General Computer Thread

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Just built my new desktop based on an AMD Ryzen 7 1700 cpu, slightly overclocked to 3.2 GHz, and 32 GB of DDR4 3200 MHz RAM. Cripes, this thing is fast compared to my 5-year old PC, which was based on an Intel i7 3770 running at 3.4 GHz with 16 GB of DDR3 RAM. I used VMware P2V to convert this old machine to a virtual machine and I am now running it as a guest under VMware Player on the new PC, allocating half of the available cores, hyperthreads and memory. The VM appears to be faster than the old physical machine (even though its image is located on the secondary spinning hard drive rather than the main 500 GB M.2 PCIe SSD) but I haven't benchmarked it. I could probably have achieved up to 8% higher performance with a Ryzen 7 1800x but the extra cost didn't seem worth it based on online comparisons.

 

[Santaman]

Sounds great.

 

[publiusr]

And yet, chips from 2002 are only recently space-rated
https://qz.com/317406/why-nasas-newest-space-shuttle-uses-a-computer-chip-from-2002/

Microchips wound up making comsats bigger.

In the early days--chips were powerful--but robust due to their simplicity. We didn't have the Vostok/Zenit cannonball to protect our electronics--so they were exposed to space--and they "talked" to older, larger computers Earthside.

Then we put chips on Earth--and they outpaced space-rated chips in their evolution.

Now that everyone wants data--and everybody has a computer--comsats keep growing--and still use tubes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling-wave_tube

 

[Santaman]

NASA was in need of old 8086 chips for the Space Shuttle in the 2000's, they were getting hard to find at that point, they were used in the solid booster systems, the chips after that were radiation hardened 386's so these Power PC chips are quite a step foreward.

 

[Gary7]

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[Stephen!]

But I am starting to dislike that machine. What brain dead moron designs a machine with only a 32gig storage for the OS and user files?

I'd probably manage fine with that. I tend to store user files on external hard disks and just have a minimalist OS and applications.

 

[Stephen!]

I remember trying to use a trackball years ago and it felt like the most unnatural thing to try and get use to that i gave up, might have been because after using a mouse for so long by that stage that there was no going back.

I used to use one of those. They just take a while of getting use to, then it feels as natural as using a regular mouse. This was an optical trackball. The only downside being that the sensors tended to get a bit clogged with dirt every so often.

 

[Marc]

I used to use one of those. They just take a while of getting use to, then it feels as natural as using a regular mouse. This was an optical trackball. The only downside being that the sensors tended to get a bit clogged with dirt every so often.

Bit like the regular mice

Been using and optical mouse for so long that until you mentioned it I'd forgotten about having the clean the rollers inside the mouse.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I'd probably manage fine with that. I tend to store user files on external hard disks and just have a minimalist OS and applications.

Yeah but in the time I have had this machine it keeps running out of disk space. Windows updates seem to eat up the space, and it won't update any more due to lack of space. Bad design.

There is only 2gig of space left from 7gig when the machine was brand new. There's just no way that is acceptable IMHO

Now the storage module is Msata.... So I am wondering if I put in an MSata ssd what would happen?

 

[Marc]

Yeah but in the time I have had this machine it keeps running out of disk space. Windows updates seem to eat up the space, and it won't update any more due to lack of space. Bad design.

There is only 2gig of space left from 7gig when the machine was brand new. There's just no way that is acceptable IMHO

Now the storage module is Msata.... So I am wondering if I put in an MSata ssd what would happen?

disk clean up choosing the option to clean up system files is your friend.

Currently running the latest insider built of Windows 10 on a 120GBB (117GB total available storage) with about 40GB free.

That's with Win10, Office 2016, Firefox, Veeam Backup, SQL Express 2016 and a few other programs installed plus about 7GB of documents.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

disk clean up choosing the option to clean up system files is your friend.

Currently running the latest insider built of Windows 10 on a 120GBB (117GB total available storage) with about 40GB free.

That's with Win10, Office 2016, Firefox, Veeam Backup, SQL Express 2016 and a few other programs installed plus about 7GB of documents.

I have tried all that, this is a 32gb EMMC with an M-sata interface. I'm hoping to pull that out and swap it with an actual M-sata SSD just I don't feel brave enough yet to pull the mainboard. I'm nervous of the ribbon cables. There's a quite a few with those push connectors you push the white bit and the releases the ribbon.

Interesting thing is that they stuck a braswell graphics set into this.

 

[Marc]

I have tried all that, this is a 32gb EMMC with an M-sata interface. I'm hoping to pull that out and swap it with an actual M-sata SSD just I don't feel brave enough yet to pull the mainboard. I'm nervous of the ribbon cables. There's a quite a few with those push connectors you push the white bit and the releases the ribbon.

Well you could alwasy put Linux on it.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Well you could alwasy put Linux on it.

There is that, and it's a touch screen too. I might have to try that.

 

[think]

So here I sit the lap top my friend had is .... yes again broken
I should of know it was the same problem.. right??? again.

NEVER put two virus protection programs on the same dag computer dammit ... they see each others virus definitions as viruses and attempt to remove the other so now with the third virus program I have to clean the messs MESSSS up dang

for a second time in about a year. go figure... just like Go figure?

Maca feee plus Norton===== broken... yep big dang broken ahhhhhh I do this for free you know but OMG>..

 

[Santaman]

Yeah.. some people aren't computer savvy and install about every piece of software they can get their hands on including three firewalls, several antimalware programs and at least six "useful" toolbars.. mlegh...

 

[think]

^hehehe

so yeah the hard drive is now officially busted with many many viral spores eating the bits and bytes yummy.. broke out the Kaspersky recovery cd burned it in linux and that would not work --- keeps getting so far but I am not giving up I reconfigured the bios three times ---

 

[Marc]

So here I sit the lap top my friend had is .... yes again broken
I should of know it was the same problem.. right??? again.

NEVER put two virus protection programs on the same dag computer dammit ... they see each others virus definitions as viruses and attempt to remove the other so now with the third virus program I have to clean the messs MESSSS up dang

for a second time in about a year. go figure... just like Go figure?

Maca feee plus Norton===== broken... yep big dang broken ahhhhhh I do this for free you know but OMG>..

Norton has a long be an abomination that needs to be damned to the deepest depths of hell.

Though I can't say I've actually had a problem with two different AVs on my system. One is the free version of Avira. the other is Sophos (centrally managed through the home licence of their UTM product).

 

[think]

Maybe, .. all the drivers are corrupt... I can’t even boot with a all purpose recovery disk as the cd driver is unrecognizable factory reset crashed twice..might try again before giving up any ideas??? The usb stick boot is corrupt also. And has been tried to exhaustion..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I suspect whatever problem they had has totally corrupted the bios chips themselves, and the io chips.. If a total reflash of the bios hasn't fixed anything that thing is dead. Chips can get corrupted in the oddest fashion.

 

[think]

Bios is useable..but,, the firmware with its drivers seems inoperable..can’t get it to load anything from anywhere reset won’t reset,. Going to see what is left of the file systems,..