Something new for 'Tivo
Aug. 31st, 2005 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoI just ordered a new computer for myself. I haven't had a new one (at home) since 1997. No, I'm not going to post about the details, because to most of you it will seem quite puny; but compared to what I've been using, it's going to be quite a step up. The hardest part was figuring out how to order an Intel-based PC without getting Windows included in the deal. Since I would have just erased it anyway, that would have been a waste, and did turn out to be a significant savings.
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Date: 2005-08-31 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 09:25 pm (UTC)Your computer is eight years old? Man, I can just imagine what running that must be like. No really, I CAN imagine, lol...
And as far as processor power goes... It's all relative to the user, no? It all depends on what type of applications one plans on running. So, as long as you're not a hardcore gamer(somehow I just cannot see you as a hardcore gamer), having the newest model of everything is hardly necessary.
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Date: 2005-09-01 03:40 am (UTC)No, that's exactly it. This old P1 still works fine. No piece has ever failed, it's still on the original 2 GB hard disk even. (I did add a second much larger HD and a CD-RW eventually.) It isn't horribly slow either, provided you go do something else while it boots up. I will probably keep it as an auxiliary machine on the network.
The deciding constraint was RAM. It has 64MB of RAM and that's fully expanded. Can't go farther. Combine that with the inefficiencies of Windows memory handling and the bloated executables created by today's lousy languages and compilers, and it thrashes itself to death. With the better memory management in Linux, it runs well as long as you don't put two memory intensive programs in at the same time. Actually, it's amazing how much it really can do under Linux.
I rather expect that a new P4 with a gigabyte of RAM is going to feel like a rocket ship. Even at work I only have a P3 at half the speed and memory of what I just ordered. (And the price is half what I paid for the old machine back in 1997.)
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Date: 2005-08-31 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 10:40 pm (UTC)I miss my machine from '96. It was a 486 DX/4-100 from Olivetti. It had 16 megs of RAM. It was a desktop case with a little clock-LED on the front like a VCR, and when you clicked the standby button, it would be -quiet-. Everything shut down, it didn't leave the PSU and CPU fans running. It was shut down.
I miss that machine. The software it came bundled was a piece of crap, the Mozart Sound System would BSOD if you were trying to get sound out of two applications at the same time, but it was a good machine, and I miss it, even if it today is nowhere near state of the art.
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Date: 2005-09-01 04:16 am (UTC)The first home computer I had was a TRS80 model III. It cost me a thousand dollars back in 1981, and came with 16Kb of RAM, a 4MHz CPU, and no disk drives at all. I gradually upgraded that until it had two floppy drives and 64Kb of RAM, but I can't say I miss it. It was not a reliable machine.
However, I still have the model 4P that followed it. That one was fun to use, and much more flexible. I had a choice of 4 different operating systems that I could boot, and eventually got a 5 MB hard disk for it (that unit is as big as one of todays entire CPU cases.) I had to write my own VT100 emulation eventually so I could use it to dial into work. I did a lot of writing on it using the ghastly SuperScripsit word processor, including several magazine articles that actually sold for real money. It's wrapped in plastic and stored out in the garage though because I just don't have the desk space to keep it active.
Next was the (used) Amiga 2000 that I rode into BIX, GEnie, and the start of the web. Heavily used for amateur radio applications, and it was finally crippled by a near-miss lightning strike one night. Several small peripherals and a 2 meter transceiver were fried, but the computer only lost its serial ports. It's out in the garage too.
Those machines each cost me about a thousand dollars when I bought them. During the Amiga era, we ran our dialup BBS, first on the retired model III, then on the 4P, and finally on a Compupro 8/16 CP/M system that we salvaged from Gary's office. That was a funny deal. They had five of those systems and about 16 cheap Korean terminals (not even VT100 emulations, they did a Televideo emulation instead) and the deal was they let him have all of it, but only if he would take it all away. We borrowed a truck. There was no lack of spare parts, believe me. It used 8-inch floppy disks and 20 MB hard drives (but those had to be partitioned because it could only address 5 MB partitions as I recall.) The 80286 CPU was capable of running a generic MSDOS but we ran CP/M-86 on it. I wanted XENIX but the license would have been prohibitive. Those "super microcomputers" were the size of small refrigerators, and used real S-100 bus cabinets. I loved working with them, but the noise of the fans drove me batty. They even had networking cards (ARCNET) and came with a hub that would have let us run all five of them as a network. Retired when we shut the BBS down because the internet had taken over. All of it was trashed when we moved because it just took up too much space. Hey, it was all free of cost, except for the hours I put into reconstructing software and reading arcane manuals. My total expenditure for the Compupros was $40 for a WordStar clone so I could do word processing on them. I actually used the 4P as a terminal on a direct serial connect, because it was better than the awful TVI-920 clones. The systems were multiuser and multitasking, so I could do my writing on it even while the BBS was running. In fact, I could keep a live session on the BBS and flip back and forth, since the VT100 emulator had two virtual screens.
By 1996, though, I was managing the network and all the computer hardware in a college library. Strictly Windows and Novell stuff, because that was what I'd inherited. I had to break down and have a similar machine at home for the sake of compatibility. I tried to get by with the bridgeboard in my Amiga 3000T but it wasn't enough, so I bought a Compaq rehab, actually a 1996 model, which is what I've been using ever since. Pentium (with floating point bug) at 166 MHz, it came with 16 MB or RAM and Windows 95, and like so many of the others, cost about $1000.
Along the way, there were a couple of early laptops (A NEC that runs CP/M, a Compaq notebook with a monochrome screen and no floppy drive) and some other experiments. The Amiga 3000T and the Compaq Presario are the two machines still running regularly on my desk now.
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Date: 2005-09-01 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-01 08:17 am (UTC)Intel P4 at 2.8 GHz, 1024 MB RAM (DDR 400 MHz), 160 GB Ultra ATA disk.
Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (I think it's the i845 chipset).
Intel Pro 10/100 MHz network interface.
56 Kb PCI data/fax modem.
16x DVD-ROM drive (I will install the 32x CD-RW from my old machine, too.)
Integrated SB-compatible audio.
3.5-in. floppy drive (special request, otherwise they don't give you one.)
Standard keyboard and mouse (no funky USB keyboard for me, thanks.)
No monitor or speakers, I'll keep my old ones.
No installed operating system (yay!)
They insisted on including a copy of FreeDOS, but there was no charge for that. Total cost $579 plus shipping and tax. Maybe not the cheapest I could have gotten that for, but it all comes assembled from one place and covered by one warranty and service agreement. Compared with what I've paid in the past, or even what Gary paid for a new system last winter, it's truly cheap.
Getting them straight that I really wanted no OS was the trick. They normally ship XP, of course. And when I said I use Linux exclusively, they wanted to ship Fedora Core (Bleah! Nooooo!)
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Date: 2005-09-01 09:58 am (UTC)Not bad.
Date: 2005-09-01 11:07 am (UTC)Now, if only you'd run FreeBSD instead of Loony old Lunix :P (Just kidding).
Re: Not bad.
Date: 2005-09-01 11:43 am (UTC)I am at least interested in setting up a dual boot between Linux and BSD.
Re: Not bad.
Date: 2005-09-01 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-01 01:40 pm (UTC)AMD Athlon @ 1.6 GHz
512 MB RAM
28.6 GB system drive, 120 GB storage drive
Radeon 9600 graphics card (inferior to yours, IIRC)
5x DVD-ROM
Disabled the onboard sound, usually the quality is not as good as on an inserted card. No idea why.
Integrated NIC for LAN, separate NIC for the net connection.
Slightly cool keyboard, but not USB. I find a USB mouse AND keyboard is a big, big problem if you need to go into Safe Mode.
All in all ... You out-class me. I'm not sure if you thought I got a whole new state-of-the-art machine last week, but I didn't.
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Date: 2005-09-01 02:48 pm (UTC)My work system is only a little below yours performance wise, I think. It's a 1.2 GHz P3 with 512 MB RAM, but a much smaller HD because we use networked storage. The Graphics are Intel i810 chipset, and work very smoothly with Xwindows thank goodness. Some Windows-optimized graphics are not nice with X, mostly because the vendors refuse to release enough information to let anyone write an open source driver. Matrox was infamous for that. Not dealing with games or watching video on a PC, I'm very out of touch with graphics specs anyway. As long as it works with X I'm satisfied.
I'm looking forward to the increased speed for using the drawing programs and photo editing, though. If I can fix the noisy fan in the old machine, I plan to convert it to all amateur radio stuff.
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Date: 2005-09-06 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 10:03 pm (UTC)