pulled out the SFF c2d dell machine, replaced the CMOS battery, and got Lubuntu 22.04.1 LTS installed. Now technically I kinda see c2d as being borderline retro, but it's still possible to use for daily desktop usage if you have enough RAM and an SSD. This machine has neither. I intend to setup up nextcloud on it and use it to backup some data on. Nextcloud in theory only needs 128MiB of RAM but really likes having 512MiB of RAM. This machine only has 1GiB of RAM and combined with a mechanical drive is a slow desktop experience. I made it far enough to get nextcloud configured with an admin account and recommended default apps. What I want to do next is get it setup with a static IP so I can manage nextcloud from my main computer and make a normal account to store files under.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-11-09, 23:04:

retrogamerguy1997 wrote on 2022-11-09, 21:22:

I got a PCIe riser card that allows me to use an nvme m.2 drive on an older system that doesn't have it. I installed the card in daily driver along with an SSD and it works. Unfortunately my motherboard is too old to support booting from a pcie card. I tested this by directly passing through the drive in a KVM/QEMU vm and installing a linux OS directly to the drive. I checked the board's firmware settings to see if the drive showed up as bootable and it did not. Not that much of a surprise to be honest. I'm sure I can figure out what to really do with the drive, I just need to give it some thought. My current setup involved dual-booting windows and linux off a SATA SSD and I then also have a larger mechanical drive for things like games, movies, music, etc. (though I also have games installed on the SSD).

I have a similar setup for mine and my wife's X58 systems. We can't boot off the nvme drives so windows in on a Sata SSD. We use the nvme drives as game drives and the loading times are fantastic and windows 10 is super responsive on the Sata 6 SSD. I wish we could of booted from the PCI-E adapter but it's still a great setup for a games drive.

You might be able to boot off of an NVME drive if you a have a PCI NIC flashed with an NVME option ROM or you could append NVME functionality into the motherboard's main BIOS (a bit more involved and possibly risky).

NVME option ROM, a question for the ROM experts.

darry wrote on 2022-11-30, 05:00:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-11-09, 23:04:

retrogamerguy1997 wrote on 2022-11-09, 21:22:

I got a PCIe riser card that allows me to use an nvme m.2 drive on an older system that doesn't have it. I installed the card in daily driver along with an SSD and it works. Unfortunately my motherboard is too old to support booting from a pcie card. I tested this by directly passing through the drive in a KVM/QEMU vm and installing a linux OS directly to the drive. I checked the board's firmware settings to see if the drive showed up as bootable and it did not. Not that much of a surprise to be honest. I'm sure I can figure out what to really do with the drive, I just need to give it some thought. My current setup involved dual-booting windows and linux off a SATA SSD and I then also have a larger mechanical drive for things like games, movies, music, etc. (though I also have games installed on the SSD).

I have a similar setup for mine and my wife's X58 systems. We can't boot off the nvme drives so windows in on a Sata SSD. We use the nvme drives as game drives and the loading times are fantastic and windows 10 is super responsive on the Sata 6 SSD. I wish we could of booted from the PCI-E adapter but it's still a great setup for a games drive.

You might be able to boot off of an NVME drive if you a have a PCI NIC flashed with an NVME option ROM or you could append NVME functionality into the motherboard's main BIOS (a bit more involved and possibly risky).

NVME option ROM, a question for the ROM experts.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll have to look into that after the holidays when there's time. Thank you

Contacted Apple Support for the first time.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2022-12-01, 03:02:

Contacted Apple Support for the first time.

Hi Elon. Glad you got that drama with the app store sorted out!

Finished a backup of an old laptop hard drive that had Windows 8.1 on it. Next step is verifying the image and reinstalling with Mageia 8 as I've been meaning to get around to trying it as a former Mandriva user, and a small T2 SDE-made Linux install entirely as a blank slate for my GNOME 1.4 fork.

Both of which I will be installing via my new 16GB USB stick from Micro Center. I'll also be finally flashing a new ReactOS nightly onto another one to install on the Mebius.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-12-01, 05:32:

bjwil1991 wrote on 2022-12-01, 03:02:

Contacted Apple Support for the first time.

Hi Elon. Glad you got that drama with the app store sorted out!

It was for an iPad support.

I finally installed W10 on a SSD, in my Dell i7-3820 + GTX 690. I use it as a gaming machine only.
Things sped up drastically. I kept the W7 oinstallation.

Doom Eternal now runs on 1080p as minimum spec and I can't play it anymore; before it was 720p and it was low on details but fine.

Bethesda, I curse you!! 😀

I need a new video card but market is crazy.

I helped a friend install a new GPU he got on black friday.

Can we all rub your friend for good luck, seems he got the one single deal this year 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-12-01, 21:41:

Can we all rub your friend for good luck, seems he got the one single deal this year 🤣

The only card we could find a decent deal on was a 3060Ti, which should be fine for his 1080p gaming needs. We rebuilt his old i5 6th gen/750Ti machine earlier this year but held off on a GPU. He's been borrowing my old 1080Ti in the meantime.

wiibur wrote on 2022-12-01, 22:22:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-12-01, 21:41:

Can we all rub your friend for good luck, seems he got the one single deal this year 🤣

The only card we could find a decent deal on was a 3060Ti, which should be fine for his 1080p gaming needs. We rebuilt his old i5 6th gen/750Ti machine earlier this year but held off on a GPU. He's been borrowing my old 1080Ti in the meantime.

Nothing to sneeze at. The 3060Ti is equal to or better performance than the 2080 depending on the game. Great GPU for the price.

If only Microcenter has it that you can pay for it online and not in the store and monthly payments. I might get an RTX3060 to pair it with my Ryzen 5 2600X build once I swap boards again.

Updating Mageia on the road.

Someone I know gave me a bag of old and malfunctioning mice.
Used parts to repair old gaming mice that I had, usually had double click or bad scroll wheel.

Old stuff with new life. 😀

been working on an excel sheet for the last couple of weeks, adding all the games, magazines, and demo discs i own for basically no reason at all other than i like being organised. at some point i want to attempt to archive everything, such as creating copies of my games, ripping their soundtracks to my collection, scanning my magazines, and creating images of all the demo discs i have. may have already hit my first hurdle with system shock as i suspect a floppy disk is bad. oh well!

I'm plotting my next Linux desktop build with current/future hardware. It's gonna be Intel-only (CPU, GPU, WiFi/Bluetooth, and Ethernet), so I have to look high and low for a good full-Intel hardware offering, since most pre-built or budget Intel hardware has some Realtek or Broadcom network and Bluetooth in there.

I believe Intel also makes (or made?) SSDs, too, so that's something to add to the list.

lepidotós wrote on 2022-12-06, 21:04:

I believe Intel also makes (or made?) SSDs, too, so that's something to add to the list.

They sold their SSD business to Korea's SK Hynix. They were solid and competitive products, in the low-end and mid-range, but Intel was too focused on the high-capacity/high-cost Enterprise/Data Center market while other companies eventually boxed them in at all consumer market points with more appealing offerings, so the business was sold off once they became uncompetitive in their consumer products. For storage, I will continue to buy discounted Intel SSDs on clearance, as there are many of them in retail channels, but I won't use them for builds anymore. Samsung will be my go-to choice, as they offer excellent speed/capacity/cost choices in both M.2 and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-12-06, 19:25:

I'm plotting my next Linux desktop build with current/future hardware. It's gonna be Intel-only (CPU, GPU, WiFi/Bluetooth, and Ethernet), so I have to look high and low for a good full-Intel hardware offering, since most pre-built or budget Intel hardware has some Realtek or Broadcom network and Bluetooth in there.

My sub-100$ (in late 2019) DIY NAS mainboard :
Base Board Information
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI-CF

was both inexpensive and AMD based, yet it came with
07:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless-AC 9260 (rev 29)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)

It would be ironic if getting an Intel MB with Intel networking HW was more difficult than getting an AMD one with Intel networking HW .