I've got an old Dell Precision T3400, Core 2 Quad CPU (upgraded from a Core
2 Duo), and an Intel RAID card with 2x2TB drives in a RAID 1 array. I re- installed Windows 10 a year ago, and it's been slowing down and annoying me
to no end, especially since I'm getting used to NVMe SSDs on my work
machines.

My hard drive was filling up, I was down to 25% free. I went on a house- cleaning spree, deleted 6000 duplicate photos and bad photos, old ISO images and temp files, and moved some data to another 2TB (non-mirrored) drive.
That got both volumes down to 40% full. I ran MyDefrag, a defrag tool that I've used over the years, and used the "monthly defrag" setting, which arranges the files by access time and leaves space for them to grow in the middle of the disk.

Bootup times compared to an NVMe are still slow, but It's significantly
faster now, and doesn't feel laggy by comparison to the NVMe laptops I have.

Check out MyDefrag if you're still running on spinning drives. It might be worth a shot to speed up your system.


... Are there sections? Consider transitions
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

Hello poindexter FORTRAN!

On 06 Jan 2021, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...

to no end, especially since I'm getting used to NVMe SSDs on my work machines.

Oh yes, those tend to make everything feel slow in comparison. :-)

I installed a 250 GB Samsung 970 M.2 Evo in my BBS machine 2½ years ago and it still feels blazingly fast...

At the same time, I also switched to a 2.5" 250 GB Samsung 860 Evo in my simple workstation (a quad-core 2 GHz Celeron, cheap as hell but runs cool and no problems), which speeded up things quite a a bit there, despite the fact that the machine doesn't support SATA-3, only SATA-2... :-O

And of course they released even better and faster SSD models shortly thereafter, but anyway. :-)

Check out MyDefrag if you're still running on spinning drives. It

might be

worth a shot to speed up your system.

Which is the correct homepage for MyDefrag? I found some older website for it but other sites promoting it seems to be hijacked pages or sites full of obscure ads...

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/01/05 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Zip to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jan 08 2021 04:59 pm

And of course they released even better and faster SSD models shortly thereafter, but anyway. :-)

Recently I decided to buy a bigger SSD for my main desktop PC at home. I had a Samsung EVO 860 500GB m.2 SSD in it, and put in a 1TB m.2 SSD. The 1TB SSD I bought is PCI Express 4.0, though my motherboard only supports up to PCI Express 3.0. I built my PC in 2019 - seems like technology is still changing fairly fast.

Nightfox

Hello Nightfox!

On 08 Jan 2021, Nightfox said the following...

Express 3.0. I built my PC in 2019 - seems like technology is still chang fairly fast.

Sure does!

(Do we need all these faster speeds all the time? :-D)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/01/05 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden

Zip wrote to Nightfox <=-

(Do we need all these faster speeds all the time? :-D)

I'd be willing to stop at SATA-3 and USB 3.1. That seems enough.




... Think of the radio
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

On 1/8/2021 9:27 AM, Nightfox wrote:

Recently I decided to buy a bigger SSD for my main desktop
PC at home. I had a Samsung EVO 860 500GB m.2 SSD in it,
and put in a 1TB m.2 SSD. The 1TB SSD I bought is PCI
Express 4.0, though my motherboard only supports up to PCI
Express 3.0. I built my PC in 2019 - seems like technology
is still changing fairly fast.

Well, it was pretty stagnant for the better part of 5 years or so.

Put together a Ryzen R9 3950X in October 2019 (actually a 3600 until I
could get a 3950X), was already running nvme for a couple years before,
and the difference from the machine before (i7-4790k, 5yo at the time)
was night and day.

Hopefully I'll be able to get an RTX graphics card sometime this year,
but not holding out much hope. I did use part of my bonus this year to
get a new NAS (DS1621+) with 4x 12TB drives (two empty slots to grow
on). My old one (12yo DS409) was really long in the tooth and slow to
say the least.

Other than the GPU upgrade mentioned above, probably good for the next 5
years or so. I do regret going full RGB though.

--
Michael J. Ryan
tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS
---
þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Tracker1 to Nightfox on Thu Jan 21 2021 07:13 pm

Hopefully I'll be able to get an RTX graphics card sometime this year, but not holding out much hope. I did use part of my bonus this year to get a new NAS (DS1621+) with 4x 12TB drives (two empty slots to grow
on). My old one (12yo DS409) was really long in the tooth and slow to
say the least.

I've been wanting to upgrade my graphics card too. It sucks that manufacturing seems to be down overall. I've wanted to buy a new printer too, as my current printer seems to be having some trouble now, but I haven't been able to find the printer I want in stock at a reasonable price anywhere either.

Other than the GPU upgrade mentioned above, probably good for the next 5 years or so. I do regret going full RGB though.

I don't like RGB either. I don't want a light show in my PC. Sometimes I leave my PC on overnight to work on something, and I don't want the room lit up (even if it's not the room I sleep in). After I built my current PC, one of the first things I did was finding a way to turn off the RGB on the motherboard and GPU.

Nightfox

On 1/22/2021 3:47 PM, Nightfox wrote:

Hopefully I'll be able to get an RTX graphics card sometime this year,
but not holding out much hope. I did use part of my bonus this year to
get a new NAS (DS1621+) with 4x 12TB drives (two empty slots to grow
on). My old one (12yo DS409) was really long in the tooth and slow to
say the least.

I've been wanting to upgrade my graphics card too. It sucks that manufacturing seems to be down overall. I've wanted to buy a new
printer too, as my current printer seems to be having some trouble
now, but I haven't been able to find the printer I want in stock at
a reasonable price anywhere either.

Been using a Color HP Laser for a few years now, finally changed out
from the stock BW cartridge and need to do the Color after about 4 years
or so on the one it came with. I really don't print that much.

As to graphics cards, production is decent, but there are a lot of
bitcoin miners and scalpers using bots to buy up any stock even close to
list price.

Other than the GPU upgrade mentioned above, probably good for the
next 5 years or so. I do regret going full RGB though.

I don't like RGB either. I don't want a light show in my PC.
Sometimes I leave my PC on overnight to work on something, and
I don't want the room lit up (even if it's not the room I sleep
in). After I built my current PC, one of the first things I did
was finding a way to turn off the RGB on the motherboard and GPU.

Yeah, I went with a LianLi O11 Dynamic case and RGB fans... my kid
really likes it and she's about due for an upgrade... so may just pull
my CPU and a few other parts out and put it in a new case for me
(thinking Fractal Define S* or Meshify series with solid panel).
Assuming again, can get GPUs any time soon, that's when I'll probably
pull the trigger so to speak.
--
Michael J. Ryan
tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS
---
ï¿­ Synchronet ï¿­ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Tracker1 to Nightfox on Sat Jan 23 2021 08:17 am

As to graphics cards, production is decent, but there are a lot of bitcoin miners and scalpers using bots to buy up any stock even close to list price.

I haven't seen a situation like this before though.. I've been waiting about 3 months to find the graphics card I want that isn't being sold at above-normal price by a scalper.

Nightfox

On 1/23/2021 10:49 AM, Nightfox wrote:

As to graphics cards, production is decent, but there are a lot of
bitcoin miners and scalpers using bots to buy up any stock even close to
list price.

I haven't seen a situation like this before though.. I've been waiting
about 3 months to find the graphics card I want that isn't being sold at above-normal price by a scalper.

I recall it being very similar at the end of 2017... then the
bit/alt-coin market crashed and things normalized. Wanting current RTX
for some AI/Upscaling I want to run on some older content, but not
willing to pay 2-3x list price to scalpers.

Apparently newegg is supposed to be switching to a lottery draw for
their video cards... saw an article last week on it.
--
Michael J. Ryan
tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS
---
ï¿­ Synchronet ï¿­ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Tracker1 to Nightfox on Sat Jan 23 2021 06:22 pm

for some AI/Upscaling I want to run on some older content, but not willing to pay 2-3x list price to scalpers.

Apparently newegg is supposed to be switching to a lottery draw for
their video cards... saw an article last week on it.

i fucking hate newegg. they send me a trashed computer and made me pay a fuckload to ship it back. the damn computer was vandalized.
---
■ Synchronet ■ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Tracker1 to Nightfox on Sat Jan 23 2021 06:22 pm

I haven't seen a situation like this before though.. I've been
waiting about 3 months to find the graphics card I want that isn't
being sold at above-normal price by a scalper.

I recall it being very similar at the end of 2017... then the bit/alt-coin market crashed and things normalized. Wanting current RTX for some AI/Upscaling I want to run on some older content, but not willing to pay 2-3x list price to scalpers.

I thought it was due to manufacturing scaling back due to the covid situation (trying to minimalize the spread of covid). I wouldn't have thought there would be so much demand for bitcoin mining to drive demand for new graphics cards this much. In 2019, I bought an RTX 2070 Super, and those were going out of stock quickly but I was able to buy one. I set an email notification on Newegg and got a notification fairly soon that some had come back in stock, and I was able to buy one.

Apparently newegg is supposed to be switching to a lottery draw for
their video cards... saw an article last week on it.

That would be interesting.

I had seen that EVGA has email notifications when their RTX 30 series cards come back in stock, and supposedly you can be guaranteed a chance to buy one for 24 hours or something. I've signed up for a few of those, but I haven't received any notifications yet. It has been about 2 months so far, I think.

Just seems hard to believe that stock levels would be this low for so long, and manufacturing can't keep up with demand..

Nightfox

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Nightfox to Tracker1 on Sat Jan 23 2021 09:49:47

It sucks so hard right now for computer enthusiasts, the chip shortage is just devastating hardware availability and prices.

Hopefully we'll see some surplus in a year or so but I wouldn't hold my breath. Lots of pent up demand. I imagine Xmas this year will be... interesting.

---
■ Synchronet ■ Auntie Bodies BBS - auntibodiesbbs.themuldoons.co.uk

On 1/23/2021 10:09 PM, MRO wrote:

for some AI/Upscaling I want to run on some older content, but not
willing to pay 2-3x list price to scalpers.

Apparently newegg is supposed to be switching to a lottery draw for
their video cards... saw an article last week on it.

i fucking hate newegg. they send me a trashed computer and made me
pay a fuckload to ship it back. the damn computer was vandalized.

Never had anything like that happen, though like Amazon, I make sure
it's sold by newegg, since they have 3rd party sellers.
--
Michael J. Ryan (tracker1)
+o roughneckbbs.com
---
ï¿­ Synchronet ï¿­ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

Tracker1 wrote to MRO <=-

On 1/23/2021 10:09 PM, MRO wrote:

i fucking hate newegg. they send me a trashed computer and made me
pay a fuckload to ship it back. the damn computer was vandalized.

Never had anything like that happen, though like Amazon, I make
sure it's sold by newegg, since they have 3rd party sellers.

Nobody other than 'MRO' has ever had that happen, either.



... All the easy problems have been solved.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Gamgee to Tracker1 on Mon Jan 25 2021 01:53 pm

i fucking hate newegg. they send me a trashed computer and made me
pay a fuckload to ship it back. the damn computer was vandalized.

Never had anything like that happen, though like Amazon, I make
sure it's sold by newegg, since they have 3rd party sellers.

Nobody other than 'MRO' has ever had that happen, either.

Years ago, I read a story that a shipment of Intel CPUs to Newegg was apparently intercepted by some people in China and replaced with boxes of fake CPUs, and the boxes were so confincing that Newegg staff didn't notice. And many customers got those fake CPUs and naturally wanted to return them.

And my understanding is that while Intel manufactures the wafers in the US, they send the wafers to their fabs in China where the CPUs are made from the wafers.

Nightfox

Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

i fucking hate newegg. they send me a trashed computer and made me
pay a fuckload to ship it back. the damn computer was vandalized.

Never had anything like that happen, though like Amazon, I make
sure it's sold by newegg, since they have 3rd party sellers.

Nobody other than 'MRO' has ever had that happen, either.

Years ago, I read a story that a shipment of Intel CPUs to Newegg
was apparently intercepted by some people in China and replaced
with boxes of fake CPUs, and the boxes were so confincing that
Newegg staff didn't notice. And many customers got those fake
CPUs and naturally wanted to return them.

Wow, that would really suck. Not quite the same thing as what MRO was claiming, though. I doubt what he said is true.

And my understanding is that while Intel manufactures the wafers
in the US, they send the wafers to their fabs in China where the
CPUs are made from the wafers.

Probably right, and no surprise, unfortunately.


... Gone crazy, be back later, please leave message.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Tracker1 to Nightfox on Sat Jan 23 2021 18:22:04

Apparently newegg is supposed to be switching to a lottery draw for
their video cards... saw an article last week on it.

God that would be nice. I'm pretty sick of this mining market pricing for cards, too.

---
■ Synchronet ■ Tinfoil Tetrahedron BBS - skulking seedily against the Brave New World

On 2/8/2021 8:11 PM, Sprite wrote:

Apparently newegg is supposed to be switching to a lottery draw for
their video cards... saw an article last week on it.

God that would be nice. I'm pretty sick of this mining market pricing
for cards, too.

read an article about it, but haven't seen it since... haven't really
tried... hopefully within a few months, I'll be able to snag a couple
RTX 3070s for close to list price.
--
Michael J. Ryan (tracker1)
+o roughneckbbs.com
---
ï¿­ Synchronet ï¿­ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

Tracker1 wrote to Sprite <=-

read an article about it, but haven't seen it since... haven't really tried... hopefully within a few months, I'll be able to snag a couple
RTX 3070s for close to list price.

On my bargain-basement box, I just bought a MSI branded Nvidia GT 1030 card for $89. It's an upgrade from my current system and should last me some
time - I'm a light gamer, mostly playing old retro games.

I helped my son shop for a card about a year ago, and he bought am AMD RX
560. I was shocked when looking at a) the price of cards now, and b) the
lack of stock online - most places were sold out of the majority of their items.

And here I was, thinking that home bitcoin mining was a thing of the past...




... All of this has happened before, and it will happen again...again...
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

On 2/20/2021 8:51 AM, poindexter FORTRAN wrote:

And here I was, thinking that home bitcoin mining was a
thing of the past...

Yeah, it's definitely bak in full swing, which is somewhat
upsetting as I'd kind of like to get a couple RTX cards, but
not for what they're going for on ebay or amazon scalpers.
--
Michael J. Ryan (tracker1)
+o roughneckbbs.com
---
ï¿­ Synchronet ï¿­ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

And here I was, thinking that home bitcoin mining was a
thing of the past...

Yeah, it's definitely bak in full swing, which is somewhat
upsetting as I'd kind of like to get a couple RTX cards, but
not for what they're going for on ebay or amazon scalpers.
Michael J. Ryan (tracker1)
+o roughneckbbs.com

Maybe I'm naive to the process, but I just can't understand for the life of me why these companies don't just... build more inventory? Stock more cards? Meet demand?

It just seems like we should be able to pick whatever hardware we want to run and push the order button... I'm not a big gamer, nor do I need all the power in the world - but I want to get into video editing and will have to hunt and be open to different options now that I need a decent video card. Sheesh.



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: paulie420 to Tracker1 on Tue Feb 23 2021 09:36 am

Yeah, it's definitely bak in full swing, which is somewhat
upsetting as I'd kind of like to get a couple RTX cards, but
not for what they're going for on ebay or amazon scalpers.

Maybe I'm naive to the process, but I just can't understand for the life of me why these companies don't just... build more inventory? Stock more cards? Meet demand?

It just seems like we should be able to pick whatever hardware we want to run and push the order button... I'm not a big gamer, nor do I need all the power in the world - but I want to get into video editing and will have to hunt and be open to different options now that I need a decent video card. Sheesh.

I thought the covid pandemic had something to do with it. With people having been in quarantine, there may have been fewer people working to produce computer parts, thus the lack of supply. It seems like it has been across the board - There's a printer I've been considering buying that has been out of stock at most places I've looked, and it seems scalpers are trying to sell it for a higher price than its normal retail price.

I also heard a story in the news recently that even car makers (specifically, Ford) have been affected by the drop in supply of computer chips and parts.

As far as it being due to the covid pandemic, I guess I'm not sure if that's a major factor or not.

Nightfox

paulie420 wrote to Tracker1 <=-

Maybe I'm naive to the process, but I just can't understand for the
life of me why these companies don't just... build more inventory?
Stock more cards? Meet demand?

Low supply = more demand, higher cost per unit. Why build to meet demand
when you can increase the value (and therefore the cost) by not keeping up with demand instead?

Let demand jack up the cost, change your product from a commodity to a specialty item, and make more money selling fewer units - and get free advertising bumping your product from one of dozens to The One People Need
to Have.

Marketing 101.


... Do the words need changing?
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
■ Synchronet ■ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: poindexter FORTRAN to paulie420 on Wed Feb 24 2021 06:51 am

paulie420 wrote to Tracker1 <=-

Maybe I'm naive to the process, but I just can't understand for the life of me why these companies don't just... build more inventory? Stock more cards? Meet demand?

Low supply = more demand, higher cost per unit. Why build to meet demand when you can increase the value (and therefore the cost) by not keeping up with demand instead?

Let demand jack up the cost, change your product from a commodity to a specialty item, and make more money selling fewer un
- and get free advertising bumping your product from one of dozens to The One People Need
to Have.

Marketing 101.

... Do the words need changing?

That only works if you don't fear the competitor making more cards than you in order to fill the demand.

--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken

---
■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

On 2/24/2021 6:51 AM, poindexter FORTRAN wrote:

Maybe I'm naive to the process, but I just can't understand for the
life of me why these companies don't just... build more inventory?
Stock more cards? Meet demand?

Low supply = more demand, higher cost per unit. Why build to meet demand when you can increase the value (and therefore the cost) by not

keeping up

with demand instead?

Let demand jack up the cost, change your product from a commodity to a specialty item, and make more money selling fewer units - and get free advertising bumping your product from one of dozens to The One People

Need

to Have.

It's not a lack of desire to build more cards... It takes years to build
a processor or memory fabrication plant. This stuff gets backlogged for
3-5 years. Not to mention costing billions to do so. Which is why they
don't over-build in the first place. Combined with network of shortages
in supply chains throughout the world, it just doesn't go well.

Combined with more demand than typical from more people at home and in
need of newer computers, and/or the crypto miners buying every GPU they
can to the point they're buying laptops with GPU power to drain
everything resembling inventory from every resource.

And it's not price, or value (performance per dollar or watt),
everything short of the lowest end is sold out everywhere. Even most of
the higher end business cards are sold out.
--
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1@roughneckbbs.com
---
ï¿­ Synchronet ï¿­ Roughneck BBS - roughneckbbs.com

Re: Re: Old Iron
By: Nightfox to Tracker1 on Fri Jan 22 2021 07:47 am

get a 2nd hand gpu that wasnt used for mining

---
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