Advice on a new PC motherboard 'bundle' Featured

ROFL. The London Hospital had one of those before they 'upgraded' to a Univac 418-III (complete with a FastRand horizontal drum where the read/heads were on a bar that oscillated from side to side). It also had 4 'spindryer' fixed head drums with an access time of 4.25 millsecs which was super fast in those days.

They wrote an entire runtime system supporting 128 terminals around the hospital (1024 character VDU's, 16*64), pre and post journalling to tape with proper logical transactions. This was the late 60's and early 70's when most commercial dataprocessing still used punch cards/key-to-disk etc. The entire runtime system ran as a continuous batch job 23 hours a day under RTOS the Univac OS which only supported 16 files. The runtime system created its own relational file system contained within one of those RTOS files.

All the runtime software was written in Univac assembler, using punch cards. No VDU's for editting code on the fly !.

I seem to remember hearing that the 803 used magnetic tape with sprocket holes ???

Andrew

Thanks. I'll have a browse through the Silverfast site to see how they manage with Win 10/11

Mention of paper tape reminded me of the Ferranti FM1600B used on RN ships(not that they used paper - finest quality mylar). The spooler & re-spooler for tape handling were stand alone boxes, each weighing much more than this desktop PC.

Another question. I have an HP 32 inch IPS monitor which supports

Does a Mac mini support this ?.

HP Elitebook 840 G5

Are about £120-140 on eBay.

I think this is the cheapest entrant to Win11.

Dell Vostro with 8th gen CPU start at about £80-90:

Theo

DVI-D is messy, but it should support that over HDMI and DP via a USB-C adapter. USB-C to DP is easier as it's a passive adapter while HDMI needs a converter chip.

Theo

Not sure about that, but the tape drives used spring loaded arms rather than vacuum columns.

The University of Kent 803 was placed by a 4130 the year before I arrived. So I never got to play with it.

I don't know of an emulator, although there is one for the 903.

Some beta versions would work with TP1 but TP2 was officially required from go-live. The compatibility tester that was released before W11 checked for TP2 and if it didn't find one said that the system would not support W11.

There was a bodge, a registry hack, that would stop W11 from checking. MS said that they would close that loophole, and did.

I have a NAS device that can't be trusted to connect to the Internet, it always picks up malware. But it was relatively easy to create an SAN that can't see or be seen from the router.

I have upgraded the TPM on an OptiPlex, but apparently the i5-3470 isn't even supported for Windows 10.

As long as you use the Rufus installer (rufus.ie someone in Ireland), you can override most of the issues. but then every Upgrade Install you do, won't work through Windows Update, and you have to use Rufus each year until support is over.

The i5-3470 would not have MBEC hardware support, or a workaround like some of the later processors can manage.

This is your processor. A 4C 4T device.

On processors where the feature is missing, the feature is simply removed from the list. They don't like to make that entry and write "No" next to it, because for the older generations, some have software workarounds when that is missing. However, on really old CPUs, the usage of this is prohibitive (too much impact from its usage).

When the processors were invented, the MBEC was a "hidden feature" and did not appear on any of the web pages. They had to go back and edit the pages of the processors that have hardware support for the issue, and add it to their description.

Mode Based Execution Control (MBEC) is an extension to x86 SLAT implementations first available in Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Zen+ CPUs (known on the latter as Guest Mode Execute Trap or GMET).[10] The extension extends the execute bit in the extended page table (guest page table) into 2 bits - one for user execute, and one for supervisor execute.[11]

MBE was introduced to speed up guest usermode unsigned code execution with kernelmode code integrity enforcement. Under this configuration, unsigned code pages can be marked as execute under usermode, but must be marked as no-execute under kernelmode. To maintain integrity by ensuring all guest kernelmode executable code are signed even when the guest kernel is compromised, the guest kernel does not have permission to modify the execute bit of any memory pages. Modification of the execute bit, or switching of the guest page table which contains the execute bit, is delegated to a higher privileged entity, in this case the host hypervisor. Without MBE, each entrance from unsigned usermode execution to signed kernelmode execution must be accompanied by a VM exit to the hypervisor to perform a switch to the kernelmode page table. On the reverse operation, an exit from signed kernelmode to unsigned usermode must be accompanied by a VM exit to perform another page table switch. VM exits significantly impact code execution performance.[12][13] With MBE, the same page table can be shared between unsigned usermode code and signed kernelmode code, with two sets of execute permission depending on the execution context. VM exits are no longer necessary when execution context switches between unsigned usermode and signed kernel mode."

The Windows OS is a Guest of the Hypervisor, the Hypervisor (which is not an OS) is the boss of the Guests. That's an Inverted Hypervisor for virtualization. Because it's an x86-on-x86 situation, most of the instructions fall through to the hardware, without penalty. But things involving privilege issues, those can cause performance slowdowns, and Windows is chock full of those sorts of issues. The "CPU core spikes when typing in Classic Outlook", is an example of what sort of shenanigans go on inside your computer. That's the wasting of performance, and highlights the need to have afterburners on the computer, to compensate for such waste and carelessness.

Paul

This is an old machine. About fourth generation.

When that system was booted, File Explorer failed to work properly. I killed it multiple times and restarted it and the symptoms did not change. I got a file off that machine using Bluetooth SendTo, so I was not concerned about losing the screenshot. This may have been the KIR Patch Tuesday rollback, as that machine does not normally act out like that. After the reboot, subsequent usage of File Explorer was "normal".

Paul

I'm sure that's true. So, if I were still in business, I'd buy a decent spec machine. (Like this machine I built years ago, with an i7 CPU. It cut the recalculation time on some very large spreadsheets down from 30 minutes to 5.)

As it is, though, I generally only have TBird and Chrome open on the PC these days, and the N100 machine seems perfectly fast enough for my current usage.

I'm not sure that the OP has said what he plans to do with his machine?

This is the nub of my objection. On my toy computer Spreadsheet, Browser, IDE, and MPV Video Player all start in under 5 seconds. Yes I would notice if these apps started in 2 seconds, and I would like it, but it wouldn't really affect my workflow.

The toy computer also has advantages, it uses so little power it can be left on all the time, it is tiny, it is absolutely silent. Having apps start in 2 seconds wouldn't be worth the cost of losing these qualities, or the additional cost.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect my usage patterns are normal for people without specific requirements such as gaming, video editing.

I do look at new PCs and I think eventually they will combine speed with low size/low idle power. I think the Mac Mini, points the way. When such machines exists outside Apple's locked down world, I'll buy one. The new 20 core Intel and AMD CPUs also look exciting, but that is the first time in 10 years, I've thought I might want to buy.

I've never believed in future proofing. In the past, when it was a problem, it was normally better to buy cheap, buy often.

I gave up playing video games 30 years ago, due to blood pressure problems. I'm surprised you can play.

Although to be fair, I feel better now than I did then. I always expected to be dead long before the age I am now. Modern medicine is a wonderful thing (and clean living - :o( )

I have both. My perception is that the oPi5 is better performance, but it's not a fair test, I never got around to installing the rPi5 OS on NVME as opposed to SD card. I use them both to drive TV screens, a kind of very smart TV/standard PC. The oPi5 TV is in front of the comfy chair.

I still use an rPi4 as my main always on server as it is fast enough.

Yes, I was debating Remote Desktop servers the other day, I said it worked on Gnome 47. I neglected to mention I don't think it works on Aarch64.

I still like MS Excel, but I can remote desktop into Windows/Intel PCs. Big old towers, hidden away.

The problem is that there is no 'normal usage pattern'. In an office, maybe - Office tools, a spreadsheet, browser and email perhaps.

At home for 'social domestic and pleasure' people are creating videos, creating 3D designs and printing them, designing circuit boards, playing online games, drawing incredible pictures with painting tools, writing books & songs, creating music, playing cards - patience and online multi-player, processing holiday snapshots, scanning yonks old slides and negatives...

I have a friend who is doing mathematical research into enormous matrices that require a supercomputer to run: He is writing code to run on various platforms...

Are any of these 'normal'?

If all you are is a *consumer* of content, then get an I-pad!

Some people want power in a huge laptop. I dont. I do power computing on a desktop. Other people want Apple fashion accessories. I dont.

There is no 'normal'. At best there is a core of stuff - email and browsing typically - that most people want. But most of them want something else as well.

Oh its not shoot em ups. More MPORPG strategy games

Indeed. I didnt expect to survive much past 1980.

Yup. Pis are very good ta that. I have one driving my Hifi...

Building mine is an ongoing project.

I am all linux, but I do need a windows VM for Corel Draw and Rhino CAD.

I never found anything better than Corel Draw for some purposes.