General Computer Thread

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Amaris, May 26, 2016.

  1. Unicron

    Unicron Boss Monster Mod Moderator

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    I came across this and found it amusing. Also makes me feel old... :p :lol:

     
  2. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    Oh good, those videos are fun. You should see the one where they have kids reacting to rotary phones.
     
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  3. Jax

    Jax Admiral Admiral

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    Didn't realise this thread was here, hoping any PC gamers here could help.

    I'm getting a PC put together and I was going to get 8GB DDR4 Ram but was thinking maybe going to 12GB so I presume one stick of 8 and one of 4 (or 2x4 and 1x8) and I came across some people saying a lone stick different in speed to others could cause some performance issues?

    Anyone clued in on such things my knowledge on Memory is limited.
     
  4. Kerock

    Kerock Commander Red Shirt

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    My first computer was an old Tandy TL 80286 8 MHz from Radio Shack - 640k ram expandable to 728k (more than anyone could ever use), no hard drive but it had the new 720k floppy and a 360k 5-1/4" floppy (two floppys - way ahead of the competition). It was twice as fast as any of my friend's computers....who had 8088's and would you believe TRS-80s.
    The only problem was all the hot games (like asteroid, millipede and space invaders) played way to fast. Programmers hadn't figured out how to control clock speeds within programs (or had no reason to) and programs / games just ran at the computer clock speeds. Luckily it has an option to switch from 8 MHz to 4 MHz so it could be slowed down. Played hours and hours of the old Starflight game. The game had four 720k floppy disks that you had to change out when prompted.

    Then sadly later that year the 80386 12 MHz came out with 1 MB hard drives.......blew my computer away.
     
  5. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    To get the best performace you'd want to run dual channel and that requires the two memory modules to the same size and speed. While you could probably run with a mixture of sizes (but don't quote me - I haven't used DDR4) I wouldn't stuff around an go straight to the 16GB.
     
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  6. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    DIMM's go in pairs, usually machines are dual channel, means they link two memory banks together for a higher performance, usually around 5%-15% depending on what you're doing with the PC.
    So, a lone DIMM extra will mean that the machine will only run in single channel, 8Gb (2x4Gb) is enough for most things, if you're worried it isn't than go for 16GB, 2x8GB would be the smartest move, you'll have two more slots left t buy another set of DIMM's for a later upgrade.

    *edit to add* To answer the previous poster, DIMM's need to be of the same size and preferably you'll buy a dual channel kit, if you run different sizes again the machine will default to single channel.
     
  7. Jax

    Jax Admiral Admiral

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    Cheers for info, I was trying to save money but 16gb is probably the way i'm going to go.
     
  8. Gary7

    Gary7 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I FINALLY got around to upgrading my laptops from HDD (hard disk drive) to SSD (solid state drive).

    One of them was upgraded quite easily. The other one was a nightmare, where data migration was concerned.

    Firstly, I highly recommend going to SSD now, even if your computer is aging. The boost in performance is so tangible (much less wait time for processing with anything that is disk intensive). Second, the prices have come down dramatically. Whereas a 500Gb SSD was $200 last year, this year you can at times find deals to get a 1Tb SSD for about $200.

    Most of the SSD makers provide a data migration tool. Samsung acquired Seagate a few years back and they've released some award winning SSD drives since. The EVO series is excellent. Samsung provides a Data Migration tool that's pretty easy to use. However, it'll fail if there are any bad sectors on your HDD. As an HDD ages, bad sectors will appear. But usually the operating system will relocate any files connected with that sector to another sector and then mark the failing sector "bad." Most disk operations will know to skip the bad sector. However, disk cloning programs can have problems with them.

    What the SSD makers fail to do is tell the consumer to run a disk check and repair utility prior to starting the data migration. This is essential to save time and one's sanity.

    I have a 500Gb SSD in one laptop and a 1Tb SSD in my other one. I can't express enough how pleased I am. I will keep these laptops for at least a few more years.
     
  9. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Seagate bought Samsung's HDD division years ago, Samsung did not acquire Seagate, Samsung's SSD division has nothing to do with Seagate.

    HDD's don't get bad sectors from just ageing, I've got ancient drives from the MFM era and ATA era that have no bad sectors on them and are in pristine conditions.

    SLC and MLC SSD drives I would almost trust as much as a HDD, 3D TLC and newer stuff nope, build for cheapness not for longevity..

    HDD's don't just die like an SSD does, can hold data MUCH longer and not degrade after a few years on a shelf.

    So personally I'm sticking with rotating rust for essential machines for a while longer..
     
  10. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    How long till we get something like optical storage for hard drives? Not a disk but some kind of crystal that stores data via a laser or something?
     
  11. Asbo Zaprudder

    Asbo Zaprudder Admiral Admiral

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    So CD/DVD/BD-ROM drives don't count then? Quad layer BDs only store up to 100 GB so are beaten by SSDs and spinning rust. I recall people were working on holographic storage 20 years ago. Never seemed to take off. If you think about it, light wavelengths are quite large (about 5x10^-7 metres). For high density data storage, one should be thinking in terms of aiming for at least one bit per atom, typically with a diameter of about 2x10^-10 metres.
     
  12. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    No I meant something like an SSD but using crystals to store data like isolinear chips.
     
  13. Asbo Zaprudder

    Asbo Zaprudder Admiral Admiral

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    Is 360 TB of data per disc enough storage for you? The tech exists:

    https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/17/technology/5d-data-storage-memory-crystals/index.html

    Personally, I feel that a minimum of a petabyte (10^15 bytes) would be the psychological milestone to aim for with such storage - perhaps by using shorter or multiplexed frequencies.

    Of course, such a storage density is by no way pushing the limit - there's plenty of room down there. Avogadro's number is huge - the number of atoms or molecules in one gram mole of a substance (such as 12 grams of Carbon-12) is roughly 6.022 × 10^23.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2018
  14. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I just spent the day harvesting 80 gb+ from dvd(s).

    Mostly Murder She Wrote.

    Why?

    Why?

    Why?
     
  15. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    360 TB is to me enormous.......

    I wouldn't mind something pocket sized that could hold that much with no moving parts and no degradation.
     
  16. Asbo Zaprudder

    Asbo Zaprudder Admiral Admiral

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    One petabyte is enough to store 20,000 50GB Blu-ray discs or about one 10MB digital photo for every 20 seconds of an average human lifetime. Personally, I'd rather be able to stream HD on demand and I have no wish to record that many images of my very mundane existence. The memory capacity of the human brain has been quoted as 2.5 petabytes but I suspect the accuracy of that figure.
     
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  17. think

    think About it! Premium Member

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    mightytext...?
    https://mightytext.net/web8/
    shear accidently clicked the download to download this on my android phone
    it appears at startup on my desktop every time I start the desktop to install it across the board on all my devices .. OH NO ... I can't find the spot to uninstall I don't want this... It was an accident it is not listed in the apps on my computer maybe on the phone .. so ... I need this deleted .. making me crazy and I want it to stop.. (everytime-nothing I know of to stop it) HELP.. anyway.. my computer stopped crashing after 3-4 hours or so .. that is the balance of happy sad .. I guess. any ideas.. would help with "mightytext"
     
  18. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    Here you go hope this helps

    https://www.shouldiremoveit.com/MightyText-143366-program.aspx

    Also if its part of your browser you might look under your extensions tab and remove it there too.
     
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  19. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    If you have android...

    Open google play, click on the three black lines on left hand top corner, then click on "my apps and games".

    You will see three columns.

    Updates, installed, and Library (stuff you've already deleted off your phone).

    Delete what you have to. :)

    If that doesn't work, install an apk manager, which is how you organize pirated software that you did not get from googleplay.

    If you have an Iphone...

    No fucking clue. :(
     
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  20. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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