Bought and received Elitedesk 800 G3 mini 16GB and i3 in it, this one is vented top with copper heatsink which is for 65W CPU, also is replaceable up to i7-7700, which is to play with older windows and linux.

Cheers,

Finally got the Line6 HD500 guitar processor working in Linux (kinda' sorta - more like getting VirtualBox to talk to it right through a VM). Basically I use a Windows XP Virtual Machine designed specifically for the purpose of editing patches using the software from Line6. Most of it is like on a regular Windows system, except somehow the device is a little...uh...Janky to get connected using the installed drivers.

I originally tried Win2K but it's too "old" for that (at least, without some janky updates from a questionable website). Which is fine since I already have a WinXP x86 SP3 license anyhoo.

Currently writing a hard drive image I made with 86Box to a 540MB Laptop IDE HDD for my FMA7600 machines. Going to test the drive out on the one that has a clock battery and go from there.

Reporting Charter/Spectrum to the BBB because suddenly 3 months later in my new place they are trying to charge me $84.99 for Internet they cut off on July 12th per our request (when it was supposed to be shut off on the 19th).

I swear to dear fucking god American business has become a joke today. Between Apartment Complexes, ISPs, Tech Companies, and other things, our country is a goddamn joke! Not to go off on a major rant again but I swear to dear fucking god illiteracy has prevailed - Kurt Cobain's demos must be prophetic! That's why I've been making extra effort in my personal life to dump commercial OSes, get away from Big Tech outside of work, and just shut off "Corporate America" as much as I can in my personal life. Too much goddamn stress.

I feel that too. I even feel like most people are sitting back and letting it happen. I don't feel like this forum is the right place for me to go into a rant about that.

I guess I'm cleaning my modern computer today. It's getting a little loud. Maybe I should take this thing outside instead of just shooting a duster can into the CPU heatsink like I've been doing for the past five years.

I should also look up how to prevent Windows from updating my graphics driver. It "updated" to a four-year-old buggy driver, even though I had a much newer driver installed. Windows Update has always messed with my graphics drivers since XP. I still haven't decided to install Linux yet.

I am striving to have no more dealings ever with the major telecoms and cable cos in my area, because they're all doing shit like that. Ended service with one of them, then they secretly charged me for one element of service I used to have 3 months after the cutoff then sicced a collections agency on me. Beside that mysterious charges were always appearing, like "mistakes" are the new profit center, and I could never with any of them seem to get moved to a lower price package, it's like your $80 a month is our God given right and thou shalt pay eternally. I might have to go to war with current internet provider because I've tried moving to a faster package (that is now cheaper than my regular speed package) and it ain't taking. So next time I feel like being on the phone all damn week I gotta roast them.

I fixed my Xbox One controller. The 'R' Shoulder button hasn't worked properly since the controller took a tumble and landed square on the button. I was able to live with it up until now. However, for a problem this tiny, I did not want to spend another $60 for a new controller, nor buy a used one. I really like this controller, too; it fits great in the hand and is solidly constructed.

Anyway, the metal stand-off/bracket with the actuator button attached was just a bit wobbly, which translated into some button pressings not making proper contact. I bent it forward ever so slightly and then added a cotton swab head for support. I figured since I had it open, I might as well take care of the left side as insurance against a future drop; plus, the consistency of the button press matches the right, too.

All is OK (for) now.

I tried to add a second monitor, but I don't have the desk space. The second monitor is only a 17" 5:4 LCD that has been collecting dust since I got my Dell P2418D. It's still on the desk, but either it takes up my repair/testing area (and blocks the USB hub in the Dell monitor) or my drinks partially obstruct one of the monitors (even with the Dell's stand raised all the way up - it's a tall water bottle).

Installed win 10 pro on blank 1TB ssd on a Latitude 3350.

By the way, Latitude 3350 is no longer easily found on parts, was used to be easily found 2 years prior. Just move on to another HP newer notebook.

Cheers,

I updated the BIOS for a B650I Aorus Ultra. I had been holding out a few revisions before committing to the newly available DDR overclock speeds for Zen 4, plus I'm GPU-bound with the image quality with which I play games as it is. However, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition kept crashing my machine, and I figured it had something to do with the aggressive timings I had related to RAM. So, a few firmware revisions have been released, and it is now as good a time as any to upgrade. Problem solved. No more crashing.

DDR5 6200MHz --> 7400MHz with factory XMP timings. It's probably not worth the effort or unforeseen future instability to squeeze more out of the timings.

A couple weeks ago, I put that little 17" monitor on a random box to raise it up to the same height as the Dell 24". Eventually, I will either get a dual-monitor arm (both monitors have VESA mounts, unlike most modern consumer-grade monitors) or decide that the second monitor is too small, but the redneck monitor riser works.

I need to clean the switches in my mouse because mice don't last as long as they did 15 years ago. This one has "20 million cycle" switches. The only other mouse I have with what I consider reasonable DPI for modern stuff is a Cherry wireless mouse with poor tracking.

Other than that, my modern activities have just been dealing with computers at work. The Dell USB-C docks are the most flaky hardware I've seen in many years. You never know if one monitor or some random USB device (including the built-in Ethernet - it's USB) will stop working. There's even a fan inside the dock, and it gives random fan failure warnings. The workstation-class laptops use two USB C connectors at the same time for additional power, and the laptop will sometimes only recognize that one connector is plugged in. All of this can be "fixed" by undocking the laptop and plugging it back in, but that's only temporary, even if you don't move the laptop. The laptop itself (a Precision 7670) randomly goes unresponsive for a second or two while I'm using it, and that gets worse when running on battery. I think it's a combination of Dell screwing up the power settings and the Intel 12th-gen "latency" problem. It's really fast under load, even though it thermal throttles heavily (I've seen it hit 2.3GHz).

I see that my keyboard sometimes registers two spacebar presses when I only pressed it once. There's one more thing to fix.

I didn't want this to turn into a huge rant (especially about work stuff), but it did.

I discovered that a current piece of software (I use it regularly, but apparently not for 4 weeks) has stopped working on my Windows 10 box (instantly Not Responding...), so I've spent all day trying to fix it, now reinstalling Windows 10...

Is the software of dubious origin? For example from chinese? I ran into that same issue with one software that is tied with the chinese made IR camera I use at work for finding shorted component (for cell phone and console repair), stopped working even was not touched or altered on a notebook without net connection. I had to bring in another notebook from home with clean install of win 10 as well.

Cheers,

No, it's from a reputable Japanese company, it's something that's been around for many years and having reinstalled winodws (which took ages of course) I've now found that the software runs fine on another profile on the same PC - loads within seconds. But on my main profile it goes into a Not Responding state for several minutes, and then something evidently happens and it responds and runs. If I exit and restart the program, it does the same again - several minutes before it is usable. There is a smaller program that seems to be a part of it that gets loaded after that delay (called "fileconverter.exe").

On the profile where the software loads quickly I get a popup window at the start, about updates being available, but you can see that behind it the program has finished loading and has loaded the photos in the default folder (it's photo software). The fileconverter.exe program seems to be required to load the thumbnails.

So I think... maybe there's something timing out with the network checking for updates? I don't get the popup window on the slow profile.. I think... tried it so many times reinstalling different versions...I'd need to check again to be sure... If it was something like security software or firewall, the program wouldn't eventually run, it would be stopped or quarantined or whatever. And this is the only software I've noticed running slowly - though that could be because it's small and usually loads fast (unlike most other software) - but suggests it's not the profile is generally broken (if such things happen).

Okay, go back to basics. What's your computer specs that made it slow and erratic and also same thing describe another computer that works well?

Thanks for keeping with us.

Cheers,

The two profiles are on the same computer running on the same windows 10 install.

Edit: problem solved. Turned out the software was waiting for network I/O. I had a previous connection to an old Mac drive still showing in ThisPC, and when I deleted that the software ran fine. I wouldn't have connected to the Mac on the other profile.

I have a cheap android tablet with a problem like that, it's trying to connect with something on the developer's system all the damn time, but it's deep in the system and I can't dig it out. Don't think it's nefarious, just slapdash development that left loose ends. As a consequence the thing runs slow as crap and keeps crashing. Easy cure would have been a quick alternative firmware upgrade, but it uses a combo of cheap SOC that nothing else seems to use so it would probably leave it just as broken, if not more. Got old enough that it doesn't seem worth bothering with now. It might end up donating it's battery to something.

Will use a non retro computer to fill insurance papers after storm Ciaran made my neighbor's tree to fall on stuff in my garden

Updating Windows 11 ARM64 VM to see if the icon label shadow bug is gone...

acl wrote on 2023-11-02, 09:13:

Will use a non retro computer to fill insurance papers after storm Ciaran made my neighbor's tree to fall on stuff in my garden
Screenshot from 2023-11-02 10-09-49.png

Its been brutal so far. Sso many seem completely unprepared for this kind of thing. I had to take a 4 mile detour earlier today when one of the back roads I usually use was completely flooded.

At least the tree fell that way and not on the house...