Jo22 wrote on 2021-07-17, 06:04:

Most people think that way by now, I guess. However, they all miss a flaw that's in the calculation. Electrical devices do age q […]
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zyzzle wrote on 2021-07-17, 03:51:

dr_st wrote on 2021-07-15, 20:23:

You can justify your habits in any way you want, but these alleged power costs are negligible. Try to find out how much an average PC consumes in sleep mode (hibernation is like power-off), and do the math.

Sure, I know it's a 'negligible' but I know there are 8760 hours in a year, and my power costs me 56 cents a kilowatt-hour. So, even one watt running continuously will cost me $5.00 in extra electric cost per year. Multiply that by 100 "wasted", negligible watts of an 'average' household who just leaves all their appliances in standby all the time, and you realize even sipping power is costing them $500+ per year in wasted costs. Little things multiply into big costs very quickly unless watched. That's how I look at it. Good stewardship is hard to accomplish when all of your electronics gadgets never really turn off. They're that way by design (BAD design), and so I have to use power-strips to make sure my TV, microwave, etc are really OFF at night, or when I'm away from the house, etc.

Most people think that way by now, I guess. However, they all miss a flaw that's in the calculation.
Electrical devices do age quickly if constantly switched on/off.

Figuratively speaking: Because of fluctuations in temperature, material fatigue happens.
The material expands, shrinks, expands.. ICs and other filigrane elements don't like that.

Imagine a wire that's constantly bend back and forth, it eventually breaks.
(Overvoltage, which happens during on/off switching is also a problem. See below. Kills diodes, transistors etc.)

Anyway, I told people many times about it. They simply ignore the matter.
Heck, even in schools they continue to teach that nonsense about power savings.

Another bad side effect of power-savings are the peaks on the power grids.
If millions/billions of devices switch on and off simultanously, then they cause a big burden on the power grids.

There are exceptions, of course. A CPU dies at some point if it overheats, for example.
So, say, a HALT instruction is useful to allow it making a pause.

However, reducing clock speed to a permant, safe level would be best.
In this respect, old computers from the 80s/early 90s did it better.

I understand the point with fatigue, but it might not be a big deal on the large picture...
An example would be old crt monitors without powersaving features, they get turned on and off a lot. I haven't had a single one break yet - knock on wood.
Another point being that you really don't want old electronics on while leaving home, additional risk of fire and so on.

As for the powergrids, fortunately not everyone turns on/off things at the same time.
The big industry cuts down on energy use in the evening so all the retro-users can go home and turn on their monitors 😀

Reducing clockspeed to a permanent "safe" level is bad for performance, you want to keep it running as fast as possible during the current circumstances.
Of course it introduces wear and tear, but on what scale? A cpu being worn out after just 20 years instead of 30?

Anders- wrote on 2021-07-17, 10:54:

I understand the point with fatigue, but it might not be a big deal on the large picture... An example would be old crt monitors […]
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Jo22 wrote on 2021-07-17, 06:04:

Most people think that way by now, I guess. However, they all miss a flaw that's in the calculation. Electrical devices do age q […]
Show full quote

zyzzle wrote on 2021-07-17, 03:51:

Sure, I know it's a 'negligible' but I know there are 8760 hours in a year, and my power costs me 56 cents a kilowatt-hour. So, even one watt running continuously will cost me $5.00 in extra electric cost per year. Multiply that by 100 "wasted", negligible watts of an 'average' household who just leaves all their appliances in standby all the time, and you realize even sipping power is costing them $500+ per year in wasted costs. Little things multiply into big costs very quickly unless watched. That's how I look at it. Good stewardship is hard to accomplish when all of your electronics gadgets never really turn off. They're that way by design (BAD design), and so I have to use power-strips to make sure my TV, microwave, etc are really OFF at night, or when I'm away from the house, etc.

Most people think that way by now, I guess. However, they all miss a flaw that's in the calculation.
Electrical devices do age quickly if constantly switched on/off.

Figuratively speaking: Because of fluctuations in temperature, material fatigue happens.
The material expands, shrinks, expands.. ICs and other filigrane elements don't like that.

Imagine a wire that's constantly bend back and forth, it eventually breaks.
(Overvoltage, which happens during on/off switching is also a problem. See below. Kills diodes, transistors etc.)

Anyway, I told people many times about it. They simply ignore the matter.
Heck, even in schools they continue to teach that nonsense about power savings.

Another bad side effect of power-savings are the peaks on the power grids.
If millions/billions of devices switch on and off simultanously, then they cause a big burden on the power grids.

There are exceptions, of course. A CPU dies at some point if it overheats, for example.
So, say, a HALT instruction is useful to allow it making a pause.

However, reducing clock speed to a permant, safe level would be best.
In this respect, old computers from the 80s/early 90s did it better.

I understand the point with fatigue, but it might not be a big deal on the large picture...
An example would be old crt monitors without powersaving features, they get turned on and off a lot. I haven't had a single one break yet - knock on wood.
Another point being that you really don't want old electronics on while leaving home, additional risk of fire and so on.

As for the powergrids, fortunately not everyone turns on/off things at the same time.
The big industry cuts down on energy use in the evening so all the retro-users can go home and turn on their monitors 😀

Reducing clockspeed to a permanent "safe" level is bad for performance, you want to keep it running as fast as possible during the current circumstances.
Of course it introduces wear and tear, but on what scale? A cpu being worn out after just 20 years instead of 30?

The mechanism in how a CRT ages out is different from how other components age out - in a CRT it's from the phosphors losing their potency over the years and havng to toss more voltages into the system to get an acceptable image, and from the actual capacitor electrolytics popping / spilling out and corroding the board that it resides upon. As far as I am concerned, CRTs are life limited consumable items, much like CCFL in old laptop LCD screens or plastics on chassis. There are tricks you can use to slow down the march of time but eventually, they will have to be serviced or replaced.

As for power grid demands doing down at night - that's not a universal case. In places like Quebec (Canada) where power is cheap and fossil fuel really isn't, the local homes use electrical heating and their peak electrical usage are actually at night time during winter (which is opposite of what is observed south of the border in the state of New York since they use NatGas or fuel oil) - they were fortunate in that 90%+ of their power comes from large hyrdo projects north of their major load centers. As for clocking back to save power, that's only practical for machines with that feature, and frankly, whatever power savings you put in will be instantly gobbled up by other components anyways - I mean, seriously, for a Socket A Barton you might save a few watts going to the XP-m variant and clocking it back using cpuspd or whatever, but if you park an nVidia Geforce FX5700 in there (because blah blah period correct blah blah those 15 games that require paletted textures in Win98 etc etc), whatever you are saving you are getting on the CPU you are giving right back on the GPU anyways (and the FX series are known for running hot). The situation is probably no better on those 40 year old 386/486 boxes, either. As for performance degradation? eeh, it's retrogaming...you are not exactly dealing with state-of-the-art, and half the time it was people not being able to clock their P3 Coppermines down enough to match a 386 anyways.

Wanna save power? See that power button there? USE IT SOMETIMES. Your desktop isn't a server it's not supposed to be kept on 24/7, and frankly, those 30+ year old capacitors all over your board has a limited shelf life, and it'll pop regardless of whether it is used daily, or if it's sitting in a sealed box at the back of a climate controlled room - it's just that some brands have more age resistant electrolytes and some don't. Turn it off, turn it on. Your time on this earth is limited and so is that beige box. If something breaks? Fix or replace - that's what it's designed for in the first place. It's not some sacred cow where the presence of a modern soldering iron will somehow profane it.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-07-18, 20:22:

Wanna save power? See that power button there? USE IT SOMETIMES. Your desktop isn't a server it's not supposed to be kept on 24/7, and frankly, those 30+ year old capacitors all over your board has a limited shelf life, and it'll pop regardless of whether it is used daily, or if it's sitting in a sealed box at the back of a climate controlled room - it's just that some brands have more age resistant electrolytes and some don't. Turn it off, turn it on. Your time on this earth is limited and so is that beige box. If something breaks? Fix or replace - that's what it's designed for in the first place. It's not some sacred cow where the presence of a modern soldering iron will somehow profane it.

For old, fragile irreplaceable components, I would agree, too many power on / off cycles is bad for the components and shortens the life.

However, in today's "planned obsolescence" world, where electricity is now very, very expensive it doesn't matter if, by turning my microwave off at the power strip shortens its life. It'll likely fail soon anyway, since the components used are cheap and meant to fail anyway. So, it consumes 5 watts being in standby all the time. Cutting the power saves me over $25 per year, and in 3-4 years I'll have saved enough in "wasted" standby power to replace the microwave anyway. My TV? It consumes something like 8 to 10 watts continuously in "standby." It will surely outlast the useful time before I've upgraded it to a 4k or 8k or ??? more fancy OLED model which consumes even *less* power. So, I turn it off at the powerstrip to save me $40 or $50 per year in "wasted" power. That money saved can help replace the (obsolete) set in 2-3 years when I'm going to upgrade it anyway. Who cares if metal fatigue / capacitance fatigue of turning on / off (only once or twice per *day*) would really shorten its life by a year or two! It's planned obsolescence by the manufacturers, we live in a throwaway society, and I'll save power whenever I can. Modern electronics are *meant* to fail by design, irregardless of whether I use a power strip to manually turn them completely off when I'm not using them.

From my personal observations changing the ON/OFF switch from ON to OFF saves a hell of a lot of electricity. But then again I am not a Rocket Scientist....😉

zyzzle wrote on 2021-07-19, 02:15:

My TV? It consumes something like 8 to 10 watts continuously in "standby."

Curious - what model is this, and where did you get this power-hungry monstrosity? (assuming you actually measured the power) My TV model is a decade and a half old and is rated for 90mW standby power. I looked at a table of random Samsung TV models from 2020, and they are all rated at 0.5W standby power.

I've had the experience that devices like it "smooth":

From the clean, ripple-free DC output of a power supply (transformers! yay!), over HDDs that aren't forced to power
to soft power on/off cycles, the picture was all similar.

Over the years, I noticed that devices which were left on permanently (TFTs, CRTs and LED lamps) did last longer, than the other devices.
(Summer heat excepted. If temperature was very high, things were shut down down, of course.)

Back in time, I heard, before the mid-90s, monitors and PCs were running not seldomly day and night.
Especially in offices or industrial places, both stable environments, the machines were never really shut down.
Interestingly, these systems lasted for years.

Of course, green monitors and amber monitors were rather receptive for burn-ins
on the screen mask, due to the phosphor.
However, esthetics aside, they still continued to function.
Gratefully, screen savers were invented soon to avoid burn-ins, also.

CCFLs are also sensitive to on/off cycles.
They age with every cycles, due to wear.
https://gblargg.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/ccfl … light-lifespan/

Their inverters are also prone to fail due to worn out electrolyte capacitors.
These caps can age due to exposure to heat sources or a changing in temperature.

Rechargeable batteries, like lithium-ion /lithium-polymer batteries,
do also age with their recharging cycles.
Recharging them not constantly, but only if necessary, say if they drop down to 20-40 percent,
makes them last longer.

Similarly, but differently, lead batteries last longer if they are "smoothly" recharged by an automatic charging circuit.
So-called "maintainers" (correct English term?) do provide a very low, thus "very soft" current that keeps the batteries in shape,
preventing a deep discharge.

Nowadays LED lamps are extra sensitive, due to their cheap design. This is shameful, because the LEDs inside are of good quality.
I've opened several of these lamps and noticed, that they do not contain a proper power supply.
Merely diodes, a few resistors. That's all. Not a single smoothing capacitors, at all.
Everything inside is exposed to the noise on the AC line, essentially.

One time, I killed one by switching on/off a electric heater in another room.
The power surge caused a peak that killed one of the rectifier diodes.
This was visible, even. The LED bulb became dimmer and started to slowly flicker not long thereafter.

Anyway, these are just my two cents. Each to his own. 😀

Where has my Dos gone?

Oh here it is:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-19, 18:46:

Where has my Dos gone?

Oh here it is:

My student's copy of OS/2 Warp came in a very similar box and dozens of floppies.. Oh the memories.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-07-19, 21:26:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-19, 18:46:

Where has my Dos gone?

Oh here it is:

My student's copy of OS/2 Warp came in a very similar box and dozens of floppies.. Oh the memories.

Kinda sorta like this one bro:

Nope, I have one of those it is the commercial box. The student version came in a box that looks like the other one, only IBM logo no OS/2 branding.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-19, 18:46:

Where has my Dos gone?

Oh here it is:

I've got an copy of PC DOS, too.. 🙂
But I don't know where it is.

That being said, I know where my DOS 9 handbook is. 😉
Here it is:

That copy of IBM PC Dos came bundled with an Acorn RiscPC x86 co-processor bundle. Prior to that it was DrDos. Older Archimedes systems had MS Dos 3.3x on floppy. They could be ran full screen or windowed.

Hi again! While I can't exactly say why DOS (MS-DOS) "died", I perhaps can at least narrow it down to when MS decided to give up on it.

It must have been between '93-'94 roughly.
Because, in November of 1992, MS still released a major product for MS-DOS: VBDOS.

Visual Basic for DOS 1.0 was not a predecessor of Visual Basic 1.0 (Win) ,
but was released after Visual Basic 2.0 (Win).

This leads me to the assumption that MS still had faith in MS-DOS at the time.
If MS hadn't, it wouldn't have had released a first class development system for DOS.

Jo22 wrote on Yesterday, 11:35:

Hi again! While I can't exactly say why DOS (MS-DOS) "died", I perhaps can at least narrow it down to when MS decided to give up […]
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Hi again! While I can't exactly say why DOS (MS-DOS) "died", I perhaps can at least narrow it down to when MS decided to give up on it.

It must have been between '93-'94 roughly.
Because, in November of 1992, MS still released a major product for MS-DOS: VBDOS.

Visual Basic for DOS 1.0 was not a predecessor of Visual Basic 1.0 (Win) ,
but was released after Visual Basic 2.0 (Win).

This leads me to the assumption that MS still had faith in MS-DOS at the time.
If MS hadn't, it wouldn't have had released a first class development system for DOS.

Or since MS-DOS 6 was a current product, and Microsoft had a major customer pay alot of money for the next version of BASIC for DOS... after all, DOS software was definitely still being written, and BASIC was kind of the go to language for Microsoft customers for some time to come.

So probably died after '95, in practical terms.

the3dfxdude wrote on Today, 00:47:

Jo22 wrote on Yesterday, 11:35:

Hi again! While I can't exactly say why DOS (MS-DOS) "died", I perhaps can at least narrow it down to when MS decided to give up […]
Show full quote

Hi again! While I can't exactly say why DOS (MS-DOS) "died", I perhaps can at least narrow it down to when MS decided to give up on it.

It must have been between '93-'94 roughly.
Because, in November of 1992, MS still released a major product for MS-DOS: VBDOS.

Visual Basic for DOS 1.0 was not a predecessor of Visual Basic 1.0 (Win) ,
but was released after Visual Basic 2.0 (Win).

This leads me to the assumption that MS still had faith in MS-DOS at the time.
If MS hadn't, it wouldn't have had released a first class development system for DOS.

Or since MS-DOS 6 was a current product, and Microsoft had a major customer pay alot of money for the next version of BASIC for DOS... after all, DOS software was definitely still being written, and BASIC was kind of the go to language for Microsoft customers for some time to come.

So probably died after '95, in practical terms.

Billy boy sent a nice letter to the computer hobbists pn the '80s. http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html

Actually that's from the 70's.

I agree with the mainstream life of DOS being dead in 95'. It seems that around that time, at least when I was there - that suddenly all companies dropped support on DOS products except anything grandfathered in by existing previously. Windows 95 was sort of like an Atom Bomb, and things like FreeDOS were the ones who ran to the bunker and survived the fallout, and now living in our desert metropolis of retro-users. It was like "and just like that, were 100% Windows". Every new game needed DirectX to run, every new piece of software needed a 486 DX CPU and Windows 95 to run. Sure, there may have been a few stragglers here and there that held out for a little longer, but by 96', the face of the industry was 100% Windows "DOS is Dead" and no more new things for DOS were being made save for some outliers here and there.

To me it's no longer dead because there's so bloody many of us up here working with it now, even if the majority of it -75%-95% - is for playing old DOS Games. It's growing into it's own form of retro-platform much like the Atari 2600 or NES have become desirable again, but unlike dedicated hardware, it's cheaper, more accessible, and usable on a virtual machine. Sheesh, even FreeDOS's creator does YouTube videos now. DOS is like the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidtt in a way, 🤣.