bjwil1991 wrote:

I have repaired an HP PSC 750's scanner head as the scanner stopped working back in 2006. Still works to this day.

That's a bit similar to the problem I had with my dad's paper sheet thingamajig. Except you have a scanner, and I have a printer. My printer is also from HP, it's an OfficeJet 4620 from 2011.

I had a weird dream I got some old HP LaserJet printer and someone was telling me the new ones are a scam... they're just the old ones with modern design.

I watch the morning news on PlutoTV app.

Today I went hardware shopping and build planning. I'm helping a friend build their MAME/Emu cabinet - namely the hardware side.

Since it'll be built with an LCD monitor for practicality, using HLSL was certainly a requirement. Other emulators are more GPU friendly, so we needed something not too expensive since cost is a factor in the build. There'll also likely be newer fighting games, so we don't want to go too old. The LCD will be using Freesync, so AMD was necessary. After seeing Phil's video on the AMD RX 470D, I was curious. $133 AUD on AliExpress? What a bargain. But of course, I was sure there was a better to be had.

I found one locally on Gumtree for $99 AUD, which is a nice saving. They are China-specific models though, so of course they had to be available in China.

In the end, I gave them the link and they bought one for $55 AUD on Taobao. Then I bought another one for myself.

Now with a lot of my unusued Retro hardware sold and the hardware I'm keeping packed in boxes for the most part, moving house on the horizon and free time due to winding up work as housing matters taking the forefront and a $50 GPU on the way, I thought about a little project to occupy my time so I don't go crazy.

I set myself a challenge - build a sub $500 AUD HTPC/Gaming PC that can actually do things. A modern (8th/9th gen) overclockable processor, 8GB 3000MHz RAM minimum. Z370/Z390 motherboard that is actually good at doing said overclocking. I have spare non-core components to make it possible. With $55 taken up by the GPU, I had a budget of around $450 for a CPU, Motherboard and RAM.

It looks like I'll be getting something similar to the following:

Intel i3-8350k (easy 5GHz) - $250.
Motherboard: Lots of options in the $140-$180 range thanks to eBay 20% off.
RAM: Best I can get with whatever is left.

I've reached out to a few people selling second hand boards and RAM to save some money there.

Either way, was a fun day hunting. Would rather have been playing with retro hardware but it's better packed and ready to move than having to pack it all at the last minute. 🤣

Another little upgrade for my dumpster-find Ideapad. A local computer shop randomly listed the best CPU that originally came in one of these for $20, so I bit.

^^ it's even one of the 1337 models, how could I say no?

Incidentally the only problem I've been having with this thing is the ambient light sensor fighting with KDE's screen brightness control and changing the brightness 'randomly' all the time, regardless of what I try to set it to. As far as I can tell, the ALS isn't software controlled at all and works via sending brightness-adjustment key presses, meaning there's no way to just deactivate it. So the 'sticker mod' up there will do until I open up the top panel again and physically disconnect it. I had to use this sticker for the extra bit of retro cred. 😉

Back to the hardware, it's literally 11 screws to get the CPU out, and it's in a socket. Try that on your 'ultrabook':

I decided to do a proper job with the thermal paste this time, as hopefully I won't need to be in there again for a while, so I burned through a bunch of isopropyl & q-tips cleaning old gunk off (the GPU too.) Somebody needs to tell Lenovo that this stuff is not cake frosting. Here's old vs new after cleaning them up:

Installed:

^^ I applied some Arctic Silver in a nice even surface spread to both dies + the GPU after this. BTW the dummy SD card cover makes a perfect thermal paste spreader.

...and up & running! I originally got a 'microcode not present' error, but updating to the last BIOS (which was NOT particularly easy to find! Lenovo seem to have expunged this model from their worldwide support site 😠 ) fixed that.

So yeah, super pleased with it again! The new CPU is a nice speed bump, although the mobile i3 and i5 are basically the same in this generation, so it just comes down to clock speed. The i5 has a higher base clock (2.66 GHz vs 2.13 GHz) and turbo boost. Both are rated 35W TDP. Haven't noticed it getting hotter at all, in fact my thermal paste tune-up may even have it running a bit cooler. Did a bunch of benchmarks with the GPU activated last night and it was rock solid.

Still planning a couple further upgrades: I want to swap out the mismatched RAM for two 4GB sticks and the 60GB HDD with a 320GB one I have lying around (which is going to involve re-installing the OS onto the SSD and possibly setting up a Win7 dual boot, which is why I haven't done it yet.) Still, pretty happy with this thing. Great little laptop.

Sending my name to mars....

My name is on its way to Mars now too. Thanks.

Stuffed an HP Elite 8200 CMT motherboard into my old Dell Dimension XPS T500 case.

Few things, one is you need at 6 pin to ATX adapter since these use proprietary power supplies. There is another little white plug that I had to rewire for it to work. Got that all sorted. But then it would give me "Front Panel USB/Audio not connected" at boot... jumpered those and that went away. But there's another one with Error 515 PSU fan not detected... you do this

Boots with no errors now!

Check out that FirePro V5800!

Installed my newly acquired ASUS TUF GeForce GTX 1660Ti video card in my main desktop PC and the graphics have improved significantly and I'm very happy with the results. Had to use a DisplayPort to DVI cable for my second display that I also bought. Now I can play modern games with the card, including Civilization. Cannot wait until the Halo Master Chief collection comes out on Steam.

Had a pretty kickass meeting today at work -- trying to spec out a new security system. Demo'd DNA Fusion and Pureactiv Video Analytics with deep learning neural network integration. Fairly impressive, and the live system demo appeared to work quite well. I have several more vendors' products to look at. Exciting stuff. This is going to be a fun 2-3 year project.

Found an i7 2600 + Intel mobo on eBay for $40 total, including taxes + shipping. It was said to not power on, which is true... the motherboard was dead. But the i7 2600 works perfectly so now my "retro" box has an i7 2600.

I've finished with my build.

Lian Li case of some kind
Asus x470 prime-pro
3700X
16GB 3600MHz RAM
Nvidia 1070ti (from my old PC)
Corsair H100i (from my old PC)
Patriot Viper 1TB NMVe m.2 SSD
WD Blue 512 SATA m.2 SSD

Upgrading from a Haswell PC.

Nice! Finally, a modern build without RGB everything

Oh come on! RGB is the best LED color lighting method most people have ever come across. If some people don't care for RGB, then I guess they'd hate my desk, which does have LED light strip that uses RGB. Or maybe they would like that kind of RGB lighting 😦

to each his own... does jack eichel have an RGB setup?

I don't even know who that is, so I dunno. But if I did know about him, then I'd say he probably doesn't have lighting that uses RGB...

Not a Sabres fan, eh?

Also installed NT4 Workstation in VMWare Workstation 15. Works great if you set it to VMWare 6.x compatibility.

You can read what I did today that had to do with modern tech activities here. I accidentally posted that comment in that thread instead of this one. I guess I was just tired and didn't see which thread I was posting in during the time I wrote it. My bad 😖

I just watched a Netflix documentary, “The Great Hack”. I am now officially scared.

oeuvre wrote:

Nice! Finally, a modern build without RGB everything

Ha, I grew up with an XP PC with 512mb of RAM from 2003 to 2006. Then I got a Vista laptop 1.7GHz single core and 1GB of RAM. This has given me a hatred of unnecessary start up apps and drivers. I hate how things like mice now have their own software package that runs at start up! You get a corsiar keyboard, Razer mouse, ASUS motherboard... three different start up control panel things! Then most people seem to leave steam, origin, uplay etc all starting at start up too *panics*

Outside of Windows features like defender and bluetooth, the only non windows applications this PC will have running in the background is Dropbox and Nvidia Control Panel. I have four taskbar icons 😁