What is your hobby

I've had a lot of different hobbies in my lifetime: riding horses, swimming, fishing, camping out, hiking, junking - looking for things to buy in second hand stores, and garage sales. I once found a first edition book at a garage sale for 25 cents, that was worth $700.! Imho, God gave me a talent for finding hidden treasure! I loved to look for and pick up rocks, collect rocks, loved to garden, I love old Western movies, because I'm literally a Cowboy's daughter. I like the horses, and the countryside, and the actors. Some old Westerns was filmed in Mexico, like the movie The Last of the Fast Guns

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051846/locations

and Garden of Evil with Gary Cooper

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047013/locations?ref_=tt_ql_dt_5

and the scenery is beautiful. Some of the actors in old Westerns was great horsemen, like Ben Johnson and Harry Carry Jr. and there are Mexican actors who I love, who Acted in old Westerns.

Alfonso Bedoya,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_Bedoya

and Pedro Armendariz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Armend%C3%A1riz

I can't tell you how great these actors was. You'll have to watch their movies for yourself!

I like outdoors activity such as camping and canoeing. Unfortunately, I have not had much chance to go such trips for a long while.

I muck around with vintage computer hardware from the late 1980s through the 1990s period. That was when the PC revolution
happened. The inflection point was around 1995 with the advent of rather powerful CPUs and the first 3D graphics accelerators.
The 1980s were mostly a period of stagnation with Intel 80286 and even 8088 computers being sold even when the 80386 was available.
That was the hard core DOS era. The 80486 and later CPUs opened the way for GUI interfaces.

I am not a GUI zealot. I like Linux because it allows for point and click and command line interaction. Windows is rather trashy in
this regard. Although with Windows 10 there is a better command line interface than previous versions.

I think a lot of people don't realize how stagnant the 1980s were in terms of computer tech.
Even if Intel and other companies did introduce new processors the reality was the cost was just so high most people did not bother with those.
In a lot of cases people had monochrome monitors on PCs to cut cost, so even improved graphics modes with more colors were less important than you would think.
You would buy a computer and it would still remain usable and retain resale value for like 5-8 years.

Ever since the 486 came out and computer prices crashed around the time the DX came out the rate of improvement and churn was incredible.
You would replace your computer every year or every other year and notice massive improvement.
This was particularly noticeable with 3D graphics where initially you had really pathetic low polygon counts and any incremental upgrade made major difference in visual quality.

kvs wrote:I muck around with vintage computer hardware from the late 1980s through the 1990s period.    That was when the PC revolution
happened.   The inflection point was around 1995 with the advent of rather powerful CPUs and the first 3D graphics accelerators.
...

You are massively underestimating first half of the 90s

Once CPUs his 100MHz that's when magic started happening

PapaDragon wrote:

kvs wrote:I muck around with vintage computer hardware from the late 1980s through the 1990s period.    That was when the PC revolution
happened.   The inflection point was around 1995 with the advent of rather powerful CPUs and the first 3D graphics accelerators.
...

You are massively underestimating first half of the 90s

Once CPUs his 100MHz that's when magic started happening

He was pretty accurate I think. The Pentium 100 and i486 DX4 came out in 1994.

Doom came out in December 1993 and suddenly people started rushing to buy PCs. Nothing less than an i386 DX with 40 MHz could cut it.
To play it smoothly at close to full screen you needed an i486 DX or better. The prices collapsed immensely.
Before you had massive stratification and higher end processors sold in tiny numbers.

Early 1980s also had massive change in terms of personal computers.

Now it is mostly stagnant again. Even smartphones have mostly stagnated for a couple years already.

The Pentium and Pentium Pro were boutique before 1995. By the time Pentium II and III arrived in the second half of the 1990s
the Pentium Pro architecture went mainstream. The 80486 is a rather limited CPU especially in terms of the floating point unit.
It was Quake that really shaped the market. Competitors to Intel like Cyrix who did not move fast enough in terms of FPU fell
by the wayside. Their CPUs were very good in terms of integer performance and for office apps. But they sucked for games
like Quake. ID Software really had a big impact in the industry, with both Doom and Quake.

Seems like "some games" would not have such an impact, but they did because they drove volume of purchases.

Cyrix, now that's a name I haven't heard in decades...

As for games I was never much of a graphics chaser myself not even today, graphics was always secondary to me at best

What happened in early 90s is that gameplay design was able to evolve beyond 80s style, entire new genres were being created every year, that was the true revolution

for the regulars on this platform, i know i have not been around in ages.
Primarily work demands an huge amount of energy and time from me.

so.... i guess,..suprise!?.

If no one cares i fully understand.
People come and go,  and life goes on.

----

My primary hobby is PC entertainment nowadays.

I am what you would call the "PC Master Race".

Long story short, when i left the Army and got a permanent place of residence i dived deep into PC's.

fixed PC's that otherwise would have gone to the garbage, and given them an new life.
my PC from 2010's is now with fresh TP and an new GPU doing service as my mothers 4K video play Machine.
my 2015 machine i did maintenance on and stored away, and is sitting as reserve for the fammily.

For me, PC's are now an equivalent to an grown up man's lego's.
I stepped away from pre-builts and went into the Custom-builds.
best choice i ever made.
i absolutely love it.
That does not mean i know what is wrong with an PC from an distance.
i am not clearvoyant .

I also know some just dont care about spending so much on PC's. Or prefer consoles.
I fully understand and respect that as well.
Most of my life as a kid i used consoles, the Sega's. Nintendo, Playstation, xbox. etc.
And used the pre-built PC's for my games to play Starcraft,simcity and the likes of that.

In the army, you earn minimal wage. so you just drool over the things that you can never afford.
you always have to settle for second or third rate.
Now i can with an better job and saving money.

I hope i explained it correctly in that way.

that said, let me show my pride.
i know some hate it, but i can not get enough of RGB.
my setup with an crap camera:
https://youtu.be/MMpnnd3z5DQ

also i am an massive PC gamer.
X4 Foundations, total war:warhammer 2, cities skylines. Mass effect, Subnautica, workers and resources, soviet republic, surviving Mars, Stellaris etc.
they are all close to my heart. I love good games and lore.

Also i dabble in very, very occaisional video editing software. mostly creating action-packed movies from movies and games where my own fantasy just pushes me to do this.
i know nobody watches my crap . and that i take myself propably way too seriously than i should.
it is basically me making scribbles to put my imagination on paper.

also, youtube throws all my russian-oriented content away. people either can not see my content unless i give them an direct link, or it's gone with a few days, my comments deleted etc.

but who cares when you can influence elections with social media?.
yay!, living as an western european under Western digital censorship and social engineering! .

my Mass Effect space battle still is up tough: https://youtu.be/UaA7jP6rIvk

To show what i usually make that is russian oriented, here is an older test-version of an project i completed for 9th of May on an site i use for checking upload/process diagnostics. Dailymotion processes new video's a lot better than other video hosting sites.
This is unfinished, all the errors you see would be normally fixed.

i got this done for Victory Day for Russian contacts of mine. i figured it would been an nice gift.
I wanted to make an all-russian content one as an tribute to Russian forces.
Russian movie footage, and music by Cephei, also an russian citizen.
i screwed up the final version for youtube so far trying to get it trough it is no longer playable.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x81rvub
Password:RDN
( for Russia Defense Net)

Airbornewolf wrote:for the regulars on this platform, i know i have not been around in ages.
Primarily work demands an huge amount of energy and time from me.

so.... i guess,..suprise!?.

If no one cares i fully understand....

We care, welcome back bro!

Airbornewolf wrote:also i am an massive PC gamer.
X4 Foundations, total war:warhammer 2, cities skylines. Mass effect, Subnautica...

Mass Effect 1 is one you of the greatest games I have ever played (and I have played plenty)

Still fire it up from time to time, never gets old, masterpiece

The current situation with video card availability is a crime. Fcuking miners (sorry miketheterrible) and the whole supply chain disruption that
appears to be global.

@specopswolf

Nice gaming PC rig you have.

We do care...

I often fix broken computers for friends and family so when they upgrade to new computers I often get the old computer dumped here... which is fine... playing old computer games is simpler on old computers.

Do you dabble in cold swappable racks?

Basically it is a drive tray for your hard drive so you can shut down the computer and take the drive out and replace it with another.

If you have children or a nosy partner or you are a super anal nerd.

They basically fit into the 5 1/4 drive space that hard drives are fitted to with an open front that allows a harddrive to be loaded into a tray and slotted into the front of your computer.

I normally buy one rack and get a few spare drive trays.

Connect that drive as the C drive and then boot up and install whatever operating system and drivers for all your hardware. Then shut down and take the drive tray out and remove that hard drive and put it in a drive cloner to make several exact copies of that Hard Drive.

If you want you can skip the cloning and just take the drive out and put a blank drive in and install a different operating system and set the machine up with all the drivers etc etc.

For each drive you can have a different computer, so one drive for work and one for games and one for video editing or music.

More importantly one for the kids... they can load all their shit games and cannot delete my files or work documents.

You have to shut the machine down to change drives, but you can also have multiple racks on one computer so you might want to access files on other drives without shutting down but that is up to you.

I had a few drives with Sun OS and Linux and my games drive had XP on it.

If the nieces and nephews come over they can screw it up all they want... I partitioned the drive and put a disk image of the boot section and the partition they play on... some of the games are good so I update the image so I don't have to reinstall a lot of games if the drive fails.

Any problems with that drive I just wipe the boot partition and copy the hidden partition on that disk over top and it just boots up again without the latest high scores of course.

Don't need to worry about hiding my internet history because they never access the drive with that information on it... and because it has no games or videos or music I can often have several hidden backup partitions...

Big external hard drives are so cheap now you can get a 5 GB drive for about $220 so I have a couple backed up with music and movies and TV shows so they can watch or I can watch no matter what drive is in at the time.

For my newer machines I use a solid state drive as the OS and system files drive with two full backup images in two different hidden partitions so if there is a problem I can usually just restore the backups and continue working.... solid state drives are expensive but very fast... on older laptops sometimes you can set up USB memory keys as RAM drives that will operate faster than the onboard hard drive... it just means you have to check in the BIOS if you can boot to USB drives.

Don't have many laptops... they become obsolete so quickly.

PapaDragon wrote:

so.... i guess,..suprise!?.

If no one cares i fully understand....

We care, welcome back bro!

Thanks man!. appreciate that! .

Airbornewolf wrote:also i am an massive PC gamer.
X4 Foundations, total war:warhammer 2, cities skylines. Mass effect, Subnautica...

Mass Effect 1 is one you of the greatest games I have ever played (and I have played plenty)

Still fire it up from time to time, never gets old, masterpiece
[/quote]


I know!, good story's do not grow old right?.
Mass Effect, except for its crappy trilogy ending is my favourite RPG ever.

love the actual realistic politics of looking away from the elephant in the room hoping it goes away by itself.
first playtrough i sacrificed the council so the Alliance fleet had an clean shot at Sovereign.
I reasoned Sovereign was the primary threat, and did not want to waste fresh,undamaged Alliance Capital ships engaging the Geth.
Alliance could circumvent the Geth and hit Sovereign directly. so i chose that option.

ilos and it's A.I Virgil(i think was its name?) was repeating in the back of my head over and over.
or its fragmented audio logs. how this massive interstellar authoritan empire could not resist the reapers.
".....they can not be stopped!, all is lost!".

Sovereign was plugging in and starting the Citadel Relay.
Preservation of own forces is irrelevant in contrast to the extreme urgency of stopping Sovereign from completing the citadel start-up.
i still believe i made the right decision the first time.
if i was an Turian crew-member getting over-run by the Geth and saw the Alliance ships bypassing us to go straight at Sovereign.
I'd fully would have understood. Job would be to take as many hostiles with me into my grave.
Fire, cycle the primary weapon, fire, cycle again. route all power to primary weapon, cycle, fire.
If weapons fail, ram your damn ship down the throat of the closest hostile capital ship that approaches.

Later after game completion, i came to the conclusion i'd propably needed Destiny Ascension down the line in ME2 or ME3.
I learned you can also "win" by saving the Council/destiny ascension and still destroy sovereign.
Who cares about politicians that are self-centered?. its the massive flagship they ride on that matters .

Thank god for Admiral Hackett and his fleet for believing your explanation of the threat, and pretty much commit mutiny against the alliance and sends his entire fleet trough the over-ride Mass Relay to fight on Shepard's orders.
when they jumped in i was from gloomy self-sacrifice mode and focussing on doing the job into "yes,Yes!, We still have an chance!".

I love how you got the choice to remind the dumbass reporter in ME2 about the names of all the ships and forces that died in defending the Citadel.
and how everyone owes them some fucking gratitude.

Turians paid an massive price when Sovereign attacked the Citadel.
Turian capital ships look amazing, with how they deploy their wings in attack position.
Also with Turians, you know they are in it to do the job. even if it costs them their lives.
Humans might have had an war with them, but they are my first choice to pick an ally.
That they evolved from predator birds just adds to the cool factor.

In ME3 i chose to cure the Krogan, i felth it was morally unfair to damn them to damnation.
They never chose to be uplifted, and after they served their purpose they where neutered and left to self-exterminate.
Maybe if you give people the means to live towards an future and some decent living standards they do not grow up so full of resentment towards your race?.
Not to mention that planet-killer bomb the Turians left on Tuchanka...
Mordin's story arc in ME 2 and Wrex his dilemma on virmire in ME1 convinced me of that. we all make mistakes that we can not always rectify, i told mordin to save the research.
And how the Krogan are just desperate for an future.
I told Wrex about how the salarians where planning to do the whole damn thing over again the first chance i got on tuchanka.
I of course followed that up by telling Mordin to execute the deployment of the Cure into the atmosphere generator.

because, screw politics. i consider myself an millitary proffesional with an moral compass when i can.
it would be litterally not be the first time i would be threatened with millitary court .
Also, loyalty is not for sale.
Wrex and Grunt deserve the same undying loyalty in return with all the suicide-level missions you drag them on with as their commander

I was very irritated when the solarian suggested extending the krogan extermination progam.
I wanted to say something back in the line of
"you frogs all hide behind us humans, the turians, krogan to do the actual dirty work. Maybe you should do less fucking over other races and do more of the dying on the front line?. might create some perspective. how politics and backstabbing means shit from our position as combatants?."

Reminds me too of the conversation an Citadel doctor has, venting her frustrations that they are just patching up soldiers that survived the meat-grinder just to be thrown at it again.
Or the girl standing at the Turian C-Sec security officer asking if he knows when her parents arrive, and she tells unknowingly how her parents shoved her on the last shuttle off planet as the planet was over-run. and they will come soon to pick her up.

his reaction is one of those you always remember.
Turian's, predators by nature and millitaristic, looks at this human girl, pausing for 5 seconds. knowing full well her parents are dead, he tries to comfort her regardless and assign her to an caretaker.

i really need to shut up. i really love Mass effect that is obvious .



@kvs, i know!. thanks!.
i am also not a big fan of crypto-mining. waste of power and GPU's.
the use of crypto mining adds up to some country's entire enegy consumption.

When i see an picture of an Mining-rig with rows upon rows of GPU's just infuriates me.

But i am of opinion good GPU's do not grow on trees and every gamer should have a chance at owning one.
GPU's are made in batches, the quality of the chip determines where it is used for.
poor chips go to the lower-end cards, really good ones go to the high-end ones.

Also, if you as an crypto miner fancy money. go get some skills in software programming.
steady pay, good pay. Plus the benefit of being employed is that Banks give you an mortage to get your own place to live.

I got an RTX 2080 TI Extreme Aorus. it is really an beast.
But i know it was one of the few out of many, many chips that do not peform at the same level.
and to see racks upon racks of medium to high end GPU's end up as mining machines just angers me.
the world can not keep up with the demands for chips at the moment and these people just buy up entire stocks up.
...and then there are the scalpers .....
they really need to be put in front of an firing squad.

its also the fault of GPU manufacturers, they can cripple this by implementing hash-rate limiters.
As a gamer, you can not tell the difference but they would turn unsuitable for crypto miners.
but Nvidia is all about that sweet, sweet money!.
to be honest, from an business perspective they do not care who buys their GPU's. as long they are sold.

AMD seems to have the right mindset, but i have not seen an GPU yet that can match nvidia in performance.
their CPU's are certainly past Intell at the moment.
i got myself an i9-9900K. its good, altough sort of an small nuclear reactor in heat generation. it is why i got an AIO to supress that heat.
but intell really does not care creating actual improvements and new architecture.

The PC market really sucks at the moment. there are talks and processes going on of building additional chip factory's. including in europe.
but i myself think this is going at least take another two years before anything stabilises.



@ Garry,

Also thanks! .

i do not dabble in the cold swappable hard drives .
my case does not allow it. it is mostly glass.
the hard drives are located in the 10 CM space that makes up the rear frame.
And its not accesible unless you screw the whole back-panel off.

My own PC has 4 hard drives. 2 m.2 drives and 2 HDD for storage.
i always migrate my "old" master storage PC harddrive to the next PC.
So i can re-install and reload all my files and games.

If anything goes wrong, like it sometimes does when i mess with the registry files of windows to get stuff working....
i re-install the O.S by flash-drive. i sometimes need to fix other people's computers too so i formatted an USB stick with an windows install drive.

super easy, plug it in the motherboard. set boot-sequence to the USB drive and re-install away.,

I know about laptops, it really was because i was mostly on the go. they are inefficient and expensive otherwise.
I had 3 laptops in total, al gaming ones.

they just can not effectively get rid of their heat buildup. i always needed to put something under the laptop.
Best solution w as an external laptop cooler. its this riser plate with fans in them. that you connect trough USB port so they power on.
also, when something is broke or you need to do maintenance, you can not do it yourself.
Everything is specifically made for that model laptop.

Here i stray off-topic...

Their only benefit was really only you could haul it around with you. and that your own world in your PC with you everywhere.
I used it on the most crazy of places. including Afghanistan where i gamed Deep waters and simcity-societies while sleeping in some subterainian cellar .
I was in charge of logistics, and soda drinks,chips and candy are worth gold on the front lines.
Besides an Airborne combatant, i knew a lot about procedures,radios and their procedures, and logistics.
Plus i speak fluent english and i remain collected under combat/pressure.
Also i knew everything about aircraft. what they can and can not do.
Lets just say infantry do not get recruited in general for their technical knowledge of aircraft, munition handling or the intricacy's of logistics.

i asked an officer once to what was the NSN (NATO stock number) of his request was in this meeting in Afghanistan. he got angry and stated 30 millimetre, and that it was not rocket science.
I got into an verbal shouting match with him. I told him if he tried to force canadian 30MM rounds trough his YPR systems they would blow their mounts in the breaches as they got way more propellant than the dutch domestic variant we produce in Brazil. that would take a few days before i could get them.  American rounds he could use and get within a few hours, but they are depleted uranium and needed an waiver from our government to use. no damage to the breach and barrel tough. altough handle with care as it is an radiological hazard. etc.

it escalated rather heavily, lots of blaming back and forth, i am a dumb coward counting socks in some magazine while he is doing fighting. that i am some bureaucrat that needs to experience some bullets around the head to know what is important and get my priorities straight. sort of missing my combat insignias and berret indicating i am Airborne and i actually did precisely that and got decorated for it.
.
I call him the next failure to come out of officer school. and how he's getting his men killed because of incompetence, playing too much call of duty and that war is not some video-game. that doing something half-assed gets men killed and it's irreversible.
that i am not the one with an university degree, he is. and that my insignia's where not from some damn pack of kellogs cornflakes.

Fun arguements!.

Mostly i dealth with sargeant-mayors that are in my army the experienced sargeants and second in command of luitenants.
They where always the calm and reasonable ones. mostly asking "can you help me with straightening out my unit's resources?".
I always helped them with pleasure, explaining everything and guaranteeing they had their replenishment before deployment.

on an more happier note! .

Give me an HF radio and i could get you some Burger King from Kandahar Airfield .
Propably an iced cappuchino and donut too from Tim Hortons too if its hauled in an coolbox.

99% i only requested munitions and neccesary gear of course. pilots fly trough enemy fire to drop cargo at your Forward location in the field, you do not abuse their trust.
it is also and give-and-take kind of deal. They do favours for you , and you give them favours back.
if they ever stay on your base, better be damn sure they get an armoured living quarters with functional air conditioning .
it was really fun at times. i felth like i was in M.A.S.H sometimes.
Sometimes not so fun, but thats another subject. it was an active warzone. bad things happen.

anyway, i bribed an squad of engineers to get me an 230 volt EU cable from the main mobile field generator for an full box of snickers candy .
you see the white power cord and split box hanging in the picture.

How far are YOU willing to go to play an videogame in the middle of an warzone? .

Before anyone judges, my sleeping area was in the middle of two defensive lines, and my headphones where shit quality.
i heard my fellow-squaddies breathing as they slept.
or in the case of my fellow-roomie, i heard everything as he watched all the dragonball Z episodes during our stay there.
I told him to haul his laptop along, that i might pull off running DC 230 volt power so he could use his laptop .

So....moral of the story...always be sure to be friends with engineers and that you can give them something they want .

Great post, Airbornewolf!

Welcome aboard!!

My first PC was bought in 1997, it is a standard full sized tower ATX design.

These days you can get all sorts of PC boxes of different size standards but as long as you get the right standard parts you can keep using any old box.

Generally it is the motherboard and CPU that are no longer up to scratch, and of course RAM types become obsolete, but buy a brand new motherboard with a modern CPU and often you can reuse older RAM, and of course your box never becomes obsolete, and your powersupply and hard drive can all be reused in the new system.

Often I will buy a new Hard drive if there is a faster one available like a solid state drive and I will use that to install my operating system and primary files onto, and use my previous C drive for the older information it contains as a D or E drive.

I have lots of old obsolete drives like Zip drives which I try to continue to use, and of course various scanners and digital TV tuners... these days most stuff is USB, but I still have some old cards I am using to digitise some of my old video cassette tape stuff.

I have so many old PC boxes I use some as entertainment centres... ie give it a modern motherboard and RAM and CPU  and connect it to the TV for streaming... on that computer I connect directly to the Router and use bittorrent for new movies and stuff with a couple of large HDDs full of movies I never get around to watching.

If the old machine is still working I often will keep it to play games of that period on it authentically but XP is probably the most stable Windows OS for gaming... most of the windows operating systems before that the game actually directly controlled the computer hardware so a crash was never recoverable. XP was their first OS where the OS controlled the hardware and the software accessed the hardware via the OS rather than directly, which makes newer games much easier to install.

The cold swappable racks really do require towers to make any sense... I had a friend who came to me for advice normally after he had made purchases... one day he turned his flash new mini tower computer and there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke and nothing happened. Worked out his very young son had probably flicked the switch on the power supply from 240v to 110v. He went to the computer shop and they told him it would be about $800 to get a replacement power supply because the mini tower was too small for a standard one and only one brand made them for this tower. I told him to buy a new computer box (it was under his desk and he never saw it so it didn't matter if it was a mini or full sized tower).  Cost $115 including the tower and the power supply.

He also was buying a new Hard Drive and asked for advice and I simply told him that most of the time speeds are similar... there are some 10K speed units but most of 7,200 rpm models so depending on the price always buy the biggest capacity. He said when he got there there were two drives he liked... a 1 TB drive with lights down the side to show how full it was and a 2 TB drive with no lights. He bought the 1 TB drive for $20 more than the 2 TB drive and within three weeks was saying it was full... and he never saw those pretty lights because where his computer is and where he needed to plug the drive into he can't see the drive anyway.

90% of my friends who have never had computers before wanted laptops, but when I talk to them about it they will be sitting at home at their desk using it and for the occasional time they might want to sit somewhere else they would be better off with a tablet.

Laptops are more expensive, have zero upgrade potential/capacity... and are very attractive to thieves who might smash your car window to get one.

The ones that get one anyway normally agree with a year that I am right... the battery has gone because they keep leaving them plugged in all the time so they are not really portable anymore anyway.

Mini laptops like notebooks or tablets are often vastly superior for email and checking the internet.

BTW If you have a recovery USB stick have you been to Portable Apps?

It is a suite of downloadable programmes and tools that you can download for free and install on a USB stick that you can then plug into other computers to use them... all the software like internet browsers are on the key and when you take you stick away everything goes with it so you can check your email on any machine with an internet connection using the browser on the stick so when you remove it all your information is gone.

It also has lots of useful tools and games.

[url=portableapps.com]portableapps.com[/url]

It includes encryption tools and recovery tools and lots of other useful stuff including HDD formating and management.

Note a lot of stuff is redundant... there might be half a dozen different programmes that do one thing so you might only load one, and as I say it is all free.

There are media players, web browsers, drawing programmes... Cellestia is like the opposite of Google Earth... you can set your location and time and date and look at the sky above you and click on stars and it tells you all about them... most have webpages...

It has onscreen keyboards and programming tools, it has a super notepad programme that can help you write C++ programmes... graphics programmes, painting programmes, all sorts of vector drawing programmes... all free and all packaged so you can load it all onto one USB stick and carry it around with you.

Of course if you search around on the internet there are dedicated recovery software suites for recovering damaged computers that are not working.

I have a Linux virtual disk that you can plug into an XP computer and get it to boot up from the USB drive and it will run a live version of Linux that will then scan the computer it is attached to for the passwords... it is called OPhCrack... quite handy for people who forgot their passwords.

Mainly photography for me, subjects being railways and military aircraft. I've managed to get to several bases in England (Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Marham and Coningsby) and the Mach Loop a few times but I wouldn't mind going to Russia one day to get shots of Mig 31s and Su35s! However I imagine a planespotter from the West would only get hassle trying to do so!

@ Garry,

Its true, but i have been in positions before where i had to decide between upgrading or just getting an all new system.

I do not want to judge others if they pick upgrading or going for an new system.
As long good parts do not go to waste you know?.

i always clean out my old system and make sure its good to go to donate it to an fammily member or someone that really needs an computer.
I was in that dilemma two times, where i had to decide to upgrade or go for completely new.
both times the situation and parts involved made me decide to go for all new.

i for example now have an Z390 master Aorus motherboard. i had doubts at first if i really needed it but went for it anyway for its overclock potential.
I have only on certain games FPS win with an 5 GHZ all core overclock. My AIO cashes in the punishment for that with just a few frames of gain.
i mostly run simulation games. they really do not notice much as the frames hit around 100 at average anyway on an 144HZ monitor.
especially in the hot summer months, why give your parts an hard time in the 90's celsius range while they can do almost the same at the 60's-70's?.
I got the profile saved to BIOS, i might give it another try in winter but cross-referrencing my results online i dont see much gain from overclocking.

Afterwards, i dont really use it for its overclock potential but for it being able to supply enough power to the USB ports for all the corsair and Aorus peripherals i got attached to it.
Motherboards have an issue with powering multiple RGB peripherals i found out. even now i have an external powered USB hub to supply some of them with enough signal power for all the crap i hooked up to it.

I really like the idea of swappable HDD's. I just do not have the hardware for it. On an Thermaltake T5 it is just glass. nowhere to put that.
But i will look into getting it into my next system. I do see a lot of potential for that.

I had gaming laptops, i never was on one location for long. neither on base in my own country without being on exercise. or being on mission.
Even then it was an high price to pay for an computer on the go.

exactly like you say, zero upgrade capability and its the first thing they rob.
Do not forget even game laptops can not get rid of their GPU/CPU heat on their own!. Its like holding an mini-chernobyl on your lap. an external cooler was reccomended if you wanted some gaming fun.
i had three gaming laptops. all big dissapointments.

The Acer aspire, dead battery and only worked on AC/DC power after two years.
HP one, worked but its CPU just died slowly.
i can not remember the name of my first game laptop. it was an popular brand. i literally had to use an multi-tool in order to open its screen after two years because of metal-fatigue in its joints.

I have a simmilar position, in my current job i am an software programmmer. but i get often calls from my former co-workers or departments about questions for their kids about what they should buy.
some kids really do not know what they talk about, and i advice to save the money. to get them an console first and see how much they play games on it.
i am not all-knowing, but at least i can tell parents when their kids are full of shit right?.
i try to be reasonable as i love PC's myself and i want to show people how great they can be with their modular design nowadays.
It is still a lot of money. I heard parents say their kids just wanted an PC because their friends had it too with all the RGB.
when i told them how much it would cost they where shocked.

some kids respect their gaming gear, but most do not. its an waste of money.

I got an work laptop but i really use it for work...and in emergency's.
Its an HP piece of crap that can barely run the programs i need to run on it for diagnostics of company software.


And i do no mean to sound paranoid Garry, but i kind of ran into western intelligence assets/services before with my internet activity's.
It cost me my social media that got deleted overnight for being part of an "terrorist or undesired organisations or persons".
I am not only vocal here about my toughts about geo-political matters, but elsewhere on the internet too.
They read my private messages on there between me and this 3rd party website editor that the West would label as "propaganda"
It was right after i was openly critical about american behaviour in Afghanistan trough the private messages.
It was the only possibility for getting kicked off out of nowhere.

And no, i have no regrets. Its just social media. its not the end of the world.
I just figured to mention that

So i am not so keen anymore to log in into other computers beside's my own .

i got an master USB stick, that contains an restore-drive with windows to restore everything. so its close i guess to what you mean.

kvs wrote:I like outdoors activity such as camping and canoeing.   Unfortunately, I have not had much chance to go such trips for a long while.

I muck around with vintage computer hardware from the late 1980s through the 1990s period.    That was when the PC revolution
happened.   The inflection point was around 1995 with the advent of rather powerful CPUs and the first 3D graphics accelerators.
The 1980s were mostly a period of stagnation with Intel 80286 and even 8088 computers being sold even when the 80386 was available.  
That was the hard core DOS era.   The 80486 and later CPUs opened the way for GUI interfaces.  

I am not a GUI zealot.   I like Linux because it allows for point and click and command line interaction.   Windows is rather trashy in
this regard.   Although with Windows 10 there is a better command line interface than previous versions.

Ever get your hands on a Commodore Amiga from the early 90's? Heck my first PC was a Tandy TR-80MK3. Those were fun.

My hobbies are: movies, games, camping, seeing architecture, building PC's and crypto mining as of now.

My first computer was a ZX-81 Spectrum... back then no one bought monitors or disk drives... floppy or hard drives... they were just not available.

There were no computer shops either... normally it was electronics stores. Software came in the form of magazines with BASIC code you had to type out each time you wanted to play a game.

My friends parents bought them a Commodore 64, which had a tape drive... which was just an audio cassette player... this was before video rental places existed.

You typed out the game and then set the tape machine to record and then pushed a start button on the computer and it copied the programme onto an audio cassette tape... basically the screaching noise of a dial up modem, but it meant to play the game again you put the tape at the start of the noise and pressed play and pushed a button on the computer and it loaded up... no more typing and retyping...

Later... about 1987 or so I got an Amiga 500 with a 3.5 inch floppy... silkworm... operation wolf... shadow of the beast... Interceptor... great times.

It was right after i was openly critical about american behaviour in Afghanistan trough the private messages.

You were openly honest... you bastard... the irony is that the American way is supposed to be truth and justice... how the mighty have fallen from the path.

I bought my first PC in 1997... it is the last new computer I have bought because it is always cheaper to buy parts for upgrades.

If you are clever you can keep adding to a system without needing to change systems.

If you buy the right brand you can string out purchases... it is always critical to get a good motherboard, but I have found it is most cost effective to get a Motherboard with a broad range of CPU options so when I first buy I get the expensive motherboard but I buy one memory stick and a cheaper CPU.

If you check out the chipset on the Motherboard, northbridge and southbridge... get the best and fastest chipset for those, it is money well spent... because 6 months later you buy more RAM, which will be cheaper by then too, and you choose your graphics card so that it can be doubled... so in a years time you can buy another graphics card the same as the one you have and link them together doubling your graphics card memory and by that time the card will be cheaper because it will no longer be the best one out... and then 6 months after that you buy a much better CPU and more memory... assuming the MB was good to start with it should still be good in the 2 years it takes to get it to that level... I never bother with the bleeding edge stuff because 6 months later a better CPU or better motherboard comes out and buying all new stuff every 6 months is expensive.

The kids in the family don't want my old crap because the boxes are old and huge, but often the new stuff they buy is slower than what I am running eventually.

You are quite right that most kids would be better off with a games machine most of the time... the talk of needing it for school or work is a ruse to get a games machine.

Can't be too harsh myself because I used my early computers for games too.

miketheterrible wrote:
Ever get your hands on a Commodore Amiga from the early 90's?  Heck my first PC was a Tandy TR-80MK3.  Those were fun.

I wanted to get one back in the late 80s but never did, so my nostalgia in this case is indirect. I will probably get one
of those FPGA based hardware emulators that can do a whole bunch of systems including Apple machines.

If I would have known, I would have picked up an Apple II I saw at the pawn shop I was at earlier in the year.

Loved the old Apples.... the fist sized green screen monitor... the big 5 1/4 inch floppy drives...

as some on here know, i spend the last years living alone on lockdown.
And video-games are my passion in life .

and snowflake as i am, i am left out of social contacts to drink with and talk to.

that makes one sad airbornewolf .

So i found an solution and in extention starting an hobby.
I just buy new friends and take an new road in depravity!.

Get Plushie's !.

small friends, spanning about 15 Centimeters, and somehow they strangely relate to fammiliar video-game character's .
Cyberpunk's Trauma Team Operator, Fallout guy and Doomguy are my first.

I got fnaf's Mangle and Foxy on 15 and 22 inch ordered and on-route .
I want to collect all my video game favourites in plushie-form.

Damn, I had no idea they were making those plushies, now I'm seriously tempted...

PapaDragon wrote:
Damn, I had no idea they were making those plushies, now I'm seriously tempted...

Honestly i did not knew about gaming-plushie's either untill a few weeks ago.
I watched markiplier playing an FNAF game, instead of seeing nightmare Foxy in the closet suddenly you see Plushie-Foxy when he opens the closet-blinds.
Someone had commented he wanted to get one of those if he could.
Another commenter said: "actually, there is an whole industry for gaming plushies".

My mind went within one second: "wait..It is an actual thing!?".
*frantic typing in google search-engine*

I found an seller on Aliexpress that has good reviews of customers, some with pictures of their received products included.
I still need to receive them to judge myself, but the pictures of other customers look really good.
Some buyer compared it with the official merch and its the same quality.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32693155129.html?spm=a2g0o.9042311.0.0.75954c4dx3mtKS

Picture here is from the small and medium sized Foxy of someone that bought both from the seller.


For others reading this, yes yes i know....grown man collecting stuffed videogame-toy's   .....

Football but i'm to old to play it now but i still support my localish football team

Cycling

online gaming years ago i was part of a gaming clan from a tech website Driver Heaven

technology

fishing ... haven't been fishing in a while though

building & airbrushing plastic model kits (i like working with my hands and it keeps my mind concentrated)

Internet

films

Music mostly heavy Rock, Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal and classical music as well