• Cracked cases

    From Utopian Galt@VERT/IUTOPIA to All on Sat Mar 26 10:28:15 2022
    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.

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  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Utopian Galt on Sat Mar 26 15:30:43 2022
    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Utopian Galt to All on Sat Mar 26 2022 10:28 am

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.


    if you buy a can of beer does it matter if the can is dented?
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  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Utopian Galt on Sat Mar 26 14:43:01 2022
    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Utopian Galt to All on Sat Mar 26 2022 10:28 am

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.

    Did this happen to you recently?
    I suppose it would be nice to have a refund, but as long as the software is still installable, then it's fine.

    These days, many times software is bought online as a downloadable thing, so you wouldn't even get a physical package.

    Nightfox

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  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to Nightfox on Sat Mar 26 22:11:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Utopian Galt <=-

    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Utopian Galt to All on Sat Mar 26 2022 10:28 am

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.

    Did this happen to you recently?
    I suppose it would be nice to have a refund, but as long as the
    software is still installable, then it's fine.

    Well, to him it's not. Sounds like he wants the packaging/case to store
    the software in, perhaps on a shelf, or CD rack, or something.

    These days, many times software is bought online as a
    downloadable thing, so you wouldn't even get a physical package.

    That has nothing to do with the situation he's describing.


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  • From Utopian Galt@VERT/IUTOPIA to Nightfox on Sat Mar 26 21:28:24 2022
    Video game and music collection is its own little sub culture. I have some expensive albums for example such as some limited edition music cds and video games etc. Value usually goes down when the case is not intact even if it costs me an extra 3-5 bucks to replace.

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  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Sun Mar 27 19:37:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Utopian Galt <=-

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    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Utopian Galt to All on Sat Mar 26 2022 10:28 am

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.


    if you buy a can of beer does it matter if the can is dented?

    The beer can is disposed if after it is first consumed, the CD case is kept for the life of the CD. It's to me, like buying a book with the cover torn.


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  • From Arelor@VERT/PALANT to Utopian Galt on Sun Mar 27 06:50:59 2022
    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Utopian Galt to All on Sat Mar 26 2022 10:28 am

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracke I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.


    Do they still sell software in physical form? :-P

    I still buy an actual music CD from time to time, but it is rare for me to get one with a broken case.

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  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Utopian Galt on Sun Mar 27 07:34:26 2022
    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Utopian Galt to Nightfox on Sat Mar 26 2022 09:28 pm

    Video game and music collection is its own little sub culture. I have some expensive albums for example such as some limited edition music cds and video games etc. Value usually goes down when the case is not intact even if it costs me an extra 3-5 bucks to replace.

    well you probably wont be selling them anyways, would you? i dont think there's any market for collectors item music cds.
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  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Sun Mar 27 07:35:02 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Sun Mar 27 2022 07:37 pm

    if you buy a can of beer does it matter if the can is dented?

    The beer can is disposed if after it is first consumed, the CD case is kept for the life of the CD. It's to me, like buying a book with the cover torn.
    who the fuck still uses cds and who even reads books anymore!
    go back to 1990!
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  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to MRO on Sun Mar 27 10:54:00 2022
    if you buy a can of beer does it matter if the can is dented?

    I don't know about beer but I can remember back when there were a lot of
    public service announcements (and even films in school) about never eating
    the food out of a can that had been dented because it could lead to
    botcholism or salmonella (sp? on both).


    * SLMR 2.1a * Too bad women don't have pull-down menus and online help.

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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Utopian Galt on Sun Mar 27 07:48:00 2022
    Utopian Galt wrote to All <=-

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.

    Ironic, since one of the carryovers from the old days is that when record labels are calculating sales, they reduce the number shipped by
    approximately 10% for "breakage", an agreement that dates back to the days
    of fragile 78 RPM records.

    They still take that deduction, even though CDs are factors of scale less fragile.


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  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Dumas Walker on Sun Mar 27 16:38:11 2022
    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dumas Walker to MRO on Sun Mar 27 2022 10:54 am

    if you buy a can of beer does it matter if the can is dented?

    I don't know about beer but I can remember back when there were a lot of public service announcements (and even films in school) about never eating the food out of a can that had been dented because it could lead to botcholism or salmonella (sp? on both).


    you just check to see if there's still seal.
    also if it smells or tastes funny that'll tell ya for sure.
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  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Mon Mar 28 20:03:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Boraxman <=-

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    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Sun Mar 27 2022 07:37 pm

    if you buy a can of beer does it matter if the can is dented?

    The beer can is disposed if after it is first consumed, the CD case is kept for the life of the CD. It's to me, like buying a book with the cover torn.
    who the fuck still uses cds and who even reads books anymore!
    go back to 1990!


    I do both, I'm a traditionalist.


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  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Gamgee on Mon Mar 28 08:59:12 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Gamgee to Nightfox on Sat Mar 26 2022 10:11 pm

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is
    broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers
    on that issue.

    I suppose it would be nice to have a refund, but as long as the
    software is still installable, then it's fine.

    Well, to him it's not. Sounds like he wants the packaging/case to store the software in, perhaps on a shelf, or CD rack, or something.

    He specificially said he wished they could offer a 10% discount to customers on this issue.

    These days, many times software is bought online as a
    downloadable thing, so you wouldn't even get a physical package.

    That has nothing to do with the situation he's describing.

    How so?

    Nightfox

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  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to Nightfox on Mon Mar 28 16:57:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is
    broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers
    on that issue.

    I suppose it would be nice to have a refund, but as long as the
    software is still installable, then it's fine.

    Well, to him it's not. Sounds like he wants the packaging/case to store the software in, perhaps on a shelf, or CD rack, or something.

    He specificially said he wished they could offer a 10% discount
    to customers on this issue.

    Yes..... and you said.... "as long as the software is still installable,
    then it's fine." What I said was that it *ISN'T* "fine" to *him*. He wants the packaging/case to be intact. So the situation isn't "fine".

    These days, many times software is bought online as a
    downloadable thing, so you wouldn't even get a physical package.

    That has nothing to do with the situation he's describing.

    How so?

    Really? He described a situation where he's bought software and it comes
    in a broken case. A specific example encountered by him. You described a theoretical (I'm not arguing that it isn't true) situation where a person
    might download some software and not get a physical package. While that is certainly true, it has no relevance to what he's talking about. See?



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  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Gamgee on Mon Mar 28 16:41:26 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Gamgee to Nightfox on Mon Mar 28 2022 04:57 pm

    That has nothing to do with the situation he's describing.

    How so?

    Really? He described a situation where he's bought software and it comes in a broken case. A specific example encountered by him. You described a theoretical (I'm not arguing that it isn't true) situation where a person might download some software and not get a physical package. While that is certainly true, it has no relevance to what he's talking about. See?

    Conversations often flow in such a way that things that are tangential (though not always directly related) are brought up. During a conversation, if you only stick to things that are 100% relevant to what was already said, the conversation could die out fairly quickly. I don't know why you're picking an issue with this.

    Nightfox

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  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to Nightfox on Mon Mar 28 19:36:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

    Really? He described a situation where he's bought software and it comes in a broken case. A specific example encountered by him. You described a theoretical (I'm not arguing that it isn't true) situation where a person might download some software and not get a physical package. While that is certainly true, it has no relevance to what he's talking about. See?

    Conversations often flow in such a way that things that are
    tangential (though not always directly related) are brought up.
    During a conversation, if you only stick to things that are 100%
    relevant to what was already said, the conversation could die out
    fairly quickly. I don't know why you're picking an issue with
    this.

    You're right. I'm done with it, all good.


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  • From Ogg@VERT/CAPCITY2 to Utopian Galt on Mon Mar 28 20:16:00 2022
    Hello Utopian Galt!

    ** On Saturday 26.03.22 - 10:28, Utopian Galt wrote to All:

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/
    case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10%
    discount to customers on that issue.

    I am sure that the merchant hates broken packaging too!

    After operating a bookshop for 10 years (my 10th anniversary
    was on Jan 14, 2022) I have enough pictures of damaged goods to
    trigger a DDoS on Instagram.

    In my case, a book product could inadvertently fall of the
    shelf, or an adjacent book may come tumbling down when reaching
    for another title. The cynical/skeptic angel that sits on my
    left shoulder might suggest that it was the customer who did
    that on purpose.

    Some book products arrive shrinkwrapped, primarily because they
    might be delicate or be expensive printings. But the wrap could
    be partially damaged, or the cover could get scratched. The
    broken wrapping or scratches can diminish the awesome freshness
    of the book and not sell.

    WRT to CD cases, replacement ones are fairly cheap from the $1
    stores.

    You COULD always ask the retailer if they might have a good
    replacement case. I see a modicum of 2nd-hand music CDs too. I
    *do* have a collection of spare cases incase there is a broken
    one that I wouldn't even like to see.


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  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to Utopian Galt on Fri Apr 1 14:59:13 2022
    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on that issue.

    I guess people would be tempted to crack them on purpose before reaching the cash.

    ---
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  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Ennev on Sat Apr 2 10:45:06 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Ennev to Utopian Galt on Fri Apr 01 2022 02:59 pm

    I hate when buying music or software and the packaging/case is broken/cracked. I wish they could offer a 10% discount to customers on th issue.

    I guess people would be tempted to crack them on purpose before reaching the cash.


    Cracked cases can be easily replaced though. What is worse as I have had happen, is when the CD is cracked. And the CD that I had cracked was a rare one, almost impossible to get now.

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  • From Utopian Galt@VERT/IUTOPIA to Ennev on Fri Apr 1 22:26:55 2022
    Only valid when the store finds out the packaging is not in good condition and they put a sticker giving the discount.

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  • From Andre@VERT/RDOMENTR to Utopian Galt on Sat Apr 2 08:05:30 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Utopian Galt to Ennev on Fri Apr 01 2022 10:26 pm

    Only valid when the store finds out the packaging is not in good condition and they put a sticker giving the discount.

    Please use the quote feature of your editor when you reply. No one knows what you're replying to.


    - Andre

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  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to Boraxman on Sat Apr 2 11:02:15 2022
    Cracked cases can be easily replaced though. What is worse as I have had happen, is when the CD is cracked. And the CD that I had cracked was a rare one, almost impossible to get now.

    Yeah, cases were cracked at purchase even back then. But yes never had the misfortune to have a crack CD :-/

    But now I'm going through my wife's CD stach, and they are unbelievably scratched. I bought a device, but for so they are even scratched on the cover art side, which is actually the thinnest, so I think that for some, the data layer is damaged :-/

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  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Mon Apr 4 17:29:28 2022
    On 4/1/22 16:45, Boraxman wrote:

    Cracked cases can be easily replaced though. What is worse as I have
    had happen, is when the CD is cracked. And the CD that I had cracked
    was a rare one, almost impossible to get now.

    Generally best to rip to ALAC/FLAC right away for those kinds of things,
    then store the CD in case of future issues. Of course, if you can
    download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon,
    etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to something lossy
    for portability.

    Not sure how broad it is, but many services allow you to add your own
    sources, if you use them for music streaming depending on what you use
    on the go. There's also Plex etc.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
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  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Ennev on Mon Apr 4 17:32:14 2022
    On 4/2/22 08:02, Ennev wrote:

    But now I'm going through my wife's CD stach, and they are
    unbelievably scratched. I bought a device, but for so they are
    even scratched on the cover art side, which is actually the
    thinnest, so I think that for some, the data layer is damaged :-/

    Depending on how scratched, there is some level of redundancy in CD
    audio data... a lot of content may be able to get ripped anyway... there
    are CD/DVD polishers, that some have suggested, never tried them myself.
    --
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  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Tracker1 on Mon Apr 4 20:22:59 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Boraxman on Mon Apr 04 2022 05:29 pm

    Generally best to rip to ALAC/FLAC right away for those kinds of things, then store the CD in case of future issues. Of course, if you can download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to something lossy

    How is a site like Apple Music, Amazon, etc. a 'better' source than ripping from CD?

    Nightfox

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  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Mon Apr 4 22:59:44 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Tracker1 on Mon Apr 04 2022 08:22 pm

    can
    download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to something lossy

    How is a site like Apple Music, Amazon, etc. a 'better' source than ripping from CD?


    better quality with no issues. your personal rips could have imperfections. ---
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  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 5 09:21:23 2022
    Depending on how scratched, there is some level of redundancy in CD
    audio data... a lot of content may be able to get ripped anyway... there
    are CD/DVD polishers, that some have suggested, I never tried them myself.


    Yes just bought one recently. I just found the description on Amazon. It's a "Digital Innovations 4070300 SkipDr for DVD and CD Disc Repair and Cleaning System". That's a sexy name!

    I only tried it on one so far as a guinea pig, and it worked. It managed to go through many deep scratches, now I was able to put it in a reader with errors correction on and rip it satisfactorily. So I have a lot of work ahead of me.

    ---
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  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 5 19:49:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <624B8D68.23005.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <62478E82.55774.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/1/22 16:45, Boraxman wrote:

    Cracked cases can be easily replaced though. What is worse as I have
    had happen, is when the CD is cracked. And the CD that I had cracked
    was a rare one, almost impossible to get now.

    Generally best to rip to ALAC/FLAC right away for those kinds of
    things, then store the CD in case of future issues. Of course, if you
    can download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to
    something lossy for portability.

    Not sure how broad it is, but many services allow you to add your own sources, if you use them for music streaming depending on what you use
    on the go. There's also Plex etc.

    That is what I do. I rip CD's I purchase to FLAC as a master, a backup, then encode to OGG for listening to on my computer. I do still use the CD, mainly in my car.

    Once you got it as a FLAC file, you can reencode to any format later on without having to rip the CD again.

    I like buying from Bandcamp, as they usually offer an OGG, FLAC and MP3 version.

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  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Tue Apr 5 19:51:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Nightfox <=-

    @MSGID: <624BBEB0.9017.dove-gen@bbses.info>
    @REPLY: <624BB613.65124.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Tracker1 on Mon Apr 04 2022 08:22 pm

    can
    download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to something lossy

    How is a site like Apple Music, Amazon, etc. a 'better' source than ripping from CD?


    better quality with no issues. your personal rips could have imperfections. ---

    Perhaps. I use cdparanoia, which is the basis for the windows Exact Audio Copy. Never heard any imperfections, though I'm aware a bit or two can be flipped without you noticing it.

    I still prefer the CD becaues I like the liner notes, and to be able to listen to it in my car, or my stereo system (which is relatively old).

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  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Tue Apr 5 12:46:46 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Tue Apr 05 2022 07:51 pm

    Perhaps. I use cdparanoia, which is the basis for the windows Exact Audio Copy. Never heard any imperfections, though I'm aware a bit or two can be flipped without you noticing it.


    there will be chirps. you can edit the file and remove them but that would be a lot of work.

    i'd rather just download the music unless i had something rare.
    I still prefer the CD becaues I like the liner notes, and to be able to listen to it in my car, or my stereo system (which is relatively old).


    just get one of those cheap radio trasmitters.
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  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Nightfox on Tue Apr 5 16:43:22 2022
    On 4/4/22 20:22, Nightfox wrote:
    Generally best to rip to ALAC/FLAC right away for those kinds of
    things, then store the CD in case of future issues. Of course, if
    you can download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple
    music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding
    to something lossy.

    How is a site like Apple Music, Amazon, etc. a 'better' source than
    ripping from CD?

    Note: "... encoded from a better source ..."

    CD is less than perfect mix-down, and often original source material is encoded in a better quality. The sites mentioned sometimes have better
    source material than the CD for the original audio in addition to being
    able to download FLAC/ALAC encoding from the web store(s). The source
    could be original from the studio, or even Blue-ray audio. Also,
    possibly additional channels, positional data, etc.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
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  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Tue Apr 5 16:50:20 2022
    On 4/5/22 02:49, Boraxman wrote:
    ...

    I like buying from Bandcamp, as they usually offer an OGG, FLAC
    and MP3 version.

    Yeah, when you can get FLAC/ALAC directly, it's usually the best option
    since it's closest to the source (usually). Have you played with
    Blu-ray audio at all? Haven't really tried it, but having more
    positional data or channels in the music might be cool.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
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  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 5 19:10:30 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Nightfox on Tue Apr 05 2022 04:43 pm

    you can download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple
    music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding
    to something lossy.

    How is a site like Apple Music, Amazon, etc. a 'better' source than
    ripping from CD?

    Note: "... encoded from a better source ..."

    CD is less than perfect mix-down, and often original source material is encoded in a better quality. The sites mentioned sometimes have better source material than the CD for the original audio in addition to being able to download FLAC/ALAC encoding from the web store(s). The source could be original from the studio, or even Blue-ray audio. Also,
    possibly additional channels, positional data, etc.

    Ah, that's true. I haven't bought much downloadable music, but I've seen sites selling music like that.

    Nightfox

    ---
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  • From Arelor@VERT/PALANT to MRO on Wed Apr 6 04:41:13 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to Nightfox on Mon Apr 04 2022 10:59 pm

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Tracker1 on Mon Apr 04 2022 08:22 pm

    can
    download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to something lossy

    How is a site like Apple Music, Amazon, etc. a 'better' source than rippi from CD?


    better quality with no issues. your personal rips could have imperfections.

    Dunno. If you use something like cdparanoia for extracting the wav, you get a nice report of the status of the tracks. If there was a recoverable read error you get notified. If there was a non recoverable error (ie glitchy result) you also get a notification. It is quite rare for CDs stored in good conditions to degrade in such a way that you get holes in the data which cannot be recovered.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Arelor@VERT/PALANT to Boraxman on Wed Apr 6 04:43:58 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 05 2022 07:49 pm

    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <624B8D68.23005.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <62478E82.55774.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/1/22 16:45, Boraxman wrote:

    Cracked cases can be easily replaced though. What is worse as I have
    had happen, is when the CD is cracked. And the CD that I had cracked
    was a rare one, almost impossible to get now.

    Generally best to rip to ALAC/FLAC right away for those kinds of things, then store the CD in case of future issues. Of course, if you can download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to something lossy for portability.

    Not sure how broad it is, but many services allow you to add your own sources, if you use them for music streaming depending on what you use on the go. There's also Plex etc.

    That is what I do. I rip CD's I purchase to FLAC as a master, a backup, the encode to OGG for listening to on my computer. I do still use the CD, mainl in my car.

    Once you got it as a FLAC file, you can reencode to any format later on with having to rip the CD again.

    I like buying from Bandcamp, as they usually offer an OGG, FLAC and MP3 version.

    I just rip the CD to flac or ogg (depending on how much I appreciate the particular album) and then place the CD in a safe location.

    For the car, I just burn a remix CD with the stuff I may want to listen to. I know it is very 90s, but if ain't broken, don't fix it.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Wed Apr 6 20:31:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <624C8086.9023.dove-gen@bbses.info>
    @REPLY: <624C1177.55804.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Tue Apr 05 2022 07:51 pm

    Perhaps. I use cdparanoia, which is the basis for the windows Exact Audio Copy. Never heard any imperfections, though I'm aware a bit or two can be flipped without you noticing it.


    there will be chirps. you can edit the file and remove them but that would be a lot of work.

    i'd rather just download the music unless i had something rare.
    I still prefer the CD becaues I like the liner notes, and to be able to listen to it in my car, or my stereo system (which is relatively old).

    I've ripped my entire CD catalog, and never had I heard chirps.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Wed Apr 6 20:34:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <624CD5BC.23023.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <624C1175.55803.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/5/22 02:49, Boraxman wrote:
    ...

    I like buying from Bandcamp, as they usually offer an OGG, FLAC
    and MP3 version.

    Yeah, when you can get FLAC/ALAC directly, it's usually the best option since it's closest to the source (usually). Have you played with
    Blu-ray audio at all? Haven't really tried it, but having more
    positional data or channels in the music might be cool.

    I haven't played or used anything Blu-ray at all. Don't have a player! I'm pretty 'low tech', so even if I did have the player, the best audio system I've got is a 15-20 year old Pioneer basic sound system. It really is just a CD player and radio with AUX input.

    Usually, if something sounds and looks decent, good enough, I'm fine with it.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Wed Apr 6 09:14:03 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Wed Apr 06 2022 08:31 pm

    there will be chirps. you can edit the file and remove them but
    that would be a lot of work.

    I've ripped my entire CD catalog, and never had I heard chirps.

    Same, I've ripped all of my music CDs and have never heard any chirps in any of it.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Arelor on Wed Apr 6 13:57:45 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Arelor to MRO on Wed Apr 06 2022 04:41 am

    result) you also get a notification. It is quite rare for CDs stored in good conditions to degrade in such a way that you get holes in the data which cannot be recovered.


    cd rot
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Ennev on Wed Apr 6 14:35:00 2022
    Ennev wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    I only tried it on one so far as a guinea pig, and it worked. It
    managed to go through many deep scratches, now I was able to put it in
    a reader with errors correction on and rip it satisfactorily. So I have
    a lot of work ahead of me.

    Rubbing alcohol, brasso and microfiber cloths always seemed to do the
    trick.


    ... Work at a different speed
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Wed Apr 6 18:50:52 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Wed Apr 06 2022 08:31 pm

    i'd rather just download the music unless i had something rare.
    I still prefer the CD becaues I like the liner notes, and to be able to listen to it in my car, or my stereo system (which is relatively old).

    I've ripped my entire CD catalog, and never had I heard chirps.

    i'm talking about damaged cds.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Wed Apr 6 18:51:49 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Wed Apr 06 2022 09:14 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Wed Apr 06 2022 08:31 pm

    there will be chirps. you can edit the file and remove them but
    that would be a lot of work.

    I've ripped my entire CD catalog, and never had I heard chirps.

    Same, I've ripped all of my music CDs and have never heard any chirps in any of it.

    after seeing him describe his sound system, i dont think he'd hear them
    if he had them.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu Apr 7 08:10:42 2022
    Rubbing alcohol, brasso and microfiber cloths always seemed to do the
    trick.

    Oh. Good to know.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Arelor on Fri Apr 8 09:07:55 2022
    On 4/6/22 02:43, Arelor wrote:

    For the car, I just burn a remix CD with the stuff I may want to
    listen to. I know it is very 90s, but if ain't broken, don't fix it.

    I usually just use YouTube music over bluetooth, since I pay for YouTube anyway (no commercials). I've added my own stuff to the library. Only
    problem is when I lose cell signal on road trips, less of an issue each
    year though. I'll never use Serious/XM again though.

    I wouldn't mind finding a dedicated app for it, WinAmp for Android was
    really the best app I'd used, but long gone now. I have a USB option,
    but larger drives don't work well in my car, and the built in UI is
    horrible.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Fri Apr 8 09:11:15 2022
    On 4/6/22 03:31, Boraxman wrote:

    I've ripped my entire CD catalog, and never had I heard chirps.

    Used to be more of an issue... especially in the 90's when computers
    were much slower. With EAC and other software, also ripping
    unscratched/new discs, it's not really an issue anymore.

    My main reference to higher quality was really better than CD
    original/master.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Fri Apr 8 09:17:44 2022
    On 4/6/22 03:34, Boraxman wrote:
    I like buying from Bandcamp, as they usually offer an OGG, FLAC
    and MP3 version.

    Yeah, when you can get FLAC/ALAC directly, it's usually the best
    option since it's closest to the source (usually). Have you played
    with Blu-ray audio at all? Haven't really tried it, but having more
    positional data or channels in the music might be cool.

    I haven't played or used anything Blu-ray at all. Don't have a
    player! I'm pretty 'low tech', so even if I did have the player, the
    best audio system I've got is a 15-20 year old Pioneer basic sound
    system. It really is just a CD player and radio with AUX input.

    Usually, if something sounds and looks decent, good enough, I'm fine
    with it.

    Gotcha... I'm not really a snob, but do have a 5.2 setup in my main tv watching space (would do 5.2.4, but my bedroom is upstairs from that
    room). Mid-range AVR and speakers... though my slightly better AVR
    died, and I want to get it fixed, since the temporary Yamaha I bought
    kind of sucks by comparison.

    Only really notice it all when watching certain movies, or positional
    audio demos... It's off the kitchen so can't really do rear speakers,
    main reason I'd want the .4 for Atmos. Of course that goes into another
    price class for AVR, which sucks.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Arelor on Fri Apr 8 09:21:48 2022
    On 4/6/22 02:41, Arelor wrote:
    It is quite rare for CDs stored in good conditions to degrade in such
    a way that you get holes in the data which cannot be recovered.

    If they're stored in a temperature controlled environment without a lot
    of humidity changes, yes... but if you store in a garage, or storage
    shed where the temperature and/or humidity varies a lot, will see a
    notable breakdown over time.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Arelor@VERT/PALANT to Tracker1 on Fri Apr 8 18:21:01 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Arelor on Fri Apr 08 2022 09:07 am

    On 4/6/22 02:43, Arelor wrote:

    For the car, I just burn a remix CD with the stuff I may want to
    listen to. I know it is very 90s, but if ain't broken, don't fix it.

    I usually just use YouTube music over bluetooth, since I pay for YouTube anyway (n
    commercials). I've added my own stuff to the library. Only
    problem is when I lose cell signal on road trips, less of an issue each
    year though. I'll never use Serious/XM again though.

    I wouldn't mind finding a dedicated app for it, WinAmp for Android was really the best app I'd used, but long gone now. I have a USB option,
    but larger drives don't work well in my car, and the built in UI is horrible.

    Doesn't it rape your data plan into nothingness?

    If I streamed music during trips I would eat away my data assingnation pretty quickly.
    This is the main reason why I have a traditional radio set in my store instead of a
    music streaming service - radio does not consume my data plan.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Arelor on Sat Apr 9 07:27:35 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Arelor to Tracker1 on Fri Apr 08 2022 06:21 pm

    I usually just use YouTube music over bluetooth, since I pay for YouTube anyway (n commercials). I've added my own stuff to the library. Only problem is when I lose cell signal on road trips, less of an issue each year though. I'll never use Serious/XM again though.

    I wouldn't mind finding a dedicated app for it, WinAmp for Android was really the best app I'd used, but long gone now. I have a USB option, but larger drives don't work well in my car, and the built in UI is horrible.

    Doesn't it rape your data plan into nothingness?

    haw haw haw. arelor no have unlimited data!
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Arelor on Sun Apr 10 10:24:00 2022
    Arelor wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <624D60DE.27976.dove-general@palantirbbs.ddns.net>
    @REPLY: <624C1175.55803.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Tracker1 on
    Tue Apr 05 2022 07:49 pm

    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <624B8D68.23005.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <62478E82.55774.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/1/22 16:45, Boraxman wrote:

    Cracked cases can be easily replaced though. What is worse as I have
    had happen, is when the CD is cracked. And the CD that I had cracked
    was a rare one, almost impossible to get now.

    Generally best to rip to ALAC/FLAC right away for those kinds of things, then store the CD in case of future issues. Of course, if you can download an ALAC/FLAC encoded from a better source (apple music, amazon, etc), that may be preferred. Also, possibly recoding to something lossy for portability.

    Not sure how broad it is, but many services allow you to add your own sources, if you use them for music streaming depending on what you use on the go. There's also Plex etc.

    That is what I do. I rip CD's I purchase to FLAC as a master, a backup, the encode to OGG for listening to on my computer. I do still use the CD, mainl in my car.

    Once you got it as a FLAC file, you can reencode to any format later on with having to rip the CD again.

    I like buying from Bandcamp, as they usually offer an OGG, FLAC and MP3 version.

    I just rip the CD to flac or ogg (depending on how much I appreciate
    the particular album) and then place the CD in a safe location.

    For the car, I just burn a remix CD with the stuff I may want to listen to. I know it is very 90s, but if ain't broken, don't fix it.

    I would recommend just using flac. Someone asked me about this, how to best preserve their music digitally, and I think having a FLAC "master rip" is the best way to go. I have on my external backup drive a FLAC rip of every CD I have. The first thing I do when I but a new CD is to rip it, encode it, then I will encode to OGG for my desktop and laptop. The desktop had enough space to store the flacs, but the laptop no, hence ogg.

    Should I need an MP3 for my cars mp3 player (which is small unit that takes a USB stick and transmit the signal via FM. You tune into the unit with the radio), I just use a converter program to convert the FLAC to MP3.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Sun Apr 10 10:27:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <624E275C.9039.dove-gen@bbses.info>
    @REPLY: <624D6D8F.55822.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Wed Apr 06 2022 08:31 pm

    i'd rather just download the music unless i had something rare.
    I still prefer the CD becaues I like the liner notes, and to be able to listen to it in my car, or my stereo system (which is relatively old).

    I've ripped my entire CD catalog, and never had I heard chirps.

    i'm talking about damaged cds.

    Oh, never had a damaged CD which did that. I've only got two, one has a crack all the way through, cannot be read, the other is mistakenly cleaned with alcohol and it eroded the polycarbonate.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Sun Apr 10 10:28:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62505EA4.23057.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <624D6D8F.55822.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/6/22 03:31, Boraxman wrote:

    I've ripped my entire CD catalog, and never had I heard chirps.

    Used to be more of an issue... especially in the 90's when computers
    were much slower. With EAC and other software, also ripping unscratched/new discs, it's not really an issue anymore.

    My main reference to higher quality was really better than CD original/master.
    --

    Ah yes, that was also due to the earlier CD roms. I think you are talking about jitter. I never had this either, but I think it is because I had a high end Yamaha CD burner when I started ripping music.

    I remember some MP3's you'd get in the early 2000, very late 1990's had this problem.

    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Sun Apr 10 10:31:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62506028.23058.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <624D6D91.55823.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/6/22 03:34, Boraxman wrote:
    I like buying from Bandcamp, as they usually offer an OGG, FLAC
    and MP3 version.

    Yeah, when you can get FLAC/ALAC directly, it's usually the best
    option since it's closest to the source (usually). Have you played
    with Blu-ray audio at all? Haven't really tried it, but having more
    positional data or channels in the music might be cool.

    I haven't played or used anything Blu-ray at all. Don't have a
    player! I'm pretty 'low tech', so even if I did have the player, the
    best audio system I've got is a 15-20 year old Pioneer basic sound
    system. It really is just a CD player and radio with AUX input.

    Usually, if something sounds and looks decent, good enough, I'm fine
    with it.

    Gotcha... I'm not really a snob, but do have a 5.2 setup in my main tv watching space (would do 5.2.4, but my bedroom is upstairs from that room). Mid-range AVR and speakers... though my slightly better AVR
    died, and I want to get it fixed, since the temporary Yamaha I bought
    kind of sucks by comparison.

    Only really notice it all when watching certain movies, or positional audio demos... It's off the kitchen so can't really do rear speakers, main reason I'd want the .4 for Atmos. Of course that goes into another price class for AVR, which sucks.


    I read messages like this and think that I sometimes think I'm being daft not embracing newer entertainment technology, that I'm missing out on more than I think.

    I don't have bluray, only have a HD TV because someone gave it to me, only have the Pioneer system because someone wanted to get rid of it.


    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Sun Apr 10 00:10:57 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Arelor on Sun Apr 10 2022 10:24 am

    I would recommend just using flac. Someone asked me about this, how to best preserve their music digitally, and I think having a FLAC "master rip" is the best way to go. I have on my external backup drive a FLAC rip of every CD I have. The first thing I do when I but a new CD is to rip it, encode it, then I will encode to OGG for my desktop and laptop. The desktop had enough space to store the flacs, but the laptop no, hence ogg.

    That's what I do. I've ripped all the CDs I have to FLAC format, and from there, I've also made MP3 versions to play on my various devices. If I want them in a different format, I can re-convert them from the FLAC versions.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Arelor on Sat Apr 9 19:46:23 2022
    On 4/8/22 16:21, Arelor wrote:
    I usually just use YouTube music over bluetooth, since I pay for
    YouTube anyway (no commercials). I've added my own stuff to the
    library. Only problem is when I lose cell signal on road trips,
    less of an issue each year though. I'll never use Serious/XM again
    though.

    I wouldn't mind finding a dedicated app for it, WinAmp for Android
    was really the best app I'd used, but long gone now. I have a USB
    option, but larger drives don't work well in my car, and the built
    in UI is horrible.

    Doesn't it rape your data plan into nothingness?

    If I streamed music during trips I would eat away my data assingnation pretty quickly. This is the main reason why I have a traditional radio
    set in my store instead of a music streaming service - radio does not consume my data plan.

    I think running software updates tethered to wireless has been my
    biggest mobile data offense while traveling...

    Music streaming really doesn't take *that* much bandwidth... compared to
    say video streams. I have an "unlimited" plan though, it used to
    throttle after about 20gb use in a month, which I almost never hit, not
    sure if it still does.

    I mean, if you look at the size of a typical 128mbps mp3 file, more
    current compression gives roughly equal quality at around half that in
    terms of bandwidth. A day (8-10hrs) of music streaming would be ~1GB,
    and on a road trip, I'm actually driving about 4-5 days worth... so
    5-8GB would be my guess. Most of the time, I'm on wifi+vpn otherwise.

    The alternative might be to setup a carputer, maybe a raspberry pi with
    a big USB hard drive would be sufficient... I have looked into
    host+charge cable splitters so I could hook an external drive to my
    phone, and I've used straight USB in my car stereo, but the UX is often
    bad, or won't support too large of a library. But that is a lot of work
    for something I only do once or twice a year and mostly when looking to
    relax.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Sun Apr 10 07:50:04 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Sun Apr 10 2022 12:10 am


    That's what I do. I've ripped all the CDs I have to FLAC format, and from there, I've also made MP3 versions to play on my various devices. If I want them in a different format, I can re-convert them from the FLAC versions.



    i threw out all my cds and i just download what i had and what i need.
    makes it a lot easier. i'm not wasting time ripping shit or dicking with stupid cds.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Arelor@VERT/PALANT to Boraxman on Sun Apr 10 07:59:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Tracker1 on Sun Apr 10 2022 10:31 am

    Gotcha... I'm not really a snob, but do have a 5.2 setup in my main tv watchin
    space (would do 5.2.4, but my bedroom is upstairs from that room). Mid-range
    and speakers... though my slightly better AVR
    died, and I want to get it fixed, since the temporary Yamaha I bought kind of sucks by comparison.

    Only really notice it all when watching certain movies, or positional audio
    demos... It's off the kitchen so can't really do rear speakers, main reason I
    want the .4 for Atmos. Of course that goes into another price class for AVR,
    which sucks.


    I read messages like this and think that I sometimes think I'm being daft not
    embracing newer entertainment technology, that I'm missing out on more than I think

    I don't have bluray, only have a HD TV because someone gave it to me, only have the
    Pioneer system because someone wanted to get rid of it.



    Having a good sound system for watching movies makes a difference. It is one of the
    few Entertainment producs on which I think it is worth it to pour a big chunk of
    money, because a good sound system is something you pay once, lasts a sempiternity,
    and you can keep enjoying for decades.

    I didn't make the jump to Bluramyself because of 3 reasons. The first one is that
    DVD suffices for me. The second one is that Bluray support is not stellar. The third
    one is that they may declare Bluray obsolete at any time they want, voiding your
    investment in Bluray tech invalid.


    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Pc Wizard@VERT/AMIGAC to Nightfox on Sun Apr 10 11:02:29 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Sun Apr 10 2022 00:10:57


    

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Amiga City - The BBS for the Amiga - more than 4,000+ files
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Arelor on Sun Apr 10 11:22:34 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Arelor to Boraxman on Sun Apr 10 2022 07:59 am

    I didn't make the jump to Bluramyself because of 3 reasons. The first one is that DVD suffices for me. The second one is that Bluray support is not stellar. The third one is that they may declare Bluray obsolete at any

    What do you mean when you say Blu-ray support is not stellar?

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Arelor@VERT/PALANT to Nightfox on Sun Apr 10 18:39:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Arelor on Sun Apr 10 2022 11:22 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Arelor to Boraxman on Sun Apr 10 2022 07:59 am

    I didn't make the jump to Bluramyself because of 3 reasons. The first one is t
    DVD suffices for me. The second one is that Bluray support is not stellar. The
    third one is that they may declare Bluray obsolete at any

    What do you mean when you say Blu-ray support is not stellar?

    Nightfox


    That the chance of not being able to watch a Bluray movie due to some software or
    hardware incompatibility is way higher than with something such as a DVD.

    https://www.cnet.com/culture/blu-ray-disc-compatibility-its-still-an-issue/

    The article is old, but you get the idea.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Mon Apr 11 04:39:19 2022
    On 4/9/22 17:28, Boraxman wrote:

    Ah yes, that was also due to the earlier CD roms. I think you
    are talking about jitter. I never had this either, but I think
    it is because I had a high end Yamaha CD burner when I started
    ripping music.

    I remember some MP3's you'd get in the early 2000, very late
    1990's had this problem.

    IIRC, it was a combination of immature software/process combined with
    evolving hardware and trouble keeping up with throughput on the drive
    i/o channels. I had an AMD 5x86@133 with a cache module that seemed to
    keep up fine, and knew a lot of people with early Pentiums that didn't
    have an issue (~1995), but all the 486 users I knew had a lot of trouble
    with ripping. Also, many were using the audio connection, not digitally ripping the CD.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Mon Apr 11 04:44:27 2022
    On 4/9/22 17:31, Boraxman wrote:

    Only really notice it all when watching certain movies, or
    positional audio demos... It's off the kitchen so can't really
    do rear speakers, main reason I'd want the .4 for Atmos. Of
    course that goes into another price class for AVR, which sucks.

    I read messages like this and think that I sometimes think I'm
    being daft not embracing newer entertainment technology, that I'm
    missing out on more than I think.

    I don't have bluray, only have a HD TV because someone gave it to
    me, only have the Pioneer system because someone wanted to get rid
    of it.

    I'm not sure I'd invest in a Blue-ray player at this point, I do have
    USB3 external drive I use for ripping content stored on my NAS. That
    said, depending on your needs/usage a firetv or nvidia shield tv as a
    couple steps up with the built in apps and kodi are probably sufficient.

    My vision isn't the best, so don't always notice the difference between
    higher quality 720p and lower end 4k. Usually do 1080p as an in the
    middle option. I do notice the sound quality, even though I have other
    issues there.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Arelor on Mon Apr 11 16:49:04 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Arelor to Boraxman on Sun Apr 10 2022 07:59 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Tracker1 on Sun Apr 10 2022 10:31 am

    Gotcha... I'm not really a snob, but do have a 5.2 setup in my main watchin space (would do 5.2.4, but my bedroom is upstairs from that room). Mid-range and speakers... though my slightly better AVR died, and I want to get it fixed, since the temporary Yamaha I bough kind of sucks by comparison.

    Only really notice it all when watching certain movies, or positiona audio demos... It's off the kitchen so can't really do rear speaker main reason I want the .4 for Atmos. Of course that goes into anothe price class for AVR, which sucks.


    I read messages like this and think that I sometimes think I'm being daft not embracing newer entertainment technology, that I'm missing out on mor than I think

    I don't have bluray, only have a HD TV because someone gave it to me, onl have the Pioneer system because someone wanted to get rid of it.



    Having a good sound system for watching movies makes a difference. It is one the few Entertainment producs on which I think it is worth it to pour a big chunk of money, because a good sound system is something you pay once, lasts sempiternity, and you can keep enjoying for decades.

    I didn't make the jump to Bluramyself because of 3 reasons. The first one that DVD suffices for me. The second one is that Bluray support is not stell The third one is that they may declare Bluray obsolete at any time they want voiding your investment in Bluray tech invalid.


    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken


    It doesn't help that I'm a tightwad. Most of the time the TV in the lounge is used either to watch NCIS (Blurgh) or Kids movies. I don't really watch that many movies, barely any and if anything, I would use the system for music mostly.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 12 06:56:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    IIRC, it was a combination of immature software/process combined with evolving hardware and trouble keeping up with throughput on the drive
    i/o channels. I had an AMD 5x86@133 with a cache module that seemed to keep up fine, and knew a lot of people with early Pentiums that didn't have an issue (~1995), but all the 486 users I knew had a lot of
    trouble with ripping.

    CD burners were a lot slower, I never had problems writing CDs, but they
    took a helluva long time. My Sparc 2 had a 1x Sony drive, the kind with a caddy that looked like a $10 CD case with a sliding door on the bottom
    (which, essentially, it was)

    I think Windows 95/98 with DOS guts and ATA data paths had problems, but
    once I moved to Windows 2000, I had a half-decent burner and don't recall
    many issues - except I hated Roxio's software, which seemed to come for free with most burners.


    ... Onward, to meatspace!
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 12 09:12:45 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Boraxman on Mon Apr 11 2022 04:39 am

    IIRC, it was a combination of immature software/process combined with evolving hardware and trouble keeping up with throughput on the drive
    i/o channels. I had an AMD 5x86@133 with a cache module that seemed to keep up fine, and knew a lot of people with early Pentiums that didn't have an issue (~1995), but all the 486 users I knew had a lot of trouble with ripping. Also, many were using the audio connection, not digitally ripping the CD.

    I had the same AMD CPU for a little while in the mid 90s (and I found it could be safely overclocked to 160mhz by increasing the bus speed to 40mhz).

    I think I started ripping my own CDs in the late 90s, and by then I had a faster PC, but I don't remember having any significant issues with ripping CDs.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Apr 12 09:15:25 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 12 2022 06:56 am

    CD burners were a lot slower, I never had problems writing CDs, but they took a helluva long time. My Sparc 2 had a 1x Sony drive, the kind with a caddy that looked like a $10 CD case with a sliding door on the bottom (which, essentially, it was)

    I first got a CD burner in the late 90s, and I think it was a 2x burner.. I think it was that drive where I had seen a buffer underrun a couple times and had to re-burn the CD. I usually was careful not to do anything else with my PC while burning a CD, because when hard drive activity increased, there was a higher chance that the read buffer for the CD burner software would go down too much.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Nightfox on Wed Apr 13 06:45:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    I had the same AMD CPU for a little while in the mid 90s (and I found
    it could be safely overclocked to 160mhz by increasing the bus speed to 40mhz).

    The mid-90s, were pretty crazy, CPU-wise. I remember phasing out my 386es at work - we had clock doubled Intel 486DXes, 486SX CPUs, Cyrix, IBM and AMD
    486 clones, then when the Pentium came out AMD and Cyrix had their own competitors.

    I was behind the times, I ran a 486DX/50 at work and an AMD 386/40 at home.


    ... Do you ever see inconsistencies in your world?
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Apr 13 09:29:05 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Wed Apr 13 2022 06:45 am

    The mid-90s, were pretty crazy, CPU-wise. I remember phasing out my 386es at work - we had clock doubled Intel 486DXes, 486SX CPUs, Cyrix, IBM and AMD 486 clones, then when the Pentium came out AMD and Cyrix had their own competitors.

    That's true. There were definitely more competitors in the CPU market at the time. I also remember hearing that TI had made their own 486, and there was also the IDT WinChip.

    I was behind the times, I ran a 486DX/50 at work and an AMD 386/40 at home.

    It seemed like the 486DX/50 was somewhat rare. The DX-50 was a nice chip.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Nightfox on Thu Apr 14 07:25:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    That's true. There were definitely more competitors in the CPU market
    at the time. I also remember hearing that TI had made their own 486,
    and there was also the IDT WinChip.

    Oh, yeah, then the Crusoe chips.

    in 1995, we had a TI laptop with a TI 486 that sat in a corner and ran a
    Quake server.

    The networking team wasn't very adept. We had ethernet hubs, no switching.
    Cat 5 cables and jacks, but the Cat5 was punched down to telco-style punch- down blocks, with amphenol cables connecting the switches. You ended up with Cat 3 speeds for Cat 5 prices.

    The entire IT department (file servers, mail servers, db and DNS) were all
    on the same switched network fabric, along with all of the IT desktops.

    We fired up an 8 player Quake match and brought the network down.


    ... THE SEVEN JOURNEYS TO ITSELFNESS
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Hustler@VERT/DMINE to Nightfox on Thu Apr 14 22:36:24 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Tracker1 on Tue Apr 12 2022 09:12 am

    I think I started ripping my own CDs in the late 90s, and by then I had a faster PC, but I don't remember having any significant issues with ripping CDs.

    Errrr. What's a CD and who were you tring to ripoff? ;-)

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Diamond Mine Online BBS - bbs.dmine.net:24 - Fredericksburg, VA USA
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Apr 15 11:29:53 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Wed Apr 13 2022 06:45 am

    Nightfox wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    I had the same AMD CPU for a little while in the mid 90s (and I found it could be safely overclocked to 160mhz by increasing the bus speed to 40mhz).

    The mid-90s, were pretty crazy, CPU-wise. I remember phasing out my 386es at work - we had clock doubled Intel 486DXes, 486SX CPUs, Cyrix, IBM and AMD 486 clones, then when the Pentium came out AMD and Cyrix had their own competitors.

    I was behind the times, I ran a 486DX/50 at work and an AMD 386/40 at home.


    ... Do you ever see inconsistencies in your world?
    It seemed at the time, there were a lot of exciting new developments, and new CPU's were significantly different, notably faster. New graphics cards significantly different.

    These days, it seems it is just a series of slow incremental improvements. I can barely tell the difference between a new PC and my 12 year old desktop, in day to day tasks.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Fri Apr 15 09:34:47 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Apr 15 2022 11:29 am

    It seemed at the time, there were a lot of exciting new developments, and new CPUs were significantly different, notably faster. New graphics cards significantly different.

    These days, it seems it is just a series of slow incremental improvements. I can barely tell the difference between a new PC and my 12 year old desktop, in day to day tasks.

    That's also what I've been thinking for a long time. It's harder to notice increases in computer speeds these days.

    I think one part of it is (from what I've heard) it has been moe and more difficult to increase CPU clock speeds.

    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads. For more everyday tasks like checking email, using a BBS, watching videos, etc., today's computer speeds are more than adequate for that. Years ago, it used to be that upgrading to a faster CPU (or computer in general) would noticeably improve speeds for running your OS and doing daily tasks, but now we're well beyond the point where we have fast enough computers that we don't really notice much difference when doing daily stuff like that.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Boraxman on Fri Apr 15 07:05:00 2022
    Boraxman wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    It seemed at the time, there were a lot of exciting new developments,
    and new CPU's were significantly different, notably faster. New
    graphics cards significantly different.

    Not to mention VLB, EISA, ISA, and later PCI.

    Those days were the beginning of a love affair with *nix in IT. I replaced a Mac-based email system called Quickmail (with gateways and user loads, we needed 4 systems total for 70 people) with a single desktop 486 system
    running BSD/OS.

    These days, it seems it is just a series of slow incremental
    improvements. I can barely tell the difference between a new PC and my
    12 year old desktop, in day to day tasks.

    I hear you. I just replaced a working 12-year old Core 2 quad system, mostly for SATA-3 and USB3. It worked just fine for some gaming and day to day use.




    ... Be less critical more often
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Ogg@VERT/CAPCITY2 to Nightfox on Fri Apr 15 13:36:00 2022
    Hello Nightfox!

    ** On Friday 15.04.22 - 09:34, Nightfox wrote to Boraxman:

    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads.

    How long does your pc take to "process" this:

    http://kolico.ca/ftn

    Excluding the initial download of the "data", all the graphic
    rendering is performed locally and depends on processor speed.



    --- OpenXP 5.0.51
    * Origin: Ogg's Dovenet Point (723:320/1.9)
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Fri Apr 15 17:26:34 2022
    On 4/14/22 18:29, Boraxman wrote:
    It seemed at the time, there were a lot of exciting new developments,
    and new CPU's were significantly different, notably faster. New
    graphics cards significantly different.

    These days, it seems it is just a series of slow incremental
    improvements. I can barely tell the difference between a new PC and
    my 12 year old desktop, in day to day tasks.

    When we passed the 1ghz mark it seems we get 10-20% faster every couple years... but as mentioned by many, for day to day, it doesn't really get noticed much. SSDs and having enough ram are probably the biggest
    things for most people. And even from SATA SSD to NVME, only really
    notice when building/compiling a project. I'll definitely never work on spinning drives again, though I have a NAS setup full of them.

    My daughter is still using my handed down 2014 laptop without
    complaints... I did upgrade all the desktops over the past 2-3 years
    though. My older desktop was a bit over 5yo at upgrade and did notice
    the difference, not like the old was unusable, just a notable
    difference. (i7-4790K now r9-5950X)
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Ogg on Fri Apr 15 19:48:08 2022
    On 4/15/22 10:36, Ogg wrote:
    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the
    difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads.

    How long does your pc take to "process" this:

    http://kolico.ca/ftn

    Excluding the initial download of the "data", all the graphic
    rendering is performed locally and depends on processor speed.

    The status bar takes ~17.5s to finish ... after that, it's pretty much
    instant for the render part.

    R9-5950x, 128gb ddr4@3600, RTX 3080, Edge browser, Ubuntu-Budgie 21.10
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Tracker1 on Fri Apr 15 19:50:40 2022
    On 4/15/22 19:48, Tracker1 wrote:
    On 4/15/22 10:36, Ogg wrote:
    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the
    difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads.

    How long does your pc take to "process" this:

    http://kolico.ca/ftn

    Excluding the initial download of the "data", all the graphic
    rendering is performed locally and depends on processor speed.

    The status bar takes ~17.5s to finish ... after that, it's pretty much instant for the render part.

    R9-5950x, 128gb ddr4@3600, RTX 3080, Edge browser, Ubuntu-Budgie 21.10

    Time above was with the profiler running..in FF with profiler running,
    took closer to 50s.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Nightfox on Sat Apr 16 16:23:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62599EA7.65213.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <6258CA91.55885.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to poindexter FORTRAN
    on Fri Apr 15 2022 11:29 am

    It seemed at the time, there were a lot of exciting new developments, and new CPUs were significantly different, notably faster. New graphics cards significantly different.

    These days, it seems it is just a series of slow incremental improvements. I can barely tell the difference between a new PC and my 12 year old desktop, in day to day tasks.

    That's also what I've been thinking for a long time. It's harder to notice increases in computer speeds these days.

    I think one part of it is (from what I've heard) it has been moe and
    more difficult to increase CPU clock speeds.

    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads. For more everyday tasks like checking email, using a BBS, watching videos, etc., today's computer speeds are more than adequate for that. Years ago, it used to
    be that upgrading to a faster CPU (or computer in general) would noticeably improve speeds for running your OS and doing daily tasks,
    but now we're well beyond the point where we have fast enough computers that we don't really notice much difference when doing daily stuff like that.

    It has been harder to increase CPU speeds. My AMD Phenom II Quad Core, which was purchase in 2009 runs at 3.4GHz, modern CPU's don't run that much faster. They may have more cores, and more efficient instruction set. In the 90s, you went from 12MHz to a few hundred.

    We are close to the physical limit as to how fast we can clock the chips, and the speed of light is another barrier.

    The other reason is as you mentioned, you only notice it during heavy workloads, which is rare. The GUI, the interface for most programs is fast enough to keep pace.

    The other factor is the Operating Systems haven't changed fundamentally either.
    The computers don't do much more now.

    We've reached a state where good enough, is really good enough. I mean, I'm still using a Thinkpad T43 as a laptop.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Sat Apr 16 16:26:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <625A0D3A.23099.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <6258CA91.55885.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/14/22 18:29, Boraxman wrote:
    It seemed at the time, there were a lot of exciting new developments,
    and new CPU's were significantly different, notably faster. New
    graphics cards significantly different.

    These days, it seems it is just a series of slow incremental
    improvements. I can barely tell the difference between a new PC and
    my 12 year old desktop, in day to day tasks.

    When we passed the 1ghz mark it seems we get 10-20% faster every couple years... but as mentioned by many, for day to day, it doesn't really
    get noticed much. SSDs and having enough ram are probably the biggest things for most people. And even from SATA SSD to NVME, only really notice when building/compiling a project. I'll definitely never work
    on spinning drives again, though I have a NAS setup full of them.

    My daughter is still using my handed down 2014 laptop without complaints... I did upgrade all the desktops over the past 2-3 years though. My older desktop was a bit over 5yo at upgrade and did notice
    the difference, not like the old was unusable, just a notable
    difference. (i7-4790K now r9-5950X)

    My wife wanted a laptop, so I get a Thinkpad T470. It's a few years old, but would she notice the difference between that and a new one which will cost 2-3 times as much? Not at all. She wanted new, but spending an extra $1,000 for effectively no real performance or functionality isn't justifiable.

    It's amazing the amount of money people are willing to throw down, just for an interface which is *slightly* easier to use, but then complain how everything costs so much.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Apr 16 16:29:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6259BB33.51146.dove.dove-gen@realitycheckbbs.org>
    @REPLY: <6258CA91.55885.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Boraxman wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    It seemed at the time, there were a lot of exciting new developments,
    and new CPU's were significantly different, notably faster. New
    graphics cards significantly different.

    Not to mention VLB, EISA, ISA, and later PCI.

    Those days were the beginning of a love affair with *nix in IT. I
    replaced a Mac-based email system called Quickmail (with gateways and
    user loads, we needed 4 systems total for 70 people) with a single
    desktop 486 system running BSD/OS.

    These days, it seems it is just a series of slow incremental
    improvements. I can barely tell the difference between a new PC and my
    12 year old desktop, in day to day tasks.

    I hear you. I just replaced a working 12-year old Core 2 quad system, mostly for SATA-3 and USB3. It worked just fine for some gaming and day
    to day use.

    I still have 2 486s, and a Pentium, and an XT which unfortunately isn't complete.

    I like to use the 486 from time to time. Those PC's were fun to play around with, you felt you could really make a change with the addition of an expansion card or a new drive.

    When I wanted USB 3 for this machine, I just got a USB 3 addon card. Works fine, and there are SATA cards you can have.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Ogg on Sat Apr 16 07:52:33 2022
    Re: at the speeds CPUs run these days..
    By: Ogg to Nightfox on Fri Apr 15 2022 01:36 pm

    Hello Nightfox!

    ** On Friday 15.04.22 - 09:34, Nightfox wrote to Boraxman:

    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads.

    How long does your pc take to "process" this:

    http://kolico.ca/ftn

    Excluding the initial download of the "data", all the graphic


    for me, under 30 secs i have an i7

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Sat Apr 16 10:56:56 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Sat Apr 16 2022 04:23 pm

    The other reason is as you mentioned, you only notice it during heavy workloads, which is rare. The GUI, the interface for most programs is fast enough to keep pace.

    If you regularly do intensive work on your PC (such as video editing, data processing, or anything else requiring lots of CPU power), it can definitely be a benefit to upgrade to something faster. And as you said, they keep making instruction sets more efficient and adding more cores - I've seen more and more software these days that can make use of multiple cores.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Ogg on Sat Apr 16 14:24:49 2022
    Re: at the speeds CPUs run these days..
    By: Ogg to Nightfox on Fri Apr 15 2022 01:36 pm

    How long does your pc take to "process" this:

    http://kolico.ca/ftn

    Excluding the initial download of the "data", all the graphic
    rendering is performed locally and depends on processor speed.

    It took about 21 seconds for me. My CPU is an Intel i9-9900k. And not sure if it makes a difference, but I also have 32GB of RAM and my graphics card is an Nvidia RTX 3080 TI (12GB).

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Sat Apr 16 17:20:37 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Sat Apr 16 2022 10:56 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Sat Apr 16 2022 04:23 pm

    The other reason is as you mentioned, you only notice it during heavy workloads, which is rare. The GUI, the interface for most programs is fast enough to keep pace.

    If you regularly do intensive work on your PC (such as video editing, data processing, or anything else requiring lots of CPU power), it can definitely be a benefit to upgrade to something faster. And as you said, they keep making instruction sets more efficient and adding more cores - I've seen more and more software these days that can make use of multiple cores.

    Nightfox


    that's the only reason i can see to upgrade if you currently have an older but OK computer. i can still play the newest games with no issues and i have an older i7, and older video card and 16gigs of ram
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Sat Apr 16 17:21:25 2022
    Re: at the speeds CPUs run these days..
    By: Nightfox to Ogg on Sat Apr 16 2022 02:24 pm

    Re: at the speeds CPUs run these days..
    By: Ogg to Nightfox on Fri Apr 15 2022 01:36 pm

    How long does your pc take to "process" this:

    http://kolico.ca/ftn

    Excluding the initial download of the "data", all the graphic
    rendering is performed locally and depends on processor speed.

    It took about 21 seconds for me. My CPU is an Intel i9-9900k. And not sure if it makes a difference, but I also have 32GB of RAM and my graphics card is an Nvidia RTX 3080 TI (12GB).



    there must be some bottleneck there, then. so it's not entirely the cpu and computer. that's way close to my time and i have a much older computer.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Nightfox on Sun Apr 17 10:30:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <625B0368.65224.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <625A6547.55893.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on
    Sat Apr 16 2022 04:23 pm

    The other reason is as you mentioned, you only notice it during heavy workloads, which is rare. The GUI, the interface for most programs is fast enough to keep pace.

    If you regularly do intensive work on your PC (such as video editing,
    data processing, or anything else requiring lots of CPU power), it can definitely be a benefit to upgrade to something faster. And as you
    said, they keep making instruction sets more efficient and adding more cores - I've seen more and more software these days that can make use
    of multiple cores.

    I wonder how many people do this kind of work with any regularity?

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Ogg@VERT/CAPCITY2 to Boraxman on Sun Apr 17 13:50:00 2022
    Hello Boraxman!

    ** On Saturday 16.04.22 - 16:26, Boraxman wrote to Tracker1:

    My wife wanted a laptop, so I get a Thinkpad T470. It's a
    few years old, but would she notice the difference between
    that and a new one which will cost 2-3 times as much? Not
    at all. She wanted new, but spending an extra $1,000 for
    effectively no real performance or functionality isn't
    justifiable.

    It's amazing the amount of money people are willing to
    throw down, just for an interface which is *slightly*
    easier to use, but then complain how everything costs so
    much.

    Sometimes it's the design that wins one's heart. It could be
    the feel of the keys. It could be the weight. It could be the
    finish of the frame/cover, etc.




    --- OpenXP 5.0.51
    * Origin: Ogg's Dovenet Point (723:320/1.9)
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Jonathan A Lloyd@VERT/SHENKS to Boraxman on Sun Apr 17 18:35:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Sun Apr 17 2022 10:30 am

    I mean, I can vouch that I do fairly regularly, and I'm just a social scientist. Then again, data processing -was- the "justification" for my build :-)

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ SHENK'S EXPRESS, Virginia Beach, VA, shenks.synchro.net
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Ogg on Tue Apr 19 19:32:44 2022
    Re: Cracked cases
    By: Ogg to Boraxman on Sun Apr 17 2022 01:50 pm

    Hello Boraxman!

    ** On Saturday 16.04.22 - 16:26, Boraxman wrote to Tracker1:

    My wife wanted a laptop, so I get a Thinkpad T470. It's a
    few years old, but would she notice the difference between
    that and a new one which will cost 2-3 times as much? Not
    at all. She wanted new, but spending an extra $1,000 for
    effectively no real performance or functionality isn't
    justifiable.

    It's amazing the amount of money people are willing to
    throw down, just for an interface which is *slightly*
    easier to use, but then complain how everything costs so
    much.

    Sometimes it's the design that wins one's heart. It could be
    the feel of the keys. It could be the weight. It could be the
    finish of the frame/cover, etc.

    Maybe, though none of these have been given as reasons. I think it is simply habit, knowing how to navigate the GUI. Anything different is considered a problem, even if it offers more.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Boraxman on Sat Apr 16 09:36:00 2022
    Boraxman wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    When I wanted USB 3 for this machine, I just got a USB 3 addon card.
    Works fine, and there are SATA cards you can have.

    My old system, a Dell T3400 did it's time and more. I could have kept adding on to it, but decided it was better to ditch it and get something with what
    I wanted built-in.

    The old system had a core 2 quad, 8 GB of RAM and 4 SATA drives. The new system has an i7, 16 GB of RAM, 1 SSD and 1 SATA drive, and my UPS run time went from 14 minutes to 24 - with a bigger monitor!


    ... Cut a vital connection
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu Apr 21 20:20:48 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Boraxman on Sat Apr 16 2022 09:36 am

    Boraxman wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    When I wanted USB 3 for this machine, I just got a USB 3 addon card. Works fine, and there are SATA cards you can have.

    My old system, a Dell T3400 did it's time and more. I could have kept adding on to it, b
    decided it was better to ditch it and get something with what
    I wanted built-in.

    The old system had a core 2 quad, 8 GB of RAM and 4 SATA drives. The new system has an i
    16 GB of RAM, 1 SSD and 1 SATA drive, and my UPS run time went from 14 minutes to 24 - w
    a bigger monitor!


    ... Cut a vital connection

    What do you do with your old systems?

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Dream Master@VERT/CAUGHT to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Apr 19 13:23:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Nightfox <=-

    Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    We fired up an 8 player Quake match and brought the network down.

    I have a similar story. Back in 1996, while at Deloitte, we ran a Quake server on the network. Whether during or after hours, that network would grind to a halt. It was sad. Back then, IT investment was ridiculous as we were viewed solely as a cost center even though they'd be nowhere without us. It took twenty years for organizations to finally see the value of IT (mostly).

    Brian Klauss <-> Dream Master
    Caught in a Dream | caughtinadream.com a Synchronet BBS

    ... Got my tie caught in the fax... Suddenly I was in L.A.
    --- MultiMail/Mac v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Caught in a Dream - caughtinadream.com
  • From Dream Master@VERT/CAUGHT to Nightfox on Tue Apr 19 13:26:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Apr 15 2022 11:29 am

    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads. For more everyday tasks like checking email, using a BBS, watching videos, etc., today's computer speeds are more than adequate for that. Years ago, it used to
    be that upgrading to a faster CPU (or computer in general) would noticeably improve speeds for running your OS and doing daily tasks,
    but now we're well beyond the point where we have fast enough computers that we don't really notice much difference when doing daily stuff like that.

    The increase in CPU speeds is lost on the every day consumer. Multitasking, background tasks, etc., are all benefiting from these higher performing systems, yet the only way anything is actually realized is on applications and games that can truly benefit from 3+ GHz CPUs. Hell, I have POWER8 and POWER9-based AIX systems that are running in the high 3 and low 4Ghz range, 4 and 8 SMT, and half the applications running on them are barely utilizing 40% of the overall chip. Oh well.

    Brian Klauss <-> Dream Master
    Caught in a Dream | caughtinadream.com a Synchronet BBS

    ... "42? 7 and a half million years and all you can come up with is 42?!"
    --- MultiMail/Mac v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Caught in a Dream - caughtinadream.com
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Dream Master on Thu Apr 28 17:44:21 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dream Master to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Apr 19 2022 01:23 pm

    grind to a halt. It was sad. Back then, IT investment was ridiculous as we were viewed solely as a cost center even though they'd be nowhere without us. It took twenty years for organizations to finally see the value of IT (mostly).

    Yeah, like in 2008 when companies told their IT departments to cut spend by 15-20%. The pendulum swung in the direction of cost savings, and IT suffered. I dealt with a handful of *bad* managed service providers who seemed to have in the back of their mind that they were the lowest bidder and we got what we paid for.

    The amount of gamesmanship they did with performance metrics was shameless - and embarrassing, because they didn't even manage to make themselves look good - just slightly less worse.

    *

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Dream Master on Fri Apr 29 19:19:07 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dream Master to Nightfox on Tue Apr 19 2022 01:26 pm

    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Apr 15 2022 11:29 am

    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice the difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads. For more everyday task
    like checking email, using a BBS, watching videos, etc., today's computer
    speeds are more than adequate for that. Years ago, it used to
    be that upgrading to a faster CPU (or computer in general) would noticeably
    improve speeds for running your OS and doing daily tasks,
    but now we're well beyond the point where we have fast enough computers that
    don't really notice much difference when doing daily stuff like that.

    The increase in CPU speeds is lost on the every day consumer. Multitasking, background tasks, etc., are all benefiting from these higher performing systems,
    the only way anything is actually realized is on applications and games that can
    truly benefit from 3+ GHz CPUs. Hell, I have POWER8 and POWER9-based AIX systems
    that are running in the high 3 and low 4Ghz range, 4 and 8 SMT, and half the applications running on them are barely utilizing 40% of the overall chip. Oh we

    Brian Klauss <-> Dream Master
    Caught in a Dream | caughtinadream.com a Synchronet BBS

    ... "42? 7 and a half million years and all you can come up with is 42?!"

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", a Phenom
    II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slowness of it. For almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enough.

    Moore's law broke at the right time, when CPU's are good enough for desktop purposes.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 07:26:34 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Dream Master on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:19 pm

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", a Phenom II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slowness of it. For almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enough.

    Moore's law broke at the right time, when CPU's are good enough for desktop purposes.

    Well said. Much of the processing power of today's CPU's is reserved for many of the OS-specific background tasks and activities - the sorts of things that automate tasks that, back in the 1980s and 1990s, we used to manually execute on the MS-DOS command-prompt (such as defragmentation, disk optimization, and search indexing). There's some solace in knowing that an operating system is taking care of self-maintenance for you, but there's also a tremendous loss of control.

    There's little wonder that enthusiast and hobbying computing on devices like the Raspberri Pi has really taken off.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to Kaelon on Fri Apr 29 09:55:00 2022
    Kaelon wrote to Boraxman <=-

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", a Phenom II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slowness of it. For almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enough.

    Moore's law broke at the right time, when CPU's are good enough for desktop purposes.

    Well said. Much of the processing power of today's CPU's is
    reserved for many of the OS-specific background tasks and
    activities - the sorts of things that automate tasks that, back
    in the 1980s and 1990s, we used to manually execute on the MS-DOS command-prompt (such as defragmentation, disk optimization, and
    search indexing). There's some solace in knowing that an
    operating system is taking care of self-maintenance for you, but
    there's also a tremendous loss of control.

    I think it's worth mentioning that much/most of that operating system
    "help" is Windows-specific.

    There's little wonder that enthusiast and hobbying computing on
    devices like the Raspberri Pi has really taken off.

    Well..... Linux. ;-)



    ... Internal Error: The system has been taken over by sheep at line 19960
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Gamgee on Fri Apr 29 10:53:12 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Gamgee to Kaelon on Fri Apr 29 2022 09:55 am

    I think it's worth mentioning that much/most of that operating system
    "help" is Windows-specific.

    Well stated. macOS certainly is pretty guilty of this sort of "help," too.

    Well..... Linux. ;-)

    Indeed. I've been enjoying messing around with a number of Linux variants over the past 20 years, but to be honest, it's hard to break MS-DOS conventions of always searching for AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS lines!
    -=- Kaelon -=- kaelon@kaelon.com -=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 12:38:56 2022
    On 4/15/2022 11:23 PM, Boraxman wrote:

    It has been harder to increase CPU speeds. My AMD Phenom II Quad Core, which was purchase in 2009 runs at 3.4GHz, modern CPU's don't run that much faster. They may have more cores, and more efficient instruction set. In the 90s, you
    went from 12MHz to a few hundred.

    You might be surprised, going from an i7-4790K to a Zen 2 Ryzen was a noticeable improvement...

    ...
    We've reached a state where good enough, is really good enough. I mean, I'm still using a Thinkpad T43 as a laptop.

    For most people, most of the time, I would agree that many systems from
    the past ~10 years and most from the past 4 are good enough.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 13:51:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Dream Master on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:19 pm

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dream Master to Nightfox on Tue Apr 19 2022 01:26 pm

    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Apr 15 2022 11:29 am

    Also, at the speeds CPUs run these days, it's just hard to notice th difference unless you're doing some heavy workloads. For more every like checking email, using a BBS, watching videos, etc., today's com speeds are more than adequate for that. Years ago, it used to
    be that upgrading to a faster CPU (or computer in general) would not improve speeds for running your OS and doing daily tasks,
    but now we're well beyond the point where we have fast enough comput don't really notice much difference when doing daily stuff like that

    The increase in CPU speeds is lost on the every day consumer. Multitaski background tasks, etc., are all benefiting from these higher performing s the only way anything is actually realized is on applications and games t truly benefit from 3+ GHz CPUs. Hell, I have POWER8 and POWER9-based AIX that are running in the high 3 and low 4Ghz range, 4 and 8 SMT, and half applications running on them are barely utilizing 40% of the overall chip

    Brian Klauss <-> Dream Master
    Caught in a Dream | caughtinadream.com a Synchronet BBS

    ... "42? 7 and a half million years and all you can come up with is 42?!"

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", a P II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slowness of it. almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enough.

    Moore's law broke at the right time, when CPU's are good enough for desktop purposes.

    Moore's Law originally covered circuit integration. People applied it to
    clock speeds and other benchmarks later. Once a speed limit was met, chip makers either widened the road or added more roads.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 11:41:41 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Dream Master on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:19 pm

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", a Phenom II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slowness of it. For almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enough.

    I hear you. I had a 12 year old desktop that I'd upgraded from a 2.0 ghz Core 2 Duo to a 2.6 ghz Core 2 Quad, and for desktop use it was more than fine. The only thing that drove me to upgrade was the cost for memory (ECC memory) and a lack native Windows 10 drivers. Then, I wanted to upgrade it to USB3; it would end up costing more to ditch it.

    I found an off-lease 3 year-old Dell with an i7, USB3 and 16 GB of RAM for $180, and as an added benefit the computer uses half the electricity of the old box.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Moondog on Fri Apr 29 17:45:01 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 01:51 pm

    Moore's Law originally covered circuit integration. People applied it to clock speeds and other benchmarks later. Once a speed limit was met, chip makers either widened the road or added more roads.

    I haven't heard Moore's law applied to clock speeds and such. I thought Moore's Law specifically said the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 12:44:53 2022
    On 4/15/2022 11:26 PM, Boraxman wrote:

    My wife wanted a laptop, so I get a Thinkpad T470. It's a few years
    old, but would she notice the difference between that and a new one
    which will cost 2-3 times as much? Not at all. She wanted new, but spending an extra $1,000 for effectively no real performance or functionality isn't justifiable.

    Depends on what she does with the computer, but unlikely.

    It's amazing the amount of money people are willing to throw down,
    just for an interface which is *slightly* easier to use, but then
    complain how everything costs so much.

    Can't speak for anyone else, but I am definitely spoiled. I tend to go
    near the top edge of consumer class every few years when I upgrade my
    desktop, not willing to make the leap to Workstation class. But it's
    often in the $3K+ range. Current system is getting close to 2yo now,
    and not itching to really upgrade currently. It's literally the first computer I've ever had that didn't feel like I was bottle-necked
    somewhere regularly. Although video (re)encoding still takes longer
    than I'd like, and AI upscaling is pretty slow too.

    For my job, a lot of that is highly tethered to disk performance, memory
    and cache... which isn't too bad, except for one work project that takes
    over 20m to build (ugh)... my work computer may be back online soon, so
    I'll have to start using that again when it is fixed/replaced (closer to
    30m for said project). :-(
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 12:47:59 2022
    On 4/16/2022 5:30 PM, Boraxman wrote:

    I wonder how many people do this kind of work with any regularity?

    *raises hand*
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Tracker1 on Fri Apr 29 19:28:04 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 12:44 pm

    Can't speak for anyone else, but I am definitely spoiled. I tend to go near the top edge of consumer class every few years when I upgrade my desktop, not willing to make the leap to Workstation class. But it's often in the $3K+ range. Current system is getting close to 2yo now,
    and not itching to really upgrade currently. It's literally the first computer I've ever had that didn't feel like I was bottle-necked somewhere regularly. Although video (re)encoding still takes longer
    than I'd like, and AI upscaling is pretty slow too.

    I've done that for my last couple of PC builds, especially my current one. I built it in 2019, but have made a few upgrades since then (most significantly the graphics card). I've probably spent close to that on it. I also do things like video re-encoding and AI upscaling. Even with this kind of hardware, it can still take hours sometimes.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 19:30:09 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:26 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Dream Master on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:19 pm

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", a Phe
    II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slowness of it. Fo
    almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enough.

    Moore's law broke at the right time, when CPU's are good enough for desktop
    purposes.

    Well said. Much of the processing power of today's CPU's is reserved for many of
    OS-specific background tasks and activities - the sorts of things that automate
    tasks that, back in the 1980s and 1990s, we used to manually execute on the MS-DO
    command-prompt (such as defragmentation, disk optimization, and search indexing).
    There's some solace in knowing that an operating system is taking care of self-maintenance for you, but there's also a tremendous loss of control.

    There's little wonder that enthusiast and hobbying computing on devices like the
    Raspberri Pi has really taken off.

    Does Windows defragment in the background? Search indexing may take a bit of CPU
    time, but it wouldn't run constantly, and disk optimisation wouldn't be needed all
    the time.

    I'm not actually sure where all the CPU power that windows is using is going. I use
    Linux, so CPU background noise is very small. Looking at processor using, I see
    pulseaudio using 2% (Why, I don't know)which seems high, and that is pretty much it.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 19:34:17 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Gamgee on Fri Apr 29 2022 10:53 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Gamgee to Kaelon on Fri Apr 29 2022 09:55 am

    I think it's worth mentioning that much/most of that operating system "help" is Windows-specific.

    Well stated. macOS certainly is pretty guilty of this sort of "help," too.

    Well..... Linux. ;-)

    Indeed. I've been enjoying messing around with a number of Linux variants over th
    past 20 years, but to be honest, it's hard to break MS-DOS conventions of always
    searching for AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS lines!
    -=- Kaelon -=- kaelon@kaelon.com -=-


    Even after all these years?? Well, you can edit rc.local, or .bashrc on Linux to
    get the same 'feeling'.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Sat Apr 30 19:36:34 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 12:38 pm

    On 4/15/2022 11:23 PM, Boraxman wrote:

    It has been harder to increase CPU speeds. My AMD Phenom II Quad Core, which w
    purchase in 2009 runs at 3.4GHz, modern CPU's don't run that much faster. They
    have more cores, and more efficient instruction set. In the 90s, you
    went from 12MHz to a few hundred.

    You might be surprised, going from an i7-4790K to a Zen 2 Ryzen was a noticeable
    improvement...

    ...
    We've reached a state where good enough, is really good enough. I mean, I'm st
    using a Thinkpad T43 as a laptop.

    For most people, most of the time, I would agree that many systems from
    the past ~10 years and most from the past 4 are good enough.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com

    I probably would notice a difference, applications starting faster, the odd times I
    do video or sound encoding, but I think for the most part, there might be a bit more
    zippyness, but thats it.

    For me, it doesn't seem worth the money. Qodem/syncterm run fast enough now...

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Apr 30 19:41:06 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 11:41 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Dream Master on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:19 pm

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", a
    Phenom II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slowness of
    For almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enough.

    I hear you. I had a 12 year old desktop that I'd upgraded from a 2.0 ghz Core 2 D
    to a 2.6 ghz Core 2 Quad, and for desktop use it was more than fine. The only thi
    that drove me to upgrade was the cost for memory (ECC memory) and a lack native
    Windows 10 drivers. Then, I wanted to upgrade it to USB3; it would end up costing
    more to ditch it.

    I found an off-lease 3 year-old Dell with an i7, USB3 and 16 GB of RAM for $180,
    as an added benefit the computer uses half the electricity of the old box.


    Having more cores is good. When I specced my desktop back in 2009, I paid that bit
    extra for a 4 core CPU with good speed. The Phenom II is a Quad core at 3.4GHz,
    similar to what you get today, but with a less efficient instruction set.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Sat Apr 30 19:45:32 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 12:44 pm

    Can't speak for anyone else, but I am definitely spoiled. I tend to go
    near the top edge of consumer class every few years when I upgrade my desktop, not willing to make the leap to Workstation class. But it's
    often in the $3K+ range. Current system is getting close to 2yo now,
    and not itching to really upgrade currently. It's literally the first computer
    I've ever had that didn't feel like I was bottle-necked
    somewhere regularly. Although video (re)encoding still takes longer
    than I'd like, and AI upscaling is pretty slow too.

    For my job, a lot of that is highly tethered to disk performance, memory
    and cache... which isn't too bad, except for one work project that takes over 20m to build (ugh)... my work computer may be back online soon, so
    I'll have to start using that again when it is fixed/replaced (closer to
    30m for said project). :-(
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com

    I choose not to upgrade not because of cost (though spending a lot of money for just
    a small benefit doesn't entice me), but because
    1) I don't like to throw out working computers and items, to landfill and destroy
    what is still useful and can be employed.
    and
    2) I'm kind of conscious about consuming the Earths natural resources in this churn.


    So it really more about not burning through resources and creating waste and getting
    caught up in the "upgrade" treadmill.

    We should be seeking to make the hardware we have last as long as possible, incuding
    software support. I think our priority, where we churn hardware to save software
    development time is muddled headed.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Boraxman on Sat Apr 30 10:52:50 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 07:34 pm

    Even after all these years?? Well, you can edit rc.local, or .bashrc on Linux to get the same 'feeling'.

    It's definitely hard to break old habits! Plus, when you grew up as I did in the 1980s around MS-DOS, you know of all the ways to tweak and perfect the OS. It's one of the reasons that I love MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22!
    -=- Kaelon -=- kaelon@kaelon.com -=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 17:34:36 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Sat Apr 30 2022 10:52 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 07:34 pm

    Even after all these years?? Well, you can edit rc.local, or .bashrc on Linux to get the same 'feeling'.

    It's definitely hard to break old habits! Plus, when you grew up as I did in the 1980s around MS-DOS, you know of all the ways to tweak and perfect the OS. It's one of the reasons that I love MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22!
    -=- Kaelon -=- kaelon@kaelon.com -=-

    you shouldnt post your email address because it can be harvested on the web. ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Kaelon@VERT to MRO on Sat Apr 30 17:05:42 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 05:34 pm

    you shouldnt post your email address because it can be harvested on the web.

    Thanks I appreciate that. ;) I forgot that these messages may be exposed to web harvesters.
    -=- Kaelon -=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 13:17:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:26 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Dream Master on Fri Apr 29 2022 07:19 pm

    I have a CPU on my main desktop that someone described as "really slow", Phenom II. Yet I almost an never inconvienienced by the supposed slownes of it. For almost all that I need to do, the computer is responsive enou

    Moore's law broke at the right time, when CPU's are good enough for deskt purposes.

    Well said. Much of the processing power of today's CPU's is reserved for man d-prompt (such as defragmentation, disk optimization, and search indexing).

    There's little wonder that enthusiast and hobbying computing on devices like

    I get the impression the adopters of single board pc's are aware of it's limit ations, but also are aware of what they can do with the extra IO and other integrated components. Sure, you can place linux on any old pc and learn to program in python, however the having a pc the size of a bar of soap makes it easier to lug around

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Nightfox on Sat Apr 30 13:21:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Moondog on Fri Apr 29 2022 05:45 pm

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Boraxman on Fri Apr 29 2022 01:51 pm

    Moore's Law originally covered circuit integration. People applied it t clock speeds and other benchmarks later. Once a speed limit was met, ch makers either widened the road or added more roads.

    I haven't heard Moore's law applied to clock speeds and such. I thought Moo

    Nightfox

    Back in the 90's and early 2000's people were using Moore's law in term s of CPU's. They're weren't using it to define transistor integration, but more towards clock speeds of cpu's doubling every 18 months

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Moondog on Sat Apr 30 21:12:30 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 01:17 pm

    I get the impression the adopters of single board pc's are aware of it's limit ations, but also are aware of what they can do with the extra IO and other integrated components. Sure, you can place linux on any old pc and learn to program in python, however the having a pc the size of a bar of soap makes it easier to lug around

    Very well said. There's definitely a lot of enjoyment that I receive from using a Raspberry Pi as a Pi-Hole to block all advertising and spy-ware at the network house-wide level. The fact that it fits in the palm of my hand makes it ever so convenient to just put on the edge of my router, and not have to add another rack to my server-closet.
    -=- Kaelon -=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Moondog on Sun May 1 06:13:01 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Nightfox on Sat Apr 30 2022 01:21 pm

    Back in the 90's and early 2000's people were using Moore's law in term s of CPU's. They're weren't
    using
    it to define transistor integration, but more towards clock speeds of cpu's doubling every 18 months

    This was certainly the context in which I was remembering Moore's Law. I wonder when it stopped applying to speed and performance and started applying to other characteristics?

    Is Moore's Law still true?
    -=- Kaelon -=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Sun May 1 16:03:46 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Sat Apr 30 2022 10:52 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 07:34 pm

    Even after all these years?? Well, you can edit rc.local, or .bashrc on Linux
    get the same 'feeling'.

    It's definitely hard to break old habits! Plus, when you grew up as I did in the
    1980s around MS-DOS, you know of all the ways to tweak and perfect the OS. It's o
    of the reasons that I love MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22!
    -=- Kaelon -=- kaelon@kaelon.com -=-


    DOS was my system from about 1993 to the end if 1996, starting with DOS 2 and 3.3 on
    a 2nd hand XT, then shortly after, DOS 6 on a 386. I won't include the "DOS" that
    came with Windows 95, though I still used its DOS 7 a lot, booting to the DOS prompt
    by default rather than into Windows 95.


    I still play with it from time to time on my old 486, DOS 6.22 that is. It wasn't
    so much DOS I liked, as all the cool utilities and things you could make your system
    do. Real mode operating systems are fun.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Boraxman on Sun May 1 14:03:55 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Sun May 01 2022 04:03 pm

    I still play with it from time to time on my old 486, DOS 6.22 that is. It wasn't so much DOS I liked, as all the cool utilities and things you could make your system do. Real mode operating systems are fun.

    You are so right. Working to optimize CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT was a real treat, especially when you got to load TSR-optimizers and other utilities that could really help you push the limits of your system. Some of these were gimmicks (I remember Stacker to "double" your diskspace and later RAM, remember that?!), but so many of them were empowering, especially when you got to see the fruits of your labor.

    A lot of people talk about Linux in this way, and while I have tinkered with Linux for many years as I mentioned, I've never seen the same type of reward. I've been enjoying iDOS on my iPad (now, unfortunately, discontinued and blocked by Apple, but still honored for those of us who were lucky to pick it up when it was still being offered by litchie, the developer), and it's incredible just how much power even the emulators have.
    -=- Kaelon -=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Kaelon on Sun May 1 23:01:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Moondog on Sat Apr 30 2022 09:12 pm

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 01:17 pm

    I get the impression the adopters of single board pc's are aware of it's limit ations, but also are aware of what they can do with the extra IO an other integrated components. Sure, you can place linux on any old pc and learn to program in python, however the having a pc the size of a bar of soap makes it easier to lug around

    Very well said. There's definitely a lot of enjoyment that I receive from us
    just put on the edge of my router, and not have to add another rack to my s -=- Kaelon -=-

    Pi-hole is awesome, and I wouldn't run it on anything larger. It's been
    awhile since I've received some hand me down pc's and what I do have are Pentium 4's that can also act as space heaters. I've been phasing out my 32 bit machines except for one or two I have some editing someware that came
    with a tuner card or video camera I still use.

    One machine was donated to me by an aunt to was given the pc by my other aunt who was hinting her hand writing was getting bad, and she should jump on the e mail and social media bandwagon. It was an athlon/ sempron from the early 2000's and ran ok for libre office. For email and surfing and the occasional letter, an rPi 3 or 4 will do the job without the big case. Hook it ot ht eTV
    and use a bluetooth keyboard

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Kaelon on Sun May 1 23:17:00 2022
    Re: Moore's Law
    By: Kaelon to Moondog on Sun May 01 2022 06:13 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Nightfox on Sat Apr 30 2022 01:21 pm

    Back in the 90's and early 2000's people were using Moore's law in term s using
    it to define transistor integration, but more towards clock speeds of cpu

    This was certainly the context in which I was remembering Moore's Law. I won

    Is Moore's Law still true?
    -=- Kaelon -=-

    The initial concept is there. From the late 60's up into the 90's,
    transistors doubled themselve nearly every 12 months. That later spread out to 18 months. In the case with CPU's, bumping up the clock speeds has been re placed with adding cores and cache. Benchmark results are much more than counting how many transistors are on a die. Going back to the road example, you can only push the speed limit up on a two track road only so much.
    Adding lanes and interchanges and parallel paths are things Moore wasn't expec ting when he was asked to write and article for an electronics magazine

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Kaelon on Sun May 1 23:46:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Sun May 01 2022 02:03 pm

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Sun May 01 2022 04:03 pm

    I still play with it from time to time on my old 486, DOS 6.22 that is. wasn't so much DOS I liked, as all the cool utilities and things you coul make your system do. Real mode operating systems are fun.

    You are so right. Working to optimize CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT was a real ker to "double" your diskspace and later RAM, remember that?!), but so many

    A lot of people talk about Linux in this way, and while I have tinkered with ll honored for those of us who were lucky to pick it up when it was still be -=- Kaelon -=-


    I recall some games having an option at setup to create a boot floppy to
    load the most efficient stripped down settings the game required.

    I had 8megs of ram on my 486/33, and I created a ramdisk at setup to copy an entire games folder in it to load the game faster. I used to work in a computer service department, and our supervisor was so sure people in our department were stealing from the warehouse to build out own machines. he would come by and ask "casually" what the hottest games are, or what sound car ds or video cards are the best, then check to see if we stocked that stuff in our inventory. When asked what brand of computer I owned and where I got it,
    I handed him a copy of Computer Shopper that I had used to find and order the parts. One time I mentioned to a co-worker installed ramdisk to speed things up, and I heard a day later from one of our lead techs that our boss asked
    him if we stocked ram disks, and see if the inventory had dropped. The lead tech explained to him ramdisk was part of DOS. I wish I was there to witness that. The funniest moment was when he tried to write me up for playing games during work time. My work pc only had company issued software and windows.
    He then told me I have a mouse, so i must be playing games,and I admitted to h aving that new game called Windows 3.1. We gave him several magazines with articles about Windows, and that shut him up real fast. A week later the VP over manufacturing went to a crusade to pull mice off desks, and our boss
    asked if he could borrow those magazines again to take to a senior
    management meeting. It's real sad when the VP of a computer company has no idea what Windows is, and declares it as the greatest waste of time. He left soon after to work for a musical instrument factory that was celebrating 75 years of manufacturing, then ran them into the ground a few years later. He d idn't understand the concept of labor unions being a bargaining unit, and the company had it's first strike in 75 years.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Mon May 2 18:51:24 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Sun May 01 2022 02:03 pm

    I still play with it from time to time on my old 486, DOS 6.22 that is. wasn't so much DOS I liked, as all the cool utilities and things you coul make your system do. Real mode operating systems are fun.

    You are so right. Working to optimize CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT was a real treat, especially when you got to load TSR-optimizers and other utilities th could really help you push the limits of your system. Some of these were gimmicks (I remember Stacker to "double" your diskspace and later RAM, remem that?!), but so many of them were empowering, especially when you got to see the fruits of your labor.

    A lot of people talk about Linux in this way, and while I have tinkered with Linux for many years as I mentioned, I've never seen the same type of reward I've been enjoying iDOS on my iPad (now, unfortunately, discontinued and blocked by Apple, but still honored for those of us who were lucky to pick i up when it was still being offered by litchie, the developer), and it's incredible just how much power even the emulators have.
    I still play with it from time to time on my old 486, DOS 6.22 that is. wasn't so much DOS I liked, as all the cool utilities and things you coul make your system do. Real mode operating systems are fun.

    You are so right. Working to optimize CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT was a real treat, especially when you got to load TSR-optimizers and other utilities th could really help you push the limits of your system. Some of these were gimmicks (I remember Stacker to "double" your diskspace and later RAM, remem that?!), but so many of them were empowering, especially when you got to see the fruits of your labor.

    A lot of people talk about Linux in this way, and while I have tinkered with Linux for many years as I mentioned, I've never seen the same type of reward I've been enjoying iDOS on my iPad (now, unfortunately, discontinued and blocked by Apple, but still honored for those of us who were lucky to pick i up when it was still being offered by litchie, the developer), and it's incredible just how much power even the emulators have.
    -=- Kaelon -=-

    The 386 that was lent to me was configured to use DoubleSpace, as it only had a 65M hard drive, which was quite tight. After a work, I whittled down the files so I could get rid of DoubleSpace (It took AAAGGEES to defrag) and went to using the raw disk. Never loaded much else in terms of TSR's, preferring to keep my system lean. I did use DOSKEY, but apart from that, the mouse driver, and maybe SMARTDRV, that was it.

    Linux is a different reward, no so much about getting down to a raw level, but about being able to configure your system, your shell and gui. It's not like DOS, but you have more ability to trim things back than you do with MacOS and windows.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Moondog on Mon May 2 07:21:38 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Kaelon on Sun May 01 2022 11:46 pm

    I handed him a copy of Computer Shopper that I had used to find and order the parts. One time I mentioned to a co-worker installed ramdisk to speed things up, and I heard a day later from one of our lead techs that our boss asked
    him if we stocked ram disks, and see if the inventory had dropped. The lead tech explained to him ramdisk was part of DOS. I wish I was there to witness that. The funniest moment was when he tried to write me up for playing games during work time. My work pc only had company issued software and windows.

    This entire story is incredible! And totally believable. I miss the antics of the misinformed management of the 1980s and 1990s. Even though I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, it was really awesome running circles around adults about technology. The BBS scene was a big part of what ensured I was always on the "cutting" or "bleeding" edge.

    I subscribed to Sierra On-Line's gaming magazine newsletter (later known as InterAction Magazine) and still have all issues in pristine condition; I keep them because they have a "Tales from Customer Support" column that makes me howl. Among the stories that I love are the ones of frustrated 'gamers' calling Sierra's support late in the early 1990s and asking for help on how to insert the "disc" they had gotten from the game. Over an hour of troubleshooting later, and the caller still couldn't figure out where to insert his CD-ROM disc, but he remarked: "At least the PC comes with this great coffee mug holder."

    I love stories like that!
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Boraxman on Mon May 2 07:24:49 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 06:51 pm

    Linux is a different reward, no so much about getting down to a raw level, but about being able to configure your system, your shell and gui. It's not like DOS, but you have more ability to trim things back than you do with MacOS and windows.

    Good point. The customization factor for Linux is definitely part of the appeal, for sure. In my case, I like sampling different flavors of Linux - and I often check out Linus Tech Tips on YouTube to see what they're experimenting with to see if I want to experiment on the vintage. In another thread, I recommended elementaryOS, which is a pretty simplistic but macOS-like derivative that helped revive my aging MacBook Pro for basic email, web surfing, and word processing tasks.

    I still miss the incredible power - often wrought by the ridiculous simplicity! - of MS-DOS. While I get my fix from customizing iDOS 2 and other brews of DOSBox, it's not quite the same having system-level access the way you could with MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6.22.

    It definitely makes me want to build a collection of retro DOS files and make them available on a BBS again for the like-minded!
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Mon May 2 10:56:35 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 07:30 pm

    Does Windows defragment in the background? Search indexing may take a bit of CPU time, but it wouldn't run constantly, and disk optimisation wouldn't be needed all the time.

    I doubt Windows defragments in the background by default. If you're using an SSD (which are fairly common these days), that would actually be a bad idea. I've heard SSDs don't need to be defragmented because there would be no benefit, since SSDs provide random access everywhere. So, defragmenting an SSD would only use up the limited reads and writes, which would only be bad for the SSD.

    If you still have a platter drive, defragmenting it could still provide some benefit though.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Kaelon on Mon May 2 11:00:28 2022
    Re: Moore's Law
    By: Kaelon to Moondog on Sun May 01 2022 06:13 am

    Back in the 90's and early 2000's people were using Moore's law in
    term s of CPU's. They're weren't using
    it to define transistor integration, but more towards clock speeds of
    cpu's doubling every 18 months

    This was certainly the context in which I was remembering Moore's Law. I wonder when it stopped applying to speed and performance and started applying to other characteristics?

    Moore's Law specifically refers to the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubling about every 2 years (I remember hearing 18 months):
    https://www.synopsys.com/glossary/what-is-moores-law.html

    So as written, that's what it applies to. If people are applying it to other things, I think they are misconstruing Moore's law.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Kaelon on Mon May 2 11:03:48 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Sun May 01 2022 02:03 pm

    I still play with it from time to time on my old 486, DOS 6.22 that
    is. It wasn't so much DOS I liked, as all the cool utilities and
    things you could make your system do. Real mode operating systems are
    fun.

    You are so right. Working to optimize CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT was a real treat, especially when you got to load TSR-optimizers and other utilities that could really help you push the limits of your system. Some

    Yeah, I think one of the best tools for memory optimization was QEMM. They had their own XMS and EMS drivers (from what I recall) and their own tools for optimizing RAM and placing as much as possible in high memory, EMS, etc. Later, when Microsoft included their memmaker tool for MS-DOS 6.0, I thought it was nice that they had that, but it seemed QEMM still did a better job.

    QEMM also had their DesqView, which was a multi-tasker for DOS. I had heard some sysops ran their BBS with that for multi-node capabilities. After a while, even though I only had one phone line for my BBS, I set up my BBS to run in DesqView so that I (as the sysop) could log in locally on node 2 even if a user was logged into node 1 on the phone line.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Kaelon on Mon May 2 11:10:19 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Boraxman on Mon May 02 2022 07:24 am

    I still miss the incredible power - often wrought by the ridiculous simplicity! - of MS-DOS. While I get my fix from customizing iDOS 2 and other brews of DOSBox, it's not quite the same having system-level access the way you could with MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6.22.

    Sometimes I miss that too. DOS seemed like the wild west of operating systems though.. It was fairly minimal and let programs do pretty much whatever they want - And programs often had to do their own thing for hardware access because DOS didn't have much of a standard to allow software to interface with audio devices, graphics cards, etc.. Each program had to implement their own methods to interface with the various types of hardware. Sound cards did have their own drivers that would have to be loaded by DOS, but still, software developers still had to specifically add support for the various sound cards on the market.

    Later operating systems added some standard ways to interact with sound cards and graphics cards via software. Software no longer had to care what specific sound or graphics hardsware was in the PC unless they used specific features.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Nightfox on Mon May 2 11:49:29 2022
    Re: Moore's Law
    By: Nightfox to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 11:00 am

    Moore's Law specifically refers to the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubling about every 2 years (I remember hearing 18 months): https://www.synopsys.com/glossary/what-is-moores-law.html

    Thanks for the clarification! It had been a while. ;)
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Nightfox on Mon May 2 11:50:46 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 11:03 am

    Yeah, I think one of the best tools for memory optimization was QEMM.

    Yes! Oh my goodness, I had completely forgotten about QEMM but I also used it, and its multi-tasker Desqview! How could I forget? QEMM was incredible, and you're right - it was far better than DOS' own MEMMAKER utility.
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Nightfox on Mon May 2 11:54:03 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 11:10 am

    Sometimes I miss that too. DOS seemed like the wild west of operating systems though.. It was fairly minimal and let programs do pretty much whatever they want - And programs often had to do their own thing for hardware access because DOS didn't have much of a standard to allow software to interface with audio devices, graphics cards, etc.

    I think it was part of the fact that DOS was the "wild west" of operating systems, and that programs could access essentially any piece of the exposed I/O, that gave the sense of this incredible power and control. You knew exactly what your machine was doing.

    I remember fondly listening to my BBS late at night, and I knew by the sound that my hard drive's needle was making on the spinning platters whether a user was uploading something, downloading something, reading bases, or logging on or off. You knew, without a doubt, that when something was running in DOS, that and only what you explicitly authorized to run memory-resident, was executing.
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Mon May 2 16:05:08 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Mon May 02 2022 10:56 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Sat Apr 30 2022 07:30 pm

    Does Windows defragment in the background? Search indexing may take a bit of CPU time, but it wouldn't run constantly, and disk optimisation wouldn't be needed all the time.

    I doubt Windows defragments in the background by default. If you're using

    are you sure? i thought it ran whenever it was needed in the background on windows 7+
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Mon May 2 16:06:09 2022
    Re: Moore's Law
    By: Nightfox to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 11:00 am

    Moore's Law specifically refers to the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubling about every 2 years (I remember hearing 18 months): https://www.synopsys.com/glossary/what-is-moores-law.html

    So as written, that's what it applies to. If people are applying it to other things, I think they are misconstruing Moore's law.



    moores law is just something computer geeks reference on forums all the time. of course they're using it wrong.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to Kaelon on Mon May 2 15:35:00 2022
    Kaelon wrote to Boraxman <=-

    I still miss the incredible power - often wrought by the
    ridiculous simplicity! - of MS-DOS. While I get my fix from
    customizing iDOS 2 and other brews of DOSBox, it's not quite the
    same having system-level access the way you could with MS-DOS 5
    and MS-DOS 6.22.

    I do too. In many ways I feel like the peak of my computer abilities,
    and knowledge, and especially *enjoyment* of things ended in the late
    90's, when Windows/GUI stuff took over. The tweaking and batch file
    magic was just so great.

    It definitely makes me want to build a collection of retro DOS
    files and make them available on a BBS again for the like-minded!

    Well...., that's already been done... ;-)



    ... Windows 3.1 - From the people who brought you EDLIN.
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to MRO on Mon May 2 16:48:23 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to Nightfox on Mon May 02 2022 04:05 pm

    I doubt Windows defragments in the background by default. If you're
    using

    are you sure? i thought it ran whenever it was needed in the background on windows 7+

    No, I'm not sure, but considering defragmenting is bad for SSDs, I doubt it would be enabled by default - perhaps on newer versions of Windows.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Gamgee on Mon May 2 18:05:33 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Gamgee to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 03:35 pm

    I do too. In many ways I feel like the peak of my computer abilities,
    and knowledge, and especially *enjoyment* of things ended in the late
    90's, when Windows/GUI stuff took over. The tweaking and batch file
    magic was just so great.

    Absolutely! I definitely find myself enjoying some of that magic to create batched DOSBox commands in iDOS 2, and using batch files to dynamically load CD-ROM .iso images before and after games so that I can play pristine full voice-and-video versions of the DOS games in lightning fast-speeds on my iPad. But those moments are rare and magical, without a doubt.
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Mon May 2 18:12:30 2022
    On 4/30/22 02:30, Boraxman wrote:

    Does Windows defragment in the background? Search indexing may take a
    bit of CPU time, but it wouldn't run constantly, and disk optimisation wouldn't be needed all the time.

    For HDDs, iirc, since Windows 7/8, there's an auto defrag scheduled task (skipping ssds), or maybe you can just create one... I've run mostly
    SSDs for over a decade.

    Note: for an SSD, do not defragment, the OS and Drive should support
    TRIM commands which remove old references, you don't want to rearrange
    on an SSD as that will reduce the life and not improve seek time. All
    drive locations are virtualized under the SSD controller, not real
    addressing.

    I'm not actually sure where all the CPU power that windows is using is going. I use Linux, so CPU background noise is very small. Looking
    at processor using, I see pulseaudio using 2% (Why, I don't know)which
    seems high, and that is pretty much it.

    Depends on what is installed... Windows seems to run a few % slower
    than Linux and take a few hundred mb of ram more at startup.

    On your pulseaudio, again, not sure... most modern audio chipsets are at
    least partially software driven, so could be that.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Mon May 2 18:21:25 2022
    On 4/30/22 02:45, Boraxman wrote:

    So it really more about not burning through resources and creating
    waste and getting caught up in the "upgrade" treadmill.

    My old systems are always handed off... sometimes to immediate family,
    or friends. My old i7-4790K is still being used by a friend of mine.

    We should be seeking to make the hardware we have last as long as
    possible, incuding software support. I think our priority, where we
    churn hardware to save software development time is muddled headed.

    I agree... and for the most part it depends on what you are doing... I
    would say, for me it's often about the time and opportunity cost. My
    time is pretty precious to me, especially my free time. If I can get
    another 10% done in a day from faster hardware, then it's usually worth
    the cost. Not always worth the 2-3 days of install/upgrade of missing
    things.

    For the past few years, a lot of software is written to scale
    horizontally instead of vertically... when you're targeting that kind of scaling, it becomes less important to churn a production environment...
    but for local software dev, often more important as there are more
    pieces to run local... Though some are taking all their dev to cloud
    too... spin up the entire environment in the cloud, dev/work on pieces
    local and tear it down at the end of the day... this can include the dev environment and tools themselves.

    Of course, it varies... if you can spend under $200k on a new server for
    an older application, or $millions over a couple years to tune an
    application ($millions) with high risk of failure, what would you rather do?
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Kaelon on Mon May 2 18:26:59 2022
    On 4/30/22 10:52, Kaelon wrote:

    Plus, when you grew up as I did in the 1980s around MS-DOS, you know
    of all the ways to tweak and perfect the OS. It's one of the reasons
    that I love MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22!

    Started out with DOS myself.. and tbh, not even sure where I'd look up
    how to set/configure a sound card etc these days in DOS. Let alone some
    of the more advanced stuff (drivers in himem, etc). I remember they
    exist, but nothing of actually configuring/tuning... Same goes for OS/2,
    used to work support, including OS/2 for iomega, and remember nothing of
    any of it.

    I also spent the better part of a decade working in eLearning, and
    having to learn not only the programming software/tools/languages but
    also the domain knowledge of a lot of the coursees being designed and
    worked on. I learned and forgot several lifetimes of job skills over
    that decade. Including a lot of time working on courseware for jet
    engine mechanics and would have trouble describing how one works at this point.

    Now it's more about conceptual understanding, enough to get going, and
    enough to know what to google for. It's a very different world today.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Kaelon on Mon May 2 18:35:01 2022
    On 5/1/22 06:13, Kaelon wrote:
    Back in the 90's and early 2000's people were using Moore's law in
    term s of CPU's. They're weren't using it to define transistor
    integration, but more towards clock speeds of cpu's doubling every
    18 months

    This was certainly the context in which I was remembering Moore's Law.
    I wonder when it stopped applying to speed and performance and started applying to other characteristics?

    Is Moore's Law still true?

    It's always been about transistor density... It was originally 12-18
    months and this corresponded with computing that was twice as fast.

    The transistor density doubling has slowed to about every 2-3 years the
    past decade, but it's still going mostly, just slower.

    In terms of performance, most of the past decade, in terms of x86 has
    been 5-10% generation over generation... the past 3 years or so (Zen2/3)
    have been around 15% (depending on the workload). Most of the benefits
    have been geared towards lower power, over more performance.

    ARM and RISC-V on the other hand have been moving towards more
    parallelization and improved performance, as well as mixing higher/lower performing cores, which Intel is doing as well now, and will probably
    see more interesting mixes.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Mon May 2 18:39:52 2022
    On 5/2/22 01:51, Boraxman wrote:

    The 386 that was lent to me was configured to use DoubleSpace, as it
    only had a 65M hard drive, which was quite tight. After a work, I
    whittled down the files so I could get rid of DoubleSpace (It took
    AAAGGEES to defrag) and went to using the raw disk. Never loaded much
    else in terms of TSR's, preferring to keep my system lean. I did use DOSKEY, but apart from that, the mouse driver, and maybe SMARTDRV,
    that was it.

    Should have done a performance test... a lot of drives back then were so
    slow, they actually ran faster doublespaced. Had a bunch of MFM and RLL drives that all ran faster doublespaced.


    Linux is a different reward, no so much about getting down to a raw
    level, but about being able to configure your system, your shell and
    gui. It's not like DOS, but you have more ability to trim things back
    than you do with MacOS and windows.

    Been really happy with my Budgie setup for the UI side... not fond of
    the handful of things I still reboot to my windows drive for.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Tracker1 on Mon May 2 19:04:46 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 06:26 pm

    Started out with DOS myself.. and tbh, not even sure where I'd look up how to set/configure a sound card etc these days in DOS. Let alone some of the more advanced stuff (drivers in himem, etc). I remember they exist, but nothing of actually configuring/tuning...

    It was similar for me. I think some of that were things I had learned (mainly word of mouth), and they were more general things such as what an IRQ and DMA was, and how to change jumper settings, etc.. From there, I'd then be able to configure jumpers on different devices so that (hopefully) none of them would conflict, and then set up the software drivers for the OS accordingly (and sometimes running configuration programs when needed).

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Kaelon on Mon May 2 21:28:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Kaelon to Moondog on Mon May 02 2022 07:21 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Kaelon on Sun May 01 2022 11:46 pm

    I handed him a copy of Computer Shopper that I had used to find and order the parts. One time I mentioned to a co-worker installed ramdisk to spee things up, and I heard a day later from one of our lead techs that our bo asked
    him if we stocked ram disks, and see if the inventory had dropped. The l tech explained to him ramdisk was part of DOS. I wish I was there to witness that. The funniest moment was when he tried to write me up for playing games during work time. My work pc only had company issued softw and windows.

    This entire story is incredible! And totally believable. I miss the antics cene was a big part of what ensured I was always on the "cutting" or "bleedi

    I subscribed to Sierra On-Line's gaming magazine newsletter (later known as that I love are the ones of frustrated 'gamers' calling Sierra's support lat ut where to insert his CD-ROM disc, but he remarked: "At least the PC comes

    I love stories like that!
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-


    The VP was always a production guy, so his ignorance of product and software was expectable. Our supervisor was a technician years ago, then made the jump
    to supervisor. He was more of an RF or HAM radio guy rather than a computer enthusiast. Their logic was understandable: mice = games. We had not officially rolled out Windows. Evaluation and demo machines would come back from the field, then broken down into replacement parts next door. It was
    easy to find a copy of Windows in the wrap in the spare disk bin. We'd grab Excel and Word from the bins and anything else we needed. One of the lan admins set us up with Novell client, since the IT service desk techs hardly ever stepped out of the office area and service bay was in the back behind the manufacturing line and parts area.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Mon May 2 21:29:40 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to MRO on Mon May 02 2022 04:48 pm

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to Nightfox on Mon May 02 2022 04:05 pm

    I doubt Windows defragments in the background by default. If you're
    using

    are you sure? i thought it ran whenever it was needed in the background on windows 7+

    No, I'm not sure, but considering defragmenting is bad for SSDs, I doubt it would be enabled by default - perhaps on newer versions of Windows.


    i think it runs all the time so everything gets ordered nicely. it doesn't get jumbled up like in the old days.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Tue May 3 19:03:00 2022
    Kaelon wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <626FE9B1.124227.dove-gen@vert.synchro.net>
    @REPLY: <626F9B8C.55976.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on
    Mon May 02 2022 06:51 pm

    Linux is a different reward, no so much about getting down to a raw level, but about being able to configure your system, your shell and gui. It's not like DOS, but you have more ability to trim things back than you do with MacOS and windows.

    Good point. The customization factor for Linux is definitely part of
    the appeal, for sure. In my case, I like sampling different flavors of Linux - and I often check out Linus Tech Tips on YouTube to see what they're experimenting with to see if I want to experiment on the
    vintage. In another thread, I recommended elementaryOS, which is a
    pretty simplistic but macOS-like derivative that helped revive my aging MacBook Pro for basic email, web surfing, and word processing tasks.

    I still miss the incredible power - often wrought by the ridiculous simplicity! - of MS-DOS. While I get my fix from customizing iDOS 2 and other brews of DOSBox, it's not quite the same having system-level
    access the way you could with MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6.22.

    It definitely makes me want to build a collection of retro DOS files
    and make them available on a BBS again for the like-minded! _____

    I have a fairly large archive of DOS programs, utilities, games and miscellaneous errata on my archive drive. Utilities, copies of old shareware CD's, stuff I've downloaded over the years, including files from my BBS days in the mid 90s. Some of it hard to find, such as obscure freeware gag games and a few utilities I've found and been given ages ago.

    DOS wasn't actually all that powerful. It had very rudimentary in process communication, very little in the way of functionality. If you wanted to send a file to another computer, you needed to download additional software to get any type of networking. I did try to get some networking with DOS working and it was a pain. I settled on etherdfs.

    What was fun was writing assembler programs in DOS that accessed the hardware directly, making the keyboard LED's flick on and off, programming the PC speaker and Programmable Interrupt Timer.

    As for Linux, being a veteran user of it for two decades, I would recommend against switching from distro to distro. There is little to be gained as they are all basically the same OS underneath. Find one that works, and get to know it well.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Nightfox on Tue May 3 19:05:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62701B53.65308.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <626D01A1.55959.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on
    Sat Apr 30 2022 07:30 pm

    Does Windows defragment in the background? Search indexing may take a bit of CPU time, but it wouldn't run constantly, and disk optimisation wouldn't be needed all the time.

    I doubt Windows defragments in the background by default. If you're
    using an SSD (which are fairly common these days), that would actually
    be a bad idea. I've heard SSDs don't need to be defragmented because there would be no benefit, since SSDs provide random access everywhere.
    So, defragmenting an SSD would only use up the limited reads and
    writes, which would only be bad for the SSD.

    If you still have a platter drive, defragmenting it could still provide some benefit though.

    Nightfox

    SSD's do still suffer from performance degradation due to file fragmentation. SSD's write data in larger blocks, and will need to shuffle data if the free space is fragmented. Other benchmarks I've seen indicate that a fragmented SSD will affect read speeds as well. You wouldn't need to defragment it as often as a hard drive, but in some cases, of severe fragmentation it may be beneficial.

    The best way to defrag is to move all files off, format, and copy them all back on, and don't use FAT32 (or if using Linux, use a Linux filesystem and not a Windows one).

    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 19:10:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6270817E.23198.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <626D01A1.55959.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/30/22 02:30, Boraxman wrote:

    Does Windows defragment in the background? Search indexing may take a
    bit of CPU time, but it wouldn't run constantly, and disk optimisation wouldn't be needed all the time.

    For HDDs, iirc, since Windows 7/8, there's an auto defrag scheduled
    task (skipping ssds), or maybe you can just create one... I've run
    mostly SSDs for over a decade.

    Note: for an SSD, do not defragment, the OS and Drive should support
    TRIM commands which remove old references, you don't want to rearrange
    on an SSD as that will reduce the life and not improve seek time. All drive locations are virtualized under the SSD controller, not real addressing.

    Never needed to, but they aren't formatted FAT32, which was awful for fragmentation. Worrying about writes on an SSD is an old, no longer really valid concern. You can write to them a lot before they 'wear out', a lot.

    I'm not actually sure where all the CPU power that windows is using is going. I use Linux, so CPU background noise is very small. Looking
    at processor using, I see pulseaudio using 2% (Why, I don't know)which
    seems high, and that is pretty much it.

    Depends on what is installed... Windows seems to run a few % slower
    than Linux and take a few hundred mb of ram more at startup.

    On your pulseaudio, again, not sure... most modern audio chipsets are
    at least partially software driven, so could be that.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com

    Possible, it is the onboard audio for the Thinkpad. It's pulling no CPU cycles now, so it could have been the Qodem terminal client, which does seem to use the soundcard.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 19:14:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62708395.23199.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <626D053C.55963.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 4/30/22 02:45, Boraxman wrote:

    So it really more about not burning through resources and creating
    waste and getting caught up in the "upgrade" treadmill.

    My old systems are always handed off... sometimes to immediate family,
    or friends. My old i7-4790K is still being used by a friend of mine.

    We should be seeking to make the hardware we have last as long as
    possible, incuding software support. I think our priority, where we
    churn hardware to save software development time is muddled headed.

    I agree... and for the most part it depends on what you are doing... I would say, for me it's often about the time and opportunity cost. My
    time is pretty precious to me, especially my free time. If I can get another 10% done in a day from faster hardware, then it's usually worth the cost. Not always worth the 2-3 days of install/upgrade of missing things.

    For the past few years, a lot of software is written to scale
    horizontally instead of vertically... when you're targeting that kind
    of scaling, it becomes less important to churn a production
    environment... but for local software dev, often more important as
    there are more pieces to run local... Though some are taking all their
    dev to cloud too... spin up the entire environment in the cloud,
    dev/work on pieces local and tear it down at the end of the day... this can include the dev environment and tools themselves.

    Of course, it varies... if you can spend under $200k on a new server
    for an older application, or $millions over a couple years to tune an application ($millions) with high risk of failure, what would you
    rather do? --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com

    It is your workflow and how you decide to work which may impact how much time you spend moreso than the speed of your PC. For example, at work I'm often navigating through the file system to open this and that spreadsheet. If the workflow was designed so I could execute a query easily, without having to "open spreadsheets", that would save me a LOT of time, far more than making the spreadsheets open faster. It is a waste of time to make more efficient, something which doesn't need to be done at all.

    This is how I approach things now, in terms of what I can automate, how can I make data more accessible and avoid the time wasting activity of opening apps and files and making the OS itself the application. I don't need apps to run faster, or load faster, if I can avoid using it completely.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Tue May 3 19:21:00 2022
    Kaelon wrote to Nightfox <=-

    @MSGID: <627028CB.124235.dove-gen@vert.synchro.net>
    @REPLY: <62701E8B.65311.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Kaelon on
    Mon May 02 2022 11:10 am

    Sometimes I miss that too. DOS seemed like the wild west of operating systems though.. It was fairly minimal and let programs do pretty much whatever they want - And programs often had to do their own thing for hardware access because DOS didn't have much of a standard to allow software to interface with audio devices, graphics cards, etc.

    I think it was part of the fact that DOS was the "wild west" of
    operating systems, and that programs could access essentially any piece
    of the exposed I/O, that gave the sense of this incredible power and control. You knew exactly what your machine was doing.

    I remember fondly listening to my BBS late at night, and I knew by the sound that my hard drive's needle was making on the spinning platters whether a user was uploading something, downloading something, reading bases, or logging on or off. You knew, without a doubt, that when something was running in DOS, that and only what you explicitly
    authorized to run memory-resident, was executing. _____

    The harddrive on the Amstrad PC2386/65 I was lent sounded like boiling water when it was going! I still prefer the whirring sound of the XT, and being able to load floppy disks into it, hearing them work away. Using a computer was a more tactile affair back then, they had a distinct feel and sound.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Tue May 3 06:26:02 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Tue May 03 2022 07:03 pm


    As for Linux, being a veteran user of it for two decades, I would recommend against switching from distro to distro. There is little to be gained as they are all basically the same OS underneath. Find one that works, and get to know it well.

    you're painting that with a very broad brush.
    there's differences, certainly enough that will make people choose one over another.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Tue May 3 06:28:06 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Tue May 03 2022 07:05 pm


    The best way to defrag is to move all files off, format, and copy them all back on,

    if you move all the files off you don't need to format i'm pretty sure.


    and don't use FAT32 (or if using Linux, use a Linux filesystem and
    not a Windows one).


    fat32? hows those windows 98 updates doing?
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 06:16:18 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 06:26 pm

    Started out with DOS myself.. and tbh, not even sure where I'd look up
    how to set/configure a sound card etc these days in DOS. Let alone some
    of the more advanced stuff (drivers in himem, etc). I remember they
    exist, but nothing of actually configuring/tuning... Same goes for OS/2, used to work support, including OS/2 for iomega, and remember nothing of
    any of it.

    You'd be surprised at just how large the retro-DOS community is out there. Check out the exoDOS project, in particular, and the countless Reddit subreddits dedicated to DOS computing. There are a lot of people who really appreciate the directness of the operating system, and so there are a lot of min-maxers. Also, Retro-PC building is a thing. A few years ago, I ended up paying $800 to buy a "new" old-stock 486/66 system, complete with manuals for the MS-DOS 6.22 and everything. It's a crazy scene out there.

    Now it's more about conceptual understanding, enough to get going, and enough to know what to google for. It's a very different world today.

    No kidding! Sometimes, I find myself really enjoying the modern conveniences until I start to dwell on the fact that no one really "owns" software anymore; it's just leased licenses to access them in the cloud for a monthly charge. Absolutely profane, in my opinion.
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 06:18:03 2022
    Re: Re: Moore's Law
    By: Tracker1 to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 06:35 pm

    It's always been about transistor density... It was originally 12-18
    months and this corresponded with computing that was twice as fast.

    You learn something new every day! So the transistor capacity had previously corresponded with computing, but the modern architectures have had a trade-off between power consumption / efficiency (presumably for laptops and mobile devices?), until the ARM-based Silicon (see: Apple and others) re-wired the speed arms-race while still preserving hyper power efficiency. Pretty amazing!
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Moondog on Tue May 3 06:21:23 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Kaelon on Mon May 02 2022 09:28 pm

    Excel and Word from the bins and anything else we needed. One of the lan admins set us up with Novell client, since the IT service desk techs hardly ever stepped out of the office area and service bay was in the back behind the manufacturing line and parts area.

    Reminds me of work that I did just recently serving as an SVP for a Managed Service Provider in Rhode Island (they had been going for ~35+ years before being acquired last year). The original facility was organized in the late 1980s, and had a separate service bay behind the network operations center, and an entire experimental technologies center that looked like a prison in the basement. It was affectionately called "the Cage" because engineers weren't ever really supposed to leave it. Hilarious!
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Boraxman on Tue May 3 06:30:12 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Tue May 03 2022 07:03 pm

    I have a fairly large archive of DOS programs, utilities, games and miscellaneous errata on my archive drive. Utilities, copies of old shareware CD's, stuff I've downloaded over the years, including files from my BBS days in the mid 90s. Some of it hard to find, such as obscure freeware gag games and a few utilities I've found and been given ages ago.

    That's wonderful! I know that the Internet Archive maintains an extensive DOS library, but it's all of the rare stuff - files that were usually shared on BBS'es - that really interests me. It's very hard to find and, depending upon who you talk to, quite an archivist's dream come true! Have you thought about making your miscellaneous errate, etc., available on a BBS? (Or have you already done that? Sorry, I'm still getting up to speed on our "modern" BBS scene.)

    DOS wasn't actually all that powerful. It had very rudimentary in process communication, very little in the way of functionality. If you wanted to send a file to another computer, you needed to download additional software to get any type of networking. I did try to get some networking with DOS working and it was a pain. I settled on etherdfs.

    Well said. I liked the illusion of power, either way, as a 6 year old who discovered it in 1986, by the time I was 9, I knew how to edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, and basically tinker with all of the settings. I found things like having to download or install drivers, just to be able to do basic things and access the hardware. It was pretty rewarding!
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Kaelon@VERT to Boraxman on Tue May 3 06:37:21 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Tue May 03 2022 07:21 pm

    The harddrive on the Amstrad PC2386/65 I was lent sounded like boiling water when it was going! I still prefer the whirring sound of the XT, and being able to load floppy disks into it, hearing them work away. Using a computer was a more tactile affair back then, they had a distinct feel and sound.

    I love that using a computer was a more tactile affair back then, though! There was a true physical sense of ownership of the machine, a much more intimate relationship with the technology. If you look at software today, everything "lives in the cloud" and you don't really own it. This whole monthly license is a racket, and it disintermediates users from the very technology that they use. I guess this is a broader commentary on just how "cracked up" our entire
    digital society is.
    _____
    -=: Kaelon :=-

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Tue May 3 09:17:33 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Tue May 03 2022 07:05 pm

    SSD's do still suffer from performance degradation due to file fragmentation. SSD's write data in larger blocks, and will need to shuffle data if the free space is fragmented. Other benchmarks I've seen indicate that a fragmented SSD will affect read speeds as well. You wouldn't need to defragment it as often as a hard drive, but in some cases, of severe fragmentation it may be beneficial.

    This is the first time I've ever seen someone say defragmenting an SSD can be beneficial.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Tue May 3 09:33:10 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Tue May 03 2022 07:03 pm

    I still miss the incredible power - often wrought by the ridiculous
    simplicity! - of MS-DOS. While I get my fix from customizing iDOS 2
    and other brews of DOSBox, it's not quite the same having
    system-level access the way you could with MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6.22.

    DOS wasn't actually all that powerful. It had very rudimentary in process communication, very little in the way of functionality. If you wanted to send a file to another computer, you needed to download additional software to get any type of networking. I did try to get some networking with DOS working and it was a pain.

    By "powerful", I think what he was talking about was the fact that DOS was not very restrictive with what you could do, so you could potentially do pretty much anything with your PC, and DOS allowed direct access to the hardware. At least from a software development standpoint, the sky was the limit. As opposed to modern operating systems like Windows and Linux, which have some restrictions on what they'll allow software to do (which can be a good thing; modern operating systems tend to protect against certain bad actions).

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Tue May 3 11:58:33 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Tue May 03 2022 09:17 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Tue May 03 2022 07:05 pm

    SSD's do still suffer from performance degradation due to file fragmentation. SSD's write data in larger blocks, and will need to shuffle data if the free space is fragmented. Other benchmarks I've seen indicate that a fragmented SSD will affect read speeds as well. You wouldn't need to defragment it as often as a hard drive, but in some cases, of severe fragmentation it may be beneficial.

    This is the first time I've ever seen someone say defragmenting an SSD can be beneficial.

    i dont think it is. it uses up write cycles.
    if you're on windows your drive won't get fragmented that much.
    i have disks that i move files on all the time and there's 0% fragmentation.

    i do however see that my boot drive which is ssd needs 'optimation'. it says 45 days since last retrim.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 08:05:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-


    For HDDs, iirc, since Windows 7/8, there's an auto defrag scheduled
    task (skipping ssds), or maybe you can just create one... I've run
    mostly SSDs for over a decade.

    The OS defrag never did a great job. I'd use MyDefrag and see a significant speed difference, *after* WIndows had been defragging the drive.

    I don't miss those days.


    ... All of my certifications are self-signed.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 08:08:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    My old systems are always handed off... sometimes to immediate family,
    or friends. My old i7-4790K is still being used by a friend of mine.

    I just bought a Dell 3847 with an i7-4790, thought I was state of the art... :)

    (No, not really. It was $160 with 16 GB of RAM and a 3 TB SATA drive, and
    was cheaper than buying 16GB of ECC RAM for my old Dell Workstation)

    We should be seeking to make the hardware we have last as long as
    possible, incuding software support. I think our priority, where we
    churn hardware to save software development time is muddled headed.

    Agreed. That was what took me on the path from Microsoft Windows to Full- blown desktop Linux distro to lightweight Linux over the years with single- core desktops.



    ... Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 08:13:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Kaelon <=-

    Started out with DOS myself.. and tbh, not even sure where I'd look up
    how to set/configure a sound card etc these days in DOS.

    You set jumpers on the card to an unused port and IRQ, then set
    environmental variables (or configure each application for that port/IRQ)
    You'd run a setup program that would copy drivers and utility programs, and play test sounds to make sure everything was working.

    I've told this story online many times before. I worked at a software
    company with a QA lab manager who loved to prank people. We pranked him back by taking the SoundBlacster install disks from his desk, re-recording the
    test sound with a stutter, and putting them back.

    He's install a card, grab his driver, and the properly configured card would play back the altered sound.

    "perperperperperforming irrrrrrrq testestestestestest"

    So, he'd go back to the drawing board and try again. Try another setting.
    Same result. Try another card. Same result. After an hour or so of frustration, my friend walked over and offered "his" setup disk.












    Let alone
    some of the more advanced stuff (drivers in himem, etc). I remember
    they exist, but nothing of actually configuring/tuning... Same goes for OS/2, used to work support, including OS/2 for iomega, and remember nothing of any of it.

    I also spent the better part of a decade working in eLearning, and
    having to learn not only the programming software/tools/languages but
    also the domain knowledge of a lot of the coursees being designed and worked on. I learned and forgot several lifetimes of job skills over
    that decade. Including a lot of time working on courseware for jet
    engine mechanics and would have trouble describing how one works at
    this point.

    Now it's more about conceptual understanding, enough to get going, and enough to know what to google for. It's a very different world today.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    - Synchronet - Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

    ... Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Tracker1 on Tue May 3 08:16:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    Been really happy with my Budgie setup for the UI side... not fond of
    the handful of things I still reboot to my windows drive for.

    I've been using Ubuntu Budgie on one of my utility VMs, and I like it. I'm
    not much of a Mac user any more, but it reminds me of what I remember a Mac looking like in 2014.

    There is a neat add-on called TwisterUI that can change UI elements of your window manager to look like MacOS or Windows. It's interesting, I set it to MacOS and am playing with it now.


    ... "The swift blade penetrates the salad."
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Boraxman on Tue May 3 08:19:00 2022
    Boraxman wrote to Kaelon <=-

    DOS wasn't actually all that powerful. It had very rudimentary in
    process communication, very little in the way of functionality. If you wanted to send a file to another computer, you needed to download additional software to get any type of networking. I did try to get
    some networking with DOS working and it was a pain. I settled on etherdfs.

    I ran LANTastic networking with DOS, and it was a game changer. Back in
    1992, I could share a screen, print to another PC's printer, turn one
    computer into a shared drive, and so on - all of the things you think about when you think of a modern networked OS.


    ... "The swift blade penetrates the salad."
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Boraxman on Tue May 3 08:22:00 2022
    Boraxman wrote to Kaelon <=-

    The harddrive on the Amstrad PC2386/65 I was lent sounded like boiling water when it was going! I still prefer the whirring sound of the XT,
    and being able to load floppy disks into it, hearing them work away.
    Using a computer was a more tactile affair back then, they had a
    distinct feel and sound.

    Flip that Big Red Switch, hear the click. One beep good, two beeps bad.
    Clicky IBM keyboard. whining hard drives, chattering floppy drives. Modem connect tones. Telix connect sound. A dot matrix printer making its telltale sound.

    The memory of sounds from those early days are vivid.


    ... I used to play with Serious Putty.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 4 02:53:02 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Tracker1 on Tue May 03 2022 08:05 am

    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-


    For HDDs, iirc, since Windows 7/8, there's an auto defrag scheduled task (skipping ssds), or maybe you can just create one... I've run mostly SSDs for over a decade.

    The OS defrag never did a great job. I'd use MyDefrag and see a significant speed difference, *after* WIndows had been defragging the drive.

    I don't miss those days.


    what os are you talking about?
    if you ran a defrag program AFTER windows defrag you're just wasting time. run one or another.

    i never noticed ANY speed difference with fast or slow computers when i defragged.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Wed May 4 20:21:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6271114A.9197.dove-gen@bbses.info>
    @REPLY: <6270F7B0.56004.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Tue May 03 2022 07:03 pm


    As for Linux, being a veteran user of it for two decades, I would recommend against switching from distro to distro. There is little to be gained as they are all basically the same OS underneath. Find one that works, and get to know it well.

    you're painting that with a very broad brush.
    there's differences, certainly enough that will make people choose one over another. ---

    A lot of those differences dissapear once you start configuring the system yourself, setting up things the way you like it. The window manager or desktop environment can be of your choice, as well as its configuration, themes, which display manager you use, which apps. You can switch between AppArmour or SeLinux (granted that isn't easy).

    I switched my laptop from Fedora to Debian, and apart from the difference in how I install packages, the rest of the system is the same. Like for like. The more you configure your system, the less the differences between distros matter.

    The problem is, people distro hop from one to another, which means they surf from default to default.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Wed May 4 20:24:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <627111C6.9198.dove-gen@bbses.info>
    @REPLY: <6270F7B0.56005.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Tue May 03 2022 07:05 pm


    The best way to defrag is to move all files off, format, and copy them all back on,

    if you move all the files off you don't need to format i'm pretty sure.


    FAT generally writes files at the first available free space, but will the system think that is now the start, or will it continue on from before.

    You can get good results without formatting. Some filesystems 'age' and metadata gets fragmented.

    and don't use FAT32 (or if using Linux, use a Linux filesystem and
    not a Windows one).


    fat32? hows those windows 98 updates doing?

    Few and far between! I use FAT32 because its compatible with FreeDos.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Wed May 4 20:30:00 2022
    Kaelon wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62712E64.124260.dove-gen@vert.synchro.net>
    @REPLY: <6270F7B0.56004.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on
    Tue May 03 2022 07:03 pm

    I have a fairly large archive of DOS programs, utilities, games and miscellaneous errata on my archive drive. Utilities, copies of old shareware CD's, stuff I've downloaded over the years, including files from my BBS days in the mid 90s. Some of it hard to find, such as obscure freeware gag games and a few utilities I've found and been given ages ago.

    That's wonderful! I know that the Internet Archive maintains an
    extensive DOS library, but it's all of the rare stuff - files that were usually shared on BBS'es - that really interests me. It's very hard to find and, depending upon who you talk to, quite an archivist's dream
    come true! Have you thought about making your miscellaneous errate,
    etc., available on a BBS? (Or have you already done that? Sorry, I'm
    still getting up to speed on our "modern" BBS scene.)

    Haven't done it, or even thought of it. It probably isn't all that much, but one that springs to mind is a software demo from Bendigo, Victoria, where it demonstrates digital sound through the PC Squeaker by playing a sample of Glen Millers "In the mood". My uncle probably downloaded it from somewhere on the 386, and I thought it was cool.

    I might find what is "rare" and upload it somewhere.

    DOS wasn't actually all that powerful. It had very rudimentary in process communication, very little in the way of functionality. If you wanted to send a file to another computer, you needed to download additional software to get any type of networking. I did try to get some networking with DOS working and it was a pain. I settled on etherdfs.

    Well said. I liked the illusion of power, either way, as a 6 year old
    who discovered it in 1986, by the time I was 9, I knew how to edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, and basically tinker with all of the settings. I found things like having to download or install drivers,
    just to be able to do basic things and access the hardware. It was
    pretty rewarding! _____

    It was. I learnt DOS on an XT, from the DOS boot floppies and figuring things out by induction. I only knew "dir" and "cd" and taught myself most of the rest, and learned some from friends.

    The sense of "power" came from being able to bend hardware to your will. One program I liked was 2M, which formatted disks to a higher capacity, up to almost 1.9M for a 3 1/2" HD floppy, or nearly 900K for a DD 5 1/4" floppy. Using a little driver, you could get extra space, which was the kind of thing you couldn't do under windows. Linux could do it, and was mostly compatible, but it was just different.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Wed May 4 20:31:00 2022
    Kaelon wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62713011.124261.dove-gen@vert.synchro.net>
    @REPLY: <6270F7B4.56008.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on
    Tue May 03 2022 07:21 pm

    The harddrive on the Amstrad PC2386/65 I was lent sounded like
    boiling water
    when it was going! I still prefer the whirring sound of the XT, and being able to load floppy disks into it, hearing them work away. Using a computer was a more tactile affair back then, they had a distinct feel and sound.

    I love that using a computer was a more tactile affair back then,
    though! There was a true physical sense of ownership of the machine, a much more intimate relationship with the technology. If you look at software today, everything "lives in the cloud" and you don't really
    own it. This whole monthly license is a racket, and it disintermediates users from the very technology that they use. I guess this is a broader commentary on just how "cracked up" our entire digital society is.
    _____

    I avoid any "cloud based" software, and ensure that my system is my own, that I own the software, control it and don't have an intermediary between me and the machine. That is in part why I moved away from Microsoft. It certainly is possible to have a computing ecosystem under your control, but the days you could just "sys C:" your way to installing the OS from a boot disk are gone.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Nightfox on Wed May 4 20:36:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <62715946.65343.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <6270F7B0.56004.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on
    Tue May 03 2022 07:03 pm

    I still miss the incredible power - often wrought by the ridiculous
    simplicity! - of MS-DOS. While I get my fix from customizing iDOS 2
    and other brews of DOSBox, it's not quite the same having
    system-level access the way you could with MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6.22.

    DOS wasn't actually all that powerful. It had very rudimentary in process communication, very little in the way of functionality. If you wanted to send a file to another computer, you needed to download additional software to get any type of networking. I did try to get some networking with DOS working and it was a pain.

    By "powerful", I think what he was talking about was the fact that DOS
    was not very restrictive with what you could do, so you could
    potentially do pretty much anything with your PC, and DOS allowed
    direct access to the hardware. At least from a software development standpoint, the sky was the limit. As opposed to modern operating
    systems like Windows and Linux, which have some restrictions on what they'll allow software to do (which can be a good thing; modern
    operating systems tend to protect against certain bad actions).

    Nightfox


    Yeah, I got that. In a perverse way, its "power" was exactly from NOT being powerful! The fact it did so little, left the machine in real mode meant you were using the raw hardware as is. It was great for writing stuff which accesses the hardware directly, but less so for writing software. Compare using XMS/EMS to just having that 4G flat address space directly available. When I moved from using Turbo C to DJGPP, it made things so much easier. Now my assembly programs wouldn't constantly hardlock the machine.

    It still is fun to be able to access the PC's hardware directly. I like fiddling around with event timers, interrupt service routines, etc. You get the same sense of control when you program the C64 or Vic 20, that you are in control of every CPU cycle, can time things to the millisecond.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 4 20:37:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <627151ED.51254.dove.dove-gen@realitycheckbbs.org>
    @REPLY: <6270F7B0.56004.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Boraxman wrote to Kaelon <=-

    DOS wasn't actually all that powerful. It had very rudimentary in
    process communication, very little in the way of functionality. If you wanted to send a file to another computer, you needed to download additional software to get any type of networking. I did try to get
    some networking with DOS working and it was a pain. I settled on etherdfs.

    I ran LANTastic networking with DOS, and it was a game changer. Back in 1992, I could share a screen, print to another PC's printer, turn one computer into a shared drive, and so on - all of the things you think about when you think of a modern networked OS.


    I did use Netware to share a drive, but I forgot how to get it working and never been able to configure it since. Back in the day, I copied things using LapLink and a Null Modem or Parallel cable.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Kaelon on Wed May 4 20:46:00 2022
    Kaelon wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    @MSGID: <62712B22.124257.dove-gen@vert.synchro.net>
    @REPLY: <627084E3.23200.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to Kaelon on
    Mon May 02 2022 06:26 pm

    Started out with DOS myself.. and tbh, not even sure where I'd look up
    how to set/configure a sound card etc these days in DOS. Let alone some
    of the more advanced stuff (drivers in himem, etc). I remember they
    exist, but nothing of actually configuring/tuning... Same goes for OS/2, used to work support, including OS/2 for iomega, and remember nothing of
    any of it.

    You'd be surprised at just how large the retro-DOS community is out
    there. Check out the exoDOS project, in particular, and the countless Reddit subreddits dedicated to DOS computing. There are a lot of people who really appreciate the directness of the operating system, and so
    there are a lot of min-maxers. Also, Retro-PC building is a thing. A
    few years ago, I ended up paying $800 to buy a "new" old-stock 486/66 system, complete with manuals for the MS-DOS 6.22 and everything. It's
    a crazy scene out there.

    The retro scene is crazy, as are the prices. I bought a 486 for $50 20 years ago, and the other was given to me!

    That is something else I liked about DOS, trying to create really small executables. That scene, the 4K, 64K etc demo scene is still alive. It's kind of satisfying to make your program as small and lean as you can get it.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 4 20:47:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    @MSGID: <627151ED.51250.dove.dove-gen@realitycheckbbs.org>
    @REPLY: <6270817E.23198.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-


    For HDDs, iirc, since Windows 7/8, there's an auto defrag scheduled
    task (skipping ssds), or maybe you can just create one... I've run
    mostly SSDs for over a decade.

    The OS defrag never did a great job. I'd use MyDefrag and see a significant speed difference, *after* WIndows had been defragging the drive.

    I don't miss those days.


    I used a DOS program called "Speedbak" which was a lot faster and worked really well.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Wed May 4 09:04:54 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Wed May 04 2022 08:24 pm

    fat32? hows those windows 98 updates doing?

    Few and far between! I use FAT32 because its compatible with FreeDos.

    that's even worse.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Android8675@VERT/SHODAN to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 4 07:24:38 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Tracker1 on Tue May 03 2022 08:05 am

    The OS defrag never did a great job. I'd use MyDefrag and see a significant speed difference, *after* WIndows had
    been defragging the drive.

    I remember the first time I found a defrag program for my Atari ST. I probably had been using my 20mb HDD for close to a year and "found" a defrag program. I had no idea what it did, but I ran it. It did some HDD stuff, and when it was done my HDD was nearly silent (which was a big deal back then), and my startup dropped from a few minutes to a couple seconds.

    Good times.

    Of course the defrag program back then had ZERO safety when moving the data around. I had a power failure in the middle of a defrag once and wiped the FAT clean. Probably wasn't that bad, but I remember "starting over". Good times.
    --
    Android8675@ShodansCore
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Shodan's Core @ ShodansCore.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to MRO on Wed May 4 09:11:31 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 04 2022 02:53 am

    The OS defrag never did a great job. I'd use MyDefrag and see a
    significant speed difference, *after* WIndows had been defragging the
    drive.

    what os are you talking about?
    if you ran a defrag program AFTER windows defrag you're just wasting time. run one or another.

    i never noticed ANY speed difference with fast or slow computers when i defragged.

    In the early-mid 90s, when I primarily ran DOS, I remember using a drive defragmenter that did a fairly good job of moving data all together (I think it was part of Norton Utilities for DOS). I think I only ever noticed a small increase in speed after defragmenting my drive.

    When I started using Windows 95/98, I used its built-in defragmenter, and based on its drive graph, it always left some data spread out over the drive when it was done, and I didn't really notice any speed increase afterward.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Wed May 4 09:18:25 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Wed May 04 2022 08:46 pm

    The retro scene is crazy, as are the prices. I bought a 486 for $50 20 years ago, and the other was given to me!

    It is crazy. I wish I still had my TurboGrafX-16 game console. I bought it new in 1993 on clearance for $40 when the store wanted to get rid of their inventory (other game consoles such as the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis had become far more popular). Over a few years, I bought several games for it (I was able to find some deals at local pawn shops and thrift stores), and had also bought one of the portable units which played the same cartridges. In 2000, I sold my whole collection on eBay and got about $200 for it. I thought that was good at the time (it had a bit of a retro following even back then), but I could probably make a mint on it now if I still had it and sold it now.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Android8675 on Wed May 4 09:21:09 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Android8675 to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 04 2022 07:24 am

    I remember the first time I found a defrag program for my Atari ST. I probably had been using my 20mb HDD for close to a year and "found" a defrag program. I had no idea what it did, but I ran it. It did some HDD stuff, and when it was done my HDD was nearly silent (which was a big deal back then), and my startup dropped from a few minutes to a couple seconds.

    That's a pretty big speed increase. But I could see that happening for an older computer like that.

    Of course the defrag program back then had ZERO safety when moving the data around. I had a power failure in the middle of a defrag once and wiped the FAT clean. Probably wasn't that bad, but I remember "starting over". Good times.

    Doh.. For a while now, I've been using UPS power backups for my PCs. You never know when the power will suddenly go out.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to Nightfox on Wed May 4 12:47:23 2022
    In 2000, I sold my whole collection on eBay and got about $200
    for it. I thought that was good at the time (it had a bit of a retro following even back then), but I could probably make a mint on it now if I still had it and sold it now.

    That's the thing with collectibles. The longer you wait, the higher you'll get generally. It's hard to know when it's a good time to pull the trigger.

    Generally, I wait as long as I can spare the space the stuff is using.

    You also have to know where to sell. You won't get as much in a local flea market as what you could get on eBay, for example, where actual collectors are more numerous. Flea markets are good for buyers, not for sellers.

    Price is in the eyes of the beholder. A 10000$ thing that nobody wants is worth noting. A trinket that everyone wants is invaluable.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Wed May 4 11:41:19 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to MRO on Wed May 04 2022 09:11 am


    In the early-mid 90s, when I primarily ran DOS, I remember using a drive defragmenter that did a fairly good job of moving data all together (I think it was part of Norton Utilities for DOS). I think I only ever noticed a small increase in speed after defragmenting my drive.



    yeah i had that also. i think a lot of it was placebo effect. supposely all those things were fixing up your computer, but i doubt they did. when things really went south, they didn't save me.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Ennev on Wed May 4 10:04:14 2022
    Re: Re: Retro computers and electronics
    By: Ennev to Nightfox on Wed May 04 2022 12:47 pm

    In 2000, I sold my whole collection on eBay and got about $200
    for it. I thought that was good at the time (it had a bit of a retro
    following even back then), but I could probably make a mint on it now
    if I still had it and sold it now.

    That's the thing with collectibles. The longer you wait, the higher you'll get generally. It's hard to know when it's a good time to pull the trigger.

    When I sold that stuff, I didn't really think I'd get much money from it (though still I knew there was an interest in it). I never considered something like that would (probably) be worth so much more now, so I didn't think about holding onto it. I didn't think retro video games would be so popular 20+ years later.

    You also have to know where to sell. You won't get as much in a local flea market as what you could get on eBay, for example, where actual collectors are more numerous. Flea markets are good for buyers, not for sellers.

    With the fees eBay is charging these days, I'm not so sure eBay is that great for sellers either.. It's still easy to find a buyer on eBay, but I feel like they're charging an arm and a leg in fees now.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Crushed@VERT/T0KERZ to Nightfox on Wed May 4 12:58:13 2022
    Re: Retro computers and electronics
    By: Nightfox to Boraxman on Wed May 04 2022 09:18 am

    and had also bought one of the portable units which played the same

    The TurboExpress (hand held TurboGrafx) was AMAZING for it's time... I remember saving up for MONTHS as a kid to buy that thing (it was almost 3x as expensive as the GameBoy).

    I'm still a sucker for hand-helds... my favs at the moment are the Retroid Pocket 2 and I still love the PS Vita (modded for retro play mostly). I'm on the waiting list for a Steam Deck, that thing is cool!


    The TurboExpresses sell for a mint on eBay these days...

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ t0kerZ hUt
  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to Nightfox on Wed May 4 14:45:35 2022
    When I sold that stuff, I didn't really think I'd get much money from it (though still, I knew there was an interest in it). I never considered something like that would (probably) be worth so much more now, so I didn't think about holding onto it. I didn't know retro video games would be so popular 20+ years later.

    Yeah, I have to be honest. I keep the shit because I'm still attached to it. Just glad to see that I'm not the only weirdo attached to the past :-)

    I never bought stuff intending to keep it in the box and never used it so that one day I would sell it at a profit.

    Once I did buy figurines in a liquidation box in a store to sell them on eBay right away because I knew they were going for more than what I paid in that store. I was an experiment out of curiosity. I did make a profit but still felt it was more trouble it was worth.

    I just hope when I die that inheritors will be smart enough to take their time selling stuff to get the correct prices, not just wholesale the whole.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Ennev on Wed May 4 12:28:24 2022
    Re: Re: Retro computers and electronics
    By: Ennev to Nightfox on Wed May 04 2022 02:45 pm

    Yeah, I have to be honest. I keep the shit because I'm still attached to it. Just glad to see that I'm not the only weirdo attached to the past :-)

    Understandable. I tend to be nostalgic about things sometimes. :) But there have only been a few things I feel like I've been a bit attached to and wouldn't want to part with. I enjoy playing retro video games, but they can be emulated on modern hardware, so I've debated whether I'd want the actual hardware or not. And when I go back and play an actual old game console, even though I enjoy it, I feel like it's now more convenient to just load a game in an emulator rather than get out a cartridge, insert it, possible deal with having to clean it off before it will work, etc.. :P

    I never bought stuff intending to keep it in the box and never used it so that one day I would sell it at a profit.

    Usually I don't either. I buy stuff that I think will be fun and/or useful to me. Sometimes those things just happen to become collectable after a while.

    As far as gaming, several old game companies have released their 'mini' consoles (which look like their old game consoles but are emulators with a bunch of ROMs loaded onto them, which have a HDMI connection to output to a modern TV). I bought a Super Nintendo Classic Mini the second time they were released to stores in 2018 and was able to get one at the regular price. I've modded it and added more games, and I still have it. Now that Nintendo has stopped making those, I imagine someone would buy it where I'd make a profit, but it's not something I'm interested in selling right now.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Nightfox on Thu May 5 20:22:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6272A751.65365.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <62725ADF.56034.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to Kaelon on
    Wed May 04 2022 08:46 pm

    The retro scene is crazy, as are the prices. I bought a 486 for $50 20 years ago, and the other was given to me!

    It is crazy. I wish I still had my TurboGrafX-16 game console. I
    bought it new in 1993 on clearance for $40 when the store wanted to get rid of their inventory (other game consoles such as the Super Nintendo
    and Sega Genesis had become far more popular). Over a few years, I
    bought several games for it (I was able to find some deals at local
    pawn shops and thrift stores), and had also bought one of the portable units which played the same cartridges. In 2000, I sold my whole collection on eBay and got about $200 for it. I thought that was good
    at the time (it had a bit of a retro following even back then), but I could probably make a mint on it now if I still had it and sold it now.

    Nightfox

    I bought two or three Commodore 64's, one working, the other with a RAM problem, for $2 each. A Vic 20 for about $5 and a 1571 Disk Drive for $7 or $8, as well as a Datasette drive for about $5.

    Only one Commodore 64 of the 4 I've got works now :(, and the Vic 20 is close to working, but no image. I suspect a capacitor, should change it soon.

    I could make quite a bit of money selling it, and I might sell some, but I can't part with it completely.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Thu May 5 20:30:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Nightfox <=-

    @MSGID: <6272ACAF.9224.dove-gen@bbses.info>
    @REPLY: <6272A5B3.65364.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to MRO on Wed May 04 2022 09:11 am


    In the early-mid 90s, when I primarily ran DOS, I remember using a drive defragmenter that did a fairly good job of moving data all together (I think it was part of Norton Utilities for DOS). I think I only ever noticed a small increase in speed after defragmenting my drive.



    yeah i had that also. i think a lot of it was placebo effect. supposely all those things were fixing up your computer, but i doubt they did.
    when things really went south, they didn't save me. ---
    = Synchronet = ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

    I've definately seen some speed-ups after defragmenting, when the files were really, really fragmented. That can happen more easily when the disk is near full. Even later on a 20G drive, I had one partition which would always be near full (torrents) and files would get very, very fragmented as it filled.

    Some people treat defrag as some kind of maintenance tool, some way to increase performance. People would have run it far more frequently than they would have needed, disks only really fragment when you go through many delete/add cycles, not with age.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Nightfox on Thu May 5 20:33:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Ennev <=-

    @MSGID: <6272D3D8.65373.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <6272C9CF.44520.dove-general@mtlgeek.synchro.net>
    Re: Re: Retro computers and electronics
    By: Ennev to Nightfox on
    Wed May 04 2022 02:45 pm

    Yeah, I have to be honest. I keep the shit because I'm still attached to it. Just glad to see that I'm not the only weirdo attached to the past :-)

    Understandable. I tend to be nostalgic about things sometimes. :)
    But there have only been a few things I feel like I've been a bit
    attached to and wouldn't want to part with. I enjoy playing retro
    video games, but they can be emulated on modern hardware, so I've
    debated whether I'd want the actual hardware or not. And when I go
    back and play an actual old game console, even though I enjoy it, I
    feel like it's now more convenient to just load a game in an emulator rather than get out a cartridge, insert it, possible deal with having
    to clean it off before it will work, etc.. :P

    I never bought stuff intending to keep it in the box and never used it so that one day I would sell it at a profit.

    Usually I don't either. I buy stuff that I think will be fun and/or useful to me. Sometimes those things just happen to become collectable after a while.

    As far as gaming, several old game companies have released their 'mini' consoles (which look like their old game consoles but are emulators
    with a bunch of ROMs loaded onto them, which have a HDMI connection to output to a modern TV). I bought a Super Nintendo Classic Mini the
    second time they were released to stores in 2018 and was able to get
    one at the regular price. I've modded it and added more games, and I still have it. Now that Nintendo has stopped making those, I imagine someone would buy it where I'd make a profit, but it's not something
    I'm interested in selling right now.

    Nightfox

    I regret selling my older computers, and not keeping them. At the time, the few dollars seemed worth it, now, not so much.

    That being said, even though I have a C64, I still use an emulator more (on the rare occasion I want to play a C64 game) because of convienience and not touching "my precious". Even with DOS games, I will use DOSBox more than the real hardware, even though I have some 486's. I will use the old technology whne I want to use an authentic CRT, hear the SoundBlaster Pro, or play with the hardware itself.

    ... Computer Hacker wanted. Must have own axe.
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Boraxman on Wed May 4 07:07:00 2022
    Boraxman wrote to Kaelon <=-

    The retro scene is crazy, as are the prices. I bought a 486 for $50 20 years ago, and the other was given to me!

    Some of those thin client PCs look like they might run DOS/Windows
    3.1, but have support for modern peripherals like USB. You don't get
    the hardware feel, but could run the old apps just fine.

    That being said, I'd love to have a throwback system with a CRT
    monitor - either a 486/50 or a Mac IIci.





    ... Think of the radio
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Boraxman on Thu May 5 07:08:00 2022
    Boraxman wrote to Nightfox <=-

    I regret selling my older computers, and not keeping them. At the
    time, the few dollars seemed worth it, now, not so much.

    It wasn't so much the money as it was not wanting to move them or
    have room to store them. Had I had the room, I would have kept an
    AT&T 6300, an Osborne 1, and a Compaq Portable II that I'd had at one
    time or another.

    Oh, and a 286/12 system I found holding up a shelf at work. I loaded
    MINIX on it and had my own little multiuser system and a web site on
    the internet early on. But, that's a story for another day.



    ... Consider different fading systems
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to Nightfox on Thu May 5 11:38:08 2022
    console, even though I enjoy it, I feel like it's now more convenient to just load a game in an emulator rather than get out a cartridge, insert it, possible deal with having to clean it off before it will work, etc.. :P



    As far as gaming, several old game companies have released their 'mini' consoles (which look like their old game consoles but are emulators with a bunch of ROMs loaded onto them, which have a HDMI connection to output to a modern TV). I bought a Super Nintendo Classic Mini the second time they were released to stores in 2018 and was able to get one at the regular price. I've modded it and added more games, and I still have it. Now that Nintendo has stopped making those, I imagine someone would buy it where I'd make a profit, but it's not something I'm interested in selling right now.

    Yes, I agree, it's complicated sometimes to try to play on the "original" platform, newer TV doesn't offer composite input anymore ( and latency ).

    I do love emulation, RecalBox on a Raspberry PI 4 is hard to beat. That's why I wasn't really interested in the mini-console offering that has been popping out these last few years. Game controllers are available in usb for Sega, Nintendo etc. So it was sufficient enough for me to get the retro console fix.

    OpenEmu on mac is also very solid, and easy to set up. So I do keep my old console (Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, gamegear(that I have to recap), GameCube etc) but it's much simpler to just start the pi and not have to mess with wires and un-collaborative cartridges.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -
  • From Ennev@VERT/MTLGEEK to Boraxman on Thu May 5 11:40:20 2022
    That being said, even though I have a C64, I still use an emulator more (on the rare occasion I want to play a C64 game) because of convienience and not touching "my precious". Even with DOS games, I will use DOSBox more than the real hardware, even though I have some 486's. I will use the old technology whne I want to use an authentic CRT, hear the SoundBlaster Pro, or play with the hardware itself.

    Yes, and using tech from the 90s and older starts to be a risk too with capacitors starting to leak(not just chemically) sometime you can damage the hardware seriously just by powering it on.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Boraxman on Thu May 5 09:19:59 2022
    Re: Re: Retro computers and e
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on Thu May 05 2022 08:33 pm

    That being said, even though I have a C64, I still use an emulator more (on the rare occasion I want to play a C64 game) because of convienience and not touching "my precious". Even with DOS games, I will use DOSBox more than the real hardware, even though I have some 486's. I will use the old technology whne I want to use an authentic CRT, hear the SoundBlaster Pro, or play with the hardware itself.

    I've thought of buying an older (perhaps 486) PC for authentic gaming, but I'm not sure I'd use it much. Emulation with DOSBox seems to do a fairly good job in most cases. A couple years ago I was a little surprised I was even able to run Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.1 and Windows 3.1 within DOSBox.

    Some months ago, I heard about this RetroWave OPL3 sound device someone made which has an actual OPL3 sound chip on it:
    https://www.tindie.com/products/sudomaker/retrowave-opl3-sound-card/
    It can be paired with one of these to plug into your PC via USB: https://www.tindie.com/products/sudomaker/potatopi-pico24-development-board/ That will provide a hardware solution to give you AdLib sound on a modern PC. There's a build of DOSBOx that has an option to enable routing AdLib data to that device so you can have actual AdLib audio from games using DOSBox.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 6 16:04:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6273D46B.51278.dove.dove-gen@realitycheckbbs.org>
    @REPLY: <62725ADF.56034.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Boraxman wrote to Kaelon <=-

    The retro scene is crazy, as are the prices. I bought a 486 for $50 20 years ago, and the other was given to me!

    Some of those thin client PCs look like they might run DOS/Windows
    3.1, but have support for modern peripherals like USB. You don't get
    the hardware feel, but could run the old apps just fine.

    That being said, I'd love to have a throwback system with a CRT
    monitor - either a 486/50 or a Mac IIci.

    You can turn any machine into a Linux thin client fairly easily. I used this 20 years ago, to be able to use my "modern" Linux machine from a 486, or allow my sister to use my computer (and access the internet) from her older machine in her bedroom.



    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 6 16:06:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6273E837.51279.dove.dove-gen@realitycheckbbs.org>
    @REPLY: <6273A904.56051.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Boraxman wrote to Nightfox <=-

    I regret selling my older computers, and not keeping them. At the
    time, the few dollars seemed worth it, now, not so much.

    It wasn't so much the money as it was not wanting to move them or
    have room to store them. Had I had the room, I would have kept an
    AT&T 6300, an Osborne 1, and a Compaq Portable II that I'd had at one
    time or another.

    Oh, and a 286/12 system I found holding up a shelf at work. I loaded
    MINIX on it and had my own little multiuser system and a web site on
    the internet early on. But, that's a story for another day.


    I found a 286 system on the side of the road, and stored it at my parents garage for 20 years. I pulled it out a couple of years go, to find it wouldn't really work, CMOS issue. I got as far as being able to get it to boot once, but thats as far as I got.

    I wanted it so I could use my old CGA monitor.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Nightfox on Fri May 6 16:10:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6273F92F.65381.dove_dove-gen@digitaldistortionbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <6273A904.56051.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Retro computers and e
    By: Boraxman to Nightfox on
    Thu May 05 2022 08:33 pm

    That being said, even though I have a C64, I still use an emulator more (on the rare occasion I want to play a C64 game) because of convienience and not touching "my precious". Even with DOS games, I will use DOSBox more than the real hardware, even though I have some 486's. I will use the old technology whne I want to use an authentic CRT, hear the SoundBlaster Pro, or play with the hardware itself.

    I've thought of buying an older (perhaps 486) PC for authentic gaming,
    but I'm not sure I'd use it much. Emulation with DOSBox seems to do a fairly good job in most cases. A couple years ago I was a little surprised I was even able to run Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.1 and Windows 3.1 within DOSBox.

    Some months ago, I heard about this RetroWave OPL3 sound device someone made which has an actual OPL3 sound chip on it: https://www.tindie.com/products/sudomaker/retrowave-opl3-sound-card/ It can be paired with one of these to plug into your PC via USB: https://www.tindie.com/products/sudomaker/potatopi-pico24-development-bo ard/ That will provide a hardware solution to give you AdLib sound on a modern PC. There's a build of DOSBOx that has an option to enable
    routing AdLib data to that device so you can have actual AdLib audio
    from games using DOSBox.

    Nightfox

    I don't use it much myself. Mostly just for nostalgia, and that is mostly just to use the CRT display. BBS'ing on a CRT display just looks more 'real', but for games, I mostly use DOSBox, and if you have CRT emulation, you're 95% there.

    To be honest, that is really the biggest difference, the visual artifacts are missing in DOSBox unless they are emulated.

    If you can get hardware for a decent price, its well worth it, but I wouldn't pay hundreds. The machine, or the parts will eventually (or soon) die and then where will you be?


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Ennev on Fri May 6 07:07:00 2022
    Ennev wrote to Boraxman <=-

    Yes, and using tech from the 90s and older starts to be a risk too with capacitors starting to leak(not just chemically) sometime you can
    damage the hardware seriously just by powering it on.

    Be careful powering up a Dell GX270 from the 2010s, too. It's not
    just retro hardware, it's worth taking a cursory look at the caps on
    any older system.

    Dell had a real problem on their hands with the GX270 - the caps were
    in the path of the power supply exhaust fan, and prematurely
    popped/leaked. They'd end up looking like popcorn.

    I replaced a bunch of them at work, and some of the replacements were
    equally bad.



    ... SURELY NOT EVERYONE WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat May 7 19:24:00 2022
    Re: Re: Retro computers and e
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Ennev on Fri May 06 2022 07:07 am

    Ennev wrote to Boraxman <=-

    Yes, and using tech from the 90s and older starts to be a risk too with capacitors starting to leak(not just chemically) sometime you can damage the hardware seriously just by powering it on.

    Be careful powering up a Dell GX270 from the 2010s, too. It's not
    just retro hardware, it's worth taking a cursory look at the caps on
    any older system.

    Dell had a real problem on their hands with the GX270 - the caps were
    in the path of the power supply exhaust fan, and prematurely
    popped/leaked. They'd end up looking like popcorn.

    I replaced a bunch of them at work, and some of the replacements were
    equally bad.



    ... SURELY NOT EVERYONE WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING
    The Dell GX620 small form factor desktops were also made during the
    capacitor plague of the early 2000's

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Fri May 6 08:39:01 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 06 2022 04:04 pm

    You can turn any machine into a Linux thin client fairly easily. I used this 20 years ago, to be able to use my "modern" Linux machine from a 486, or allow my sister to use my computer (and access the internet) from her older machine in her bedroom.


    i had some asus netbooks that couldn't run linux.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat May 7 17:46:04 2022
    Re: Re: Retro computers and e
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Ennev on Fri May 06 2022 07:07 am

    Ennev wrote to Boraxman <=-

    Yes, and using tech from the 90s and older starts to be a risk too with capacitors starting to leak(not just chemically) sometime you can damage the hardware seriously just by powering it on.

    Be careful powering up a Dell GX270 from the 2010s, too. It's not
    just retro hardware, it's worth taking a cursory look at the caps on
    any older system.

    Dell had a real problem on their hands with the GX270 - the caps were
    in the path of the power supply exhaust fan, and prematurely
    popped/leaked. They'd end up looking like popcorn.

    I replaced a bunch of them at work, and some of the replacements were
    equally bad.


    that's from the bad caps issue probably.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Gamgee@VERT/PALANT to MRO on Tue May 17 21:43:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Boraxman <=-

    You can turn any machine into a Linux thin client fairly easily. I used this 20 years ago, to be able to use my "modern" Linux machine from a 486, or allow my sister to use my computer (and access the internet) from her older machine in her bedroom.

    i had some asus netbooks that couldn't run linux.

    Well, maybe you don't know much about Linux.



    ... A day without sunshine is like night.
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From the doctor@VERT/QBBS to NIGHTFOX on Wed May 18 21:43:00 2022

    --- NIGHTFOX wrote --- Re: Re: Cracked cases By:
    Kaelon to Boraxman on Sun May 01 2022 02:03 pm

    You are so right. Working to optimize CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT was
    a
    real treat, especially when you got to load TSR-optimizers and other utilities that could really help you push the limits of your system.
    Some

    Yeah, I think one of the best tools for memory optimization was QEMM.
    They had their own XMS and EMS drivers (from what I recall) and their own tools for optimizing RAM and placing as much as possible in high memory, EMS, etc. Later, when Microsoft included their memmaker tool for MS-DOS 6.0, I thought it was nice that they had that, but it seemed QEMM still
    did a better job.


    Gross. I remember spending at least 8 hours trying to find the right memory addresses to exclude to make a (I think defective) Miro video card work
    with Windows 3.1 I miss that almost as much as OS/2 (:


    ---
    * TARDIS BBS - Home of QUARKware * telnet bbs.cortex-media.info
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to the doctor on Thu May 19 07:16:00 2022
    the doctor wrote to NIGHTFOX <=-

    Yeah, I think one of the best tools for memory optimization was QEMM.
    They had their own XMS and EMS drivers (from what I recall) and their own tools for optimizing RAM and placing as much as possible in high memory,

    Gross. I remember spending at least 8 hours trying to find the right memory addresses to exclude to make a (I think defective) Miro video
    card work with Windows 3.1 I miss that almost as much as OS/2 (:

    Yeah, I remember spending way too much time running QEMM's optimize
    routine, running for 5 minutes then crashing, then running it again,
    making it 10 minutes, and so on.

    Memmaker with DOS 6.x mostly did the job, and it was free - no need
    to buy or pirate QEMM. This is the way, said Bill Gates.



    ... Powered By Celeron (Tualatin). Engineered for the future.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri May 20 17:15:37 2022
    On 5/3/22 08:16, poindexter FORTRAN wrote:
    Been really happy with my Budgie setup for the UI side... not fond of
    the handful of things I still reboot to my windows drive for.

    I've been using Ubuntu Budgie on one of my utility VMs, and I like it. I'm not much of a Mac user any more, but it reminds me of what I remember a Mac looking like in 2014.

    There is a neat add-on called TwisterUI that can change UI elements of your window manager to look like MacOS or Windows. It's interesting, I set it to MacOS and am playing with it now.
    Cool.. Ubuntu Budgie as well. Have mine configured as a bit of a mix of
    all of the above. Unified menu bar, title control when maximized, tray
    icons bottom right, sys icons top right, win-style menu and tasks bottom
    left. Just glad the update to 22.04 was relatively painless... had to un/reinstall to latest nvidia drivers in a color borked mode. But
    working well since.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Crushed on Fri May 20 17:21:48 2022
    On 5/4/22 09:58, Crushed wrote:

    I'm still a sucker for hand-helds... my favs at the moment are the Retroid Pocket 2 and I still love the PS Vita (modded for retro play mostly). I'm on the waiting list for a Steam Deck, that thing is cool!

    Yeah, my original estimate for the Steam Deck was February, now it's
    saying October.. :-/ looks so cool.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to Boraxman on Fri May 20 17:24:26 2022
    On 5/5/22 03:30, Boraxman wrote:

    Some people treat defrag as some kind of maintenance tool, some way to increase performance. People would have run it far more frequently
    than they would have needed, disks only really fragment when you go
    through many delete/add cycles, not with age.

    I mostly did it after installing software, that's when it really made
    the most difference. Like right after installing Windows, Office or
    something else big. Once programs let you set it for even once a week,
    that was fine for me.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat May 21 10:40:57 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to the doctor on Thu May 19 2022 07:16 am

    Yeah, I remember spending way too much time running QEMM's optimize routine, running for 5 minutes then crashing, then running it again, making it 10 minutes, and so on.

    I don't remember my PC crashing often with QEMM. It seemed to do the job fairly well.

    Memmaker with DOS 6.x mostly did the job, and it was free - no need
    to buy or pirate QEMM. This is the way, said Bill Gates.

    Mostly, but I always thought QEMM was still better at memory optimization. I always wanted to squeeze as much free memory available as I could out of the main/lower memory.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to POINDEXTER FORTRAN on Sat May 21 10:52:00 2022
    Yeah, I remember spending way too much time running QEMM's optimize
    routine, running for 5 minutes then crashing, then running it again,
    making it 10 minutes, and so on.

    Memmaker with DOS 6.x mostly did the job, and it was free - no need
    to buy or pirate QEMM. This is the way, said Bill Gates.

    If you were not running Windows, QEMM did a much better job than Memmaker
    on the same machine. They tried continuing with a Win95 version of QEMM
    (or something similar) but it never seemed to work right, especially after
    a Windows update.


    * SLMR 2.1a * Windows isn't crippleware: it's "Functionally Challenged"

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to NIGHTFOX on Sun May 22 10:30:00 2022
    Yeah, I remember spending way too much time running QEMM's optimize routine, running for 5 minutes then crashing, then running it again, making it 10 minutes, and so on.

    I don't remember my PC crashing often with QEMM. It seemed to do the job fair
    well.

    If you were not using it on a Windows 3.x machine, or one with some odd ball CDROM controller, you probably didn't have problems. I was running it on a machine with Desqview and it ran great.

    Only issue I had with it was when I wanted to run SimCity 2000. It would
    not run under Desqview anyway, so I had a boot menu where I could choose a config specifically for SimCity.

    Memmaker with DOS 6.x mostly did the job, and it was free - no need
    to buy or pirate QEMM. This is the way, said Bill Gates.

    Mostly, but I always thought QEMM was still better at memory optimization. I ways wanted to squeeze as much free memory available as I could out of the mai
    lower memory.

    It was better, so long as you were not trying to use it with Windows 3.x.
    May stil have been better even then, depending on what you were trying to
    do with it.


    * SLMR 2.1a * Boss spelled backwards is "double SOB".

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to Tracker1 on Sun May 22 21:46:00 2022
    Tracker1 wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <6288313A.23413.dove-general@roughneckbbs.com>
    @REPLY: <6273A902.56050.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    On 5/5/22 03:30, Boraxman wrote:

    Some people treat defrag as some kind of maintenance tool, some way to increase performance. People would have run it far more frequently
    than they would have needed, disks only really fragment when you go
    through many delete/add cycles, not with age.

    I mostly did it after installing software, that's when it really made
    the most difference. Like right after installing Windows, Office or something else big. Once programs let you set it for even once a week, that was fine for me.
    --

    It probably would have been better to do it after deleting files. Files got fragmented because the OS would fit the the file into fragmented free space. You were most likely to get fragmented free space after deleting files, especially lots of smaller ones.

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Dumas Walker on Sun May 22 16:39:40 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dumas Walker to POINDEXTER FORTRAN on Sat May 21 2022 10:52 am

    Yeah, I remember spending way too much time running QEMM's optimize
    routine, running for 5 minutes then crashing, then running it again,
    making it 10 minutes, and so on.

    Memmaker with DOS 6.x mostly did the job, and it was free - no need
    to buy or pirate QEMM. This is the way, said Bill Gates.

    If you were not running Windows, QEMM did a much better job than Memmaker
    on the same machine. They tried continuing with a Win95 version of QEMM
    (or something similar) but it never seemed to work right, especially after
    a Windows update.



    my uncle was a big gamer and he liked to play those xcom games and wing commander games. he called up one of them and asked them for help in configuring his memory. they gave him a boot disk that he just put in the windows shortcut that was no less than magic. i always messed around with those things and they had him doing shit i never saw before.

    so he was able to reboot in a great environment with a lot of memory and it seemed a lot faster. i took it and used it for my games and i wish i still had it someplace. whoever wrote those bootdisks really knew their shit. it was far beyond what memmaker or anybody used. it's like they knew the specific memory addresses for the game to utilize to be the best it could be.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Mon May 23 09:11:50 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to Dumas Walker on Sun May 22 2022 04:39 pm

    Yeah, I remember spending way too much time running QEMM's optimize
    routine, running for 5 minutes then crashing, then running it again,
    making it 10 minutes, and so on.

    Memmaker with DOS 6.x mostly did the job, and it was free - no need
    to buy or pirate QEMM. This is the way, said Bill Gates.

    If you were not running Windows, QEMM did a much better job than Memmaker on the same machine. They tried continuing with a Win95 version of QEMM (or something similar) but it never seemed to work right, especially afte a Windows update.



    my uncle was a big gamer and he liked to play those xcom games and wing commander games. he called up one of them and asked them for help in configuring his memory. they gave him a boot disk that he just put in the windows shortcut that was no less than magic. i always messed around with th things and they had him doing shit i never saw before.

    so he was able to reboot in a great environment with a lot of memory and it seemed a lot faster. i took it and used it for my games and i wish i still it someplace. whoever wrote those bootdisks really knew their shit. it was far beyond what memmaker or anybody used. it's like they knew the specific memory addresses for the game to utilize to be the best it could be.

    I don't miss that nonsense at all. Once we started needing that, it was clear evidence we were pushing the system beyond what it could do. We were trying to squeeze things into a memory model which was outdated due to its limitations.

    I never had multiple set ups for games, or uses any memory manager besides memmaker. My computer was set with two boot options, XMS and EMS, with it defaulting to XMS. EMS was required for a few programs.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Boraxman on Mon May 23 03:14:27 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Mon May 23 2022 09:11 am

    I don't miss that nonsense at all. Once we started needing that, it was clear evidence we were pushing the system beyond what it could do. We were trying to squeeze things into a memory model which was outdated due to its limitations.

    I never had multiple set ups for games, or uses any memory manager besides memmaker. My computer was set with two boot options, XMS and EMS, with it defaulting to XMS. EMS was required for a few programs.


    yeah it was indicitative of bad programming that users had to do such modifications to their systems for games to work.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to MRO on Mon May 23 17:59:00 2022
    so he was able to reboot in a great environment with a lot of memory and it se
    ed a lot faster. i took it and used it for my games and i wish i still had it
    omeplace. whoever wrote those bootdisks really knew their shit. it was far b
    ond what memmaker or anybody used. it's like they knew the specific memory ad
    esses for the game to utilize to be the best it could be.

    Having something like that now would be great to tinker with, especially if
    you are into retro machines or gaming.


    * SLMR 2.1a * Why is the word abbreviation so long?

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Dumas Walker on Mon May 23 15:36:40 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dumas Walker to NIGHTFOX on Sun May 22 2022 10:30 am

    I don't remember my PC crashing often with QEMM. It seemed to do the
    job fair well.

    If you were not using it on a Windows 3.x machine, or one with some odd ball CDROM controller, you probably didn't have problems. I was running it on a machine with Desqview and it ran great.

    It was better, so long as you were not trying to use it with Windows 3.x. May stil have been better even then, depending on what you were trying to do with it.

    That's true, I may have seen some issues with it when running Windows 3.x. I think Windows 3.x did some of its own memoery management anyway, so it was probably fine to use the included DOS memory management stuff with Windows.

    I'd actually heard of Microsoft doing things to prevent Windows 3.x from running in anything except MS-DOS. If you were using DR-DOS or some other DOS, I heard Windows 3.x would refuse to run due to some technicality.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Nightfox on Mon May 23 21:18:19 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Dumas Walker on Mon May 23 2022 03:36 pm


    I'd actually heard of Microsoft doing things to prevent Windows 3.x from running in anything except MS-DOS. If you were using DR-DOS or some other DOS, I heard Windows 3.x would refuse to run due to some technicality.


    i had 3.11 running on dr dos.
    i think you had to use a trick with what memory it was using.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Nightfox on Mon May 23 19:01:12 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Nightfox to Dumas Walker on Mon May 23 2022 03:36 pm

    running in anything except MS-DOS. If you were using DR-DOS or some other DOS, I heard Windows 3.x would refuse to run due to some technicality.

    Technicality? Windows checked to see if it was running on DR-DOS and threw up an obscure error message.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.
  • From Boraxman@VERT/MSRDBBS to MRO on Tue May 24 10:14:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Boraxman <=-

    @MSGID: <628B4263.9405.dove-gen@bbses.info>
    @REPLY: <628AC336.56250.dove-gen@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Boraxman to MRO on Mon May 23 2022 09:11 am

    I don't miss that nonsense at all. Once we started needing that, it was clear evidence we were pushing the system beyond what it could do. We were trying to squeeze things into a memory model which was outdated due to its limitations.

    I never had multiple set ups for games, or uses any memory manager besides memmaker. My computer was set with two boot options, XMS and EMS, with it defaulting to XMS. EMS was required for a few programs.


    yeah it was indicitative of bad programming that users had to do such modifications to their systems for games to work. ---

    The only programs I really remember which needed EMS where one or to Module players, and maybe one or two games. It was rare that I needed it, but the option was there for a reason.

    Other programs would spit the dummy if there was an EMS driver present and managing EMS.


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ MS & RD BBs - bbs.mozysswamp.org
  • From Tracker1@VERT/TRN to MRO on Sat Jun 4 11:53:08 2022
    On 5/6/22 6:39 AM, MRO wrote:
    You can turn any machine into a Linux thin client fairly easily. I used
    this 20 years ago, to be able to use my "modern" Linux machine from a 486, >> or allow my sister to use my computer (and access the internet) from her
    older machine in her bedroom.


    i had some asus netbooks that couldn't run linux.

    A lot of the netbooks and some of the really chromebooks are eMMC
    memory, which requires flashing and a regular install typically doesn't
    work. There are usually instructions, but it's just something I avoid,
    unless it's for someone who is going to be using ChromeOS already installed.
    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Tracker1 on Sat Jun 4 17:06:33 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to MRO on Sat Jun 04 2022 11:53 am

    On 5/6/22 6:39 AM, MRO wrote:
    You can turn any machine into a Linux thin client fairly easily. I used >> this 20 years ago, to be able to use my "modern" Linux machine from a 486, >> or allow my sister to use my computer (and access the internet) from her
    older machine in her bedroom.


    i had some asus netbooks that couldn't run linux.

    A lot of the netbooks and some of the really chromebooks are eMMC
    memory, which requires flashing and a regular install typically doesn't work. There are usually instructions, but it's just something I avoid, unless it's for someone who is going to be using ChromeOS already installed.
    well in my case that wasnt it. i could install anything but linux.
    i think it had something to do with the bios.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Tracker1 on Sun Jun 5 00:19:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Tracker1 to MRO on Sat Jun 04 2022 11:53 am

    On 5/6/22 6:39 AM, MRO wrote:
    You can turn any machine into a Linux thin client fairly easily. I used >> this 20 years ago, to be able to use my "modern" Linux machine from a 486 >> or allow my sister to use my computer (and access the internet) from her >> older machine in her bedroom.


    i had some asus netbooks that couldn't run linux.

    A lot of the netbooks and some of the really chromebooks are eMMC
    memory, which requires flashing and a regular install typically doesn't work. There are usually instructions, but it's just something I avoid, unless it's for someone who is going to be using ChromeOS already installed. --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com

    I could've sworn most Asus netbooks shipped with linux, if they didn't ship with XP Lite. My Asus eee701 (4gb flash) ran Ubuntu and it's lite variants (xubuntu, easy peasy) with no problems. Problem was when it came to upgrade, and Ubuntu's standard install wanted more than 4gb to install. I got around
    it (sort of) by having the bios boot to the SD slot, and installed a 32 gb sd card. I looked for a heavier duty yet fast access card, 32gb so it wouldn't
    be too slow.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Moondog on Sun Jun 5 07:56:45 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to Tracker1 on Sun Jun 05 2022 12:19 am

    I could've sworn most Asus netbooks shipped with linux, if they didn't ship with XP Lite. My Asus eee701 (4gb flash) ran Ubuntu and it's lite variants (xubuntu, easy peasy) with no problems. Problem was when it came to upgrade, and Ubuntu's standard install wanted more than 4gb to install. I got around
    it (sort of) by having the bios boot to the SD slot, and installed a 32 gb sd card. I looked for a heavier duty yet fast access card, 32gb so it wouldn't
    be too slow.

    mine had windows 7 starter edition

    it was the asus eee pc 1025c and does not support 64bit or pae

    my mom had an acer netbook that had windows and linux images you could install on it.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Ron Lauzon@VERT/SYNCNIX to Moondog on Sun Jun 5 16:04:00 2022
    Moondog wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    I could've sworn most Asus netbooks shipped with linux, if they didn't ship with XP Lite.

    They did. The Windows version cost more because it needed extra memory, so most people opted for the cheaper version.

    But some people bought the Windows version to get the extra memory, then installed Linux on that.


    ... Everyone makes mistakes, if not we'd all be single!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ My Brand-New BBS (All the cool SysOps run STOCK!)
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Ron Lauzon on Sun Jun 5 20:58:28 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Ron Lauzon to Moondog on Sun Jun 05 2022 04:04 pm

    Moondog wrote to Tracker1 <=-

    I could've sworn most Asus netbooks shipped with linux, if they didn't ship with XP Lite.

    They did. The Windows version cost more because it needed extra memory, so most people opted for the cheaper version.

    But some people bought the Windows version to get the extra memory, then installed Linux on that.


    i didnt see anything like that. from what i saw they all had the same amount of memory.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Dr. What@VERT/FINALZON to MRO on Mon Jun 6 09:19:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Ron Lauzon <=-

    i didnt see anything like that. from what i saw they all had the same amount of memory.

    You sort of had to watch the stores closely to have seen it.

    First, the Asus eee PC comes out (7" display) - Linux only because Microsoft wanted $100 for a Windows license - which would have doubled the cost of the machine.

    Shortly after that, Microsoft noticed how well they sold - without Windows. They couldn't have people noticing how good Linux worked, so they changed their tune and dropped the price.

    But Windows didn't work well with the current hardware specs, so Asus made a model with extra RAM and bundled it with Windows - again for more money. That's when Linux people were buying the Windows version and loading Linux.

    But shortly after that, Asus came out with a 9" display version, more RAM, etc.


    ... I'm not paranoid! Which of my enemies told you this?
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Final Zone BBS - final-zone.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Dr. What on Mon Jun 6 15:15:09 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dr. What to MRO on Mon Jun 06 2022 09:19 am

    You sort of had to watch the stores closely to have seen it.

    First, the Asus eee PC comes out (7" display) - Linux only because Microsoft wanted $100 for a Windows license - which would have doubled the cost of the machine.

    Shortly after that, Microsoft noticed how well they sold - without Windows. They couldn't have people noticing how good Linux worked, so they changed their tune and dropped the price.

    But Windows didn't work well with the current hardware specs, so Asus made a model with extra RAM and bundled it with Windows - again for more money. That's when Linux people were buying the Windows version and loading Linux.

    But shortly after that, Asus came out with a 9" display version, more RAM, etc.


    i was watching, i didnt see any of that stuff you are talking about.
    i used to run my bbses on netbooks. i had 3 of them.
    there were various models but most of them had 1gig of ram, later on they had more ram like the model i linked. i didnt see a first wave of linux netbooks.
    i've owned 6 netbooks. newegg doesnt let me go that far back in my history to pull up the models, though.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to MRO on Tue Jun 7 23:41:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to Dr. What on Mon Jun 06 2022 03:15 pm

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dr. What to MRO on Mon Jun 06 2022 09:19 am

    You sort of had to watch the stores closely to have seen it.

    First, the Asus eee PC comes out (7" display) - Linux only because Micros wanted $100 for a Windows license - which would have doubled the cost of machine.

    Shortly after that, Microsoft noticed how well they sold - without Window They couldn't have people noticing how good Linux worked, so they changed their tune and dropped the price.

    But Windows didn't work well with the current hardware specs, so Asus mad model with extra RAM and bundled it with Windows - again for more money. That's when Linux people were buying the Windows version and loading Linu

    But shortly after that, Asus came out with a 9" display version, more RAM etc.


    i was watching, i didnt see any of that stuff you are talking about.
    i used to run my bbses on netbooks. i had 3 of them.
    there were various models but most of them had 1gig of ram, later on they ha i've owned 6 netbooks. newegg doesnt let me go that far back in my history

    As mentioned, I had an eee 701 I had upgraded to 1gb of ram and a 4gb onboard ssd. Later on I received a hand me down Dell Mini Inspiron 10 witht he worst onboard Intel chipset and cpu combination. Ubuntu ran like a dog on it. The last one was a 10" HP with a 16gb ssd. It was also a good host for Ubuntu.
    I still use the HP mini for setting up a serial session with my Chrony F1.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Moondog on Thu Jun 9 05:07:40 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to MRO on Tue Jun 07 2022 11:41 pm


    As mentioned, I had an eee 701 I had upgraded to 1gb of ram and a 4gb onboard ssd. Later on I received a hand me down Dell Mini Inspiron 10 witht he worst onboard Intel chipset and cpu combination. Ubuntu ran like a dog on it. The last one was a 10" HP with a 16gb ssd. It was also a good host for Ubuntu.
    I still use the HP mini for setting up a serial session with my Chrony F1.


    maybe this linux and windows fight on weak computers was a regional thing.

    the only stores i was watching was kmart and bestbuy.
    I'm not sure if microsoft was really that focused on getting into battles back then, though. weren't they focused on taking over the phone market? would they really care about the netbook market?
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Grimpen@VERT/SPACEPTR to MRO on Thu Jun 9 06:09:00 2022
    MRO wrote to Dr. What <=-

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dr. What to MRO on Mon Jun 06 2022 09:19 am

    First, the Asus eee PC comes out (7" display) - Linux only because Microsoft wanted $100 for a Windows license - which would have doubled the cost of the machine.

    i was watching, i didnt see any of that stuff you are talking about.

    I think those were the very first Asus 700 eeePC's. They had "Xandros" Linux IIRC.

    -G

    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    þ Synchronet þ -=Spacepatrol=-
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to MRO on Thu Jun 9 08:39:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: MRO to Moondog on Thu Jun 09 2022 05:07 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Moondog to MRO on Tue Jun 07 2022 11:41 pm


    As mentioned, I had an eee 701 I had upgraded to 1gb of ram and a 4gb onboard ssd. Later on I received a hand me down Dell Mini Inspiron 10 wi he worst onboard Intel chipset and cpu combination. Ubuntu ran like a do on it. The last one was a 10" HP with a 16gb ssd. It was also a good ho for Ubuntu.
    I still use the HP mini for setting up a serial session with my Chrony F1


    maybe this linux and windows fight on weak computers was a regional thing.

    the only stores i was watching was kmart and bestbuy.
    I'm not sure if microsoft was really that focused on getting into battles ba

    The netbooks I saw in the store shelves were running a light version of XP. Online stores sold both linux and XP light netbooks. Windows 7 had been out, and i thought it was weird to roll back to XP. Then my niece and nephew got
    in a fight over my nephew's netbook, and damaged the hard drive. I can't reca ll what brand but it had a 250gb spinner in it. The media restore disk was
    an option to make from the pc if you had an external DVD. Not sure if a boota ble USB was an option. I had a copy of Win7 and threw it on. It ran ok but took awhile to boot up. The kids used it mainly to run Itunes and sync up their Ipods

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From knightwise@VERT/BEERS20 to Moondog on Thu Jun 9 11:38:00 2022
    Boy I remember those EEE pc's. I got one for my wife's grandma when she turned 75. It was delightful to see here enjoy that little computer.

    Netbooks were something of a step too soon. We didn't have operating systems back then that could honestly support it. Take a modern day chromebook and shrink it down, you have a perfect EEE pc.

    I still have my 701 in my upstairs attic. Believe it or not .. it still works.

    Knightwise
    Host of the knightwise.com podcast
    www.knightwise.com

    ... Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Grimpen on Fri Jun 10 20:35:00 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Grimpen to MRO on Thu Jun 09 2022 06:09 am

    MRO wrote to Dr. What <=-

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Dr. What to MRO on Mon Jun 06 2022 09:19 am

    First, the Asus eee PC comes out (7" display) - Linux only because Micros wanted $100 for a Windows license - which would have doubled the cost of machine.

    i was watching, i didnt see any of that stuff you are talking about.

    I think those were the very first Asus 700 eeePC's. They had "Xandros" Linu IIRC.

    -G

    Yes, it had a strange name like Xandros on it. I replaced it with Ubuntu.
    At first there was a problem with driver support in linux for the broadcomm wireless it had built-in. NDISwrapper worked ok, then drivers appeared soon after in the repositories


    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From DaiTengu@VERT/ENSEMBLE to Ron Lauzon on Wed Jun 15 08:03:09 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Ron Lauzon to Moondog on Sun Jun 05 2022 04:04 pm

    I could've sworn most Asus netbooks shipped with linux, if they
    didn't ship with XP Lite.
    But some people bought the Windows version to get the extra memory, then installed Linux on that.

    Yep,I did that. I ran across my old Asus EeePC the other day. I can't find the power cord though, but I wanted to see if I could still run something Tiny Core Linux, Puppy Linux, or even Mint. I'm pretty sure I bought it back in 2008 or so.

    DaiTengu

    ... The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ War Ensemble BBS - The sport is war, total war - warensemble.com
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to DaiTengu on Wed Jun 15 09:14:28 2022
    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: DaiTengu to Ron Lauzon on Wed Jun 15 2022 08:03 am

    Re: Re: Cracked cases
    By: Ron Lauzon to Moondog on Sun Jun 05 2022 04:04 pm

    I could've sworn most Asus netbooks shipped with linux, if they
    didn't ship with XP Lite.
    But some people bought the Windows version to get the extra memory, then installed Linux on that.

    Yep,I did that. I ran across my old Asus EeePC the other day. I can't find the power cord though, but I wanted to see if I could still run something Tiny Core Linux, Puppy Linux, or even Mint. I'm pretty sure I bought it back in 2008 or so.


    i used to take mine to work and mess with it when i took a dump.
    that was before smartphones were so popular.
    i also had one with a great speaker system and i'd play my music through it. ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::