Just a quick note to point out an interesting fact of computer history. Amd recently announced it’s server beast CPU [Epyc 9965] . Built in 3nm lithography, it supports 384 threads, a 12-channel memory controller and has a whopping 500W TDP. Windows 7 256 thread barrier is finally broken. As for an Intel, they are definitely can send their technology to the museum. Imagery by spacedrone808 @Adobe Imagery by spacedrone808 @Freepik

Brilliant high quality review of a really interesting and compact SCSI card for those of you who want to keep your Amiga up to date. Imagery by spacedrone808 @Adobe Imagery by spacedrone808 @Freepik

Bring your museum 4.7Mhz XT machine up to the performance of an AT 286 machine. In those days, productivity gains were measured in times, not the measly percentage units that currently are common practice in the marketing world today. Adrian has done a very interesting review of such a rare accelerator. Thanks fly out to him, enjoy! Imagery by spacedrone808 @Adobe Imagery by spacedrone808 @Freepik

I already marked stand-from-the-crowd [Neo Geo console] of the early 90s. Now it is time to mention a Japanese computer that is definitely made with love and effort, just look at it’s design! IMPORTING AN X68000 FROM JAPAN TESTING OUT THE IMPORTED X68000 SHARP X68000 MIDI AND RAM UPGRADES Imagery by spacedrone808 @Adobe Imagery by spacedrone808 @Freepik

It’s been a while since i watched Chyrosran22 YT channel. If you are interested, here is one more unusual video unpacking of pretty obscure keyboard. Imagery by spacedrone808 @Adobe Imagery by spacedrone808 @Freepik

It looks like we have reached the very last driver for the Nvidia 3XXX series of graphics cards. They promised that the final revision of the driver will see the light of day in late September. As of early October, the latest version of the driver is [v475.14] , released on July 9. But I have a feeling that Nvidia will release another very final version later on, if this is true I’ll update post accordingly.

¶ INTRO WORDS Numbers, numbers, numbers … i say NUMBERS!!!! It’s been a while since i ran into the craze of pointless benchmarks. And now I’m back with the absolute procrastination stuff. Are you happy with this? Take a note that 3DMark 03, 3DMark 05, 3DMark 06, 3DMark Vantage [2007], 3DMark 2011 and 3DMark 2021 are not marked by ▒ sign, showing the fact that these programs lost the soul of demoscene and just providing comparison numbers, nothing else.

[HighTreason] is not that active these days, so i have to find a solid substitute for my retro hardware cravings. And, oh boy, that was not an easy task to complete, i can barely find a solid reviewer among hundreds of sellouts, boring and just plain ignorant vloggers. But in the end of the day i found him! Yeah, it is [RetroSpector78] from Belgium. His speciality is producing reviews of obscure and rare pieces of computer hardware [primarily from 80s-90s era] with episodic dives into the software field.

Messing around with the recently purchased Ryzen 7700 i ran into some rather annoying power related problems. The computer and monitor would go into sleep mode after about 5 minutes, despite the appropriate power settings in the Control Panel and third party software such as Process Lasso and Park Control being residential in memory. I had to break my head to get out of this situation and traditionally i am sharing with you the solution I found.

Initially, I decided to install Windows Server 2008 R2, attracted by the opportunity to have a server-class operating system with increased I/O throughput in the works. But almost immediately i ran into compatibility problems [no surprise here] with my existing software. Some programs refuse to run because of artificial restrictions [you know licensing mambo-jambo stuff], some of which depend on components that are not present in Windows Server. It’s sort of possible to work, but you almost always run into little glitches here and there, even after converting it to a [workstation] .

It was more than a two-year long run with [44 thread Broadwell] , quite a nice heater. I have really enjoyed running multi-threaded workloads on it, but it is time to move on. As you may remember i’ve already tried [AMD in 2021] , just to make sure that it is possible in a Windows 7 environment. And now i would like to jump on the red train again.

Too large to be good in terms of ergo? I had the chance to try out the [Dell U4323QE] beast and here is my opinion on that device. I have been using neat [NEC PA301w] since early 2014 and have no regrets about it’s performance. But not long time ago i’ve noticed that screen space has become scarce for my needs and applications in 2024. Even after I added an old 19-inch NEC to the configuration, it still wasn’t enough to feel completely comfortable.

UPDATED ON: 2024-09-07 Internet is swarming with instructions on how to do this in a proper way, but all of them are incomplete and it looks like the authors don’t care much and don’t put enough effort into making them really shine, so i decided to fix that confusion and write my own, uber one. Computer user ergonomics is a really complex thing, so I split the FAQ into several sections for better readability and understanding.

The [Acorn computer] is probably one of the most underrated in computer history. All mobile device manufacturers should give a credit to the developers of Acorn’s first RISC computer. They developed the first System-on-Chip CPU. Without the efforts of Acorn engineers you would probably be running an overheated, crashing quad-core CISC CPU from Intel in your mobile device in 2024. ACORN ARCHIMEDES ▀ REALLY IMPORTANT COMPUTER IN TECHNOLOGY HISTORY

If i remember correctly i already promised [not to touch any cameraphones again] . But what convinced me to take another crack at it was the numerous reviews claiming “it’s the best cameraphone in the world” running Android 13. As you may know, Android 14 brought many groundbreaking changes [at least from my point of view]. One of them is the restriction on installing applications targeted at Android 6.0. Loads of cr#p services and telemetry dialers are included also.

Somewhere in the previous posts i have already done [small rant] regarding the desired specification of modern smartphone. After fiddling around with the latest [Oppo Find X6 Pro] aka the best modern cameraphone, i come to a conclusion with myself on how the smartphone specification of my dreams should look like. Consider this as a revisited version of the previous document. And yeah, you will surely see the Oppo review in a while when i free myself up from the daily routine.

For me, the [Atari Falcon] was as cool as the later Amigas. Some people claim that Falcon had less custom chips and less GFX capabilities compared to Amiga. On the other hand, Falcon was a bit faster CPUs in standard configurations, native MIDI support, but more importantly it had special sound DSP capable of 16-bit 48Khz sound output, the thing that was too cool even for Amiga. That is why computer was so popular in music studios at the time.

Despite the fact that i’m not a MIDI person, i find this video loaded with interesting technical and historical facts about the era. So, take a look if you have spare time! Imagery by spacedrone808 @Adobe Imagery by spacedrone808 @Freepik

Currently we all know that [Ryzen 7950x] and more importantly [Threadripper 7000] series are working just fine in Windows 7 environment. Upcoming Ryzen 9950x confirmed to work already, because it is using the same socket [mechanically and electronically]. And now for even better news: [AM5 socket will be supported at least until 2027] , which means that Ryzen 10950x will work without any hassles also. So, it looks like the Threadripper 7995wx and Ryzen 10950x will be the last chips to work properly on the Windows 7 platform in the worst case scenario.

Himmelskibet [member of WinRaid community] has just discovered that modern 48-thread workstation CPU Threadripper 7960X can work in Windows 7 environment. He was able to execute Windows Server 2008R2, with working USB3 ports. Testbed motherboard: Gigabyte TRX50 Aero D rev 1.1. “Good” BIOS version: FA BIOS [dated Nov 23, 2023] Nvme testing is in progress. I’m pretty sure that everything will work fine. Here is a proof image: [Original topic @ WinRaid] If it works out with NVME and it will not give BSODs and substantial issues we could count that Windows 7 is capable of driving 192 threads then.

The time has come for another technology bombshell. You waited for it, didn’t you? Looking at the atrocious [interfaces of modern applications] I don’t know when the idea of proper convenience has become obsolete. Maybe around 2013 or so. The time period is debatable, but the main thing here is that we are distancing ourselves not only from real engineering, but more scarily from common sense. The topic affects not only software stuff but hardware products as well.

Desperately need a help of Windows 2000 adepts. I’ve decided to build a [Windows 2000 Datacenter] machine. Especially after discovering the news about porting of modern fully-fledged [Supermium] browser into W2K environment. Here are the results of my investigations. Correct me and add additional preciseness to details. Important statements [please correct me if i’m wrong]: Maximum number of CPU threads including hyper-threaded ones can be 32 [so 16 cores + 16 HT threads is an absolute maximum] Maximum amount of RAM is 32Gb [accessible via PAE technology, which introduces some latency and affects performance a bit, browsing the web i’ve seen some non-clear evidence of 64gb RAM configurations].

The Amiga 4000 is a computer that was way ahead of its time, and this was true for many years in a row. The architecture had no competing alternatives for a very long period. Ability to install an additional processor through a special accelerator board. So in the end you own multi processor platform (in 1995!). Custom chips for hardware accelerated processing requests for I/O systems, sound, video. Three levels of RAM: fast memory (conventional ram), chip memory on the motherboard, the possibility to increase the RAM even more by means of Zorro III adapter.

Short answer will be: NONE OF THEM. But if you are not satisfied with that and interested in topic: read below. In this quick blip-note i’ll explain my subjective opinion regarding big corpos and their influence on technology in general. Let’s start from the barebone roots of the problem. There are two people who brought home computing to masses. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Who are they? First one cheaply bought DOS operating system from [Gary Kildall] and resold it to IBM for a waaaay bigger money.

As you may already know golden age of personal computing happened somewhere around 80s and 90s. Time when new computer model was released almost every week or so. No standardization at all, everybody were doing exactly what they wanted without any restrictions. GOLDEN AGE OF PERSONAL COMPUTING Imagery by spacedrone808 @Adobe Imagery by spacedrone808 @Freepik

During recent week i’ve received plenty questions regarding hardware and software i’m using in my retrograde activities. So, here is a list. The most important thing is a desktop workstation/server. ░ HARDWARE CPU: Intel [Xeon E5-2696v4] COOLER: [Noctua NH-D15 SE] MOBO: [Asrock X99 Extreme 4] RAM: 64GB DDR4 Samsung 2400Mhz ECC NVME: 1Tb Samsung 980 Pro SSD: 1Tb Samsung QVO sHHD: 2Tb Seagate Firecuda (8Gb SSD cache) VIDEO: [EVGA 3090 Ti 24Gb VRAM] AUDIO:[ESI Maya 44EX PCIE] PSU: [Seasonic GOLD 1300Watt] CASE: [Fractal Design Define S2 White] KEYS: [Keychron Q6] MOUSE: A4Tech [ <1$ ] MONITOR: [NEC PA301W 2560x1600] SPEAKERS: [Edifier R2800] Other hardware stuff to mention:

I’m quite satisfied with performance of my current workstation. [44-thread Broadwell] paired with 64Gb of RAM, fast NVME and [24Gb EVGA 3090Ti] shape solid desktop tool. However i’m planning distant upgrade to achieve maximum speed in Windows 7 environment. Just to mark checkbox that it is possible. In 2021 i already tried out modern platform based [around x570 in conjunction with Ryzen 5950X] . System worked without any problems, thanks to modern [CanonKong Windows 7 drivers] .

UPDATED ON: 2024-08-04 Finally Nokia PureView 808 set is complete. Red, black and white. Currently i’m not thinking about sale of this treasure chest. But if you are willing to offer good five-digit number amount i may reconsider my statement [or may not]. This will be quite hard decision to accept. Moreover, such bundle in almost like new condition [can’t be bought even on Ebay] . Anyways, it is surely nice to have set of unique camera-phones in excellent condition, especially if they are not surpassed in daylight resolution even in 2024.