Subj : Re: USB lock up - poo! To : Barry Martin From : Ky Moffet Date : Tue Dec 29 2020 18:54:00 BARRY MARTIN wrote: > Hi Ky! > > Well, possibly Cash might be the recipient of a capacitor transplant. > KM> Might be in its future, yeah... assuming it's still in use. But > KM> when I FINALLY get Silver II completely in service, it'll > KM> probably go back to its old job, which is about as static as it > KM> can be (second streamer during baseball season) and never needs > KM> USB anything. > > Might be safer. Of course there is still that overall Southbridge > question: is it just the USB section having problems or all of the > Southbridge? And yes, that is sort of a question for me too: known In the early stages, only USB. But later on... Double Vision (AMD/Asus of ?2006 vintage) seems to have had basically the same flaw... USB was crappy for a long time (would only do USB1 during boot), but given a few more years for those caps to dry out, guess what, it stopped being able to write to the HD. As I discovered when I tried to install a new OS on the durn thing. It is now retired to the cannibal pot. > problem here with USB, so could the motherboard be used for a some other > function where it just handles data and essentially never touched? > Quite frankly I'm considerating it for network storage, though the USB- > caused lockups has me a bit nervous. Once the USB problem starts, I don't think I would trust it for mission-critical anything. Definitely not for storage you rely on. > KM> Tellya, tho... has sure shown that a 2.6GHz quadcore (Tarnish) > KM> outperforms a 3.2GHz Core2Duo (Cash). Latter gets clogged up > KM> about 10x as often. > > There's probably a mathematical explanation somewhere but OTTOMH it > seems splitting the workload among four is better than two. The part of > figuring at which speed four cores is equivalent to two I have no idea. Seems to be the case even with apps that don't really use more than one core, or not very well. It is REALLY noticeable with SeaMonkey. > > KM> Oh, speaking therewhich, found a USB driver for DOS that works > KM> Ugh, will have to remind me another day. > Is today the day? I do have one or two PS/2 to USB adapters -- not the No, this has nothing to do with that. Only for USB storage devices, like flash drives. > same as the driver but at least allows me to use the old keyboards and > mice. (Some of the old computers required them to be detected on boot; > use the old ones to keep the computer happy -- just store them > behind/next too while using the wireless.) My oldest PC in service BARELY has USB2, and it can use a USB keyboard in DOS without any adapters to PS/2. However.... Strange facts and useless information: if possible, use PS/2 with your DOS machine. Seems MODE CON RATE=32 DELAY=1 to speed up the keyboard does not work with USB keyboards!! And wireless USB keyboard does not work during boot if used via KVM. > KM> DOS7 has enough perks to be well worth the switch; just peel it > KM> out of Win98, or off any of numerous bootdisk sites. Large drives > KM> and FAT32 support are definitely a never-going-back for me. > Some things are fun just because we used to do them that way. True :) > I've been sort of shopping: collecting general information and prices, > mainly from the Newegg ads I get. Might not be the best prices but a > place to start: unlocked vs. locked, processor speeds -- know about the > number of cores but LIS above someplace that slower speed with more > cores is better than less cores at a higher speed thing. Plus this > computer has been behaving as long as I don't plus a USB device in; > building/working on stuff with just one eye wasn't that easy (no > distance from normal stereoscopic vision).... Yeah, not so motivated when you know the workaround to avoid the OOOPS! > Good for him! As for not keep old stuff around, I can sort of see that > as the manufacturers, software sellers, etc., would like to sell new > stuff as that's the only way they make money. OTOH a lot of consumers > (businesses) can't use the new stuff because they have a programme which > won't work on the current OS (16-bit, etc.). Was reading where the That's mostly industrial and certain businesses with weird old software. But there's tons of industrial applications out there still running on ancient hardware. > Raspberry Pi Foundation is going to keep manufacturing their old Pi's > because there is enough business for them: businesses used the original > "RPi 1" and the unit finally fails -- just pop in the replacement. Yeah, totally different market. They're basically replacing the XT and 486 market for small-scale industrial control boards. > KM> Yeah, sometimes a problem. Not so much with the newer Intel CPUs, > KM> tho. Basically if the board supports it, it should be fine. > "Should be"! That may have been one of the problems with the > current system: IIRC the 125W CPU was sort of at the very max of the > specification. Also board was sort of rated for the processor _family_ That shouldn't be a problem. Either the BIOS supports the CPU and it boots up, or it doesn't support the CPU and won't even power on, or maybe it will downshift to a lower speed on the fly (common when you've got the MHz or multiplier or voltage set outside what it supports). And a lot of BIOSs actually support near-miss CPUs. Also, BIOS updates commonly upgrade CPU support quite dramatically. Paladin has a P4 CPU that it "doesn't support" that works just fine. And it's an Intel sample, not even a production CPU, and it's never had a BIOS update either. > but not specific processor. And as you mentioned some time back AMD is > more into gaming and expecting the end-user to 'super-size' the cooling > fans, etc. Yeah, that would be them. > And back to Newegg's advertising, I haven't seen too many motherboards > in their daily advertisements but when they do it's the 'opposite' > brand: Intel CPU and AMD motherboard. No matter what you have in mind, they want to sell you something else! > KM> I'd grab the board first, as there's usually some flexibility in > KM> what CPUs it'll support, but a given CPU may have a very limited > KM> compatible boards list. And by the time you get there, that board > KM> may not be readily available anymore. That's kinda what happened > > OK yes. I had been thinking motherboard then CPU all along, just I am > more familiar with what to look for in a motherboard and not so much a > CPU so sort of preparing to study CPU options. Sort of a crash course > on your $5 is fine, $20 is probably the sweet spot, and $200 isn't > really worth spending at the consumer/hobbyist level. Unless you're into high-end gaming or crunching databases or the like, whatever CPU comes along will be perfectly good. The $20 CPU -- yeah, it's kind of a sweet spot, because it's plentiful and not in demand by gamers, yet pretty much peak performance for that price range. The easy way to decide on a CPU for a given motherboard is to first get the list of supported CPUs, then check specs for some of the newer ones on passmark's benchmark site. It's not 100% but it's pretty close to what I've observed when I've had a family of CPUs to compare. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ And then you can chart the performance specs (be sure to note both single-threaded and multi-threaded results) vs price. For quicker compare, they also have an Everything At Once chart for various categories of CPU, more or less organized by socket and age. http://twilightasylum.com/pc/cpus.htm Westworld (scroll down a bit) makes a good example: it came with the first-listed CPU which was pretty durn slow. It supports up to Phenom X6, but that one is still pricey. And supports a bunch more CPUs. Phenom x4 840 is not ideal but is common and cheap, therefore was deemed good enough for what is not really a good performing PC no matter what CPU it has. (40% slower than the Intel CPU that is supposedly much slower.) I was willing to spend $15 to upgrade it; I wasn't willing to spend $60 for the next-faster, or somewhat more for the best it supports. > KM> Onboard video is usually good enough nowadays (unless they did > KM> something stupid like skimp the shared RAM down to 8mb, like the > KM> older Dell did!) Won't hold up to modern games and maybe not to > KM> very high def video, but certainly good enough for ordinary use. > HD quality is fine for me: not using this system to watch shows but do > watch the occasional video. A motherboard with on-board video with > decent specs would not be excluded. The nice thing about HAVING it is that when you're initially setting up, you don't NEED to find a vidcard, and onboard video is always adequately supported by whatever OS is handy. > On that note I've got/had a few MythTV Frontend computers (primary > purpose to playback TV shows) and I don't think any with video cards > with fans have shown a problem when the fan died or otherwise > malfunctioned. OTOH the cards have had a decent heat sink and the > computer itself has an airflow in the cavity. Not saying the fan is > useless but for my needs doesn't seem to be a requirment. I've had so many vidcard fans either go rattly or die that fanless has become a requirement if I'm paying money for it. Fact is those little fans are crap. And by the time you get up to a card with big fans, it's way more $$$ than it's worth to me. > KM> Yeah, and having only one PCIe x16 generally indicates > KM> corner-cutting. I still like to see half a dozen slots of one > KM> sort or another. > > Right: I generally use full-sized ATX boards so no need to skimp on > slots to gain compactness. Stuff will fail, stuff will need to be added > so extra slots and ports are good. Yep, definitely. > KM> That too. And not chintzy somewhere. Turns out the reason we only > KM> get a couple USB3 ports is because the USB3.x chip is about $40 > KM> per pair of ports (or at least was a year or so ago, when I heard > KM> about this), which is an awful large chunk of the cost against a > KM> $100 motherboard. > > Ugh, yeah! So now having more USB 3.x ports which looks like a benefit > could mean they skimped elsewhere to balance costs. By the time you have more USB3.x ports, the whole thing is expensive enough that there's no point in cutting corners. > Here the overall number of USB 2.0 and 3.x ports isn't a big factor: > want at least three USB 2.0's: keyboard, mouse and third to a (powered) > hub. USB 3.x at least one as goes to a powered hub: the external > devices are too far away to plug in directly without extension cables. Yep, that's about right. > This one is configured as 1920 x 1080 (16:9) @ 74.99 Hz, which is > probably restricted by the monitor as opposed to the video output > device, Downstairs have a MythTV Frontend with some card in it -- a > while back had to replace the TV as a part of the video failed. New > TV's HDMI input will do 4K and that's what the computer's video card > went to. Talk about a teeny-tiny display! Was full screen, just the > icons were 'microscopic'! (Forced to 1080 and all was good again.) Yeah, when the OS doesn't know how to scale icons and text... > > apparently that design division didn't cut corners but the crew > > designing the Southbridge circuitry did! > KM> Or just goofed up -- as complex as these things are, I suppose > KM> it's not that hard to get your wires crossed somewhere in the > KM> depths of the many layers in a modern board. However, when it's > KM> been going on for several years, you'd think they'd fix it... > I would tend to agree. "Poop occurs", but one should clean up the mess > eventually! You'd think, but apparently not! > > > .. Take the lemons and make lemonade! > > > Take the salmon and make salmonella! > > KM> Ain't biology wonderful? :D > > Yup! And seems no one remembers the old ad that had "Hey Sal! Sal > > Monella!". > KM> I certainly don't. > I wonder if it was a regional public health ad campaign? At the time I > was living in southern New Hampshire and heard it on a Boston station. > I'm not even sure if more than one station. Or the fact that I've done long stretches with no TV! > And now I'll tease your brain with "Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day": > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNX1QtyG9_8 Now that I can positively say I've never seen. For one thing, we didn't have Prince brand spaghetti out west of the Mississippi. Creamettes for us! Saw in the comments that the guy who played the little boy passed away. > KM> Side note: I desperately need a different form of Courier. Dark > KM> Courier doesn't grow nicely and gets all weird, like someone > KM> colored in all the 'windows' in the letters. Regular Courier > KM> isn't dark enough. SeaMonkey doesn't believe Bold exists. *sigh* > > I've been using Thunderbird for e-mail and the default "Variable Width" > font. Hmm, maybe enlarge the default size to medium or a notch larger? > (With Thunderbird on the same configuration page as selection of the > font in Preferences.) Nope, doesn't work. I can enlarge it, but it doesn't play nice. Gets all blotchy. > There is also a default colour option: on my "Write" screen immediately > to the right of the Font Selection is a small black square offset over a > small white square: one is foreground text colour and the other > background colour. Wonder if you have a dark gray selected instead of > black? You're using the HTML editor, which I never do. Plaintext editor uses your fixed-width font. I prefer Courier for that, but can't seem to find one that's dark enough. > > > ¯ BarryMartin3@ ® > ¯ @MyMetronet.NET ® > > .. 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