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The lonely tech post thread.

I got an IBM PC XT in 1986 (£2,200 as I recall but I didn't pay for it). Served me admirably for a good few years. I bagged it up and have carried it round with me for nearly 35 years :cool: Was thinking some tech collector might be interested - I was told it was one of the first to come into the UK but I think he was lying. Was looking forward to having a play with DOS again to see whether I could navigate around pre mouse and internet (did have a Compuserve link to the US which involved entering a lot of numbers and digits each time), and whether any of the software still worked :thumbs:

Finally got it out of the attic and connected it up, plugged it in and wandered off for a few minutes. Hadn't even switched it on and smoke started coming out of the back :(

I remember similar years ago with my ZX Spectrum I'd had in my parents loft for years. Pulled it out for nostalgia sake, there was a funny noise and it never booted.
 
Edit: it was indeed switched on but I don't think that improves things.

Mind you it does solve my problem of where to store it because it's fucking huge. I wonder whether I could sell the keyboard/monitor as spares.
 
Edit: it was indeed switched on but I don't think that improves things.

Mind you it does solve my problem of where to store it because it's fucking huge. I wonder whether I could sell the keyboard/monitor as spares.

There is a market for retro gear, so probably, not sure how much its worth, but you could check ebay.
 
Damn the pub and my weak willed-ness, was doing some research and it looks like my current CPU is going to bottleneck my gpu ( ryzen 5600g, a fine chip ) so upgraded to a ryzen 5800x3d.

I was looking at going fulll ddr 5, but that was going to be about to get to hundreds of quids with a new cpu and motherboard, ram ), so going to wait a bit before I build the beast.

But I reckon it's going to be a sweet upgrade for my gaming needs.

Check back here in a year and if everything has gone tits up again Il have to sell and start again.
 
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Damn the pub and my weak willed-ness, was doing some research and it looks like my current CPU is going to bottleneck my gpu ( ryzen 5600g, a fine chip ) so upgraded to a ryzen 5800x3d.

I was looking at going fulll ddr 5, but that was going to be about to get to hundreds of quids with a new cpu and motherboard, ram ), so going to wait a bit before I build the beast.

But I reckon it'sd going to be a sweet upgrade for my gaming needs.

Check back here in a year and if everything has gone tits up again Il have to sell and start again.

Does it make that much of a difference? I thought the 5600g was still a decent chip and that CPU won't make that much of a difference once you have half decent one, at least compared to the difference a GPU makes?
 
Does it make that much of a difference? I thought the 5600g was still a decent chip and that CPU won't make that much of a difference once you have half decent one, at least compared to the difference a GPU makes?
Probably not loads of difference but I'm kinda on a bit of an upgrade thing, and the l3 3d cache thing does seem to make a difference. I do once every few years and am getting a bit carried away, but Ive been skint for so long I'm indulging.

I'm 52 and my eyes aren't what they used to be so I probably wont be able to tell but I'l know in my heart it's great.
 
Mucking about with conditional access insights and it's workspace.


It's looking like the Azure logs report all windows 10 and 11 as windows 10 when you run the query. Apparently there's a reg key they won't change.

Absolutely top work there Microsoft. Seeing if I can replicate with graph tomorrow and I think I can, called it a day before I was happy.

Also going to see if I can't find another job in new year, not loving this place. Way to much low level leg work and desktop support.
 
FFS. Get up really early to run a task that needs to be done outside office hours. PC runs like a dog. Just about manage to RDP to the machine I need and set it off and go drop the car at the garage. Took an hour to fix. Think it was a failed update.

Shortly after Virgin went down, so I switched to mobile data. An hour later Vodaphone became unusable. After dealing with the shit show that is Virgin customer service, I've had to drive to the office.

Zen now offer full fiber to my house which wasn't an option when I moved, so when my Virgin contract is up I'm leaving (unless I get a huge discount). It's that I don't expect a WAN not to go down very occasionally (and tbf they are good) but I expect to have it dealt with in a decent matter as I've got a business connection.
 
Oh and I fucked up creating a new server and made the C: drive to big and it appears that's theres not a simple way to resize the disk. From my googling I suspect it will be quicker to re-create it. :(
 
After faffing around looking at various keyboards that sometimes came in UK layout, sometimes in US layout and frequently lied about it I gave in. I spent the £85 and bought a Cherry keyboard.

OMG, where have you been all my life? Or at least where have you been since I last used an IBM buckling spring keyboard back in 1990?
 
View attachment 391283

Although saying that my contract has just been extended by 3 months (also posted in the 'Chuffed' thread).

Nice work. :cool:

I've handed my notice in. It feels very weird. I actually feel quite guilty and wonder if I've jumped ship to soon development wise, but I'm also looking forward to it. Really fustratingly my boss has been more present online and helpful since I applied for it, but the first time I've actually spoke to him for months was when he got the reference. He asked me why I was leaving and I realised after that he would have made me an offer if I'd had said money.

I'm visiting a client for a few days so I hand over as best I can. I'm going to feel quite bad telling them I'm leaving as well.
 
The why do we even pay you one hits hard. When I worked in IT that was always brought up when I was sitting around doing nothing and everything was working.
It took the MD to remind everyone if you notice IT not working that means you're not doing your job and they've done theirs lol
 
No one from work has actually said anything to me in a week except asking for a password for a spreadsheet I made over email. It is a little bit weird.
Remote of course but still odd.
 
No one from work has actually said anything to me in a week except asking for a password for a spreadsheet I made over email. It is a little bit weird.
Remote of course but still odd.
still, it is always nice to know they at least tried to open it
 
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still, it is always nice to know they at least tried to open it
Well tried to change it which is why it was locked to begin with as we needed people to fill it in who manage to get everything wrong unless its locked down, data validation in and dropdowns.

They seemed to think a small table and some bits was going to take several days for some reason, I did it in like 20mins so shot myself in the foot there.
 
.... it was locked to begin with as we needed people to fill it in who manage to get everything wrong unless its locked down, data validation in and dropdowns....
I reckon you work in the same place I do (perhaps you are me)

The ongoing struggle to build an idiot proof submission template in Excel will never be won, as they keep on recruiting a better level of idiot.

Probably beyond the wit of said users, but you know that even the sheet locking can be overridden by a determined user who can go into the XML of the file and zap out the password bit?

  1. Make a copy of the Excel file and perform the following steps in your copied file.
  2. Open the file copy with 7-Zip.
  3. Go to the folder “xl”.
  4. Open the subfolder “worksheets”.
  5. Right-click on the file “sheet1. ...
  6. Find the XML entry “sheetProtection”.
  7. Delete this XML entry.
 
Finally got round to setting up the NAS I was given ages ago. I "acquired" a pair of 4TB drives so it's got a useable about of space (anyone want a pair of 500GBs let me know). Funnily enough did a call with an old guy on Friday where I was having to explain about NTFS, HFS+ & FAT32 and then was scratching my head about if I wanted ext4 or btfrs and deciding if I could be bothered with RAID (I can't).

Now deciding between if I want to go the whole hog and use VEEAM of just treat them like a pair of external drives and use something much simplare to sync my media folders.
 
I'm doing some mega downloading, replacing previous series etc with newer higher res versions.

The disk I'm using is an external Seagate 8Tb. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07CQJBSQL?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

I keep coming back to find an error message:

1695817451738.png
What could be causing this? I have noticed that the outside of the disc gets quite warm, could it be overheating due to 12 hours plus of continuous use? Is this type of disc suitable for this purpose? If not, what should I get?

An internal drive isn't an option, it is a pygmy PC.

The drive is connected directly to the PC, not though a hub.
 
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First things i would try is connecting it straight to the PC.

I'd also check the drive health using a tool like CrystalDiskInfo.
 
Crystal Disk isn't seeing the disk, it did warn that it wouldn't work with some external disks.

If I can just get this lot down I'll replace the disk.
 
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