My needs for digital control are modest. I always use good old fashioned TTL circuits to control stuff.
I have reverse engineered several AV receivers that I took out of the dumpster. (I'm building a biamp out of one.) Out of 7 or 8 that I've dissected, only one had a defect other than the built in computer. A couple of them had laptop motherboards installed inside, complete with USB outlets. There were USB cables and plugs inside! This is cheesy, it's cheap, it's lazy, and deceptive to the consumer. And, it's 100% designed to fail. Honestly, I'm way more clever than that, with way less resources.
I have reverse engineered several AV receivers that I took out of the dumpster. (I'm building a biamp out of one.) Out of 7 or 8 that I've dissected, only one had a defect other than the built in computer. A couple of them had laptop motherboards installed inside, complete with USB outlets. There were USB cables and plugs inside! This is cheesy, it's cheap, it's lazy, and deceptive to the consumer. And, it's 100% designed to fail. Honestly, I'm way more clever than that, with way less resources.
Funny, I've oft felt this same way about them too.
>It is well known that Microsoft wants all old hardware to go away, and nothing older than 7th or 8th gen CPU's will be supported on W11.
I didnt know. Came here to show off my shiny new Thinkpad T560 I took delivery on today ($300) from which I just entered my DIYAudio password to reply.
Seems to be a nice machine. But, now I feel that way about them a bit more...
[edit] after a quick look on line -
"TLDR; Microsoft is tired of low-end PCs and Laptops that get specific bugs and glitches which make their experience with Windows 10 a nightmare, so they upped the minimum requirements, although TPM 2.0 and UEFI aren't really needed. If you can currently run Windows 10 and have a decent-specced PC, you CAN run Windows 11. Don't keep listening to fear-mongering posts"
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Back in the early 2000's Norton AntiVirus did it too. Working in a large engineering facility brings you in contact with highly skilled technical people who may not always use their skills for "good." There was a "computer club" at Motorola for years. We cloned, modified, or upgraded nearly every "home computer" ever made. We had an audio club too, and we cloned nearly every Tiger Amp ever made along with several others.
A long time ago in a computer far away, the SWTPC MC6800 machine from the mid 70's, there lived a device that could read any cartridge for the Atari 2600 game console, store its data on a cassette tape, and burn it to an Eprom as needed. This data wound up on a floppy disk, and eventually on several hard drives, along with just about every bit of useful information associated with our hobbies.
By the 2000's we all had PC's and most of us used Norton AV. One day a new Version of Norton was released and it found multiple "infections" on our PC's and removed them without asking or even offering to quarantine them. These "infections" were the tools, data, and even some schematics used in our endeavors, including some legally installed tools like the software that operated an Eprom Programmer.
Yes, some of these tools cold be used to thwart copy protection, but many including my JDR Microdevices EPROM programmer was used for burning chips for my MC68HC11 robot car project that won second place in an IEEE contest in 1993, were legitimate "maker" tools. None of us ever used a Symantec product again.
I read somewhere on a Microsoft web site that machines without the hardware needed for a certain level of security will not be supported on W11. The exact definition of that terminology was not specified, but TPM 2.0 is mentioned. At this point it is not worth digging through the BS to figure out what MS will really do, since up until very recently W10 was the "last version of Windows."
What was the cat that would go to sleep on the screen in the really early version of OS/2?
Neko?
I still have all my disks back to 2.1, but for you guys that lost yours and need a real OS all the way back to 1.X for an old computer:
IBM OS/2 Warp 4 Collection : IBM : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Neko?
I still have all my disks back to 2.1, but for you guys that lost yours and need a real OS all the way back to 1.X for an old computer:
IBM OS/2 Warp 4 Collection : IBM : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
While we are complaining about bad behavior, remember that sometimes they kill off good products for future gain:
From the DEC Aplha wiki:
The Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC, to Compaq in 1998.[4] Compaq, already an Intel customer, phased out Alpha in favor of the forthcoming Hewlett-Packard/Intel Itanium architecture, and sold all Alpha intellectual property to Intel in 2001, effectively killing the product. Hewlett-Packard purchased Compaq later that same year, continuing development of the existing product line until 2004, and selling Alpha-based systems, largely to the existing customer base, until April 2007.[5]
They killed off the DEC Alpha to let Itanium get a head start. I have seen a shipping facility or other production facility run on a 10 year old DEC more than once.
Also recently my youngest kid and his friend asked why Linux was faster then Windows for some games. I explained that maybe 15 years ago some good developers got together and made the Linux kernel work well on larger servers using the AMD64 instruction set. Lots of good work was done that could not happen art a place like Microsoft. The best people would not wind up in the right places. Also back then Microsoft put most of their effort into making their kernel and software work with the Itanium processor. You kids have not heard of the Itanium processor have you?
From the DEC Aplha wiki:
The Alpha architecture was sold, along with most parts of DEC, to Compaq in 1998.[4] Compaq, already an Intel customer, phased out Alpha in favor of the forthcoming Hewlett-Packard/Intel Itanium architecture, and sold all Alpha intellectual property to Intel in 2001, effectively killing the product. Hewlett-Packard purchased Compaq later that same year, continuing development of the existing product line until 2004, and selling Alpha-based systems, largely to the existing customer base, until April 2007.[5]
They killed off the DEC Alpha to let Itanium get a head start. I have seen a shipping facility or other production facility run on a 10 year old DEC more than once.
Also recently my youngest kid and his friend asked why Linux was faster then Windows for some games. I explained that maybe 15 years ago some good developers got together and made the Linux kernel work well on larger servers using the AMD64 instruction set. Lots of good work was done that could not happen art a place like Microsoft. The best people would not wind up in the right places. Also back then Microsoft put most of their effort into making their kernel and software work with the Itanium processor. You kids have not heard of the Itanium processor have you?
I did that a while back to one that weighed nearly 60 pounds, amp worked fine, had a humongous power supply, the thing made 180wpc, but the controls were dead.
After removing the many rca jacks on the rear, except for a pair, and wiring them directly to the amp inputs, it’s alive again.
I did just buy some caulk to prepare the house for paint here soon however.
Hey! No fair staying on topic! 😛 Well OK then:
Today at WalMart I bought a USB car charger with a twist. It has 2 ports on the cigarette lighter part like most do, but also a long pigtail coming off to a separate little box with 3 more ports on it. The intended purpose is to strap the auxilliary box to the headrest posts to give backseat passengers access to that sweet USB juice. But I was hoping for a different application.
Got it home, unboxed it, crossed my fingers, and snipped the pigtail cable in two - success! Only 2 conductors, red & black, each wired directly to the corresponding terminals on the lighter plug.
Now I can wire my little 12V-to-12V isolated DC-DC converter in this line. This will give me a choice of regular connections on the plug, or ground-isolated on the little extendo-box. No more nasty ground loop buzz trying to listen to my Clip Zip MP3 player while it's charging, and I can still just unplug the whole thing to prevent battery drain when not in use. And after shortening the wires to correct length and Velcro-ing everything up under the dash, it will clear up a fair bit of wiring clutter in the work vehicle.
Today at WalMart I bought a USB car charger with a twist. It has 2 ports on the cigarette lighter part like most do, but also a long pigtail coming off to a separate little box with 3 more ports on it. The intended purpose is to strap the auxilliary box to the headrest posts to give backseat passengers access to that sweet USB juice. But I was hoping for a different application.
Got it home, unboxed it, crossed my fingers, and snipped the pigtail cable in two - success! Only 2 conductors, red & black, each wired directly to the corresponding terminals on the lighter plug.
Now I can wire my little 12V-to-12V isolated DC-DC converter in this line. This will give me a choice of regular connections on the plug, or ground-isolated on the little extendo-box. No more nasty ground loop buzz trying to listen to my Clip Zip MP3 player while it's charging, and I can still just unplug the whole thing to prevent battery drain when not in use. And after shortening the wires to correct length and Velcro-ing everything up under the dash, it will clear up a fair bit of wiring clutter in the work vehicle.
Same here. 150 watts x 5. I removed one amplifier board and configured it as 150 watts x4. Enormous power supply.
Now I'm putting a logic controlled active crossover in it so it can be used as a 4 channel amplifier, or a bi-amplifier. NO software, just TTL controls and logic.
This thing had like 50 jacks on the back, now only 4. It seems to me that the average person would have to hire the Geek Squad to hook this thing up.
I put an order into element 14 back in Aug 2020 for a bunch of stuff, and there ws one dale cmf55 resistor value (It was an odd one 9.something K and 0.1% from memory) which they didn't ship, saying it was on back order.
Well that one resistor turned up about a month ago! 11 Months after my original order!!
Tony.
Probably the stupidest thing HP ever did, dropping R&D on the PA-Risc and instead investing in Itanium.... (also killing the dec Alpha, though strickly speaking that was compaq, actually maybe buying compaq was the stupidest thing they ever did....)
Probably doesn't matter since as of the end of Dec 2020, (unless someone other than HP is making computers with them) HP no longer sells their HP-UX machines which used the chip.
There was a brief period of time where Windows (I think NT 4.0) was available for Itanium (I went for a job interview in the early 90's before NT 3.5 came out where SGI were looking to port it to run it on their MIPS chips too)
I never liked the Itanium philosophy. It was the antithesis of a risc processor, and it made performance too reliant on the compiler. The powerpc was what I was interested in, still going as far as I know in the IBM Power series machines...
Tony.
What did I buy today? Way too much! A new phone for my daughter, A new Internet router, some phone accoutrements, and a usbc hub with an HDMI output so my daughter can plug her laptop into a monitor.... It doesn't have any video output on it at all! She asked me today (have had it for 18 months) if she could plug it into the monitor, and after looking I came to the conclusion, no, not without buying an adapter of some sort first!
Tony.
Tony.
I began installing Fedora Server 34 on a little Lenovo i5 miniature computer I recently bought. I'm in the installation process now. With any luck, it will become the domain controller that the Win10 boxes can join and life can return to normal. Well, normal except that there will be a little server to authenticate logons and allow access to the NAS.
I hope this is all Microsoft has done to me. Just waiting for the surprises to roll out.
-Chris
I hope this is all Microsoft has done to me. Just waiting for the surprises to roll out.
-Chris
I really don't get why you need to run a domain server in your house LOL But I'm glad you're on the way to making it work.
I still say you can just make a shortcut to the NAS using it's IP from any box that supports SMBv2. It's just not browseable since the depreciated NetBIOS.
This article might be of some help. I learned a few things reading it 😀
How to kill off SMB1, NetBIOS, WINS and *still* have Windows' Network Neighbourhood better than ever | TrueNAS Community
I still say you can just make a shortcut to the NAS using it's IP from any box that supports SMBv2. It's just not browseable since the depreciated NetBIOS.
This article might be of some help. I learned a few things reading it 😀
How to kill off SMB1, NetBIOS, WINS and *still* have Windows' Network Neighbourhood better than ever | TrueNAS Community
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All these stories about DOS, OS-2, WordPerfect, etc. remind me of my youth...remind me when I went back to school after my US Marine Corps enlistment, graduated from college in the 1980s with a BSME degree. By that time, it didn't matter what your major field of study, you had to learn how to use a PC. That meant the computer labs were loaded with IBM XT's. I soon went to work at a national laboratory and met the IT manager. This guy knew less about computer software and hardware than most. I realized that after my new manager took me to visit this guy to get a PC workstation for ProEngineer software. The IT guy said I had to wait until the new fiscal year because ProE required a $6000 video card. My manager took me to an abandoned workstation and said I could use it until the new PC arrived. A week later the IT guy walked by while I was running ProE and almost yelled how did I do that? I sheepishly commented that you could run ProE with a VGA card. Then he commented that they had ditched all the SGI workstations because no one could figure out how to transfer files between the workstations and PCs running MS Win NT. I showed him a FTP shareware file I had downloaded from our sister lab. He shook his head and pointed to a couple pallets of workstations they were sending to reapplication and said they had paid $30k for each workstation loaded with software and hardware. Nobody ever took the fall for that example of stupidity runneth amok.
Like this one?
I got a used one of these on Ebay several months ago for use in a portable music workstation. It does OK running several software synthesizers at once, but does get a bit choked Up running a big Ableton Live project. It would like some more memory but these are fixed at 8 GB and not upgradeable. One SSD slot can be SATA or NVMe, but the other is SATA only, which matched up well with my collection of used SSD's.
I have it connected to a 13 inch 1080 X 1920 screen and powered by a DIY lithium ion pack (7 X 18650's). It's still running the W10 that came on it.
Attachments
Hi George,
Mine is larger and came with 8 GB ram which is expandable. At the most it might serve some disk, but no applications. The ram it has should be fine, especially with Linux. At the moment I need to find a compatible, small monitor. Didn't really want to buy one. One I have sort of works, but puts a big information box in the middle of the screen saying it is unhappy with the horizontal and vertical frequencies (but displays the screens fine otherwise). I guess I have to buy another monitor and wait for it to arrive.
Hi kodabmx,
It has been decades since I set up a real server, so I am an idiot when it comes to this stuff. That's why I do not want to be an IT person at home. So the quick answer is that I don't know. I do know Microsoft is asking for a server, so the quick and easy way to deal with that is to give it one. Only, I'm forcing it to deal with a Linux box so I have no Windows tricks and traps in networking. Just simple, straight forward, clear to understand networking with no extreme unwanted help from applications I don't want. I also do not wish to be surprised one day when a Windows server decides that it is not secure and forces an update to something even more troublesome.
I do not trust Microsoft one little bit. Over the years I learned that relying on Microsoft to just simply do what it is supposed to do isn't realistic, it decides to think for me. Loading stuff I don't want, blocking other programs without consent or changing network settings for no reason. I was happy and productive running my own computers where they didn't help me and did exactly what they were set up to do. It is clear to me that Microsoft will continue to treat me like a moron and just do whatever the gremlins decide is best for me. I know exactly what is best for me. I just want my applications to leave me alone and do nothing more than what they are told.
Workarounds are just great until Microsoft blocks that avenue and you are right back where you started. I expect those two applications to stop running because "they are no longer secure" even though they are. The Microsoft solution would be to "upgrade" software that requires new hardware and days of set up so it will also hopefully run my other critical applications. When it doesn't, I'll have to run a KVM box for a dual monitor setup between two machines I don't have room for. It's only a matter of time really, this will happen, I'll put money on it.
I will then be forced to replace this software with something more human friendly (= Microsoft hostile) at great expense for the program, and more expense for a professional to set it up. I have basically reached my breaking point with Microsoft.
By the way, this program did not at any time mention that Win7 Pro was not secure enough to run. In fact, the program will run fine, except that it detects the OS and actually stops the installation with the message that Win7 Pro is on longer considered secure and that Win10 must be installed. By then I could not send it back, so I am stuck with a decision from Microsoft that has cost me substantial money and time. Microsoft Windows secure? Don't make me laugh! It isn't by a long shot, this is a cash grab, pure and simple.
Someone please initiate a lawsuit against Microsoft. I would love to see them disappear completely. It's not like any of you have real support from Microsoft. But then I guess people who wrote crappy code for Microsoft will have to become professional and write stuff that runs under any other OS. All in all, short term confusion followed by reliable, non-buggy operating systems and applications. A return to real networking and equipment doing as it was programmed to do. Oh, and actually having real secure operating systems for computers. Not having to take continual upgrade courses just to keep up with UI interface changes should lower costs for everyone as well.
-Chris
Mine is larger and came with 8 GB ram which is expandable. At the most it might serve some disk, but no applications. The ram it has should be fine, especially with Linux. At the moment I need to find a compatible, small monitor. Didn't really want to buy one. One I have sort of works, but puts a big information box in the middle of the screen saying it is unhappy with the horizontal and vertical frequencies (but displays the screens fine otherwise). I guess I have to buy another monitor and wait for it to arrive.
Hi kodabmx,
It has been decades since I set up a real server, so I am an idiot when it comes to this stuff. That's why I do not want to be an IT person at home. So the quick answer is that I don't know. I do know Microsoft is asking for a server, so the quick and easy way to deal with that is to give it one. Only, I'm forcing it to deal with a Linux box so I have no Windows tricks and traps in networking. Just simple, straight forward, clear to understand networking with no extreme unwanted help from applications I don't want. I also do not wish to be surprised one day when a Windows server decides that it is not secure and forces an update to something even more troublesome.
I do not trust Microsoft one little bit. Over the years I learned that relying on Microsoft to just simply do what it is supposed to do isn't realistic, it decides to think for me. Loading stuff I don't want, blocking other programs without consent or changing network settings for no reason. I was happy and productive running my own computers where they didn't help me and did exactly what they were set up to do. It is clear to me that Microsoft will continue to treat me like a moron and just do whatever the gremlins decide is best for me. I know exactly what is best for me. I just want my applications to leave me alone and do nothing more than what they are told.
Workarounds are just great until Microsoft blocks that avenue and you are right back where you started. I expect those two applications to stop running because "they are no longer secure" even though they are. The Microsoft solution would be to "upgrade" software that requires new hardware and days of set up so it will also hopefully run my other critical applications. When it doesn't, I'll have to run a KVM box for a dual monitor setup between two machines I don't have room for. It's only a matter of time really, this will happen, I'll put money on it.
I will then be forced to replace this software with something more human friendly (= Microsoft hostile) at great expense for the program, and more expense for a professional to set it up. I have basically reached my breaking point with Microsoft.
By the way, this program did not at any time mention that Win7 Pro was not secure enough to run. In fact, the program will run fine, except that it detects the OS and actually stops the installation with the message that Win7 Pro is on longer considered secure and that Win10 must be installed. By then I could not send it back, so I am stuck with a decision from Microsoft that has cost me substantial money and time. Microsoft Windows secure? Don't make me laugh! It isn't by a long shot, this is a cash grab, pure and simple.
Someone please initiate a lawsuit against Microsoft. I would love to see them disappear completely. It's not like any of you have real support from Microsoft. But then I guess people who wrote crappy code for Microsoft will have to become professional and write stuff that runs under any other OS. All in all, short term confusion followed by reliable, non-buggy operating systems and applications. A return to real networking and equipment doing as it was programmed to do. Oh, and actually having real secure operating systems for computers. Not having to take continual upgrade courses just to keep up with UI interface changes should lower costs for everyone as well.
-Chris
I bought a pair of Dali Oberon 5's in white for the living room. About £730 here in the UK. Nice for the money - big sound with reasonable top end though not as refined as the KEF LS50's. They are nice an compact so don't dominate the room visually like the B&W's would.
If you have the keys for W7 (should be on a sticker placed somewhere on the machine) you can download W10 directly from the Microsoft web site, install it, then use the W7 keys to authorize it. It will be a fully functional system as it you bought a new copy of W10. A W7 pro PC will become a W10 pro PC, and a W7 home machine will become a W10 home machine. Who knows what will happen with W11, because even Microsoft documentation is conflicting.
If there is no sticker, there are programs on the web that will retrieve them from the registry for you. I have done this free W10 upgrade on maybe 20 PC's and it always works, with one exception. If the machine was ever used in a corporate environment and covered by a Microsoft blanket license agreement, then those machines are covered by a separate license agreement, and not user upgradeable. I got two used W7 laptops on Ebay a couple years ago which would not upgrade. The MS guy explained the corporate license thing to me. I called my friend the surplus dealer who got me some numbers off of the stickers on some NASA computer stuff he was scrapping. They worked just fine.
My little Lenovo did come from a corporate environment, and was under such an agreement. The seller claims that a new W10 license went with the machine as did almost a year of the remaining Lenovo warranty. The Lenovo did guide me through the new PC dance upon first power up, including registration on the Lenovo site. We will see what happens if I ever take the W11 bait.
W10 will work just fine for my purposes without being authorized. A nag screen will tell you that your copy is not genuine upon power up. It states that the machine is operating at "reduced functionality" and can be dismissed. In my case one machine is used for an audio analyzer, and the other for controlling some IEEE488 test equipment. They both work fine, and both are also of the same 3rd or 4th gen vintage hardware as this one.
Neither are on the net, so there have been no updates. I also have two W7 machines kept alive so that the 10 year old PCI (not PCIe) audio interfaces can be used, again no net access, no problems.
This machine however is becoming more frustrating every day. Is it flakey old hardware, or bad updates? I don't know, but I feel that the path of least resistance will be to play along with MS and pop in a 7th gen core i7 board and chip that I pulled from a dead project. The "new" hardware will likely invalidate the W10 keys associated with this PC, bit the 7th gen MB was used on W7 and then W10, I have keys written down.....somewhere.
Most W8 and all W10 machines use a digital licensing scheme kept on a MS server somewhere. Each PC generates a unique "hardware ID" that goes with your digital license. Experiments by myself and others reveal that the CPU and the motherboard each play a major role in creating this. The core i7-7700T chip in that motherboard died, which Intel replaced under warranty. I had to call Microsoft for a re-authorization when the new chip was inserted even though nothing else had changed. Wholesale hardware changes or trying to reuse old keys on a new PC will fail. Depending on who you get on the phone at Microsoft, and what story you give, may or may not get you back up and running. "Lightning hit my PC and fried most of it, I had to buy all these new parts to fix it, and now you tell me that I have to buy a new W7 license" worked once several years ago. Do not try to reuse any of those part on a licensed Windows machine again......big brother IS watching.
If there is no sticker, there are programs on the web that will retrieve them from the registry for you. I have done this free W10 upgrade on maybe 20 PC's and it always works, with one exception. If the machine was ever used in a corporate environment and covered by a Microsoft blanket license agreement, then those machines are covered by a separate license agreement, and not user upgradeable. I got two used W7 laptops on Ebay a couple years ago which would not upgrade. The MS guy explained the corporate license thing to me. I called my friend the surplus dealer who got me some numbers off of the stickers on some NASA computer stuff he was scrapping. They worked just fine.
My little Lenovo did come from a corporate environment, and was under such an agreement. The seller claims that a new W10 license went with the machine as did almost a year of the remaining Lenovo warranty. The Lenovo did guide me through the new PC dance upon first power up, including registration on the Lenovo site. We will see what happens if I ever take the W11 bait.
W10 will work just fine for my purposes without being authorized. A nag screen will tell you that your copy is not genuine upon power up. It states that the machine is operating at "reduced functionality" and can be dismissed. In my case one machine is used for an audio analyzer, and the other for controlling some IEEE488 test equipment. They both work fine, and both are also of the same 3rd or 4th gen vintage hardware as this one.
Neither are on the net, so there have been no updates. I also have two W7 machines kept alive so that the 10 year old PCI (not PCIe) audio interfaces can be used, again no net access, no problems.
This machine however is becoming more frustrating every day. Is it flakey old hardware, or bad updates? I don't know, but I feel that the path of least resistance will be to play along with MS and pop in a 7th gen core i7 board and chip that I pulled from a dead project. The "new" hardware will likely invalidate the W10 keys associated with this PC, bit the 7th gen MB was used on W7 and then W10, I have keys written down.....somewhere.
Most W8 and all W10 machines use a digital licensing scheme kept on a MS server somewhere. Each PC generates a unique "hardware ID" that goes with your digital license. Experiments by myself and others reveal that the CPU and the motherboard each play a major role in creating this. The core i7-7700T chip in that motherboard died, which Intel replaced under warranty. I had to call Microsoft for a re-authorization when the new chip was inserted even though nothing else had changed. Wholesale hardware changes or trying to reuse old keys on a new PC will fail. Depending on who you get on the phone at Microsoft, and what story you give, may or may not get you back up and running. "Lightning hit my PC and fried most of it, I had to buy all these new parts to fix it, and now you tell me that I have to buy a new W7 license" worked once several years ago. Do not try to reuse any of those part on a licensed Windows machine again......big brother IS watching.
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