[X] My Assistant

The raspberry pi is pretty good for emulator support for older systems. Its not really a general purpose computer though.

Raspbian is a truly awful OS, and a genuine disservice to the linux community.

Raspbian is a truly awful OS, and a genuine disservice to the linux community.

I could not agree more.
I dislike the Pis in general, though. Overhyped, underpowered, and generally boring and closed-off because Broadcom.

Just use a Wii for emulation. Or a PC.

For the price and performance I compare the Pi to things like the Mini-nes/min-snes/Mini-psx/mini-genesis.

if you don't want the form factor, then there are better cheaper options, like old dell computers.


edit:

Nvidia basically killed SLI, they are only going to support titles where developers build native support into the game... which is like eight directx 12 games and 2 additional Vulkan games... Most of the games are pretty ancient.

Normally implicit support would work but not as effectively/efficiently... I think there is virtually no reason to go SLI for gaming now unless you are retard. The main use case in the past was using two cheaper cards instead of the uber expensive card...

AMDs efforts were all over the place, sometimes good but then driver support would fall off after a year on older cards.

Implicit SLI/crossfire was supposed to be a Directx 12 showcase feature... dead.

This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Dec 2 2021, 23:58

I think the relationship between Windows and ARM is worse than I thought, and then HP goes and takes out a tablet (HP Elite Folio) which is crap you can't do much with. I suppose that Microsoft is not given that to innovate and give a good user experience

By the way, Snapdragon loves the idea of the Steam Deck, so much that he made his own, who knows if it will be a success but Qualcomm is pushing in many places

This post has been edited by RepStormy: Dec 3 2021, 02:14

For the price and performance I compare the Pi to things like the Mini-nes/min-snes/Mini-psx/mini-genesis.

if you don't want the form factor, then there are better cheaper options, like old dell computers.
edit:

Nvidia basically killed SLI, they are only going to support titles where developers build native support into the game... which is like eight directx 12 games and 2 additional Vulkan games... Most of the games are pretty ancient.

Normally implicit support would work but not as effectively/efficiently... I think there is virtually no reason to go SLI for gaming now unless you are retard. The main use case in the past was using two cheaper cards instead of the uber expensive card...

AMDs efforts were all over the place, sometimes good but then driver support would fall off after a year on older cards.

Implicit SLI/crossfire was supposed to be a Directx 12 showcase feature... dead.

Yeah, I have a motherboard that claims crossfire compatibility. Never used it, probably never will.
Multi-GPU is also apparently why that awful trash can mac pro case was designed the way it was. Doesn't excuse the lack of slots, though.

It's a shame it's dead.
It could be a cheaper way to get more VRAM for GPGPU as well - assuming crossfire/SLI allowed for addressing like that. Even if not, it's still a shame.

Also, they killed it when they decided not to support SLI/Crossfire on lower-end cards. If the 750 Ti or similar allowed for SLI you'd still see people using them for it.
The profitability of segmenting the market was too great for the concept to survive. So much easier to keep people buying the high margin products if you cripple the low margin ones that would benefit most from the feature.

This is all just the opinion I have formed, of course; if I'm totally wrong about something please correct me.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 3 2021, 02:42

As I understood it, the main issue that hampered Crossfire was that games have to be coded to properly take advantage of that. Even the big money titles stopped bothering with it. Optimization for just the GPU is hard enough- now it has to be optimized for dual and single GPU. I play mostly indie titles that aren't highly optimized to start with.

I suppose you could write off needing crossfire specific optimization as a failure in the drivers and cards to properly hande the workload- so the feature was half baked from the start and never got enough attention to be forth fully implementing.

It could be a cheaper way to get more VRAM for GPGPU as well - assuming crossfire/SLI allowed for addressing like that. Even if not, it's still a shame.

They killed that off ages ago. VRAM is one of their biggest marketing points. They charge a fortune for high amounts of VRAM.

Also, they killed it when they decided not to support SLI/Crossfire on lower-end cards. If the 750 Ti or similar allowed for SLI you'd still see people using them for it.

Well the 760 SLI was popular and many people chose that rather than going for the crazy expensive 780 ti (relatively speaking lol)

As I understood it, the main issue that hampered Crossfire was that games have to be coded to properly take advantage of that. the feature was half baked from the start and never got enough attention to be forth fully implementing.

For directx 12 they made it much easier for crossfire/sli to work but... its such a small amount of the market now as nvidia is the market leader and they really hate SLI that its only really used where the engine already supported it. Around the 1000 series AMD and Nvidia driver support was getting pretty good and the number of games supporting two cards was growing. Then the unreal engine dropped support and nvidia dropped support.

AMD is still putting out high end cards with two chips but its mainly benchmarking titles that still support it....

Intel is mainly aiming for lower end cards right now, but hopefully they're better about drivers than Nvidia are. It's irksome having one brand that works well on linux, and the other brand being a shitshow.

I really ought to get another UPS for my desktops. I have a big APC with secondary battery right now, but that just runs my modem/router/ATA.

I got one of those generic laptop ~19VDC chargers with the swappable power tips. Looks like the tip for Dell laptops has the stupid chip that the laptops require to not throttle your CPU built in. Maybe since it's in the tip rather than in the brick it won't die as randomly from EMI or whatever the hell it is that kills them (it's not the wire breaking in the cable, because I once (around 2014) took one out of a brick and soldered it directly to the laptop motherboard and it didn't work that way either).
I guess ESD could probably do it, too.

They're dumb 1-wire EEPROM's in TO-92 packages, basically. One of the worst things about old Dell laptops. I've had four or five different OEM chargers for those machines, and all but one of them died over a period of five years. The last one's frayed and will probably blow up any day now.

Would not surprise me in the slightest if this ends up being a better design than the OEM one. A nice thing about the older thinkpads with the barrel connectors is that while they can identify the reported "wattage" of a charger, they do it by detecting the resistance between the signal pin and ground, rather than with an IC in the charger. I've read that the newer rectangular connector chargers use the same mechanism as well, but I do not own one of those.

I wonder if IBM/Lenovo patented that design and that's why Dell did what they did, or if Dell were just being dicks? To me it doesn't feel like the kind of thing that should be patentable, but I've been wrong before.

Oh yeah this charger also cost about as much as an OEM dell 65W one, and this one is 90W so it actually works with the Dell docking station unlike the 65W unit. And by swapping a tip I can use it on pretty much all my other laptops, too.

The brick doesn't list what tips are for what systems on it, and it uses numerical codes for each tip, so I clipped the table off of the packaging and rubber cemented it onto the brick itself.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 3 2021, 21:04

For a while Dell had the best quality higher output power bricks but you had to mod them to work with other brands.

I had a high end laptop that supported overclocking.... but the supplied brick did not have overhead for power... so what was the point?

I think overclocking on laptops is just gamer marketing without real support most of the time. Like why get the unlocked intel laptop chips when most laptops don't support overclocking.

For a while Dell had the best quality higher output power bricks but you had to mod them to work with other brands.

I had a high end laptop that supported overclocking.... but the supplied brick did not have overhead for power... so what was the point?

I think overclocking on laptops is just gamer marketing without real support most of the time. Like why get the unlocked intel laptop chips when most laptops don't support overclocking.

I can overclock my pentium MMX laptop anytime I want, though :)

Modern training wheels and guard rails on hardware are so dumb. Good for profits, however.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 4 2021, 09:10

I can overclock my pentium MMX laptop anytime I want, though (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Modern training wheels and guard rails on hardware are so dumb. Good for profits, however.

Yes... though I have found some aspects of overclocking can be the as the past. Especially when you are trying to get more performance out of the heat / power / clock window.

I suppose the problem is they took away the easy gains and now you have to go into many sub settings.

Ryzen dram calculator and Ryzen hydra suite are pretty cool though but only for the newer processors.

Yes... though I have found some aspects of overclocking can be the as the past. Especially when you are trying to get more performance out of the heat / power / clock window.
I suppose the problem is they took away the easy gains and now you have to go into many sub settings.

I mainly meant things like multiplier locks on arbitrary CPU's to make you buy more expensive ones. Also motherboard chipsets that don't give you settings. And a lack of jumpers.

I just found someone on a forum who appears to just be me but about ten years older and from Venezuela.

tomman, on [helmet.kafuka.org] https://helmet.kafuka.org/bboard/thread.php...=5&from=940

• Uses seamonkey
• [helmet.kafuka.org] Calls mongoDB mongoloidDB (I found this post when searching the term)
• Wishes the web used basically anything besides Javascript
• Likes talking about old game consoles
• Despises systemd
• Thinks teslas are meme cars that don't actually solve the major issues of where electricity comes from and the plastics used in producing them
• Thinks the blockchain meme needs to burn in hell
• Thinks "smart TV's" are a prime example of what's wrong in the tech industry
• Really likes talking about old airplanes
• Just has strong opinions in general and rants about them constantly

Micro-Soft just cancelled April Fools:
[tech.slashdot.org] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/03/27/16...ools-day-pranks

Once again, I'm unsure of which side to take on this:

- April Fools is (mainly) a USA-only thing. In Latam we don't even celebrate our "innocents' day" (which is in December 28, as you already know) the way USAians do. Lately I've been finding most so-called April Fools jokes very tasteless, unfunny, irrelevant to anyone not living in USA, and generally annoying, so getting the whole day shitcanned is not a bad idea (I actually refrain from using the Internet that day: no Slashdot, no Google, no nada), if only to keep our sanity intact.

- But on the other side, getting MS turned into yet another NO FUN ALLOWED zone means the PC/SJW/thought police crowd wins: "someone could get offended!" is the codeword for CENSORSHIP. And you guys already know my strong stance against that shit. Seriously, software development is already a boring snorefest full of broken tools and moronic trends (hi Javascript!), and I miss the days where every decent piece of software came with a funny easter egg embedded (I never got to play Excel 95 Doom, sadly). The last thing we need is THIS.

Someone else on that thread mentions the only private torrent tracker i frequent.

Seems like a possibly interesting community, without looking at absolutely anything else. Actually, I think I was on this site (but not the forum) many years ago for some GBA rom hacking tools.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 7 2021, 06:34

Latest tech related thing I got was a vertical ergonomic mouse. It's been pretty useful, but I keep accidentally bumping the DPI switch and have to keep resetting that.

Was vaugely mulling over a low power 10th gen LGA1200 board, asus commercial type, to put in the box my 4th gen xeon box should be in, but I don't really need another machine so I likely won't. I do still have an E-350D board, but it's a bit potato. Wonder if it'd crash and burn with win7.

Blah, I need to wrap up projects, and ebay a pile of stuff I'm not gonna use.

I'm sure it's just because no one wants to take the time to do it since Oracle bought Sun and dropped it, but I appreciate that Openoffice/Libreoffice still don't use a ribbon UI (at least by default).

Side note: anyone know how I could make Libreoffice look like this? I miss it, but Apache's OpenOffice is aging pretty badly.
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/YgcGP2vg.png)

LibreOffice (GTK3):
[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/rAPpqLGg.png)

It looks slightly better if I don't use the GTK3 plugin, but still garbage compared to the old GTK2 version.
Not to mention the scroll bar arrows are missing.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Dec 7 2021, 22:15

Big tech is using mandatory two factor authentication to link people's profiles. It will be difficult to have anonymous emails or social media accounts. Google is also linking people's google id's across devices.

Yay. Thank you Tech overlords building dystopia.

It isreally frustrating to unlock a phone.