The continuing hard drive worries.

How can I tell if the memory can be swapped from the current PC? Will there be slots available?

Rule of thumb: By the time you're thinking of replacing a PC, the memory from the old one won't be suitable for the new one.

Since your old disk is IDE, that probably makes the old memory meet the rule, but post photos somewhere if you really want to know.

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

About Linux

And audio interface drivers, especially for anything beyond just listening, and I can't find a virtual keyboard that works properly on a tablet PC

I needed more than magic to get the various audio mixers into any sort of sense and working with Jack and the various other audio apps. I am still not at all happy.

But the daughter in law who saw it for the first time yesterday picked up and used the Ubuntu laptop that sits in the lounge for the family when they visit, and I'm not sure she noticed it wasn't Windows.

In message , Tim Lamb writes

Does it apply to desktops as it does to laptops, that you should beware of machines with small amounts of DDR2 memory because of the cost of upgrading?

The audio interface problems are the main reason I don't use Linux. Please don't suggest I should choose a different audio interface, as the ones I use are the best I can afford. That and the Bluetooth non-support.

You're a few steps past me, then, in that case.

For office work and t'Interwebs, it's good. If you can get it to talk to the bluetooth linked 3G phone/ modem, a problem which I've now bypassed by buying one that links to the computer using Wifi.

Sadly over the last few years RAM has gone from DRAM to DDR, to DDR2 and to DDR3 and IIRC DDR4 is on the way, all with parity/non parity and with different bus speeds.

In DIMM and SODIMM formats, too.

Meanwhile PCI became AGP for graphics cards, and is now PCI-express. All mutully incompatible.

Disks went from IDE to ATA to SATA.

Processors went from 32 bit to 64 bit as well.

In short you need to get a clear idea of what you have and what the new machine needs to say with any certainty.

Which is why when you do get an old machine, its not worth paying a lot for, or yu may end up with something that cannot be upgraded cheaply to modern specs.

Since you can buyt a new case/PSU MB graphics cards and RAM for under

In the case of my supplier 'here, take it away for free, if you have some spare RAM chips in exchange'

I even have an XP home license number on it.

DDR2 aint that bad. I got 4GB for £29.

Yep. If you are pushing bleeding edge hardware, then the bleeding hardware manufactures know they HAVE to get it working under windows.

They wont get it working under OSX, because no one puts non apple cards into OSX.

They may or may not bother to get it working under Linux.

Usually thats a linux geek in their company who does that.

scanners and printers and sound all have had a chequered history. CUPS and HP between them solved MOST of the printer problems, and thats mostly plug and play now.

Sound on standard type chipsets is OK for normal use.

Scanners are still a bit hit and miss. If you get the right scanner its plkug and play, if wrong, it simply will never work. In between there are some that can be coaxed to life but not always at full res.

Bluetooth seems to be nearly working OK in latest releases.

But if you have an ailing XP computer and you just want something like XP that works, and doesn't cast much if anything, its ideal.

OK. Offer made to include keyboard and a further 2 gig ram.

Watch this space:-)

Offer made on the Stone (including extra ram) I take your point about vintage and memory.

Now now. Don't make things up. When I was still at work, I had three

Anyway, the days of needing expansion slots (other than perhaps memory) in a computer are essentially over. Sound, ethernet, USB, etc are all on the motherboard. Everyone has "millions of colours" so no need for video cards unless you're driving more than two screens. Even my low-end Mac Mini can drive two screens these days.

I still find it doesn't float my boat (last time I tried it was about 6 months ago - Some version of Mint) still find it rather 'awkward' to use. Ok, partly I'm used to Windows, but I sat down at a Mac running a recent version of OSX and found that pretty straight forward.

and yes i know I can use different desktops, or whatever they are called, but I've never really felt the effort was worth it.

I really don't find Windows a pain - I've installed Win 7 on all sorts of newish and oldish hardware here and it's always been a painless (the oly issue was with an old scanner where drivers had not been produced)

One thing I am attached to is Lightroom, there Linux alternatives but I never liked them enough when I tried, and I didn't liek it's performance in a VM.

However, thee is an old machine here used moslty for when a gang of my daughters friends come round and play minecraft, I do have a copy of Minr on there I soemtiems use.

For Windows users and presumably Mac users as well, I would normally say to list the audio connector types and audio facilities you want, then look for an interface to fit. It will almost certainly work. That is not the case with Linux. I don't know of, and would be interested to hear of, anyone successfully using one of the many guitar + phantom power mic input interfaces with Linux and getting usable latency figures. I don't really understand why Linux seems to compile drivers into the kernel or an application like Jack rather than having the simple hardware->driver->application model like Windows.

I don't feel I'm any steps past anyone. I've been trying to evaluate "Harrison Mixbus" as a comparison between its Linux and Windows incarnations, and I keep running out of time and patience.

I have to say that I thought the Windows traditional audio mixer was mediocre, but the Linux normal mixer is just bizarre. Hopeless labelling, channels disappearing off the screen, recording and playback in the same mixer and so on. Supersonic howlrounds, here we come.

But we are a bit OT now.

It doesn't.

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

Hmm, the convertible tablet laptops that I am playing with have been around since at least the XP tablet edition came out. I've had Android 4.4 running in a virtual machine here but, unfortunately, it wasn't one with a touch screen so I couldn't try the virtual keyboard in that properly.

OK, so where are they? I know that I don't know what I'm talking about, but if I look up, say, the EMU 0202 that I have here and is apparently one of the better supported usb interfaces, I get led to

and it all gets rather heavy for me.

I believe at one stage on one machine I got this device working, but only at one sample rate and bit depth.

More recently, I've just been trying to use the on-board audio on Lenovo X-series machines. These seem to expose the not-present docking station audio channels mixed in with the real ones in the mixer (sometimes alsa-mixer, sometimes, I think gnome-mixer - I'm writing this from memory and can't look it up just now).

The first paragraph of the page you linked to has the answer, you can either compile them into the kernel, or you can compile them as kernel modules which can be loaded supplied separately and loaded after the system has booted (but they do have to be built for the correct kernel version).

Tim. if you are local to me, woc.co.uk is where I got my scrapper computer

And I may be getting another from a friend