StriderTR wrote on 2025-08-30, 21:49:

Swapping out my original Ender 3 with a newer, faster, and the overall "better" Ender 3 V3 SE.

Got the V3 for my wife last year, but, she's not using it. So, it's mine now. She didn't like the manual filament swapping for color changes. Going to have to get her a multi-color unit.

My old Ender 3 served me well, have a ton of upgrades on it, but this V3 is so much nicer. Going to make my 3D printing life easier. 😀

* laughs in Creality K1C *

i didnt like how manual the ender 3 is, so i decided to make my life a little easier. (and then proceeded to make several mods because of course...why not?)

Living wrote on 2025-09-01, 15:49:

StriderTR wrote on 2025-08-30, 21:49:

Swapping out my original Ender 3 with a newer, faster, and the overall "better" Ender 3 V3 SE.

Got the V3 for my wife last year, but, she's not using it. So, it's mine now. She didn't like the manual filament swapping for color changes. Going to have to get her a multi-color unit.

My old Ender 3 served me well, have a ton of upgrades on it, but this V3 is so much nicer. Going to make my 3D printing life easier. 😀

* laughs in Creality K1C *

i didnt like how manual the ender 3 is, so i decided to make my life a little easier. (and then proceeded to make several mods because of course...why not?)

Heh, yeah. The Ender 3 is indeed very manual. 🤣

But, that's what I wanted to start with. I wanted to build the printer, set it up, and get a firm understanding of how they function before I really dove in and started spending money on the hobby. So, the original Ender 3 made sense. It's about as DIY as you can get. I'm glad I did. All standard 3D printers operate on the same basic principals, learning these from the ground up, along with all the troubleshooting, taught me a lot.

The Ender 3 V3 SE is much less manual. It does everything pretty much on its own. However, it's still missing two features I want. An auto filament change system for easier multi-color printing, and a higher print speed. While the V3 SE is much faster than the original Ender 3, it realistically tops out at about 180MMs, closer to 150MM on many prints.

So, I'm looking at buying a couple Flashforge AD5X 4-Color printers. I know people who use and love them. For my needs, they will work fine.

Why do I need 3 printers up and running? I'm starting up a little 3D printing shop to print common household items, outdoor items, decor, tool, and setting up a section dedicated to modern and retro computer accessories. 😀

ratfink wrote on 2025-08-31, 12:57:

Decided to cut my losses (time and mental headroom as well as money and space) and recycle my Ryzen 7 mobo/cpu/ram/gpu. Case has already gone along with its sticky rubber. Rest goes today.

Have moved to Windows 11 on a mini PC.

I'm feeling that too, except my Ryzen is six months old. I was not expecting this kind of power consumption, and now I've found reviews showing that a cheaper Core Ultra 5 245K is slightly faster than the 9700X while having lower power consumption outside of heavy all-core loads. Of course, those heavy all-core loads are the only thing anyone uses to determine "efficiency," so AMD gets better ratings. I just found a Guru3D review showing full system power consumption of 45W at idle with an RTX 4090, while I'm seeing 54W with integrated graphics. So far, that looks like an outlier, but maybe there's something preventing the chipset or a motherboard peripheral from idling down (the block of metal "chipset heatsink" gets so hot that I can only touch it for a few seconds, but none of the sensor readings show anything in that 55-60°C range).

The next question is what to get to replace it. I'm seeing some weird mixed power consumption measurements on Intel platforms (sometimes in my expected idle power consumption range of 20-25W and some matching my Ryzen), so I think I would go with a mini-PC with a mobile or embedded CPU. Then would I want to get a high-end model that can do everything or keep the big space heater Ryzen around to use when I need the extra performance? I was going to hand down my old i5-8500 to my parents since they're still on a 7th-gen CPU without the technical knowledge (my mom) or patience (my dad) to force-install Windows 11 or use Linux.

lti wrote on 2025-09-01, 19:02:

The next question is what to get to replace it... I think I would go with a mini-PC with a mobile or embedded CPU. Then would I want to get a high-end model that can do everything or keep the big space heater Ryzen around to use when I need the extra performance?

My Ryzen 7 had started to die anyway, and I then killed it completely through a serious of unfortunate events (lol).

For what it's worth I bought a GMKtec K8 (or K8 Plus in some descriptions) with 64gb ram, 1TB SSD, Ryzen 7 8845HS, 11 pre-installed. Apparently:

"AMD Radeon 780M 12 Cores Graphics Card; AMD RONA 3 graphics architecture; performance is almost close to that of a full NVIDIA GTX 1650 Ti"

and

"AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS features “Hawk Point” AI NPU, which increases the NPU's power by 6 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to 16 TOPS in the NPU. The new 2024 Ryzen AI chip is able to accelerate AI software capabilities in your PC to optimize AI workloads, improve AI processing efficiencies, and unlock exciting experiences like AI-powered noise cancellation."

I haven't tried any games yet, only photo software, but so far it's been a nice smooth experience for about £500. The top of the range Ryzen 9 models from the same company are twice that and more.

Thinking of getting a second mini-PC for linux (partly for Wine), but I can't work out what would be a sensible purchase, whether to try a different manufacturer etc.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-25, 06:58:

Playing around with Windows 11 LTSC IoT on my Ryzen 7 build. Seems to be working fine so far. No Recall/Copilot/whatever, no pre-installed bloatware, and no intrusive data collection, at least as far as I can tell. The only trace of AI that I can see is in the Edge browser, which I don't use.

I restored the Microsoft Store (it wasn't available by default) and then installed the Xbox App and Game Bar. So far, games seem to be working fine, but I still have more testing to do.

After some more testing, Win 11 LTSC seems to be quite capable with regards to gaming. The Xbox Wireless Adapter got recognized without a hitch, and my Series X controller works perfectly. I even managed to update its firmware over the wireless connection. And looking at Game Bar's features tab, it seems that DirectStorage is also working correctly, for whatever that's worth.

I haven't tested a whole lot of games yet, but FF7 Rebirth works fine, and that was released on PC in January of this year. Its predecessor FF7 Remake also runs great. Other than that, both Rise and Shadow of the Tomb Raider worked well, as did Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Not bad at all.

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-01-09, 05:26:

Apparently I killed my M4A785-M board somehow by letting it idle on the desktop with chrome open for like half an hour.... had my back turned to it, heard the fans ramp up, and screen was blanked, didn't respond, hammered keyboard, nothing... tapped power, shutdown... huh... touched sinks, cool... tried powering back on and it hits the LS-120, almost does a full seek and resets over and over. Wall power off, leave it sit 5 mins, plug it back in, same thing. Doesn't even seem long enough before it resets that it's wanting a bootblock recovery, and what the hell would suddenly wipe the bios, I think it's dual BIOS too. No smoke or smells either. Everything unplugged external but the monitor, still does it.. gah... too late for this crap, I guess I'll have to tear it down to minimum in the morning and see what it does. Anyway seems really bizarre it would just quit while idling like that, I know the CPU goes down to like 20W and the GPU below 5. Unless that fan ramp up was something suddenly demanding power, but I've had it balls out max consumption for hours to burnin/test before. Computers are stupid.

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-01-10, 02:45:

Had the dumb thing down to just GPU, RAM, CPU and it's still not doing anything, can't tell it's resetting or just catatonic now because monitor doesn't turn on quick enough. Had the battery out for a bit and put it back in, did nothing. I wouldn't have thought a dead battery would have gone like that, fine to boot it, run half an hour, in which case it would have warmed up a few degrees and picked up 0.1V maybe, then been too depleted to immediately restart... if it had been dead from cold I would have suspected it. Anyway, done all I can do without taking it to the bench and stripping it alllll the way down, testing diff RAM, CPU, GPU etc and the bench is occupied. Hope it's not that Sudden Asus Death Syndrome shit again (Where an Asus mysteriously dies, offers no clues/codes/beeps and is fix resistant.)

Edit: Jan 10th PM... I pulled more out of it, down to onboard gfx, one mem stick, no drives, still nothing.... though I realised it has changed behaviour.... it no longer shuts down on a long hold of the power button... I am sure I have the case speaker connected too and no beeps. Thinking last time I had a no shutdown thing on the button, the CPU was not seated right.... so maybe I need to reseat it, or maybe the socket is falling off.

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-01-11, 15:17:

Yeah, it's in a bad position to work on and the bench is buried in 2 other dismembered corpses, so I poke at it a bit, get pisse […]
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Yeah, it's in a bad position to work on and the bench is buried in 2 other dismembered corpses, so I poke at it a bit, get pissed off and stiff and leave it alone again before I klutz something or deliberately maim it. Otherwise as you say, thorough work up would take just a couple of hours. Think I gotta find the inspection mirror, as the PCI slot is too close to the bottom to see a POST card display. Though it was cycling quick enough before that I dunno if that will show anything useful yet. Is making me a bit unreasonably grumpy though, it's interrupting the "fun stuff to mess around with" by being a chore, and also because it was filling some tweener support roles, so I can't forget about it for a bit, because I go "I just need a file from.." "I just need to make a disk on.." AAAAARRRRGH stupid shitty shitbox that died for no sensible fricking reason. Yeah there's other ways to do that, got the files on other machines etc, but just from being the "go to" it keeps coming to mind and doesn't let me calm down about it 🤣

Evening Edit: Had another attempt... had CPU and RAM out, hosed with contact cleaner, pulled plugs, nothing. Checked batt, voltage was down under 3, fresh batt in case, no improvement/change. Noticed CPU fan pulsing a bit, that seems consistent with it resetting over and over though. Put a USB stick on it, no attempt to read, so it's not looking to bootblock recover. Realised case didn't have a speaker, the header plugs didn't include it, and put a speaker on, but no beeps anyway. Checked PSU voltages, all look good. Tried different RAM sticks different slots, nope. So it is seeming like it's gotta be a full bench workup, checking for clock to CPU and core voltages etc etc, all the nitty gritty, and fine tooth comb inspection for hairline cracks and dodgy solder. Great, practically another project. Maybe this PSU just sliiiightly too marginal for fussy board and it's flipping out on a real small voltage variation, but IDK. Also might suspect one or two of the "poly" caps, they haven't got the flattest flat tops, but they also ain't bulgy bulged, just real slightly convex.

However, cluttering up the bench is a FM2 board I was still investigating, mATX, so might divert efforts to that, see if that can be got going, then put that in that system, and go back to this stupid damn thing when I got more patience for Asus BS.

editII: it was this one if you are curious, appears to have more life in it than Asus at the moment. Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today though I just realised I can't hook the LS-120 to it, boooo.

edit yet again: so I am seeing similar models to this Asus board listed for parts/spares or repair with burned aux 12V sockets... like it's a common design flaw or cheap socket problem, so guess I better take a close look at that just in case.

edits that never stop: Fifth thoughts, it might get my DG965SS in it with a SLACR native floppy controller, PATA, better for purpose prolly.

Sun edit: I poked at the 4 pin aux ATX 12V again, actually seems a little wobbly, not sure if it's just the shell loose. Anyway, when I futz with that, the ability to turn off on the button comes back. Hanging the DVM on the 12V2 seems to see it waver a bit also. Maybe this PSU ain't so good either, reviews from way back say it might be a bit weak in the 12V department. Maybe I should try diff PSU... hard to get one close where it is tho...

Gotta rename this damn thing "Palpatine" I guess because somehow it just came back from the dead. It was still sitting as I left it due to getting absorbed by other tasks for months. However at some point I had unplugged the keyboard. I was going to move it, due to needing the space to work on something else that was mysteriously dead. Before I did so, I just tapped the power button and it woke up. Whaaaaat???? Tried to boot like nothing had happened. However, didn't have the KB plugged in to do anything on it, and also trying to get something else done.

Anyway, what is kinda interesting, is that I am not sure if I tried it with this keyboard unplugged... and whether I was always trying it with this keyboard. It is kind of interesting because if it IS this keyboard, it is the third individual model of Microsoft branded keyboard hardware to die badly enough that it prevented computer POSTing or powering up. Think this one is a multimedia internet KB, silver, slightly ergo. The previous fails were some PS/2 one, and one infrared wireless one that plugged into PS/2 and USB, that one was the dongle I guess rather than keyboard itself, but it must have had the kb smarts in it. I have only ever had one other KB do this and it was a questionable one I pulled from a scrap box in the mid 90s. But MS, three now this century.

I've been looking for a way to dim the home button light of the Xbox controller while using it on my PC. Turns out, someone on the Steam forums wrote a guide for that.

Worked great for me, and it helped a lot while gaming at night. Sharing it here in case someone else runs into the same issue.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-09, 14:08:

I've been looking for a way to dim the home button light of the Xbox controller ...

I tend to use a very simple, old-school, low-tech method for stuff like that.

I just use a piece of "black tape"... If it's a light that I want to see dimly, I either put a pinhole in it, or
a thin strip of paper partially under it (so it glows a bit at one edge)

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-09-11, 10:08:

I tend to use a very simple, old-school, low-tech method for stuff like that.

I just use a piece of "black tape"... If it's a light that I want to see dimly, I either put a pinhole in it, or
a thin strip of paper partially under it (so it glows a bit at one edge)

Heh, I've done that in the past as well, usually for speakers or monitors that have those obnoxiously bright blue LEDs.

But the thing with the Xbox controller is that the light also needlessly drains the battery, so I prefer to dim it as much as possible via software.

I'm about to replace my old synology with a full-blown proxmox server.

The case is not meant to hold additional 3.5" HDDs, but i printed a bracket to hold 2 drives inside. (The brackets are a bit rough, i still didn't have the printer fully configured. Mainly retraction length was too small.)

The synology is an old DS213+.
The machine isn't much newer, but a lot more capable:
Intel Core I7-4790
2x 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
256GB SATA SSD for system
2x XTB HDDs (i still have to aquire them)

First time playing around with proxmox. Got jellyfin working in a tiny container and sideloaded jellyfin to my older Tizen 3.0 Samsung TV successfully.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-09-11, 10:14:

... But the thing with the Xbox controller is that the light also needlessly drains the battery, so I prefer to dim it as much as possible via software.

Fair enough (and completely agree on the annoying bright blue indicators).. but .. even fairly bright LEDs don't draw that much and (for me) it's
almost never worth the effort to find a better solution (and when I do decide to do it, I'm not above just adding a resistor - no real effort to figure
out somebody elses design, and always works!

Just performed an upgrade on my main gaming / daily driver computer. I'd been using an Intel 8700k for years now, but it was long overdue for an upgrade. Plus, with Microsoft discontinuing Windows 10 support and needing to update the OS, I decided I might as well upgrade everything at once.

I went with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This is my first AMD build since the Athlon XP 2500+ way back in the early 2000's.

One of the things I'm excited about is finally having enough USB ports on my PC. The five ports on the back on my previous motherboard just wasn't cutting it.

I've been playing around with Nvidia's DLDSR to see if it could improve image quality when gaming on a 1080p screen. Results seem to vary a bit from game to game, but it generally does a decent job. It's especially nice that you can use this for older titles which don't natively support DLSS.

For example, I tried running Dishonored 2 at the 2880x1620 resolution (2.25x DLDSR), and I could see more texture detail on the clothing of certain characters. Not a huge difference, and it's not something that you would notice while playing, but you can easily see the improvements during in-engine cutscenes. Of course, this also helps with cleaning up jaggies and shimmering, since it's basically downsampling from a higher resolution.

As usual, the folks over at Digital Foundry have a video on this, which inspired me to do some testing of my own. Not bad so far.

I actually got access to code repo at work a while back. It does come in handy. So now there's another guy with ability to break things! 😁 Although I have fixed more things than I have broken so far and the latter were quickly put back in order. Despite reviewing changes million times, it still easily happens that something slips that you didn't mean to commit. And no fancy version control software helps with that entirely.

Playing with a new AI model, Seedream 4.0. Seeing how it handles pixel art. I kinda like it.

Edit: Added more images.

StriderTR wrote on Yesterday, 04:54:

Playing with a new AI model, Seedream 4.0. Seeing how it handles pixel art. I kinda like it.

Edit: Added more images.

they look more and more 'precise' compared to stuff from a year or two ago. Is it built from a base image, transformation rather than completely text prompted?