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Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

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Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#241

Post by genewitch »

ikurei wrote: post #202
soyiuz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minisforum machines are excellent in that regard. Sturdy little bricks with price and performance.

I have one and my main gripe with it is how large the power brick is. It's practically like carrying a second mini pc; I didn't take this into account when I got it, lesson learned.

considering https://streacom.com/products/nano160-fanless-psu/ stuff like microPSU, miniPSU, and nanoPSU exist, this is unacceptable. I've used these mini PSUs - which are a barrel power jack, a hdd molex power cable, and the N pin ATX plug on a breadboard the rough size of the N pin ATX connector from large PSU - in remote inaccessible locations to do "in box UPS" for vm hypervisors on intel atoms/celerons and the like. Plug this in to the board, wire in a 12v stamped aluminum PSU that takes a battery as backup (used to be like $22 on amazon) and a SLA battery, toss that in one of those "mini desktop" cases - not the elitedesk - like the ones you saw in every office 10 years ago.

anyhow you can get a 12V PSU that does whatever amps (12? 15?) in a pretty small formfactor, and the "additional" stuff the motherboard needs is, as shown above, insignificant. The PSU can be pretty dirty, as in in the US do literal 10:1 winding to get 12V out (i know it'd be slightly different winding amount to account for losses in rectification and lines and whatnot but 10:1 looks nice to the math) and rectify it straight into one of those nanoPSUs. believe me i've seen me do it.

also don't ask to see my laptop DC-DC supply for running straight off a solar panel... it's larger than most NUCs, too. oh wait, you still need a laptop brick, plus the DC-DC. So you gotta DC-DC -> DC-DC -> laptop which -> DC-DC and probably DC-DC again (1.2v/3v3 rail probably clocked off 5v rail, that's what i'd do naively)

those "dashes" in "DC-DC" are doing a lot of heavy lifting

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#242

Post by bhaney »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #186
bhaney wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of many reasons why I just don't let Windows touch bare metal. My old gaming rig was a Linux machine that would boot a Windows VM with GPU passthrough, and the control I had over the virtual hardware that Windows thought it was attached to was really helpful for working around a lot of Windows bullshit. Won't boot without a screen? Virtually attach a fake one. Recognizes a device and tries to auto-install…

Since a few years, I just play on Linux Almost anything works with proton - unless you're playing competitive online games with anti cheats software

Same. My Steam Deck has completely replaced my old gaming VM.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#243

Post by PotatoPancakes »

pipes wrote: post #159

I wish valve would do a steam laptop that's just steamdeck in a laptop. I'm surprised how good the steamdeck is. I'm considering replacing my pc with steamdeck + dock + external hard disc.

Thankfully, we can now do this ourselves.

The Steam Deck hardware to compete with is:

- A custom CPU with integrated GPU that's somewhere between an AMD 6600U and 6800U, underclocked for battery life and thermals

- 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM (6400 MT/s)

- 50 Wh battery

So, to make your own Steam Deck-like laptop, you should buy a USB or wireless controller and install the Holo ISO distro (for a UI like the Steam Deck) on a laptop with the following specs:

- 50+ Wh battery

- 16+ GB of RAM (preferably LPDDR5 for thermals)

- A sufficiently powerful CPU+GPU (most new 15W ones will do, especially if you set it to underclock when on battery power)

- A USB-C port with USB 3 Gen 2 speeds and DisplayPort support

- A sufficiently nice screen, speaker, trackpad, cooling fan

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#244

Post by genewitch »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #239
genewitch wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, i buried the lede. you need windows server to do it easily ; once you have windows server set up, you need terminal services to be enabled and installed for that server. Then you can set up "single application mode" application. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-serve... I didn't really need a guide, it's pretty straightforward; we ran firefox on a windows server VM in AWS and watched youtu…

Thank you for these details. When I looked into doing it once on a modern system and stopped when window server entered the story. I’ve been hoping there might be a simple solution but that had me stumble upon Parallels RAS which I’ve been considering doing an evaluation of. https://www.parallels.com/products/ras/remote-application-se... My primary battlestation system (not gaming but for business) is 8X4k monitors o…

looks like microsoft has jumped into this area since i last looked (eesh, 16 years ago is what i was basing my info on!): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/... https://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/technet/download...

so it looks like, in addition to the method i mentioned, you can also virtualize the applications within "App-V" which is like hyper-v for apps (is anyone catching all of this? is this thing on?).

Microsoft made a firecracker or whatever for windows apps and no one told me?

edit: i'm shocked there's not a kitsch-y name for this like "Windowless Office Suite" for on-prem office that's virtualized for app-v... Someone at microsoft should pay me if they use this.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#245

Post by VTimofeenko »

regularfry wrote: post #224
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fonts render at whatever size you tell them to. That doesn't change. I have the Viture not the Xreals, but anyways... my experience: I do find that there's significant optical aberration that makes text more blurry towards the edges. I also have astigmatism; not a deal-breaker but it means the built-in myopia adjustment only partially corrects my vision. I basically got contacts again just so I can use these a bit be…

I don't know about Viture, but the XReals come with a prescription lens attachment clip. I've got a set. It would be unusable without it, but even then the screen is only really great towards the middle of the field. In theory the hardware has a motion tracker that lets you freeze the screen in space and pan around it by moving your head, which would be a huge win, but the current iteration needs an external dongle t…

Frame.work has a cooler master case:

https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case

I have my old mainboard chugging along in one of those, works alright. Wish the fan was less whiney though.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#246

Post by alchemist1e9 »

genewitch wrote: post #244
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for these details. When I looked into doing it once on a modern system and stopped when window server entered the story. I’ve been hoping there might be a simple solution but that had me stumble upon Parallels RAS which I’ve been considering doing an evaluation of. https://www.parallels.com/products/ras/remote-application-se... My primary battlestation system (not gaming but for business) is 8X4k monitors o…

looks like microsoft has jumped into this area since i last looked (eesh, 16 years ago is what i was basing my info on!): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/... https://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/technet/download... so it looks like, in addition to the method i mentioned, you can also virtualize the applications within "App-V" which is like hyper-v for apps (is anyone catching all of…

Quick skim seems to suggest the client to that system is Windows only.

I’m hoping for a Linux client which apparently the commercial Parallels RAS provides.

I think MacOS is even more hopeless than Windows for a per window or seamless remote GUI application solution. For Linux I use Xpra which honestly with GPU server and client acceleration can feel like magic. The dream for me would be a Linux based system for display using an X11 window manager to manage remote GUI application windows from all 3 platforms from multiple systems, all GPU accelerated on both ends.

Apple seems to have a particular hatred for the idea of anyone using their OS remotely for whatever reason, though Parsec works quite well for me, though I’ve heard there is a sunshine+moonlight approach that does even better than Parsec …

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#247

Post by genewitch »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #246
genewitch wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

looks like microsoft has jumped into this area since i last looked (eesh, 16 years ago is what i was basing my info on!): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/... https://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/technet/download... so it looks like, in addition to the method i mentioned, you can also virtualize the applications within "App-V" which is like hyper-v for apps (is anyone catching all of…

Quick skim seems to suggest the client to that system is Windows only. I’m hoping for a Linux client which apparently the commercial Parallels RAS provides. I think MacOS is even more hopeless than Windows for a per window or seamless remote GUI application solution. For Linux I use Xpra which honestly with GPU server and client acceleration can feel like magic. The dream for me would be a Linux based system for disp…

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/guide-using-seamless-rd...

rdesktop has a "-A" flag for seamless mode which looks like it does what you want. I'm telling you we had that working 16 years ago via AWS - the AWS side was running windows but there wasn't any reason we had to be [running windows] on the client side. I merely mentioned that microsoft apparently didn't rest on their laurels with msts, they now support even more thin client mechanisms.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#248

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

genewitch wrote: post #240
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you already do this just by daisy chaining them?

I'll elaborate. You'd think that by putting N powerbanks daisy chained together (except i imagine at either end) you get ~N times the mAh or runtime but i think you get probably .25N or less. the "last" powerbank in the chain, the one you'd charge to charge them all, would run out of power first, and about 15% of seconds more afterward, the second one, then the next, with the "first" powerbank, the one you're using f…

I'm intrigued now, I'll have to dry this on my testbench and report back with some figures. Expect to hear from me in about six years.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#249

Post by brundolf »

nfriedly wrote: post #35
brundolf wrote: post #10

Wtf are those glasses

They have a pair of tiny screens that sit right in front of your eyes and act like a very portable monitor. (Both screens show the same picture - no 3d effects.) I assume they get power and video both over USB-C, so they can be connected to the Steam Deck's one USB port. Not my thing, but some people really love them.

I'm having trouble understanding the difference between this tech and the leading-edge AR tech like Meta's Orion glasses, which supposedly cost $10,000 to make

Why are these $500 and high-res enough to play games on? What's so much harder and costlier about the other AR glasses?

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#250

Post by marcosscriven »

Fnoord wrote: post #145
mgaunard wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, the French do it the other way around, and start counting from the final year (they also start at 0 so it's offset by one). That's arguably a better system since you can keep adding earlier and earlier years (mandatory school starting age has drifted from 11 to 6 to 3 over the years) while keeping everything consistent. Unfortunately they messed it up in 1959 by renaming 12th to 7th and giving m…

French and Brits do a lot of things the other way around, like imperial system, ATON/NATO, driving on the other side of the road. Just mentioned the age bracket. Kids who are younger or older are outliers.

The French for NATO is completely reversed: OTAN
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