMT

@altenbach wrote:

This was a clever commercial back then! Anyone old enough to remember?

Never seen it, but wasn't Widows 95 hyped for its multi media capabilities? The installer came with 3D games including Hover, and Weezer had a music video on the install CD. Also a special port of Doom called Doom 95 with various enhancements was hyped with Microsoft support. And I'm pretty sure ours came with Encarta 95, an interactive encyclopedia. Seems a pretty odd thing to criticize.

Also I enjoy building modern computers.

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

altenbach — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 21:10:31 GMT

I think the term back then was "plug & pray". Not really sure what he was installing, maybe a SCSI CDROM drive, requiring an interface card. I do remember dip switches everywhere.. I also remember paying about $120 for a 10baseT ISA bus network card.

My AT-MIO-16E-1 DAQ card showed up as two devices in the device manager, because it required more resources than a single device could allocate under windows 95. No dip switches on that one, though. How advanced! 😄

I remember the Weezer video, especially since my 100MHz Pentium 1 system could not play it without stuttering. 😄

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

wiebe@CARYA — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 08:04:10 GMT

@altenbach wrote:
I remember the Weezer video, especially since my 100MHz Pentium 1 system could not play it without stuttering. 😄

Did it not have a Trubo button?

My 4.something MHz could switch to 8.something MHz with a Turbo button... I think it was a good old 8088.

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

Hooovahh — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 13:07:58 GMT

wiebe@CARYA wrote:

Did it not have a Trubo button?

My 4.something MHz could switch to 8.something MHz with a Turbo button... I think it was a good old 8088.

Are you sure you don't have that backwards? I never owned one but I was told the turbo button actually would underclock the CPU, so software that relied on the clock precision would run normally.

Plug and pray was right, the infamous demo with Bill Gates where the PC bluescreens when plugging in a device. Which does remind me of a more modern issue I think we might have with Windows 11 and NI hardware.

Obviously Windows 11 isn't officially out yet, but by all accounts it seems Microsoft is trying to reduce malware, and increase system stability by locking down the OS more and more. Windows 11 will apparently have secure boot features, have a soft requirement for TPM, and a new driver model called Windows Drivers. It seems Windows 11 will still support the current driver model (Windows Desktop Drivers) but it sounds like at some point moving forward the current driver model won't be supported, and hardware that hasn't had an update to the new model will stop working. This is not exclusively an NI problem, but I do wonder if various NI hardware I have which one day will just not work on new machines.

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

wiebe@CARYA — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 13:40:46 GMT

@Hooovahh wrote:

wiebe@CARYA wrote:
Did it not have a Trubo button?

My 4.something MHz could switch to 8.something MHz with a Turbo button... I think it was a good old 8088.

Are you sure you don't have that backwards? I never owned one but I was told the turbo button actually would underclock the CPU, so software that relied on the clock precision would run normally.

Pressing the turbo button would change the LCD display from 4 to 8.

Not sure if the button pressed was turbo on or off. I always thought pressing it enabled it, as the speed would double.

@Hooovahh wrote:
Obviously Windows 11 isn't officially out yet, but by all accounts it seems Microsoft is trying to reduce malware, and increase system stability by locking down the OS more and more.

I hope that includes their own malware.

I didn't have any malware problems on Windows 10, except M$'s own crap.

I will never own an XBox or play candy crush saga. Stop bothering me with it.

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

Hooovahh — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 14:42:45 GMT

wiebe@CARYA wrote:

I didn't have any malware problems on Windows 10, except M$'s own crap.

I will never own an XBox or play candy crush saga. Stop bothering me with it.

Oh I totally get this. ShutUp10 is software I've used in the past for controlling privacy settings, which also disables automatically downloading stuff. It lets you import and export settings and run from a command line. So I made an installer that I install on my test machines that locks down the OS. It shouldn't be necessary but does help.

I've also made installers for having a normal start menu (OpenShell), setting up the environment with showing extension, removing UWP apps, removes IE Icon, installs Chrome, fixes the lock screen, enables RDP, adds My Computer to the desktop, restores the normal image viewer program, Removes OneDrive, sets the background, installs Notepad++, maps network drives, creates secondary users, installs 7-Zip and a various other things. Maybe I should make a blog post about it.

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

altenbach — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 14:44:46 GMT

@Hooovahh wrote:

wiebe@CARYA wrote:

My 4.something MHz could switch to 8.something MHz with a Turbo button... I think it was a good old 8088.

Are you sure you don't have that backwards? I never owned one but I was told the turbo button actually would underclock the CPU, so software that relied on the clock precision would run normally.

Yes the turbo button was typically left on (either in or out, because that was not standardized but there was typically a frequency display for visual feedback), but it's not due to "clock precision" (whatever that means, both speeds were precise 😉 )), but software that only had timing based on clock cycles (instead of a real clock), would run twice as fast as the programmer intended.

Quote from here: "Games in particular were often rendered unplayable".

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

wiebe@CARYA — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 14:57:56 GMT

@Hooovahh wrote:

wiebe@CARYA wrote:

I didn't have any malware problems on Windows 10, except M$'s own crap.

I will never own an XBox or play candy crush saga. Stop bothering me with it.

Oh I totally get this. ShutUp10 is software I've used in the past for controlling privacy settings, which also disables automatically downloading stuff.

ShutUp10, Gold Microsoft Partner 😂.

I might give it a try.

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

Hooovahh — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 16:43:36 GMT

@altenbach wrote:

but it's not due to "clock precision" (whatever that means, both speeds were precise 😉 )), but software that only had timing based on clock cycles (instead of a real clock), would run twice as fast as the programmer intended.

Yeah sorry that's what I meant. Clock precision wasn't the correct term. It had to be precisely 4MHz, and by that I mean not double that, otherwise your character, music, and enemy speed would be too fast.

Re: Should have bought that fancy desktop a couple of weeks ago!

wiebe@CARYA — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 08:17:17 GMT

@Hooovahh wrote:

@altenbach wrote:
but it's not due to "clock precision" (whatever that means, both speeds were precise 😉 )), but software that only had timing based on clock cycles (instead of a real clock), would run twice as fast as the programmer intended.

Yeah sorry that's what I meant. Clock precision wasn't the correct term. It had to be precisely 4MHz, and by that I mean not double that, otherwise your character, music, and enemy speed would be too fast.

Music?

All I had was a speaker that did 'bleep'. Of course we could PWM it to get some 'melody' 🙂.

We could do the same with the 'A' disk drive.

All I did was program, so I usually had the turbo off.