Author Topic: Bought any computing stuff today?  (Read 127255 times)

Chris S

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #550 on: 07 July, 2018, 12:54:45 pm »
An Nvidia GTX1080 Ti 11Gb. That'll make Zwift fly!

And at night, you can do bitcoin mining.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #551 on: 07 July, 2018, 04:32:12 pm »
They also do an æxcellent job of turning the Estate Office into a sauna.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

ian

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #552 on: 30 January, 2019, 08:29:06 pm »
A little Bluetooth nuggle for my headphones. I was just going to buy some wireless headphones but they seem to waver between cheap and likely shit and ouchingly expensive. I lose headphones at a rate of about once a month which could promise to be an expensive habit very quickly and I'm happy with £30ish Sennheiser earbuds (I buy a couple of pairs at a time, may as well be prepared). Plus, if the batteries die, I can plug them directly into the damn phone.

And it is little. I'm not sure what was in the small car-sized Logitech box that used to pipe Blueteeth into my stereogram.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #553 on: 30 January, 2019, 09:50:44 pm »
Lenovo idea pad 330s 14" with i5 8th gen, 8gb ram and 500ish gb ssd. Ips screen fhd. Might be overpriced despite the claimed £250 knocked off full price. Wanted new so paid the money for it.

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #554 on: 30 January, 2019, 10:06:20 pm »
A little Bluetooth nuggle for my headphones. I was just going to buy some wireless headphones but they seem to waver between cheap and likely shit and ouchingly expensive. I lose headphones at a rate of about once a month which could promise to be an expensive habit very quickly and I'm happy with £30ish Sennheiser earbuds (I buy a couple of pairs at a time, may as well be prepared). Plus, if the batteries die, I can plug them directly into the damn phone.

And it is little. I'm not sure what was in the small car-sized Logitech box that used to pipe Blueteeth into my stereogram.

What did you get?

ian

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #555 on: 30 January, 2019, 10:20:58 pm »
Not sure if Amazon links work, the catchily named 'Mpow Bluetooth 5.0 Receiver, New Bluetooth Receiver for Car, On/Off Switch,16-Hour Wireless Music, 66ft/20m Range, Hands-free Call, Ultra-thin Portable Bluetooth Aux Adapter for Audio Stereo Earphone'

There's a bazillion of them. Tested it briefly, does what it says. And a lot cheaper than new headphones that I'll undoubtedly lose or somehow terminally yank the wires out of.

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #556 on: 30 January, 2019, 10:29:07 pm »
Ta!

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #557 on: 02 February, 2019, 04:58:30 pm »
I had to buy a 7mm thick 2.5 inch hard disk (lovely mix of units, they should take a lesson from car tyre sizes) in spite of the fact that I have a bunch of 9mm thick 2.5 inch hard drives. Admittedly the new hard disk has more capacity than the combined capacity of the 45 mm tall stack of 5 - 10 year old 9mm disks, and cost less than  any that I bought as stand-alone units.

It's for a new Dell Inspiron that has 256 GB of SSD as standard, and has space for spinning rust as well.
Quote from: Kim
Paging Diver300.  Diver300 to the GSM Trimphone, please...

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #558 on: 03 February, 2019, 09:15:12 am »
I have two new 1TB SSDs, and have had fun naming them ‘Fruit Shortcake’ and ‘Jammie Dodger’.
It is simpler than it looks.

ian

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #559 on: 05 February, 2019, 06:06:52 pm »
Ta!

By-the-by, it works but sounds a bit shit* which may be a case of you get what you pay for, it ain't a £160 pair of earbuds. Probably fine for a noisy train.

*seems to over-amp and distort a little. Ironically the bluetooth box that used to plug into my stereo did the opposite, it was so quiet you had to turn the stereo up to 35 (eleven is so passé) otherwise it was like being serenaded by mice.

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #560 on: 05 February, 2019, 09:04:24 pm »
Ta!

By-the-by, it works but sounds a bit shit* which may be a case of you get what you pay for, it ain't a £160 pair of earbuds. Probably fine for a noisy train.

*seems to over-amp and distort a little. Ironically the bluetooth box that used to plug into my stereo did the opposite, it was so quiet you had to turn the stereo up to 35 (eleven is so passé) otherwise it was like being serenaded by mice.

It's fine, it's not for hi-fi porpoises. It worked straight out of the box  :thumbsup: I wanted it for my Creative mp3 player which is fairly underpowered anyway.

Maverick

  • One of the rural idle
    • Twoberries
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #561 on: 07 February, 2019, 10:30:48 pm »
A new MacBook Pro with touch bar - 13" i5 quad core, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD.

Replaces my venerable mid 2011 MacBook Air which is still going strong but an update to my audio recording interface and software requires multi-core cpu & more RAM. I was pretty blase about buying this (just another laptop) until it arrived today. I'm bowled over - smaller & lighter than the outgoing macbook air, faster than my main quad core 2013 i7 iMac, gorgeous screen, touch ID login just works, sound is better than adequate. Yes it was very spendy but if it lasts as well as the outgoing macbook air it'll be worth it.

ian

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #562 on: 11 February, 2019, 04:32:50 pm »
As mentioned, the evil geniuses (well, one called Vivian) at the Apple store made me buy a pair of new iPhones. I felt a bit bad at handing her my very grungy iPhone 6, which in the surgically clean retail splendour of the Apple Store looked a little worse for wear. I could only apologize greatly. I'm surprised she didn't get out a pair of latex gloves to touch it. Even my wife backed away a step. We'd only gone in to ask about a battery replacement so I wasn't planning on exposing it (it's been in a silicone case since forever, and all the grunge had levered its way behind it – and yes, I'm talking about the phone). On the plus side, it hid all the dinks and scratches.

But anyway, nice though it is, bigly! Sat on my desk next to my mothership-issued iPhone SE. I don't have pockets big enough to hold a dinner tray.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #563 on: 25 March, 2019, 08:07:24 am »
I'm not 100% sure that this can be described as 'computing stuff', but it's certainly related.  It comes under various descriptions, but one of the most common designations is LCR-TC1, and it's variously referred to as a Multi-Function Tester or Transistor Tester.  I just got it, although I ordered it a few days ago.

 

If you plug any small electronic component into it, it will determine what it is, and give you the basic parameters for it.  It seems to be able to identify single cell batteries (no more than 4.5V), capacitors, resistors, inductors, diodes, zeners, bog-standard bipolar transistors, thyristors, triacs, JFETs, MOSFETs and IGBTs.

You can probably buy similar unit, without a case or battery, and with a B&W screen for as low as £7 from China, and if you're willing to wait you can get this one with an internal USB charged Lithium cell and case probably for £12 on Banggood, AliExpress of eBay.  On eBay, I paid £15 with about 1 week delivery to Argos Click'and'Collect).  Now I know what to search for, they are also available for £18 on Amazon, with Prime next day delivery!

It's not terribly accurate, especially with some of the slightly more exotic parameters, like a capacitor's ESR, but certainly provides approximate values.  If you want to measure a zener, with a reverse voltage greater than 4.5V, there's a pair of special connections for that, which will supposedly work up to 30V, although it failed to measure a 29V Zener in a YouTube video I saw (but did work with a 20V Zener).

I've tested it on a few random capacitors and resistors, and it generally gives a value within the quoted error range of the components, and happily identified a MOSFET, although it measured an RDS variously between 0.2Ω and 0.4Ω, when the datasheet says a typical value of 0.065Ω and maximum of 0.075Ω.  However, for a unit costing £15, I didn't expect a great deal of fidelity!  Internally it's relying almost entirely on an AVR microcontroller for the measurements, and the ADC on that is optimistically only 10 bits typically over 5V, so naively that's resolution of 5mV, but I suspect other factors affect its ability to measure some parameters.

Quite a cool, neat little gadget. :thumbsup: :)
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #564 on: 25 March, 2019, 12:45:56 pm »
I've got an older variation on that theme.  I really like the ZIF socket for bunging random components in, and it's replaced my cheap Chinese LCR meter for quickly identifying random resistors without reliable colour vision.  One of my favourite functions is being able to read the ROM address from DS18B20 temperature sensors, for ease of identification or hard-coding in embedded things where a discovery algorithm would take up too much space.



Looks like yours has a much better case design, particularly with regard to accessing the lever on the ZIF socket.  I keep not getting round to trimming the plastic on mine so it's a bit less fiddly to release if you fully depress it.

It's also got basic frequency and voltage measurement, a basic frequency generator, and (more usefully, since I don't have something better that will readily do it) the ability to generate a PWM signal at arbitrary duty cycle.  Mine doesn't have the zener feature - it just identifies them as normal diodes.  Given how handy I've found the 15V diode range[1] on the 121GW multimeter, that sounds well worth having.

A lot of functionality in a cheap little gadget.  At a price that's well worth it for anyone starting out in electronics (I expect the actual *testing* of components is a lot more useful if you're not so confident about what you're doing, particularly when it comes to troubleshooting circuits), and useful simply as a random component identifier for tidying up after breadboard sessions.  The precision isn't brilliant, but it's perfectly sufficient for "what is this?" and "has this lost its magic smoke?".


[1] A niche multimeter feature that really shouldn't be:  Extremely useful for testing series LEDs, as well as zeners.

fuaran

  • rothair gasta
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #565 on: 03 May, 2019, 09:22:00 pm »
A Logitech G203 mouse. It is a 'gaming' mouse - I'm not going to use it for much gaming, but seems a reasonable quality option for a wired mouse. It has a button to adjust the DPI, if you want a hypersensitive high-speed cursor. And it has built in multicoloured lights8)

mcshroom

  • Mushroom
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #566 on: 05 May, 2019, 01:28:31 pm »
A bluetooth dongle for my thin client pc that gets used as a media server. It is going to become my zwift computer too, now that zwift bluetooth seems to work properly on windows 10.
Climbs like a sprinter, sprints like a climber!

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #567 on: 05 May, 2019, 09:43:22 pm »
I bought a bluetooth dongle too.

BrianI

  • Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Lepidopterist Man!
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #568 on: 22 July, 2019, 05:08:46 pm »
A USB microphone kit (Neweer NW-7000 USB), with boom, mic holder & pop shield.

I'd promised my local photography club I'd do a talking head video tutorial on photo editing using Darktable on my Linux Box. Since I'm now off work for the next few weeks (long story, involving a laparotomoy & twisted bowel!) I figured I'd better get my finger out and start getting the tutorial recorded!

 :thumbsup:

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #569 on: 22 July, 2019, 08:22:35 pm »
Just installed new Asus motherboard,  16gb DDR 4 memory and a six core AMD Ryzen 2600x CPU as a result of old i5 ddr 3 Gigabyte motherboard suddenly dying. Must say most impressed with the performance of what is a modern mid range cpu which is similar to current gen Intel I5 7700 (but apparently 3 x faster on multithreading)  and great vfm. but could have done without the expense just atm. New board has a 32Gb/sec M2 slot which I will be populating in due course. I was most hacked off at not being able to find a replacement Mobo for the old set up which still seemed capable of tackling just about anything albeit with a 4 core cpu. Also disappointed that local supplier wanted £70 more for same new kit but with a cheaper motherboard
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #570 on: 22 July, 2019, 09:03:55 pm »
AM4 motherboards are a little tricky at the moment.  AMD promised that the AM4 will be supported for several years.  Sadly that has resulted in too many processes for the space in the bios chips. So with the Ryzen 3000 series fulfilling AMDs promise to run on AM4 there are bios updates for old boards like mine to support the new processors. However this means that the lower end processors are no longer supported and some motherboard features such as raid stop working.

So I was pleased when I noticed that my motherboard, MSI B350 Tomahawk Arctic can support the latest processors I was little disappointed that would cripple the board even thought it would make no difference to me. MSI have re-engineered their motherboards.  There is for example MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX. The only difference for the B450 Tomahawk is a larger bios chip.  So this new motherboard can support every AM4 processor from the lowly AM4 Athlon or APU to the latest Ryzen 9 3xxx.

I should not grumble. Intel nearly always require a new motherboard for a new processor.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #571 on: 04 October, 2019, 04:45:24 pm »
The stock cooler is struggling a bit in my system I assume partly due to the restricted floor standing location available for the pc as I am not deliberately overclocking. I bought some 140mm Corsair magnetic lev case fans to see if they would help. In the event I was only able to fit one of these on a side panel.  :hand: . These fans have a large operating range via PWM. Although fairly quiet at low RPM they quickly become something akin to a jet aircraft taking off, in addition to which, there is a constant low level motor whine. So, althought they are effective at moving large volumes of air around, and will probably prove to be very robust, I am a tad disappointed. I have now therefore ordered a new, rather expensive, Noctua designed cpu cooler in the hope that this sorts the issue.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #572 on: 04 October, 2019, 08:09:47 pm »
a new dell i3 desktop

I had an old machine which was used with a touchscreen in portrait mode for reading pdfs.  yesterday it decided to tell me the hard drive no longer existed.  There was no evidence of forced removal so I suspect it just died.  I therefore went out and bought a cheap standard desktop with dvd drive from PC world.  the hardest part was convincing the salesman that i did not want any software, that i did know what I was doing and that i did want to pay for it with a credit card and no I did not want a VAT receipt as I pay an accountant to do all that for me.


Morat

  • I tried to HTFU but something went ping :(
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #573 on: 08 October, 2019, 09:40:36 pm »
580m of fibre - my first Single Mode cable! I'm creating a backup route to change our network from a sort of an L  shape to more of a b shape to cover my arse in case someone gets carried away with the marquee spikes.

I suppose I didn't _really_ need to go single mode because the run was measured at 542m but the single mode cable was cheaper. Plus I've found some 10Gb transceivers which should be compatible for under £100 each so... this could work!
Tune in next week for "Morat causes the worlds worst broadcast storm"
Everyone's favourite windbreak

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #574 on: 11 October, 2019, 01:24:53 pm »
Sorted my issues by relocating the new 140mm Corsair fan to the top of the case in extract mode and replacing it with an original 3 pin 120mm fan. I have ordered some semi rigid PVC dust filters which are supposed to help with this issue. Seems the new fan was resonating with the panel despite application of rubber washered mountings thereby producing its banshee wail, but now is very quiet. I have also installed a new Noctua extract fan to the rear of the case. CPU temps are now much lower with the stock cooler, so the new cpu cooler will be a bit of overkill, but never mind.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain