No sense in reviving old computers

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 21:54:48 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Wolf K
writes:
On 2017-02-18 19:54, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
[...]
It seems obvious to me that there must be some angle below which the
density of rods and cones in the eye becomes the limiting factor.
[...]

Nope, it's your brain. People see what they pay attention to. If the
[]
No, it's not.

Actually, I think Wolf is onto something there.

I'm perfectly aware of all the psychological arguments
concerning optical matters, and most of them have some validity;
however, I can see no way in which putting more pixels in a display than
the eye can resolve can truly make any difference.

I'll turn it back on you: _knowing_ that the display is HD (or at least
720) might make you _think_ it looks better (-:.

It doesn't work that way because you don't know in advance whether it's
going to be HD or SD. You can't make that determination until you see
it. It's not enough to assume that an HD display will be receiving an HD
signal, or that it won't be receiving a signal that's been upsampled to
HD. Only your eyes/brain can answer that, if you're even looking for it.

For artifacts like banding and macro blocking, when I point them out
during a movie, for example, invariable the person or people around me
give one of the following responses:
"Oh, I never noticed that before. What causes it?"
"I've seen that but didn't know what it was. What did you call it?"
"Yeah, that annoys the heck out of me, too!"

In each of those scenarios, they can see those artifacts just fine. The
only difference is whether they needed a bit of prompting first.

In much the same way
that wifi manufacturers succeed in selling ever-faster wifi, despite the
fact that in most cases the external link is the (main!) limiting
factor.

That's not really germane to the current discussion, but I'm happy to
give my take. IMHO, LAN speeds are a completely separate topic from WAN
speeds, and one should almost never artificially constrain oneself to a
LAN that's as slow as the WAN. There are a lot of LAN activities that
have nothing to do with the WAN.

--

Char Jackson

On 02/19/2017 12:27 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
O

I think there are two issues with new Windows and Mac systems for many
users. The actual complexity of the system, and the complexity of the
UI in accessing the system. I've been helping 3 seniors who are totally
confused with the W10 interface, yet all 3 have used XP systems. Only 1
of the 3 is actually going through what looks to be a very good
beginner's book on using Windows 10.

On a side note, I'm working slowing on some small help documents for
folks in that position, which benefits me in learning W10, as well as a
particular page layout program.

My interest in Linux came from an effort to find some way to a) prolong
the life of the hardware when nothing was wrong with it, and b) find a
simpler UI/system that was easier to learn for people who were
definitely not computer literate.

That led me to Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop. Which, when I've
shown it to people, there's been an overall positive response. We even
set up a system at work for people to see, and when the customer has
been thinking about a different computer, the response has also been
generally positive.

Elementary Linux looks simple, but I've not had the time to play with it.





I started out back in the old punch card days and got so fed up with
computers that by 1982 I vowed never to touch one again.
Ironically that was the year IBM came out with the PC and the whole
world started using computers.

Somewhere around 1999 my (now) wife told me to "get with it" and gave me
her old P-1 and before too long I had Win95 figured out and liked it but
wanted a bigger challenge.

I found Linux to be the best computer learning experience I ever had.

I really was clueless and did not even know what a partition was, but
after six months really had learned a lot.


Also had to start collecting older computers to see what I had missed so
started over with 8088's 286's and 386's

learned DOS and Win3x /after/ learning win95 and win98





Etc. the psychology of choice is "poorly
understood", as they say, but the research shows quite clearly that most
of the time choice is just another illusion. "Marketing" is all about
creating that illusion to the seller's advantage.

Have a good day,

On 02/19/2017 03:54 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[snip]

I'll turn it back on you: _knowing_ that the display is HD (or at least
720) might make you _think_ it looks better (-:. In much the same way
that wifi manufacturers succeed in selling ever-faster wifi, despite the
fact that in most cases the external link is the (main!) limiting factor.

The external link ISN'T the limiting factor when you're transferring a
DVD-size file between computers.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of
the few." -- Marie Henri Beyle (Stendhal)

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 21:54:48 +0000, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

In message , Wolf K
writes:
On 2017-02-18 19:54, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
[...]
It seems obvious to me that there must be some angle below which the
density of rods and cones in the eye becomes the limiting factor.
[...]

Nope, it's your brain. People see what they pay attention to. If the
[]
No, it's not. I'm perfectly aware of all the psychological arguments
concerning optical matters, and most of them have some validity;
however, I can see no way in which putting more pixels in a display than
the eye can resolve can truly make any difference.

I'll turn it back on you: _knowing_ that the display is HD (or at least
720) might make you _think_ it looks better (-:. In much the same way
that wifi manufacturers succeed in selling ever-faster wifi, despite the
fact that in most cases the external link is the (main!) limiting
factor.

I believe you are correct. Your eyes can play "tricks" but only
if you are unaware of what you are looking at. Most people that
are watching a movie are looking at the movie and not counting
pixels or looking for artifacts.

This discussion reminds me when I owned a consumer electronics
repair shop/store. You know, TV's, VCR's, etc. I had a guy that
specialized in car audio and did excellent custom installations.
That attracted a lot of audiophiles who would get into arguments
with each other about which power amp sounded better. One would
say, "The Alpine amp sounds better. It has .ooo5% distortion."
Another would say, "No the Pioneer sounds better. It has .0004%
distortion. I can really hear the difference." I would just
quietly laugh. Their ignorance helped pay my bills. In reality
distortion has to reach close to 3% before the average human ear
can detect it. Plus the human ear is not linear. It adds a
little distortion itself so we never hear anything that is
100% distortion free.

The same sort of thing is true for our eyes. If you go back to
the old method of determining video resolution that was called
"lines of resolution", you would see there is a point where
any improvement is useless. Your eyes won't see it.

--
Wildman GNU/Linux user #557453
The cow died so I don't need your bull!

philo wrote:
On 02/18/2017 04:49 AM, Ant wrote:
sctvguy1 wrote:
On Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:30:20 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/15/2017 03:12 PM, Wildman wrote:
On Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:53:38 +0100, Linea Recta wrote:

"philo" schreef in bericht
news I was given a 2ghz AMD machine with 2 gigs of RAM and a bad HD with
XP. In theory that should have been ok for Win7

I replaced the drive and installed Win7


The machine must have been 15 years old and though Win7 would
install, the CPU has no SSE2 so I was not able to install any new
browser due to lack of H/W support.

The machine has now been sent to the recycler



So it had an older processor than Pentium 4?

Intel started SSE2 with the P4 in 2001 but AMD did not support it until
the release of the Opteron and Athlon 64 chips in 2003.




Thanks for the info.

It did not break my heart to recycle a 16 year old comptuer

As long as it was not an IBM PS/2!

Why? I had my own PS/2 model 30 286 10 Mhz and a borrowed P70
386 portable back then. I hated Microchannel Architecture (MCA) in the
386. 286 was OK without its MCA, but dang slow.


My PS/2 runs win95 extremely well!

Which model? :P
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Since we're talking about old school computers. Here are mine:
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html ...
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On 02/19/2017 05:01 AM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
On 19/02/2017 7:02 AM, philo wrote:

Correct, but any of the current browsers require SSE2 I would have
needed an older version of the browser.

I tried an AMD Athlon and Sempron and the machine was just too slow.
Any P-4 should still be good

Per another reply, try older versions of Firefox...




Maybe you missed that the machine was scrapped out

On 02/20/2017 04:03 AM, Ant wrote:
Since we're talking about old school computers. Here are mine:
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html ...




My Obsolete computer collection has been thinned out but my PS/2 and
Kaypro are keepers

On 02/20/2017 03:59 AM, Ant wrote:
philo wrote:
On


Model

Intel started SSE2 with the P4 in 2001 but AMD did not support it until
the release of the Opteron and Athlon 64 chips in 2003.




Thanks for the info.

It did not break my heart to recycle a 16 year old comptuer

As long as it was not an IBM PS/2!

Why? I had my own PS/2 model 30 286 10 Mhz and a borrowed P70
386 portable back then. I hated Microchannel Architecture (MCA) in the
386. 286 was OK without its MCA, but dang slow.


My PS/2 runs win95 extremely well!

Which model? :P




Model 70 with the 486

The drive was wiped when I got it but the boot manager was still there,
so I saw that it ran win95 and os/2

I just re-loaded Win95

Eventually someone gave me a new MCA eithernet card

On 2/20/2017 2:03 AM, Ant wrote:
Since we're talking about old school computers. Here are mine:
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html ...

do you ever max out your 6GB RAM?

philo wrote:
As long as it was not an IBM PS/2!

Why? I had my own PS/2 model 30 286 10 Mhz and a borrowed P70
386 portable back then. I hated Microchannel Architecture (MCA) in the
386. 286 was OK without its MCA, but dang slow.


My PS/2 runs win95 extremely well!

Which model? :P

Model 70 with the 486

Wow. IBM had 486 for their P70s? I only used it for 386. I remember
DOOM 1 shareware was choppy. Haha.
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to the Ants, page 59. Bert Holldobler & Edward O. Wilson
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Mike S wrote:
On 2/20/2017 2:03 AM, Ant wrote:
Since we're talking about old school computers. Here are mine:
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html ...

do you ever max out your 6GB RAM?

Maybe if I am heavily multitasking like with VMs.
--
Quote of the Week: "The foreign policy aim of ants can be summed up as
follows: restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal
annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had
nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week." --Journey
to the Ants, page 59. Bert Holldobler & Edward O. Wilson
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"Wolf K" wrote in message
...
On 2017-02-19 23:35, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 02/19/2017 03:54 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[snip]

I'll turn it back on you: _knowing_ that the display is HD (or at least
720) might make you _think_ it looks better (-:. In much the same way
that wifi manufacturers succeed in selling ever-faster wifi, despite the
fact that in most cases the external link is the (main!) limiting
factor.

The external link ISN'T the limiting factor when you're transferring a
DVD-size file between computers.

I think John was referring to the link to the ISP. I've found d/l speeds
vary with time of day and with source.

I have found that my laptop takes longer to download a file over wifi than
over Ethernet, even when the wifi link speed is showing as being
significantly greater than the router's sync speed. I think there must be
re-transmissions and TPDU size factors at play as well.

My laptop has recently developed an annoying habit of its link speed
gradually decreasing. If I disable and re-enable the wifi adaptor in Device
Manager, the link speed always goes back to around 70 Mbps (well short of
the 400 that my router on Wireless N is capable of, but that's another
story). Data transfer is reasonably fast. Then gradually over the hours the
sync speed (and hence the data transfer speed) decreases until it settles at
about 5 Mbps. That's fast enough that it's not noticeable for normal web
browsing, but it's very noticeable if I want to access to transfer a GB
video file across the network. I've got into the habit now of disabling and
re-enabling the wifi adaptor before attempting a large file transfer!

This is even when the laptop is within a few feet of the router, when I'm
the only network on that wifi channel, and with no overlapping channels in
use - for example if I'm on 6, the only other (weak) networks are on 1 and
11.

Sometimes I resort to plugging in an Ethernet cable which is even faster,
and has the added benefit of being consistent. If I do a large file transfer
and look at the network speed in Task Manager, I can see far more variation
for the wifi signal than that for Ethernet - the latter usually goes to
about 95% and stays flat at that, whereas the wifi fluctuates within a range
10 Mbps to 60 Mbps at random (assuming a reported link speed of 60 Mbps).

On 02/21/2017 03:33 AM, Ant wrote:
philo wrote:
As long as it was not an IBM PS/2!

Why? I had my own PS/2 model 30 286 10 Mhz and a borrowed P70
386 portable back then. I hated Microchannel Architecture (MCA) in the
386. 286 was OK without its MCA, but dang slow.


My PS/2 runs win95 extremely well!

Which model? :P

Model 70 with the 486

Wow. IBM had 486 for their P70s? I only used it for 386. I remember
DOOM 1 shareware was choppy. Haha.




I was wrong, just checked and it's a Model 77


I tried Win98 on the machine but it was very slow, so re-loaded Win95

On 02/20/2017 11:15 PM, Mike S wrote:
On 2/20/2017 2:03 AM, Ant wrote:
Since we're talking about old school computers. Here are mine:
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html ...

do you ever max out your 6GB RAM?




Speaking of maxing out RAM

about 12 years ago someone who was getting rid of junk gave me an ISA,
RAM extension board. I put it in my Zenith Data Systems 286 and got 16
megs of RAM recognized. The max amount a 286 can address!


At the time the machine was made 16 megs of RAM would have been (almost)
an impossibility and probably cost over $50,000