Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-04-14, 23:44

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does ripping music CDs onto my computer count as a retro activity? Now I decided to start ripping some more CDs and DVDs today. I guess it partially counts as retro because I'm using a laptop running Windows 7 and a USB optical drive because the internal drive failed. I can rip non-copy-protected …

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Re: 2024 - End of the era of Retro Computing Youtube channels?

Posted on 2024-04-13, 17:53

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

No offense, but something is wrong with your PC or your network somewhere. This is not the normal experience. YT should work fine on anything Core2Duo or higher. Are you using WiFi? What kind of router? Have you done a site survey? Yeah, I've realized that it's only one computer (and only one …

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Re: What Capacitor Value is this? (Ceramic Capacitor on 386 motherboard)

Posted on 2024-04-08, 02:16

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's 51pF. A 2-digit number on ceramic caps is the actual value in picofarads instead of some kind of code. The K probably means 5% tolerance.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-04-07, 22:56

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I went back to the HP laptop, and I fixed the audio by changing the graphics driver. I don't know how the graphics driver can make the Microsoft MIDI soft synth clip so hard that it sounds like a Metallica meme (and only through integrated audio), but it did. I used ChroMetal 4.5, and I haven't had …

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Re: Fascinating Article about cooling fan bearings, with teardown pictures...

Posted on 2024-04-07, 19:28

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was wondering what the Sunon vapo bearing was. It doesn't look any different from the standard sleeve bearing Sunon fan, but the writer didn't go too in-depth (looking for oil reservoirs or circulation channels). CUI fans looked like they were made by Sunon, but their construction is slightly …

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Re: What modern activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-04-07, 18:16

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

They take a while to install as well, but when you're still on 15Mbps DSL (which was 9Mbps last year), downloading anything is a problem.

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Re: What modern activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-04-07, 16:28

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

Why Win10 takes forever even on NVMEs? With my Internet connection, downloading the updates is what takes the most time, and it still takes much more time than updating Linux. I noticed that the progress indicator on cumulative updates goes to 100% when it's really about 50% complete, and the …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-03-31, 23:41

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally figured out what was wrong with the shitty HP laptop. I have a modern SSD in an IDE converter, and the converter uses a through-hole header for the IDE connector instead of a surface mount header like every 2.5" hard drive ever made. The through-hole pins scraped through the insulator …

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Re: 2024 - End of the era of Retro Computing Youtube channels?

Posted on 2024-03-30, 21:53

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

If anyone still cares, refreshing Firefox seemed to help with my YouTube playback problems for about two days. Then the problem of videos randomly skipping forward came back, and it's even worse than ever. I didn't find anything online besides people complaining of the same thing on their phones, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-03-25, 02:07

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Obligatory M747 chipset register twiddling thread: PCChips M747 / SiS 600 Tuning: The Anti Thesis Thread. NOT the bane of MY existence. I still don't know how stable it will be (probably terrible, but at least it will crash faster). That VRM looks sketchy (insert "MC34063, not even once" meme).

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2024-03-24, 22:45

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

I also bought an enclosure for the old Seagate drive to use it for backups, so people can still complain about my choice of hardware. Hard drive enclosures always feel cheap and shitty to me, so I picked the first one I saw with USB C (Vantec NST-371C31-BK). It would be nice if it's one of the few …

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Re: 2024 - End of the era of Retro Computing Youtube channels?

Posted on 2024-03-23, 23:47

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yeah, I just realized today that it's only my main computer. I have no idea what would cause it, though. Maybe I need to refresh Firefox or something. That laptop does still have the problem of quiet and horribly distorted audio (totally drowned out by Windows notification sounds, lots of crackle, …

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Re: 2024 - End of the era of Retro Computing Youtube channels?

Posted on 2024-03-23, 22:18

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

I guess the YouTube problems are just my desktop. I played a few videos on my laptop, and they played fine instead of playing for two seconds, restarting, playing for seven seconds, skipping forward 10 seconds, playing for a few minutes (possibly skipping forward more times), and then stopping and …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2024-03-23, 17:55

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

There is a company called Schiit Audio, but they don't make headphones.

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Re: 2024 - End of the era of Retro Computing Youtube channels?

Posted on 2024-03-23, 17:33

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

i'd never had that issue with Firefox and youtube. Opera seems to work fine too, as another option It happens on almost every video for me, especially the problem with videos skipping forward randomly (and by a random amount - usually 10 seconds, but it can be anywhere from 2 to 15 seconds). Is it …

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Re: Drive bay extinction in cases, PC chassis, accelerating ???

Posted on 2024-03-22, 15:25

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

Its the industries obsession in catering to gamers and their need for MOAR fans, MOAR rads space and unicorn puke RGB on everything, oh lets not forget tempered glass on all sides too..bleh, I dont see this ending anytime soon as it clearly sells cases. I want the external 5.25 and 3.5 drive bays, …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2024-03-21, 19:26

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

I should probably get new headphones, but I'm apparently strangely sensitive to certain flaws. Unfortunately, caring about sound quality in any way puts you into audiophile snob "it can't be good because it didn't cost enough" territory (where "budget" headphones are $500), so I still have no idea …

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Re: What modern activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-03-20, 17:46

by

by lti

in Milliways

in Milliways

Windows is nagging me to use the ad-supported New Outlook. I'm going to try whatever Linux distro is on one of the flash drives on my desk (probably Lubuntu 22.04 since that's the last one I installed on physical hardware). I'll have to check what's on that Sandisk Ultra Flair that gets too hot to …

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Re: Reviving Linksys WRT54GL - about pin header connections and related matters

Posted on 2024-03-19, 00:56

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I recognize that board. https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubleshooting-hardware-devices-and-electronics-theory/troubleshooting-designing-networks/35202-linksys-wrt54gl-v1-1-bad-capxon-caps From that thread, there's a chance that bad caps can damage the main ICs, but a good de-CapXon job might put it …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-03-18, 19:58

by

by lti

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have repasted several laptops. The thermal paste in these can degrade significantly with age. It might be as simple as that to fix. I don't think it's the thermal paste. The heatsink is really getting that hot. Strangely, the temperature doesn't increase much under load (if anything, it actually …

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