Author Topic: Bought any computing stuff today?  (Read 127217 times)

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #575 on: 05 December, 2019, 07:49:50 pm »
Splurged on a new (well new to me its grade A refurbished I cant afford one of these brand new) Lenovo P710 workstation.

2 x Xeon E5-2680v4 2.4 GHz 14 Core CPUs
256 GB DRAM
512 GB SSD
nVidia Quadro K4000 graphics card

I need to sort out at least one more SSD for it before it arrives.
Should have enough grunt with 56 threads.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #576 on: 06 December, 2019, 01:04:16 am »
Spurred on by that I just spec'd out a similar machine and was surprised at just how cheap it was. I'd expected to be paying at least double, which only goes to show how out of touch I am with it all.

I remember buying my 486DX2-66 with 8MB RAM for £1000 in my first year of Uni back in 1994. That was my entire student loan for the first year and I remember walking through some dodgy bits of Sheffield (down by the station but lots of it was dodgy back then) with £1000 in £20 notes in an envelope in my pocket feeling rather uneasy.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #577 on: 06 December, 2019, 07:10:25 am »
Amazing isn't it. I do router virtualisation for self study and testing out configs before using them on clients networks. The old Cisco virtual images used to take up hardly any RAM or CPU but the new stuff requires 1 vCPU and 5-8GB RAM per router. Then there's management appliances etc. Oh and vMware with vCentre and NSX etc. A laptop just doesn't cut it for this kind of stuff any more and I had to bite the bullet.
Staying one generation behind the latest kit gets you an amazing amount of bang for your buck.
My electricity bill may get somewhat bigger though ....
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

ian

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #578 on: 06 December, 2019, 09:36:31 am »
I'm pretty sure my Canon (I know, they did) laptop that I bought in the mid-90s from a shop in NYC cost several million dollars. But I'll still say the Windows 95 startup tune is the sweetest computer startup sound of all.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #579 on: 06 December, 2019, 09:50:59 am »
After reading the previous couple of posts I'm almost embarrassed to mention the new cover for my fondleslab and ethernet cable that landed on the doormat at 9 last night.
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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #580 on: 06 December, 2019, 10:05:43 am »
What does an ethernet cable cover look like?

Wait a sec, you needed to buy an ethernet cable?

You don't have a hissing box of reproducing cables: ?
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Kim

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #581 on: 06 December, 2019, 03:47:13 pm »
You don't have a hissing box of reproducing cables: ?

Just the one?



(I think that goes: Mains, Ethernet, Wall-warts[1], Kettle leads, USB, A/V.  And yes, barakta's desk has aero bars.)

An Ethernet cable cover is shirely the boot that stops the tab snapping off the RJ45 when you wrestle it from the other hissing cables...


[1] Subject to a recent cull, hence the free space.  I chucked anything with a linear transformer power supply and most of the weirder voltages (eg. old Nokia).

ian

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #582 on: 06 December, 2019, 04:30:33 pm »
I have a big box and one large drawer of ethernet (and other deprecated cables) folded into n-dimensional brane space (say what you want about Apple pricing, but they fold 'em up neat). There's some incontrovertible urge to hang onto this stuff in case I one day suddenly myself having to cable a large office block.

Of course, it's a rule that the one you want is the one you won't find.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #583 on: 06 December, 2019, 07:31:59 pm »
An Ethernet cable cover is shirely the boot that stops the tab snapping off the RJ45 when you wrestle it from the other hissing cables...

Also good for rebooting and wiping the configuration of your Cisco switch inadvertently when you plug a cable into port 1.



I hope Cisco took whoever put the mode switch in that position on the front of the chassis out the back and gave them a serious seeing to.
That one caused me and network engineers all over the world much pain until someone noticed what was going on.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Kim

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #584 on: 06 December, 2019, 07:36:31 pm »
An Ethernet cable cover is shirely the boot that stops the tab snapping off the RJ45 when you wrestle it from the other hissing cables...

Also good for rebooting and wiping the configuration of your Cisco switch inadvertently when you plug a cable into port 1.



I hope Cisco took whoever put the mode switch in that position on the front of the chassis out the back and gave them a serious seeing to.
That one caused me and network engineers all over the world much pain until someone noticed what was going on.

Crowley must have worked for Cisco after he finished the M25...

Chris S

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #585 on: 06 December, 2019, 07:39:03 pm »
I thought of taking a picture of my office, but TBH there's no way I can compete with Kim's Teetering Tower of Tech.

Kim

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #586 on: 06 December, 2019, 07:40:05 pm »
I thought of taking a picture of my office, but TBH there's no way I can compete with Kim's Teetering Tower of Tech.

I think there's a 5.25" floppy drive somewhere in the lower levels.  And some 700c inner tubes.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #587 on: 06 December, 2019, 09:59:02 pm »
I thought of taking a picture of my office, but TBH there's no way I can compete with Kim's Teetering Tower of Tech.

I think there's a 5.25" floppy drive somewhere in the lower levels.  And some 700c inner tubes.

There was a DEC VT320 in my attic for years until Mrs Pcolbeck made me dispose of it a couple of years ago :~(
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Kim

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #588 on: 06 December, 2019, 10:28:07 pm »
There was a DEC VT320 in my attic for years until Mrs Pcolbeck made me dispose of it a couple of years ago :~(

When I was a PSO, we had a Wyse VT-120 clone liberated from the Physics department skip, that lived on top of the fridge, logged into a Linux box in another room, running BitchX.  This enabled us to have put-the-kettle-on / does-anyone-have-some-cash-for-the-meter / come-here-and-remove-your-festering-pile-of-ming-from-the-sink-you-boabword conversations up and down the stairs at sensible student times like 2am, and with appropriate use of all caps and multiple exclamation marks, without waking our gratuated housemate who had a job that required audax o'clock starts (because BloodyTrains).

When barakta came along, this Just Worked for her, and so it came with us when we moved out, and was still in service until about 4 years ago, when it was replaced by a Raspberry Pi and 10 quid from eBay monitor.

The great thing about a serial terminal was that you could turn it on from cold and hit <ctrl><L> and be at a working IRC window complete with scrollback in about 5 seconds.  The Pi does somewhat better, by powering up the monitor as you walk into the room, but at a cost of a couple of watts quiescent power.

I imagine we were one of the last users of the things for some pratical application that was neither retrocomputing, art, nor control of some vastly expensive piece of industrial/scientific/banking equipment from 1983.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #589 on: 06 December, 2019, 10:49:16 pm »
All Cisco switches and routers still need a serial console to give them a management address at least so you can SSH them (unless you POAP boot them which no one ever does unless you are building a fabric and even then its a PITA as they end up with random IP addresses). So there is a big market for USB to serial port adaptors for network engineers since they stopped putting RS232 ports on laptops.
Luckily these days quite often I get someone else to do that what with apparently being a network architect and not an engineer any-more (get to sit in a nice warm office or at home with RAS whilst someone else goes down to the datacentre racks).
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Kim

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #590 on: 06 December, 2019, 10:56:37 pm »
Yep, serial's going to be with us for a long time yet.  Maybe not full RS232 like on network kit, but serial comms at TTL levels remains standard for talking to microcontrollers.  For bonus points, you get to play what-USB-dongle-does-the-timing/handshake-properly-for-this-fussy-piece-of-hardware while hoping that there isn't a pirate Prolific chip involved that will get bricked if you plug it into a Windows machine with the official driver.

At least the 25-pin D connectors have mostly gone.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #591 on: 07 December, 2019, 01:29:58 pm »

Wait a sec, you needed to buy an ethernet cable?


The only one of suitable length in my Big Box of Anbarick String is a huge fat inflexible thing that I think used to be part of one of those rotary drain unblockers in a previous life.  It would have required Woodwork to get it past the door of the Great Hall, and possibly the Lifting of Carpets too.  The new one is one of they spiffy flat ones and thus fits through the existing lack of wood where the distascope ærial cable goes.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #592 on: 30 December, 2019, 11:41:40 pm »
Components to replace my current and sluggish desktop. Good bye spinning rust.

Hello AMD Ryzen 3400G, 32Gb Ram, 1Tb SSD, 500Gb M2 etc. My one concern is that I can't take the PCI SCSI card across and so the flat bed scanner and tape drive may be obsolete.*








* All right a 4Gb spool of rust is already obsolete but my 15 year old Uni backups are on those tapes. Not that I need them now of course.
Fortunately Concur and emailed receipts has made the scanner unnecessary.

vorsprung

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #593 on: 31 December, 2019, 04:33:59 pm »
I thought of taking a picture of my office, but TBH there's no way I can compete with Kim's Teetering Tower of Tech.

I think there's a 5.25" floppy drive somewhere in the lower levels.  And some 700c inner tubes.

There was a DEC VT320 in my attic for years until Mrs Pcolbeck made me dispose of it a couple of years ago :~(

I still have a hardware X terminal in the attic
It has to have a tftp or bootp server with the correct software to work however and...

TheLurker

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #594 on: 31 December, 2019, 06:21:54 pm »
Quote from: pcolbeck
There was a DEC VT320 in my attic for years ...
Feh!  Modern rubbish. You want a VT-100 or, if you're a skinflint, a Plessey PT100.  :)
Τα πιο όμορφα ταξίδια γίνονται με τις δικές μας δυνάμεις - Φίλοι του Ποδήλατου

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #595 on: 03 January, 2020, 10:37:36 am »
Got a Lenovo X210 laptop delivered from eBay yesterday. Nice condition with i7 processor. Swapped out the HD with a new 500GB Samsung SSD and it flies with Arch and KDE. Screen resolution not brilliant but oh the keyboard !
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #596 on: 03 January, 2020, 02:12:30 pm »
Got an APC C5-650 UPS from my dad when visiting last week, he'd rescued it from a skip so it was free. Battery looks in good condition so no idea why it was thrown away. Will test it out when I'm in long enough to keep an eye on it.

I don't care if it can only provide a fraction of its stated capacity, I only need it to cover the very occasional (once every 3-4 months or so) blip in the power supply that's just long enough to cause various items (ESXi box and NAS mainly) to reboot. Also ordered a 4 way extension block with an IEC C14 socket on it to plug into the back of the UPS rather than having to faff with recabling everything.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #597 on: 03 January, 2020, 02:43:06 pm »
Just found out some guys in Shenzen are making new motherboards for old X series Thinkpads.  Latest i7 processors and USB 3.1 plus IPS displays. They will even sell you a bare bones system with a new case (supply your own memory, SSD and WiFi card). I do hope they dont start doing an X220 version or I will sorely tempted. Currently its only X201 or X61.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #598 on: 04 January, 2020, 01:15:29 pm »
Quote from: pcolbeck
There was a DEC VT320 in my attic for years ...
Feh!  Modern rubbish. You want a VT-100 or, if you're a skinflint, a Plessey PT100.  :)

We had a VT-52 as a console for a DECsystem-20 when I worked at City of London Poly.  You could play Space Invaders on it.  Srsly.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

CommuteTooFar

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Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #599 on: 05 January, 2020, 02:45:58 pm »
Terrible scheduler on Dec-20s.  Great for teaching Basic etc. If a process was  interrupted for I/O it was placed at the front of the queue so you get a seemingly responsive system when you are typing a line of code. Or run you latest "hello world" job.  However if a process used it entire time slice it was placed on the end of the run queue.  So if you write a program that actually does some work it becomes the lowest priority task in the system and runs accordingly. In brief loved by users doing Programming 101 hated by every other user.