xjas wrote:

Thin clients / cubes / netbooks / minis / etc. You know you love 'em. 😀

Right! But only if they are x86's.

I recently acquired this mini-PC: Foxconn Nettop nT-A3500 based on the AMD E-350. It has 4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. OS is Windows XP.

It runs Flatout 2 in HD without lag on my TV! Pretty neat for such a small thing.

Second, I have an Asus eee-PC 1000HE Netbook with Atom N280 1.66GHz, 2GB RAM and 32GB SSD. It served me well and it is still running fine, but I wish it also had an AMD E-350 inside, instead of that Atom CPU.

And last; In 2011 I build a PC in a lian-li PC-Q07 Mini-ITX case using an unbranded Mini-ITX board. It has a Core2 Duo T5600 (Mobile) 1.83GHz Processor and 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD. This thing was difficult to assemble, especially since it was the intention to use spare parts to build it. It still runs fine, but I had to remove the Radeon videocard because it did not cooperate with the mainboard somehow. Disappointing, since it took me effort to mechanically fit that card.

I have a 11" HP notebook with AMD E-450 CPU. Although I maxed it out with SSD and 8 GB of RAM, I was never quite happy with the performance. Browsing the modern Internet is a tedious experience.

Got a similar machine with 14" and E-300 CPU, that one I downgraded to XP and it's my "XP machine" if I ever need to test something special. Runs very well with XP on it.

Does my micro atx garage setup count? I normally would not consider is a "tiny pc", but it does have dual quad xeons.

^.^

I'm pretty sure I've posted pics of both of my tiny PCs in the "dumpster finds" thread, but here they are again.

Sony 10.1" netbook. Atom N470 - 1.83GHz. 2GB DDR2. 250GB HDD.

And a Dell Optiplex 780 USFF.
C2D E7500, upgraded with one of my spare E8600s.
4GB DDR3-1333, upgraded to 8GB
320GB HDD, upgraded to 256GB SSD

matze79 wrote:

Games on OSX ?
apple sucks much this days, they give a fuck on gamers..
Example, Spore is just bundled windows version with wine.

That's not Apple's fault, that's lazy game developers' fault.

matze79 wrote:

Or current opengl version on latest osx is outdated..
its not better then situation on linux.

There's a reason for that. In macOS, OpenGL is the central graphics foundation (just like GDI used to be in Windows):
Everything is running through OpenGL, not just games. Making bigger changes could render the whole OS to be unstable.
Hopefully this situation is getting better when that Metal API is finished.

OS X Graphics API's: OpenGL vs Metal vs Vulkan
http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum/index.php … showtopic=47801

Why OpenGL Updates Take Forever and Why Vulkan Might be Coming After All
http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum/index.php … showtopic=47806

luckybob wrote:

Does my micro atx garage setup count? I normally would not consider is a "tiny pc", but it does have dual quad xeons.

^.^

Dual Xeon and mAtx? That I'd like to see.

Jo22 wrote:

There's a reason for that. In macOS, OpenGL is the central graphics foundation (just like GDI used to be in Windows): Everything […]
Show full quote

matze79 wrote:

Or current opengl version on latest osx is outdated..
its not better then situation on linux.

There's a reason for that. In macOS, OpenGL is the central graphics foundation (just like GDI used to be in Windows):
Everything is running through OpenGL, not just games. Making bigger changes could render the whole OS to be unstable.
Hopefully this situation is getting better when that Metal API is finished.

OS X Graphics API's: OpenGL vs Metal vs Vulkan
http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum/index.php … showtopic=47801

Why OpenGL Updates Take Forever and Why Vulkan Might be Coming After All
http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum/index.php … showtopic=47806

I don't understand this. OpenGL is nothing more than a standard and is implemented by vendor drivers. This is suggesting that OSX has its own OpenGL driver independent of the vendors driver (its not software rendered is it ? 😵). If OpenGL functionality works in OSX its because the driver of your gfx is doing its thang.... unless it's an OSX software renderer 😵. Upgrades should be no problem at all since you just request the version you require when creating a GL context? Any delay will be vendors writing drivers for the newer OS's as they come out, rather than it being a fundamental part of OSX holding back progress. Unless my understanding here is wrong?

No games on OSX is because game developers in the realm of the apple only have iOS in their vocab. 🤣

As far as I can tell my g4-mini is an excellent gaming platform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fud5ugp3mdc

spiroyster wrote:

I don't understand this. OpenGL is nothing more than a standard and is implemented by vendor drivers. This is suggesting that OSX has its own OpenGL driver independent of the vendors driver (its not software rendered is it ? 😵). If OpenGL functionality works in OSX its because the driver of your gfx is doing its thang.... unless it's an OSX software renderer 😵. Upgrades should be no problem at all since you just request the version you require when creating a GL context? Any delay will be vendors writing drivers for the newer OS's as they come out, rather than it being a fundamental part of OSX holding back progress. Unless my understanding here is wrong?

It really is a bit strange, I admit. In OS X, the OpenGL "drivers" seem to be part of the OS (so no vendors drivers; they ship with it and are made/adapted by Apple).
So OpenGL gets updated about the same time when a new OS release is out (so OS X can take advantage of new features if needed).

This also means that the Mac's OpenGL implementation (its stack, so to say) is more tied to OS X and "unnecessary" features aren't implemented in the first place (they would require additional testing).
There are also third-party graphics drivers for the Mac Pro (from nVIDIA I think), but that's more of an oddity.

Normally, a new release of macOS also comes with drivers for the current hardware generation (and sometimes throws out older drivers for "unsupported" Mac models).
Of course it's also possible to install your own drivers (kernel extensions or KEXTs). Well, if you can get some.. 😉

"Upgrades should be no problem [..]" Perhaps not, I don't know. On Windows, OpenGL is something external and not a vital part of the OS (older versions even had an OpenGL to Direct3D wrapper).
On OS X, however, OpenGL is apparently used for the whole GUI handling (through higher level APIs). Errors during context creation/switching could crash the GUI or affect other APIs.

I don't know for sure how it works today, but on PowerPC platform graphics could also be displayed by the help of the "open firmware".
This even worked with old VGA cards that where otherwise incompatible with the Macintosh platform (I heard so).
So there must be some kind of software renderer, too..

Here's an article I found about the Mac's OpenGL interface.
If I do understand correctly, other APIs were built on top of that (Cocoa, etc.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_OpenGL

Jo22 wrote:

It really is a bit strange, I admit. In OS X, the OpenGL "drivers" seem to be part of the OS (so no vendors drivers; they ship […]
Show full quote

spiroyster wrote:

I don't understand this. OpenGL is nothing more than a standard and is implemented by vendor drivers. This is suggesting that OSX has its own OpenGL driver independent of the vendors driver (its not software rendered is it ? 😵). If OpenGL functionality works in OSX its because the driver of your gfx is doing its thang.... unless it's an OSX software renderer 😵. Upgrades should be no problem at all since you just request the version you require when creating a GL context? Any delay will be vendors writing drivers for the newer OS's as they come out, rather than it being a fundamental part of OSX holding back progress. Unless my understanding here is wrong?

It really is a bit strange, I admit. In OS X, the OpenGL "drivers" seem to be part of the OS (so no vendors drivers; they ship with it and are made/adapted by Apple).
So OpenGL gets updated about the same time when a new OS release is out (so OS X can take advantage of new features if needed).

This also means that the Mac's OpenGL implementation (its stack, so to say) is more tied to OS X and "unnecessary" features aren't implemented in the first place (they would require additional testing).
There are also third-party graphics drivers for the Mac Pro (from nVIDIA I think), but that's more of an oddity.

Normally, a new release of macOS also comes with drivers for the current hardware generation (and sometimes throws out older drivers for "unsupported" Mac models).
Of course it's also possible to install your own drivers (kernel extensions or KEXTs). Well, if you can get some.. 😉

"Upgrades should be no problem [..]" Perhaps not, I don't know. On Windows, OpenGL is something external and not a vital part of the OS (older versions even had an OpenGL to Direct3D wrapper).
On OS X, however, OpenGL is apparently used for the whole GUI handling (through higher level APIs). Errors during context creation/switching could crash the GUI or affect other APIs.

I don't know for sure how it works today, but on PowerPC platform graphics could also be displayed by the help of the "open firmware".
This even worked with old VGA cards that where otherwise incompatible with the Macintosh platform (I heard so).
So there must be some kind of software renderer, too..

Here's an article I found about the Mac's OpenGL interface.
If I do understand correctly, other APIs were built on top of that (Cocoa, etc.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_OpenGL

Thanks, yes that clears a few things up... ha! so they have their own miniGL driver! 🤣

I remember when they switched to GL (must have been approx 2004/5 or something like that?) iirc it was before the switch to x86 too. I was joking about the software render parts in my previous post, turns out it might be closer to reality than thought. Not much going on for Core Cocoa stuff other than rendering textures though I guess, wouldn't even cause CPU's to break much sweat. o.0.

So its a bit like MS deprecation/decapitation of OpenGL 1.2+ on windows. by default you get GL 1.2 supplied by MS windows, and have to explicitly (dynamically) search for extended GL capability. Apple just give you a later version by default, but again any extra performance or extendibility you have to check at run-time?

Makes me wonder about metal on OSX. I can understand the gains with PowerVR chips on iOS platforms since imagination provide literally 'direct to metal' drivers, but in order to squeeze anything else out of any desktop gfx more exposure to the underlying hardware is required (outside of compute GPGPU capabilities) and this would have to be drivers supplied by vendors? Is it a rewrite of the drivers supplied to them, their own optimisations applied to the API's which they supply as part of OSX Core... As you can probably tell, I have never done any Metal, and while I have done GL on OSX, now that I think of it, I have no idea which versions I was using at the time. It never crossed my mind 😵

Having said that, early tests of Metal seem to show little to no gains over GL (in some cases, apparently worse), so maybe some overheads incurred by the vendor supplied drivers, just cannot be overcome. I suspect Vulkan will blow it out of the water the more its implementations mature. And if and when they switch OSX Core to it, there may still be a ceiling on optimisations they can use being restricted by the Vulkan Api. Hmmm but if they get supplied the drivers by vendors perhaps they can rewrite accordingly to the architecture differences the hardware brings for Vulkan. No vendors are creating hardware specifically for 'Metal' are they?

How is the world of Metal? Is it still alive? Seemed like it oxidised har har har 🤣

I love this computer, pleased to have the opportunity to show it off.

Unisys CWD4001
AMD X5 133 @ 160Mhz
64mb of RAM
Sandisk Extreme IV 4gb CF
SoundBlaster AWE64 Value

Internal pic to show the neat CF adapter setup, a couple of standoffs to sit nicely on the original HDD mount. Floppy disconnected, SoundBlaster and ISA riser board are missing in this pic.

It simply sucks, i can't play 10.6 Games on 10.8..
Apple can do it better, for sure, but they give a fuck on customers.

matieo wrote:

I love this computer, pleased to have the opportunity to show it off. […]
Show full quote

I love this computer, pleased to have the opportunity to show it off.

Unisys CWD4001
AMD X5 133 @ 160Mhz
64mb of RAM
Sandisk Extreme IV 4gb CF
SoundBlaster AWE64 Value

[...]

Ooh, I like that a lot. Looks great stacked with the MT32 too. 😁 Is there enough room to stuff a SIMMConn on the AWE64 with it installed?

Unisys made a line of public school PCs where I grew up, they were slow as all get-out and not really well respected back then. I didn't know they made anything else until recently. Some of their x86 offerings look really neat; I'd definitely like to get my hands on one like that.

Does anyone have one of these? I don't, but it's been on my wish list for years:

That's an HP e-Vectra. My elementary school had one, and I've always regretted not rescuing it. It probably would have made a decent Windows 98 machine. It should support up to a Pentium III 1Ghz and 512MB of PC133 RAM.

They do turn up from time to time on eBay, but I've been holding out for a better deal.

xjas wrote:

matieo wrote:

I love this computer, pleased to have the opportunity to show it off. […]
Show full quote

I love this computer, pleased to have the opportunity to show it off.

Unisys CWD4001
AMD X5 133 @ 160Mhz
64mb of RAM
Sandisk Extreme IV 4gb CF
SoundBlaster AWE64 Value

[...]

Ooh, I like that a lot. Looks great stacked with the MT32 too. 😁 Is there enough room to stuff a SIMMConn on the AWE64 with it installed?

Unisys made a line of public school PCs where I grew up, they were slow as all get-out and not really well respected back then. I didn't know they made anything else until recently. Some of their x86 offerings look really neat; I'd definitely like to get my hands on one like that.

This one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys_ICON

gdjacobs wrote:

xjas wrote:

Unisys made a line of public school PCs where I grew up, they were slow as all get-out and not really well respected back then. I didn't know they made anything else until recently. Some of their x86 offerings look really neat; I'd definitely like to get my hands on one like that.

This one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys_ICON

Yeah those things! They were actually pretty advanced for the time - graphical networked UNIX terminals with storage handled by a central fileserver - but they were too slow and gimped by committee design to be any good for anything. I distinctly remember gritting my teeth through multi-minute load times and wondering how the C64 I had at home was faster reading from floppy. I didn't realize they were the genesis of QNX. I wonder if anyone still has a functioning network of the things with the server set up?

Edit: th

Some specs & info.