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Tech minor victory thread

Nov 15, 2015#1

DarkAudit

When stuff JustWorks(tm) when you weren't sure it would, not a suitable victory for the main victory thread, and because my old threads were locked. Not only locked, but the first ones to show up locked when I scroll back through the tech threads.

Anyway. now that my Aspire laptop is a spare, I decided to give Gentoo Linux another go. For security purposes, I wanted to go full disk encryption. Previous googling found many incomplete write-ups, so I never bothered. That was then. Now there are multiple full walkthroughs to choose from based on hardware and your personal preferences. I find one that suits my needs, and wade in. I got the partition set up, encrypted, and the volumes inside configured. Then I was directed to proceed with a typical installation, with only a couple of detours back for encrypted-specific changes.

Long story short, I got it done on the first attempt. Delete one optional command that didn't work at boot time, and it works! The first time I've ever done a Gentoo install without having to go back into the install procedure at least twice more before it would boot.

Doesn't mean it was perfect. I still had to go back and fix a missing ethernet driver in the kernel, but that was quick and relatively painless. So it's now running on a wired connection until I get NetworkManager installed to make setting up the wifi easier. Then I can emerge xfce and whatever else I want.

tl;dr: I got an encrypted Gentoo install done in one (okay, one and a quarter) attempt! Go me.

Nov 27, 2015#2

DarkAudit

16GB RAM added to the desktop, now running at 24GB.

Re my post in the build thread earlier today. After discussions elsewhere, it seems the Sandy Bridge and i5 combo is still a viable gaming platform. Just the video card would need to be brought up to current. And then a single midrange (~$170ish) card should be sufficient.

Nov 27, 2015#3

Eriol

DarkAudit said:
16GB RAM added to the desktop, now running at 24GB.

Exactly how many VMs are you running normally that you need that much RAM?

Nov 28, 2015#4

DarkAudit

Eriol said:
Exactly how many VMs are you running normally that you need that much RAM?

With 8GB and twin HD6800s in Crossfire mode, I'd still get out of memory errors when trying to run WoW on ultra settings. I haven't had a chance to test WoW with the extra RAM much tonight, but the first attempt before work went well. Not to mention that the 16GB pack was the only 2-stick set they had in the store that was compatible with my setup.

But here's the weird thing. I had 2 4GB sticks of DDR3-1600 already. The package I bought was marked as DDR3-1600, and DDR3-1333 compatible. But when I installed them and looked at the BIOS, all four sticks were running as DDR3-1333. I switched the memory timing setting from auto to DDR3-1600, but that made the system unstable, until it finally just started the four beep POST cry. I removed the new RAM, switched the timing back to auto, and reinstalled. All well since then.

Nov 28, 2015#5

Ravenpoe

DarkAudit said:
With 8GB and twin HD6800s in Crossfire mode, I'd still get out of memory errors when trying to run WoW on ultra settings. I haven't had a chance to test WoW with the extra RAM much tonight, but the first attempt before work went well. Not to mention that the 16GB pack was the only 2-stick set they had in the store that was compatible with my setup.

But here's the weird thing. I had 2 4GB sticks of DDR3-1600 already. The package I bought was marked as DDR3-1600, and DDR3-1333 compatible. But when I installed them and looked at the BIOS, all four sticks were running as DDR3-1333. I switched the memory timing setting from auto to DDR3-1600, but that made the system unstable, until it finally just started the four beep POST cry. I removed the new RAM, switched the timing back to auto, and reinstalled. All well since then.

WoW should run on a toaster, even on ultra. My gaming pc only has 8gb ram and it runs even the newest games at max. Something is wrong if you are getting those errors.

Nov 28, 2015#6

DarkAudit

Ravenpoe said:
WoW should run on a toaster, even on ultra. My gaming pc only has 8gb ram and it runs even the newest games at max. Something is wrong if you are getting those errors.

It would only do that on ultra settings. And more likely if I also had firefox open at all as well. I'm more concerned why a set of memory marked PC3-12800 and 1600MHz compatible would show up at 1333 instead.

Nov 28, 2015#7

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
The package I bought was marked as DDR3-1600, and DDR3-1333 compatible. But when I installed them and looked at the BIOS, all four sticks were running as DDR3-1333.

That's normal behavior. When you go from 2 memory modules to 4, it's not unusual for the memory to downclock*. When the memory controller(s) has to pay attention to more than two modules simultaneously, it will slow down a notch. This is why it's recommended to do 16GB as 2x8GB instead of 4x4GB when possible. Trying to force them to run back up at the higher speed will usually make them unstable unless you play with the voltages and such, but if you run them too far out of spec, it may damage the memory, CPU, or motherboard, so it's not something for casual experimentation.
Fortunately, the performance difference between 1600 and 1333 is really not that big.

--Patrick
*scroll down to "Standards and The Issue With Memory"

Nov 28, 2015#8

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
That's normal behavior. When you go from 2 memory modules to 4, it's not unusual for the memory to downclock*. When the memory controller(s) has to pay attention to more than two modules simultaneously, it will slow down a notch. This is why it's recommended to do 16GB as 2x8GB instead of 4x4GB when possible. Trying to force them to run back up at the higher speed will usually make them unstable unless you play with the voltages and such, but if you run them too far out of spec, it may damage the memory, CPU, or motherboard, so it's not something for casual experimentation.
Fortunately, the performance difference between 1600 and 1333 is really not that big.

--Patrick
*scroll down to "Standards and The Issue With Memory"

Yeah. I talked to a Geek just a few minutes ago, and he suggested pulling the old memory to see what would happen. Bingo. the new 16GB is running at it's rated 1600 now. Next thing is to put all the old in one bank and all the new in the other, instead of old-new-old-new.

Nov 28, 2015#9

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Yeah. I talked to a Geek just a few minutes ago, and he suggested pulling the old memory to see what would happen. Bingo. the new 16GB is running at it's rated 1600 now. Next thing is to put all the old in one bank and all the new in the other, instead of old-new-old-new.

You're actually much, much better off just running 16GB all by itself in the two blue slots.
According to your manual, old-new-old-new is actually the RIGHT way to do things (since the two blue slots should be identical and the two white slots should be identical).
Also according to the manual, if you use 4 sticks, they all need to be identical mfr, speed, and size (see page 19 of your manual).

--Patrick

Nov 28, 2015#10

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
You're actually much, much better off just running 16GB all by itself in the two blue slots.
According to your manual, old-new-old-new is actually the RIGHT way to do things (since the two blue slots should be identical and the two white slots should be identical).
Also according to the manual, if you use 4 sticks, they all need to be identical mfr, speed, and size (see page 19 of your manual).

--Patrick

WRONG!

(page 19 finishes setting up SLI video cards)

And as I dig, I find the PNY memory (new) has a CAS latency of 11. The old memory, G. Skill Ripjaws X, is a 9.

Nov 28, 2015#11

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
WRONG!
(page 19 finishes setting up SLI video cards)

You must be looking at a different manual. Here's the one I'm using from ASRock's download page.

--Patrick

Nov 28, 2015#12

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
You must be looking at a different manual. Here's the one I'm using from ASRock's download page.

--Patrick

The memory setup on the bound copy is on page 15.

Dec 1, 2015#13

Denbrought

Wife's main screen had been doing the death dance, so we decided to keep an eye out for cheap screens during last week. Dell had a pretty decent 24" for $100 each, and we decided to pick up one for each of us.

The new screens are so far both fantastic--very even lighting, good colors, no stuck/dead pixels, decent viewing angle, etc. This is the consumer version of one of the screens I purchased very often at my old IT job, so I knew what I was getting more or less.

Side victory: after 5 years of getting rid of my old black CRT, I finally have a vertical screen again :3 No vertical VESA mount handy, so it's sticky tape and physics, but still.

Dec 5, 2015#14

Enresshou

Seriously tinkering around with overclocking for the first time. Got my 3.5 GHz i5 overclocked to 4.5 GHz, and ~10% performance boost over baseline with my GTX 970.

Yet Fallout 4 is still running very poorly, so I'm sure there's some stuff I need to iron out.

Dec 16, 2015#15

DarkAudit

Wound up with a $10 coupon from Best Buy after buying the laptop, and another $5 off for my birthday. So I went ahead and got a single XFX R7 360 video card to replace my twin HD 6850s. About to swap those out now.

And bah on Gentoo again. Doesn't play nice with Plasma 5 (the DE Formerly Known As KDE.) So many hoops to jump through before even attempting to download, and then block after block. No thanks. Kubuntu 10.15 takes care of all that automagically.

Dec 16, 2015#16

PatrThom

You probably won't notice much performance increase (if any). You're replacing your crossfire system with a single card that's just about as capable as those two cards in Crossfire. Your heat and noise should go down, though.

--Patrick

Dec 16, 2015#17

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
You probably won't notice much performance increase (if any). You're replacing your crossfire system with a single card that's just about as capable as those two cards in Crossfire. Your heat and noise should go down, though.

--Patrick

There is the five years of development between the old cards and the new ones. And the combined memory of the old cards is now on the one. And the new set of drivers the old ones aren't going to be allowed to use. So there should be at least a little bit of improvement.

Dec 17, 2015#18

PatrThom

Right. Your speed won't change (much...it'll probably actually go down slightly), but it will look prettier on screen and only take up one slot.

--Patrick

Jul 7, 2016#19

Denbrought

Successfully liberated my QFR TKL using a Frosty Flake daughterboard (in short, turned a normal keyboard into a programmable one like my Ergodox). I've been messing with it for a few days, and I'm on version 7 of my modified layout--slowly approaching a steady state of happy.

Totally worth it. I can plug this keyboard into nearly any computer and have this NKRO layout out of the box:

Workman with QWERTY toggle, modifiers moved around (and doubled where needed), full mouse controls, and I can type every catalan character while staying ANSI. F13-F24 are more placeholders than anything else, but they're available if I want to do computer-side macros.

This is so much fun.

Jul 8, 2016#20

jwhouk

My eyes hurt just looking at that.

Jul 8, 2016#21

sixpackshaker

I wish I could find the old formatting keyboard overlays that were used for the original WORD. Because it had all the keyboard shortcuts on them.

Jul 8, 2016#22

Denbrought

jwhouk said:
My eyes hurt just looking at that.

I'm no graphics designer >_>" It's only meant as a reference, the keyboard layout should be in your hands. Or in this case, a mixture of having my hands learn and learning from what my hands want to do.

That graphic above will be outdated soon, anyway. I'm probably changing Ctrl+Alt+Del from Funct to L_Mod, and I'm thinking of turning L_Mod+L_Alt into a toggle Modifier that turns the number row (1, 2, ... 0) into a symbols row (!, @, ..., *) (i.e. Programmer's Workman) since it gets annoying when typing a lot of parentheses.

I might have to move away from AVR and into TMK soon, though. I'm reaching the programmability limits of this firmware, as it's missing some features I heavily rely on (transparent layers and chording).

Jul 8, 2016#23

Denbrought

sixpackshaker said:
I wish I could find the old formatting keyboard overlays that were used for the original WORD. Because it had all the keyboard shortcuts on them.

A few ex-coworkers of mine that did a lot of Adobe-family stuff (Photoshop, Soundbooth, etc) stuff swore by 4Keyboards decals. Here's their Word one:

Aug 10, 2016#24

Denbrought

New keycaps for the QFR arrived, so I could move from thin ABS to any sort of PBT plastic (also blanks, so glancing at QWERTY doesn't mess me up).

Aug 10, 2016#25

PatrThom

It's like you made a keyboard out of dinner mints.

--Patrick

Aug 10, 2016#26

Denbrought

PatrThom said:
It's like you made a keyboard out of dinner mints.

--Patrick

I mean, if that's your thing, they do have literal mint

Aug 10, 2016#27

PatrThom

Also, for anyone interested, you can get mostly-decent mechanical keyboards for less than $60 these days.

--Patrick

Aug 10, 2016#28

Denbrought

PatrThom said:
Also, for anyone interested, you can get mostly-decent mechanical keyboards for less than $60 these days.

--Patrick

To this, I would add that you can get keyboards with room-for-growth for a bit more than that ($60-$90), specially if you are willing to buy refurbished. my current keyboard was $65, plus $30 for the programmable daughterboard (green pcb in the first picture, above the arrow keys).

Also, you can get a switch tester from Amazon for $8-20 (or a numpad tester, so it actually has a purpose) so you get a feel for the different keyswitches.

Aug 11, 2016#29

GasBandit

I'm still loving my Kinesis Freestyle, it's made a world of difference at work. My only gripe is it doesn't have a numeric keypad or a printscreen key.

That said, the switches are membrane, not mechanical.

Aug 11, 2016#30

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
I'm still loving my Kinesis Freestyle, it's made a world of difference at work.

I want to know if that difference is that it has been better for your wrists, or that you now have room in the center of your desk for your current Snack-O'-Choice.

--Patrick

Aug 11, 2016#31

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
I want to know if that difference is that it has been better for your wrists, or that you now have room in the center of your desk for your current Snack-O'-Choice.

--Patrick

BOTH.

My wrists are much happier, and now there's space on my desk in front of me to write (or store snacks) on.[DOUBLEPOST=1470932715,1470932498][/DOUBLEPOST]I should have just taken a picture of my own in the first place.

Aug 11, 2016#32

Dei

Your desk looks a lot like my desk. [emoji14]

Aug 11, 2016#33

GasBandit

Dei said:
Your desk looks a lot like my desk. [emoji14]

Except you probably don't have the word AFFIDAVITS desperately scrawled across the middle as if it were some kind of terrified warning.

Also, probably less beard hair.

Aug 11, 2016#34

Denbrought

GasBandit said:
I'm still loving my Kinesis Freestyle, it's made a world of difference at work. My only gripe is it doesn't have a numeric keypad or a printscreen key.

That said, the switches are membrane, not mechanical.

With the new Kinesis Advantage coming out, you might be able to pick up an older model used for cheap(er). Could be a nice upgrade, since it's mechanical.

I can vouch for split keyboards being life--my other daily driver is an Ergodox Infinity, which is a programmable kit heavily based by Kinesis' offerings (sample picture):

I have numpad on a separate layer in the right hand, sort of like the Advantage.

Aug 11, 2016#35

GasBandit

Denbrought said:
With the new Kinesis Advantage coming out, you might be able to pick up an older model used for cheap(er). Could be a nice upgrade, since it's mechanical.

I can vouch for split keyboards being life--my other daily driver is an Ergodox Infinity, which is a programmable kit heavily based by Kinesis' offerings (sample picture):

I have numpad on a separate layer in the right hand, sort of like the Advantage.

Now THAT looks like a prop keyboard from an 80s sci-fi movie

Aug 11, 2016#36

Denbrought

GasBandit said:
Now THAT looks like a prop keyboard from an 80s sci-fi movie

Yep. Those keycaps (Granite) are supposed to go back on sale sometime this month, I'm hoping to snag a set. My current keycaps (meant to test the flat-profile caps' comfort) is... ~~Epileptic~~Eclectic.

Aug 11, 2016#37

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
I should have just taken a picture of my own in the first place.
View attachment 21819

Well now we know where your pen is.

GasBandit said:
Now THAT looks like a prop keyboard from an 80s sci-fi movie

Nah, you're thinking of the old Apple Adjustable Ergonomic Keyboard.

"You know what would make this ergonomic? More buttons! MOAR!"

--Patrick

Oct 3, 2016#38

Denbrought

Finally got the Granite base set, it arrived yesterday. I held off on getting the caps specific to the 'dox, since it would double the cost, instead going with matching spares from a grab bag.I'll try to slowly collect the missing pieces from private sellers... Or bite the bullet eventually, I guess.

Also, today I got the aluminum top plates in the mail. They're thin enough that they fit between the top acrylic layers, for a nice glossy sandwich

Oct 4, 2016#39

Eriol

There was a guy I worked with who used a very similar type of keyboard at work, but even more "curvy" than that, but same general idea. Always intrigued me, but never went for it.

Oct 4, 2016#40

Denbrought

Eriol said:
There was a guy I worked with who used a very similar type of keyboard at work, but even more "curvy" than that, but same general idea. Always intrigued me, but never went for it.

A dactyl, maybe? I've heard they're really comfy, and it's definitely closer to the inspiration for both keyboards (Kinesis Advantage). Would love to try one out.

Oct 4, 2016#41

Eriol

Denbrought said:
A dactyl, maybe? I've heard they're really comfy, and it's definitely closer to the inspiration for both keyboards (Kinesis Advantage). Would love to try one out.

Related, again, but it had wrist rests like the original image you showed, as well as there were a few more "separate" keys here and there.

Either way, I hope you like the one you got.

Oct 4, 2016#42

Denbrought

Eriol said:
Related, again, but it had wrist rests like the original image you showed, as well as there were a few more "separate" keys here and there.

Either way, I hope you like the one you got.

Nifty, wonder what it was.

Yep, quite satisfied with mine, though I'm still trying to get the firmware to do what I want.

Oct 4, 2016#43

Eriol

Denbrought said:
Nifty, wonder what it was.

Yep, quite satisfied with mine, though I'm still trying to get the firmware to do what I want.

It's over 10 years old, whatever it is. He's had it that long.

Fiddling with keyboards (any input device really) is always a weird balance between what you're used to, and wanting to strike out into a new input method, but stumbling precisely because it's NOT the one you're used to. So even if the new is better, it's not better yet, which is tough to get past.

So good luck man. You'll probably need it!

Oct 17, 2016#44

Ravenpoe

DarkAudit said:
The Sandy Bridge based PC I built is still viable five years later. Running a Core i5 2500K at 4.6GHz. Upgraded the video card at the beginning of the year, and now just ordered an extra 16GB RAM. I tried upgrading the memory just after Xmas, but one stick of the new set crapped out after the return period expired. So this time I just ordered a larger set of the Ripjaws memory I already have. Let's try that 24GB RAM again, hmm?

24 is a bit of an odd number for RAM. Do you have 2 8GB sticks and 2 4GB sticks?

Oct 17, 2016#45

GasBandit

With the GTX 1060, a bargain at $199, even Space Engineers runs 60+fps while on a planet's surface! O_O

My old R9 270x, which cost $219 3 years ago, often got bogged down into the 20s. Although, I think I saw a whole lot less trees rendering now than when I last played SE... So there might be some shenanigans afoot.

I still gotta tinker with the vsync, I think it might be causing me some microstutter in Overwatch.

Oct 17, 2016#46

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
I will once the order arrives. Running 2 4GB sticks now.

It's not unusual for you to have to step down the memory speed when using 4 sticks. If you keep having stability problems later, try stepping your memory down to one speed notch lower than whatever is printed on it (Run your 1667 RAM at 1333, etc.).

--Patrick

Oct 17, 2016#47

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
They're all the same spec this time, just different sizes.

Good! You should always use memory that's all rated for the same speed. But keep in mind you still might have to run them one speed notch lower when you're using 4 instead of 2.

--Patrick

Oct 18, 2016#48

bhamv3

My minor victory: Computer refused to start up, it would sort of start running and then sputter out and die, only to repeat the process again by itself, again and again. I opened up the case, blew out some of the dust, and now it works again.

Power supply problem, maybe?

Oct 18, 2016#49

GasBandit

bhamv3 said:
My minor victory: Computer refused to start up, it would sort of start running and then sputter out and die, only to repeat the process again by itself, again and again. I opened up the case, blew out some of the dust, and now it works again.

Power supply problem, maybe?

That'd have to be some hellacious dust buildup for blowing out the case to be the sole reason it works again. Seriously, I've seen computers chugging along caked in a half centimeter thick layer of dust (and sometimes cigarette ash, ugh).

Makes me think there's another thermal issue that passing extra air/giving time to cool off mitigated. It still might be the power supply (those things can get pretty damn hot when they're malfunctioning), and that would be a near-best case scenario as PSUs are cheap to replace, but it could also be something as simple as a CPU heat sink needing to be re-seated with fresh compound applied, or something as worrisome as an overheating cap on the motherboard getting ready to burst into literal flames.

Oct 18, 2016#50

PatrThom

My vote's also for PSU, though it could be some connector is not fully seated, and pulling around in there got it seated.
It could also be that a fan was obstructed and the computer was refusing to start up with a fan running at 0RPM.

--Patrick

Dec 2, 2016#51

GasBandit

One of the HDDs in the production server's drive pool was failing! Oh no!

Right-click and repair actually worked for once, didn't require a reboot, and didn't disconnect anybody! Oh yeah!

Dec 2, 2016#52

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
One of the HDDs in the production server's drive pool was failing! Oh no!

Right-click and repair actually worked for once, didn't require a reboot, and didn't disconnect anybody! Oh yeah!

I hope it's using one of the redundant RAID flavors.

--Patrick

Dec 2, 2016#53

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
I hope it's using one of the redundant RAID flavors.

--Patrick

It's a WINDOWS HOME SERVER.

Using a DRIVE POOL for redundancy.

It chews through a couple 2TB drives every few years.

Dec 2, 2016#54

ncts_dodge_man

GasBandit said:
It's a WINDOWS HOME SERVER.

Using a DRIVE POOL for redundancy.

It chews through a couple 2TB drives every few years.

Oh dear lord - if it were me, I'd RAID that sucker - drive redundancy would at least help with keeping data without interruption if it's chewing through disks like that. Are you keeping good backups of the data?

My new job (am now an IT Consultant again) is recommending RAID 50 for our clients' new servers for critical data.

Dec 2, 2016#55

GasBandit

ncts_dodge_man said:
Oh dear lord - if it were me, I'd RAID that sucker - drive redundancy would at least help with keeping data without interruption if it's chewing through disks like that. Are you keeping good backups of the data?

My new job (am now an IT Consultant again) is recommending RAID 50 for our clients' new servers for critical data.

You speak like I get an actual budget for anything other than panic-stricken putting-out-of-fires.

I'm not keeping backups of the data, per se, because I'm using the drive pool as its own redundancy, not to increase the size of the storage. Kinda like a poor man's raid mirror. The down side is (as I'm sure you know) Windows Home Server doesn't quite know how to deal with drives over 1tb in size, and since I'm using 2gb drives, they steadily generate bad clusters over time. Every few years, I swap one out, the data gets copied over, and we all continue on our way.

Right now, I've got about 860 unusable gigs between the two drives in question.

Dec 2, 2016#56

ncts_dodge_man

Eww.. Even RAID is not a backup solution - it's for redundancy or speed... Can they at least get you a couple of USB drives to take a copy of the data periodically?

Dec 2, 2016#57

PatrThom

Or, y'know, put NAS4Free on it, or something.

--Patrick

Dec 2, 2016#58

GasBandit

ncts_dodge_man said:
Eww.. Even RAID is not a backup solution - it's for redundancy or speed... Can they at least get you a couple of USB drives to take a copy of the data periodically?

Yeah, I kinda do that when I can. The advantage of drive pooling this way is both drives have the complete file system on them, so no matter which one dies, you can either just throw in a new drive and add it to the pool, or put the one good remaining drive in another PC and copy off the files. You're only fucked if both drives go at once.

Dec 3, 2016#59

Ravenpoe

GasBandit said:
Yeah, I kinda do that when I can. The advantage of drive pooling this way is both drives have the complete file system on them, so no matter which one dies, you can either just throw in a new drive and add it to the pool, or put the one good remaining drive in another PC and copy off the files. You're only fucked if both drives go at once.

"The only way it can fail is if x happens"
And then x happened.

Dec 5, 2016#60

evilmike

The local MakerSpace held a robot mini-Sumo event. They had put together a robot kit for ~$25. I started from their kit, redesigned the frame, cut it out on the laser cutter, assembled it, and wrote some new code for it; in what was basically a one day build. I ended up in second place.

My robot, Killdozer:

Jan 4, 2017#61

GasBandit

My new ram got here yesterday, and I upgraded from 8 gig to 16 gigs. Yay. Can't think of a thing I want to play now that needs it >_<

Jan 4, 2017#62

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
Can't think of a thing I want to play now that needs it >_<

...Chrome?

--Patrick

Jan 4, 2017#63

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
...Chrome?

--Patrick

Actually, yes, that was my main impetus for upgrading, sadly enough >_<

Jan 4, 2017#64

Eriol

GasBandit said:
My new ram got here yesterday, and I upgraded from 8 gig to 16 gigs. Yay. Can't think of a thing I want to play now that needs it >_<

VMware.

Jan 4, 2017#65

Dave

You want to get a Vive...

Jan 4, 2017#66

GasBandit

Dave said:
You want to get a Vive...

With the state of my living space, that'd be a good way to step on something and fall on something else and break a whole lot of somethings.

Jan 4, 2017#67

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
With the state of my living space, that'd be a good way to step on something and fall on something else and break a whole lot of somethings.

<BRK_GLAS.WAV> <CAT_YOWL.WAV>

--Patrick

Jan 4, 2017#68

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
<BRK_GLAS.WAV> <CAT_YOWL.WAV>

--Patrick

<WOODSPLT.WAV> <BLDCOLPS.WAV> <EARTHQKE.OGG> <NUKEBOOM.MP3>

Jan 4, 2017#69

sixpackshaker

GasBandit said:
My new ram got here yesterday, and I upgraded from 8 gig to 16 gigs. Yay. Can't think of a thing I want to play now that needs it >_<

I thought of doing that, but the PC freezes up anytime Firefox and Fallout 4 takes up more than 3 gigs anyway.

Jan 4, 2017#70

GasBandit

sixpackshaker said:
I thought of doing that, but the PC freezes up anytime Firefox and Fallout 4 takes up more than 3 gigs anyway.

Subnautica promptly slurps up every byte of spare ram and stays there... I should check and see if it still does that.

Jan 4, 2017#71

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
Subnautica promptly slurps up every byte of spare ram and stays there... I should check and see if it still does that.

To be fair, that might just be due to disk caching. Modern OSes sure do like to cache their disk reads.

--Patrick

Jan 4, 2017#72

Ravenpoe

GasBandit said:
With the state of my living space, that'd be a good way to step on something and fall on something else and break a whole lot of somethings.

As much as I love the Vive, I honestly would recommend anyone looking to get into it to wait for second gen anyway.

Jan 18, 2017#73

GasBandit

Phone rings:

Me: "Yah."

Salesweasel: "Is marketron down?"

Me: (checks) "Nope."

Salesweasel: "Then why can't I get in to it?"

Me: (without thinking) "User error."

Salesweasel: "... oh. You're right, I just saw what I was doing wrong. It's working now."

And that was my natural 20 roll for the day.

Jan 18, 2017#74

PatrThom

Bluff check: Successful.

--Patrick

Jan 18, 2017#75

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Bluff check: Successful.

--Patrick

Oh, it wasn't a bluff, it was a failed diplomacy check covered by a critical charisma check

Jan 25, 2017#76

GasBandit

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fi...s-to-legalize-the-right-to-repair-electronics

Jan 25, 2017#77

Dei

GasBandit said:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fi...s-to-legalize-the-right-to-repair-electronics

I had to go to European websites to get the repair manual for my sewing machine. :/ So yeah.

Jan 25, 2017#78

PatrThom

I'm for it. I'd be properly satisfied if booby-trapping your devices became illegal.

--Patrick

Jun 28, 2017#79

DarkAudit

I wish I'd found out about university surplus stores long before the last week ever of our business, but I found a stack of Optiplex 790s for $50 each. Way better than the Vista-era Lenovo Core 2s the front desk is using now. Something to keep in mind in case a miraculous comeback happens.

Jul 3, 2017#80

DarkAudit

Had 2 old iPads, one a wifi only, the other on AT&T. Deleted the AT&T one from that account (and switched to a cheaper plan), got the okay from mom to ditch them (we'd tried to see if she could use them when the PCs were no longer an option. Didn't really work out.) Sold them for $80 via the eco ATM. Got a 1TB HDD and a displayport to HDMI adapter.

So now this $50 Optiplex is hooked up to the 43" TV and the SA-600 receiver and the great big Technics speakers in the living room. The Windows 10 creators update is installing on it now. Next step will be a new low profile video card and a bigger power supply..

Jul 3, 2017#81

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Next step will be a new low profile video card and a bigger power supply..

Can get a 1050 Ti LP to fill that role.

--Patrick

Jul 3, 2017#82

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
Can get a 1050 Ti LP to fill that role.

--Patrick

Not really. There's only two slots available, and the 710 or 730 would leave room for a wifi card in case I struggle getting the ethernet working during the hackintosh project.

Jul 3, 2017#83

PatrThom

Plus the 1050 is not natively supported in macOS. I assumed you were skipping the project since you were installing WinX.

--Patrick

Jul 3, 2017#84

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
Plus the 1050 is not natively supported in macOS. I assumed you were skipping the project since you were installing WinX.

--Patrick

I was installing Win 10 so I could update the BIOS and have at least something running. The video card and PSU have to wait for payday

Jul 3, 2017#85

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
I was installing Win 10 so I could update the BIOS and have at least something running. The video card and PSU have to wait for payday

Seems that HH GT730's can be had for $70.

--Patrick

Jul 4, 2017#86

DarkAudit

I cheated a bit this morning. Found this site, installed VMWare Player, and did their Sierra install instructions. Running as a 4-core and just 4GB RAM, but it's working and it has sound. Posting this from Safari in the virtual Mac.

Jul 7, 2017#87

DarkAudit

I woke up this morning all ready to order the video card and power supply for the Optiplex 790. Until I started reading reviews on the power supply. How it wouldn't fit the case, and how the fan had only one speed, full blast and LOUD.

So another check of the Pitt surplus store showed some other candidates that were more compatible out of the box. I found an Optiplex 7010 with an i7-3770 CPU and intel HD 4000 graphics. It came with a Radeon card that had a broken fan, but no matter. The HD 4000 is supported natively in Sierra.

I stopped to pick up a 2TB HDD at Best Buy on the way home, and set to work. Or not. Short version, the PSU in the 7010 was dead. Fortunately, the PSU in the 790 is identical. A quick swap, and I was back in business. Updated the BIOS and prepared my install stick per Tonymacx86. Time to hackintosh!

Install was a breeze. Nothing hung up to interrupt the process. The system boots from the HDD just fine. The only glitch was the sound. The ALC269 codec is a bear to get configured for novices. So much of the jargon on the mackintosh sites was way over my head. I found a video tutorial that got me familiar with kexts, but still no sound. Finally I got pointed to the VoodooHDA package that fixed the sound. I have a full working Hackintosh. I haven't tried out iMessage yet. That's the next big trick to get working.

When I think about it, even though my i5-2500K is overclocked to 4.6Ghz, I think this system with the i7 is the better box. Sandy bridge vs Ivy bridge and all that.

So I'm posting this from a native mackintosh. No more VMware box.

Jul 14, 2017#88

DarkAudit

This whole setup I'm using is repurposed. The surplus dell with keyboard and mouse from another spare pc, hooked up to the late 1970s era stereo and speakers. And the living room TV. Only thing bought new is the HDD.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Jul 20, 2017#89

DarkAudit

A big issue with hackintoshes is updating the system after Apple releases a software update to the App Store. Sierra updated to 10.12.6 yesterday. After checking tonymacx86, I updated mine. No noticeable problems. Everything seems to be working fine. Even iMessage.

Aug 3, 2017#90

DarkAudit

Did a complete wipe and reinstall of my main desktop PC. Resets and Fresh Starts hadn't worked, so I just wiped the sucker completely and started anew. I think moving the entire user profile off of the C: drive had a bit to do with my issues. This time I'm leaving the profile on the C: and pointing all the visible data to the HDD on D:. As long as AppData doesn't eat too much space on the 120GB SSD, I should be good. Already seen a noticeable speed increase. Boot is much faster than before.

Aug 3, 2017#91

Eriol

DarkAudit said:
Did a complete wipe and reinstall of my main desktop PC. Resets and Fresh Starts hadn't worked, so I just wiped the sucker completely and started anew. I think moving the entire user profile off of the C: drive had a bit to do with my issues. This time I'm leaving the profile on the C: and pointing all the visible data to the HDD on D:. As long as AppData doesn't eat too much space on the 120GB SSD, I should be good. Already seen a noticeable speed increase. Boot is much faster than before.

I did the whole "move the user dirs off of C" on Win 8 or 8.1. No end of headaches. They really don't want you to do that, despite the whole "small SSD programs, big HDD media" idea. But it falls apart if everything starts dumping EVERYTHING onto C:

Next machine I build I think I'm just going to go spinning rust plus Optane for simplification purposes. Unless 1TB SSDs come down to more reasonable prices anytime soon, that'll probably be what happens.

Aug 3, 2017#92

Denbrought

Eriol said:
I did the whole "move the user dirs off of C" on Win 8 or 8.1. No end of headaches. They really don't want you to do that, despite the whole "small SSD programs, big HDD media" idea. But it falls apart if everything starts dumping EVERYTHING onto C:

Next machine I build I think I'm just going to go spinning rust plus Optane for simplification purposes. Unless 1TB SSDs come down to more reasonable prices anytime soon, that'll probably be what happens.

I've had zero issues with it, probably because I haven't let any program know that I did it. Just a handful of symlinks at the base subdirectories. Everyone thinks everything is in C:.

Aug 3, 2017#93

sixpackshaker

I am kinda backwards. I have a bigger C: HDD and a small SSD that I just install games on. I don't have time to read the game pointers on Skyrim SE loading screens.

Aug 3, 2017#94

DarkAudit

Eriol said:
I did the whole "move the user dirs off of C" on Win 8 or 8.1. No end of headaches. They really don't want you to do that, despite the whole "small SSD programs, big HDD media" idea. But it falls apart if everything starts dumping EVERYTHING onto C:

Next machine I build I think I'm just going to go spinning rust plus Optane for simplification purposes. Unless 1TB SSDs come down to more reasonable prices anytime soon, that'll probably be what happens.

Did you just move the pointers to stuff like the Downloads and Documents folders to the other drive (which appears to be the suggested method, IIRC. Just change it in the Location tab under the folder Properties), or did you move the entire user profile? That's the method I used the first time, and is the one that causes everyone issues further down the road.

Aug 3, 2017#95

Eriol

DarkAudit said:
Did you just move the pointers to stuff like the Downloads and Documents folders to the other drive (which appears to be the suggested method, IIRC. Just change it in the Location tab under the folder Properties), or did you move the entire user profile? That's the method I used the first time, and is the one that causes everyone issues further down the road.

I did a guide on changing an install.ini file (or something) so that user directories (like C:\Users didn't exist) ACTUALLY went to the other drive, not leaving a pointer behind. That caused no ends of problems, and I do not do that anymore. I've looked at (but never done) the "hack" where you actually change the NTFS references so that C:\Users (and C:\ProgramData, which is where a lot of Apps install to) point to another physical drive/directory.

Aug 3, 2017#96

PatrThom

Guys, guys...that's what RST's Smart Response is supposed to be used for.
(Or Fusion Drive if you're on a Mac)
But yeah, manually managing SSD/HDD is the "poor-man's" method of doing the same thing.

--Patrick

Aug 3, 2017#97

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
Guys, guys...that's what RST's Smart Response is supposed to be used for.
(Or Fusion Drive if you're on a Mac)
But yeah, manually managing SSD/HDD is the "poor-man's" method of doing the same thing.

--Patrick

SSHDs didn't exist yet when I built this PC.

Aug 3, 2017#98

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
SSHDs didn't exist yet when I built this PC.

When Cranky built his new computer, I convinced him to splurge on getting a 400GB Intel 750. That thing is fast, and I don't mean 500MB/s fast like most SATA SSDs, I mean 2.1GB/s fast. Using it is AMAZINGLY fast...but it's only 400GB. So we recently also installed 2x750GB 2.5in WD Red in an internal 3.5in RAID 1 enclosure so he can offload as much stuff as he wants from the 400GB "Fast" area into the 750GB "Safe" area without having to mess with the shared external 2TB RAID 1 USB box I have for all our important stuff.

I've considered trying to wire things up so they're more transparent, but really it's less of a headache to manually just do things like OS/Apps on SSD, pics/docs on HDD, etc.

--Patrick

Aug 5, 2017#99

DarkAudit

Hit up the CPU cooler with canned air until no more dust came out the back. Left the side door off and reran Prime95 at the 4.8GHz overclock. This time the peak temp on the problem test only topped out at 91C. Before it redlined at 100C. I let it go for around 20 minutes, and after not seeing it go any higher than 91C, I called it good enough.

I doubt I'm going to try for 5GHz again, though.

(ETA: sealed the case back up to let the side fan do it's thing. Temps still acceptable.)

Aug 10, 2017#100

DarkAudit

I never installed the cooler that came with the i5-2500K, and the original build plan called for a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus. I bought that and abandoned it within a week in favor of the Corsair H50 which I've used ever since.

Which brings us to today. While going through the closet where I put all the boxes from my build, I found both coolers and the 6850 video cards from the original build. All I need now for another decent build is a case and PSU. I have a spare i3 from an unused Optiplex, not to mention the i7 in this Hackintosh and an i5 in a Gentoo box that isn't doing anything but update itself.

Aug 15, 2017#101

DarkAudit

I wanted to buy a new case and rebuild the 2500k box. PCMR says no, spend the money on a 1050ti instead.

Prices are about the same as the Mastercase Pro 5 I was looking at.

Aug 15, 2017#102

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
I wanted to buy a new case and rebuild the 2500k box. PCMR says no, spend the money on a 1050ti instead.
Prices are about the same as the Mastercase Pro 5 I was looking at.

Once you account for the difference in clock speed, the single-thread (i.e., gaming) performance delta between the 2010 i5-2500k Sandy Bridge and the current 2017 Kaby Lake i5-7600k is merely +9.94%.

--Patrick

Aug 24, 2017#103

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
I wanted to buy a new case and rebuild the 2500k box. PCMR says no, spend the money on a 1050ti instead.

Supporting my comparison above, and also going into much more detail here:
Upgraders guide: Ryzen 3 vs. Core i5-2500K vs. FX-8370

--Patrick

Sep 20, 2017#104

PatrThom

Finally got around to replacing my onboard Realtek with an add-in Intel.
Reduced my ping time 30% and reduced my CPU usage. Life is slightly better.

--Patrick

Sep 23, 2017#105

PatrThom

By now many of you have probably heard about the CCleaner hack.
Since I installed CCleaner recently during the window that might've been while the hacked version was being distributed when setting up my kid's "brand new" computer (an Inspiron 3650 i3-6100 which we just added a GTX750ti to, btw), I was worried that I'd inadvertently infected my kid's machine with some of the shadiest malware since Superfish.
The infected version is v5.33
I checked yesterday, and the version I installed ... was v5.32.

Also FYI the GTX 750Ti is THE best card you can get if a) you have a computer that doesn't have supplementary 6- or 8-pin connectors (it only draws 60W) AND b) you require native VGA output (he's still using an older monitor). And you can get one for $100-150.

--Patrick

Sep 23, 2017#106

Gared

Well, that explains why MalwareBytes found two trojans in my CCleaner app directory. Glad I quarantined and deleted them and then told Piriform to go to hell when they keep wanting to reinstall their app at startup.

Sep 23, 2017#107

PatrThom

Gared said:
Well, that explains why MalwareBytes found two trojans in my CCleaner app directory. Glad I quarantined and deleted them and then told Piriform to go to hell when they keep wanting to reinstall their app at startup.

Upgrading to v5.34 replaces the tainted version, but it will not undo any mischief that might already have been done.

--Patrick

Sep 27, 2017#108

DarkAudit

Once I remembered to have the FakeSMC.kext file in place, upgrading the hackintosh to High Sierra went without a hitch. Only question is if iMessage still works.

Sep 27, 2017#109

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Once I remembered to have the FakeSMC.kext file in place, upgrading the hackintosh to High Sierra went without a hitch. Only question is if iMessage still works.

You were luckier than I. My first attempt ended up in disaster and I lost all the data on my hard drive* when the installer hung partway through.
Good thing I made a backup, an image of the volume, and a raw device copy before I started.

You might be interested to know there's this new weekly firmware check thing. The engineers have already said that they expect Hackintosh users may see this message, but they're not exactly going to go out of their way for Hackintoshers.

Also seems there may be complications when I get around to updating my Mac Pro. Hmm.

--Patrick
*well, didn't exactly lose it, the installer just moved it all around but then didn't move it back when I canceled the install. I could've moved it back where it belonged (I've done it before plenty with Sierra) but I don't want to take any chances the new OS puts things in places I don't know yet.

Sep 27, 2017#110

Gared

My god, do I fucking hate Comcast. So why is this in the Tech Minor Victory Thread, then? Because I no longer have Comcast. Funny how I can suddenly download games from Steam over wifi faster than I could ever download them on Comcast on a wired connection.

Sep 27, 2017#111

PatrThom

I will be so happy when we're finally done with this oligopolistic bullshit. I only hope it happens well within my lifetime.

--Patrick

Sep 27, 2017#112

strawman

PatrThom said:
Also seems there may be complications when I get around to updating my Mac Pro. Hmm.

Aw man... "We’re also seeing reports of some older Macs, like the 2011 17-inch MacBook Pro, failing their firmware check after installing macOS High Sierra. Rebooting again seems to fix the problem."

Hopefully this doesn't become an issue for me, but I expect the next release of OSX to drop support for my 2011 macbook pro 17 anyway.

I pull it out among apple fans and they all gawk since Apple hasn't made a 17" laptop in years, and it's gargantuan next to everyone else's machines.

Oct 9, 2017#113

DarkAudit

I thought it was a silly question, and was prepared for disappointment, but TIL they actually DO make bluetooth cassette adapters. Costs just as much as one of those Belkin dual lightning connector widgets, and doesn't make the phone all bottom-heavy when in the car cradle. Sold!

Oct 9, 2017#114

GasBandit

DarkAudit said:
I thought it was a silly question, and was prepared for disappointment, but TIL they actually DO make bluetooth cassette adapters. Costs just as much as one of those Belkin dual lightning connector widgets, and doesn't make the phone all bottom-heavy when in the car cradle. Sold!

Oh yeah, dude, I had an extra one or two from my old stereo... I could have just sent you one.

Oct 9, 2017#115

strawman

I have an old truck that could use that treatment. Not sure if it's better than the FM bluetooth adaptors though.

Oct 13, 2017#116

GasBandit

Thanks, Amazon Prime, my VGA->HDMI converter came today! I can stop having to watch stuff on my phone like some kind of hipster in his first apartment!

Oct 13, 2017#117

PatrThom

Lucky you. My shipment of potassium bicarbonate was delayed an extra two days for some mysterious reason. Probably due to some overzealous package inspector.

--Patrick

Oct 16, 2017#118

Eriol

PatrThom said:
Lucky you. My shipment of potassium bicarbonate was delayed an extra two days for some mysterious reason. Probably due to some overzealous package inspector.

Just curious, what's that used for and/or what are YOU using it for?

Oct 16, 2017#119

GasBandit

Eriol said:
Just curious, what's that used for and/or what are YOU using it for?

Only thing I know of is that it's commonly used to treat potassium deficiency.

Oct 16, 2017#120

Eriol

GasBandit said:
Only thing I know of is that it's commonly used to treat potassium deficiency.

I would think that something like that wouldn't be in a "Tech" thread, but fair enough. I didn't mean to inquire about a medical issue Patrick.

Oct 16, 2017#121

PatrThom

Eriol said:
Just curious, what's that used for and/or what are YOU using it for?

It's primarily used to reduce acidity in wine, or as a substitute for standard baking soda for people who are on diets where sodium intake is being heavily restricted.

Kati has RLS. This makes it difficult for her to sleep. That makes it difficult for me to sleep. Kati also has frequent heartburn which also makes it difficult for her to sleep. As a result, she takes an elevated dose (20mg) of Famotidine nightly with occasional courses of Omeprazole to reset things entirely. These medications increase her susceptibility to muscle cramping.

She also uses baking soda water situationally to control frequent peaks and flare-ups. This will artificially boost the amount of salt she takes in (because baking soda + stomach acid => CO2 + NaCl). Earlier this week, I learned that one of the things that excess sodium in your system can cause is cramping and pain, especially in the lower extremities. Additionally, since she partakes of many sugared caffeinated beverages throughout a day, she tends to pee more often than normal.

Therefore I got some USP food-grade potassium bicarbonate to see if we could cut down on all the salt she unintentionally bombs herself with, plus replace some of the K she depletes, all without eliminating her ability to medicate any acute heartburn episodes. If she notices a difference, then we'll switch to it full-time AND we'll have discovered that ++sodium was one of the causes of her RLS.

Eriol said:
I didn't mean to inquire about a medical issue Patrick.

FYI I don't care if you ask. I never care. If you ever ask me something I don't want to answer, I just won't answer it.

--Patrick

Oct 16, 2017#122

Denbrought

PatrThom said:
It's primarily used to reduce acidity in wine, or as a substitute for standard baking soda for people who are on diets where sodium intake is being heavily restricted.

Kati has RLS. This makes it difficult for her to sleep. That makes it difficult for me to sleep. Kati also has frequent heartburn which also makes it difficult for her to sleep. As a result, she takes an elevated dose (20mg) of Famotidine nightly with occasional courses of Omeprazole to reset things entirely. These medications increase her susceptibility to muscle cramping.

She also uses baking soda water situationally to control frequent peaks and flare-ups. This will artificially boost the amount of salt she takes in (because baking soda + stomach acid => CO2 + NaCl). Earlier this week, I learned that one of the things that excess sodium in your system can cause is cramping and pain, especially in the lower extremities. Additionally, since she partakes of many sugared caffeinated beverages throughout a day, she tends to pee more often than normal.

Therefore I got some USP food-grade potassium bicarbonate to see if we could cut down on all the salt she unintentionally bombs herself with, plus replace some of the K she depletes, all without eliminating her ability to medicate any acute heartburn episodes. If she notices a difference, then we'll switch to it full-time AND we'll have discovered that ++sodium was one of the causes of her RLS.

FWIW (n=1) I found Morton's Lite-Salt (50/50 NaCl/KCl) to be a great way to cut salt intake and increase potassium. That, plus some magnesium citrate in my daily pill-box, have left me muscle cramp free. Before those changes I was pretty prone to them.

Oct 16, 2017#123

PatrThom

Incidentally, I haven't been able to convince her to start using it yet (she first wants to do her own research as to its safety), so if anyone reading this tries it before she does and can speak to its efficacy (or lack thereof), please share.

Denbrought said:
FWIW (n=1) I found Morton's Lite-Salt (50/50 NaCl/KCl) to be a great way to cut salt intake and increase potassium. That, plus some magnesium citrate in my daily pill-box, have left me muscle cramp free. Before those changes I was pretty prone to them.

She doesn't really have cramps, per se. The switch is more meant to discover whether she has been unintentionally exacerbating her RLS in her attempts to fight GERD, and if so, to treat it. We (She) cook(s) almost all of our own food at home, so she's not exposed to processed salt anywhere near as often as most, so we're not really looking for salt substitutes so much as I'm trying to investigate a nonintuitive "invasive" source of salt.

...Science!

Also she hates the taste of iodine, so all the salt she does use is not iodized. She plans at least a handful of seafood meals/month to compensate and deliberately chose a one-a-day vitamin supplement that explicitly states that it contains iodine.

--Patrick

Nov 5, 2017#124

GasBandit

Man, how did I get along without WinDirStat? I freed up 300 gigs today more quickly and efficiently than I ever have muddling through with primitive tools like treelist.

Nov 5, 2017#125

Tinwhistler

I've been using Treesize Free for years

Nov 5, 2017#126

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
Man, how did I get along without WinDirStat? I freed up 300 gigs today more quickly and efficiently than I ever have muddling through with primitive tools like treelist.

How did you NOT know about it? Heck, I've been using Spacemonger since well before 2010.

--Patrick

Nov 5, 2017#127

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
How did you NOT know about it? Heck, I've been using Spacemonger since well before 2010.

--Patrick

I guess I never went looking, I just muddled through with treelist *.* | sort.exe > treelist.txt and went from there.

Nov 6, 2017#128

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
I guess I never went looking, I just muddled through with treelist *.* | sort.exe > treelist.txt and went from there.

You...you...Barbarian!

--Patrick

Nov 8, 2017#129

PatrThom

Me, yesterday.

Me, today.

...I finally see everything! I see it all!
(Translation: 1280x1024 -> 1920x1080 & 5ms -> 1ms)

--Patrick

Nov 11, 2017#130

Tinwhistler

Back when I got my SSD, I also got a bunch of other parts to upgrade. New mb/cpu/video card/memory/case to be precise.

Not bad on ultra. The min fps was only a couple of jitters during the entire benchmark. I can stop running games on minimum settings now

Upgrade specs:
MB: GIGABYTE GA-Z270P-D3 LGA1151
CPU: Intel Core i5-7600K LGA 1151
Video Card: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Mini 8GB GDDR5
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB)
Case: Something cheap because my old mid-tower wouldn't fit properly in my new desk my wife got me for my birthday. So I got a cheapo mini tower.

Nov 11, 2017#131

PatrThom

Please tell me you're running at least 8GB RAM, if not 16.

--Patrick

Nov 11, 2017#132

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
Please tell me you're running at least 8GB RAM, if not 16.

--Patrick

16gb. Edited my post to show the parts I upgraded. The benchmark is with default, non-overclocked settings on CPU and GPU.

Nov 11, 2017#133

PatrThom

Tinwhistler said:
16gb. Edited my post to show the parts I upgraded. The benchmark is with default, non-overclocked settings on CPU and GPU.

I saw you had a nice PSU, but didn't know if that was left over.

--Patrick

Nov 11, 2017#134

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
I saw you had a nice PSU, but didn't know if that was left over.

--Patrick

yeah, I bought the PSU for the last machine. It's pretty awesome, so I carried it over. It's a Seasonic 80+ Gold 650W

Nov 11, 2017#135

PatrThom

Tinwhistler said:
yeah, I bought the PSU for the last machine. It's pretty awesome, so I carried it over. It's a Seasonic 80+ Gold 650W

What a coincidence. So's mine.

--Patrick

Dec 6, 2017#136

PatrThom

Amazon has finally released a Prime Video app for Apple's ecosystem.
Took 'em long enough.

--Patrick

Dec 6, 2017#137

Gared

PatrThom said:
Amazon has finally released a Prime Video app for Apple's ecosystem.
Took 'em long enough.

--Patrick

Cool. Now if Amazon and Alphabet could put their differences aside so Google stops taking their apps/services away from Amazon devices (especially those Amazon devices that run on fucking Android), that'd be great too.

Dec 6, 2017#138

Eriol

Gared said:
Cool. Now if Amazon and Alphabet could put their differences aside so Google stops taking their apps/services away from Amazon devices (especially those Amazon devices that run on fucking Android), that'd be great too.

And Amazon would allow THEIR services to run on Alphabet/Google devices too. And would SELL them too.

Basically, Amazon shot first. They pulled Chromecast and other Google stuff from their stores. And then didn't allow Prime Video to work on Chromecast either.

So yes, Google has been retaliating. Both need to calm the fuck down, but they're not.

Dec 6, 2017#139

Gared

Eriol said:
And Amazon would allow THEIR services to run on Alphabet/Google devices too. And would SELL them too.

Basically, Amazon shot first. They pulled Chromecast and other Google stuff from their stores. And then didn't allow Prime Video to work on Chromecast either.

So yes, Google has been retaliating. Both need to calm the fuck down, but they're not.

Yeah, I'd really love to be able to use Google's superior casting technology to air Amazon's content without having to use the tab mirroring functionality built in to Chrome; because it would mean that I could let one of their clients render the video instead of constantly overtaxing my HDDs (read speed is the biggest hangup in my system right now).

Dec 14, 2017#140

sixpackshaker

I've had a 7" Fire tablet for about 2 years. Today I jump in to the Amazon world with both feet. I bought the 10" Fire. I hope it will be worth it...

The 7" was just a little too small for reading and watching video.

Dec 28, 2017#141

Ravenpoe

Got my new laptop. The best part about a new computer, once you scrub off all the bloatware they come with, is having a clean install. Some people really hate this, but I love it. Out with all the old.

Jan 19, 2018#142

DarkAudit

It just hit me. With the lack of space after this pending move, why not use the Roku TV as my monitor for the main PC instead of trying to find space for the entire rig? DUH!! I'm already using it for the hackintosh in the living room, and 1080p is as high as I need/can afford.

Jan 23, 2018#143

DarkAudit

The hotel is ditching the ISP providing guest internet and moving everything to one provider for the entire property. Speeds are expected to be significantly higher for guests. So instead of trying to finagle a way to connect my modem to Comcast, I can quit them and move all my accounts to my gmail address instead. Saving nearly $100/month.

It will be interesting what retention tries to do to keep me, even though I'll be in a location without a cable hookup or an option to add one.

Jan 30, 2018#144

jwhouk

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/2471454963

Jan 30, 2018#145

Sparhawk

Bought a new battery for my iPhone 6, changed it out, and everything is working great. I didn't break anything while trying to fix a bad battery issue.

Jan 30, 2018#146

PatrThom

Sparhawk said:
Bought a new battery for my iPhone 6, changed it out, and everything is working great. I didn't break anything while trying to fix a bad battery issue.

If Internet videos are any indication, changing those things means taking your life in your hands.
Well, if you're not careful, I guess.

--Patrick

Jan 31, 2018#147

Sparhawk

PatrThom said:
If Internet videos are any indication, changing those things means taking your life in your hands.
Well, if you're not careful, I guess.

--Patrick

If your're careful, as in basic precautions, and run the battery down like the instructions say.

May 20, 2018#148

DarkAudit

Swapped out the old 1TB HDD in the desktop for the 2TB HDD that was in the hackintosh without having to reinstall Windows. Just had to copy everything over to the new one, do the manual labor to swap them, then change the drive letters to their new destinations after it was all buttoned back up. Only hiccup was not remembering to turn off the page file first.

Turns out the old drive is nearly 10 years old. The new one is barely a year old.

May 20, 2018#149

PatrThom

Sparhawk said:
If your're careful, as in basic precautions, and run the battery down like the instructions say.

YOU know that, I know that. But lots of youtubers get to learn that for the very first time. And they don’t look happy about it.

—Patrick

May 23, 2018#150

DarkAudit

Networked printer wouldn't print from one particular location all of a sudden.

Rebooted PC. FAIL.

Rebooted printer. FAIL

Reconnected all USB and network cables on PC. FAIL.

Installed April Update. Um... SUCCESS?

It got weirder after that. Another networked printer in the guest business center that wasn't printing, and shouldn't have anything to do with what I did started working again as well. HUH?

I have no idea why just installing that update on one PC cleared up issues with multiple printers. Why did that work?

May 23, 2018#151

Sparhawk

Could have been a corrupted file that was replaced during the update.

May 23, 2018#152

PatrThom

Could be that computer was the one advertising the printer as a share over the network.

In related news, updated my FiL’s computer with the April update, now his printer doesn’t work. Gonna have to figure that out today.

—Patrick

May 23, 2018#153

Gared

Does anyone have a build number for the April update? I'd love to know if I already have that particular disease. I suspect that's the "serious update" that popped up on Aislynn's laptop yesterday that I've put off for 6 days.

May 23, 2018#154

jwhouk

1803 is the build number. Imma gonna hafta get it in the shop on Friday or Tuesday. :/

May 23, 2018#155

Gared

Woohoo! That's the one I already have. Now I just have to worry about 1833.

Jun 21, 2018#156

GasBandit

I successfully figured out how to have my twitch stream show reruns of my youtube videos at the push of a button, so I can prevent stream snipers from watching me do admin stuff on the Empyrion server, and avoid revealing things like other players' base locations, etc!

Yaaay!

It doesn't sound like much, but it was an ordeal, and a nice fix for a problem I had.

Jul 3, 2018#157

Tinwhistler

Honeywell thermostat banished to the junk drawer.

Nest thermostat installed.

Aug 30, 2018#158

Gared

I finally got my landline to work! Minor victory because the only way it works is if it's plugged directly into the modem and not the phone lines in the house - which leads me to believe that we have multiple phone systems upstairs as well. Who the hell did the cabling work in this house?!

Aug 30, 2018#159

drifter

Your house sounds like r/DiWHY material.

Aug 30, 2018#160

jwhouk

Have you tried plugging the phone line from the modem into one of the wall phone jacks, and checking the other phone jacks in the house? I know that in my apartment that was how we got the phones to work.

Aug 30, 2018#161

Gared

jwhouk said:
Have you tried plugging the phone line from the modem into one of the wall phone jacks, and checking the other phone jacks in the house? I know that in my apartment that was how we got the phones to work.

That's what we had been doing, apparently the jack in the living room either isn't connected to the jacks in the bedrooms and kitchen, or there's a fault somewhere. My guess is actually the latter - there are just too many gremlins, all of them related to wiring, for it to be a coincidence. We have:

phone jacks that don't connect to each other (or to anything, apparently),
a light switch that was supposed to be a three-way switch but was screwed up so that one switch will always be a master switch and the other a slave,
outlets where only the top half works (I actually suspect that the wires serving the bottom ones were used to power the baseboards, rather than being attached to light switches like they would be in modern homes),
a pellet stove that actually works off the thermostat, once per power-cycle,
flood lamps where normal bulbs would be expected (in hanging lamps and ceiling mounted light fixtures),
normal bulbs/CFLs where specialized bulbs would be expected (in canister lights set in the ceiling or in the range hood),
phone jacks outside (well, just the one, but still),
an electrical box outside by the pond - no idea if it's grounded or hooked up to anything,
a spare satellite dish on the roof, with no idea what it's hooked up to,
lights that are on three (or more!) switches next to a second light that's on its own switch(wtf?!),
lights that aren't on switches (just the pull cord),
a dryer vent that was cut into the base of the wall in such a way that it can't be connected and meet fire code if the laundry closet doors are installed,
coax cables that aren't attached to each other (including two in the same frelling living room!), which I'd bet would mean that the one that doesn't connect to Spectrum connects to the dish on the roof,

And I have a feeling I just figured out where at least the cable fault came from. This city just got cable internet access within the last decade, but the dish on the roof is at least an early 2000's dish (if not first-gen, late 90s'). There's only one cable jack that's actually attached to Spectrum's external connection, the rest are just connected to each other - and the dish on the roof. This is the fault of whichever contractor set this place up for cable internet. They created a new line, instead of just connecting the existing line (by splitting into it, at the very least). That would also explain why all of the other cables have been properly mounted, with plates and jacks, and this one is just a bare cable going through a rough hole drilled in the wall. I wonder if they were also sloppy enough to create a fault in all of my other electrical systems.

Sep 26, 2018#162

GasBandit

I'm finally getting my shit together vis a vis passwords, and getting set up on lastpass, so that all my passwords everywhere but there will now be 20 digit long alphasymbonumeric garbledygook. Feels good, man.

A little bit of a hassle that the automatic password changing feature is stymied by all the sites I have 2FA turned on for

Sep 26, 2018#163

Eriol

GasBandit said:
I'm finally getting my shit together vis a vis passwords, and getting set up on lastpass, so that all my passwords everywhere but there will now be 20 digit long alphasymbonumeric garbledygook. Feels good, man.

A little bit of a hassle that the automatic password changing feature is stymied by all the sites I have 2FA turned on for

Don't. Just get KeePass and throw the file on Google Drive. Completely free, and no risk of "the company" being able to get at your credentials. And there's some good Android apps for it too (Keepass2Android is what I use).

Sep 26, 2018#164

GasBandit

Eriol said:
Don't. Just get KeePass and throw the file on Google Drive. Completely free, and no risk of "the company" being able to get at your credentials. And there's some good Android apps for it too (Keepass2Android is what I use).

Lastpass is free, too, though I'm not particularly worried about "the company."

Sep 26, 2018#165

Tinwhistler

I did something similar a little over a year ago with 1Password, before they started selling the product as SAAS.

Sep 28, 2018#166

Sparhawk

Took the dive, ordered an iPhone Xs last night. Moving up from a 6. The camera tipped me over from just moving to the X.

Sep 29, 2018#167

PatrThom

Sparhawk said:
ordered an iPhone Xs last night. Moving up from a 6.

That's... quite a leap.
I went from a 5 to an 8, which is just about the same, I guess.

--Patrick

Sep 29, 2018#168

Sparhawk

Yeah, phone's been struggling with some tasks, and battery life has been dropping again. Went back and forth about the 8 and the X, but the camera difference (and only a small difference in price) tipped me over to the newest generation. I've actually never been this "up to date" ever with an iPhone.

Oct 3, 2018#169

Eriol

A victory for simplicity for all: Wi-Fi now has version numbers, and Wi-Fi 6 comes out next year

In the past, Wi-Fi versions were identified by a letter or a pair of letters that referred to a wireless standard. The current version is 802.11ac, but before that, we had 802.11n, 802.11g, 802.11a, and 802.11b. It was not comprehensible, so the Wi-Fi Alliance -- the group that stewards the implementation of Wi-Fi -- is changing it. All of those convoluted codenames are being changed.

Now, instead of wondering whether "ac" is better than "n" or if the two versions even work together, you'll just look at the number. Wi-Fi 5 is higher than Wi-Fi 4, so obviously it's better. And since Wi-Fi networks have always worked together, it's somewhat clearer that Wi-Fi 5 devices should be able to connect with Wi-Fi 4 devices, too.

Now that the retroactive renaming is done, it's time for the future. If you've been closely following router developments over the past year (no judgments here), you'll know that the next generation of Wi-Fi is on the horizon, with the promise of faster speeds and better performance when handling a multitude of devices. It was supposed to be called 802.11ax, but now it'll go by a simpler name: Wi-Fi 6. The Wi-Fi Alliance says that it expects companies to adopt this numerical advertising in place of the classic lettered versions.

(Summary shamelessly stolen from Slashdot)

To me: f'n finally. And I like how the article mentions that devices may display that too, which is nice.

Oct 3, 2018#170

PatrThom

Oh good, I get so tired of trying to explain the progression to people.

--Patrick

Oct 3, 2018#171

figmentPez

Eriol said:
A victory for simplicity for all: Wi-Fi now has version numbers, and Wi-Fi 6 comes out next year

(Summary shamelessly stolen from Slashdot)

To me: f'n finally. And I like how the article mentions that devices may display that too, which is nice.

Is it still going to be guessing game about which devices support 5Ghz and which ones don't?

Oct 3, 2018#172

PatrThom

figmentPez said:
Is it still going to be guessing game about which devices support 5Ghz and which ones don't?

Not really.
802.11b/g only support 2.4, 802.11n supports both, and 802.11ac (and presumably later) only support 5.
It's 802.11a that's all weird.

--Patrick

Oct 3, 2018#173

figmentPez

PatrThom said:
Not really.
802.11b/g only support 2.4, 802.11n supports both, and 802.11ac (and presumably later) only support 5.
It's 802.11a that's all weird.

You might be misunderstanding my complaint. Some 802.11n devices only had 2.4Ghz, and it was a pain in the ass to figure out which laptops and phones that had 802.11n actually had 5Ghz antennas to support the faster version of n. (So it's n that's the weird one, to me.) I had not realized that ac required 5Ghz and my woes are already a thing of the past for the latest wireless standards. I clearly do not keep up with tech like I used to.

Oct 3, 2018#174

jwhouk

About freakin' TIME.

Oct 4, 2018#175

PatrThom

figmentPez said:
I clearly do not keep up with tech like I used to.

People ask me, "Why are you always looking at so many tech websites all the time?"
BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO

--Patrick

Oct 6, 2018#176

jwhouk

Hey, anyone else have this problem when opening up Google today?

I went to the main search page, and this is what I got:

Nov 24, 2018#177

DarkAudit

Birthday/Xmas money plus a 25% price drop equals a 16GB memory upgrade for my HP laptop.

Nov 24, 2018#178

PatrThom

FWIW you can get halfway decent 1TB SATA SSDs now for US$125-150, too.

--Patrick

Nov 26, 2018#179

DarkAudit

Getting to the insides of the laptop was less fraught than I expected. Now all I need is for the mail to arrive with the new RAM.

Nov 26, 2018#180

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Getting to the insides of the laptop was less fraught than I expected. Now all I need is for the mail to arrive with the new RAM.

I am also waiting for RAM to arrive. It's coming from CA, though, so even though it was supposed to arrive this past Fri, I'm gonna give some slack for the fires, etc.

--Patrick

Dec 6, 2018#181

GasBandit

Got my laptop back from its warranty repairs today! The keyboard works again! They didn't even wipe the hard drive like I was afraid they would!

My joy has been slightly dampened by the fact that an update has broken hamachi on the laptop, but at least this is something I can fix, albeit a bit of a hassle.

Dec 6, 2018#182

Eriol

GasBandit said:
Got my laptop back from its warranty repairs today! The keyboard works again! They didn't even wipe the hard drive like I was afraid they would!

My joy has been slightly dampened by the fact that an update has broken hamachi on the laptop, but at least this is something I can fix, albeit a bit of a hassle.

Considering what's on the hard drive, I'm surprised you didn't get a visit from the FBI.

:ninja:

Dec 6, 2018#183

GasBandit

Eriol said:
Considering what's on the hard drive, I'm surprised you didn't get a visit from the FBI.

Oh, there's nothing on my laptop but steam

All the GOOD stuff is on my home desktop!

Dec 6, 2018#184

PatrThom

Eriol said:
Considering what's on the hard drive, I'm surprised you didn't get a visit from the FBI.

GasBandit said:
Oh, there's nothing on my laptop but steam All the GOOD stuff is on my home desktop!

What, you don’t keep a drive prepared as the one you swap into whatever machine you are sending in for service?

—Patrick

Dec 6, 2018#185

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
What, you don’t keep a drive prepared as the one you swap into whatever machine you are sending in for service?

—Patrick

Nah, this laptop was still brand new, I got it in september. Nothing on it but steam, hamachi, and teamviewer, and discord I guess. So it wasn't really worth messing with. No personal stuff at all.

I've already reinstalled hamachi and fixed it so it is working again.

Dec 19, 2018#186

DarkAudit

Got my SSD for the laptop. 1TB SanDisk with 3D NAND as recommended by @PatrThom in Discogs last night.

Dec 19, 2018#187

PatrThom

It ain’t the best, but it’s more than good enough, and it’s hella cheap these days.

—Patrick

Dec 19, 2018#188

DarkAudit

I'm dead tired after driving since 7am. Where's the pun?

Dec 19, 2018#189

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
I'm dead tired after driving since 7am. Where's the pun?

DarkAudit said:
Got my SSD for the laptop. 1TB SanDisk with 3D NAND as recommended by @PatrThom in Discogs last night.

—Patrick

Dec 19, 2018#190

DarkAudit

Oops. Yeah, I'd better get to bed. Discord, obviously.

Jan 4, 2019#191

DarkAudit

Got a few responses about the turntable sale. Should be a done deal by Sunday. Which would pay for a new GPU with money to spare.

Jan 6, 2019#192

DarkAudit

So far with stock CPU cooling and case fan setup, I've yet to go above ~55C on the CPU. Even after clearing the numbers and taking a flight around Orgrimmar, I never topped 50.

Jan 7, 2019#193

DarkAudit

Windows 10 didn't want to activate as a hardware refresh from the old system. MS support kept telling me I needed the old Win7 Ultimate key from over 10 years ago. When they tried to escalate, I got transferred to a number that was closed for the weekend. So I decided to try my luck with a grey market key. It was bad luck. Fortunately I spent the extra $5 for buyer protection, and filed a ticket to see if I can get a refund without going through a paypal dispute.

Tried clearing all keys and trying again with MS support. Nope. Kept repeating that I needed the old Win7 key even though I told him repeatedly that I didn't. Then I realized I had that surplus Optiplex. I was certain that key had never been used to upgrade. Dude now said if I wanted to do that, I'd have to install Win7 on the new box first. NO. That wasn't going to happen. Since I was getting nowhere with MS, I said a curt goodbye and hung up. To the Google I went.

Turns out activating a Win10 install with a Win7 key IS a thing. A few moments of uncertainty later, and I have an activated copy of Win10 with a legit key. Take THAT, phone support guy!

Jan 7, 2019#194

PatrThom

Assuming the old computer is still functional:
How to Find Your Lost Windows or Office Product Keys

--Patrick

Jan 14, 2019#195

DarkAudit

Buying the RX 580 came with a promo coupon for two free games. Choices were Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5, and The Division 2. All unreleased as of today. Resident Evil 2 was the odd game out. The other two will release in March and I'll get them then.

Jan 14, 2019#196

Ravenpoe

DarkAudit said:
Buying the RX 580 came with a promo coupon for two free games. Choices were Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5, and The Division 2. All unreleased as of today. Resident Evil 2 was the odd game out. The other two will release in March and I'll get them then.

Jan 14, 2019#197

DarkAudit

Ravenpoe said:

What does Resident Evil 2 have over the others besides an earlier launch date? Or was the only winning move not to play?

Jan 14, 2019#198

Ravenpoe

DarkAudit said:
What does Resident Evil 2 have over the others besides an earlier launch date? Or was the only winning move not to play?

RE2 is the only one of those games that interests me, and it's a game I've already played. But that's more an indictment of modern AAA gaming than your choice.

Jan 14, 2019#199

DarkAudit

Ravenpoe said:
RE2 is the only one of those games that interests me, and it's a game I've already played. But that's more an indictment of modern AAA gaming than your choice.

With two Capcoms and an Ubisoft, I was screwed no matter what I did.

Jan 18, 2019#200

sixpackshaker

Found a Tech here that changed my iPhone 6 battery out in under thirty minutes and $50.

Jan 18, 2019#201

PatrThom

sixpackshaker said:
Found a Tech here that changed my iPhone 6 battery out in under thirty minutes and $50.

...isn’t that just the normal rate?

—Patrick

Jan 18, 2019#202

sixpackshaker

PatrThom said:
...isn’t that just the normal rate?

—Patrick

I heard that they were much higher. Or that they were about to go back up on the price after that little scandal. Not to mention an 80 mile drive.

Jan 18, 2019#203

PatrThom

sixpackshaker said:
Not to mention an 80 mile drive.

Well since that’d mean you’d have to go ~350MPH to make that only take 30min, I completely get it.

—Patrick

Feb 4, 2019#204

GasBandit

I had to go a little above the price range I wanted, but I managed to snag an i7-4770 off ebay for $120. That'll give me a 31% increase in CPU power, which will hopefully iron out the VR hiccups I'm having to tiptoe around right now, and keep this rig running for a couple more years.

Feb 4, 2019#205

PatrThom

Too bad you couldn’t snag a 4790.

—Patrick

Feb 4, 2019#206

Dave

The i7-4770 is what I am running. I want to upgrade so bad. It'll depend on how much my bonus is in July.

Feb 4, 2019#207

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Too bad you couldn’t snag a 4790.

—Patrick

Yeah, it was more than I was willing to spend.

Dave said:
The i7-4770 is what I am running. I want to upgrade so bad. It'll depend on how much my bonus is in July.

I was happy with my i5-4670 until I got my oculus rift. Now suddenly CPU power matters again, for the first time in 20 years.

Feb 4, 2019#208

PatrThom

10 years, really. It only seems like 20 since Sandy Bridge came out.

—Patrick

Feb 4, 2019#209

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
10 years, really. It only seems like 20 since Sandy Bridge came out.

—Patrick

Has nothing to do with that. Has everything to do with the 3d accelerator revolution of the late 90s, when the GPUs became more important than the CPUs. The last time the speed of my processor mattered, it was when I overclocked a celeron 333a to 500mhz in 1999. Next machine after that, no game put any strain on any processor whatsoever.

Feb 4, 2019#210

PatrThom

Yeah, but I blame the Pentium 4 Prescotts for that. Once Intel hit their GHz wall in 2004, the only way to increase performance was going to HAVE to be outside the CPU. And also because while adding 150MHz to a 300MHz processor gets you a 50% performance increase, adding 150MHz to a 3.4GHz chip would only get you a 4% increase in performance, but then the CPU power draw/heat would go up another 65W, too.

Plus that’s when Shader 3.x/DX9c finally came out and NVIDIA/ATI finally started releasing cards that could actually do REAL work (6600GT, X1900).

—Patrick

Feb 4, 2019#211

PatrThom

Btw anyone out there looking for a cheap way to snag an i7-4790 might be interested to know there are plenty of places where you can buy an entire refurbished Core i7-4790-based system for right around US$300, probably swap the CPUs and then resell (or repurpose) the now-slower refurb to reclaim some of your cost.

--Patrick

Feb 8, 2019#212

DarkAudit

I can finally redeem my hotel frequent stay points into *digital* gift cards instead of waiting for physical ones to arrive. Still have to wait 48 hours between transactions, though.

So I ordered a MSI Core Frozr L CPU cooler for about half off, and tomorrow will order the last of the ML120 case fans for virtually nothing.

If that cooler's good enough for Gamers Nexus, it's good enough for me. It's their test suite cooler for case evaluations.

Feb 8, 2019#213

GasBandit

When swapping out CPUs, I accidentally dropped the i5 I was removing, and it landed corner-first in the socket, bending a pin. Luckily I was able to get in there with a flashlight and a pen knife and ever-so-gently bend it back to more-or-less where it needed to be. Apparently it was good enough, because I'm typing this on that computer, now with its i7-4770 up and running

It's already making a difference in my VR games, so I think that was $120 well spent.

Feb 8, 2019#214

DarkAudit

GasBandit said:
When swapping out CPUs, I accidentally dropped the i5 I was removing

TIL Linus hacked @GasBandit's account. No, wait. a mere i5 isn't worth his time.

Feb 8, 2019#215

GasBandit

DarkAudit said:
TIL Linus hacked @GasBandit's account. No, wait. a mere i5 isn't worth his time.

Hey, the i5-4670 was perfectly good for gaming until VR became a thing

But yeah, I think I'd shit my own testicles if I dropped/damaged a $10,000 CPU :Leyla:

Feb 8, 2019#216

PatrThom

Hey Gas, at least you weren’t this guy.

—Patrick

Feb 8, 2019#217

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Hey Gas, at least you weren’t this guy.

View attachment 28603

—Patrick

Feb 8, 2019#218

Ravenpoe

PatrThom said:
Hey Gas, at least you weren’t this guy.

View attachment 28603

—Patrick

I did something like this once. And realizing that I fucked up and had only myself to blame, I did the responsible thing: called the manufacturer and lied my ass off that it was shipped to me in this condition.

Feb 8, 2019#219

Denbrought

PatrThom said:
Hey Gas, at least you weren’t this guy.

View attachment 28603

—Patrick

Feb 8, 2019#220

GasBandit

Denbrought said:

Feb 8, 2019#221

PatrThom

Why would they do something like that to an innocent GA-MA78LMT-US2H???
I mean, at least they used actual mayonnaise instead of Miracle Whip, but still.

EDIT: I also want to know how someone "happened" to have a full, faithful 3D render of that specific board just ... lying around.

—Patrick

Feb 9, 2019#222

DarkAudit

Temps way down as soon as the new cooler was installed. Time to go for that overclock. 4.2Ghz is a no go. 4.15 looks okay so far. 1.4 volts too hot, though. Dialing back until the spikes are below 80c or no longer stable.

ETA: 4.15Ghz failed at 1.375V. 4.1Ghz looks okay at 1.625v. Will keep going to see where the 4.1Ghz OC voltage gets me.

Mar 5, 2019#223

PatrThom

GPU upgrade has increased my performance 50-75% (before (7970 3GB) v. after (RX580 8GB)). Not too bad for ~$200, and should keep me happy until my wallet fills back up enough for a new build.
Here's hoping Optane prices come down and capacities go up by then.

--Patrick

Mar 7, 2019#224

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
Why would they do something like that to an innocent GA-MA78LMT-US2H???
I mean, at least they used actual mayonnaise instead of Miracle Whip, but still.

EDIT: I also want to know how someone "happened" to have a full, faithful 3D render of that specific board just ... lying around.

Holy...there's a whole gallery:

--Patrick

Mar 7, 2019#225

figmentPez

PatrThom said:
Holy...there's a whole gallery:

--Patrick

I recognize at least one of those from Linus Tech Tips.

Mar 7, 2019#226

Ravenpoe

figmentPez said:
I recognize at least one of those from Linus Tech Tips.

That last set... I'm triggered

Mar 7, 2019#227

PatrThom

#4 could also be titled "A rough morning."

--Patrick

Mar 7, 2019#228

jwhouk

Minor victory: With the help of tech support, I got BeamNG drive working again by downgrading to an earlier beta. Only problem is, my wheel is a bit touchy for controlling vehicles.

Apr 5, 2019#229

PatrThom

Oh hey, my computer finally admitted to me just now that 1809 is available.
I mean, I should've been in bed about 2hrs ago, but yeah go ahead and install, I'll wait.

--Patrick

May 22, 2019#230

DarkAudit

Not long after I had all my apps and games installed, the Microsoft Store broke and wouldn't run. All the repair tips, including the reinstall in place, failed. The only suggestion left was a wipe and reinstall. Nope.

Today I got word the May Update was now available. Installed it, and the store is fixed. Might not use it for much, but now I've got it again if I need it.

Jun 16, 2019#231

DarkAudit

Who needs torrents when you have an nzb indexer and a high retention server or two?

Jun 18, 2019#232

DarkAudit

Around 280 or so of my iTunes Match files I'd backed up to the cloud came back corrupted. Won't play and can't edit tags. Redownloading off of iTunes didn't help on any PC. Luckily, I have a backup I'd made years ago to an external HDD. Those copies are fine. Go me.

Jun 18, 2019#233

PatrThom

Always, ALWAYS make backups.

—Patrick

Jun 18, 2019#234

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
Always, ALWAYS make backups.

—Patrick

That was why I just bought a 256GB thumb drive. Wasn't expecting the cloud backup to be corrupted like it was. But now the main set is fixed and I can backup it all over again... for the third time since I bought the drive.

Jun 23, 2019#235

PatrThom

Hard drives in mah PC just passed 900 operating hours, still no errors.

--Patrick

Jul 26, 2019#236

PatrThom

Got paid today.
Found a good deal on 5400rpm 2TB 512b/sector enterprise drives.
Bought half a dozen, they should be here by Wed.
Then my DIY NAS project will break free from its long hibernation to trundle forward towards completion and I can finally get my computer rolled back to WinXP+7 by mid-August, well before the Jan 2020 deadline.

--Patrick

Sep 18, 2019#237

PatrThom

The project above continues despite some snags, but that's not the victory.
The snags I mention meant I had to go grab some utilities I bought a while ago.
Bad news, they're on my dual-PIII system. The PSU on that system died in 2011. It's a hyper-specific PSU (still has AT connectors!) so I can't just swap it out BUT it was still under warranty, so I mailed it back and had it fixed.
And then it sat there, because I was too lazy to reinstall it, even through two moves.
[...time passes...]
Fast forward to two days ago, and needing my utility collection.
Finally reinstalled that PSU.
Computer booted first try. Didn't even have to reset the date & time. Hello, good ol' WinXP!
It powered off unexpectedly 10min in, but came back up and has been stable since, so I suspect a family of dust bunnies may have moved in during the 8yrs it sat inactive. Part of the reason I retired the system was because the GPU (a Quadro FX 4000--yes, an AGP Quadro!) was getting flaky. So I bought two more (ages ago), but they also had intermittent issues. So I'm not actually sure if the shutdown wasn't due to the GPU. We'll see.

tl;dr: Computer sat in a basement for ~8 years, powered right back up on first try.

--Patrick

Sep 24, 2019#238

Tinwhistler

Ordered a 2tb NVMe drive just before heading out to Orlando on vacation last week. It was waiting for me when I got home yesterday.

It installed pretty easily (though I did have to temporarily remove the CPU fan to get the right installation angle), and it was pretty simple to use Macrium to move my OS partitions from the 500gb drive, and Partition Wizard to expand the partition out to fill up all the available space.

only hiccup is that Gigabyte makes selecting the boot drive a lot more complicated than it used to be. But once I got that figured out, I set the new drive as the boot drive, unplugged the old 500gb, and here I am.

Best part is that I had a ton of reward dollars from when i got my son his gaming rig as a graduation present, so it cost me a lot less than it otherwise would have.

Sep 26, 2019#239

Bones

we figured out last night you can screen share vlc with sound in discord video chat group dms, I am now converting many of "I want to see this" titles for my friends so we can sit and watch it together.

Sep 26, 2019#240

PatrThom

NAS is working, testing it out before I move to put my full faith in it.
Just FYI moving 5TB over GigE takes longer than you probably want to sit and wait for.

--Patrick

Sep 26, 2019#241

GasBandit

Bones said:
we figured out last night you can screen share vlc with sound in discord video chat group dms, I am now converting many of "I want to see this" titles for my friends so we can sit and watch it together.

Odd, whenever I try to do that it crashes.

Sep 27, 2019#242

Bones

GasBandit said:
Odd, whenever I try to do that it crashes.

dont look at me. the only thing we noticed is that because I have Nitro(we think) my streams dont hang as much and come through cleaner. its not internet because I only have a 200 mbps connection and my friend is on gigabit. I literally just converted them to MKV(cause lazy, also powerdvd ultra has man in the middle drm protections like crazy so vlc)

Sep 27, 2019#243

GasBandit

Bones said:
dont look at me. the only thing we noticed is that because I have Nitro(we think) my streams dont hang as much and come through cleaner. its not internet because I only have a 200 mbps connection and my friend is on gigabit. I literally just converted them to MKV(cause lazy, also powerdvd ultra has man in the middle drm protections like crazy so vlc)

Hrm, maybe it's because I've been using MPC instead of VLC. I'll have to try it the other way.

Sep 29, 2019#244

GasBandit

Ok, figured it out. Discord doesn't like to stream my VLC/MPC videos because I'm extending across 2 monitors, and so in "full screen" mode it tries to transmit the entire screenspace so it ends up only taking up half the screen, and when I change between full screen and windowed mode it crashes. Works fine on my laptop though, which only has the one screen.

Dec 1, 2019#245

DarkAudit

Spent a little more than I'd intended yesterday. Asked some questions about the TV I'd had my eye on going in. Turns out even tough it's an upgrade from what I was running, it wasn't as capable as other similar models. Plus Sharp is really a rebadged HiSense using big brother's hand-me-down parts.

So I went with a TCL 50S425 instead. Only $10 more, but significantly more capable. Reviewed very well as a PC monitor, too.

Dec 1, 2019#246

GasBandit

DarkAudit said:
Spent a little more than I'd intended yesterday. Asked some questions about the TV I'd had my eye on going in. Turns out even tough it's an upgrade from what I was running, it wasn't as capable as other similar models. Plus Sharp is really a rebadged HiSense using big brother's hand-me-down parts.

So I went with a TCL 50S425 instead. Only $10 more, but significantly more capable. Reviewed very well as a PC monitor, too.

That's very similar to the TV I just got a couple weeks ago for my living room. I'm very happy with it, and I think you will be, too.

Dec 2, 2019#247

GasBandit

Got me a new cable modem and router... and now my gigabit internet is behaving like it should. I just got 850 megabit from fast.com, which is netflix... so I'm pretty happy with it.

The modem/router my ISP had been renting me was just utter garbage. I was getting double digit ping times to MY OWN MODEM. It's amazing the difference good equipment makes.

Dec 2, 2019#248

Bones

in relation to that Comcast keeps trying to remotely flash my own modem with their firmware and its driving me crazy as it sucks compared to what the actual vendor has supplied as their current firmware.

Dec 2, 2019#249

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
It's amazing the difference good equipment makes.

Preach it!

--Patrick

Dec 10, 2019#250

DarkAudit

Bought a wifi range extender for $30 off of Amazon. Clawed back a good 20-30Mbps of bandwidth compared to without it. And the connection from my devices to the extender is now encrypted.

OTOH, the connection between extender and main access point is not. I'm still good though, right?

Dec 11, 2019#251

GasBandit

DarkAudit said:
OTOH, the connection between extender and main access point is not. I'm still good though, right?

(repeating the post that I made that the server transfer ate)

From a security standpoint? No... not really. But I guess you're no worse off than you were using the main AP before, if it's always been unencrypted.

Dec 11, 2019#252

DarkAudit

GasBandit said:
(repeating the post that I made that the server transfer ate)

From a security standpoint? No... not really. But I guess you're no worse off than you were using the main AP before, if it's always been unencrypted.

Yeah. It's always been an open wifi connection. Only now the specific access point I'm using is passworded. I have a VPN account, but there's the significant loss of bandwidth that comes with it.

Dec 11, 2019#253

PatrThom

Rescued from the latest forum hiccup:

Gasbandit said:
Not really, from a security standpoint.

ncts_dodge_man said:
Like Gas said, if you want the most security, you'll want full end-to-end encryption, no sections without it. Is there new firmware available for the main AP? If not, do you feel comfortable doing something like DD-WRT on it?

I'm running two Netgear routers that are upgraded with DD-WRT (getting much better performance than with stock) with a wire running between the two to cover my house (one functioning as a router and one is just a AP).

Dei said:
If I recall he's using his hotel's wifi, and probably isn't allowed to fuck with it.

Dec 11, 2019#254

DarkAudit

Yes, this is hotel wifi and I'm not allowed to fuck with it. So this is the best solution I've got (AFAIK) to keep max bandwidth incoming.

Dec 12, 2019#255

ncts_dodge_man

If you can't mess with it, then, yeah, that's about the best you're going to get.

Dec 22, 2019#256

PatrThom

Reinstall completed, content migrated, installs complete.
Before:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 102.646 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 94.414 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 1.785 MB/s [ 435.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 1.030 MB/s [ 251.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.626 MB/s [ 397.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.007 MB/s [ 245.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.447 MB/s [ 109.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.003 MB/s [ 244.9 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 69.1% (574.4/831.7 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2019/12/17 22:32:20
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 17763] (x64)

After:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 192.979 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 174.891 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 2.829 MB/s [ 690.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 2.902 MB/s [ 708.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.861 MB/s [ 698.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.876 MB/s [ 702.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.835 MB/s [ 203.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.854 MB/s [ 696.8 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 25.4% (414.5/1629.8 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2019/12/20 0:04:16
OS : Windows 7 Professional SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

Double the storage and just about double the speed. I'll take it.

--Patrick

Feb 26, 2020#257

DarkAudit

The bright side to the calamity of the last 24 hours is once I am finally settled, I'll be able to have fast internet again. I gave up my 200Mbps cable when I left the house, and have had to settle for ~35Mbps on average for the last couple of years. I could go for full on gigabit, but if I want to eat, 600Mbps is about the best I can hope for. Still faster than what I left behind.

So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Mar 2, 2020#258

DarkAudit

Gig internet is too expensive, so I "settled" for this. But after 2 years of settling for 30-50Mbps, I'll take it.

Mar 2, 2020#259

Bones

That should be more than enough for a single user. What the hell are you doing that you need gigspeed?

Mar 2, 2020#260

Fun Size

Mar 2, 2020#261

sixpackshaker

I ordered $1k worth of components for my next home PC. Hard to believe that I'm 50 and still building my own PCs.

Mar 2, 2020#262

PatrThom

Bones said:
What the hell are you doing that you need gigspeed?

sixpackshaker said:
I ordered $1k worth of components for my next home PC. Hard to believe that I'm 50 and still building my own PCs.

Hey now, I don't find this hard to believe at all, buddy.

--Patrick

Mar 2, 2020#263

PatrThom

Haven't signed into my NAS in a really long time.
Discovered I'd forgotten the password.
Tried many things.
Eventually discovered I was getting the password correct, it was the username which I'd forgotten.
Blaaaaaahhhhh...
Well at least I didn't lock myself out of my data!

--Patrick

Mar 18, 2020#264

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
Finally got around to replacing my onboard Realtek with an add-in Intel.
Reduced my ping time 30% and reduced my CPU usage. Life is slightly better.

Last night I finally switched out my old router for that purpose-built PFSense box I've been talking about.
Realtek latency (pre-intel) was usually 165-185ish milliseconds.
The add-in Intel NIC reduced that to 130-150ish milliseconds.
With the new router? My latency is now 30-40ish milliseconds. Holy RNGeezus, I had no idea it would make THIS much difference.
That might even go down a tick or two once I take the next step and retire my current external BIND DNS in favor of PFSense's built-in Unbound resolver. Plus I'll get to retire the server itself, which means something like a 45-60W savings, I guess.

--Patrick

Mar 27, 2020#265

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
That might even go down a tick or two once I take the next step and retire my current external BIND DNS in favor of PFSense's built-in Unbound resolver. Plus I'll get to retire the server itself, which means something like a 45-60W savings, I guess.

It did not go down more. If anything, it actually went up a bit (to around 80-90ms), but I don't know how much of that is just the enforced Quarvid-19 increasing traffic to their servers. Whatever, the ol' DNS server has now been retired and powered down (it's earned it!), and additionally all my DNS lookups now go out over DNS-TLS so that my ISP can no longer snoop my lookups. Also, I've successfully set it so that all other DNS queries get rerouted back through my router so they can't sneak around it, either.

So that's it for now. Future projects I'd like to do: Setting up a Squid proxy to speed up web page load times, and maybe black holing obnoxious ad servers (or at a minimum google analytics/doubleclick).

--Patrick

Apr 1, 2020#266

Dirona

OK.
So.

I have installed OBS. Win!
I have created two "scenes" with one "source" each - the first is a video without sound, the second is a video with sound. (This took longer than I'm willing to admit to figure out how to do.) But win! none the less.
I have recorded, found where the file saved, and checked it over. The sound... well, sounds, when it's supposed to. Win!

Wins all around!

Now... help! I've have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. All the guides on the website assume a level of knowledge that I do not possess (even the "general" guides were intimidating).
Current question - how do I get it to automatically transition between to two source videos when the first one ends?

Whine: I've used Windows Movie Maker before, slowly, but proficiently enough. This is a whole new level of "WTF am I doing?!?"

Apr 1, 2020#267

GasBandit

Dirona said:
OK.
So.

I have installed OBS. Win!
I have created two "scenes" with one "source" each - the first is a video without sound, the second is a video with sound. (This took longer than I'm willing to admit to figure out how to do.) But win! none the less.
I have recorded, found where the file saved, and checked it over. The sound... well, sounds, when it's supposed to. Win!

Wins all around!

Now... help! I've have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. All the guides on the website assume a level of knowledge that I do not possess (even the "general" guides were intimidating).
Current question - how do I get it to automatically transition between to two source videos when the first one ends?

Whine: I've used Windows Movie Maker before, slowly, but proficiently enough. This is a whole new level of "WTF am I doing?!?"

What software are you using to actually stream your sermon?

Apr 1, 2020#268

Dirona

GasBandit said:
What software are you using to actually stream your sermon?

Previously I've been streaming directly from my webcam to either Facebook live or YouTube live. Soooo... none????

Apr 1, 2020#269

GasBandit

Dirona said:
Previously I've been streaming directly from my webcam to either Facebook live or YouTube live. Soooo... none????

Ok. In that case, I recommend you use OBS as your "middleman" to do your stream.

This is going to get involved, so I'm going to make a new thread for you. One sec.

May 20, 2020#270

Bubble181

New smartphone :aaah:

Huawei P30, last version to still have access to Google apps. Damn you Americans :-P
But it's now come down in prince enough to fit my budget, and it beats pretty much anything at that price point.

May 20, 2020#271

bhamv3

Bubble181 said:
New smartphone Huawei P30, last version to still have access to Google apps. Damn you Americans :-P
But it's now come down in prince enough to fit my budget, and it beats pretty much anything at that price point.

Do you need me to teach you how to say "I know you're listening" in Chinese, to maybe spook the guys monitoring you?

May 20, 2020#272

Bubble181

How about "please get me access to the good anime you guys are keeping for yourself"? :-P

First thing I just now discovered: the finger print sensor is now under the screen instead of on the back (which I knew), and despite all the protestations of Huawei, literally every review of every screen protector states "afterwards, fingerprint detection doesn't work as well anymore".
Well crap. I do A LOT of stuff with fingerprint ID. And there isn't always an alternative (e.g. my banking business, and the Belgian tax system).

May 20, 2020#273

GasBandit

Bubble181 said:
How about "please get me access to the good anime you guys are keeping for yourself"? :-P

... that's not China, Bubble.

And the fingerprint sensor in my Pixel 1 continues to function like a charm

Jun 3, 2020#274

General Specific

I work as the tech person at a high school. This year has been challenging. One of the most recent challenges has been Graduation. I am posting from it right now. It starts in about an hour from now. We are attempting to take every precaution possible with still having a full ceremony for the seniors. Debate about the appropriateness of that aside, the main problem we have had is that the big video board at the football stadium where we are holding it has been on the blink all week.

This is an LCD board that was installed in 2013 and was already old by then, so it still runs on foot square panels of LCDs called Mods. Well, those have been going out all over the board ever since I got here a year and a half ago. We try to keep them repaired as much as possible, but there's always something that has gone out.

Well, this week is no exception, we've had random outages all over the board. It seems to calm down after about two hours of being on. I was asked to be in early today to see if we can get it going and miracles of all miracles, it is fine this morning. There are no issues currently. I just need it to last until the end of the ceremony and I will look like goddamn Scotty.

Edit: They are playing "Walking on Sunshine" right now and all I can hear is Philip J. Fry.

Jun 3, 2020#275

General Specific

It did not last even 5 minutes into the ceremony. So much for my tech victory. :mad:

Jun 4, 2020#276

Bones

i wasnt sure where to post this, but my new set-up is now complete for my desk.

Jun 4, 2020#277

PatrThom

Can never have too many fans.

--Patrick

Sep 9, 2020#278

Shakey

Finally got around to mounting some of my networking stuff. Mainly because I picked up a new AP for my upstairs, and an AP for outside. Before I ran wiring for those I wanted to get this all sorted out so my jumble of wires didn’t end up completely out of control. Now I need a Battery backup for it all.

Nov 24, 2020#279

General Specific

Finished doing a wireless AP swap at work today, upgrading to newer models. I work at a high school, we have over 230 APs around the building. Took me 2 days.

I am very tired.

Dec 13, 2020#280

DarkAudit

I need to go back to the store later this morning to finish some things, but it's possible I'll come out paying less with the new phone and plan than I did before.

Dec 27, 2020#281

Tinwhistler

Got simultaneous playing over the internet working...was surprised this was even possible with the latency most internet connections have.

Dec 27, 2020#282

PatrThom

Looks like you had to sacrifice a little of your aspect ratio to get it working, but not bad.
150ns or less is considered "real-time" for VOIP, so as long as you can keep the total end-to-end latency below 250ns (1/4s), you should be good for anything up to ♩=200 or so.

--Patrick

Dec 27, 2020#283

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
Looks like you had to sacrifice a little of your aspect ratio to get it working, but not bad.
150ns or less is considered "real-time" for VOIP, so as long as you can keep the total end-to-end latency below 250ns (1/4s), you should be good for anything up to ♩=200 or so.

--Patrick

That's a bug (assumedly) in JamKazam. I couldn't find a way to fix it.

Music-wise, we try to keep the latency below 80 on the round trip, otherwise, it starts being obvious to the players and difficult to perform together. I'm assuming you meant ms here, since I'd love to have nanosecond latency

250ms latency might be fine for voip, but 1/4 of a second off the beat for tunes is murderous. even with the 80ms round trip, we both end up having to pretend we're 'pushing' the tune (playing slightly ahead of the beat) so that we record together well.

Dec 27, 2020#284

GasBandit

When using PTP in things like Dante, which is a digital audio protocol I use a lot in devices for things like concert venues, we find that eveything's generally fine as long as we can keep the latency below 15ms. Of course, that's not really realistic for consumer internet, unfortunately.

Jan 2, 2021#285

DarkAudit

I renewed a dormant subscription to my old VPN service over the weekend, only to find it no longer worked with any of the most popular overseas television services. I pled my case to customer support, and they were gracious enough to give me a full refund. I've since switched to a different service that works with BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 straight out of the box.

Jan 7, 2021#286

DarkAudit

Got one of those bluetooth-enabled OBD2 scanners. It cleared the check engine code (P0420) where the one at AutoZone couldn't.

Jan 7, 2021#287

jwhouk

Uh... That's not a victory, mon ami. P0420 means your Cat system is dying. And considering WV winters, I suspect it's corrosion around your exhaust.

Jan 7, 2021#288

DarkAudit

It's a victory enough for now. Because until that extra $1400 arrives, it's not getting a permanent fix.

Jan 7, 2021#289

PatrThom

jwhouk said:
P0420 means your Cat system is dying.

I've had the same code the last three cars running.
1) Someone stole the catalytic converter
2) Absurdly high mileage before I even bought the car
3) Low miles BUT previous owner obviously did not know Jack shit about cars and probably considered them disposable

--Patrick

Jan 7, 2021#290

jwhouk

That being said, good on you for getting an OBD scanner. Though they can be a nuisance to try to get plugged in, they do give you an idea what's going on under the hood.

Jan 10, 2021#291

DarkAudit

The battery on my infrared thermometer finally gave out. The Best By date was... 2010!?

Jan 10, 2021#292

Tinwhistler

DarkAudit said:
The battery on my infrared thermometer finally gave out. The Best By date was... 2010!?

Reminds of the CO detector that the builders plastered into a wall whey they built this house in 2013. You're supposed to change the batteries ~~every year~~ every six months. Thing started going off in 2020.

Feb 23, 2021#293

DarkAudit

I built my PC at just the right time. That $230 RX 580 in February 2019 is the wrong side of $700 now.

Feb 23, 2021#294

Fun Size

I got fed up with my keyboard occasionally missing keys and finally got myself a properly nerdy gaming keyboard. I keep fat fingering things now because I'm not used to the extra buttons on the left, but it's nice. I haven't gamed with it yet, but I'm not ashamed to admit that it fills me with glee when the lights on my mouse, keyboard and headphones all pulse together. If only the kid who was obsessed with Tron could see me now all lit.

Feb 23, 2021#295

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
I built my PC at just the right time. That $230 RX 580 in February 2019 is the wrong side of $700 now.

I know, right?
That place I said was selling 580's way overpriced at $300? They upped it to $450...but now that's actually a good deal!

--Patrick

Feb 24, 2021#296

Bones

i was going to refresh my pc this spring, not going to happen until gpus are reasonable again.

Feb 24, 2021#297

Bubble181

Bones said:
i was going to refresh my pc this spring, not going to happen until gpus are reasonable again.

What country are you from again? Because prices are very, very weird right now.
Newegg has the 3070 for $500. Continuously out of stock, of course, but still.
The cheapest I've found in Germany - also out of stock, BTW - is over €900. That's literally double.
With current ticket prices, we're approaching the point where buying it in the US, and just flying there and back to get it, is cheaper than buying here.

Feb 24, 2021#298

Bones

US, nothern midwest, its no hurry. but im ready to build something that can handle all my displays lol.

Feb 24, 2021#299

PatrThom

Bones said:
US, nothern midwest, its no hurry. but im ready to build something that can handle all my displays lol.

Heck, even an RX 580 or WX7100 can do that (up to 6 displays @ 5120x2880 ea).

--Patrick

Feb 24, 2021#300

Bones

PatrThom said:
Heck, even an RX 580 or WX7100 can do that (up to 6 displays @ 5120x2880 ea).

--Patrick

has to be NVidia due to my need to play physical media in HD/2K/4K. I have had issues getting amd/ati products to do a HDCP handshake correctly

Mar 17, 2021#301

DarkAudit

Old laptop is six years old. With refunds, OT, and stimulus, it was time. Time for an new 15" HP Pavilion.

Ryzen 5 4500U, 512GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 1080p HD.

Mar 22, 2021#302

DarkAudit

Oh, did I say 8GB RAM? I meant 16. Because I just ordered the memory upgrade.

Mar 26, 2021#303

DarkAudit

Took a good while but the old laptop has a bootable Gentoo install and working ethernet. KDE Plasma DE is currently emerging. Package... 99 of 226. Still gonna be hours. Even more hours to get Firefox and VLC going.

Mar 26, 2021#304

DarkAudit

When I said KDE, it was really just the Plasma underpinnings. What the user would consider "KDE" is in the apps packages that weren't installed yet.

But at least I have a laptop that boots, has a graphical DE, and connects to wifi. That's a win.

Apr 10, 2021#305

Denbrought

Bit the bullet on upgrading my work headphones, the current ones are pushing 5 years and looking+feeling pretty beat up (they're worn 30-45 hours weekly, and under normal circumstances travel with me). I should be getting these Shure A50 (on sale) mid-next week. Looking forward to owning something with active noise cancellation.

Also picked up ER2SE earbuds (also on sale) for home+phone listening. I have a very cheap and old SportaPro headset, and want to see if IEMs are up my alley.

Apr 27, 2021#306

DarkAudit

Getting the Plasma 5.21 update was only a little bit more involved than pointing the meta packages to the testing branch, but not by much. Next will be the latest kernel, then just go all in on testing.

Apr 30, 2021#307

DarkAudit

Took nearly 3 days of compiling nearly half the system, but switching over to an all-testing branch Gentoo install is done.

Apr 30, 2021#308

Bubble181

DarkAudit said:
Took nearly 3 days of compiling nearly half the system

At least it's not a Windows Update!

(not aimed at you or anyone in particular - I'm just always amused when people hate on Windows updates blocking their machine for an hour but then happily say they were messing with whatever distro and spent a whole night getting things back to where they were or similar. I'm definitely not a MS fanboy or anti-Linux)

Apr 30, 2021#309

DarkAudit

Bubble181 said:
At least it's not a Windows Update!

(not aimed at you or anyone in particular - I'm just always amused when people hate on Windows updates blocking their machine for an hour but then happily say they were messing with whatever distro and spent a whole night getting things back to where they were or similar. I'm definitely not a MS fanboy or anti-Linux)

The difference is when a Linux distro is updating packages, the rest of the system is still useable. Windows you get that interminable "Windows is updating. Do not turn off your computer," and all you can do is stare at it.

Apr 30, 2021#310

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
The difference is when a Linux distro is updating packages, the rest of the system is still useable. Windows you get that interminable "Windows is updating. Do not turn off your computer," and all you can do is stare at it.

Hell, I updated the core OS on my (FreeBSD-based) NAS a couple nights ago, and it was still running right up until it was like, "Ok all done installing just need to reboot a sec to refresh."

--Patrick

May 17, 2021#311

DarkAudit

OT says I can afford an extra 1TB SSD for my games drive. So I did. And promptly took nearly half of it with my Steam library alone. But now my C: drive is up to 75% free instead of hovering around 20%.

May 27, 2021#312

jwhouk

4th Generation iPad, 32 GB Wi-Fi. Running iOS 10.3.3.

Amazon has 'em for $177, not including a case.

I got mine for $40 from MPS surplus.

Jun 5, 2021#313

DarkAudit

My first successful remote ssh. I almost feel like a real linux user now.

The next trick is running X remotely.

Jun 16, 2021#314

DarkAudit

Got X apps running remotely. And for my next trick I ssh'd to the Gentoo laptop, wget to download an Xubuntu wallpaper package Gentoo doesn't have natively, emerged dpkg, and then installed said package. All from the "comfort" of the front desk at work.

Am I a real linux user yet?

Jun 16, 2021#315

Bubble181

See, that sounds complicated, but as far as I can tell you remotely logged into your home PC and downloaded a wallpaper? No clue :-P

Jun 16, 2021#316

DarkAudit

Bubble181 said:
See, that sounds complicated, but as far as I can tell you remotely logged into your home PC and downloaded a wallpaper? No clue :-P

Give me a little more credit. I installed a package from a different distro's package manager.

Jun 16, 2021#317

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Am I a real linux user yet?

Well you’re way ahead of me in unlocked Linux achievements.

—Patrick

Jul 24, 2021#318

PatrThom

Still moving my presence from old computer to new, XP/7 dual boot to -> 10.12/10.14/8.1/10 quad boot.
Today's task (which I've been putting off) is to copy and move over my Steam library and support files.
Plugged in 2TB external to copy it all aaaaaand my computer froze.
When turning it back on it tries to start up but then just goes beeeeeeeeeeeeeee and restarts itself, then repeats. Can't even get to BIOS screen, just eeeeeeeeee *bip* eeeeeeeeee.
Having the computer fail just as I'm finally moving my stuff over (in earnest!) is the sort of AYFKM? moment that is going to make me grumble for days. Sure, I can extract the drives, hook them up with a dock/sled, and dig through them to manually move the stuff over, but that's more work than I really WANT to have to do.

hang on the top of the heatsink looks really dusty remove pfft pfft fresh paste remount okay all good now and only 90F/32C to boot was just ProcHot the whole time nevermind.

--Patrick

Jul 29, 2021#319

Ravenpoe

PatrThom said:
Still moving my presence from old computer to new, XP/7 dual boot to -> 10.12/10.14/8.1/10 quad boot.
Today's task (which I've been putting off) is to copy and move over my Steam library and support files.
Plugged in 2TB external to copy it all aaaaaand my computer froze.
When turning it back on it tries to start up but then just goes beeeeeeeeeeeeeee and restarts itself, then repeats. Can't even get to BIOS screen, just eeeeeeeeee *bip* eeeeeeeeee.
Having the computer fail just as I'm finally moving my stuff over (in earnest!) is the sort of AYFKM? moment that is going to make me grumble for days. Sure, I can extract the drives, hook them up with a dock/sled, and dig through them to manually move the stuff over, but that's more work than I really WANT to have to do.

hang on the top of the heatsink looks really dusty remove pfft pfft fresh paste remount okay all good now and only 90F/32C to boot was just ProcHot the whole time nevermind.

--Patrick

Aside from a few critical documents and password settings, I don't back up shit. A new drive/pc/etc is just a chance to throw out all the old and start fresh and clean.

Jul 29, 2021#320

@Li3n

PatrThom said:
Still moving my presence from old computer to new, XP/7 dual boot to -> 10.12/10.14/8.1/10 quad boot.
Today's task (which I've been putting off) is to copy and move over my Steam library and support files.
Plugged in 2TB external to copy it all aaaaaand my computer froze.
When turning it back on it tries to start up but then just goes beeeeeeeeeeeeeee and restarts itself, then repeats. Can't even get to BIOS screen, just eeeeeeeeee *bip* eeeeeeeeee.
Having the computer fail just as I'm finally moving my stuff over (in earnest!) is the sort of AYFKM? moment that is going to make me grumble for days. Sure, I can extract the drives, hook them up with a dock/sled, and dig through them to manually move the stuff over, but that's more work than I really WANT to have to do.

hang on the top of the heatsink looks really dusty remove pfft pfft fresh paste remount okay all good now and only 90F/32C to boot was just ProcHot the whole time nevermind.

--Patrick

Didnt i post this here already: https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Of course if you changed your OS versions that's not going to work.

But why are you copying Steam library, instead of just reinstalling... you guys still don't have gud internetz?

Jul 29, 2021#321

GasBandit

@Li3n said:
Didnt i post this here already: https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Of course if you changed your OS versions that's not going to work.

But why are you copying Steam library, instead of just reinstalling... you guys still don't have gud internetz?

I have gigabit, but since the Rona started, Steam in particular has been getting stupidly low throughput.

Jul 29, 2021#322

PatrThom

@Li3n said:
Didnt i post this here already: https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Macrium is great for cloning, but not so great for migration.

@Li3n said:
why are you copying Steam library, instead of just reinstalling... you guys still don't have gud internetz?

Because 760GB, that's why. Even if I keep 100% of our house's 100Mbit connection for myself and run it 24/7, that's still 17+ straight hours MINIMUM of downloading, plus no guarantee that it will keep my mods, settings, screenshots, save games, etc., intact. Even lowly USB2 is 480Mbit, which is almost 5x faster.

Also my Steam library is not the only thing I want to move. So there's more.

--Patrick

Aug 2, 2021#323

Bubble181

Yeah, I don't see why I'd ever choose to re-download a huge amount of data if it's already stored locally. I mean, my "unlimited" plan is still maxed at about 1TB/month. Not that I ever get anywhere near that, but trying to re-download my whole Steam and GOG library would put me close.

Aug 2, 2021#324

@Li3n

Jeez guys, i was just bragging about our internet... gimme a break.

Heh, i still remember when he 1st got network peering in town between the different provider and my local DC++ downloads where limited by HDD's writing speeds.

PatrThom said:
no guarantee that it will keep my mods, settings, screenshots, save games, etc., intact. Even lowly USB2 is 480Mbit, which is almost 5x faster.

Pretty sure everything but the mods should be part of you steam profile.

Aug 2, 2021#325

PatrThom

@Li3n said:
Pretty sure everything but the mods should be part of you steam profile.

Unfortunately not. There are many things stored outside the actual Steam folder, depending on the game.

—Patrick

Aug 2, 2021#326

Bubble181

A whole lot of games -especially of a certain generation - keep a crapload of stuff in the \users\ directory (save games etc), in \programdata\, and in \programfiles (x86)\. It can be an absolute pain to track it all down, as sometimes it's just in say, \programdata\gamename\sound (or whatever) while other times it'll be programdata\developer\publisher\licensingcompany\steam\BIN\data\sounds\ . And not a single mention of the actual game anywhere in there. Bad manners, but hey.

Aug 2, 2021#327

@Li3n

PatrThom said:
Unfortunately not. There are many things stored outside the actual Steam folder, depending on the game.

—Patrick

I was assuming cloud saves, but then i remembered not all games (esp. older ones) have even that.

And i'm guessing the screenshots aren't taken with the Steam Client (like this great one of a Batman Thug "just resting"!)

Weird how used to just having everything in the cloud i've gotten.

Aug 18, 2021#328

Bubble181

At my wife's work place they were retiring some old NAS's so they held a raffle to see who amongst the interested got one, and which one.
I got the biggest and best one, a Synology DS215+ with 2 4-TB HDDs.
Sure, it's a bit of an older model, but it still works perfectly well and as some of you may remember, I recently posted i was thinking about cord cutting...having a NAS, even a bit of an older one, around will definitely help in that regard :-D

Aug 18, 2021#329

PatrThom

Make sure the first thing you do is to update the firmware.

--Patrick

Aug 18, 2021#330

Bubble181

PatrThom said:
Make sure the first thing you do is to update the firmware.

--Patrick

The drives were completely formatted and everything returned to original settings, so yes, the first thing I did was update the firmware and re-install the latest versions etc etc

I don't know a bloody thing about setting up a NAS (though it's currently already automatically backing up all the pictures on my cell phone so at least something's working right

) and I'm sure I' m clueless about how to get the most out of it (I feel like it might be useful to set up my own Plex server for instance but haven't got a clue where to start yet, it's not something I'll be tackling this week anyway), but "get every form of security on there up to the latest and get some more" is alwyas a good move on any new appliance :-D

Aug 18, 2021#331

Bubble181

And five seconds later I discover they have a ready-made (beta) Plex-server package to install so it might not be complicated after all :cool:

Aug 18, 2021#332

PatrThom

They have a ready-made Plex server package that you can ... oh.

--Patrick

Sep 17, 2021#333

Dei

Finally got a 3080ti this week woo.

Sep 17, 2021#334

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
They have a ready-made Plex server package that you can ... oh.

--Patrick

Terramaster NAS boxes have a ready-made plex package also. Made moving my plex from an actual PC to the NAS very simple

Nov 11, 2021#335

Bones

discuss:

Pat or Gas have something to say about this :3

Nov 11, 2021#336

GasBandit

A non-overclocked celeron? It was obsolete the day it was assembled.

Re:Spoiler: Fair cop.

Nov 11, 2021#337

ncts_dodge_man

Blazing CPU speed there...

Nov 11, 2021#338

PatrThom

It’s shown up and been discussed online before. The reason it was billed as “never obsolete” is because you could kinda trade them in for newer models sorta like how you trade in and upgrade phones today.

Bones said:
Pat or Gas have something to say about this :3

well duh

—Patrick

Nov 13, 2021#339

DarkAudit

I never even gave it a moment's thought, but this laptop is PCIe 4.0. Go me.

Nov 13, 2021#340

Cat

Couldn't get the mic on my headset to work, checked all the sound settings, nothing picked up. Turns out the windows mic test doesn't work at all for me and my privacy settings were preventing audacity from accessing the microphone

Nov 13, 2021#341

PatrThom

Cat said:
my privacy settings were preventing audacity from accessing the microphone

I very frequently have the following conversation (or something like it) with people:
Them: "My xxxxx isn't working."
Me: (looking through prefs/restrictions/block list/settings/) "That's because you have xxxxx turned off."
Them: "Well I didn't want anyone to xxxxx me."
Me: "Really? Even yourself? What about when you want to xxxxx?"
Them: "Uhhh..."

(apologies if this gives @ThatNickGuy PTSD)

--Patrick

Nov 13, 2021#342

Cat

PatrThom said:
I very frequently have the following conversation (or something like it) with people:
Them: "My xxxxx isn't working."
Me: (looking through prefs/restrictions/block list/settings/) "That's because you have xxxxx turned off."
Them: "Well I didn't want anyone to xxxxx me."
Me: "Really? Even yourself? What about when you want to xxxxx?"
Them: "Uhhh..."

(apologies if this gives @ThatNickGuy PTSD)

--Patrick

Lol to be fair I knew I wouldn't be recording anything for myself anytime soon when I set myself up like this

Nov 13, 2021#343

PatrThom

Cat said:
Lol to be fair I knew I wouldn't be recording anything for myself anytime soon when I set myself up like this

"Darn it, past me!"

--Patrick

Nov 15, 2021#344

PatrThom

Power went out today at home while I was at work.
The two UPSes did their job. We lost nothing.
Good job, past me.

--Patrick

Nov 17, 2021#345

Cat

Somehow my 3Mb connection turned into a 12Mb connection this morning so I am updating cyberpunk for the first time in a year :3

Nov 18, 2021#346

Cat

Looks like I've been having airflow problems the whole time. Got the laptop sitting on an old keyboard and settings are turned up again

Edit: gpu is running at 25-30% instead of 100 whenever a game is running. Looking like I got it right this time

Dec 17, 2021#347

DarkAudit

5800X on special again at the usual locations. Including Best Buy. My local store has them in stock. So now I just need to go pick mine up.

And some isopropyl alcohol. Then backup my files, update the BIOS, etc etc...

Dec 17, 2021#348

DarkAudit

First scariest task is done. BIOS is updated to accommodate the new CPU. Had to reenter the security settings and fan and memory profiles, but the system is still running okay. Tomorrow morning it'll go in for the big surgery.

Dec 17, 2021#349

PatrThom

So glad you remembered to do that BEFORE the switch.

—Patrick

Dec 17, 2021#350

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
So glad you remembered to do that BEFORE the switch.

—Patrick

Not gonna get caught out like I did when I tried to install the nVME drive.

Plan is to bit by bit acquire higher-end parts to turn the current rig into yet another Gentoo box, and the 5800x system running on its own. GPU is the obvious flaw in the plan, of course.

Dec 18, 2021#351

DarkAudit

Surgery complete. Patient is doing well. XMP2 reenabled to get the full 3200MHz out of the RAM.

Dec 18, 2021#352

PatrThom

And your existing HSF is up to the task?

--Patrick

Dec 18, 2021#353

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
And your existing HSF is up to the task?

--Patrick

It should be. It's the MSI Core Frozr L. It did a great job when I OC'd the 2600, never really getting close to 80C in regular use. Granted, that is a 65W TDP part compared to 105W for the 5800X. But I have plenty of other fans and good ventilation.

Dec 18, 2021#354

DarkAudit

Multi-core Cinebench R23 score of 14929. With a CPU temp of ~89C. According to AMD, that's still within acceptable limits. The 5800X is the hottest runner of the Zen 3 CPUs.

Jan 24, 2023#355

GasBandit

Hey, tech minor victory thread, it's been a while.

I bought an EV.

Jan 24, 2023#356

drifter

Holy cow, I haven't read The Devil's Panties in... damn, it's probably been like a decade now. Nice to see she's still chugging along.

Mar 22, 2023#357

PatrThom

Finally bought an upgraded GPU (an ASROCK 6950 XT) for my new system to replace the ol' faithful RX 580 that I've been using for so long now. With the new monitor, that means my system upgrade is finally complete. Only took about 15mo to achieve it, and came in ~US$1250 over budget, pretty much entirely due to the GPU stupidity. It's no screamer, but it should be solid. If it were a car, it would be something like a 2015 Volvo XC70 diesel.

I know that, in another thread, I said that the only two GPUs worth getting right now were the RTX 4080 and the 7900 XTX, and I still stand by that recommendation. But I just can't justify throwing US$1200+ (or, to put it another way, 50% of the cost of the entire rest of the computer) at anybody's GPU right now, so instead I jumped on a top model from last generation's tech whose price has come down about a third since launch. As my overall goal for this system is good performance but prioritizing long-term stability, I will probably be underclocking it anyway (to reduce heat and strain) to the point where its performance will be closer to that of a 6900 XT.

Still gotta find the time to install the new GPU and monitor, though. Hopefully later tonight.

--Patrick

Apr 29, 2023#358

GasBandit

I'm getting fiber on wednesday! Woooo

Apr 30, 2023#359

Tinwhistler

GasBandit said:
I'm getting fiber on wednesday! Woooo

May 3, 2023#360

GasBandit

GasBandit said:
I'm getting fiber on wednesday! Woooo

It got pushed back to a day to be determined due to construction delays in the splicing! Boooo

May 3, 2023#361

Sparhawk

GasBandit said:
It got pushed back to a day to be determined due to construction delays in the splicing! Boooo

Hehehehehe, splicing delays.

May 5, 2023#362

ncts_dodge_man

Just installed a RAM upgrade for my laptop - went from 8 GB to 32 GB (maxed out what the MoBo supports).. Sitting with basics open went from 75-80% RAM to 20-25%. Will have to see how performance is when gaming and doing my Discord D&D/Roll20 gaming where I was hitting 95%-100% RAM, but should be better since there is more and won't have to rely on the Windows Cache as much.

May 5, 2023#363

PatrThom

Not to mention you won't have to swap to disk as much, too.
Don't be surprised if you still see a lot of RAM in use even after your upgrade. Windows will try to cache files in RAM rather than having to touch the disk as often, so it's entirely possible you'll see your RAM still be pretty full, it'll just be full of cache rather than your programs.

--Patrick

May 6, 2023#364

ncts_dodge_man

PatrThom said:
Not to mention you won't have to swap to disk as much, too.
Don't be surprised if you still see a lot of RAM in use even after your upgrade. Windows will try to cache files in RAM rather than having to touch the disk as often, so it's entirely possible you'll see your RAM still be pretty full, it'll just be full of cache rather than your programs.

--Patrick

Yeah - I'm not going to be surprised about that - it's expected behavior. I work with in the Virtual Desktop/End User Compute world (Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops/VMWare Horizon) and see that type of thing a lot. We have to statically set the Windows Cache size for 'gold image-booted' VMs - if you let Windows manage it, it eventually just fills the separate cache drive (that is also there for event logs/etc to remain after reboots), freezing and/or BSOD-ing the VM.

Other fun things from my IT world: recently worked on a ticket in to put some test machines to 3x production RAM for a voice app (not Teams) when audio compression is enabled in the app - their voice apps vendor's solution was "throw more RAM at it - it should work better" - not going to happen, but we have to prove that to the other vendor.

May 6, 2023#365

PatrThom

ncts_dodge_man said:
Other fun things from my IT world:

I recently helped a user migrate from an older machine with a 256GB drive to a new one with a 1TB drive. It kept complaining the migration couldn't be completed due to lack of space on the destination drive, and when I finally convinced the source to tally up how much data was being moved, it reported the source had 3.35PB of content (yes, I said PB). Turned out there was a Sims folder in the prefs that said it contained 120MB of files taking up 3.3PB on disk so we deleted that sucker and everything was fine. Also he says he has never played the Sims, so there was that mystery as well but whatever.

--Patrick

May 6, 2023#366

HCGLNS

Geocaching.com now supports actual browsers! I downloaded information to my Garmin eTrex 20 without using, =shudders= Windows Explorer.

May 7, 2023#367

ncts_dodge_man

I was able to play a PC game finally with the upgraded RAM and what an improvement. The game itself was able to use more RAM than I previously had installed (non-optimized game - 7 Days to Die) and while playing, I maxed out at 50% of installed RAM, without having to shut down anything else for the first time.

May 22, 2023#368

GasBandit

I got fiber.

Not quite a gigabit on speedtest, but it IS 5:45pm after all....

May 22, 2023#369

GasBandit

Well, it's a qualified success. I didn't realize until too late that this carrier uses CGNAT, which means if I want port forwarding I have to get a static IP. Port forwarding is very important for me, it's what lets things like the game servers I host and my plex server work outside my home network.

I put in a ticket to get one late last week, but apparently it takes 3-5 days to process. So I am back on the cable modem for a little while longer until that is ready to transition.

May 22, 2023#370

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
I got fiber.

Just in time, too!

MSN

—Patrick

May 22, 2023#371

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
MSN

—Patrick

20 gig sounds amazing... but to be honest, nothing I want to connect to right NOW can even do 1 gig. Even ftp from my seedbox gets me, at best, 45 mbit.

I think 1 gig up and down is plenty for me for a while.

Also, apparently this company found it cheaper to run fiber alllllll the way back to chicago instead of find a local backbone connection to buy space in. My cable modem typically gets 10 ms ping times to google, the fiber connection seems to get about 27. Which is acceptable.

May 22, 2023#372

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
if I want port forwarding I have to get a static IP.

Can’t you set up DynDNS?

—Patrick

May 22, 2023#373

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Can’t you set up DynDNS?

—Patrick

I already do. DNS resolution has nothing to do with it. The problem is CGNAT. This ISP does not put any of its DHCP customers on real, public IPs. They're all behind a router sharing one IP, even before it gets to their fiber modem.

If I want a real public IP, I have to pony up the extra 10 bucks a month to get a static IP, which I think is fair, really. The cost of this gig connection is stupid cheap.

Jun 3, 2023#374

GasBandit

Oh yeah, I guess I should update this - I have my static IP in place, and port forwarding is now working, and my transition to fiber has been otherwise seamless. Now I get to have the fun experience of trying to cancel my cable modem - a process they make notoriously unpleasant.

Jun 3, 2023#375

PatrThom

I found my Blu-ray player's remote this morning.
It's been missing since Feb 2022.
Now I can finally watch those Blu-rays I ordered in Mar 2022.

--Patrick

Jun 4, 2023#376

Frank

They're installing fiber up here as we speak. Be on a gigabit u/d before summer is out.

Jun 4, 2023#377

Tinwhistler

They've been installing fiber here for a couple of years. No telling when they'll get to my neighborhood.

Jun 5, 2023#378

Dave

Frank said:
They're installing fiber up here as we speak. Be on a gigabit u/d before summer is out.

They had to burn away some of the trees blocking their path first, apparently.

Jul 18, 2023#379

GasBandit

RAM finally got cheap enough again for me to decide to go ahead and keep this ol' gaming PC (originally built in December of 2013!!) limping along. For the low, low price of only 35 bucks, I now have 32 gigs of ram. Wasn't long ago that would have been like $150. Guess the supply crunch really IS coming to a close.

Granted, it's only DDR3, but I've yet to really find that a problem.

It would have been less, but I had to replace 4 4's with 4 8's. In the lifetime of this machine, it has gone from 8 to 16 and now 32 gigs of ram. It started off with a Radeon R9 270X and now I'm running (admittedly, an outdated) GTX 1060. It started out with an i5-4670 and now it's got an i7-4770k. About the only thing I haven't replaced is the system SSD, the power supply, and the motherboard. But that last one now has everything else at its limit. To upgrade further, I'd have to ditch the ol' Asus Z87-K. Which would mean new everything else. And given the state of Windows, I still think the right move is my next gaming PC will just be my Steam Deck on a dock.

Aug 3, 2023#380

GasBandit

I picked up a refurbished GTX 1080 TI for $350, which is what my 1060 3 gig cost new, and half the TI's initial MSRP.

It just snapped right in and booted right up and everything worked the first time and oh man does it look nice and I am scared to think how much techno-karma I just cashed in not having to struggle getting this to work all night.

Aug 3, 2023#381

PatrThom

What, you replaced a 1060. You probably didn't even have to change the drivers at all.
Also I bet Dave's diving looks extra sharp now on that 1080.

--Patrick

Aug 4, 2023#382

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
What, you replaced a 1060. You probably didn't even have to change the drivers at all.
Also I bet Dave's diving looks extra sharp now on that 1080.

--Patrick

There were lots of potential stumbling blocks along the way.

It was a refurbished 1080ti, so it could have been DOA. But it wasn't.
It was twice the length of the 1060, so I could have had case space issues. But I didn't.
It needed both an 8 pin and 6 pin PCI-E power hookup, the 1060 only needed a 6 pin. I could have been missing those power connectors. But I had them available.
One of my monitors had been using a DVI cable to the 1060. The 1080ti doesn't have DVI, just HDMI and DP. Luckily the monitor in question has an HDMI port too (the 1060 only had one HDMI port, the 1080 ti has 2). So I got lucky on monitor plug and cable config (had a spare HDMI lying around because of work)
Found out my CMOS battery is dead. So that was a slight inconvenience booting back up, having to re-enter my clocking and boot order settings. But I was able to remember them the first try.

Let me put it this way - when I went from 16gb to 32gb of ram - which didn't mean I had to change any drivers either - the damn thing wouldn't even POST for 5 attempts until I found the magic peripheral to unplug to get it to power up. This thing is officially 10 years old.

SO much could have gone wrong.

Aug 4, 2023#383

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
SO much could have gone wrong.

(I really have no room to talk, my previous machine that I replaced last year was from 2011)

--Patrick

Aug 4, 2023#384

GasBandit

Ironically, yes, my 2013 pc IS still better than a current gen console. But it is because I upgraded it over the years. This build with the current hardware probably would have been like $3500 back then. But I've spent way less.

Sep 29, 2023#385

GasBandit

I've noticed since the latest patch, my Plex server has had to do a lot less transcoding. Apparently HEVC support is much better done now! So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Transcoding was the only thing I was really worried about on that server. It's very CPU intensive. I've got 48 gigs of RAM and a gigabit of upstream bandwidth, but the ol' Xeon x5675 that came out 12 years ago would start to show the strain if 3 or 4 people were transcoding something at the same time. Now it's a non-issue!

So yeah, if anybody wants GasBanditFlix, send me a PM.

Sep 30, 2023#386

PatrThom

’Tis a crying shame those processors don’t support QSync or GPU offload.

—Patrick

Sep 30, 2023#387

GasBandit

I have accomplished 5 of the 8 miracles that needed to happen for my Programming exam to be ready to submit. I still have 2 weeks left til my deadline.

For the first time I feel like I might actually not go down in flames on this.

Sep 30, 2023#388

Bubble181

We're rooting for you.

Oct 6, 2023#389

GasBandit

... It's ready. I don't know if I'll pass, but at least I completed it. Submitting it today, 11 days ahead of my deadline (though the last day I would have to work on it before "real work" takes back over again on monday).

Re-reading the scope documentation, I see if they find problems they'll give me 30 more days to fix it.

I don't know if I'll pass first try (probably not), but man, I had serious doubts I'd even get this far.

Oct 6, 2023#390

PatrThom

Hot take: The entire time, it wasn't actually a test of your existing skills, it was crafted to spur you to independently acquire the required skills/training without any investment of effort on their part.

--Patrick

Oct 6, 2023#391

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Hot take: The entire time, it wasn't actually a test of your existing skills, it was crafted to spur you to independently acquire the required skills/training without any investment of effort on their part.

--Patrick

Oh even moreso, to even be eligible to take this exam required me to attend three separate very expensive week-long training sessions over the last few years.

They are making money off me (well, my company) HAND OVER FIST on this transaction.

You know, in addition to all the Crestron gear we're reselling for them as a dealer.

Oct 6, 2023#392

GasBandit

Got a response. They accepted my submission, and say I should hear back in 60-90 days.

Nothing like being kept in suspense, amirite?

But yeah, it feels like a long time, but to be fair, it took me 120 hours over 80 days to write, and it reads like the computer code equivalent of a mad priest's eldritch screed against God, so it's not unreasonable to need a similar amount of time to evaluate.

Oct 6, 2023#393

PatrThom

Here's hoping you don't have to nail it to your LinkedIn profile to get them to take you seriously.

--Patrick

Nov 3, 2023#394

PatrThom

Surveyed PC gamers say they STILL prefer Windows 10 and mid-range 1080p over high-end parts

The world's most popular PC is mild and affordable.

www.windowscentral.com

As one commenter put it: "America, the country of well-cared-for GTX 1080's"

--Patrick

Nov 3, 2023#395

Frank

I cannot see myself changing anytime soon. A 4090 is 2500 Canadian dollars and it still struggles to run new games at 4K 60 fps with all the new raytracing/pathtracing etc all relying on DLSS to get decent performance.

My ancient Ryzen and 2080 are doing just fine in the 1080p department. I even downgraded and sold my 1440p monitor many years ago because I hated the performance hit.

Nov 3, 2023#396

GasBandit

I'm loving my refurbed 1080ti. There has not been another card since the 10 series that I thought was worth snagging, especially not the way I felt I had to leap on the 1060 when it first came out.

Nov 4, 2023#397

Ravenpoe

Frank said:
I cannot see myself changing anytime soon. A 4090 is 2500 Canadian dollars and it still struggles to run new games at 4K 60 fps with all the new raytracing/pathtracing etc all relying on DLSS to get decent performance.

My ancient Ryzen and 2080 are doing just fine in the 1080p department. I even downgraded and sold my 1440p monitor many years ago because I hated the performance hit.

Game devs and GPU manufacturers have been focusing on things that most gamers really don't care about. You can see it in console development, where every new game that comes out reports itself as 4k raytracing super Fidelity that runs at a paltry 30fps, or relies on upscaling technologies that make everything look incredibly blurry, where most people who play games would prefer lower resolution and higher framerates.

Nov 4, 2023#398

PatrThom

Waiting for it to come out that the GPU mfrs have secretly been paying devs to keep adding more dancing bologna to their games in order to force gamers to keep upgrading.

--Patrick

Nov 4, 2023#399

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Waiting for it to come out that the GPU mfrs have secretly been paying devs to keep adding more dancing bologna to their games in order to force gamers to keep upgrading.

--Patrick

I am 100% certain this happened with Darktide. It's using the Vermintide 2 engine. It is at no level more graphically complex than Vermintide 2. And yet it needs windows 10 instead of 7 and way more GPU power.

Nov 4, 2023#400

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
I am 100% certain this happened with Darktide. It's using the Vermintide 2 engine. It is at no level more graphically complex than Vermintide 2. And yet it needs windows 10 instead of 7 and way more GPU power.

I can't find it at the moment, but I know I previously posted something like, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if the whole reason for games having increased system requirements wasn't because of the game/engine itself, but because it's required by the newest flavor of DRM that's been woven into it?"

--Patrick

Nov 4, 2023#401

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
I can't find it at the moment, but I know I previously posted something like, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if the whole reason for games having increased system requirements wasn't because of the game/engine itself, but because it's required by the newest flavor of DRM that's been woven into it?"

--Patrick

If a single FLOP from my *GPU* is being used to process DRM, I will see code monkeys flayed alive and hanging by their feet.

Nov 4, 2023#402

PatrThom

Wasn't there something about people working to create a completely separate VM that would reside in GPU VRAM and was suggested could do things just like what you describe?

--Patrick

Nov 4, 2023#403

Bubble181

Frank said:
My ancient Ryzen and 2080 are doing just fine in the 1080p department.

/cries in 760

Mar 6, 2024#404

PatrThom

In 2020 PatrThom said:
Last night I finally switched out my old router for that purpose-built PFSense box I've been talking about.

Today I finally switched from PFSense to OPNSense after the PFPeople announced in 2021 that they would be hamstringing the free version of their product. Yeah I know it took almost an extra year to finally do it, but whatever. It's almost the same thing, except for some very slight differences which meant we were without Internet an extra 90min while I looked up the new places to find the equivalent preferences I needed to change in order to get everything working and then back as close to my original intent as I wanted.
Now I just have to restring one wired connection to upgrade it from CAT5 to CAT6 so I can flip that line from 100 to 1000 speed without straining my NIC, but that means having to go crawl around in the basement rafters, so...maybe I'll get it done before another year goes by?

--Patrick

Apr 1, 2024#405

PatrThom

Just finished sorting through something like 2000 emails, deleted about 1500 of them.
Only 6000 more to go. Ugh.

--Patrick

Apr 7, 2024#406

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
I picked up a refurbished GTX 1080 TI for $350, which is what my 1060 3 gig cost new, and half the TI's initial MSRP.

It just snapped right in and booted right up and everything worked the first time and oh man does it look nice and I am scared to think how much techno-karma I just cashed in not having to struggle getting this to work all night.

(also @Dave to some extent)

--Patrick
(almost halfway through my email backlog, too)

Apr 7, 2024#407

Frank

Would be nice for Nvidia to produce actual good products like that again.

Apr 30, 2024#408

Ravenpoe

This Sunday I get my new 2gb fiber connection installed. I am hyped.

Jun 25, 2024#409

Ravenpoe

The laws of man do not apply to me, mwahaha

Sep 19, 2024#410

GasBandit

Hotchie Motchie that's a lot of cores.

Hotchie MOTCHIE that's a lot of RAM.

That's my new plex server.

And that's 12 of its 24 drive bays filled with 2tb hard drives.

My previous server was, hands down, the best $280 I ever spent, 6 years ago. But I've outgrown it. This should tide me over for a while.

Sep 19, 2024#411

PatrThom

Is it quieter than the last one?

--Patrick

Sep 19, 2024#412

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Is it quieter than the last one?

--Patrick

So far, a little. But nobody's really put the spurs to it yet.. TBD.

Sep 23, 2024#413

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Is it quieter than the last one?

--Patrick

GasBandit said:
So far, a little. But nobody's really put the spurs to it yet.. TBD.

Update - I accidentally pegged it at 100% for 10 minutes by running 50 instances of syncbackpro at once, each trying to do 105 profile backups at once.

Yes, it is much much quieter. I can barely tell it is on. It's maybe 1-3db louder than my desktop, which is SUPER quiet.

Oct 19, 2024#414

figmentPez

One of my small victories lately has been replacing the ear pads on my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones. They're over a dozen years old, and the covering started falling apart and exposing the foam inside. I replaced them with leather pads, and they feel so nice. I'm glad I spent a little bit extra.

I remember when I first bought these headphones; I was worried my dad would chew me out for spending $100 on headphones. I was fed up with spending $30 or $40 bucks on headphones, having them sound mediocre, and then fall apart in a year or two. Sometimes it's cheaper in the long run to buy quality.

Oct 19, 2024#415

Bubble181

Yes, that's known in echognomics as the Vimes Boots Theory

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