General Computer Thread

[Marc]

A history on the three finger salute we all know so well.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-history-of-ctrl-alt-delete?utm_source=pocket-newtab

In a nutshell it was never intended to be used outside of development of the original IBM PC and was created as quick means to restart for the programers with the three keys being chosen as they were unlikely to be ever pushed at the same time.

 

[Santaman]

^^ tihihihi yeah.. nice story.

 

[BK613]

Wow, I know they've being dying for years but Frys just closed down. Everything,
http://frys.com/
I've DIY'd a bunch of PCs using parts bought at their stores and though their customer service wasn't always great I still have good memories associated with them
RIP.

 

[StarCruiser]

Yep - we have (had) three locations in Houston and they have all been slowly shriveling up over the last 10 years or so...

It's a real shame as Fry's had been a Mecca for those of us into computers and audio/video equipment.

 

[Santaman]

We used to have quite a few hardware stores here, like everywhere else they have mostly disappeared.
Those were fun days, really shop for a mainboard, have discussions with the staff about things, pity that all has gone.

 

[Kraig]

Wow, I know they've being dying for years but Frys just closed down. Everything,
http://frys.com/
I've DIY'd a bunch of PCs using parts bought at their stores and though their customer service wasn't always great I still have good memories associated with them
RIP.

That's why I didn't get my normal early morning email. They usually send me two a day. The last one I got was yesterday afternoon about "e-ridables, robotics & toys." It says that the sale is good "02.22.21-02-28-21."

I've made a few purchases over the years from Fry's using the internet and shipped to home. The nearest store to me was 80 miles away in San Jose. Never went to the physical store, too much traffic between here and there. I'll miss them.

 

[BK613]

@Kraig I'll miss them too. No brick and mortar will ever match the sheer volume and variety ever again. Heck, most online sites can't. Fond memories of the fading PC era...

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I built a second NUC but this one seems a bit borked, the microphone array just won't work regardless of what I try including suggestions online. It's not bothering me so much as it worked during setup as I used voice commands during install of windows but now the microphones are dead though windows says they are on.

Intel NUC8I5BEH

My setup has 16gig ram and m.2 drive.

 

[publiusr]

The Internet rich owe it to history to keep this alive. They made their bloody money with electronic hobbies—-argh! No loyalty!

 

[Non Sync]

I too, have built a number of computers with parts from Fry's, including the one I'm using right now.

I was always struck by how the staff seemed to have the joy sucked out of them. Seemed like a depressing place to work, especially with what must have been mandatory tie they wore.

 

[Santaman]

I worked on and off for a small computer shop for a while, some consumer machines but a lot of business machines, really fun to build them, it was in the time that you got a new driver diskette or CD with every new batch of graphics cards, especially ATI in the Rage series era, baseline machines in those days were a Pentium II 233/266 with 64Mb RAM and a 8.4 to 20Gb HDD, CD drive, sometimes a CD writer, a Soundblaster card, ATI rage graphics card and this all wrapped up in a good quality Aopen mid tower casing.
Mainboards we used were mainly Biostar boards, they were really good quality and they had an office in the Netherlands, if there was a problem with a batch then they'd diagnosed it and sent patched BIOS's as soon they had fixed it, I still have computers around from that shop with similar hardware..

Later on I worked for a bigger company, mainly corporate stuff, was in the Pentium 4 era, loved to build Intel barebone server machines, once had a bunch of 4 CPU Xeon machines to build, they were almost all maxed out machine so 50K a piece..

Nowadays it is so very different, click a basket of parts together, order, build and tadaa you're done... ye gads and don't get me started on that RGB crap..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

RGB lighting is everywhere..... Ram sticks, mainboards, psu, you almost can't escape it. I HATE IT WITH A PASSION and always try to find a way to disable it for good.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm not fond of it either. There's usually an app where you can just turn it off. It's no big deal. Sometimes it is usefully applied to indicate some status such as temperature. Mostly it's aimed at those who are impressed by bright, colourful lights.

 

[Santaman]

When something is functional, yes, I am all for it, I don't think that LED's whichare randomly farting rainbows are much functional..
Yes, I am aware that some can be switched off.. not sure that goes for everything though..

 

[StarCruiser]

Even old school "Boss Lights" on mainframes had more valid reason to exist than those silly LED arrays...

(They kept the boss convinced everything is good!)

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm lucky that I've been able to find a way to disable nonessential LEDs whenever I've needed to.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

When something is functional, yes, I am all for it, I don't think that LED's whichare randomly farting rainbows are much functional..
Yes, I am aware that some can be switched off.. not sure that goes for everything though..

I love that expression, "farting rainbows" sums up the lights on my old PSU..... For some reason a rainbow LED fan was put in there, I don't know what process goes into designing PC peripherals but geez who thought that was a good idea considering you'd hardly ever look at the PSU. Luckily it could be turned off or the wires cut.

 

[BK613]

Maybe it's a consequence of me living through the beige box era of PCs but I love the fact that my PC glows like some retro-futuristic light show. You know, like Scotty's TMP warp core.

 

[Marc]

Only leds on my computers are the keyboards because finding a mechanical line that does not have the damn things and won't cost me a kidney isn't easy.

 

[Santaman]

Maybe it's a consequence of me living through the beige box era of PCs but I love the fact that my PC glows like some retro-futuristic light show. You know, like Scotty's TMP warp core.

I LOVED the beige box era of PC's, you know, when you had green PCB's with stuff silkscreened in white and colourful internal connectors so you FLIPPING could read what the hell they were for, now it's all black PCB's with black connectors and silkscreened in such a way only a frigging T-800 using it's infrared sensors can see what's written, same with keyboards, beige/white keyboards with black txt on it much easier to read than black keyboard with somewhat white characters on them (they fade and get dirty easier), I'm not getting any younger so I nowadays I need at least a 500 Lumen light to be able to plug in stuff.