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e: gently caress wrong thread LifeSunDeath has a new favorite as of 16:34 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 16:23
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evobatman posted:Real business computers like Dell Latitudes and Lenovo Thinkpads have hardware LPT and RS-232 ports on the motherboard today. You just smack one of these in the docking station connector, to give them the actual physical ports: Nope, not anymore. I have the fancy-pants, all-singing, all-dancing Lenovo Ultra Dock at work (current docking connector generation, so T440-T470 and X240-X260). It has USB 3.0, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, DVI, VGA and a 3.5mm headset socket. That's it. No DE-9 serial port, no DB-25 parallel port. For my personal laptop, I'm using an X220, and the dock for that doesn't have hardware serial/parallel ports either. I think you would have to go back to the T61/X61 generation to find them.
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Feb 3, 2018 16:54
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KozmoNaut posted:Nope, not anymore. The company I work for just bought new* Latitudes and they have the docking connector which includes RS232 pins. I also just installed an LGA1150 mainboard and it has connectors for serial and a parallel port (!). Lots of boards still have the RS232 functionality but they typically don't have the connector populated. That said, for my SCADA work I use USB-Serial or USB-EIA232 adapters almost exclusively without problems. *new meaning sometime in the past 12 months. TotalLossBrain has a new favorite as of 17:00 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 16:57
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KozmoNaut posted:Nope, not anymore. Try reading the post. It's a separate snap in for the docking connector that provides those ports. Not the standard dock.
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Feb 3, 2018 17:16
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One thing that never caught on was the battery-powered thermocouple watch. Here's British comedy legend Kenneth Williams explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkL35M9sQIY
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Feb 3, 2018 17:21
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evobatman posted:Real business computers like Dell Latitudes and Lenovo Thinkpads have hardware LPT and RS-232 ports on the motherboard today. You just smack one of these in the docking station connector, to give them the actual physical ports:
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Feb 3, 2018 17:40
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TinTower posted:One thing that never caught on was the battery-powered thermocouple watch. Here's British comedy legend Kenneth Williams explaining how it works: Not quite as obsolete as you might suspect: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/1/8/16866028/matrix-industries-powerwatch-x-smartwatch-body-heat-fitness-tracker-ces-2018
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Feb 3, 2018 17:42
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I loved Carry On as a kid.
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Feb 3, 2018 17:45
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carry on then posted:Try reading the post. It's a separate snap in for the docking connector that provides those ports. Not the standard dock. Duly noted. However, those are probably not actual hardware serial/parallel ports. If they don't have an external power supply, it's usually just a passthrough port replicator, so those ports are more than likely on an unpowered USB hub, connected directly to one of the USB ports exposed through the dock connector. No laptop of any recent design exposes serial/parallel ports directly through the dock connector, it would take up way too many pins for a very limited use. If it is a proper, powered dock, it hooks onto the PCI/PCIe (ISA on old laptops) bus and can theoretically supply any port that can be connected over PCI/PCIe/ISA, depending on what hardware is in the dock. If your laptop has an ExpressCard slot (or PCMCIA slot), that would be the best place to get a serial/parallel port, as they also hook to the PCI/PCIe bus. JazzmasterCurious posted:My Asus H81MP-Plus motherboard had an RS232 header so I just bought the plate with plug and cable. Most motherboards still have them, I think? A lot of desktop motherboards still have the pinout, since it's easy to add, doesn't take up much space on the motherboard, and is a very popular connector for hobby use and for controlling various industrial/commercial machinery.
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Feb 3, 2018 18:46
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Not having an RS232 port is a PITA talking to tons of industrial equipment. I have used USB-R232 converters but the quality runs from OK to complete garbage.
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Feb 3, 2018 23:18
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Three-Phase posted:Not having an RS232 port is a PITA talking to tons of industrial equipment. If its for industry use why not just buy top of the line certified usb to r323 dongles?
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Feb 3, 2018 23:23
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My mechanic is still running a bunch of old Thinkpads (T30s and T20s, I think) with Win2000, because they have serial ports and just work the best, while of course standing up to being used in a garage. I love that you can still get most spare parts for older Thinkpads, it means I can keep my trusty X220 running for a long time. I would still be using using my old T42, if it wasn't a 32 bit CPU and painfully slow for any reasonably modern OS.
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Feb 3, 2018 23:30
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Boiled Water posted:If its for industry use why not just buy top of the line certified usb to r323 dongles? Yeah this is how a lot of this equipment's own control or interface pcs talk to it now even
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Feb 4, 2018 00:24
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Three-Phase posted:Not having an RS232 port is a PITA talking to tons of industrial equipment. I see a lot of newer stuff ship with their own USB-Serial converter. It's the $250 comm cable they insist on tacking on. Usually it's RJ45(EIA232)/USB or RS232/USB One of the devices I work with now and then is a GE D30 RTU, which insists on giving full-scale RS232 spec voltage  It's destroyed a couple of USB/RS232 adapters now.
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Feb 4, 2018 00:37
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We have several machines at work with RS-232 ports, that's not an issue. One of them is an old 486DX with DOS 5.0 and Win3.1, and it runs a serial connection to some really old test equipment from the early 80s, just to load and save programs. While we could probably use a USB-serial adapter and a MUCH newer machine, the 486 has never ever given a reason for us to upgrade it, because it does what it does and never stops. We have a test machine that uses a USB-to-Serial-to TOSLINK adapter because it's a high voltage lightning surge tester. It uses the fiber optic connection to isolate the PC from the test so that doesn't explode when we hit test. This same PC has a normal serial port, and it's hooked up to a fancy but old HP bench multimeter. Much of our equipment has custom interface cards that are ISA only. So the latest computers we can get easily are Pentium3s. Some Pentium 4s came with them too but they are much rarer. We run NT4 on some of them, and Win98/Me on the others. The 9x machines have it because they have to have real DOS to work correctly. I think you can get ISA bridge interfaces to run this stuff on newer computers, and expensive industrial motherboards with ISA - but why bother? We can practically get an infinite supply of free windows 98 computers from employee's grandma's basements. We have so many spares that they can be replaced in production in minutes and repaired later. The big testers use a Sun Sparcstation as the system controller running SunOS 4. These are obviously way more reliable than the Windows PCs, but they're still approaching 25 years old. The hard drives go kaput just as often. It's my job to keep all this garbage running. And I actually love it.
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Feb 4, 2018 00:47
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KozmoNaut posted:I love that you can still get most spare parts for older Thinkpads, it means I can keep my trusty X220 running for a long time. I would still be using using my old T42, if it wasn't a 32 bit CPU and painfully slow for any reasonably modern OS. I recently upgraded my X200 to a T430, and the difference was huge. Alas, I have no doubt I'll be doing a similar upgrade jump in 5 years, just to be able to painlessly view websites, view H265 encoded videos, and such.
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Feb 4, 2018 00:48
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0toShifty posted:
Maybe looking into getting one of those CF card adapters and eschewing hard drives altogether?
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Feb 4, 2018 00:52
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Johnny Aztec posted:Maybe looking into getting one of those CF card adapters and eschewing hard drives altogether? Yeah, that's the way to go for the Windows PCs, but the SCSI hard drive on the Suns are a bit more difficult to find the right adapters for.
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Feb 4, 2018 01:05
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What about obselete flashlights?  The CC Expedition, I lusted after this thing back around 2001. It was one of the first easily available LED flashlights, and I was running around with buddies making a pretty ok urban exploration website. I finally got one, it was like $50 from what I remember and ran on 3 C cells. Compared to modern lights it was hilariously weak, hell compared to a basic maglite it was pretty weak. But LEDs man! I remember the prices were on a scale based on how many LEDs they crammed on the board in there. The one with 30 or something LEDs was over $100. And they were just bog standard white LEDs soldered to cheapo board. Probably cost a few cents to make. But LEDs man!
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Feb 4, 2018 02:01
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It wasn't possible to make a reasonably affordable white light LED until the 90s. I couldn't find a price for white LEDs from then but I'd guess the still cost dollars.
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Feb 4, 2018 02:13
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RandomPauI posted:It wasn't possible to make a reasonably affordable white light LED until the 90s. I couldn't find a price for white LEDs from then but I'd guess the still cost dollars. There were no powerful blue or ultraviolet LEDs until the mid-90s. White LEDs are just those with a bit of phosphor to generate the rest of the spectrum, but you couldn't make a flashlight with the earlier ones.
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Feb 4, 2018 02:24
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I'm posting on a T400 because it was originally a cheap laptop for my Mom that she didn't want. My semi-decent tablet laptop convertible died a horrific firmware death, so this is the best I got. Battery lasts about 20 minutes off mains.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:06
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Well, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of it; sure, it wasn't until 93 that a blue LED was powerful enough to add a phosphor to produce white light. And they didn't start showing up on flashlights until 1996/1997. That feels as good a point for when they showed up as a feature (and not a novelty) in consumer goods. My point is, LEDs probably cost significantly more to make from 1993 to 2001. With 2001 being the year the OP wanted to get an expensive LED flashlight.
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Feb 4, 2018 03:16
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RandomPauI posted:Well, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of it; sure, it wasn't until 93 that a blue LED was powerful enough to add a phosphor to produce white light. And they didn't start showing up on flashlights until 1996/1997. That feels as good a point for when they showed up as a feature (and not a novelty) in consumer goods. Mass-production is a boon, huh?
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Feb 4, 2018 03:41
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Lurking Haro posted:There were no powerful blue or ultraviolet LEDs until the mid-90s. White LEDs are just those with a bit of phosphor to generate the rest of the spectrum, but you couldn't make a flashlight with the earlier ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoTALRhAqWc Interesting LGR video about blue LEDs.
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Feb 4, 2018 07:15
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T-man posted:I'm posting on a T400 because it was originally a cheap laptop for my Mom that she didn't want. My semi-decent tablet laptop convertible died a horrific firmware death, so this is the best I got. Battery lasts about 20 minutes off mains. I'm still using a T420. 
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Feb 4, 2018 07:45
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Nutsngum posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoTALRhAqWc Agreed, especially as my PC case has 5 blue LED fans and my second monitor also has yellow (sleep) and blue (work) LEDs behind the power switch.
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Feb 4, 2018 09:09
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I have one of these: https://m.ebay.com/itm/Mini-CREE-Q5-LED-Flashlight-Torch-Waterproof-Lamp-Light-Camping-Hiking-Outdoor/152230390481?NAV=HOME Don't let the price fool you, it's actually really goddamn nice, and stupidly bright for a single AAA light. 0toShifty posted:It's my job to keep all this garbage running. And I actually love it. I have an old 733MHz P3 (with 320MB RAM!) and a 350MHz K6-2 at my parent's place, that I really should do something with. But a Raspberry Pi can do just about everything so much better. Maybe I'll make a retro gaming machine or something. Pilsner posted:I'd like to be on the "keeping my old ThinkPad with a proper keyboard going forever" bandwagon, but the sad truth is that websites, which in theory should just be simple HTML and a little JavaScript, kill off old laptops. I had an X200 for many years, happy with it, but the truth is that modern websites, even hyper-optimized Google websites such as Gmail and Google Maps, are just dog slow on an old computer. Borderline insufferable. A website isn't just HTML these days, it takes serious computer power to render even a moderately advanced website, just watch your task manager CPU % meter when hitting any news website. Of course it doesn't help that the vast majority of websites out there has bullshit ads, social media integration, videos, comments and all sorts of poo poo that slows an old computer to a crawl, even with AdBlock and the like. There's a gigantic difference going from Core Duo or even Core 2 Duo, to basically any i3/i5/i7. My X220 has a Sandy Bridge i3, but it's not a low voltage U or Y model like in most newer laptops, it's the full fat version. It still matches or beats those Atom- or Celeron-based netbooks/Windows "Chromebooks" that are getting more popular. I haven't noticed any problems browsing with Firefox (obviously with uBlock Origin and so on), not even on Google Maps, or playing 1080p h265 videos. It's much faster than the Chromebook I used to have. I haven't tried VP9 video yet, but I think Intel is adding GPU decoding soon, even for older chipsets. It'll chew through a charge slightly quicker, but that doesn't matter when... T-man posted:I'm posting on a T400 because it was originally a cheap laptop for my Mom that she didn't want. My semi-decent tablet laptop convertible died a horrific firmware death, so this is the best I got. Battery lasts about 20 minutes off mains. ...a brand new 9-cell battery from a reputable vendor is like $25. moller posted:I'm still using a T420. I had one of those briefly, what a gigantic huge beast it was. Chunky goodness.
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Feb 4, 2018 10:05
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A bit of a derail, butI found a receipt for a 4GB stick of DDR3 I bought just about 5 years ago. $15 on sale. Man, I forgot RAM used to be so cheap like that.
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Feb 4, 2018 10:13
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KozmoNaut posted:My mechanic is still running a bunch of old Thinkpads (T30s and T20s, I think) with Win2000, because they have serial ports and just work the best, while of course standing up to being used in a garage. For reference, a Dell Optiplex, Latitude or Precision typically has a production run of 12-18 months. For five years after the last day of that production run, you can get any part for it anywhere on earth within 24 hours from Dell. After those five years, there's another 18 months where you can get those parts within 3-7 days. After that, you can get parts from eBay and professional refurbishers and recyclers who buy up big quantities of business computers. A consumer computer will be produced for 6 months, and is then ignored by the manufacturer and retailer immediately. You're also unlikely to find parts in the aftermarket, since they are sold one by one to consumers, who just put them in the trash when they break.
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Feb 4, 2018 10:43
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Exactly, and that's why I only buy refurbished business class laptops.
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Feb 4, 2018 10:55
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JediTalentAgent posted:A bit of a derail, butI found a receipt for a 4GB stick of DDR3 I bought just about 5 years ago. it's been a while since I build a PC, but it's RAM like super cheap still? I remember when it was a dollar a meg...
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Feb 4, 2018 11:49
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KozmoNaut posted:Exactly, and that's why I only buy refurbished business class laptops. What's the best place to get these refurbed business class laptops?
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Feb 4, 2018 11:50
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ladron posted:but it's RAM like super cheap still? No, it's getting eaten up by mobile devices and price fixed and gouged and poo poo.
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Feb 4, 2018 11:51
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What's the best place to get these refurbed business class laptops? Here in Denmark, there are a couple of companies that specialize in refurbishing and reselling computers, phones and tablets. Refurb.dk is the biggest one, and the one I've bought from. In the US, I know you can get refurbished laptops and desktops straight from Dell and Lenovo, but I assume there are also specialized resellers.
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Feb 4, 2018 12:14
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What's the best place to get these refurbed business class laptops? Depending on your location, I know that dell has outlet.dell.com in the US. My mother in law in the US got an AMAZING deal on a Latitude E7240 from a refurber on eBay that had like 50 pretty much brand new ones for around $5-700 for what should be a $1500 laptop at the time. Check your local craigslist alternative for resellers and refurbishers who might be posting single computers, but with links to their online store or inventory. In Norway we have ones like https://www.arrowdirect.no/ , and I know Kozmo got his from a similar business in Denmark. I've also seen good deals on Latitudes quite often in the SA Mart if you're in the US. I myself use a Latitude E6520 I pulled out of the electronics recycling as my main laptop. I want to buy something new, but it has a quad-core i7, 8 gigs of fast DDR3 and a 256GB SSD, and just keeps working and working. e; beaten like a redheaded stepchild.
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Feb 4, 2018 12:21
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evobatman posted:I myself use a Latitude E6520 I pulled out of the electronics recycling as my main laptop. I want to buy something new, but it has a quad-core i7, 8 gigs of fast DDR3 and a 256GB SSD, and just keeps working and working. Who throws out something like that? That's a really nice machine. A little chunky and heavier than most laptops today, but still a really solid machine. My girlfriend is using an E6430 that she's had for like 3 or 4 years now. We've recently replaced the LCD because she accidentally broke the old one when she lifted it by the lid. A new panel was $60 from a European vendor, and the replacement procedure involved the clipped-on plastic frame, 6 screws and a ribbon cable, which took around 15 minutes. We also recently replaced the hard drive, as it had started getting bad sectors and freezing the PC. I got a smoking deal on a 500GB HDD, and again the procedure involved 4 screws and done. Try doing that on a fancy Macbook or low-cost netbook with everything glued in and soldered to the mainboard. She'll be using that machine for years and years, it still goes like 4 hours on the original battery. KozmoNaut has a new favorite as of 14:34 on Feb 4, 2018 |
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Feb 4, 2018 13:32
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Who throws that out? Big oil businesses who are moving out of a wing they rented in the building I worked in. We had an internal trash room with electronics recycling, and I've pulled thousands of dollars worth of stuff out of there, including laptops, several hundred sticks of RAM, a Beogram 5500 with MMC4, SSD drives etc etc etc. The Latitude E6420/6430 was our workhorse, and I can do a display in about 30 seconds, including changing the side rails. I've taken apart and put together hundreds of them and related models, and even mixed together models to make stuff Dell never sold. I got a 13" Macbook Pro from where I am now with a dead keyboard. iFixit has a guide on how to replace it, and it's beyond hosed up. Now I've done it, and I'm never doing that again! My wife has an Acer from Elkjøp/Elgiganten, and changing the wireless card on that from whatever useless OEM thing to a decent Intel card involved splitting the base apart, with 18 screws of different length holding it together. It's dying and literally falling apart now, so I might by myself a new used Latitude and give her my old one.
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Feb 4, 2018 14:43
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The Latitudes don't look as flashy as Dell's XPS consumer line garbage, but man, what a gigantic gently caress-off difference in build quality. For some reason, our department replaced everyone's desktop machine with XPS-15's a few years back. 10% where DOA, another half died soon after, and the remaining ones just fell apart in 2-3 years. The case comes apart, bits of plastic flake off, there are dents, it locks up more and more. Now we are slowly replacing them with new Latitudes and those things are so much nicer. I only wish they came without touch screens.
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Feb 4, 2018 17:45
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:18 |
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KozmoNaut posted:I have an old 733MHz P3 (with 320MB RAM!) and a 350MHz K6-2 at my parent's place, that I really should do something with. But a Raspberry Pi can do just about everything so much better. Back in college, circa 2009, someone gave me a massive beige tower with a dual-socket P3 system, CDROM, 3.5" floppy, 5.25" floppy, serial, the works. I installed Plan 9 and actually used it for some of my graduate work. I really regret leaving it when I graduated. I also regret leaving the massive desk I'd scavenged from another department; it was HP-branded and had a rack-mount cabinet over on the left where you might normally have drawers. I guess it housed some HP minicomputer back in the 80s, then at some point they tore out the computer and kept the desk, then eventually got sick of the desk too. That fucker was ROOMY.
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Feb 4, 2018 18:20
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