[flagged]
Its an incredibly millenial word and very cringey
to be cringe is to be free
Old Computer Challenge
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it sucks. Since then I've tried to better vet retro tech groups before inviting more friends along. It seems rather unfortunate that more often than not old hardware enthusiast groups come with old beliefs. Things are much better off at IRL gatherings I've noticed. Vintage Computer Festival events have been very open and welcoming to all peoples without issue in my experience.
Regarding "old beliefs", a distinction I'd like to make... My anecdotal impression is that early Internet overall was, on average, more enlightened and amiable than Internet today. Our earlier experience: Nobody knows you're a dog, people are excited about the possibilities, people are open to meeting others around the world, people see others sharing just to share, people haven't been conditioned to intolerant extre…
Early Usenet was similar, there were no flamewars or anything like that.
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding "old beliefs", a distinction I'd like to make... My anecdotal impression is that early Internet overall was, on average, more enlightened and amiable than Internet today. Our earlier experience: Nobody knows you're a dog, people are excited about the possibilities, people are open to meeting others around the world, people see others sharing just to share, people haven't been conditioned to intolerant extre…
Early Usenet was similar, there were no flamewars or anything like that.
MINIX having inherent design flaws was simply just a robustly expressed opinion ... it was nothing like the Meow Wars of '98.
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#74I have a TRS-80 that still ran last time I tried. It used audio cassette tapes for storage, but I don't have one, so I built a cable to use a modern voice recorder to read and store data on. I've been wanting to build some kind of project for it that uses the old school nature of the machine with modern conveniences. As an example, it's way easier to create graphics now, but the machine has really limited methods to…
That machine has such a pleasant form factor.
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intel Atom, 1.66GHz. 2Gib RAM. I mostly run a web browser, some terminal emulators and a mail reader. Oh, and Emacs.
Insane. Can I ask how you live like this? Is it a income issue or a statement? I'm from a developing country and I had a 2010 dual core Celeron notebook with 4GB DDR3 and I found it unusable in 2016-2018. Can't imagine still having to use that today. Especially for browsing the web today.
It was hard for a while just before Firefox had their big optimization push. But ever since, it’s still workable.
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it sucks. Since then I've tried to better vet retro tech groups before inviting more friends along. It seems rather unfortunate that more often than not old hardware enthusiast groups come with old beliefs. Things are much better off at IRL gatherings I've noticed. Vintage Computer Festival events have been very open and welcoming to all peoples without issue in my experience.
Regarding "old beliefs", a distinction I'd like to make... My anecdotal impression is that early Internet overall was, on average, more enlightened and amiable than Internet today. Our earlier experience: Nobody knows you're a dog, people are excited about the possibilities, people are open to meeting others around the world, people see others sharing just to share, people haven't been conditioned to intolerant extre…
It's inherently hard to get along with people you don't share values with, and the culture war got extra vicious. But I wouldn't call the people throwing racial and sexual slurs more intolerant of the outgroup than the other side (the people deciding to get offended), if anything, they seem to have thicker skin when it comes to differences in worldview.
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try yt-dlp+streamlink. YT-DLP config: #at ~/.config/yt-dp/config --format "best[height MPV config: #~/.config/mpv/config ytdl-format=bestvideo[height Dillo (from git) has worse CSS capabilities than netsurf but more than often the webs aren't broken as often as NetSurf. On the rest, get MuPDF, nsxiv for images, maybe xfe for files, mutt/sylpheed for email...
What was the point of this comment? Yeah this is pretty much how I use my computer. I use netsurf because I can use it in the framebuffer. I use mg for text editing and file browsing (using dired), chat using ircii, and email with elm. I don't really do much that can't be done without a GUI, so I rarely use X for anything other than forwarding something from my main computer over ssh
Playing videos in underpowered machines vía streamlink/yt-dlp.
Tons of people under HN might know yt-dlp, but not streamlink.
About GUI's and the like, mpv has both SDL and KMS output, and both can render to the framebuffer. Ditto with mplayer and fbdev2.
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was the point of this comment? Yeah this is pretty much how I use my computer. I use netsurf because I can use it in the framebuffer. I use mg for text editing and file browsing (using dired), chat using ircii, and email with elm. I don't really do much that can't be done without a GUI, so I rarely use X for anything other than forwarding something from my main computer over ssh
Playing videos in underpowered machines vía streamlink/yt-dlp. Tons of people under HN might know yt-dlp, but not streamlink. About GUI's and the like, mpv has both SDL and KMS output, and both can render to the framebuffer. Ditto with mplayer and fbdev2.
Yeah, I'd probably use those if I had much use for them. Like I said, for any media consumption I have my PS vita and my work rarely requires me to do something with multimedia content while I'm on the go
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#79I want to participate. But maybe I already do everyday.
My daily driver is a MacBook Pro 2009 running Linux MX 23, does that count as an old computer for this challenge?
Re: Old Computer Challenge
#80This just reminds me that I have my old MicroATX HTPC (remember that term?) that I built in about 2010 sitting in a closet. I bet I haven’t booted it since 2014. I wonder what’s on it…
This is one of the baby ones smaller than Micro-ATX. Weaker too, with soldered-on processor. Only 15 years old:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-E350N-USB3-rev-10
https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/motherboards/gigabyte-...
Early SATA 3 and USB3 and the mainboard footprint is not much bigger than a miniPC. The enclosure it's in is about twice the size of a miniPC, 191 x 286mm, and the discrete little power supply probably has less than the recommended 200W. Enclosure only fits 2.5 inch drives, holds two of them but can't always power up both if they are HDDs when 4GB memory is installed. Never would handle a video card and there's no way one would fit inside the case anyway. Not really taking advantage of the SATA 3 yet, using an appropriate vintage HDD from a 2011 Macbook that's 160GB at SATA 2 which is half the speed.
But it has 3 video connectors from which you can choose any two, and decent sound.
This one has two full processor cores but it's not much faster to boot than my old Dell which does run at about twice the speed. The Gigabyte has a nice BIOS geared toward overclockers but it runs hot enough with default settings so that's enough.
Windows 11 in a MBR/BIOS layout, can only handle up to W11 23H2 but it's fully updated by manually installing the patch each month. Edge updates as expected. LAN drivers also less than a year old. OS takes up over 20GB of a 32GB partition. As drive space dwindles the manual patch installation using DISM will require a /scratchdir on a different partition than you are booted to, or on a storage drive having plenty of space.
This next one is 20 years old, still just sits there running:
https://dl.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esup...
32-bit only so it's Windows 10 x86. Used to play internet videos fine just a couple years ago, PC never changed but the internet got more encumbered. When it had XP it was snappier than a new Windows 11 PC at least.
I do use a PS2 mouse with each of these but only one with any balls at all :)