chris2021 wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:29:

Sadly I'm lost by the quote and the reply. No matter I'll just buy whatever suits me, knowing full well that breaking the bank for cutting edge hardware never makes any sense (unless you're loaded or your livelihood requires it). I don't shoot for bottom of the barrel, sometimes wind up there regardless 🤣. I just buy what makes the most sense for the money. I don't spend hours gaming, not even minutes these days. Ultimately a computer is supposed to enhance intellectual endeavor somehow. The vast majority of hw and sw out there serves to dumb the masses down more then anything else.

call me conspiracy theorist but governments love dumb people they are easier to control.

Just look at social media ...full of exceptionally dumb people, the horrible thing is the realisation that at least half of them are even more stupid and use Tik Tok.

Sorry when I said people will buy budget hardware instead of high end stuff that is much more collectable I was talking about vintage gear. Most people just don't care about the difference in performance as long as it gets the job done (playing their old games).

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:33:

chris2021 wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:29:

Sadly I'm lost by the quote and the reply. No matter I'll just buy whatever suits me, knowing full well that breaking the bank for cutting edge hardware never makes any sense (unless you're loaded or your livelihood requires it). I don't shoot for bottom of the barrel, sometimes wind up there regardless 🤣. I just buy what makes the most sense for the money. I don't spend hours gaming, not even minutes these days. Ultimately a computer is supposed to enhance intellectual endeavor somehow. The vast majority of hw and sw out there serves to dumb the masses down more then anything else.

call me conspiracy theorist but governments love dumb people they are easier to control.

Just look at social media ...full of exceptionally dumb people, the horrible thing is the realisation that at least half of them are even more stupid and use Tik Tok.

Governments AND Corporations like dumb people they can control. Heck, there's even individuals like that. My understanding is that it's hard to live and let live because it's so hard to teeter off into failure, but that's part of the challenge of life, and most people and organizations are incapable of rising to that challenge in a fair and proper way.

But on that same note, the "dumb" people are basically created by a mixture of peer-pressure, laziness, and a feeling of belonging to a group (ie "Brands").

Some other discussion I saw here was about how we all buy old computers because we want to play games. That's not always true, the truth about me, call me a bottom feeder - I don't care, is my technology ownership and usage has pretty much only been on old hardware. I've only owned ONE computer I built new, and even then, the CPU was 3-4 years old when I built it (Pentium D) - and still I spent less than $1000 ($800 actually) building that PC, with the biggest outlay being the video card (NVIDIA 8800GT) all for the purpose of a strong, reliable daily driver - and that one machine was more trouble than any crappy fourth hand Dell I've had ever since. Right now my main desktop is a 7 year old Xeon, my laptop, a 7 year old i5. Heck, I have a server from 2014 as well. outside of that $800 "gaming" PC I built in 2008, I've only spent, at most, about $100 building a fast, powerful machine out of everyone elses "old crap" they don't want, and been laughed at for it.

What do I use it for? Wiring diagrams, PCB design, recording/mixing/mastering music, recording/editing video, writing documents, some things involving my day job, Spreadsheets, modeling our finances, researching (that's a lot of it), paying the bills - and then maybe occasionally watching YouTube or playing a game (very rare). Every PC I've had has been like this since the original Creeping Net 1 (Flight 386 with a ZEOS 486 motherboard) in 2001. And I run it into the ground before I scrap/sell/part it out, usually getting 5-10 years a PC, on a PC that was already "obsolete" when I got it.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-01-27, 00:13:

Governments AND Corporations like dumb people they can control. Heck, there's even individuals like that. My understanding is […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:33:

chris2021 wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:29:

Sadly I'm lost by the quote and the reply. No matter I'll just buy whatever suits me, knowing full well that breaking the bank for cutting edge hardware never makes any sense (unless you're loaded or your livelihood requires it). I don't shoot for bottom of the barrel, sometimes wind up there regardless 🤣. I just buy what makes the most sense for the money. I don't spend hours gaming, not even minutes these days. Ultimately a computer is supposed to enhance intellectual endeavor somehow. The vast majority of hw and sw out there serves to dumb the masses down more then anything else.

call me conspiracy theorist but governments love dumb people they are easier to control.

Just look at social media ...full of exceptionally dumb people, the horrible thing is the realisation that at least half of them are even more stupid and use Tik Tok.

Governments AND Corporations like dumb people they can control. Heck, there's even individuals like that. My understanding is that it's hard to live and let live because it's so hard to teeter off into failure, but that's part of the challenge of life, and most people and organizations are incapable of rising to that challenge in a fair and proper way.

But on that same note, the "dumb" people are basically created by a mixture of peer-pressure, laziness, and a feeling of belonging to a group (ie "Brands").

Some other discussion I saw here was about how we all buy old computers because we want to play games. That's not always true, the truth about me, call me a bottom feeder - I don't care, is my technology ownership and usage has pretty much only been on old hardware. I've only owned ONE computer I built new, and even then, the CPU was 3-4 years old when I built it (Pentium D) - and still I spent less than $1000 ($800 actually) building that PC, with the biggest outlay being the video card (NVIDIA 8800GT) all for the purpose of a strong, reliable daily driver - and that one machine was more trouble than any crappy fourth hand Dell I've had ever since. Right now my main desktop is a 7 year old Xeon, my laptop, a 7 year old i5. Heck, I have a server from 2014 as well. outside of that $800 "gaming" PC I built in 2008, I've only spent, at most, about $100 building a fast, powerful machine out of everyone elses "old crap" they don't want, and been laughed at for it.

What do I use it for? Wiring diagrams, PCB design, recording/mixing/mastering music, recording/editing video, writing documents, some things involving my day job, Spreadsheets, modeling our finances, researching (that's a lot of it), paying the bills - and then maybe occasionally watching YouTube or playing a game (very rare). Every PC I've had has been like this since the original Creeping Net 1 (Flight 386 with a ZEOS 486 motherboard) in 2001. And I run it into the ground before I scrap/sell/part it out, usually getting 5-10 years a PC, on a PC that was already "obsolete" when I got it.

I only build my modern expensive PCs because they are going to pay for themselves, no way I would buy a 3080ti just for gaming. Otherwise I'm happy with my Core2 Quad machine and other older PCs and hardware, sometimes its for gaming like with the Quadzilla other times its because I want to try out stuff I never got the opportunity to do when it was current. Like using a sound tracker on my Amiga 1200 or messing around with ancient video capture on a Pentium MMX (Do not recommend).

I want to tackle a Velociraptor NAS next using an old 2600k and Adaptec 16 port sata raid card, I wouldn't say its super old but its far from current hardware tho the raid card would prefer PCIe3 it should work with PCIe2 otherwise its off to find an older raid card that supports SaS Sata.

Perhaps after that Ill try my hand at a NT 4.1 based file server using IDE raid.

Vintage PCs for me are not always about gaming.

Errius wrote on 2022-01-26, 07:06:

Is your computer newer than your car? It used to be you would switch computers every couple of years and switch car a couple of times a decade.

Yes ! 🤣 my car is a 2002 truck with 56k miles, have a company rig to drive for work purposes, so not many miles on it yet. My newest computer is a hybrid 2018/2019 home made model 😁

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-26, 12:56:

The whole P4 > Core 2 era is just a fun time, P4 covered a huge amount of time due to Intel taking their sweet ass time realisin […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote on 2022-01-26, 12:36:

Remember when some people said that 486 would never become retro? Because it's so mass-produced it's just cheap junk it's not in […]
Show full quote

chinny22 wrote on 2022-01-25, 12:30:

People said P4's would never become desirable yet more and more 478/775 builds are featuring here in recent years. "retro" XP b […]
Show full quote

People said P4's would never become desirable yet more and more 478/775 builds are featuring here in recent years.
"retro" XP builds are also becoming more common, which will flow onto the XP overkill builds

Give it enough time and even the current gen hardware will be "worth it" maybe not with us but I've no doubt the "kids of today" will become nostalgic of their computers just as we did 20 years later on.

This excludes crap budget hardware though. No one builds Celeron/Intel Graphics based PC's now, Can't see many people wanting to relive things line netbooks

Remember when some people said that 486 would never become retro? Because it's so mass-produced it's just cheap junk it's not interesting/it's boring/low quality.
You are absolutely right btw. P4 is a nice platform though. Perhaps not the best but it's definitely not completely boring 😜
There's at least 3 CPU sockets and at least 4 memory types to choose from (and at least 5 if DDR3 is included).

XP builds are fun 😀

And I still think some particular Celerons are definitely worth it, especially some of the P2/P3-era ones.

The whole P4 > Core 2 era is just a fun time, P4 covered a huge amount of time due to Intel taking their sweet ass time realising that Netburst was never going to hit the targets they wanted it to but it was around just long enough to see S775 and DDR3. I could shove a P4 Cedar Mill HT 661 in my Striker II extreme and it would work perfectly fine with hardware it by rights should have never seen. (IIRC the 661 was the last P4 released)

Such a fun time and the one era I enjoy greatly collecting parts for, I also love modding 771 Xeons and modding boards to take them.

A 300A celery is fun to OC the snot out of, even then it not powerful just a lot of fun, P3 Celerons are ok too, they are not nerfed to the point of uselessness that a lot of P4 Celerons are.

I have a soft spot for the 400MHz s370 Celeron because the system I build around this CPU is probably the retro PC I ended up using the most 😀
Celeron 800 is also alright, though of course a Coppermine running at the same speed has better performance with minimal disadvantages (I mean even cost shouldn't be much of a factor).
And of course there is also Tualeron which is basically something of a Coppermine running above 1000MHz at 100MHz FSB.
All of these along with the legendary first few Celerons on Slot 1 are nice in their own rights 😀

Pentium 4 was definitely interesting, even though I'm not a fan of netburst personally.
Northwood was alright actually but Willamette and Prescott (preshot or preshit, ha ha!) were not very stellar.
But even so, we are comparing Willamette to Tualatin and it's very easy to forget that Tualatin core was made using 130nm process while Willamette was made on 180nm.
When comparing Tualatin to Northwood (both using 130nm proces) the difference in performance and scaling become apparent.
Obviously the netburst legacy for the masses also includes PSUs predominantly using 12v making 5v mostly legacy and of course hyperthreading and some other improvements which were later inherited by the Core series of CPUs.
Intel really wanted to keep going with their netburst CPUs. In itself I always found Pentium 4 to have a ridiculous concept.
It went something like this:

We'll make the CPU dumber so we can clock it higher! Oh wait, the CPU is getting too hot? Wait we fix this by adding more latency to caches making the CPU even more dumber! Ha ha those stooped consumers will never know the difference they buy because they get pretty Intel sticker on front of case!
Now we crash AMD and make prescott! Oh it's too hot? No problem! We make CPU even more stooped so we can clock higher! We cannot clock higher? Oh fire all our engineers and we now make Core2 🤣

Well....maybe it didn't go quite literally like this but I'm fairly sure the message will get across 😜
But they did decide to make the CPU more dumb and hope that the brute increase in clock frequency could make up for the CPU basically having less IPC

creepingnet wrote on 2022-01-27, 00:13:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:33:

chris2021 wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:29:

Sadly I'm lost by the quote and the reply. No matter I'll just buy whatever suits me, knowing full well that breaking the bank for cutting edge hardware never makes any sense (unless you're loaded or your livelihood requires it). I don't shoot for bottom of the barrel, sometimes wind up there regardless 🤣. I just buy what makes the most sense for the money. I don't spend hours gaming, not even minutes these days. Ultimately a computer is supposed to enhance intellectual endeavor somehow. The vast majority of hw and sw out there serves to dumb the masses down more then anything else.

call me conspiracy theorist but governments love dumb people they are easier to control.

Just look at social media ...full of exceptionally dumb people, the horrible thing is the realisation that at least half of them are even more stupid and use Tik Tok.

Governments AND Corporations like dumb people they can control. Heck, there's even individuals like that. My understanding is that it's hard to live and let live because it's so hard to teeter off into failure, but that's part of the challenge of life, and most people and organizations are incapable of rising to that challenge in a fair and proper way.

But on that same note, the "dumb" people are basically created by a mixture of peer-pressure, laziness, and a feeling of belonging to a group (ie "Brands").

Yes, they do. Unfortunately.
I don't want to start being political here but I believe we (as a people) should be protected against such predatory mass mindmanipulation if only in the form of a well constructed democracy along with at the very least a solid educational system and good and fair opportunities for anyone.

Well, one can dream right?

Tetrium wrote on 2022-01-29, 00:41:

Yes, they do. Unfortunately. I don't want to start being political here but I believe we (as a people) should be protected again […]
Show full quote

creepingnet wrote on 2022-01-27, 00:13:

Governments AND Corporations like dumb people they can control. Heck, there's even individuals like that. My understanding is that it's hard to live and let live because it's so hard to teeter off into failure, but that's part of the challenge of life, and most people and organizations are incapable of rising to that challenge in a fair and proper way.

But on that same note, the "dumb" people are basically created by a mixture of peer-pressure, laziness, and a feeling of belonging to a group (ie "Brands").

Yes, they do. Unfortunately.
I don't want to start being political here but I believe we (as a people) should be protected against such predatory mass mindmanipulation if only in the form of a well constructed democracy along with at the very least a solid educational system and good and fair opportunities for anyone.

Well, one can dream right?

🤣, you sound like socialists. Next thing, you'll be demanding equal distribution of resources. From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs. (I'm not against hard workers and good producers having more, but who really need $millions per year?).

null

Far and away the largest problem is parenting. Kids tend to emulate their parents, not 100% of the time, for their good or harm. If daddy was an ignorant redneck chances are strong the kids are going to follow suit. And while I'm for a strong mandatory education, I'm nauseated by the attempts to indoctrinate kids with idiocy.

Tetrium wrote on 2022-01-29, 00:34:

I have a soft spot for the 400MHz s370 Celeron because the system I build around this CPU is probably the retro PC I ended up us […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-26, 12:56:

The whole P4 > Core 2 era is just a fun time, P4 covered a huge amount of time due to Intel taking their sweet ass time realisin […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote on 2022-01-26, 12:36:

Remember when some people said that 486 would never become retro? Because it's so mass-produced it's just cheap junk it's not in […]
Show full quote

Remember when some people said that 486 would never become retro? Because it's so mass-produced it's just cheap junk it's not interesting/it's boring/low quality.
You are absolutely right btw. P4 is a nice platform though. Perhaps not the best but it's definitely not completely boring 😜
There's at least 3 CPU sockets and at least 4 memory types to choose from (and at least 5 if DDR3 is included).

XP builds are fun 😀

And I still think some particular Celerons are definitely worth it, especially some of the P2/P3-era ones.

The whole P4 > Core 2 era is just a fun time, P4 covered a huge amount of time due to Intel taking their sweet ass time realising that Netburst was never going to hit the targets they wanted it to but it was around just long enough to see S775 and DDR3. I could shove a P4 Cedar Mill HT 661 in my Striker II extreme and it would work perfectly fine with hardware it by rights should have never seen. (IIRC the 661 was the last P4 released)

Such a fun time and the one era I enjoy greatly collecting parts for, I also love modding 771 Xeons and modding boards to take them.

A 300A celery is fun to OC the snot out of, even then it not powerful just a lot of fun, P3 Celerons are ok too, they are not nerfed to the point of uselessness that a lot of P4 Celerons are.

I have a soft spot for the 400MHz s370 Celeron because the system I build around this CPU is probably the retro PC I ended up using the most 😀
Celeron 800 is also alright, though of course a Coppermine running at the same speed has better performance with minimal disadvantages (I mean even cost shouldn't be much of a factor).
And of course there is also Tualeron which is basically something of a Coppermine running above 1000MHz at 100MHz FSB.
All of these along with the legendary first few Celerons on Slot 1 are nice in their own rights 😀

Pentium 4 was definitely interesting, even though I'm not a fan of netburst personally.
Northwood was alright actually but Willamette and Prescott (preshot or preshit, ha ha!) were not very stellar.
But even so, we are comparing Willamette to Tualatin and it's very easy to forget that Tualatin core was made using 130nm process while Willamette was made on 180nm.
When comparing Tualatin to Northwood (both using 130nm proces) the difference in performance and scaling become apparent.
Obviously the netburst legacy for the masses also includes PSUs predominantly using 12v making 5v mostly legacy and of course hyperthreading and some other improvements which were later inherited by the Core series of CPUs.
Intel really wanted to keep going with their netburst CPUs. In itself I always found Pentium 4 to have a ridiculous concept.
It went something like this:

We'll make the CPU dumber so we can clock it higher! Oh wait, the CPU is getting too hot? Wait we fix this by adding more latency to caches making the CPU even more dumber! Ha ha those stooped consumers will never know the difference they buy because they get pretty Intel sticker on front of case!
Now we crash AMD and make prescott! Oh it's too hot? No problem! We make CPU even more stooped so we can clock higher! We cannot clock higher? Oh fire all our engineers and we now make Core2 🤣

Well....maybe it didn't go quite literally like this but I'm fairly sure the message will get across 😜
But they did decide to make the CPU more dumb and hope that the brute increase in clock frequency could make up for the CPU basically having less IPC

Give Tualatin dual channel DDR and quad pump its bus and you almost have a core CPU .. which is exactly what Intel engineers were thinking when building the Enhanced Pentium-M which went on to become Core then Core2, Tually could run circles around early P4 until it got to memory scaling and bandwidth.

Perhaps its why I love Core2 along with P3 .. they both share DNA and have a really cool grandpa who just loved that shiny gold bling. (Pentium Pro CPUs sure are purty)