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Vanagoon posted:"Netbust" God that was such a miserable architecture. For some reason my high school had a QuickBASIC course and I tried to take my final project code home (I made a lovely version of the Dragon Quest monster fights where you could bet on them!) and discovered that my AMD Athlon 2800+ ran the drat thing way too quickly. We were required to use timing things in it so it would do some number of operations and it turns out that the numbers I'd used were a couple orders of magnitude too small for the better architecture. Goddamn hilarious.
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Jun 17, 2014 01:16
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... QuickBASIC had proper timing tools...
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Jun 17, 2014 01:20
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Shugojin posted:God that was such a miserable architecture. For some reason my high school had a QuickBASIC course and I tried to take my final project code home (I made a lovely version of the Dragon Quest monster fights where you could bet on them!) and discovered that my AMD Athlon 2800+ ran the drat thing way too quickly. We were required to use timing things in it so it would do some number of operations and it turns out that the numbers I'd used were a couple orders of magnitude too small for the better architecture. Hehehehehe, this brings back the old days. When There was no Pentium M and if you wanted to build a gaming laptop you had to use Pentium 4 Mobiles which was basically a desktop processor on a laptop package. http://books.google.com.pa/books?id...0mobile&f=false These abominations cost more than a Salarian testicle transplant and would probably make you sterile if you set the machine on your lap.
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Jun 17, 2014 01:48
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Keiya posted:... QuickBASIC had proper timing tools... Look man it was high school and we used what we were told to use, good idea or not, teacher knowing what the gently caress or not.
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Jun 17, 2014 01:51
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Saw this while reading Married to the Sea and it made me think of this thread.
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Jun 17, 2014 05:38
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Keiya posted:How is that surprising at all? They had a need for things like a nice, friendly installer, they wrote it, and they offered it upstream if upstream wanted it. That's how basically everything gets done. Mostly because it seems like it should be an obscure and eventually abandoned project; finding out they've become the educational face of Debian and are still producing generally useful code wasn't quite what I expected.
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Jun 17, 2014 06:25
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TerryLennox posted:Hehehehehe, this brings back the old days. When There was no Pentium M and if you wanted to build a gaming laptop you had to use Pentium 4 Mobiles which was basically a desktop processor on a laptop package. Not as bad as the time period where they tried to put the 9800M into everything as a video card. That card runs somewhere between the heat levels of "Unceasing Hellfire" and "Raging Inferno of the Damned". Pretty much every company was throwing huge piles of money at Nvidia for those things and then the computers they were in would last like a year tops because they would get burned out by how hot the card was. Rumor has it that its one of the things that made them go and make their current generation of mobile cards run so cold and ALSO what drove AMD to make the whole GPU concept. Heat and laptops don't mix. Not even Apple was smart enough to realize this ("Lets make a computer that has a really hot graphics card and processor and have it use the body as a heat sink!"). But Jobs has had a long history of not caring about heat. One of the early Apples had no fans because Jobs hated fan noise, so it got so hot inside of it that it would warp the plastic and unseat the RAM and other components.
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Jun 17, 2014 06:50
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The Apple III It was designed to follow up on the Apple II, which was a booming success for the company at the time. It also marked Job's foray into trying to work around annoyances of computer's of the 80's, such as noise so no fan for you! It even came with an optional Silentype Thermal printer. The entire case is pretty much a lump of aluminum, that was costly to mill and provided issues with fitting in the motherboard. It was also cramped and despite later models having sinks, the thing turned in to a little desk-heater. It got so hot that chips started to warp out of their sockets and one story has people finding melted disks upon ejection. The quick fix was to lift the system up an inch, then drop, in the hopes to reseat the chips. There were more problems, such as deliberately hobbled Apple II emulation and real-time clocks that would fail, and result in the whole unit needing to be replaced as the chips had been soldered directly to the board. It quickly got written off as a failure in which Steve W blamed Apple's marketing department. The Power Mac G4 Cube.  A fantastic example of form over function It was meant to be an in-between for the iMac and the PowerMac.. New (in 2001) this cost $1799 and had a 450MHz G4 processor, 64MB of RAM, a 20GB hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive, and an internal 56 k modem. A PowerMac G4 cost $200 less, had the same specs and could be upgraded. Formwise, the plastic in the early models tended to crack or have mold lines. The flat surface meant it was tempting to put things that could roll into the vent and the convection heating made it a natural magnet for the cat. It suffered heavily from having the sense of being an overpriced piece of art and despite Apple upgrading it to have a CD-RW and a faster graphics card (that had to be designed to squeeze in) along with bundling it with software it failed to catch on and was "put on ice". Hackers have had fun with it, upgrading the guts, adding lights and converting it into all manner of things like tissue boxes or fishtanks. The Mac Mini is widely seen as the successor to the cube, it seems to even share the same footprint.
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Jun 17, 2014 07:39
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On the subject of failed machines, anyone remember this? The Go-L Mach system. Appearing in 2004 this pretty much was the wet-dream of any PC enthusiast at the time. It cost between $4000 to $7000 depending on what you ordered. But what made this was the sheer guff of the advertising surrounding it. All PR was coated with deliciously fancy nonsensical terms; such as it's SuperBios that featured "Intelligent Bios Priority Threading" which was a real-time speed adjustment. The top-end specs were 4B of DDR RAM, that was coupled to a RAM Drive (called PuRAM powered by something called CacheFlow) for a max of 16GB and powered by an Intel 4, 3.8ghz processor (with Hyper-threading!) and 1TB of storage (some sources go up to 2). Graphics were a ATI Radeon™ 9800 Pro that linked up to a "Grand Canyon View" array of up to 8 monitors. Apparently it had a fridge system as a cooler that it kept cool at -35c: "The most spectacular cooling system ever built using vapor compression cycle, is capable of removing CPU's heat over 50 times more efficiently than any air cooling solution." Or the fact it claimed to come with a fuel cell battery that would give you 24 hours off power. You could even pick what kind of rock you wanted the case logo to be carved from. The site is so much fun to read through. It has tons of little animations. Of course the maxim of "it's too good to be true" became true when the company kept on complaining that Intel wasn't producing the chips required to meet demand. Even more damning was a teardown in MaximumPC. They were a bit weary as it was lacking many of the bells and whistles, and what it had onboard was not much more than off the shelf components anyone could obtain and a worryingly overclocked CPU. Plus the internals were pretty ramshackle in their assembly. Then like all good things they just vanished in 2005 with no trace. Who knows how many people dropped $7000 to pre-order one of these. Reportedly it was a one-man deal, complete with threats to reporters.
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Jun 17, 2014 09:31
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Well, the cooling system was very real: http://www.trustedreviews.com/Asetek-VapoChill-XE-II-Refrigerated-PC-Case_Peripheral_review but happily CPUs in general turned down the heat, so only nerds and gamers do watercooling  and yeah, i remember the Go-L poo poo. the best part was the many forum posts claiming to have bought a system or at the least having ordered it, and then nobody ever followed through.
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Jun 17, 2014 12:23
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Hahah So Go-L just used the Asetek case and stuck a little L logo and a swish LED monitor on the front. That case was around $900 new. Makes the PR rubbish even more fantastical.
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Jun 17, 2014 12:56
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Computer viking posted:the educational face of Debian and are still producing generally useful code Nothing related to Debian has ever produced useful code.
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Jun 17, 2014 13:30
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El Estrago Bonito posted:Not as bad as the time period where they tried to put the 9800M into everything as a video card. That card runs somewhere between the heat levels of "Unceasing Hellfire" and "Raging Inferno of the Damned".
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Jun 17, 2014 17:15
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WebDog posted:The site is so much fun to read through. It has tons of little animations. As I was looking around, that site layout seemed really familiar. Then I looked it up and yep: https://web.archive.org/web/20031202030033/http://www.apple.com/powermac/
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Jun 18, 2014 00:08
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About to give my last revision PowerMac G5 to my mate. Reading all the hype again makes me want to keep it a bit, but it's a bloody dog compared to an i5.
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Jun 18, 2014 00:54
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Ron Burgundy posted:About to give my last revision PowerMac G5 to my mate. Reading all the hype again makes me want to keep it a bit, but it's a bloody dog compared to an i5. I decided to go hog wild when I switched to a Mac and bought a G5. I got the dual 2.5 which was the top of the line at the time. Those things were monstrous. It probably weighed about 50 lbs. Liquid cooled with about ten fans in it. It served well as a space heater. Unfortunately it aged pretty quickly and loved to burn up the huge and expensive proprietary power supply often. I gave up on it after the third power supply. I still have the case around somewhere. It really was a beautiful piece of hardware and I'd like to put some modern PC guts in it someday. Has anybody ever attempted that? There's a lot of really thick metal in there that needs to be cut away in order to mount a different mobo.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:18
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Was this posted? The P38 can opener. 
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Jun 18, 2014 01:30
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Grumbletron 4000 posted:Has anybody ever attempted that? There's a lot of really thick metal in there that needs to be cut away in order to mount a different mobo.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:43
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indoflaven posted:Was this posted? The P38 can opener. Explain.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:48
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Possibly "the best" as despite it being obsolete with MRE rations, it's still a fantastically rugged design that still works well? In Australia we had the Church Key style which were a bane on any camping trip as they usually were combined into this monstrosity.  It's a little wonder why early tinned food had people desperately stabbing it with bayonets or in some cases trying to shoot them open.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:55
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Jerry Cotton posted:Explain.  ?
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Jun 18, 2014 02:01
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A lot of canned food doesn't have the ring for two reasons: 1) It's cheaper to make without the ring. 2) They haven't been making ones with the ring for all that long and a lot of canned food is old  Bonus: The ring sometimes comes off if the can is handled roughly.
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Jun 18, 2014 02:05
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I would be willing to bet  that when you're making enough canned food for 12.2 Million people (probably more, if you include allied armies and civilian relief), that making cans with a regular lid and including a p-38 for each crate is a more efficient use of steel.Sure, now it's obsolete with modern thermoplastic packaging, but pull-tab rings are not the reason.
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Jun 18, 2014 02:09
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WebDog posted:Possibly "the best" as despite it being obsolete with MRE rations, it's still a fantastically rugged design that still works well? OK, really? A can opener? Guys check out this piece of poo poo:  It's like looking into the loving stone age!
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Jun 18, 2014 02:20
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indoflaven posted:Was this posted? The P38 can opener. The Australian version called a Field Ration Eating Device or FRED has a spoon at the end.  Not surprisingly it is often jokingly referred to as the loving Ridiculous Eating Device
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Jun 18, 2014 02:22
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GWBBQ posted:Was that the one that got so hot it would desolder the processor? I dunno if it could desolder anything but it definitely burned through all the thermal grease on my friends Asus laptop. That laptop was a piece of poo poo (the G50V) it had a false fan on the bottom of it, and pretty much every problem with the drat thing could be solved by drilling some holes through the false vent. I'm not sure why Asus didn't do this themselves, since, uh, THE MAIN FAN FROM THE loving PROCESSOR BLOWS DOWN RIGHT INTO THE FALSE VENT. It also had terribly inefficient heat piping in it where it redirected all the heat to the fan that was supposed to be exhausting heat from the video card. His 6 year old daughter used to put her stuffed animals right next to the vent because it would heat them up to like ~100+ degrees and the fan exhaust once melted a bag of whoppers that was about six inches from the computer into a solid lump.
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Jun 18, 2014 02:23
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The Thinkpad X Series Tablets that I've scrounged up have all had this black tape covering some of the vents on the bottom and it's also stuck all over the loving motherboard. I looked at them carefully when removing the boards, didn't see anything that looked like it would short out and ripped out every bit of that crap and I haven't had a bit of problem with them. That and the giant sticker on top of the Intel Wifi Cards, what is this poo poo? What, are we trying to make the wireless card overheat on purpose? You wouldn't believe the mountain of tape and stickers I removed from the inside of these things. drat it, Lenovo. I get about a 10 degree reduction in temps from doing this alone.
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Jun 18, 2014 02:42
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Ron Burgundy posted:The Australian version called a Field Ration Eating Device or FRED has a spoon at the end. Looks like you'd stab yourself in the face with every spoonful.
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Jun 18, 2014 03:05
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indoflaven posted:Was this posted? The P38 can opener. I used to keep one on my keychain. One day it opened in my pocket when I pulled out my keys. Ripped the pocket out of my pants and made a 2" gouge in my thigh. No more P38's for me.
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Jun 18, 2014 03:38
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Ensign Expendable posted:Looks like you'd stab yourself in the face with every spoonful. The sharp bit folds down on that style of can opener, so it would be flat against the handle while eating. You still have to be careful because it doesn't exactly lock in place. Anyone who attached a P-38 to their dog tag chain is very familiar with that.  Fake edit: ^ See what I mean?
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Jun 18, 2014 03:41
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carry on then posted:As I was looking around, that site layout seemed really familiar. Then I looked it up and yep: Wow, Jon Rubinstein in the intro video and everything.
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Jun 18, 2014 03:54
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Dewgy posted:OK, really? A can opener? Is the screwdriver older than the can opener? I'm not going to look it up just yet, anyone care to throw their thoughts in?
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Jun 18, 2014 04:22
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Dewgy posted:OK, really? A can opener? It really is. The only good thing philips screws are good for is drywall because you want it to strip out. It is probably the worst screw design there is. At least flat blade, or standard or slot, looks somewhat nice if external and can be operated with just about anything flat. They should be obsolete but people still loving use them. Robertson has been around for over 100 years and is better than any screw type there is, without getting into cap screws. I would love to never have to use a philips or slot screw again.
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Jun 18, 2014 04:50
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Computer viking posted:Skolelinux lives on, and is these days also known as Debian Edu. More surprising, they did a lot of the original code for the current debian installer (and a fair bit of work for the linux terminal server project). Well, I'll be damned. I still don't like it very much. Too many bad experiences, even though it was fun to gently caress up other students.
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Jun 18, 2014 05:12
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DocCynical posted:It really is. The only good thing philips screws are good for is drywall because you want it to strip out. It is probably the worst screw design there is. At least flat blade, or standard or slot, looks somewhat nice if external and can be operated with just about anything flat. They should be obsolete but people still loving use them. Ditto, hell, Phillips were literally designed so that they'd strip if there is too much torque. Fine if you need a one-and-done screwdriver; not so much if you need to take stuff apart and back together again. Slot screws have the problem of being easy to slip out of the groove and only working if it's sitting at the right angle (versus the screw or driver naturally guiding you to the right angle), but it won't strip so drat easily. Robertson is where it's at, get on our level USA.  Now if only consumer products could use them...
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Jun 18, 2014 05:14
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Flat is also good for opening paint. Phillips is loving abysmal at everything, Robertson forever.
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Jun 18, 2014 05:23
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WebDog posted:A mate of mind did just that. It requires a fair bit of sawing to fit in the motherboard, which won't line up out the back correctly, as well as rewiring all of the ports. Someone's done a very good pictorial on what you have to do to get it all to work. That's about what I was imagining. I may have to attempt it in the near future. My present PC is almost worthy of this thread. I'm still sporting a 2.6 dual core and an old 9600gt. Its showing its age in a bad way. Its noticeably chuggy these days and modern games are pretty much hopeless. Still runs tf2 like a champ though. Philips screws won't give you as much grief if you use a proper sized, good quality screwdriver. By that I mean the sort with the grippy ridges down in the slots. Less slippage = less stripped screws. Grumbletron 4000 has a new favorite as of 05:28 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 05:23
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Flat's also pretty good for shivving.
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Jun 18, 2014 05:24
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Sir_Substance posted:Is the screwdriver older than the can opener? Yes, it is.
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Jun 18, 2014 11:07
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Sir_Substance posted:Is the screwdriver older than the can opener? The can was invented like a hundred years before the can opener. You had to stab them with whatever was handy, which might have been a screwdriver.
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Jun 18, 2014 11:16
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