IT... Computing....

[DaveRattlehead]

It seems too complex for me

[PluMGMK]

I mean, if you get a nice distro like Linux Mint, it should just work for you out of the box. Then you can ease yourself into the more hardcore aspects… or not, it's up to you…

[The Jonster]

I second plum, there’s always a chance someday

[Rsandee]

The biggest problem for me is that windows severely inhibits your autonomy. Linux gives you tons of freedom and doesn't sell your data.
I'm still using windows on my gaming pc though....

[DaveRattlehead]

Linux Mint? Is that a more friendly version?

[Master]

The card arrived today (thanks UPS for the delays ) and when I plugged it in I got exactly the same result: receive, no transmit. It turns out (and I had suspected this, but convinced myself otherwise with the oscilloscope :facepalm) that the REAL problem was the lack of a –12 V supply on the new power supply. It seems that PSU manufacturers now no longer bother to include a –12-V pin, even though there's nothing stopping users from hooking them up to hardware that requires it (just like I did, in fact).

Huh, I spose it's a bit redundant given the state of IO in modern computers, but was it officially removed from the ATX spec, or is this a noncompliance the industry just didn't really compare about?

[PluMGMK]

Linux Mint? Is that a more friendly version?

So when you're installing Linux, you have to choose a distribution. There are many many distributions out there, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, etc. Linux Mint is one of the more user-friendly distros (at the other end of the scale you have Gentoo and Slackware )

[DaveRattlehead]

And I guess it's a bit more efficient than W11 right?

[PluMGMK]

And I guess it's a bit more efficient than W11 right?

Well, it doesn't have a trumped-up requirement for the so-called Trusted Platform Module that nobody really needs, so it'll run on older but perfectly functional hardware.

The card arrived today (thanks UPS for the delays ) and when I plugged it in I got exactly the same result: receive, no transmit. It turns out (and I had suspected this, but convinced myself otherwise with the oscilloscope :facepalm) that the REAL problem was the lack of a –12 V supply on the new power supply. It seems that PSU manufacturers now no longer bother to include a –12-V pin, even though there's nothing stopping users from hooking them up to hardware that requires it (just like I did, in fact).

Huh, I spose it's a bit redundant given the state of IO in modern computers, but was it officially removed from the ATX spec, or is this a noncompliance the industry just didn't really compare about?

I'm not 100% sure… I need to look into it, it's possible that the latest version of the spec no longer mandates it. But either way, this really isn't warned about sufficiently IMO.
Btw, another case of a noncompliance that the industry doesn't care about is modern graphics cards' VESA BIOS implementation: recently they just started ignoring the "set display start" call, but returning a "success" code. There's a VOGONS thread about NVIDIA doing this, and I can confirm AMD do the same.

Also, the HD Audio on my motherboard has had really horrible clipped audio (to the extent that I'm now plugging my headphones into the monitor and getting the audio via DisplayPort) since the change-out, so maybe it was using the –12 V as input to some comparator too. Seems strange for a motherboard from 2014, but I guess it's possible…

[Master]

The industry does seem to play it a bit fast and loose sometimes, I know there's been iffiness with Intel and AMD CPUs of recent years because of motherboard manufacturers not necessarily complying to the stock settings for them. I wasn't aware about the issues with the GPUs however, I'll have to read into those when we're done here.

[PluMGMK]

The industry does seem to play it a bit fast and loose sometimes, I know there's been iffiness with Intel and AMD CPUs of recent years because of motherboard manufacturers not necessarily complying to the stock settings for them. I wasn't aware about the issues with the GPUs however, I'll have to read into those when we're done here.

I mean, the GPU thing literally doesn't matter to anyone except those using modern hardware to play certain DOS games natively. So, crazies like me. (but not me, because I don't happen to have any affected game)

[Master]

Haha that's fair, still, in the interest of preservation it is something to be aware about, no?

[PluMGMK]

Haha that's fair, still, in the interest of preservation it is something to be aware about, no?

In my opinion, yes, but I guess the people at NVIDIA and AMD don't agree with me Someone evidently made a conscious decision to remove the code to save space in the ROM, but didn't bother to reprogram it to return a failure status

[Master]

I suppose so, though I do wonder if space is such a premium these days, given the densities. I know ROM is going to be substantially smaller, but even so.

[PluMGMK]

I suppose so, though I do wonder if space is such a premium these days, given the densities. I know ROM is going to be substantially smaller, but even so.

Well we're talking about a Real-Mode (i.e. 16-bit code) Option ROM, which has to fit in the 64k space between addresses 0C0000h and 0D0000h.

[Master]

Ahh ok, I'm not too well versed, but this is due to how the legacy x86 architecture works right?

[PluMGMK]

Ahh ok, I'm not too well versed, but this is due to how the legacy x86 architecture works right?

Yeah… A lot of people like to talk about "legacy cruft" and all that, but having studied it extensively over the past five years I've come to the conclusion that it's actually beautiful. Like I can boot DOS on my PC from the 2010s, and it works! That's fantastic tbh!

[Master]

To be fair, I think that's half the reason the x86 arch has lasted for as long as it has, thought it's definitely not perfectly backwards compatible. Still, I do wonder how much longer x86 will hold out, given the proliferation of ARM in the PC and Mac space.

[PluMGMK]

To be fair, I think that's half the reason the x86 arch has lasted for as long as it has, thought it's definitely not perfectly backwards compatible. Still, I do wonder how much longer x86 will hold out, given the proliferation of ARM in the PC and Mac space.

Well, Intel are still adding features, and a new working group was set up recently with both them and AMD to make sure new features are implemented uniformly across the board. So it's not going anywhere I'd say!

[Master]

That is true, it does seem they've realised that ARM is a substantial competitor to their space, I do wonder what this'll mean for future CPUs. I know Intel were trying to push for efficiency gains in their last generation, and I think that's one of the areas ARM is particularly good at.

And of course there's RISC-V lurking around, though I don't see that going into the desktop space anytime soon.