General Computer Thread

[Owain Taggart]

Though depending on how retro you wanted to be that could also be greatly simplified. Change the video to HDMI which can also carry the audio and you'd negate most of that daughterboard.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I mean, in the interest of historical perspective and depending on what you plan on doing with it, you could go retro and try to have the board looking as close to the original as possible. That'd be great for a museum that has older computers, and to have them functioning would be the cherry on top. . But for personal purposes, the more compact would probably be more useful.

In other news, I got a new phone on Sunday. Not a Samsung, not a Motorola, but a TCL 10 Pro. The build quality is excellent, it's sleek and fast and I've seen reviews directly comparing it to the iPhone SE released last year. It's quite a bang for the buck. Only paying $10 a month for it on top of my regular bill.

 

[Santaman]

I wouldn't mind having a recreated Atari ST, if it would work 100% accurate that is.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Speaking of phones got a Nokia 5.4 and have really enjoyed it despite reading negative reviews after I bought it. I don't understand those. I got everything I wanted out of it and more and it's reliable.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, I do find that product reviews can sometimes be overly critical. Sometimes the reviewers will have biases too that play into it.

 

[John Clark]

I wouldn't mind having a recreated Atari ST, if it would work 100% accurate that is.

I had a go on one of those back in the day (My mate went that route while I went with the Amiga) and seem to remember enjoying it.

Unfortunately, the ST didn't seem to be quite as supported in our local shops.

 

[Santaman]

I have four Atari machines, an 800XL and the later but mostly same 65XE and two ST machines, a 520ST and a 1040ST.
In some countries the ST was very popular, in the late 80's my brother and I had a 260ST with a PC speed card which could emulate a 8088/86 machine, we later on switched to a PC because we couldn't find much stuff for the ST here either.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I think some of you will love this video..

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What an amazing device?
One Windows 6 users

 

[Santaman]

If it prevents M$ from sucking the cash out of your pocket they WILL make it illegal..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I just think those devices are super neat... Now not cheap here but still.

 

[Owain Taggart]

So, it essentially makes Windows into a server-driven PC Network? It reminds me in the 80's & 90's in Canada. Schools had these computers called Unisys ICONs, a system developed by the government for schools. It was essentially a Unix box. One box would be the server, accessible only by teachers and the like, and through it they could also see the other PCs in the classroom. They were quite slow, from what I remember, as everything resided on the server box, rather than locally. Everything you did, including the loading of files was through the server, and the computers essentially couldn't operate without their server. I was very glad when we eventually moved on to IBM PCs.

 

[Marc]

So, it essentially makes Windows into a server-driven PC Network? It reminds me in the 80's & 90's in Canada. Schools had these computers called Unisys ICONs, a system developed by the government for schools. It was essentially a Unix box. One box would be the server, accessible only by teachers and the like, and through it they could also see the other PCs in the classroom. They were quite slow, from what I remember, as everything resided on the server box, rather than locally. Everything you did, including the loading of files was through the server, and the computers essentially couldn't operate without their server. I was very glad when we eventually moved on to IBM PCs.

My wife remembers using the Icon computers in the mid 80s.

The video above is really nothing new. Suggest the poster lookup concepts such as VDI, Remote Desktop, thin clients.

In a way it’s a return to the terminal to sever model from the mainframe era.

Sun Microsystems tried to get it going in the early 2000s with their Sun Blade thin clients (this was before they became the abomination known as Oracle today).

used to require programs such as Citrix and VMWare to implement but Microsoft included as part of Windows Server 2016 iirc.

can even do it with Linux (IsardVDI is one I’ve been playing with).

there’s even software that allow you to turn Windows 10 into a multi-user system but you’re dicing with death there because the neither the hardware of software is really up to the task.

 

[Owain Taggart]

And there's a reason they were phased out. If there's an issue with your server, you're SOL with the rest of them because of that single dependency.

 

[Marc]

And there's a reason they were phased out. If there's an issue with your server, you're SOL with the rest of them because of that single dependency.

these days they make extensive use of virtualisation, clustering and shared storage storage to alleviate that issue.

Sun’s approach made use a blade servers.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Oh, no doubt that would certainly improve things.

And it's kind of amazing how the OS used in the Icons, ONX, would eventually end up being the basis of the Blackberry.

 

[Marc]

Oh, no doubt that would certainly improve things.

And it's kind of amazing how the OS used in the Icons, ONX, would eventually end up being the basis of the Blackberry.

Something tells me some-one in the Ontario govt made a big mistake letting that one get away.

 

[Marc]

researchers at a university in Japan are very unhappy after an error with the backup system on the supercomputer they've been using was lost.

14million files totaly 77TB has been lost but details haven't been given on what actually happened but the backup system is being replaced.

The system was built by HP Enterprises so this could be a very big black eye for them.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...es-77tb-of-research-data-due-to-backup-error/

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Ouch!!

 

[Santaman]

That sucks.. holy crap, if you have to redo all that research it will be a really expensive thing..

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I have some issues with an older Dell laptop and it's dock and I'm getting nowhere.

I have a Dell Latitude E6540 running Win7x64 on a Dell PR03X (e-port I?) dock.

I just bought 2 new Dell 32" monitors. One is currently plugged into the dock's DP port and the other is plugged into the laptop's HDMI port (during the day I move this one to my work laptop so I can actually see what I'm doing). Everything works fine this way, the monitors work as a dual setup. But I have my previous Dell monitor I want to use in portrait mode for reading online mags, comics, books, etc.

So I bought a StarTech 1 DP to 3 HDMI powered splitter, but the monitors are getting no signal. The computer knows there's monitors plugged into it, because when I click the Scan button on the splitter, Windows goes "ba-dunk" twice, but no luck getting a signal to the monitors.

I need to find out if my laptop and/or dock is MST capable, because this might be the issue. This same capability allows daisy-chaining of monitors, which also does not work. Google has been running me around, but nothing helpful yet.

Any ideas? Would an e-port II+ dock make this work?

 

[Marc]

I have some issues with an older Dell laptop and it's dock and I'm getting nowhere.

I have a Dell Latitude E6540 running Win7x64 on a Dell PR03X (e-port I?) dock.

I just bought 2 new Dell 32" monitors. One is currently plugged into the dock's DP port and the other is plugged into the laptop's HDMI port (during the day I move this one to my work laptop so I can actually see what I'm doing). Everything works fine this way, the monitors work as a dual setup. But I have my previous Dell monitor I want to use in portrait mode for reading online mags, comics, books, etc.

So I bought a StarTech 1 DP to 3 HDMI powered splitter, but the monitors are getting no signal. The computer knows there's monitors plugged into it, because when I click the Scan button on the splitter, Windows goes "ba-dunk" twice, but no luck getting a signal to the monitors.

I need to find out if my laptop and/or dock is MST capable, because this might be the issue. This same capability allows daisy-chaining of monitors, which also does not work. Google has been running me around, but nothing helpful yet.

Any ideas? Would an e-port II+ dock make this work?

Could be a limit on the hardware both with the ability to run 3 monitor with the new ones (4K?) and the version on display port that is supported.

Even with the latest and greatest Dell laptops and docks there can issues. Some-one posted in r/sysadmin on Reddit during the week.

Try dropping the 32” monitors back to 1920x1080 ( yeah will be as ugly as sin) and see you can run the 3.