Subj : Lacros To : Ky Moffet From : Barry Martin Date : Sun Aug 27 2023 10:55:00 Hi Ky! > KM> Were those the fanless all-in-one? Have personally seen one of > KM> those catch fire... > So you're indicating they ran a little hot?! Yes, these were all-in- KM> A lot hot. Have seen one catch fire and another that smoked... Which is why havign fire extinguishes handy is a good idea! > ones; I think the power supply was encased in epoxy; maybe the > motherboard -- for heatsink?? Mainly recalling it was a good computer > just not a good fit for me as I liked to go inside and improve/upgrade. KM> From what I hear performance was really not very good, not least KM> because of thermal throttling. I guess it was better than the KM> previous Macs, but that's not saying much. Poor math processing, KM> slow bus, slow hard drive.... I never actually played with one beyond the basics: at the time it seemed like the customers knew they wanted one and sometimes the hardest decision they had was what colour. The only person I knew who had one or at least an Apple was a coworker in the department who mostly used hers for word processing. > > Your 'different inside' comment reminded me of why I never bought a Dell > > computer when I was buying refurbished computers: I never could get a > > detailed answer on what was inside. I don't recall if down to the > KM> Um... open it up and look. :) > Well the problem would be I would need to buy it and then open it up to > see what it was made of. KM> No, no, no, ask the vendor to.... I had thought of that but at the time didn't, or maybe did once or twice but didn't receive a satisfactory answer -- decades ago. I think there was also a timing problem: the 'today-only' sale. ...Who did the 3-hour sales? Item A was 9 to noon, Item B noon to 3... I know a couple of times something I wanted was on sale starting at 8 p.m. my time. > KM> I don't know what they did before about 2000, but I've had > KM> several desktop Dells fall on my head since then. All you need do > KM> is pull on the latch (they have a latched side or top panel, not > KM> screws) and take a look. > Probably right on the easy-opening: I've got some IBMs/Lenovo's here > which do the same: I know one has a single latch-button in the rear of > the top cover which inside connects to a Y-shaped brackets which somehow > opens latches on sides. Most of the others simply have a button on each > side to unlatch. (Maybe the one-button thing was because he broke his > arm and couldn't do two buttons at the same time, or was showing off for > a machanical award!) KM> Hahaha... these have a handle. Very easy. Yup: and some vendors are picked up on that tool-less concept. Sometimes doesn't quite work after a few years: go in to replace and the plastic has become brittle. (I don't recall that kind of a problem with IBM/Lenovo.) > KM> What the mainboard offers depends on which form factor and which > KM> grade. > That was the details I couldn't get (and I'm talking pre-2000 still). > The selling info would say "Dell Model 1234-C" but go to look that up > and I oculd only get to what options it could come with, so might come > with a 240W PSU or a a 750W one or somewhere in-between. Base of 8 GB > RAM, but no indication of expansion possibilities nor available slots. KM> The pre-2000 Dells I'd seen were not very good. All the ones that KM> came thru the User Grope got junked. So I don't think you missed KM> much. In that case that's good! KM> In that era, my observation (from a couple hundred donations that KM> were largely any brand you can name) was that HPs were a little KM> better performing and more stable (as they were built for the KM> business market), but if you wanted a prebuilt that was at all KM> flexible and wasn't complete junk, Gateway was the only way to KM> go. The parts were largely seconds but all pretty standard; once KM> they got to a P-II tower you could upgrade them like any clone KM> system. I have a PII-800 Gateway in the basement... works fine, KM> has 9 slots and all of 'em full of something... just not useful KM> in the modern era, tho it does have a TV capture card. Too bad that capture card is NTSC! (For the non-nerds: NTSC is the old analog TV format; ATSC is the current digital format.) There was a Gateway store locally -- black and white cow splotches on the eiter ouside of the building -- definitely noticed driving by! Building or at least where the Gateway building now is now Fortress Bank: brick and relatively solid/sturdy looking on the outside. KM> So I ended up refurbing the HPs and Gateways, but everything else KM> was stripped for parts. Micron and Packard Smell were such crap KM> they got gutted by default, and I don't think I ever saw a KM> working Dell. I was able to pick up a few HPs, Compaqs, and Packard Bells from the store as the department manager would sometimes give me a pretty decent discount on returned computers. Through very limited personal experience it did seem the PBs weren't all that great -- name probably lasted longer than the computer. > Good news: it's well past 2000 and apparently the information is more > readily available now. KM> Woah! Who would have guessed??! Maybe a lot of complaints and lost sales because of a lack of information?! > Heat can create strange issues! (Tangent) It's been hot and humid here > this week -- air temperatures approaching 100ø (might be a degree or two > over that this afternoon or tomorrow). I've got two Raspberry Pi's in a > closet - both in metal cases with heat sink 'feet' to the motherbaord. > One has a fan, one doesn't. (Built/installed at two different times.) > The one without the fan started acting up lately: the closet isn't that > hot but apparently with lack of circulation... Contactless thermal > probe: yup: fanless case about 10ø hotter than the fan case, plus the > software report of the processor's temperature was 10-15ø warmer on the > fanless one. KM> Well, now you know the limits of Pi heat tolerance.... What's 'funny' is (IIRC) the processor will tolerate to 80øC and it was running about 20ø cooler. Of course just because the ARM processor will run at 80øC doesn't mean the rest of the unit will! Since swapping with the Pi with the case and fan no heat-related issues AFAICT: I have been running a script periodically which probes the Pi's to monitor for various issues. Do have the occasional inconsistent quirk which is spread amongst the Pi's, not restricted the 'new' one with the added fan. > KM> Lightfoot is a Quad-core 3GHz with onboard everything, 3 PCIe and > KM> one PCI slot. 4 RAM slots. It came with some random vidcard along > KM> with the onboard video. It is the cheap consumer model. > > KM> Here's the same board: > KM> https://www.ebay.com/p/98189154 > KM> This is the cheap consumer board, not expected to work hard for a > KM> living. > Poor thing wouldn't last long here! The eBay site didn't have the specs > but took me a couple of clicks to get to a site with specifications. To > me that's acceptable' back in the old days (my pre-2000 buy refurbished) > I couldn't get the to specs. Nice to see they've changed! KM> Yeah, back then if you didn't find it published in an ad or KM> review, you couldn't find it at all. Computer Shopper was our KM> FRIEND! Yup! ...I still keep on the hard drive lots of 'trivia' for my various motherboards/computers/daughtercards/etc.: have found sometimes I was able to find something and then try to refind it later and can't. At least if I have it on the hard drive it's somewhat more restricted as to where to look. KM> Oh, someone is digitizing a whole collection of Computer Shopper KM> mags, what a huge project! KM> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543 Jaw-dropping wow. I've got a legal-page-sized flatbed scanner here and scanning twenty pages seems like an all-day project. OK, so probably closed to an hour but still -- imagine scanning a whole magazine, but first having to disassemble ==> heat gun unglueing. KM> Kind of a shame to cut them up for scanning, but at least they'll KM> be preserved, and available for old fogeys who want to brag about KM> how much we used to spend on computer hardware. Cutting is sort of a requirment else the portion near the center doesn't image properly. Almost not a choice. And as for costs: $2000 for my DEC Rainbow 100 with a whopping 768 MB RAM, the 5¬" floppies cost $50 for a box of ten because they were RX50 format (400 KB instead of 360). A 1 MB hard drive would have cost be just under $1,000. Eventually 'had' to get a UPS because the apartment complex and extended neighbourhood would randomly loose power: bad connection or something somewhere. Power company did actively look for the problem because it didn't make them look good; eventually fixed. Anyway, my 800W UPS cost $800 -- a dollar a watt. People now would look at us like we were out of our minds to pay those prices -- that's what they were. I remember I was working in the computer department of the store and a new (want to say) IBM computer came in -- I scanned the bar code and it came up around $1000 -- can't possibly be right!! Flagged the box, reported it to the department manager: nope: that's the right price. He also made the comment it was going to be impossible to sell the current units because they had so much less power/capabilities and were oriced so much more. > > KM> And I have three Optiplex 9010 minis. This is a compact case that > KM> can sit desktop or tower. These came with i7-3770 CPUs. There is > KM> onboard video but they also came with a fairly decent vidcard > KM> (Radeon R7 350X 4GB). 1-PCIe16 1-PCIe4. 4 RAM slots, max 32GB. > KM> These were designed as business units. > Case is suit-and-tie as opposed to khakis! ...I tend to go for > 'overbuilt' so it will last. I tend to let the parts 'roll downhill": > I'll build myself a brand-new unit for myself, backend -- what was > replaced (eventually) goes to replace the next 'level', that unit > eventually replaces something else.... 'Bottom level' sometimes left as > a spare, sometimes disassembled for parts (extreme example: a Pentium > unit might have a darn good video card which could be used in a > mid-level build). KM> Yeah, if I'm going for an everyday system that I actually spend KM> money on, I want something with future legs. Right. I try to buy/build a system which will be able to take on the future. Might need to add a part or two so let's have some free expansion slots..... KM> But for the one that sits over yonder and plays Youtube vids all KM> day, whatever works is fine. I'm not all that into on-line videos -- nothing wrong with them, just not for me. I have watched how-to's and they've helped make sense of text-based instructions. Have watched some shows and yes even the occasional cute animal video, > KM> I don't know about the mini Optiplex pinout but the PSU is a long > KM> narrow thing like a server PSU. The other drawback is that there > KM> is only room for one 3.5" HD or two 2.5", but it's easy enough to > KM> get to. The larger size Optiplex (there are three sizes, one is > KM> smaller yet) may have a standard PSU and more slots and bays, I > KM> haven't checked. > Yes, I have an older computer which comes in three 'flavours': the one I > have is a 'CMT' -- Convertible Mini Tower ==> upright or flat. Another > version is a slimline -- suppose nice if room is at a premium but a PITA > to easily swap parts -- daughtercards have to be half-height! I've > forgotten what the third option was. KM> This used to be a common thing because business wanted the KM> options. Room was sometimes at a premium. Personally I prefer not to have the slimline version because it restricts me to what's available in short daughtercards. In a business envirnoment I wouldn't care as repair is someone else's problem! Now as for the desktop vs. tower format here - depends on where the computer is being located. Some are in the VCR cubby hole some want desktop format, others I want tower due to space issues. > KM> Well, this is the larger version of the same board: > KM> https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813186233 > KM> main difference is having two PCI slots and more SATA ports. > More is sometimes better, but as Newegg is out of stock doesn't matter! KM> And if I'm going to buy a naked motherboard, it'll be something I KM> can work with. Right. As indicated somewhere above the ability to insert a new part is helpful. I'd rather add a hard drive so have two than copy the contents of the old one to the new one and swap. > KM> The other Repurposed NameBrand Core in my Closet is Fireball, who > KM> started life as a Lenovo Thinkstation S30. This is a very good > KM> quality X79 mainboard that takes a midrange i7 or Xeon. 3-PCIe16, > KM> 1-PCIe4, 1-PCI, 8 RAM slots (192GB max capacity, and can use the > KM> cheaper server RAM) and without opening it up to look I think it > KM> has 6 SATA and 4 SAS ports. However I would strongly recommend > KM> sticking to one that comes with its original case, because this > KM> will save you a lot of swearing as you figure out all the > KM> oddities of the front panel and USB connections (one of which > KM> needs an extra jumper shorted to work properly). > Yup: reminds me of a nice HP (maybe Compaq) case I had gutted and KM> Oh, I forgot, I also have Xorro, formerly Jerry Pournelle's KM> "Regina". Dual Xeon 750MHz, Compaq workstation. Weighs 57 pounds. Bet that one doesn't get moved too often! > updated. Everything was nice until got to the DVD - the original CD > must have had a bracket or something as the DVD had problems with the > opening of the front panel flap, or opened but the try didn't come out > far enough... something. KM> Yeah, that was a big issue with the prebuilt cases. Lots of KM> optical and floppy drives with no faceplate but an integrated KM> slot in the front of the case. Which often meant a weird mount. The good news here is I've been doing less and less with video disks so having the reader/writer built-in has become less of an issue. Do use an external device for the occasional need. > > changed, but at the time turned me off to Dells for personal use: I'm > > not going to buy something if I don't know if I can do the usual > > eventual upgrade. > KM> What sort of upgrade? I looked inside my Dells, saw that they > KM> were already maxed out for CPU, and at a minimal cost I maxed out > KM> the RAM. They are now as upgraded as they get. In this era of > KM> external drives and networked storage, I no longer feel the need > KM> to put six hard drives inside every case. In fact Silver has none > KM> inside the case; they're all in the hotswap bays. :) > LIS this was twenty-thirty years ago and appears the information is > readily available now. Problem is that little bit of secretative soured > my thinking of them as far as purchasing refurbished. Do think they're > good, just not being able to get the information I needed. As noted > somewhere above, appears that has changed. ...OTOH, now I 'roll down' > my motherboards, etc., so not sure I need to buy an entire unit or > motherboard. KM> Yeah, when you've got plenty it's not an issue. The three KM> Optiplex fell on my head (discards from my sister's office) so KM> might as well use 'em. Part of why Lightfoot got sent back to the KM> Closet -- didn't need a quad-core for misc. duties when I had an KM> i7. I've parted a few of the old ones -- what the heck am I going to do with an AGP video card with VGA out?! > KM> I may eventually get Fireball a faster CPU (it has whatever Xeon > KM> was available for $20, or was it $5... wasn't very much), as > KM> what's in it is toward the lower end. However it's > KM> performance-equivalent to Silver (i7-4820k) as it is. It already > KM> has 64GB RAM, filched from the server that's being gradually > KM> gutted for parts. > Upgrading the RAM might be a significant speed increase. RAM plus CPU > might be a Memorex Moment (remember the old ads for the cassette tape > with the guy sitting in front of his speakers and the gale-force wind?!). KM> The ONLY thing that ever reaches above 32GB RAM is Chrome, which KM> is a hog like no other. So 64GB is more than enough. I'd have to KM> actually *shudder* buy 32GB and 16GB sticks to upgrade it to KM> 192GB (it needs to be some weird combo for 8 slots) which KM> presently doesn't seem worthwhile. Tho server RAM is much cheaper KM> than desktop RAM. My MythTV server has 32 GB or RAM and it seems more than sufficient. This computer (the one I'm on now) has 64 GB -- seems to be overkill but wasn't sure how much would be needed by the Virtual Machines -- actually running the VMs on a NVMe worked better. > Running off a SSD will really do an increase! KM> Yeah, would be helpful. For the 'heavy duty' machines I've been running the OS on a SSD and keeping the data on a hard drive. Probably going a bit Old School as seems like would be easier to recover data from metal, or at least keep the OS separate from the 'library' ==> if the SSD/OS has issues I can probably boot from a USB stick and still look at the data drive. KM> Should buy a bunch of small ones for this sort of thing, but KM> lightly used 2.5" WD Blacks are about $5 each on eBay.... (most KM> have under 10k hours and many under 3k hours). Sounds like a plan! > KM> Would have had to tear out metal. The joys of pop rivets. > Sort of reminds me a friend's parents' TV I repaired years ago: they'd > sometimes get a 2" wide picture on the CRT (told ya it was years ago!) - > smack it on the side of the cabinet and usually worked again. I bought > the schematic (probably Sam's Photofact), tracked down the problem to a > bad solder joint. So resolder, right? Suuuure: the joint right under a > metal bar and so couldn't quite get my soldering iron in. Was able to > bend or cut the bar (forgot which), do the resoldering - taa-daa! KM> How to solder: First, get hammer... Just about! Good news: I fixed the TV. :) > > Sort of reminds me of a UPS I have. Decent one still. To replace the > > two batteries take the insides out -- and greeted by a cage securely > > holding the batteries inside and the UPS motherboard on top. > > Essentially there is no way to get to the batteries without taking the > > motherboard apart, which sounds like a simple step but is anything but. > KM> Ugh. > Right. Recall numerous comments on great UPS except for the problem > with replacing batteries. Batteries need to be replaced -- fact. Send > in for replacement -- well, you're either without a UPS during the > repeir or have bought a replacement UPS and so have an extra. Dumb on > the manufacturer's part. Even if someone is afraid to do their own > battery replacement of a normal unit they could bring it in to some > place like BatteriesPlus to have them do the swap, but not with this > unit! KM> I was going to do it for the ones I have but opened one up and KM> said.. uh. Never mind. They have two inside. To me was a stupid design, just inviting jumping to a different brand. > KM> I don't bother doing battery swaps on modern UPSs. The battery is > KM> $89 and the whole durn unit is $99 at Costco and comes with a 2 > KM> year warranty by Costco, which is a lot better than the > KM> replacement battery. > Hmmm... The RBC17-equivalents I've been getting are around $30 and the > UPSs starting $160. I'm either shopping at the wrong places or > different requirements! KM> APC, evidently. These are Cyberpower, aka "what Costco has". Some are APC; one was an old Energizer-branded, Got two old-old Belkins; probably some other brands. The big detail for me was they all use the same battery so I can have a couple/few spare batteries on hand for immediate swap. Yeah: generally wait until they die before replacing. > > KM> I have a G4 of the silver tower era -- it's much less awful, tho > > KM> was highly amused to discover that everything inside, except for > > KM> the mainboard and CPU, is an off the shelf PC part. At some point > > KM> I borrowed the vidcard and have no idea if it got its original > > KM> back, but it works. Also gave it RAM from the PC drawer, and an > > KM> IDE SSD. Performance is now much better. Someone paid $3,999.99 > > KM> for it in 2000... at the time it was performance-equivalent to a > > KM> P2-500 from 1998 that sold for $600. > > Paying for the name are we?! I've upgraded several old computers with > KM> Apparently. :/ It came with all sorts of software (Photoshop > KM> etc.) but far as I can tell it was never used. > Maybe was being used as a spare. Maybe the company buying them found it > cheaper to buy 500 computers when they only needed 450: I used to work KM> Nope, this was some old guy's personal system, forget where I KM> found that but not corporate. The receipt is still on the HD. Somebody either had money to burn or liked the idea of a money-laundered component! > > SSDs and it's amazing how fast they boot and react! I have one with a > > BIOS displaying a copyright of 2009, 6 GB RAM, and it boots in probably > > 15 seconds; Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) and runs MythTV v31 quite > > fine. > KM> Yeah, SSD does wonders. If I'm gonna keep using this durn Fedora > KM> it'll need to get one, because it's a good five minutes from > KM> power on to usable desktop. Tho a lot of that is gotta go check > KM> for updates BEFORE it'll do anything else, and updates are so > KM> freakin' slow via Discover that I do it via CLI instead. > It's because of Fedora!! (I use Ubuntu and there is a bit of friendly > rivalry between distributions. MythTV originally required Ubuntu and > that's why I started with Ubuntu -- no real reason for me to change.) KM> LOL. Yeah, Fedora is not my favorite, but I like it better than KM> Ubuntu. Then again, I like being hit on the head better than KM> Ubuntu. :P~ Feels so goooood! LIS some time back I got started with Ubuntu because it was base for MythBuntu, which eventually detached itself from being a separate OS+Utility in one to an application -- let the Ubuntu folks worry about the OS stuff! If it wasn't for that I don't know which flavour of Linux I would be using. > This may be helpful: https://itsfoss.com/long-shutdown-linux/ > I know you said boot but may have some clues as to what to look for. KM> Nope, doesn't have shutdown issues... the problem is the check KM> for updates, plus it's just slow. Umm, turn off the 'check for updates at boot' option. I don't know if that's a thing -- seems not logical. > > KM> Picky, picky!! Well, the driver didn't change so why it worked > > KM> ONCE but then never again is a total mystery. Mind you this was > > KM> ONCE and then never again on the SAME DAY with nothing between > > KM> but a restart. Power down did not fix. > > Booting killed it! Your WiFi dongle needed the generic driver which you > > covered up with the new one! (semi-joking) > KM> No, this was onboard wifi.... it's a laptop.... > Still could be a driver issue. Your restart could have finished > installing an update which broke the WiFi. I (and others) seem to be KM> Wary Puppy is monolithic, there were no updates. The one I have KM> to hand is dated 2012 but this was a couple years before that. Anything looking at a no-longer-existant site? I'm thinking of how X-10.com went bye-bye and that killed the home automation software until some figured out a patch. What the problem was was on starting the X10 software it would call the .com site to verify the software license was valid. Site not answering, no way to verify the license so things stopped. Probably not all all your WiFi problem, but thinking may be a potential clue. > having an issue something in the latest kernel (?) 6.2.0-26-generic > seems to be causing some weird issues with PulseAudio -- my USB headset KM> Oh, PulseAudio, the swearing I've heard... I guess it's better KM> now but it used to break just about anything at random. It seems like it was used too much for the problems it gave. I have run into problems with PulseAudio in years past. More using it because it (semi)works and is default -- I don't know how and don't have the time to use something different on something I don't use all that much. At this point Firefox is more important than the headset. > killed Firefox (!) -- oddly Firefox now works with the headset unplugged > (there were some strange subdirs that seem to verify), read yesterday > someone's Bluetooth isn't working and seems to be caused by the kernel > update (at least one other person with the Bluetootk issue). Can you > roll back to a previous version of GRUB to see if your WiFi works? KM> Well, if Puppy was still installed on that system... Puppy KM> doesn't work like other linux, it works more like a VM. The whole KM> thing loads into RAM. I'm not sure it even used GRUB. Probbaly doesn't need to. > > > .. You Matter. Until multiply self x speed of light ý, then o > nergy > > KM> > > What happened to my 'squared' character?! > KM> Some people square the circle. You circled the dra-- er, square. > Who said we wouldn't use algebra when we grew up?! KM> That's geometry, not algebra! See? It's been so long I don't remember what the stuff is called! KM> Besides, first we'd have to grow up. Pbbbt!! > .. Wondered why music coming from printer. Apparently paper was jamming. KM> Printers have done that, but nothing like this: KM> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCXRerqaJI Quite an ensemble! I'd be lucky to do the opening of Beethoven's Fifth (and probably get drive to drink and I rarely drink). ¯ ® ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ® ¯ ® .... Underwear bandit apprehended -- admits brief crime spree. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47 þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .