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Bless and Curse of Atari and Amiga computer designs


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On 11/2/2021 at 3:16 AM, TGB1718 said:

Point in fact :- Window 11 :( won't run on probably 90+% of current PC's

 

You've gotta love Micro$oft ☠️

Since Win 10 noticed me few weeks ago that should run SW, what will test my PC for Win 11 compatibility. Instead it, I looked requirements at M$ site, and motherboard site about Win 11 compat. of their products.

And no, mine is not compatible. Because missing EFDI and some security thing in BIOS. Otherwise it is fast enough (8x faster than min spec), 3x more RAM ... And no BIOS support for mentioned, so can not use it. Not that it made me sad. I was rather curious. Latest BIOS update is from 2017, so it is clear that will be no newer.  And who's interest it is rather ? M$ or MBO manufacturer ? In this case M$ is who loses, MBO mf. is who may gain - if user decides to get new, compatible motherboard (but it will need new RAM (why on Earth it is cheaper than older type (DDR3) ? ) , new CPU ...   Btw. I saw hacked BIOS for my MBO - but will not bother with it and 11.

In 2016 it appeared that not much old video card has no driver for Win 10. They just did not make it. There was built in driver in Win 10 for, but missing some settings.  Yeah, motivation to buy new one.

So, HW manufacturers are to blame too, actually probably more. And what about decreasing environment pollution ?

 

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1 hour ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

And what about decreasing environment pollution ?

Exactly, not very green, if you look at the requirements there are restrictions on the CPU type too, not just speed, some

security stuff in the CPU and BIOS.

 

My PC happily play lots of online games, it plenty fast enough, so why would I want to spend £500-£600 to upgrade.

 

Apparently you can install Windows 11 on older PC's but Micro$oft will not provide any updates of any kind. Typical!!!

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1 hour ago, TGB1718 said:

Exactly, not very green, if you look at the requirements there are restrictions on the CPU type too, not just speed, some

security stuff in the CPU and BIOS.

 

My PC happily play lots of online games, it plenty fast enough, so why would I want to spend £500-£600 to upgrade.

 

Apparently you can install Windows 11 on older PC's but Micro$oft will not provide any updates of any kind. Typical!!!

It's seems all about preventing piracy of the OS, under the guise of "security". But also, it's Microsoft and whoever "partners" with them digging their tentacles into your "device" so they can uniquely ID you.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Windows has now, like a virus, mutated from Win 8 to Win 10 2016 upgrade to Win 10 2020 upgrade and soon to the Win 11 upgrade.

Trouble is these machines all have severe Windows Rot, Windows is a real mess. You need to do clean installs but they are not 'free'. I can start playing Sword of Sodan on my Amiga quicker from a cold boot using just the internal drive than the Windows 10 desktop takes to appear....and then takes another five minutes to stop hammering the hard drive with useless tasks.             

 

People in the media act as if there is no problem, Windows was ALWAYS a problem and this is an idea that only works for well programmed OS designs, like TriPOS unlike Windows POS.

 

(my backup identical PC which has been spared these stupid updates but has an identical install of apps and utilities for my YT channel and personal use boots up 400% faster and takes a lot longer to run out of memory doing video editing)

 

 

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17 hours ago, oky2000 said:

I can start playing Sword of Sodan on my Amiga quicker from a cold boot using just the internal drive than the Windows 10 desktop takes to appear....and then takes another five minutes to stop hammering the hard drive with useless tasks. 

I can remember some years ago, getting into work, turn on PC, then go get a coffee and come back

10 minutes later and if your lucky it's ready to use  

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My experiences are different about boot times in later years. It was Win 7 where 'disk hammering' was noticeable, and where SSD made process significantly faster. 8.1 was much better in it, and boot was fast with mechanical hard disks too - of course until some usage time, and accumulated trash SW slowing it.

Same for Win 10 - no hammering, pretty fast boot times with or without SSD.

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56 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

It was Win 7 where 'disk hammering' was noticeable, and where SSD made process significantly faster.

My old work laptop had a traditional hard drive and yes, it got hammered while booting and took forever, when I

left, they said I could keep the laptop, it was so slow, I hardly ever used it, then my grandson started University

and asked if I had an old laptop, so I put an SSD in the thing and Windows 8, the thing now fly's, it's amazing this

old thing boots as fast a new laptop, he loves it :)

  

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SSDs are near ideal for boot/OS drives. Yes.

 

Loading all kinds of OS modules and parts and swapping memory is as old as IBM themselves. Came about in the mid-1900's with the advent of the hard disk.

 

I've managed to keep my XP boot times under 30 seconds for the past 15-20 years by using file-placement optimization from Disktrix. Minimizes head movement and improves upon layout.ini. While 30 seconds isn't anything to brag about by any means, it was good for the time. And remains good for the old hardware today.

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On 12/14/2021 at 12:46 PM, TGB1718 said:

I can remember some years ago, getting into work, turn on PC, then go get a coffee and come back

10 minutes later and if your lucky it's ready to use  

As a service manager, the only one, for a massively international IT dept for one of the largest re-insurance companies in the world I can tell you Windows 95 was a massive clusterfuck, GDI resource leak was pathetic and inferior to Kickstart 1.1 bootdisk I had at home on an hour by hour basis. Any dept needing remotely media rich apps got OS/2 Warp thank god (overpriced at 150 quid for home users mind). The only thing MS ever got right in the 90s was the lawyers chosen to prevent them being made bankrupt for selling commercial products 'not of merchantable quality' and therefore liable to damages to all businesses.

 

Windows 10 2020 update is a joke, and a raping of my consumer rights not to have their untested flaky rubbish overwrite the slightly less flaky shit that came with my PC. Forced updates are a dumb idea, not ever PC user is a clueless moron. Google Chrome developers I think have been copying the shit ideas of Windows Kernal coders too as that bloatware browser also no spawns tasks of unrelated isolated apps from within itself so you get two pieces of shitty code causing a constant creeping up of memory used so you need to reboot (killing explorer/chrome doesn't restore all memory lost) so it is exactly like the Win 95/98 years where if you do any kind of multimedia heavy shit you need to reboot for Windows to start working properly again.

 

(yes I know Linux and Mac OS are not great either for someone using cutting edge technology since 1985 in the OS arena).

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On 12/14/2021 at 2:25 PM, TGB1718 said:

My old work laptop had a traditional hard drive and yes, it got hammered while booting and took forever, when I

left, they said I could keep the laptop, it was so slow, I hardly ever used it, then my grandson started University

and asked if I had an old laptop, so I put an SSD in the thing and Windows 8, the thing now fly's, it's amazing this

old thing boots as fast a new laptop, he loves it :)

  

Did you install or upgrade to Windows 8?

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I agree about forced updates of Win 10. That was very annoying especially in 2016. They added some delay, scheduling options in meantime. Still, this looks pretty much as using people's computers as testing platforms.

I don't know when exactly delay options were added - I used 7, 8.1 in meantime, after 10 crashed in 2016. And I installed it on 60 GB partition of Kingston SSD - 120 GB, grey color.  Used it regularly - for instance Steem Debugger 3.2 worked a lot. And it has no versions for other OS. Well, SSD gone bad after about 1.5 year usage - bad sectors on C.  The question is: is it better with other brands, other Kingston SSDs ? Surely C partition is where lot of writing happens practically all time because way how Win works. Surely, for manufacturers long lifetime is not life insurance ?

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4 hours ago, oky2000 said:

Did you install or upgrade to Windows 8?

Initially Windows 7 and the speed increase was immediate, I updated to Windows 8 so he could still

get updates if he needed them.

 

Was hard to tell any speed difference between 7 and 8 when on the SSD

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1 hour ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

The question is: is it better with other brands, other Kingston SSDs ?

I always use Samsung SSD's and never had any issues (yet :) )

I even still use one of my original 128GB SSD on a Raspberry Pi, the disk used to be my Windows boot disk

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5 hours ago, oky2000 said:

it is exactly like the Win 95/98 years where if you do any kind of multimedia heavy shit you need to reboot for Windows to start working properly again

Sorry, but that's just nonsense. It's absolutely nothing like pre 98SE years, where you'd get blue screens out of the, well, blue on regular basis of no apparent reason at all, and have to be really frugal with multitasking. Win 10 is super stable and has the best memory management of all of them so far, even - or especially - on machines with low RAM. Granted, I don't use updates or Chrome, but I doubt Firefox is that much better in that regard since it can also puff up wildly on occasion. Restarting it takes a couple of seconds though (and yes, I also do quite a lot of multimedia stuff alongside) but it's very rarely I have to do that.

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2 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Well, SSD gone bad after about 1.5 year usage - bad sectors on C.  The question is: is it better with other brands, other Kingston SSDs ? Surely C partition is where lot of writing happens practically all time because way how Win works. Surely, for manufacturers long lifetime is not life insurance ?

There was a problem with some low capacity Kingston SSDs iirc a few years ago. I think I have a similar one to yours (certainly similar capacity), there was a firmware patch to stop it killing itself. I was lucky to find the update before the SSD wore itself out, the wear level was already well beyond what it should be in a couple of weeks.

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13 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

There was a problem with some low capacity Kingston SSDs iirc a few years ago. I think I have a similar one to yours (certainly similar capacity), there was a firmware patch to stop it killing itself. I was lucky to find the update before the SSD wore itself out, the wear level was already well beyond what it should be in a couple of weeks.

Interesting. Did not know about firmware update possibility. So went to Kingston site and DL KSM Setup program. Site self is disappointment. Executed KSM setup after attached problematic SSD, and program is even bigger disappointment - it worked, but nothing from writing on screen what happens. It blocked PC over 1 hour, then asked for restart, then some Win disk check, etc ...  From some reason after that any access to SSD was extremely slow with long waits. I don't know is it Win 10 or whatever, but I connected it to older PC with Win XP - and there works very well, no bad sectors detected.  So, healing worked. Actually, it was for sure remapping of good sectors to logical sector which gone bad - and yes, capacity is now lower couple GB. Still very happy.

Thanx for hint .

 

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18 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Interesting. Did not know about firmware update possibility. So went to Kingston site and DL KSM Setup program. Site self is disappointment. Executed KSM setup after attached problematic SSD, and program is even bigger disappointment - it worked, but nothing from writing on screen what happens. It blocked PC over 1 hour, then asked for restart, then some Win disk check, etc ...  From some reason after that any access to SSD was extremely slow with long waits. I don't know is it Win 10 or whatever, but I connected it to older PC with Win XP - and there works very well, no bad sectors detected.  So, healing worked. Actually, it was for sure remapping of good sectors to logical sector which gone bad - and yes, capacity is now lower couple GB. Still very happy.

Thanx for hint .

 

No problem, glad it helped :) The Kingston program is a bit flakey (and it's bare bones at best), but still handy in the odd circumstance.

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Early on the Apple II days I wanted some form of file format compatibility. It seemed with every new word processor, a new format came out - and that format only worked with that program. It seemed to get worse from '83 - '87, when advancements in user interfaces were being experimented with. This issue was magnified more if switching hardware platforms. Thankfully it was solved with Windows and DOS - more professional applications.

 

I never did too much CP/M at the time. Too young. I did get a Z-80 card, but since it didn't run games I stuffed it under the bed.

 

On 11/2/2021 at 1:04 PM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

For instance, how Windows handles hard disks is good way to lose data, to lose working Win too - by default it wants only one, C partition. And even if user creates more of them, it sets all saves, temporary data, SW installs etc. on C.  While C is partition where most of disk access happens, all time - as part of way how Win works. That means that that section of disk will first go bad. Talking from experience. And it is even worse with SSD - used it for 8.1 , and C partition just gone bad after 1.5 years - surely as result of lot of writes, and it is known that Flash storage has limited write count.  I did not lost any relevant data, because I don't save it on C - that practice by me is from DOS times, about 25 years ago.

We consider SSDs as disposable consumables. Once they reach around 60% write cycles we just throw them out. And only the OS and applications go on them. Any user-generated data goes to a spinner. Never lost anything. Learned this concept of separating OS/Application from user-data when I got my 2nd Disk II drive.

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On 12/16/2021 at 10:46 AM, youxia said:

Sorry, but that's just nonsense. It's absolutely nothing like pre 98SE years, where you'd get blue screens out of the, well, blue on regular basis of no apparent reason at all, and have to be really frugal with multitasking. Win 10 is super stable and has the best memory management of all of them so far, even - or especially - on machines with low RAM. Granted, I don't use updates or Chrome, but I doubt Firefox is that much better in that regard since it can also puff up wildly on occasion. Restarting it takes a couple of seconds though (and yes, I also do quite a lot of multimedia stuff alongside) but it's very rarely I have to do that.

Don't tell me my business, am an engineer, have been since the time of Win 3.11 to Win ME transition in the market place and been technically responsible for mixed network architectures (including IBM Token Ring into standard LAN) and OS platforms (Windows, OS/2, Unix and Citrix). With forced updates blue screens happen multiple times a year but I am not talking about system stability. I am talking about Windows Rot, it existed back then and it still does today. 

 

The Payrol dept and accounts as well as information server users (telephony, email, intranet, messaging and paging systems) ALL had OS/2 for a very good reason. The reason was after printing a few text + graphic 200+ page documents and messing about on the intranet with either Netscape or IE you quickly ran out of GDI resource and the only way to print another 200 page document or have your intranet site/portal work correctly on your PC was a reboot. With Windows 10 AND the changes to how Google Chrome forced updates now work your machine WILL go screwy sooner or later and if it doesn't crash it will reboot. My IDENTICAL PC bought at the same time in the same store I bought as a backup  with Windows 10 2016 edition has NONE of these problems. The latest Windows update ONCE A-FUCKING-GAIN has some weird issue with wireless or USB keyboards and mice and if you don't reboot the machine once every few days it will stop them from working. Again the wireless keyboard/mouse is identical on both PCs and bought the same time.

 

If I say Windows is a problem, not even commercial quality product, it is coming from someone who worked for a business as the top Service Manager in the company worldwide that probably earnt more than the country/state you live in so you can believe me. If you can't see anything wrong with Windows and how we have steadily gone backwards on average since around 2002 is clueless. Anybody who defends any version of Windows at any time in history is completely clueless and would be better off keeping quiet.

 

Next you will tell me Vista and 7 are different, when in reality it is the same shit bloatware kernal in both. 

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Been running a long-term XP install since 2004 and had precisely 3 BSODs. Keep a log. The system is hibernated frequently, but rebooted only rarely when required for backups or out of curiosity to see if any programs went wonky.

 

Never cared too much for 95/98, but absolutely adored Win 3.1. A steadfast companion for writing and introduction to MS-DOS and x86 assembly.

 

Never cared much for 7 or 8. And jury's still out 10/11. Never got too excited for 10. But perhaps 11 once I get more into it.

 

In any case, Windows was a godsend compared to what I was experiencing elsewhere. I could finally do what I wanted, how I wanted. And it was certainly above anything the 16-bit world had going.

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If you really want a Blue Screen Machine, just install Windows 2000 Server and get it to run

longer than 24 hours without a re-boot.

 

The firm I worked for had a mix of many OS's:- AIX Unix, DOS, Windows, DEC Alpha etc.

and pretty much every outage would be cause by Windows 2000 Server crashes :)

 

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Over the past years I conducted an informal test to see what OS'es and types of systems were best (are best) for home use. Huge factors are reliability and ease of use. Doing what it's advertised to do. And doing it with minimal fuss.

 

Here's what failed:

Windows 7

Low-end AMD laptops from the 2010-2016 time

Office versions that have the ribbon

2005 era hardware being pushed too much

XP being pushed too far

Less than 4GB of memory

VGA output

Macbook Air

CD-ROM

 

Here's what's winning today:

Windows 10/11

Intel NUCs

16GB memory

Hi-Speed USB

Integrated graphics and chipsets (mobile MCM)

Chromebooks

Chrome browser

HDMI

NVME SSD

Large external WD Elements drives

Large 32GB and up JumpDrives

Microsoft Edge (honorable mention)

FireFox (honorable mention)

VLC mediaplayer

Elgato video capture products

Apple iPhone

Cheap Amazon cabling

Google Docs

 

..all chosen or rejected by kids and tech newbies and soccer moms!

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This thread went far away from original topic. Not problem to say couple words about Windows, but now it is 90% about Windows.

 

I don't know is latest post of Keatah just sarcasm - I mean less than 4 MB RAM is what failing ? My old PC with 3 GB works perfectly fine, except Internet, but I don't need it for Internet - where lot of it is intentionally overcomplicated, just to motivate people to spend money on new HW. And of course all those mindless pushed adverts just help in overload ?

16 GB is winner - poor idiots spending money on more RAM ! Btw. I have 12 GB, and RAM usage never went over 70% .

 

And worst in it is that smells like some favorizing of specific brands, manufacturers. Ah, I did not know that AMD manufactured laptops.

Integrated graphics win ? Sorry, there is no HDMI out of it, only VGA. And MBO is not old.

Maybe just should close this thread ...

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1 hour ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

This thread went far away from original topic. Not problem to say couple words about Windows, but now it is 90% about Windows.

It's natural evolution for that to happen. It may come around again to the original topic if anything else needs to be said. And there likely is.

 

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I don't know is latest post of Keatah just sarcasm - I mean less than 4 MB RAM is what failing ?

Some is near-sarcasm. Most is real experience and observances from being the neighborhood go-to when something doesn't work. Or for recommendation when purchasing something new. 4GB RAM is limiting. Or low performing. Consider what you might have had available to you in 32-bit XP. Firefox leaks to 1GB or more. UltimateDefrag takes another 1GB if you're handling a 2TB drive. Throw in Office and Photoshop. And you are now paging swapping. And if it's a spinner it's painful to watch. Even on a 2GHz machine. In this day and age, actually ever since the turn of the the century, quantity of RAM should never be an issue.

 

Admittedly that software combination is niche 2bshur. There are others that accomplish the same bogging in a 4GB machine.

 

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My old PC with 3 GB works perfectly fine, except Internet, but I don't need it for Internet - where lot of it is intentionally overcomplicated, just to motivate people to spend money on new HW. And of course all those mindless pushed adverts just help in overload ?

Absolutely. Almost all the websites today are bloated for no good reason, even if they're not trying to get you to spend money, which they all do anyways. On hardware or their product, doesn't matter. No reason to execute that amount of code locally. And it's all poor quality shit outsourced from code farms.

 

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16 GB is winner - poor idiots spending money on more RAM ! Btw. I have 12 GB, and RAM usage never went over 70% .

16GB is good enough. When I do my rigs I usually put in 64GB. Because I can.

 

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And worst in it is that smells like some favorizing of specific brands, manufacturers.

Not sure where that comes in. If you're referring to the mentioning of Intel or Chrome or any other brand. It's impossible to have a computer discussion without mentioning the companies that make the stuff.

 

And as much as we don't want to admit it, we all have personal preferences for brands and manufacturers. At the same time it's fun to bash fanboism! Either way, I offer no apologies for liking what I like, dislikling what I dislike, and talking about it all.

 

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Ah, I did not know that AMD manufactured laptops.

They don't. It's totally acceptable to distinguish a laptop or other rig by manufacturer of its processor. Or even by the codename of its processor's architecture - like Dothan or Bulldozer, Tualatin or Ivy Bridge. The codename says a lot of what's in the system to those in the know. And also the the era and OS and limitations. For example Mendocino and 11? Not likely! I never say never because some freak will sooner or later figure out how to re-write drivers for a youtoob shock video. Alder Lake and 11? Yes with enhanced thread scheduling. 10? Yes, without advanced thread management. And all of that speaks volumes to software compatibility and lends clues to problems users may have.

 

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Integrated graphics win ? Sorry, there is no HDMI out of it, only VGA.

Integrated graphics are a total and complete win. Millions upon millions of users have relied on the technology every hour of every day for years past and will continue to do so for decades to come. It makes the SFF PC possible. Not everyone wants or needs or even knows what a discrete GPU is. Let alone what the latest 2x overpriced & scalped RTX is.

 

And it's all about HDMI today and the past 5 years. Maybe further back too.

 

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And MBO is not old.

Not sure what you mean by MBO, there's several meanings.

 

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Maybe just should close this thread ...

That would be up to the boss or a moderator. Usually only happens when certain people get out of hand. And if the thread is closed the same topic will pop up again. Then someone will complain we had a topic on it and ask why it was closed.

 

Besides, the pluses and minuses are more visible when compared against a winning architecture like Wintel and what it's evolved into.

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