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Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

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Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#251
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a new laptop a few months ago that does not do 5GHz. It's a Dell Inspiron 3195, with a Qualcomm Atheros 9565 wireless card. The laptop is still available for purchase. When I purchased it it was on sale for $200. (not sure if the link is my exact model, but all the specs are the same, and this particular model does say 2.4GHz with no mention of 5GHz) https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/2-in-1-laptops/inspiron-11…

Oh wow they're still selling 1366x768 screens in the year 2020.

What's wrong with that? I happen to prefer a "lower" resolution on a laptop (and by "lower" I mean the same pixel density as my IPS monitor, which is 1920x1200). Unless I use an operating system that has completely solved the problem of GUI scaling, I don't see the benefit of higher pixel densities, only constant issues with incompatible applications.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2. * It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer.

To the downvoter: what was wrong with that post? - quote - @nordsieck >> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels > A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2. * It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compati…

[deleted]

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they do it? How does carrier actually know that traffic is coming from tethered device rather than phone itself?

The carrier can inspect TTL (or hop limit in IPv6) values which decrease with every hop, so TTL at the point your packet reaches the carrier is typically lower when you are tethering. Of course it is easy to circumvent by changing TTL on the terhered device from 64 to 65 or something like that, but I guess the solution is esoteric enough that carriers still make money doing crap like this.

Thanks for the brilliant analysis.

I didn't know this.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~90% of my 5.25" floppies written between 1992 and 1995 are readable (verified 2 years ago.) As for my CD-R collection from 1999-2005 ~50% got problems reading everything from it.

I tried my CDR collection from the late 90's last year. Everything worked perfectly. However I destroyed a number of the obsolete ones.

Well a lot of my CD-Rs were the cheapest ones possible - a lot of them using infamous organic acid based substrate, very popular with fungi ;)

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#255
For me the the issue with upgrading is that when you buy a piece of hardware, specifically DJ gear (Serato), mixers/interfaces, etc; the latest and greatest often doesn't support it. Then you are hoping and wishing for the company to create drivers to support your expensive hardware on the latest Catalina OS upgrade. That's why when you see interviews with many musicians that have home studios, the computers aren't the newest. Once you have a stable situation that works, why change all the time?

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#256

> In fact, for reasons I’m yet to discern, my iBook’s internal AirPort Wi-Fi card can’t connect to modern Wi-Fi networks—they simply confound it. WPA2 was standardized a year after his laptop was built. The ancient 802.11b card in it wants to do WEP. Getting driver support for a modern USB WiFi on that prehistoric version of OSX is no picnic either. It's a good thing he doesn't want to get it working.

I also fired up a 2006-era original MacBook fairly recently, running the first Intel version of macOS (I've always had a soft spot for Tiger, its version of Aqua is honestly one of Apple's prettiest interfaces in my mind), while it works with modern-ish WiFi all the certificates are long expired so few things actually connected. I'm not sure how bodge-able this problem is, I never had time to find a solution. It's a…

Arctic Fox works with modern TLS and older versions of OS X.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#257
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz Wow, that’s surprising…most laptops from like 2010 onwards have done 5 GHz. Did yours have a particularly old Wi-Fi card in it?

> Did yours have a particularly old Wi-Fi card in it? From lspci: 03:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) I don't know whether that is an old card or not. I think the laptop was in the $300-$400 range when we got it. Inspiron 15-3551, came with Ubuntu pre-installed, which has since been swapped out for Debian. This Dell support link [1] seems to confirm that it…

Yeah, thats an ath9k card (802.11n). 5Ghz was optional in the 802.11n days, so only higher end devices tended to support it.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#258

> In fact, for reasons I’m yet to discern, my iBook’s internal AirPort Wi-Fi card can’t connect to modern Wi-Fi networks—they simply confound it. WPA2 was standardized a year after his laptop was built. The ancient 802.11b card in it wants to do WEP. Getting driver support for a modern USB WiFi on that prehistoric version of OSX is no picnic either. It's a good thing he doesn't want to get it working.

Some modern wifi networks have 11b (and 11a) switched off so that newer protocols (11n +) can get higher throughout.

CCK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_code_keying

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.airwindows,com I continue to compile my Audio Unit plugins, to this day, on a 10.6.8 Snow Leopard machine specifically so I can release them as PPC/32/64 bit fat binaries. Far as I know that should continue to hold for everything I've done (not sure if it holds for the Mac VST plugins, though) So that constitutes new audio DSP plugins for PowerPC Macs. Though I don't use it day-to-day, I've got an old G3 (…

http://www.airwindows.com/

Thanks. :) I don't seem to know Hacker News posting skills as well as I thought.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the long page metaphor? He doesn't really explain what it is and I've never heard the term before.

Search on the linked page for "THE LONG-HAND PAGE METAPHOR".

I did read it. It doesn't explain anything. I still have no idea what it is.
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