As my relatives and siblings updated their computers, I inherited their spare parts. My machine got some very interesting upgrades. It got 2 floppy drives (very rare at the time), 2 harddisks, a cd-recorder unit, RAM was upgraded to 64 MB and the modem was replaced by a ne2k compatible network card. I also had a Linux-supported Canon BJC 4200 and a SANE-supported TCE table scanner. Still, I couldn't get the SoundBlaster that my brother had and, sadly, my machine continued without sound support on Linux.
At around 2006 I replaced it with a new self built computer which had better compatibility with Linux than with windows-xp and then this new computer became my first dedicated Linux machine. I found out that Linux eventually got support for AZT-R 2316 at around 2007, but the last time I tried my old computer, it displayed "parity error" probably from oxidation in the memory connectors. I then just gave up on it.
Later on I thought about if it would be possible to install a graphics card with OpenGL support and USB port on one of the remaining PCI ports. I certainly wouldn't be able to install a modern Linux distro on it, but certainly it would work with one of those specially crafted for old computers like TinyCore. With recent kernel changes, swapping maybe smart enough to be usable on SSD with SATA to IDE adapters even in that computer. Now, that would be a dream machine.
I was awed by the beast... Everything about it screamed over-engineering - even the case was incomprehensibly robust and the power switch had a satisfyingly loud motion... I could even touch its legendary tangential fan... Touching the 20 years-old dream was an emotional moment - I'm glad I did it... The ultimate Windows 3.0 host !
But it had to go after a little while: my two-room apartment was too small for so much awesomeness, so it went to another fan.
Which is bizarre. But to me it is (apparently) the small of new electronics, plus perhaps the ‘hot dusty things’ smell. It also comes with the memory of playing Pod (a racing game), by Ubisoft (I think). Good teenage memories!
Also started programming on this one with QBasic and then moved to Turbo Pascal 7 (because I needed a .exe file to be called from autoexec as a password protection vs. my sister which I couldn't do with QBasic :)
Didn't take me long to destroy everything by trying to install some old SUSE-Linux from a floppy disk :D
With a friend we destroyed the msdos 622 installation on the new 40 mb hd of my family 386 when deleting tmp files...
And I’m just immediately fixated on this whole vibe of a life-sized tinkering workspace that’s the inside of a PC case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FSQ-7_Combat_Direction_Cent...
While realistically I understand it was just a bunch of racks and consoles, due to the permanent nature of the installation and the way it was integrated into the building I like to imagine the operators and technicians scurrying around admits bunches of wires and tubes.
- Commodore 128 with dual floppy drive vs my tape-only C64 - Maxed out Amiga 1000 with a bunch of sampler and MIDI extensions vs my A500 + 512kb - B/W PowerMac G3 fully expanded just because - Dual Celly 300A @ 450 with Dual Voodoo II vs my 450 with single Voodoo II
Nothing after that had this "I really want this, but I can't get it" thing. I just bought what I wanted.
From the article:
> 8BitDo makes a fantastic modern keyboard inspired by the M looks and feel.
Hard disagree. I found most of their keyboard replicas to be rather cheap feeling. However, their controllers such as the Arcade Stick and Pro 2 are excellent.
I think the closest approximation you can get to an old school model M keyboard with buckler springs is probably from Unicomp. If you don't care about that kind of authenticity I would just stick with something like a Keychron mechanical keyboard and call it a day.
The Quake code was designed to take advantage of the fact that the Pentium could have one integer and one FPU instruction in flight at the same time, thanks to optimizations by an even bigger space-alien wizard than John Carmack -- Michael Abrash. The Cyrix CPUs... couldn't dual-issue instructions like this, so clock-for-clock their performance suffered compared to Intel.
It had a CD-ROM, speakers and sound and color and everything. I think it was $10,000, or that's what the computer teacher said.
And it looks like the PS/1 is missing VLB, but of course the video card is integrated in this model so that makes sense.
I would have probably went with a Cirrus Logic VLB video card and a Sound Blaster AWE64.
But that's my childhood machine, not the author's :-)
I once visited a college buddy who had a genuine EISA system, and I believe that I left flecks of drool as I admired the superior electronics and engineering invested in that EISA bus. Of course, nobody seriously purchased EISA if they expected to be compatible with stuff.
My father had a PS/2 50Z, which unfortunately saddled him with the MCA Microchannel bus. A likewise superior bit of engineering that was compatible with virtually nothing. Thankfully, Dad never felt a burning need to trick out his system.
Personally, I enjoyed the standard ISA path on my 286 and 386. It was with some regret that I chose VLB for the 486 board, because compared to the above buses, VLB was a hack and a kludge, and you could smell the duct tape and chewing gum on every expansion card.
However, VLB expansion cards were as plentiful as Star Wars action figures, so I was able to absolutely cram cards into a full-size tower until several generations of Pentiums obsoleted everything except PCI.
Today it's... video card and that's it. Every other PCIe slot is a 'waste' (though I do have a BT 5.1 card for a purpose I no longer need). SLI is dead. Only those with special needs, LLMs or crypto, would ever fill up the additional slots.
Building computers is now just stupid simple and in my view, sorta brainless. No jumpers, no "must go in this slot #". The only thing I ever have difficulty with is mounting the CPU cooler, the thing is f-ing huge and requires a special very long Phillips screwdriver.
/oldmanrant
Oh yeah, and if you didn't bleed when building a PC, you didn't really build a PC. Now everything is rolled steel for those kitten hands.
The CPUs all come with enough PCIe lanes for a single dGPU at x16, x4 for the PCH/chipset, and maybe another x4 for a single M.2 SSD. If you aren't building a bog standard gaming PC with one SSD, one huge GPU, and nothing else, you get a configuration that doesn't match what you need. Bifurcation is hit-or-miss, if you can even physically get to the second PCIe slot, if that slot is even big enough. Random M.2s are linked to the PCH with random modes and bandwidths that change based on other configuration options.
All due to the stingy lane count on consumer platforms, again, targeting the lowest common denominator. It was even worse before Ryzen came out and offered a generous 24 lanes (16 for a GPU, 4 for the PCH, and 4 for an SSD) vs Intel's 20.
Of course, PCIe lanes aren't free, but somehow, having "I/O" targeted workloads means you also must go and spend 2-5x as much for "workstation" or server class motherboards, which also are engineered to a common "usual needs" spec that add in a bunch of shit I don't need, and usually require sacrificing single-core speed unless you get top of the line $10K+ server CPUs that draw 5x the power.
What I'd really like is instead of 4 lanes going to the chipset, I wish all of them did. Or at least, all of them went from the CPU to some switch chip that would allow me to set which lanes go to what slots, and have a software configured lane/bandwidth allocation. 24 lanes of PCIe 5.0 is 48 lanes of PCIe 4.0 is 96 lanes of PCIe 3.0, which is more than enough, but trying to actually unlock all of that bandwidth is still limited to the hardware configuration of the motherboard, and no way to reallocate unspent bandwidth. Instead of it all being hardwired for specific configurations, to the CPU directly OR to the chipset, I wish they were all wired for x16 (or x4 for the M.2 slots) direcly to some switch chip, which is then fully wired to the CPU's remaining lanes after PCH/chipset connections. If I need to stuff 4 slots with x16 cards, but they only run at 3.0 speeds, that would still leave 8 lanes of PCIe 5.0 I could allocate elsewhere.
I'm sure this is probably technically impossible, or would be incredibly expensive, but a man can dream.
Made worse by the video cards being ridiculously fat. As an example, the one I have is two slots wide, and protrudes over the third slot; my motherboard has a PCIe x1 slot there, which is made unusable by that. The fourth and last slot of my motherboard, a PCIe x4, is clearly intended for the Thunderbolt card (there's a special connector near it on the motherboard for the sideband signals), but I can't see much use for Thunderbolt on a tower desktop, so it sits empty.
It's not just the huge heatsinks to get rid of the heat output, the power input is another. Also while dGPUs are growing at the high end, low-end dGPUs seem under-served, while AMD have APUs that I think could make a lot of people very content they don't seem too eager to make them easy to get hold of, and intel have the building blocks for a similar product but are hesitant to providing something beyond the minimum
The old ATX power supply standard really needs to get phased out. I'm hopeful to see progress on ATX12VO become more common.
But even separate from that I see things like the Ryzen Z series opening even smaller devices while still offering a lot of graphical punch. I love the Z1 Extreme on my Legion Go, it's an awesome platform. And yeah, having that plus an external GPU could be cool but as noted it's $$$.
It's a shame as the only real personal computer desktop/tower maker that's exercised their freedom to make a significantly different design Apple with Mac Pros, and that's a different animal entirely.
This is exactly what the IBM PS/1 2168 have (see the unboxing section).
But I missed that part of your post. I haven't seen integrated VLB before, only slotted. Does this board have an expansion to 2MiB? Though that would only matter if you wanted higher resolution/colors.
It worked until I started to store some boxes horizontally.