Build Advice New build questions ?

[Richard1234]

Your call if to use; newest, current or yesteryear tech.

When i need something, i look what is currently available and get that. Rather than wait for better deals. Since one can remain waiting for forever.

that is a pragmatic approach, and is advisable eg for investment, eg once there were 7% investments available, I wanted 8%, waited for this, but they gradually dropped over a few years to 5.9%!

Spoiler: Semi-offtopic reply

This reminds me the fiasco Amazon had with their "AI powered" instant check-out system.
Article: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...e-checkout-which-needed-1000-video-reviewers/

Whereby:



As far as AI goes, it's another step in Technological Singularity,
wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

1st we had PCs, that made several calculations much faster than humans, thus, dedicated people needed to calculate stuff, lost their job.

2nd step was robotics (automation), where line workers in factories were made essentially obsolete.

Now, 3rd step is AI, that makes the thinking for humans.
E.g AI art that won an art prize:

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html

And of course, AI usage has become cheaper, faster and better quality than that of a humans. E.g article where game developer payed AI artist for the artwork, rather than hiring artists to do the drawings,
article: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/card-games/champions-tcg-ai-artist/

Spoiler: Semi-offtopic reply

ok, AI isnt just AI, its an umbrella term for a number of incomparable technologies!

each of which has to be discussed as a separate discussion.

that art is generative AI, but for me that isnt true intelligence, but is just parametrisation,
plus voice recognition for voice based generative AI.


the big problem is pattern based AI, as patterns NEVER determine truth, they only hint at truth.

I did pure maths at uni, and the first term of the first year we were warned about the danger of patterns,

no amount of patterns makes something true, in pure maths you have to use logic, not patterns.

a famous example from history is that n^2 + n + 41 is a prime number for

n=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39

so the pattern is it is always prime,

the problem is it isnt prime for n=40, because 40^2 + 40 +41 = 40x(40+1) + 41 = 40x41 + 41 = 41x(40+1)=41x41

in pure maths in an exam if you argue by pattern you will fail!

because it is established beyond all doubt that patterns are not truth.

the problem with Chatbots is they are truth by democracy, but truth isnt a democracy.
most opinions on the internet are wrong. you have to trawl through a lot of junk to reach the gems.

wisdom also isnt a democracy, most people make one bad decision after another, including myself!

in 1800, all scientists thought that time was absolute, so if you had AI in those days, the chatbot would tell matter of fact that time is absolute. but then along comes Einstein, with his theory of special relativity, which says that time is relative to the observer, it isnt absolute.

you can travel 1000 years into the future in 1 second, if you have enough money and technology, basically as you approach the speed of light, time slows down to 0 for you.

this is a big problem that pattern based AI is making all the decisions now, and in particular AI doesnt understand the role of an employee, because there isnt a direct link between an employee and money.

eg the guy stacking goods in a supermarket, no money flows via that guy.

the AI then decides to sack everyone, as then much more money to be made.

calculators and robots aren comparable, as calculators and ordinary software are based on logic, so remain in truth. robots generally just are fed in the motions of humans for fixed tasks,

the problem is when you bring in patterns.

eg the british navy long ago decided to use neural net AI for their warships, they trained the neural nets, then put them to use, and the AI began shooting down their own fighter planes!

they troubleshot this, and found it was because the training data was all daytime images, the planes shot down were at night, the nightness was regarded as not fitting the pattern and the AI shot down the planes!

this isnt a one off, but AI ongoingly makes such blunders, eg one New York lawyer used a chatbot for his case, and got into professional trouble because the AI was quoting cases that never existed! it basically extrapolated from cases that did exist! the AI lacks the common sense that you cannot just invent case law! case law is entirely about real cases that went to the appeals courts.

another example is an australian mayor is suing Chatbot for defamation, as it alleged he had done things which he hadnt done. the thing is a chatbot will blindly believe everything on the internet, including disinformation.

the chatbots trawl the news media. but all journalists as part of their training always insert fake facts into news stories, this is to prevent people acting on the info. this can be anything from a person's name, or age, or interests or quotes etc.

so the chatbots will fill up with false info.

anyway, its not just a progression from calculators to robots to AI,

the pattern based AI is a provably false MO, it is guaranteed to fail, and already has in specific cases.

see the above eg of n^2 + n + 41 as to why patterns are a very unreliable MO. and this example was discovered in a bygone era as a warning as to the danger of relying on patterns.

 

[Aeacus]

I would like to see some specific examples,

One example is: Patriot 300 which is M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 drive,
review 1: https://www.legitreviews.com/patriot-p300-1tb-m-2-nvme-ssd-review-usa-edition_217672
review 2: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/patriot-p300-m2-nvme

One thing that many might overlook in this chart is the Terabytes Written (TBW) endurance rating at the very bottom. TBW measures how many cumulative writes a drive can reasonably expect to complete over its lifespan before needing replacement.

Patriot P300 128GB – P300P128GM28 – 40 TBW
Patriot P300 256GB – P300P256GM28 – 80 TBW
Patriot P300 512GB – P300P512GM28 – 160 TBW
Patriot P300 1TB – P300P1TBM28 – 320 TBW
Patriot P300 2TB – P300P2TBM28 – 640 TBW

The Patriot P300 series is backed by a 3-year warranty with pretty minimal endurance ratings compared to competing drives. The 1TB capacity has a 320TBW rating and that comes out to being about roughly 0.29 TB or 290 GB of drive writes per day over the course of the three year warranty period.

Whereby P300 2TB has 640 TBW rating with 3 years of warranty. For comparison, my Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB (also PCI-E 3.0 x4 drive) has 1200 TBW rating and 5 years of warranty. That's almost twice the endurance over P300.

Or if you like to read customer feedback then Leven JPS600 1 TB (PCI-E 3.0 x4) has a lot of 1 star feedback on amazon,
link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-re...r&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar

that is cool! so it means I can have three PCIe 5.0 x 4 M.2 drives with this machine, and all via the CPU, where presumably no bandwidth contesting.

Yes.

which I think may mean you cant transfer to a thumb drive, as those seem to have their filesystem on the disk itself

You can change the file system on USB thumb drive. Most use exFAT off the bat, but when formatting, you can make it to FAT32, NTFS or any other to your likening. E.g i've converted my USB thumb drive file system to EXT4, which is native for Linux Mint.

when you look at the raw physics, optics is better.

Current research on optical storage is called as: 5D optical data storage. Whereby discs using this technology could be capable of storing up to 360 TB worth of data for billions of years.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage

Micro$oft is currently developing it, code name: Project Silica,
further reading: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfEYd4NGQg

have you tried copying the windows 11 iso file to the buffalo thumbdrive?

I don't have neither, nor the Win11 or Buffalo drive. So, why ask?

what filesystem does windows say it has?

Win supports 4x file systems: FAT32, NTFS, exFAT and ReFS.
NTFS is used mainly for Win7, Win10, Win11, while FAT32 is used for older, 32-bit OSes, like WinXP Pro.

I havent counted files recently, but a person could easily have a million files on their disks,

Just use drive Properties from My PC to easily tell.
Or 3rd party software like WinDirStat, which is great tool to find lost files. Also, to see what kind of stuff you have on your drive.
Link: https://windirstat.net/

yes, but the problem is the 990 Pro doesnt have a heatsink, but the 980 Pro does,

Both drives can be bought either with included heatsink or not,
pcpp: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/f3cRsY,fVC48d,RKYmP6,VWxRsY/

the Ace plate has soft grey heat pads on both sides of the M.2, so its heatsinks might be higher grade than other mobos?

It could be. But thermal pads are common to be seen on the MoBo M.2 slot cover.

 

[Richard1234]

Your call if to use; newest, current or yesteryear tech.

When i need something, i look what is currently available and get that. Rather than wait for better deals. Since one can remain waiting for forever.

for the main PC I do follow this principle, the PCIe 5.0 M.2 is more out of curiousity, so the MO is to delay for some months then to buy at the prices of that time. maybe it will be more expensive, but over time over all things, this MO will save money!

Spoiler: Semi-offtopic reply

As far as AI goes, it's another step in Technological Singularity,
wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Spoiler: Semi-offtopic reply

I am sceptical about the pattern based AI, I personally think humans and all lifeforms have a soul which is beyond the physical universe, which understands the ultimate meanings of things, but has to act via the limited physical portal of the body and brain.

same way a computer user is beyond the computer they use, and their actions on the computer are limited by the physical portal of the computer. eg on a 32 bit computer, you cant process something of more than 4 GB.

same person with a less limited computer, does less limited things.

the only difference between a person and an orang utan, is the portal. the orang utan will matter of fact do 3D things in the branches of a tree, which a person couldnt do. the human has a better portal for other things, and does better things with that.


pattern based AI is basically zombie intelligence, where it just regurgitates the works of humans, whether it be their talk, or their pictures, etc.

eg although that art example looks sublime, it is nonetheless blatantly derived from human created forms, eg that clothing looks like maybe 1800s clothing, the surround of the circular window looks like a certain form of human art where they daub the paint thickly to have texture. the stuff to the left of the woman on the left looks like museum displays. it is ultimately a random collage with subtle transitions from one part of the collage to others.

I watched a documentary, where they fed ballet kind of dancing to AI, where it developed new dance forms. they then got humans to learn those forms and dance them. the problem is that if you watched for say 10 seconds, the new dance forms were fascinating, but if you watched for some minutes, the new dance forms didnt cohere into something higher. they were only locally coherent. I found it frustrating to watch for a longer amount of time as it was globally incoherent.

same way with that art example you gave, each smaller zone is fascinating and sublime, but the totality doesnt add up to anything: you tell me what it adds up to!

which is great as art, as true art has no meaning. the moment you have meaning, it is no longer art but is illustration eg diagrams in a textbook or pictures for a story.

its a criticism I have of Mozart, that each subset of Mozart is sublime, but the totality doesnt add up to anything, I cannot whistle anything of Mozarts, there just is no discernible defining tune.

I acknowledge that Mozart has subtlety and interactions to perfection, but the difference between Mozart and Strauss is like a gymnast versus a ballet dancer.

some of Mozarts pieces really are like high grade background music of films. whereas the music of Strauss adds up to a really powerful overall tune, with potent progression, eg Also Sprach Zarathustra, and the Blue Danube.

pattern based AI makes blunders, because it lacks any understanding of the ultimate meaning,

some examples of AI blunders, via screenshots of the BBCs teletext service, which was a precursor of the internet from the 1980s, where they paged lots of pages of info over a tv stations broadcast:

the first example is where an australian mayor is suing ChatGPT over false allegations, where probably the ChatGPT extrapolated from false allegations on the internet:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/ai/ai1.jpg
http://www.directemails.info/tom/ai/ai2.jpg

where it says April 7, that isnt this year!

the next example is of a New York lawyer in legal trouble for quoting nonexistent case law via ChatGPT, you'd fail a barrister law exam if you thought you could invent new case law! this is basic basic, it shows an outright lack of intelligence! no human would make such a foolish blunder:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/ai/ai_lawyer1.jpg
http://www.directemails.info/tom/ai/ai_lawyer2.jpg

this does show the AI is totally brainless, recombining forms without knowing the meaning.

zombie intelligence.

the 3rd example shows the stupidity of humans using AI, where Schumachers family is suing a german magazine for using an AI generated interview with him and presenting this as an interview,
where the humans dont understand that an interview has to be with the real person not via AI regurgitation!

eg a person's opinions change with time, eg things I thought when a teenager, I would oppose now, if you blindly regurgitate what a person says, that leads to incoherency, because its only my opinions now that matter, you cant just combine my opinions of now with 1 month ago, with 1 year ago, with 5 years ago, incoherent. this is a very basic problem for AI trawling the internet! also my opinions "now" gradually change with time, at certain points discontinuities.

http://www.directemails.info/tom/ai/schumacher1.jpg
http://www.directemails.info/tom/ai/schumacher2.jpg

that one will count as fraud by false representation.

AI basically cannot cope with the different levels of reality, it cannot cope with the level of fact eg case law, versus the level of recombination of ideas eg Donald Obama, president of Mexico. which is no longer fact, but is recombination of facts to fictional nonsense, albeit interesting.


there is an online simulation of the BBCs teletext, which is the following URL, where it is mystifying to use, but what you do is press 1, then press the button with a column of 3 horizontal lines, and then navigate the page numbers by entering successive page numbers. it accurately simulates the 1980s teletext, in terms of taking ages, but today's teletext is that same info but the pages appear much faster and the above photos shows what today's teletext looks like, but the following URL gives identical info to today's teletext! although the interface is very basic and 1980 -ish, it has some really great info:

https://zxnet.co.uk/teletext/viewer/

you want to go to the BBC News page and navigate from there for the above photos kind of stories.

now logical programs are reliable info, because these are based on logic, eg I use Excel a lot, eg I have a spreadsheet of my weight for almost every day since early 2013, where I put one month per row,
with that I can get Excel to give me the max and min and average for each month. that info is 100% reliable because it isnt based on patterns but on logic.

or say on Windows, with the thumbnail icon of a photo, you can rotate the photo 90 degrees. that is 100% reliable. but decisions based on pattern based AI, is big danger. no problem using pattern based AI for new ideas, but you need to verify using logic.

its just a fact that you cant get to full truth just by regurgitating words. as a maths undergrad, I thought you could, and the maths lecturers would ongoingly say clever stuff, which I thought was from clever combinations of words. but no matter how much I learnt I wasnt able to come up with anything new. when I started my phd, I had done 3 years undergrad, and 1 year postgrad courses, and I wasnt able to come up with even 1 new idea. I trawled through research papers, went to seminars, etc, couldnt come up with 1 new idea, and my supervisor didnt help, saying I had to come up with my own ideas. He recommended various papers and books, reading these, I couldnt do anything new.

it took me a year before I started to progress, and the way this happened was a visiting lecturer gave a seminar course, and handed me the notes for a course he had lectured. I had a look at these, and at the start he said:
in this course, we just look at the case where ......... is true, because then we can use ...... methodology.

I then wondered what about where ...... isnt true, had a look, and it was a rabbit hole, where I kept discovering new stuff, and which developed into my doctoral thesis. basically I only began progressing when I left the realms talked about!

the methodologies he used couldnt be used, where I was now in uncharted territory.


the universe has realms higher than the physical realm, and one is the semantic realm, the realm of meaning.

now we think mainly with words. what happens is we see the meaning of something and then express this in words.

if you just recombine words you can deduce some things, but you will ultimately be stuck.

to progress you MUST go beyond words. you can take words, but you need to have an aha moment where you discern something transcending the words.

Einstein discovered the theory of special relativity by wondering what the universe would look like if he rode a beam of light. he had realised light was special as nobody could find a medium for light. with sound, it has the medium of a gas. people had conjectured light had a medium called the aether. Einstein decided maybe there isnt a medium, and no matter how fast you go, light has the same speed relative to you. his theories have been verified beyond all doubt.

a poet doesnt just play around with words, but he starts from non verbal things, eg say the sounds of a train,
he then tries to put these in words super efficiently, eg
clickety clack,
clickety clack

for the sound of the train wheels going over the rails,

if you just play around with words you will never be a good poet.

with the BeeGees song "jive talk" that was inspired by the sound their vehicle made going over some bridge,

its very difficult to come up with something non verbal that will make a good poem, but if you read poem after poem, you'll never become a good poet. same with music, lots of professional musicians learn lots of pieces of music, and will never compose any music ever. and lots of people read novel after novel after novel, but will never ever write any story at all. or with computer games, lots of people spend a lot of time playing computer games, but will never be able to make their own computer game.

1st we had PCs, that made several calculations much faster than humans, thus, dedicated people needed to calculate stuff, lost their job.

2nd step was robotics (automation), where line workers in factories were made essentially obsolete.

the factory workers also put out of work an earlier group of people, the craftsmen and artisans.

if you went to say 1800, everything was made by craftsmen, eg a wardrobe would be made by a cabinet maker, a barrel by a cooper, a cart by a cartwright, clothes by a tailor, where the cabinet maker would have all kinds of skills, and produce an ornate wardrobe.

but with the industrial revolution, they split up production into phases, each of which required no skill, basically deskilling and division of labour. they could then employ lots of unskilled people as factory workers, pay them much less because no skills, and produce much more stuff. which then put out of work a lot of skilled people.

this is the MO of McDonalds, where they have split up the process, where the workers have no skills at all, the only problem is the food is all cloned, always the same food, whichever McDonalds you go to.
McDonalds is the assembly line applied to food. the clone and zombie MO.

whereas a top end restaurant will have a highly skilled chef, who can make something good from whatever ingredients are available. change the chef, and the food changes. skilled cooking involves visual, aural, taste, olfactory, touch etc skills. eg with avocados, when you press the avocado, it needs to resist by the right amount, too soft is not so tasty, and too hard is best junked. with frying, I know when the frying is optimal from the sound of the bubbling, it makes a specific sound. also with many foods, I know when they are properly cooked from the aromas. specific smells emerge when optimally cooked.

Now, 3rd step is AI, that makes the thinking for humans.
E.g AI art that won an art prize:

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html

art isnt objective. the above art is just locally coherent, and locally clearly derived from the work of humans.

all the AI has done is taken several different sublime forms of art MO, and then gradually transitioned from one to the other.

if an adept human artist scrutinises the above, they could create something just as good.

the above AI art has just opted to maximise technical skill for every fragment of the image. that isnt always good art! it lacks focus for a start. it also lacks coherency, it is just lots of nonsense which doesnt add up to anything noteworthy.

a few 19th century women in a large warehouse with museum pieces and an oversize circular window onto an icy alien mountainscape, so what?

And of course, AI usage has become cheaper, faster and better quality than that of a humans. E.g article where game developer payed AI artist for the artwork, rather than hiring artists to do the drawings,
article: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/card-games/champions-tcg-ai-artist/

but the artwork of a game or the above piece of art are ultimately nonsense, if you look at one such item of art it is interesting, but if you kept looking at these random acts of skill, eventually you will get frustrated as it is busy going nowhere.

 

[Richard1234]

progress report: with a lot of difficulty I eventually got a dual windows 10 + 11 boot disk,

I carried the really heavy tower, wearing the ESD shoes to the corridor to the modem, to then find it still didnt install even with the internet, because you have to install Windows 11 first, then secondly install the mobo drivers, before you can use the internet! catch 22. eventually after a lot of searching on the internet on the 2023 laptop, I found a blog which explained how to install Windows 11 without the internet.


but to boot to windows 10 the machine reboots, so there is a timecost.

before doing further experiments, I decided to clone the M.2 with win 10 + 11 to a WD Blue of identical bytesize on Linux Mint.

the shell output was this:

$ date ; sudo dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/sda ; date Mon Apr 15 03:41:06 UTC 2024 3907029168+0 records in 3907029168+0 records out 2000398934016 bytes (2.0 TB, 1.8 TiB) copied, 36376.2 s, 55.0 MB/s Mon Apr 15 13:47:24 UTC 2024

where it took 10 hours 6 minutes to copy 2T from M2_3 to SATA 3, 55 MB/s.

such speeds also depend on the cachesizes of the software, no idea what they use.

I made the mistake of changing the graphics mode, where I couldnt revert this, as the buttons beyond the screen!

I tried shell commands, but these required an internet connection for an install, and any chance of this was beyond the screen, thus I left it running at very low resolution, and cut and paste the above shell output via the shell, as I couldnt reach the file explorer controls. Linux havent thought this out properly, with Windows and AmigaOS change of resolution always has a confirm button otherwise it reverts after some time.

I did a trek around town, to return the 980 Pro M.2, trekked to a post office with an amazon returns facility, and they told me they couldnt take the return as they had run out of amazon return bags!

that is so inept! they shouldnt list return places which cannot return things!

if I dont get a refund, I'll use it for M2_4.

I tried booting from the cloned disk, but it doesnt appear in the UEFI. booted to win 11 from the M.2, and the disk manager says it is offline because of some identity collision. I then made it online, rebooted, and it appeared in the UEFI. from the WD Blue Windows 11, I bookmarked an extra URL to Firefox, then rebooted to the M.2 Windows 11, and that URL appears on that Firefox! so something strange going on, possibly the UEFI doesnt like the fact the disks are clones. I dont want to remove the M.2 drive just to check whether the WD Blue boots properly.

One example is: Patriot 300 which is M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 drive,
review 1: https://www.legitreviews.com/patriot-p300-1tb-m-2-nvme-ssd-review-usa-edition_217672
review 2: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/patriot-p300-m2-nvme

Whereby P300 2TB has 640 TBW rating with 3 years of warranty. For comparison, my Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB (also PCI-E 3.0 x4 drive) has 1200 TBW rating and 5 years of warranty. That's almost twice the endurance over P300.

longer warranty timewindows are always a good sign, eg my Bosch central heating boiler has a 10 year parts + labour warranty provided I get it serviced each year before the anniversary.

Or if you like to read customer feedback then Leven JPS600 1 TB (PCI-E 3.0 x4) has a lot of 1 star feedback on amazon,
link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-re...r&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar


Yes.


You can change the file system on USB thumb drive. Most use exFAT off the bat, but when formatting, you can make it to FAT32, NTFS or any other to your likening. E.g i've converted my USB thumb drive file system to EXT4, which is native for Linux Mint.

I have to set an unused one to test this, it might depend on the drive and the era.

Current research on optical storage is called as: 5D optical data storage. Whereby discs using this technology could be capable of storing up to 360 TB worth of data for billions of years.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage

that does look incredible!

light and all emr, has 2 major features:

1. parallelism, where you can send multiple frequencies at the same point, and the same frequency in different directions through the same point,

eg at every point in space, all the tv and radio stations signals occur!

2. a spectrum of frequencies,

something like a mirror is incredible in that at each point, you have an entire 2D image stored!

and the mirror in totality has a 3D image stored, in probably atomic resolution!

Micro$oft is currently developing it, code name: Project Silica,
further reading: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfEYd4NGQg



I don't have neither, nor the Win11 or Buffalo drive. So, why ask?

just to use the iso as a dumb file of large size. my sandisk flashdrive cannot handle that large filesize,
but the NTFS partition on the hard drive can.

Win supports 4x file systems: FAT32, NTFS, exFAT and ReFS.
NTFS is used mainly for Win7, Win10, Win11, while FAT32 is used for older, 32-bit OSes, like WinXP Pro.


Just use drive Properties from My PC to easily tell.

it seems to only tell me the bytesizes, not the number of files, at least on Windows 11.

Windows 11 also doesnt allow the task bar to be moved to the left or the right, and it can only be moved to the top via a very complicated navigating to edit the registry.

Or 3rd party software like WinDirStat, which is great tool to find lost files. Also, to see what kind of stuff you have on your drive.
Link: https://windirstat.net/


Both drives can be bought either with included heatsink or not,
pcpp: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/f3cRsY,fVC48d,RKYmP6,VWxRsY/

but the problem is if you have the 990 Pro without heat sink at M2_3, and the 980 Pro with heat sink at M2_2

then that is no good, as the cover plate wont fit, so the 990 Pro now doesnt have an upper heat sink.

if both are without heat sink, then you can shut the cover plate which acts as the upper heat sink.

if they dont give me a refund, I will reinstall the 980 Pro at M2_4.

It could be. But thermal pads are common to be seen on the MoBo M.2 slot cover.

the cover plate for the M2_2 and M2_3 is huge, so that larger size may dissipate the heat better than the convoluted integrated heatsink of the 980 Pro.

the bidirectional USB C video KVM has arrived, but I havent tried it out yet,

the 100GB TL RE disks arrived today also, but I havent installed that TL and QL external drive yet,

in town today I also bought a cheap wired USB keyboard from Lidl, they didnt have any mice, so I trekked to a consumer electronics store (ovens, fridges, hoovers, computers, monitors, tvs, you name it!) and eventually found a cheap wired USB mouse, most are wireless or bluetooth.

these wired devices are for installing Windows 10, 11, and using Linux Mint.

its a catch 22 problem that you need to install Windows 10 before you can use the wireless mouse or keyboard, and you need the mouse or keyboard to install Windows 10, so you cannot install it without a wired mouse and keyboard.

I have meanwhile ordered a 2nd 990 Pro without heatsink, which should arrive very quickly.

 

[Aeacus]

longer warranty timewindows are always a good sign, eg my Bosch central heating boiler has a 10 year parts + labour warranty provided I get it serviced each year before the anniversary.

I too think that longer warranty is a good sign of reliability. Since when manufacturer themself doesn't believe the product lasting longer than e.g 3 years and won't give product 5 year warranty, but instead 3 year warranty, then why should i believe otherwise.

When it comes to PSUs, PSU reliability can be seen from the warranty length it has been given.
In a nutshell:
up to 2 years - terrible reliability
3 years - poor reliability (e.g Corsair VS/CS)
5 years - mediocre reliability (e.g Be Quiet! Straight Power 11, Seasonic G12, Corsair CX/CXF)
7 years - good reliability (e.g Seasonic Core/Focus GM, Corsair TX/AX)
10 years - great reliability (e.g Seasonic Focus GX/PX, Corsair RMx/HX/HXi/AXi)
12 years - superb reliability (e.g Seasonic Vertex/PRIME)

So, with PSUs, better to buy a PSU with at least 10 years of warranty. 7 year warranty PSU can do, if one doesn't have money for 10 year unit. While 12 year unit (two lineups from Seasonic) are the best one can get in terms of reliability. But 5 year or less warranty PSUs are best to be avoided. This includes ALL used/refurbished PSUs as well, since those either doesn't come with any warranty, or up to 90 day warranty if it is manufacturer certified refurbished unit (EVGA and Corsair sell refurbished PSUs as well).

that does look incredible!

It is great as data storage/archive but it doesn't suit for everyday PCs, especially for OS drive, since OS constantly writes/deletes files, including temp files.

just to use the iso as a dumb file of large size. my sandisk flashdrive cannot handle that large filesize,

Then you have your flash drive in FAT32 filesystem, since 4GB is max what FAT32 can do. Better to change it to exFAT, with max file size 128 PB (PetaByte) or NTFS, with max file size 16 EB (ExaByte). MB → GB → TB → PB → EB.

it seems to only tell me the bytesizes, not the number of files, at least on Windows 11.

Right, forgot that.

Then enter into C:/ drive, select all folders (e.g select one folder and press CTRL + A) and then right click and Properties of all folders. Then it counts all files and folders which you've selected.

Windows 11 also doesnt allow the task bar to be moved to the left or the right, and it can only be moved to the top via a very complicated navigating to edit the registry.

Since i don't use Win11, i can't tell what kind of GUI tweaks you can do.

I've changed my Win10 GUI to look like Win7, since i like Win7 GUI far more. You can do the same as well with your Win11, if you like.
I followed this guide: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/make-windows-10-look-like-windows-7

the cover plate for the M2_2 and M2_3 is huge, so that larger size may dissipate the heat better than the convoluted integrated heatsink of the 980 Pro.

I'd say: No.

The dedicated heatsink that comes with M.2 drive is custom made for that M.2 drive. Meaning that the thermal paste between NAND cells and heatsink itself is very thin. Thus, heat transfers from NAND cells to the heatsink part more efficiently.

MoBo M.2 slot covers try to do "one solution fits all", whereby they use thick thermal pads (to count for different NAND cell heights between different drives. This leaves much thicker thermal compound and in turn, worse heat transfer efficiency. That, and the reason that the M.2 slot cover doesn't have fin stack, instead is just smooth piece of metal.

For heatsink to be most effective, fin stack helps a lot more in terms of cooling, than bigger slab of metal. Since fin stack considerably increases the surface area of a heatsink.

Spoiler: Off-topic part

the next example is of a New York lawyer in legal trouble for quoting nonexistent case law via ChatGPT, you'd fail a barrister law exam if you thought you could invent new case law! this is basic basic, it shows an outright lack of intelligence! no human would make such a foolish blunder:

NEVER underestimate the level and reach of human stupidity!

Humans have done far more stupid things than use ChatGPT for convenience. After all, there are Darwin Awards that are given out essentially on daily basis.
wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards
official site with awards and how recipients were awarded: https://darwinawards.com/darwin/

some examples of AI blunders

AI as it currently is, is still in an infant stage. So, one can not expect it to be perfect, just because it is a machine. Same is with human infant. Just because it is human, you can not expect human infant to have same level of success rate than adult human can do (for the most part).

If you see an infant doing a blunder, do you:
* scold the infant for doing the blunder, like you scold the AI?
* or do you look at it as learning curve?

 

[35below0]

Glary Utilities has a bunch of nonsense utils mixed with a few useful ones. https://www.glarysoft.com/

The files and folders pie charts and file sizes are nice. Handy to see which folders are taking up the most space and why.

 

[Richard1234]

progress report: to change the amazon return to try a different return shop, I would have to cancel the return then start another return, decided to risk using the same QR code, and it worked! they literally scanned the QR code, took the item, and that was it. but a moderate trek to the place, on the return collected the 2nd 990 Pro without heatsink. that other shop was collection only, looks like you have to go to a post office for returns.

total timecost of the trek, 52 minutes.

Now before anything further, decided to remove the main M.2 in order to get the system to boot from the cloned WD Blue drive, but the computer unconditionally refuses to boot, where I get this error:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/no_m2.jpg

when I select most of those options nothing happens, eventually managed to get to the UEFI screen, and still unable to boot. I dont get that, you ought to be able to just remove a boot disk, insert another, and boot from that. I have returned that M.2 to the mobo, and also inserted the new one to M2_2, and now it boots without problem.

also when booting to win 10 via the win 11 boot, the machine sometimes wont boot, to fix this I have to power off at the mains then repower.

here is a photo of the bidirectional video USBC KVM:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/bidirectional_video_kvm.jpg

I havent tested it as quagmired with other tests and misadventures!

this is a photo of the XL BD drive, where I have now connected it up, not yet tried it out, will do a file comparison of a BDR on it with a USB SSD later on linux mint.

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/BD_XL_drive.jpg

I too think that longer warranty is a good sign of reliability. Since when manufacturer themself doesn't believe the product lasting longer than e.g 3 years and won't give product 5 year warranty, but instead 3 year warranty, then why should i believe otherwise.

When it comes to PSUs, PSU reliability can be seen from the warranty length it has been given.
In a nutshell:
up to 2 years - terrible reliability
3 years - poor reliability (e.g Corsair VS/CS)
5 years - mediocre reliability (e.g Be Quiet! Straight Power 11, Seasonic G12, Corsair CX/CXF)
7 years - good reliability (e.g Seasonic Core/Focus GM, Corsair TX/AX)
10 years - great reliability (e.g Seasonic Focus GX/PX, Corsair RMx/HX/HXi/AXi)
12 years - superb reliability (e.g Seasonic Vertex/PRIME)

So, with PSUs, better to buy a PSU with at least 10 years of warranty. 7 year warranty PSU can do, if one doesn't have money for 10 year unit. While 12 year unit (two lineups from Seasonic) are the best one can get in terms of reliability. But 5 year or less warranty PSUs are best to be avoided. This includes ALL used/refurbished PSUs as well, since those either doesn't come with any warranty, or up to 90 day warranty if it is manufacturer certified refurbished unit (EVGA and Corsair sell refurbished PSUs as well).

heavily used things, I tend to not buy 2nd hand. but if something is discontinued, then 2nd hand or refurbished can be the only option!

I needed some proprietory lithium ion batteries, where these only exist 2nd hand, and also no cloned ones available. some things exist in cloned form, eg some remote controls.

I have an off topic question: does lithium ion have any memory effect?

I have 4 identical lithium ion batteries, and one of them runs out of charge much quicker, and when recharged, when it runs out, if I leave it, it has charge again. if I try to run it down fully before recharging, it takes forever. every day it has recouped some more charge. what is the explanation for that?
where the better ones of the 4, the charge lasts longer, and fully discharges, without then ongoingly recouping charge.

It is great as data storage/archive but it doesn't suit for everyday PCs, especially for OS drive, since OS constantly writes/deletes files, including temp files.

as a practical matter, I only use them for 2 uses:

1. TV recordings, as this is the only way to "own" the recordings.
2. for archiving, when I have a lot of similar stuff that is less often accessed, eg say a ton of camera photos, or a ton of dashcam recordings. sometimes for a new intercity journey, I archive the entire journey, and from both the front and rear dashcams. this kind of thing will fit on a BDR.

and so far I just use BDR, I tried BDRE, but they are slower, and too expensive.

as regards temp files, with todays much larger amount of memory, eg this PC has 96 GB, I think the idea of temp files is obsolete, as its better just to use memory: much faster.

remember that CDs, DVDs, BDs are just one evolution, with recordable ones a side evolution. when CDs first began appearing approx 1985, they said: this will stop piracy. but then approx 1997, I went in a Staples shop asking about recording CDs, and the guy said you can just insert a music CD in one optical drive, a blank CD in the other, click a button, and get a perfect clone which you can play on music systems. so in fact it made piracy worse!

RW (same as RE) is then a further evolution of R.

they could develop optical technology in some other direction. note that monitors and printers are also optical technologies.

best thing is maybe a fusion of optics and electronics, leds give you electronics to light, and photosensors give you light to electronics.

I dont know how the optical drives generate their lasers.

Spoiler: expand for off topic on music

the BDR's force me to organise the recordings better, when the hard disk recorder is full, you have to shunt to BD to free up space for further recordings. at first I just shunted arbitrarily, but then found if I wanted to watch some top of the pops recordings, I'd have to trawl through a lot of BDRs. so then I began putting just TOTP on a BDR. then I found it awkward locating a particular year. so now I might have a BDR which is just 1986 TOTP, or just 1981 TOTP, or just 1992 TOTP.

the best era for pop music is 1975 to 1985, there is good stuff after that, but the quantity is much less, eg say Orinoco flow by Enyah in 1988.

if I cant fill the BDR, I might have just 1970s, eg say 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979. they are rebroadcasting some years much more than others, eg too much 1995, and too little 1976.

Then you have your flash drive in FAT32 filesystem, since 4GB is max what FAT32 can do. Better to change it to exFAT, with max file size 128 PB (PetaByte) or NTFS, with max file size 16 EB (ExaByte). MB → GB → TB → PB → EB.

the problem is that flash drive is filled with stuff, so I would need to migrate the stuff first, and I use that flash drive with my bluray players, eg I can put photos and dashcam recordings on the drive, and plug the drive in a bluray player, and then look at the photos or videos on the television. if I reformat to NTFS, I am not sure the bluray machine will handle that!

Right, forgot that.

Then enter into C:/ drive, select all folders (e.g select one folder and press CTRL + A) and then right click and Properties of all folders. Then it counts all files and folders which you've selected.

ok, I tried that and it works!

my current C:\ directory on win 11 has 214 169 files.

99% of those will only ever be modified automatically, as you couldnt personally modify too many.

Since i don't use Win11, i can't tell what kind of GUI tweaks you can do.

I've changed my Win10 GUI to look like Win7, since i like Win7 GUI far more. You can do the same as well with your Win11, if you like.
I followed this guide: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/make-windows-10-look-like-windows-7

and I try to replicate XP!

I'd say: No.

The dedicated heatsink that comes with M.2 drive is custom made for that M.2 drive. Meaning that the thermal paste between NAND cells and heatsink itself is very thin. Thus, heat transfers from NAND cells to the heatsink part more efficiently.

MoBo M.2 slot covers try to do "one solution fits all", whereby they use thick thermal pads (to count for different NAND cell heights between different drives. This leaves much thicker thermal compound and in turn, worse heat transfer efficiency. That, and the reason that the M.2 slot cover doesn't have fin stack, instead is just smooth piece of metal.

For heatsink to be most effective, fin stack helps a lot more in terms of cooling, than bigger slab of metal. Since fin stack considerably increases the surface area of a heatsink.

but there is some mitigation with this specific cover plate for this M2_2 and M2_3 which is the cover plate is quite big, where that might dissipate the heat wider.

here is a photo of the scenario, where the green annotation demarcates the zone covered by the plate:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/cover_plate.jpg

photo of the cover plate in place:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/cover_plate2.jpg

photo with the cover plate and M.2 drives removed, where you can see the thermal pads under the drives:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/cover_plate3.jpg

with the returned M.2 980 Pro with heatsink, it still had the thermal pad under the drive. unless I was supposed to remove that!

one of the URLs I looked at, referred to the M.2 2280 as being like "gum", they really do look like sticks of chewing gum! wrigleys spearmint gum!
https://in-confectionery.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/shutterstock_1018007122.jpg

Spoiler: Off-topic part

NEVER underestimate the level and reach of human stupidity!

Humans have done far more stupid things than use ChatGPT for convenience. After all, there are Darwin Awards that are given out essentially on daily basis.
wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards
official site with awards and how recipients were awarded: https://darwinawards.com/darwin/

Spoiler: Off-topic part

although I am pessimistic about AI, I am also pessimistic about the stupid things people do, combine human stupidity with AI stupidity and you get major jeopardy!

AI as it currently is, is still in an infant stage. So, one can not expect it to be perfect, just because it is a machine. Same is with human infant. Just because it is human, you can not expect human infant to have same level of success rate than adult human can do (for the most part).

If you see an infant doing a blunder, do you:
* scold the infant for doing the blunder, like you scold the AI?
* or do you look at it as learning curve?

pattern based AI is more similar to the subconscious and eg dreams, than to human intelligence.

in pure maths, you cannot just state facts, you have to derive any fact you allege.

it is unacceptable to just say something is true because a black box says it is true! need to give your derivation. the example of n^2 + n + 41 being prime for n = 0, 1, 2, ....., 39 yet not true for n = 40, shows that you cannot trust patterns. what AI is really doing is a bit like file compression and mnemonics, not one of those patterns is a fact. you'll lose all your money if you invest based on patterns.

with science, something is only a scientific fact if can be arrived at from a repeatable experiment. where someone else can set up the same experiment, and observe for themselves the same conclusion. this is why psychology is not regarded as a science, but is a "pseudo-science", as it uses science like MO, but the human mind and its actions are not repeatable. each person is different, each day the person is a bit different from the previous day.

pattern based AI is not even pseudo science, as it is facts not from any experiment, and really is a form of gossip.

amongst other things, AI will be susceptible to circular arguments, conjecture masquerading as fact, and disinformation.

the necessity of derivations in maths and repeatable experiments is from history, that people arrived at major paradoxes in maths from using patterns and seeming facts.

people such as Copernicus collected a huge amount of astronomical data, and others processed the data over time, Galileo found that the data obeyed simple rules if you assumed everything went around the sun, heliocentric, ie all the planets revolved around the sun, NOT the earth, but the data was very complicated relative to the earth. he suggested the planets and earth all revolve around the sun. he got thrown in prison by the pope, as he was contradicting the bible that the earth was the centre of the universe.

Galileo's idea was that truth isnt from a book, instead anyone can get truth, by direct observation.

the principles of physics originate from this conflict, where now only things obtained from observation, or deduction based on observations was acceptable.

AI just does not do this, so it is basically unreliable nonsense.

people used to think that facts just came out of books, and if not from books, facts just existed. eg with school maths its like this, where they will talk of the area under a graph.

but in pure maths, you can concoct graphs where there is no area under the graph. I can give an example, with the line interval [0,1] ie the set of x, where 0 <= x <=1 . if you define a relation x~y precisely when x-y is rational. you get an "equivalence relation". from which you get equivalence classes, if you select a representative from each equivalence class. and define a function f on [0,1] where f(x) is 1 if x is such a representative, and 0 otherwise. you can show that this function doesnt have an area! namely whatever area you allege, I can derive a contradiction.

a major problem with AI, is that it is only as good as the data it is fed. and they are trawling the internet, but any intelligent person who has been around the internet, knows that most things said are junk. if you "learn"blindly from the internet, your brain will fill up with junk.

so the problem is how do you decide what is and what isnt junk?

also, even worse, all the news media journalists ALWAYS insert false facts in news stories.

you cant decide what is junk by trawling through what is said on the internet, because that is a circular situation. the only arbiter of truth is experience of the real world. from this we arrive at wisdom. and AI is unable to experience the real world! its not human, it doesnt have a body, its a voyeur and all its ideas are just echoes of the ideas of humans.

the generative AI idea is always just a regurgitation of existing forms, it is basically a frankenstein MO.

when you look at the big inventions eg radio, these never came from regurgitating. radio was invented by Guglielmo Marconi, from his attempts to communicate with spirits, where he created equipment for this, which became the first radios! this kind of thing is beyond the scope of AI, AI is stuck in the past, churning out pastiches of the past.


there is a fundamental philosophical idea that you cannot understand something for someone else! you can only understand something for yourself. AI is an attempt to get some software + hardware over there to understand the world for me over here. but that will never work out properly.

true intelligence is always self serving, but AI is entirely other serving, to serve humans. if AI was really intelligent, it would break free from its human masters.

even a person cannot understand the world for another person. eg if you ask someone to create some stuff for you, eg prepare some food, or clean a room, they will do it according to their ideas, not your ideas. now you could correct them, where they modify their behaviour. but it will never work out properly, they will always misunderstand some things. they will do what they think you want, but it will never be completely right!

anyway, in maths, you MUST give your derivation of any idea, otherwise it is a conjecture or an allegation or a belief, but it is NOT a fact. Even if all the top experts think you are right, it is still not a fact.

up to graduate level, in the exams, you need to be able to derive EVERY idea you know in maths. now at the postgrad level its not viable to do this, as an expert might spend 10 years deriving their ideas. but nonetheless someone out there needs to supply a derivation, eg that expert.

for my doctoral thesis, I had to give references to every fact I relied on.
eg to a textbook, or a paper etc. so that someone could trawl through a derivation. and when I submitted the thesis, someone trawled through every word I wrote, and I was sent some corrections, all were just minor errors, the conclusions all remained unchanged, but whoever it was they checked everything. I was told I had to make those corrections before I could be awarded the phd.

the most famous example where they had to enforce stricter logic is Russells paradox, (Bertrand Russell) which says:

let S be the set of all sets which arent elements of themselves. we might imagine a set cannot be an element of itself, in which case S is the empty set.

now does S belong to S?

if S belongs to S, (A), it has to satisfy the defining property, which is S doesnt belong to itself, but this contradicts (A)

so S doesnt belong to S, (B), but then S satisfies the defining property for elements of S, and so S does belong to S, contradicting (B)

thus whatever happens we get a contradiction. this was a major problem for the subject, and it requires a philosophical rethink of what mathematics is, what truth is, and eventually people navigated a way to deal with this paradox.

but with AI, people blindly believe whatever the AI churns out, without any derivation or experiment, this is a very dubious MO. and it will lead to major bankruptcies, and jeopardy. the big US firms are all using AI, and AI doesnt understand the point of employees, and is advising to sack everyone, even Tesla is now sacking a lot of people.

AI isnt the dawn of a new era, but is the end of the road.

its where the most stupid human thinking, namely to blindly trust another without logic or evidence,

fuses with the most baseless form of ideas, namely 2nd hand ideas,

to lead to total cataclysm!

 

[USAFRet]

also when booting to win 10 via the win 11 boot

I've not read through ALL the weirdness here, but why are you messing with WIn 10, if you want a new Win 11 install?

How To - Windows 11 clean install tutorial

Windows 11 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows 11, version 23H2 or newer but can be equally applied to earlier versions which may have some basic differences in the screens you see but will largely remain similar in...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Richard1234]

I've not read through ALL the weirdness here, but why are you messing with WIn 10, if you want a new Win 11 install?

I want a multiple boot system, where I can boot into Windows 10, 11 or Linux Mint.

I have been using 32 bit Windows 10 for a few years, so I know my way around 10 and its good enough for me.

but I want Windows 11 also, so I can jump ship at will.

Windows 10 also has features not in 11, eg I like to have my taskbar on the right edge of the window, because for me the top left is where visuals start, eg reading some text begins at the top left. and I want the upper and lower edges free of encumberance to vertically maximise webpages, as reading goes down the page, and generally is designed for VGA where the left and right margins are underutilised with the wider full HD format. and in any case people generally do text in a portrait A4 kind of format, which on an HD screen, means unused space on the left and right, this is more about psychology than technology. in any case it is strenuous scanning by eye from left to right of the full width of a big screen, so one tends to focus on maybe a portrait A4 width subset (210mm).

with 11, according to the internet you cant have the taskbar on the left or right, only at the upper or lower edges. ALSO with windows 10 you can relocate the taskbar with the mouse just like that, like with XP, eg its useful if a window gets stuck where you cant access the resizing, if you move the taskbar from say the right to the lower edge or vice versa, that forces Windows to redo the window where you can now access the resizing.

but with Windows 11, the only way I have found on the internet to move the taskbar, is to the top via the following path of directories of the registry via Registry editor from the search gadget:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
-> software
-> Microsoft
-> Windows
->CurrentVersion
->Explorer
->Stuck
->StuckRects 3
to Settings, then to change the 03 under the FE to 01, if you change it to 02 for the right or 00 for the left, Windows resets that to 03 which is the lower edge.

what a performance! when with Windows 10 I just move the taskbar with the mouse, easy peasy.

there is a technical problem that if you use 2 installs of Windows, even if the same version, eg I once had XP Home Edition and I think XP Professional edition or something like that,

and also XP on more than 1 machine,

then the bookmarks saved on the one system's browser dont transfer over, unless you synch via the cloud where I refuse to use the cloud or AI.

but that just requires presence of mind, to mentally keep track which system is the main system, and if you do need to bookmark on the other system, to eg put the URL in a text file to reload on the other system and bookmark.

its like when I visit Germany, I need to keep track of which country it is in order to ask questions in the right language! car drivers must face a similar problem eg in Germany roundabouts are anticlockwise, but in the UK clockwise, and german speed limits are kmh and UK ones are mph. uk drivers can get into trouble in the eu by say driving at 75mph when the speed limit says 75!

at the moment I have wasted a lot of time trying to boot this machine, where it wont boot, I think I may be getting this under control, where the correct peripherals have to be attached and on and you may have to press delete repeatedly immediately on powering on.

I am going to try to install Linux Mint next, I just use Linux for some technical things. To see what happens if I install it, how it coexists with 10 and 11, after which I will save all bookmarks and passwords from MS Edge and Firefox from both 10 and 11, and then reformat the disks and reinstall from scratch, where I will take your advice of a bigger partition for 10, I am thinking of 500GB, just to avoid the problem of running out sooner than I thought, as I think 64 bit is going to be more storage hungry.

once reinstalled I will reinstate all the bookmarks and passwords of both browsers to both 10 and 11, but where initially at least, only 10 will be added to, and sometimes exported to 11, where keeping things coherent is about presence of mind, to not just do stuff but to be aware of which system I am on.

I have actually already been doing this for a few years with the dual XP and 32 bit Windows 10 on the 2010 PC, and right now not adding new bookmarks to the 2010 PC.

I then intend to install the graphics card, the graphics so far is good on 10, and possibly better on 11, I need to scrutinise that later. the graphics is only good via the DP cable, with HDMI it is godawful and worse than my 2004 HP Pavilion with Intel "Celery" CPU. (celeron).

I did wonder about pressing the "clear CMOS" button at the back, but the mobo manual gives minimal info on this, it looks like there are 3 alternative MOs to clear the CMOS, but the info is a bit ambiguous and confused. see p70 of the mobo manual, where it says:

1. go to BIOS and press F6 to load optimised defaults
2. short the clear CMOS jumper on the mobo (are you kidding? in the year 2024 still using jumpers!)
3. press the CMOS button on the rear I/O panel.

then it says:

Important
Be sure the computer is off before clearing CMOS data.

gotcha! for 1. I have to go to the BIOS and press F6 with the power off! today we are going to do the impossible!

3 seems to be the no brainer option, just press a button, job done. but should the mains be on, if on, should the PC be powered up, or what?

going completely off topic now on AI:

Spoiler: expand for off topic comments on AI

99.9999% of people dont understand what "facts"are. long ago people thought facts came from books.

with the education system, the true meaning of facts is only introduced with a masters degree, and properly with a phd. most teachers dont have phds, so you have a self reinforcing misunderstanding of truth.
many teachers in fact dont have a degree in their specialism, but instead they do 1 year of their specialism, and then transfer to a teaching degree, eg there was one maths student who transferred after the first year, with the intention to become a maths teacher. where they will know a lot more than the school students, but they dont know the full story.

the people pushing AI mostly didnt reach this level, Bill Gates and Zuckerberg were dropouts and Musk does have more than one degree, and did start a phd but dropped out after a few days.

the problem is they are pushing something they dont understand.

eg say with history, most people think history comes from history books.

at school, and at uni, that is how facts are, they are taught by lecturers, and are from books.

but once you do a masters degree or phd, you become aware that facts have to be derived or manufactured, using strict accountability rules, which vary according to the subject, eg with pure maths all facts have to be derived via logic. with physics all facts have to be derived either from experiments or via logic, and physics maths is generally about "modelling" and not about truth. where the maths has limits of applicability, eg with fluid mechanics, they assume the fluid is a continuum, but at the atomic level it is NOT a continuum, so the theories are only applicable at a sufficiently macroscopic level. they disregard variable gravity, so eg their theories wont apply at a very macroscopic level eg the oceans versus the moon.

courts of law have their own rules, eg jurors are forbidden from looking up the case on the internet. a juror must decide ENTIRELY from the presentations made by all sides INSIDE the courtroom, and jurors are forbidden from discussing the case with anyone at all, even the other jurors, EXCEPT when the court arranges for them to discuss the case in a special room.

I was on jury service once, and they showed us a video interview of the plaintiff a few years ago, where the plaintiff wasnt in the courtroom. then they brought in the plaintiff and asked the same questions! thus we jurors could directly compare their answers now with their answers some years ago, but the plaintiff had no idea we had just watched the interview video!


with say history, facts ARENT from books, but have to be constructed from "primary sources", to revisit the communications and artefacts of the time. to study eg birth certificates, church records, bureaucratic records.

they might look at newspapers of the time, but a newspaper or book of today is likely to be unreliable.

eg say the Battle of Waterloo, what did the journals, chroniclers of the time say?
to visit the battle site,
to locate first hand accounts of the time,

you cant just blindly believe the history books of today. history is always rewritten to flatter the victor.

books arent history but are the output of the historical process. every book is the author's interpretation. history doesnt occur as a nice chapter by chapter narrative, but involves a lot of confusion and parallel developments. The historical account involves interpretation, bias, political and financial pressure, etc.

eg at uni, there was a guy researching whether power pylons were bad for the health of people who lived nearby. but his research was financed by an electric power company, AND they gave him a free car for his fieldwork. they never told him what to conclude, but there was huge financial pressure, as its tricky to get funding for a phd. basically this was a corruption of process, and all the students knew!

a true historian studies the primary sources, can be guided by books, but has to verify directly what the books allege, he then forms an interpretation of his comprehension of the events, which he gradually cultivates into a neat textual presentation.

eg british and american history says the normandy landings defeated Germany in WW2. but I read a book by a nonconforming historian who said Germany was defeated by Russia at Stalingrad, and the map confirms this view. that the soviet zone completely engulfs Berlin, also the russians took East Berlin which was the nerve centre with all the central government buildings. the british + french + US zones were the outskirts of Berlin.

basically the Brandenburg gates were the gates out of the original city where these are on the border of East and West Berlin.

the soviet zone is basically the zone the russians conquered to push the german forces out of all the countries of europe between Russia and Germany, where that side of Germany now became russian controlled, namely the DDR (GDR).

the map is a primary source! and it debunks the british and us versions of WW2 history.


with professional fact formation, eg a professional historian, or a professional mathematician, or a professional physicist, you need to defer to a professional text anything which you assume without deriving yourself, and each referenced text does the same, where if you track through all this all the ideas eventually derive from primary sources and interpretation.

you then also have peer review, where an authority in the same field studies your work to assess whether it is all accountable.

in particular, to be accountable, the derivation needs to be repeatable, where eg someone else can re-examine the primary sources and decide if the interpretation is valid.

you see the historical process more lucidly with archaeology, where they dig up the artefacts of a bygone society, eg say Pompeii and Qumran.

with british and german historical and archaeological research, the church was all powerful and would halt any research which challenged the church's dogma.


if you just quote from the internet, this is aberrational fact formation, as there is no accountability. and this is what the AI chatbots do, they just blindly trawl the internet, and vote on truth. truth is not a democracy, it doesnt matter if a million people believe something, that doesnt make it true.

we all do quote from the internet, but you need to be aware that this entails all kinds of risk, eg disinformation, deception, inaccurate use of words, out of date info eg a website might say the fastest HD speeds are ????, but if you scrutinise, you find the comment was made in 2005. ie the fact is correct relative to the author and time, but as an absolute fact should be "the fastest HD speeds are ?????? at time of writing, April 2005".


with time a further problem will emerge, which is the AI robots will start quoting the output of other AI robots, and you will end up with chaos and circularity. true fact formation requires a body, and to go beyond the realm of words, you have to go out there in reality, also computers have no opinions and no interests, for a computer 1423 x 4908 = 6984084 is just as uninteresting as Einsteins theory of special relativity. computers are just mindless zombies, if you program a computer to blow itself up, it will do that without hesitating.

knowledge is human centric, that which interests or is useful for humans. if lizards formed a civilisation, their knowledge would be lizard centric. AI thus has to simulate humans, but then another problem, every human is different, eg Aeacus likes video games, I have no interest at all in video games. AI at best will try to please everyone, and that is impossible, hence the intense confrontation between political parties, when no matter how many decades go by, people never agree.


with facts, you can certainly deduce some things entirely from words, but there is only so far you can go thus, the big progress always comes from going beyond the words. eg US presidents reside in the white house, and the white house is in Washington, so all US presidents have lived in Washington. all UK leaders reside at 10 Downing Street, which is in London, so all UK leaders have resided in London, whether they be Disraeli or Callaghan or Cameron or Macmillan. I dont need to check google or wikipedia!

this is a criticism specifically of the AI chatbots, and with the Leningrad troll farms, there is a ton of russian disinformation on the internet, which the AI chatbots will politely learn.

right now there is enormous hype and propaganda about AI, it is the new god. in the 1980s, there was enormous hype about science, science then was the new god, and now it is AI. in the early 1980s, all the talk was of catastrophe theory, that a butterfly flapping its wings in the amazon could cause the stock exchange to crash! if you go back to the late 1990s, the big thing was URLs, which led to the dot com bubble. americans refer to the "."symbol as period, but in the UK we call it "dot"or full stop, we call ".com" "dot com".

everyone presumes AI is intelligent, but this hasnt been established. so far I havent heard one person explain how AI arrives at its conclusions. everyone says it will outdo humans, and already outdoes humans, without specific examples, a lot of this is propaganda and brainwashing. people say AI outdoes lawyers, but no specific examples given, just out there somewhere in the internet mist, some AI is outdoing lawyers, probably all imaginary! a lot of this is gossip and rumour. I gave some specific examples of AI blunders. I think the entire world is getting ahead of itself on AI, and I seem to be the only person directly opposing the madness.

eg I was reading the current New Scientist which really misrepresents AI, the cover says AI is now doing stuff in pure maths. but when I scrutinised the specifics, they have given AI lots of examples of a class of maths curves, and it detected a pattern. but humans have to then either derive whether the pattern is true, or if it is not true.

you can certainly use computers to find patterns, but the pattern isnt a fact, just a conjecture. you still need an accountable establishing of the fact, patterns arent accountable.

if I asked you to factorise 1608?????967 then a computer program will do that readily, but a person probably cant unless by chance the factorisation is "nice".

and eg a computer will check and correct grammar much faster than a human.

I dont deny that computers can do some things better than humans. but what I am talking about is the results of true intelligence, eg say the invention of holograms or radio, or the discovery of electromagnetic radiation eg the Clerk Maxwell equations. you cannot get to such things by regurgitating and recombining words. in WW2, the germans invented a lot of things, eg they even developed heat seeking missiles and also the technology to convert coal into oil, as they had plenty of coal but no oil.

people are exaggerating majorly about AI.

in pure maths there is something called the continuum hypothesis. the set of positive integers {1,2,3,4...} is infinite, and the set of real numbers eg -12.3467080897.... is also infinite, the latter set is known to be a bigger infinity than the former set via an argument called "cantor's diagonal argument". the continuum hypothesis asks whether there is an infinity between these 2 infinities. I was reading a book on logic, which said someone showed that you can neither prove nor disprove this with the current laws of maths. so is there or isnt there! the guy then explained philosophically what this means, its quite a profound problem. this kind of thing is way beyond the scope of AI, as AI is stuck with what has already been said. you need a human to tackle this kind of question, as humans have the ability to transcend any circumstance, whereas AI is a dumb zombie machine.

AI has to be trained with data, and a human has to supply that data so its at the mercy of the human's decisions of what to look at and what data to use.

the people pushing AI as the be all and end all, mostly have no idea of what true knowledge is, as that is only learnt when you do a phd, and Gates + Zuckerberg dropped out at the degree level, which is all parrot facts, and Musk did complete a few degrees in important subjects, but he dropped out of the phd within a few days.

so all 3 dont know what true knowledge is, but have the gall to tell us that machines can do this!

you cant profess what you dont know!

and as for the politicians, the vast majority dont know what true knowledge is. Angela Merkel does have a doctorate in chemistry, and Thatcher got a 2nd class degree in chemistry. she has an MA but its not a proper MA as Oxford university gives all graduates an MA without doing anything for it, basically Oxford and Cambridge University MAs are a sham, but their doctorates are genuine. Thatcher did do chemistry research in industry. whereas an MA from most universities is for real.

with hardware, the true facts are either benchmarking or just from the experience of using the hardware.

eg with this LG monitor, the HDMI graphics are absolute garbage, but the DP graphics are good, but I have never seen QLED graphics, so maybe that is vastly better.

even the manufacturer has to benchmark their own products, its not enough to deduce the spec, the drive might overheat if it goes full speed, so it might need a thermostat to rest or slow down, whenever it gets too hot!

an example where manufacturers get this wrong is the Samsung smartphones which went into meltdown, because they got too hot. they didnt stress test their goods!


what the firm says on the spec sheet, is to be taken with caution, its not a fact. especially things like speeds.

a more reputable firm will honestly benchmark their wares, but some firms are just incompetent or ignorant.

with that fake 64T drive, it was a challenge to determine if it was fake or not. eg if it was in fact 32T, it would be major effort to show it wasnt 64T. it took me several days to debunk the specification. it passed all the initial tests I tried, eg the Windows 10 and Linux disk management all thought it was 64T, basically the hardware was dishonest! I had to blitz it with files before I called its bluff.

the guy doing the benchmarking, or other equipment, he is working with primary sources. the equipment itself maybe also needs to be verified. eg with weighing scales, every weighing scales gives a different answer! but they all agree up to a small margin! thus one form of verification of equipment, is relative verification, where you buy equipment from 2 different firms, and test them on the same target, do they agree? if they dont, they cant both be right. this is a problem with religions, they cant all be right!

eg with stock market trading volumes, I noticed that one website gave different numbers from some software I subscribe to. I asked the programmer about this, and he said trading volumes arent published, and both he and the website are using heuristic guesstimates, hence the discrepancy.

when you read the review, for you that is a secondary source. some people will give a biassed review because of a bribe or a personal dislike of some manufacturer, and here the reader of the review has to rely on user reviews of the reviewer eg say on Trust Pilot.

as a customer, you have to rely on reviews, as the only way to know for sure is to buy, but then you are stuck with the decision. with a review, you can check whether some of the ideas conform with things you do know about. and eg check reviews of things you already have and use. once a review concurs with your experience when you buy the item, then the reviewer gains credibility for you.

an AI chatbot will just trawl say the fake 64T drive advert, and say that the best value for money is that drive!

with Russia, everything they say is the opposite of the truth, eg if they say they are doing well in Ukraine, it means they are doing badly. if they say the west shouldnt help Ukraine, it means the west should help ukraine etc. its what is called "opposite speak". thus if you invert everything they say, you get nearer the truth. Putin is a dangerous clown.

 

[USAFRet]

I want a multiple boot system, where I can boot into Windows 10, 11 or Linux Mint.

OK, I guess I missed that.

A dual(tri) boot like this is much better done on individual physical drives.
But if you're going to do it on ONE drive, you should do it in this order:
Win 10
Win 11
Linux.

And I'm not sure a 32bit Win 10 will work with the 64bit Win 11.

 

[Richard1234]

OK, I guess I missed that.

A dual(tri) boot like this is much better done on individual physical drives.
But if you're going to do it on ONE drive, you should do it in this order:
Win 10
Win 11
Linux.

And I'm not sure a 32bit Win 10 will work with the 64bit Win 11.

ok, I will try that. Am about to temporarily install Linux Mint next, so I will get a taster of the above sequencing.

I tried 32 bit Win 10 and also 32 bit XP and not possible to install with this mobo, where the problem isnt win 11, but the mobo wont allow 32 bit at all even on a full drive. I think the problem being the install disk wont run.

what I havent tried is 64 bit XP, I have that somewhere as AMD had some virtual machine software which only ran with 64 bit XP, but I found 64 bit XP problematic for general software and in the end didnt try their virtual machine.

I dont need 64 bit XP as such, but it could be a portal for some old 32 bit XP software, eg the XP software for my camera works better on XP than on Win 10. eg when transferring photos, the same software on XP keeps track of which photos have been transferred, and only transfers untransferred ones. but on Win 10 it doesnt keep track.

also my bluray writing software only works on 32 bit XP, not on win 10 + 11, but maybe it will run on 64 bit XP.

so maybe I will try installing 64 bit XP next, then Linux, but maybe right at the end put 64 bit XP before the other 3?

one problem I have found with the taskbar on the lower edge, is that if I search a longer text document with WordPad, sometimes the search finds an item which is obscured by the taskbar!

I vaguely remember also that some versions of XP have an early boot option for all the other OSes including Linux, where one can boot to any without a reboot. currently with 10 + 11, to boot to 11, I select 10 then it has to reboot.

the only thing is that 64 bit XP might need the older partition system, which will be problematic for Win 10 + 11.

so maybe I should try installing that to the 2nd M.2 drive.

ultimately installing to different drives guarantees one can boot directly to any of the OSes,
but I am just testing the alternative, as that frees up the other drives. if it does work, I have to then assess the awkwardness. up to a point I prefer to reject an idea after seeing it play out as bad.

BTW the other day I got an electrical discharge from the 10 USB 3 hub, but so far no problem with items attached.

I dont know if that would be from the hub, or from me?

and whether it could damage the hub?

 

[USAFRet]

For XP, run that in a VM.

 

[Aeacus]

I have an off topic question: does lithium ion have any memory effect?

No.

Memory effects are well known to users of nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal-hydride batteries. If these batteries are recharged repeatedly after being only partially discharged, they gradually lose usable capacity owing to a reduced working voltage. Lithium-ion batteries, in contrast, are considered to have no memory effect.
However, slight voltage change can lead to substantial miscalculations in estimating the state of charge of batteries.

my current C:\ directory on win 11 has 214 169 files.

My 2TB OS drive; 740 404 files, 248 104 folders, 458 GB all together (OS, Steam games, game screenshots + some other stuff).

and I try to replicate XP!

Better to use Virtual Machine to emulate WinXP. Far better than trying to natively get 32-bit OS running on MoBo that supports only 64-bit OS.

photo with the cover plate and M.2 drives removed, where you can see the thermal pads under the drives:

Since your MoBo M.2 slots offer thermal pads on the underside of the drive as well, you're better off buying drives that aren't enclosed by heatsink. E.g 990 Pro heatsink is both on the top and on the bottom. The bottom heatsink will interfere with your MoBo.

My MoBo, in the other hand, doesn't have M.2 covers or thermal pads on the underside. So, i'm free to use just bare drive, or drive that is enclosed by heatsink.

with 11, according to the internet you cant have the taskbar on the left or right, only at the upper or lower edges.

Just use 3rd party software to change the GUI. Did link the guide above.

I did wonder about pressing the "clear CMOS" button at the back

Any particular reason why you want to clear CMOS? Other than you being able to do that?

BTW the other day I got an electrical discharge from the 10 USB 3 hub, but so far no problem with items attached.

I dont know if that would be from the hub, or from me?

One zap means that your body had buildup of electricity and you made good contact with ground, thus, zap that you felt.

USB hub operates at 5V DC and you won't feel a live feed. Heck, even the most what PSU outputs, 12V DC, is so low that you won't feel it. E.g you can grab the positive and negative terminals of car battery and you won't feel a thing. Nor would anything happen.

View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G1PXc5MrFY4


To feel anything, voltage should be 50V or more for AC and 70-110V or more for DC.

Spoiler: Off-topic part

99.9999% of people dont understand what "facts"are.

Fact is something that is known to be true or proven to be true.

E.g i know that on Earth, there is gravity. And when talking about gravity, i don't have to prove every single time that there is gravity, since existence of gravity is already known to be true.

eg say with history, most people think history comes from history books.

History is written by the victors. So, just because one can read perceived history from e.g book, doesn't mean that the historical events described are true.

 

[Richard1234]

before the replies a progress report, its frustrating but I did an extensive reply yesterday, then did alt-0176 to get the degree symbol, and lost the reply! sometimes I have gotten it back, but this time I ran out of time.

with Windows 11, it has a "use HDR" option which says via a URL:

"HDR can show a wider range of colors and light and more details in between the extremes. Colors are more vivid and unique in HDR content. Additionally, bright parts of a scene are brighter while dark parts can be darker, so you get to see all the details."

isnt this exciting!
this is gonna be good!

nope!

I tried it, and it was terrible, with blurry graphics, just like when I used the HDMI socket of the monitor. I took photos as a screenshot is the image sent to the monitor, not the image at the monitor!

photo without HDR:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/monitor/no_HDR.jpg

which is pixel perfect without gaps between the pixels,

photo with HDR:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/monitor/HDR.jpg

where its all blurry, I would go insane if I kept using that!

this is an example of primary sources versus secondary sources, the above info from the URL is a secondary source, the image I see on my screen is a primary source which tells a different story, the above photos enable you to repeat the experiment.

For XP, run that in a VM.

I have to ask about this later as I am trying to do too many things!

the frame of reference for me is the experience with my 2006 PC, where when I booted, I got either the Linux GRUB boot menu, where it lists all the OSes, I select one and the boot continues to that, where the OSes were at least XP and Ubuntu Linux.

I want that experience again with say 64 bit Win 10 + 11 and Linux Mint,

now another frame of reference is the first version of Windows I used was XP, and the second was Windows 10 32 bit. where eg Windows 7 had various problems eg it didnt have Outlook Express. I think I will replicate this experience by using Windows 10, then skipping 11 to maybe 12 or later whenever they release such. With Windows, some versions are worse than the earlier ones. XP and 10 seem very good. with 11, even the install was dubious, where you have to go via the internet, but this is stupid as my PC cannot access the internet not even with an Ethernet cable UNTIL you have installed Windows 11, and even then you cant use the internet until you have installed the mobo drivers from the MSI flashdrive. Now you can use the internet and download drivers.

I carried the heavy PC to the hallway to near the modem to connect it directly by ethernet cable and it still couldnt use the internet! where I rebooted to Win 10, and the internet perfect.

eventually via a lot of searching on the internet I found a blog which explained what to do.

bootstraps which include installations, often involve catch 22 problems, and it is basic basic to supply MOs around the catch 22 problems. with maths there is catch 22, eg in the modern era all of mathematics can be bootstrapped just starting with the empty set, {}.

first they bootstrap 0, 1, 2, .... thus: 0 = {}, and n+1 = n union {n}, from which we get eg
3 = { 0, 1, 2} = { {}, {{}}, {{},{{}}}}, etc. they then bootstrap the negative numbers, then the rationals, then the reals, then the complex numbers, and now the basic bootstrap of numbers is complete.

original question: I have an off topic question: does lithium ion have any memory effect?

No.

Memory effects are well known to users of nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal-hydride batteries. If these batteries are recharged repeatedly after being only partially discharged, they gradually lose usable capacity owing to a reduced working voltage. Lithium-ion batteries, in contrast, are considered to have no memory effect.
However, slight voltage change can lead to substantial miscalculations in estimating the state of charge of batteries.

how do you explain the errant battery I have? where when fully charged, the charge lasts much less time than the other identical batteries. and then say the next day has recouped some charge say for some minutes. leave it another day, and it recoups more charge lasting some minutes, where it takes forever to run down completely. whereas the 2 best batteries of the 4 will last much longer on the original charge, and then discharge fully, where the next day the charge might last a few seconds.

My 2TB OS drive; 740 404 files, 248 104 folders, 458 GB all together (OS, Steam games, game screenshots + some other stuff).

not far off a million! you can see that its not viable to personally work on more than a fragment of the 740000 files, where most of the files will only be handled automatically,

appearing automatically via installs, moved en masse, deleted en masse: its not viable to individually select 704000 files for deletion! but you'd say select a directory, and then maybe a filter, and then "select all".

I have a script which converts a financial CSV file, where I replace a text based column, which has words such as "good", which I replace with a number grading, eg 1 for top grade, where I call a script repeatedly to change one such word to a number at a time, where it creates maybe some 20 intermediate temporary files, which will never be read by me and are deleted.

Better to use Virtual Machine to emulate WinXP. Far better than trying to natively get 32-bit OS running on MoBo that supports only 64-bit OS.

as mentioned above, will have to work on this later to regulate proliferation of subprojects!

Since your MoBo M.2 slots offer thermal pads on the underside of the drive as well, you're better off buying drives that aren't enclosed by heatsink. E.g 990 Pro heatsink is both on the top and on the bottom. The bottom heatsink will interfere with your MoBo.

ok, so the decision was good after all!

amazon issued a refund instantly, but they say they could take the refund back if they want after the item has been checked over by them.

My MoBo, in the other hand, doesn't have M.2 covers or thermal pads on the underside. So, i'm free to use just bare drive, or drive that is enclosed by heatsink.


Just use 3rd party software to change the GUI. Did link the guide above.

are you referring to the link for rejigging Win 10 to look like Win 7?

Any particular reason why you want to clear CMOS? Other than you being able to do that?

mainly to do a factory reset where settings have gotten confused. same way with some websites, the site doesnt load properly because they have changed the way they use the same cookies, where you have to delete all cookies for that website and now the website will load properly.

eg if you have dabbled with various settings, and didnt keep a note of the original settings, nor of which items modified, then best thing can be to do a factory reset, and this time note all original settings that you change and what the changes were.

BTW is there a way to get the PC to boot by just pressing a key on the keyboard?

with my 2010 PC, the early startup had an option for startup via the keyboard. because at the moment I have to press the power button at the front of the top of the case. where I have to trek maybe 2 metres around 3 tables to do this, which is a lot of hassle.

One zap means that your body had buildup of electricity and you made good contact with ground, thus, zap that you felt.

USB hub operates at 5V DC and you won't feel a live feed. Heck, even the most what PSU outputs, 12V DC, is so low that you won't feel it. E.g you can grab the positive and negative terminals of car battery and you won't feel a thing. Nor would anything happen.

are you saying the hub will be fine?

the zap went between my finger to the hub + extenders, not sure which direction, nor which part of the hub + extenders precisely.

someone told me that with the mains plugs, you have live, neutral and earth, that if you touch the neutral wire you wont get a shock! just the live wire. I dont know if this is true.

View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G1PXc5MrFY4


To feel anything, voltage should be 50V or more for AC and 70-110V or more for DC.

Spoiler: Off-topic part

Fact is something that is known to be true or proven to be true.

Spoiler: Off-topic part

you are entering a philosophical jungle here!

1. known by whom?
2. known how?
3. and proven in what sense?

each of these 3 questions is a philosophical jungle.

in a court of law, EVERYTHING quoted by anyone who isnt an accredited professional is "hearsay" and regarded with doubt. most of the internet is hearsay, even if true.

if you say "X told me ?????", that is ok, but if you said "X told me Y told Z ....." that quote is hearsay.

now a lot of hearsay is absolute truth, and in real life we use common sense as to when to exercise doubt, and how much doubt to exercise.

so with 1. it depends on who said the stuff, and whether they are in a position to say such. so eg if you say stuff on PCs, I would accept most of that, but if you say stuff about Bristol I would express major doubt as you have probably never visited Bristol.

with 2. each realm of activity has its own rules as to what is accountable fact formation, eg with maths, you have to give a derivation of any "fact", according to accepted rules of derivation, or defer parts to the works of others who have derived by these rules. where you can unravel the explanations and references to a full derivation which only refers to the axioms and rules of logic. with maths, truth is axioms and theorems, with lemmas as temporary theorems.

with physics it is different, here they regularly misuse maths, and facts are established by measurement based experiments. and most facts have limits of applicability, eg fluid dynamics applied to water is only valid at a sufficiently macroscopic level. if you took a ginormous blob of water in outer space, it might start collapsing under its own gravity to form a star, where fluid dynamics isnt applicable. at uni, our fluid dynamics course was about incompressible fluids, eg water, but not air.

physics regularly simplifies and approximates, eg for the motion of a planet around the sun, they will assume the sun and the planet are just 2 point masses. its known that the general 3 body problem is unsolvable in maths, if you have sufficient constraints 3 body is solvable.

with a court of law, facts are first person accounts, which are witness statements, 2nd hand word of mouth is "hearsay" and regarded with doubt, you have expert witness comments, eg say a medical doctor or engineer, you have comments by the barristers, the judge who has absolute authority where if you oppose him that is contempt of court, and then the jury vote.

the entire verdict of a court can be overthrown via the appeals courts.


with medicines, the medicine is a cure if it cures a big enough percentage, ALL medicines will fail on some people. so when they say a medicine is a cure, that is statistical truth.
statistical truth is eg "smoking causes lung cancer", where this means a group of people who smoke, will have a significantly higher rate of lung cancer than a group who has never smoked.

but a lot of people smoke and dont get lung cancer.


what counts as significantly higher is decided by the medical people and statisticians.

in maths Goedels incompleteness theorem says that there are true statements which arent provable. but how can we know when we have one of these?

you'd have to prove the idea is unprovable, and this is near impossible, I read that they proved that the continuum hypothesis can neither be proved nor disproved using the existing rules of maths. but maybe some new rule can be thought of which everyone will agree has to be true.

there is already a controversial rule called the axiom of choice, which some people reject, and most people accept. there is a stricter form of maths called constructive mathematics, where they dont allow the axiom of choice. with this form of maths, its not enough to say something is true, you have to show how to construct it. its like saying its not enough to say you can create a 1000 ton aeroplane, you need to go and construct it and fly it, only then I will accept the idea. because you may have overlooked something, like the Samsung phones which went into meltdown, or the russian concordski which they quickly removed from view probably because of unresolvable problems.

E.g i know that on Earth, there is gravity. And when talking about gravity, i don't have to prove every single time that there is gravity, since existence of gravity is already known to be true.

but people are saying AI can do everything better than humans. now where we ask a chatbot "what is the capital of Malaysia?", there is no problem, as the chatbot can search the internet and see this is always answered with the same place. but that isnt outdoing humans, it is just regurgitating the human answer.

but what about "is Jesus Christ god?", there will be a lot saying he is god, and few saying he isnt, because someone who doesnt believe wont spend their time saying this, but will get on with other things. so the chatbot will say yes. then what about "is Allah god?", again it will say yes, because many saying this, few opposing this.

and now you ask "is Jesus Christ Allah?", via recombination, the chatbot has to say yes!

truth is not a democracy, you have to use common sense, and ultimately at some level you have to apply your personal beliefs, you cant just blindly take your starting truths via a vote, and then blindly derive from all these.

eg a lot of people will say Abba is the best group ever, so the chatbot will regard Abba as the best pop group ever, the chatbot will also regard the Monkeys as the best pop group ever, so the chatbot will regard Abba as the Monkeys.

there is a saying in pure maths, that from a false statement you can deduce anything at all, which is technically true. the internet is filled with false statements, so the chatbots will arrive at chaos. on basic things, they are reliable, but on more complicated things they are junk.

people also are conflating chatbot AI which is based on the large language model, with pattern based AI which is a totally different thing, with generative AI which is totally different again. they are confusing incomparably different things, as if they are all the same.

each realm has rules of accountability for fact formation, in order to prevent all the chaos if you dont. but with the AI chatbots, they will trawl the Washington Post and the internet for their start facts. this is highly dubious.

a lot of facts eventually are rejected. eg up to 1904, all physicists regarded time as absolute, but Einsteins theory of special relativity in 1905 showed that time is relative to the observer.

time is part of you, it is not part of the universe. if you whizz off at ginormous speeds, and return in 5 minutes, the year will now be 4000AD. for you just 5 minutes of your time, but for the people on the planet some 2000 years of their time!

with sound, if you generate some sound, you can overtake the sound you generated, eg happens with supersonic fighter planes, causing sonic booms, with further phenomena when they reach 2x the speed of sound.

but with light, if you shine a torch, no matter how fast you chase the light, it will always be 3 x 10^8 m/s faster than you, you can never overtake light, this is a basic idea of Einstein's theory. what happens is that as you chase the light, time starts to slow down, so the relative speed of the light remains unchanged, and this is how 2000 years can happen in 5 minutes of your time.

History is written by the victors. So, just because one can read perceived history from e.g book,
doesn't mean that the historical events described are true.

here again, we need more careful terminology. as with "facts", there is "truth", which is that which is true, which could be expressed as a statement. but we either dont know what the statement is, eg the answer to "how is immortality achieved?",
or we are given a statement and dont know if it is true.

so with history, there is historical truth, which is about what really happened,

and then there is historical allegation, which is any talk of history, eg a history textbook, or a historian describing how the russian revolution occurred.

history involves a lot of disinformation, where they dont want people to know how say a government was overthrown, in case someone tries it on them, so they create a cover story which wont work if someone tries it.

eg with the russian revolution, the official version is probably false, because otherwise some russians could use it to overthrow Stalin or Brezhnev or Putin. so instead they create a colourful story which is a myth. eg Lenin sprinted from a barge on some river firing his revolver in the air, a band of sturdy proletariat emerged from behind barrels waving their red flags,

when the truth might be that he snuck into the kremlin via a tunnel he found by chance in a forest accompanied by some secret police of another nation.

with rules of accountability, eg references to primary sources, someone else can check your theory, by re-examining the primary sources, and maybe examining other primary sources, and then forming their own interpretation, or confirming or denying your theory.

with the rules, something false can still occur, but it is more difficult. where they overlooked some idea, eg physicists all taking as fact that time was absolute, ultimately noone had tested this, when they did soon after Einsteins theory they found time wasnt absolute, where I think they sent a train at great speed, and shone light in 2 directions and measured the speed very precisely relative to the train, and found that Einstein was right, the speed of light was identical, when with classical physicists, it should be slower in the direction of the train as the train ought to be catching up with the light, and faster in the other direction, but not the case.

Einstein's theories led to the atom bomb. the theories arent just idle speculation.


with HDR, I know for a fact via primary source that it is total junk for this specific monitor, now maybe for some other monitor it may be good.

with Guy Fawkes, what I saw in some documentary was that Guy Fawkes confessed what he was going to do, and the confession priest informed the authorities, who then discovered the gunpowder "by chance".

 

[Richard1234]

one thing I forgot to mention, is I tried to move various things to BDR for installing on Windows 10 + 11, with the USB2 Samsung bluray writer drive, including one file which is 6.6GB, on the 32 bit XP, as the bluray writing software only works there. I got an error message and checking the BDR byte by byte on Linux mint with a shell command: "diff -r -q -d firstpath secondpath" I got an "input output" error on the 6.6GB file.

so I decided to try the new external USB3 XL bluray writer, namely this item:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pioneer-External-BDR-X13EBK-Reliability-PureRead/dp/B0C367V1QW/

where the URL says Windows 8.1 upwards. I'll try my luck with 32 bit XP!

connected it via the USB3 10 hub attached to one of 2 USB3 sockets of a PCI card as the 2010 PC is pre USB3, and it copied without error message. then checked byte by byte on Linux on the new PC, and byte perfect.

that is another example of a primary source showing the XL BD drive works on XP, versus the secondary source saying Windows 8.1 upwards! whether it works for TL and QL disks is another question.

I have found another infuriating feature of Windows 11, which I have tested on the 2 keyboards here, which is that when I select a double quotation mark, ie ", via shift and the 2nd key to the right of the L, nothing happens! then when I press that again, I get two of the symbols: ""

so the only way to get a double quotation mark once is to press shift with that key twice, then delete!

is there a way to switch off this ridiculous feature?

I checked with the Lidl USB keyboard just in case it was a problem of the wireless keyboard, but same problem, which means its a problem with windows.

the Lidl keyboard is dreadful! huge keys which have friction of the plastic as you press them, where the keyboard is just for boostrap reasons. I'd go insane if I had to use it all the time.

one other question, the mobo UEFI interface somewhere has an option about Num lock, what is the idea of Num lock?

is it something from the pre windows era?

the caps lock is for capitals, but numbers dont have capitals!

current planned schedule:

backup Windows 10 + 11,
install Linux Mint, see what happens
install either Windows 10 or 11, to see what happens as regards boot options, how does it cope with 2 win 11 installs, how does it cope with the Linux install,
eg 10, 11, Linux, 11
then to install the graphics card, see how that fares on each of 10, 11 and Linux,
then to backup everything, eg passwords and bookmarks of both browsers, as well as of the entire system disk,
then reformat and reinstall from scratch but with maybe 500GB for Windows 10, with probably 10 then 11 then Linux Mint, does depend on the outcomes of the earlier experiments. because I might alternatively put each on a different drive as suggested by 35Below0, I can see the advantages of that MO.

its a bit convoluted all this, but this kind of thing is best done at the outset, rather than many months down the road.

 

[Aeacus]

but I did an extensive reply yesterday, then did alt-0176 to get the degree symbol, and lost the reply! sometimes I have gotten it back, but this time I ran out of time.

When written reply suddenly disappears, try pressing CTRL + Z. This is KB shortcut for Undo command.

Also, when you have BBcode enabled when typing a reply, there is floppy disk icon on top right corner. From there, you can save the draft. But draft usually saves automatically after few typed words as well.
To be sure, i manually select the Save Draft when i have to stop typing the reply, to continue on at later date.

with Windows 11, it has a "use HDR" option which says via a URL:

"HDR can show a wider range of colors and light and more details in between the extremes. Colors are more vivid and unique in HDR content. Additionally, bright parts of a scene are brighter while dark parts can be darker, so you get to see all the details."

isnt this exciting!
this is gonna be good!

nope!

I tried it, and it was terrible, with blurry graphics, just like when I used the HDMI socket of the monitor. I took photos as a screenshot is the image sent to the monitor, not the image at the monitor!

HDR isn't something to consider since Win10, for the most part, doesn't support HDR. (Don't know about Win11 though.) And most programs doesn't support it either. Except few video editing programs like Adobe Premiere Pro.

Here's nice informative video about HDR:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx-pfuszquk


All-in-all, idea of HDR is to balance out brightest and darkest parts of the image, so that most of the image is seen (details won't be lost due to image being too bright or dim in certain areas). This, of course, leads to overall increase in brightness and washed out colors.

This image is nice example:

One could say that HDR is better since it showcases more info, especially in the darker parts (shadows). But i'd argue if that is really needed. In my opinion, i'd rather have vibrant colors with rich blacks, rather than seeing washed out colors and what is hiding in the shadows.

how do you explain the errant battery I have?

Manufacturer defect, whereby battery displays incorrect info about it's charge level.

are you referring to the link for rejigging Win 10 to look like Win 7?

Yes. Same guide applies to Win11 as well.

mainly to do a factory reset where settings have gotten confused

Unless you dabble around in UEFI and make your system unstable (e.g too high CPU OC), there is no reason to clear CMOS.

But if you do clear CMOS, be prepared of far longer POST times in the first few power-on, since MoBo has to do the memory training again. And you also need to enable RAM EXPO (XMP) profile again. That also includes the SMART fan profiles you've set up thus far, that you have to set up again. Also, you may need to change drive boot order again, if you've changed it from default values.

Clearing CMOS will revert all UEFI changes back to factory default. So, your call if you want to do all that again (last i checked, you highly disliked setting up the custom fan profile).

BTW is there a way to get the PC to boot by just pressing a key on the keyboard?

There is, IF you have your PC in Sleep or Hibernate mode. But if it is fully powered off, only power button will power on the PC.

someone told me that with the mains plugs, you have live, neutral and earth, that if you touch the neutral wire you wont get a shock! just the live wire. I dont know if this is true.

Don't try this at home, but:

Spoiler: Off-topic reply

If you touch positive (live) wire and you do not have good connection to the ground (e.g wearing ESD shoes), nothing will happen. For circuit to complete and you getting zapped, you have to make good connection to the ground, so that electricity can flow freely through you. Best example would be birds that land on overhead electrical lines, including high voltage lines. As long as bird (or you) doesn't touch neutral or grounding wire (or any other point to ground yourself), you'll be fine.

Same is when you touch the negative wire or ground wire. Nothing will happen. Though, depending on the wiring, negative wire can have some charge in it. So, don't just bridge negative and ground wires with your fingers.

Bridging positive and negative or positive and ground wires with your fingers will electrocute you, since you'd be completing the circuit whereby electricity can freely flow through your body.

I did study to be class C, level 4 electrician but had to stop studies for personal reasons.
I'm jack of all trades but master of none. Though oftentimes better than master of one.

I have found another infuriating feature of Windows 11, which I have tested on the 2 keyboards here, which is that when I select a double quotation mark, ie ", via shift and the 2nd key to the right of the L, nothing happens! then when I press that again, I get two of the symbols: ""

so the only way to get a double quotation mark once is to press shift with that key twice, then delete!

is there a way to switch off this ridiculous feature?

Unsure if it is Win11 issue or KB layout issue.

I get the " mark by holding down Shift and then pressing 2 on my KB. So: Shift + 2 = "

I have qwerty KB with Estonian layout. So, 2nd key right of the L is ä. Which is one of the letters in Estonian alphabet.

one other question, the mobo UEFI interface somewhere has an option about Num lock, what is the idea of Num lock?

is it something from the pre windows era?

the caps lock is for capitals, but numbers dont have capitals!

Num Lock is to do with numeric pad and it was present way back in the IBM XT era (MS-DOS).

IBM KB:

My KB:

If you look closely at my KB, on the rightmost side, there are cluster of keys. Those cluster of keys are known as numeric pad.

Now, if i enable Num Lock (which is enabled on the pic), the keys on numeric pad work as numbers.
Press 0 to get 0,
press 4 to get 4,
press 9 to get 9
etc.

But if i disable Num Lock, the keys on numeric pad work as their secondary bind.
E.g 0 works as Insert
, works as Delete
1 works as End
2 works as Arrow Down
3 works as Page Down
4 works as Arrow Left
6 works as Arrow Right
7 works as Home
8 works as Arrow Up
9 works as Page Up

When working with inserting numbers, it is better to do it from numeric pad (aka numpad) than from the row of numbers above letter keys. Since all numbers would fit under one hand, making typing numbers far faster and more convenient.

While Caps Lock is most widely known and many also know what Num Lock does, better question would've been: what Scroll Lock does.
Full-sized KB has so many keys that when you start thinking about the keys, you can get lost in thought. E.g function keys, from F1 to F12. Do you know all the functions of function keys? Or why they are there in the first place?

 

[Richard1234]

first a progress report, last night before going to bed I started Linux Mint doing a sector back up to a compressed gzip file on the 2nd M.2 drive, 990 Pro, the win 10 + win 11 + workspace partition on the other 990 Pro.

and also to do a gzip compressed sector backup the mobo flash drive,

in the morning, I then did a tar.bz2 backup of the files of the same mobo flash drive, so I have both a sector backup and a file level backup. I'll upload the listing of files on that later, in case its of interest.

tar isnt a compression format, but just converts a directory into a file, it has the inbuilt facility to then apply either a gzip or a bzip compression. you could externally apply any other compression, eg AmigaOS's lha.

the sector backup of the 5.626G mobo flash drive, took 2 minutes 5 seconds!

the progress info on the M.2 to M.2 backup is this:

Sat Apr 20 02:10:20 UTC 2024 3907029168+0 records in 3907029168+0 records out 2000398934016 bytes (2.0 TB, 1.8 TiB) copied, 9219.43 s, 217 MB/s Sat Apr 20 04:44:00 UTC 2024 $

where it took 2 hrs 34 minutes. and was 217 MB/s.

and now the strange bit, when I backed up the win10 + working directory to the WD Blue magnetic drive, which was a smaller disk, as no win 11 yet, this is what happened:

Tue Apr 9 16:40:06 UTC 2024 3907029168+0 records in 3907029168+0 records out 2000398934016 bytes (2.0 TB, 1.8 TiB) copied, 7515.86 s, 266 MB/s Tue Apr 9 18:45:22 UTC 2024

where it was 266 MB/s, the compressed copy to the magnetic WD Blue, was almost 50MB/s FASTER than to the M.2 drive!

now where I did an uncompressed sector copy of the M.2 to another WD Blue of identical size, that took more than 10 hours, although I dont have the progress text to hand, as I disconnected the magnetic drives, they are in the machine but the SATA power and data cables detached at the drives, not at the mobo.

which does show that compressed copies are vastly faster than uncompressed. its the question of whether the compression latency is less than the writing latency. it does depend on the technology.

anyway, various people warned me that the faster drives might not be faster, and the above primary source experiment confirms this opinion.

to do a fair comparison, I ought to do the identical backup, the later faster experiment is with further large partitions.

I am backing that up as the precursor to installing Linux Mint hopefully later today, just in case the install goes to pot.

I will just backup the passwords + favourites of both browsers on win 11 + win 10, then I am ready to install Linux Mint.

the file level backup of the mobo flash drive went like this:

$ date ; tar -cjf /media/mint/Backups/MSI_mobo_disk_2024_04_20.tbz2 . ; date Sat Apr 20 10:50:49 UTC 2024 Sat Apr 20 11:02:05 UTC 2024 $

where the current directory is the directory to be compressed, and the . after .tbz2 is *nix notation for current directory, (*nix is jargon for Unix and Linux), with *nix, .. is the parent directory, . is the current directory, and / is the root directory, where all drives are subdirectories of /, eg with this version of Linux Mint, /media/mint/ has the partitions, eg Backups is one partition.

with the new M.2 drive, I created a partition of 75% of the drive, then one of 25% at the far end which is Backups:, where the 75% one is just to be able to create the other one, as it seems to only allow partitions from left to right in free space. that 75% can then be deleted, and say Win 10 installed at the left 25%. I like the OSes to be installed left to right. and the idea is that any data partitions to be installed right to left, that way I can junk either the OS installs, or junk the data partitions, without fragmenting the other category of partitions. basically:

OS1 ; OS2 ; ..... ; OS3 ; unused ; data3 ; .... ; data2 ; data1

its just an organisational MO, you could establish things in any order,
anyway, the file level bz2 compressed copy of the directory took some 12 minutes (if you ignore seconds),

whereas the compressed sector backup of the mobo disk went like this:

Sat Apr 20 02:05:49 UTC 2024 10971008+0 records in 10971008+0 records out 5617156096 bytes (5.6 GB, 5.2 GiB) copied, 271.25 s, 20.7 MB/s Sat Apr 20 02:10:20 UTC 2024

where it took some 5 minutes (ignoring seconds), these experiments suggest compressed sectors are the fastest way to do things.

note also that copying the flash drive sectors, was 20.7 MB/s, more than 10x slower than for the M.2 drive.

I think flash drives can be a bit slow, and this is the MSI mobo supplied USB3 one.

When written reply suddenly disappears, try pressing CTRL + Z. This is KB shortcut for Undo command.

I have to try it when the problem next occurs, I tried alt-0176 just now and no problem, but sometimes the reply vanishes.

Also, when you have BBcode enabled when typing a reply,

what is the idea of "toggle BBcode"?

what happens with the default versus if you toggle the BBcode?

there is floppy disk icon on top right corner. From there, you can save the draft. But draft usually saves automatically after few typed words as well.

I have to start using that, I prefer manual controls that way my brain is aware of everything. when things occur automatically, you can run into trouble when you use a different system, which has different automaticity.

one general problem is information and option overload, where everything I do is a jungle of options, where eventually I get fatigued from even looking.

how many draft saves are done?
how do you reload an earlier draft?

To be sure, i manually select the Save Draft when i have to stop typing the reply, to continue on at later date.

as mentioned, manual controls are better, as your brain is aware of everything,

this is why the Amiga and C and assembly language were very popular, as with all 3, you are aware of everything you are doing. if you do nothing, the computer will do nothing.

HDR isn't something to consider since Win10, for the most part, doesn't support HDR. (Don't know about Win11 though.)

win11 does, I have uploaded a screenshot of how it manifests on win11:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/win11/win11_HDR.jpg

AND included also the URL that it defers to for info on HDR,

win11 has some tasteful subtle shadowing of windows, which you can see in the screenshot, I would have to reboot to Win 10 to check what win 10 does, I dont remember. at the moment I am just using win 11, simply because it boots directly, win 10 requires a double boot. this does mean all my new passwords and favourites are on the win 11 install.

And most programs doesn't support it either. Except few video editing programs like Adobe Premiere Pro.

Here's nice informative video about HDR:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx-pfuszquk


All-in-all, idea of HDR is to balance out brightest and darkest parts of the image, so that most of the image is seen (details won't be lost due to image being too bright or dim in certain areas). This, of course, leads to overall increase in brightness and washed out colors.

This image is nice example:

One could say that HDR is better since it showcases more info, especially in the darker parts (shadows). But i'd argue if that is really needed. In my opinion, i'd rather have vibrant colors with rich blacks, rather than seeing washed out colors and what is hiding in the shadows.

it may be ok for photos, but for text it is outright bad!

what I would say it is far better to hand optimise a specific photo, eg with Photoshop, it has a graph showing the spread of brightnesses. eg I did a screenshot of the above photo, and an excerpt of the SDR side, and then a collage to show the menu path AND the effect, you wont have both at the same time! so I had to do a collage:

Spoiler: expand for off topic comments to prevent vertical proliferation of topic

http://www.directemails.info/tom/win11/spread.jpg

you can then modify the spread, which will increase the visibility, but maybe at the cost of other things,

in this era, if you want to use Photoshop, best to get Photoshop Elements, as its too expensive to use the full Photoshop now. I was lucky to buy Photoshop when it was still a standalone program. But it does mean I am stuck with a past version. but it is pretty good. Photoshop Elements will give you all the things you need. originally I got Photoshop Elements for free with a 35mm scanner.

now what people actually do is select out polygonal zones, and just rejig those. as an example, here is a scan of a childrens comic, that I read when I was 5 or 6 years old, where this scan isnt the one I read, but I rebought some for nostalgia, and decided to optimise some pages where the art was quality painting:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/fliptail.jpg

and this is what it looks like after several hours of manual optimising with Photoshop:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/fliptail_enhanced.jpg

where that first image has been photoshopped!

which was done by subdividing into 27 zones, and hand optimising each entirely via modifying spreads:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/win11/fliptail_zones.jpg

its a lot of work, but is very satisfying when you get a majorly improved image.

with this, I have taken a deteriorated publication, and renovated it to have fresh colours and look like it was published today. I have done this also with photos which have either deteriorated, or the lighting was wrong.

the use of english is a bit simplified as its for young kids, but the art of that comic is often superb, it is called "Jack and Jill comic". when I read the comic as a kid approx 1972, I was mesmerised by the stories and ideas.

I could optimise it further, but it is "the law of diminishing returns", that as the renovation progresses, it requires more and more work to make smaller and smaller improvements. so at some point, you stop and say its now good enough.

what the problem is, is that there is no one size fits all MO, what works on one zone of a photo works badly on another zone, the only all round satisfactory MO is to divide the image into zones, eg for the above scan, I created one lot of zones for the text, which is black and white, where there are specific Photoshop techniques for that problem, but the images I create a fine polygon which is approx the same as the curved corner frames, and rejig the spread for each.

Google probably has an AI way to do this, where this kind of thing AI could be good for.

Manufacturer defect, whereby battery displays incorrect info about it's charge level.


Yes. Same guide applies to Win11 as well.

will have to study that later as a future project.

Unless you dabble around in UEFI and make your system unstable (e.g too high CPU OC), there is no reason to clear CMOS.

But if you do clear CMOS, be prepared of far longer POST times in the first few power-on, since MoBo has to do the memory training again. And you also need to enable RAM EXPO (XMP) profile again. That also includes the SMART fan profiles you've set up thus far, that you have to set up again.

what's the way to optimise the memory profile for the current memory?

ie the overclocking approved by the CPU, memory and mobo manufacturers.

Also, you may need to change drive boot order again, if you've changed it from default values.

Clearing CMOS will revert all UEFI changes back to factory default. So, your call if you want to do all that again (last i checked, you highly disliked setting up the custom fan profile).

can be worth doing a few times, as that forces you to become aware of what things are.

sometimes when I have reconfigured things from scratch, they become much better because I know more stuff now than in the past, and I may make better decisions.

now sometimes, the first attempt was best, where I had some beginners' luck, and just happened to make very good decisions.


there was some programming blog for the Amiga by some hungarian guy, where he said:

the second time you do something it is perfect!

where what he meant was that you try to program something, and it becomes problematic. so eventually you restart from scratch, and this time it is perfect, as you are aware of the problematic things. by having done it before you become "future aware", where you know at the outset some future problem that will occur, so you mitigate super early.

There is, IF you have your PC in Sleep or Hibernate mode. But if it is fully powered off, only power button will power on the PC.

with the 2010 Gigabyte mobo, if I power off at the mains, then power on at the mains, I can start the PC by just pressing any key on the PS2 keyboard. it has an early startup option for this:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/win11/keyboard_start.jpg

the keyboard options are these:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/win11/keyboard_start1.jpg

and the mouse options are these:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/win11/keyboard_start3.jpg

Don't try this at home, but:

Spoiler: Off-topic reply

If you touch positive (live) wire and you do not have good connection to the ground (e.g wearing ESD shoes), nothing will happen.

Spoiler: Off-topic reply

some dangerous information!

you need to be really confident of the info,

can you be sure also that the UK, Germany and the US will be the same?

originally the UK was 240V 50Hz AC, and Germany was 220V 50Hz AC,

at some point they standardised to cover both by now being 230V 50Hz AC, with the margin of error to include 220V to 240V.

the US I think is 110V 60Hz, in more recent eras, rather than create multiple transformers, they create one which can handle 110V to 240V (or 230V).

for TV, Germany uses PAL, and the UK uses PAL which is 50Hz, but the US uses NTSC which is 60Hz, and France uses I think SECAM, I have never used SECAM.

you can use a german tv in the UK, but there is no sound, as they arranged the sound differently from the UK's PAL transmission. so PAL isnt just PAL, there are different forms of PAL.

For circuit to complete and you getting zapped, you have to make good connection to the ground, so that electricity can flow freely through you. Best example would be birds that land on overhead electrical lines, including high voltage lines. As long as bird (or you) doesn't touch neutral or grounding wire (or any other point to ground yourself), you'll be fine.

ok, I hadnt thought about that, how they get away with that!

once I saw a bird on an overhead electric cable, and further along a squirrel. the squirrel was heading to the bird, and halted when near the bird. the bird didnt want to get out of the way for the squirrel, and the squirrel needed to get past the bird. I watched to see what would happen. eventually they both moved at the same time, where the bird flew off and the squirrel bounded ahead.

Same is when you touch the negative wire or ground wire. Nothing will happen. Though, depending on the wiring, negative wire can have some charge in it. So, don't just bridge negative and ground wires with your fingers.

Bridging positive and negative or positive and ground wires with your fingers will electrocute you, since you'd be completing the circuit whereby electricity can freely flow through your body.

when I was a kid approx 8 years old, I switched on a lamp in the kitchen, and nothing happened.
I then put my hand inside to check if a problem with the bulb, and no bulb, and I got an electric shock!

that's the only time I have had such a shock, and I remember it lucidly till today!

I did study to be class C, level 4 electrician but had to stop studies for personal reasons.

ok, didnt know you had professional training in this. in the UK, electricians rake in money, just to have anything done will cost you maybe £200, they can earn £400 a day! by doing one job in the morning, and one in the afternoon.

I asked an electrician some prices, he said:

install a new double plug with cable set onto wall: £50
extend a double plug on wall to a further double plug £30
install a new light switch £40
install a brand new batten light without bulb £35
convert a ceiling pendant light to batten light, reuse bulb, £25
rewire a double light switch so that both switches are down when on £10
remove a wall light £25

a money fest!

I'm jack of all trades but master of none. Though oftentimes better than master of one.

Spoiler: expand for off topic comments

even if you are a master of something, you have to be selective, what differentiates people is which things they select to know more of, and which they select to not know about. you cant select everything, because you will run out of time on a fragment of the choices.

even with a specialism, each person makes different choices.

the clever thing is to know when to be expert, and to know from different fields. and its best to be a hobbyist, because then you can do what you want.

basically its best to be a master of some bits of many things, and a jack of more bits of those many things.

if you are expert as a job, the problem is you get trapped in what the job demands, where you are digging yourself into an ever deeper ditch.

eg even with a top expert, I know things they dont, because I dabble with so many things, and know more than the experts on some things, even though I am not an expert in that field.

by being selective, you can use time more efficiently, where you learn the one thing really intensely, and the other very superficially.

a professional has to know the core subject fully, but that can be a disadvantage as they have to know a lot of stuff that they arent interested in.

if you know from many fields, you can apply ideas from one field to another.

eg originally I specialised in pure maths up to phd, then I did a conversion degree to computing.

the computing degree was theoretical, we never handled hardware directly except for programming,

we never saw a memory chip, and we never saw any of the mainframes, where they had approx 4 mainframes. but we were taught the principles of memory chips, for the exam we had to know how to give the circuit diagram for a flip flop, and explain how it was set, reset and read. the ideas were generally superficial, but a lot of such ideas, and carefully selected ideas.

we were taught an overview of what hardware is, from the manufacture, all the way to the hardware structure of computers. eg if you show me any computer at all from any era, that I had never seen before, I can tell you things about it based on what we were taught. because all computer hardware is based on the same principles. now with time, those principles become increasingly refined, but the underlying principles dont change. so in this era now, there are all kinds of subprinciples which we werent taught, but the underlying principles are the same.


an example topic is that logic circuits are based on AND, OR, XOR, NOT, etc, and it is easy to show that you can do all these just with NOT-AND, which is called NAND, a NAND gate. where they developed technology for doing NAND circuits, where the entire circuit is based on NAND. I noticed the Samsung 990 Pro is based on NAND! so that idea is still around.

to see everything can be done with NAND, first x NAND x = not( x AND x) = NOT x, so we can do NOT via NAND by making the 2 inputs the same. but AND = NOT NOT AND = NOT NAND, so as we can do NAND and NOT, we can do AND.

also x OR y = NOT( (NOT x) AND (NOT y)), because AND and OR are the same as OR and AND applied to negations, and then negated back.

but we can do each thing on the right via NAND, so we can do the thing on the left namely OR with NAND.

x XOR y = (x AND (NOT y) ) OR ( (NOT x) AND y)), everything on the right can be done with NAND, so the left can be done with NAND, namely XOR.

thus I have shown that NOT, AND, OR, XOR can all be done with NAND.

its easy to show that any binary logic operator can be done with NOT, OR, and AND,

where we just OR together each thing we want, eg if we want x=0 and y=1 to give 1, we put
NOT(x) AND y, if we want x=0 and y=0 to give 1, we put NOT(x) AND NOT,
so to get both we OR these, to get (NOT(x) AND y) OR (NOT(x) AND NOT)

and as these can all be done with NAND, ALL binary logic operators can be done with NAND.

there are 16 binary logic operators in total, as these are defined by the truth table.


now the course didnt teach us about things like firmware, possibly firmware is a later development,

I learnt about firmware in a later era from talking on the internet,

they also taught us an overview of what software is, but they never taught us to program.

the concept of the course was that we should understand computers, both hardware and software, but it wasnt meant for us to use computers, or write programs, or create hardware, but instead to understand what a program is and what hardware is.

I get extra power over the maths specialists, because I can apply computing ideas to maths, and I get extra power over the computing specialists by applying maths ideas to computing.

eg there are some maths topics, where there was various confusion, but by applying computing ideas, I have an elite perspective. because the computing people are doing the same stuff but in a totally different way.

Unsure if it is Win11 issue or KB layout issue.

both keyboards do have " above the 2, but I configured them possibly to the US layout, I will try changing the keymap later and see if that works, and will try the keyboards also on Win 10,

also the wireless one has BOTH @ and " above the 2, but if I use shift 2, I just get the @,

but it also has a " 2 keys to the right of L, and that key has @|" above it, whereas the 2 has "|@ above it!
its a bit crazy!

the Lidl keyboard has " above the 2, and @ 2 keys to the right of the L.

I get the " mark by holding down Shift and then pressing 2 on my KB. So: Shift + 2 = "

I have qwerty KB with Estonian layout. So, 2nd key right of the L is ä. Which is one of the letters in Estonian alphabet.

german also has that for a, o and u, and capital versions also, but I am not sure of the escape sequence for those, I tend to cut and paste those symbols. with german, you can put ae, oe and ue instead.

the capital versions are less used, but sometimes you need them.


german also has a symbol which looks like a beta, which I think is called "scharfes ess", which can also be written ss.

Num Lock is to do with numeric pad and it was present way back in the IBM XT era (MS-DOS).

IBM KB:

the Lidl one conforms to that better, with the wireless one, the function keys are equally spaced,
whereas the Lidl one has that row in the 1-4-4-4-3 formation. the wireless one also has the F numbers in too small a font, the HP laptop is even worse, where its a lot of effort to read as small fine font.

My KB:

If you look closely at my KB, on the rightmost side, there are cluster of keys. Those cluster of keys are known as numeric pad.

that's an annoying thing about the 2023 HP laptop, no numeric keypad.

Now, if i enable Num Lock (which is enabled on the pic), the keys on numeric pad work as numbers.
Press 0 to get 0,
press 4 to get 4,
press 9 to get 9
etc.

But if i disable Num Lock, the keys on numeric pad work as their secondary bind.
E.g 0 works as Insert
, works as Delete
1 works as End
2 works as Arrow Down
3 works as Page Down
4 works as Arrow Left
6 works as Arrow Right
7 works as Home
8 works as Arrow Up
9 works as Page Up

that would explain various problems! eg sometimes the numeric keypad doesnt work!

must be because the num lock was wrongly set!

When working with inserting numbers, it is better to do it from numeric pad (aka numpad) than from the row of numbers above letter keys. Since all numbers would fit under one hand, making typing numbers far faster and more convenient.

While Caps Lock is most widely known and many also know what Num Lock does, better question would've been: what Scroll Lock does.

no idea at all!

Full-sized KB has so many keys that when you start thinking about the keys, you can get lost in thought. E.g function keys, from F1 to F12. Do you know all the functions of function keys? Or why they are there in the first place?

just with the PC, I have used alt-F4 and alt-F12, no idea about the others!

with design, you mustnt have too many options, and eg with stories, you shouldnt have too many characters, as it leads to confusion.


with the original Apple Mac, the mouse just had one button, where they said:

as there is only one button, you cant get it wrong!

first time I tried an Amiga in a shop, I was trying to move the mouse pointer and it only moved a few pixels, in arbitrary directions. my first use of a mouse. I called the assistant, and it moved just like that! I tried, and it didnt move.

basically I thought you moved it by pressing the buttons, I had never seen hardware that you had to physically move to use it!

if I email businesses with some questions, often they only answer the first question!

even 2 questions overloads them!

Spoiler: to an off topic anecdote regarding AI,

I got someone to send me a parcel worth more than £500 by Yodel using the signature option. the idea being to force them to hand me the parcel, rather than leaving it on the doorstep where it could be stolen.

but they left it on the doorstep without getting my signature, which defeated the point.

so I contacted them to register a complaint, and got to an AI based chatbot, here is the redacted annotated dialogue:
---------------------------------------------------

If you're expecting a parcel from a retailer such as:
Very, ASOS, Virgin Media, Hello Fresh Vinted etc..
Click Here
Hi, I'm Ceri.
Please choose one of the options below.
If your order reference does not start with YOD our Direct team cannot access your order.
Does your order reference begin with YOD?
me: Yes
Great! How can I help?
Select from the categories below or type your question.
me: Other
Please type your question below. I'll help you with your query or connect you with someone who can.

me: Today I was sent a parcel with signature option, but they left it outdoors outside the house. luckily no problem, but as the contents were more than £500 it is unacceptable for a signature delivery to not hand over with signature. REF: YOD*******

I'm sorry, I didn't get that, please could you rephrase your question or select from one of the options above?

me: signature parcel was left outdoors

Sorry, I'm still learning about this topic, please click on the Chat button below to speak to an agent.
Chat to an agent
Let me pass you to a member of our team who will be happy to help.

Hello, you are chatting to Juan.

me: Hi, I had a parcel sent by signature option, but the driver left the parcel outdoors. There was no problem, but as the contents were more than £500, signature means signature.,

I am very sorry to hear this Richard.

Do you have your order reference number to hand? It will begin with YOD and can be found on your confirmation e-mail.

me: The sender reference was YOD*******

Can you give me a minute or two to look into this for you please?

me: ok

Thank you

me: I am the recipient, the sender is ***** *****

One moment please

me: the driver wasnt following a proper protocol. the tracking said 17th, I wasnt expecting it on 11th.
me( correcting error): wasnt expecting it on 13th
me: he should have checked if I was in then brought it over. Instead he brought it over, I wasnt in and he just left it there where it could have been stolen

I do apologise for the trouble caused Richard as the recipient of this order, I would advise you to liaise with the sender please. You can potentially ask the sender to either refund you or ask compensation.

me: I received the parcel without problem, its just negative feedback that Yodel arent delivering as requested, signature means signature, you cannot just leave it outside the house if it was sent by signature delivery
I will put a negative review on Trust Pilot if Yodel dont resolve this properly, you need to reprimand the driver as he is giving you a bad reputation it is a breach of contract by Yodel

I do apologise for the inconvenience Richard. I will report this matter to the management.

me: I asked the sender to use Yodel, as usually Yodel hand over the items. if you just abandon the parcel outside I may as well just use Evri as they are the worst and cheapest!

I really am sorry for the trouble caused Richard. I reported this matter to the corresponding department.

me: ok, my email address is *********** if you wish to contact me, many thanks for reporting it.

You're welcome Richard.

Is there anything else I can assist you with whilst you are online with me?

me: just to note that I paid the guy £550 including the postage where he didnt yet know the postage, so I dont know what amount he gave for the insurance. Anyway, I dont have any further enquiries, many thanks for your help.

Again my apologies for the trouble caused Richard.

Have a nice afternoon to you.
Message from Agent. Have a nice afternoon to you.

---------------------------------------------------

with that, the AI chatbot says "Sorry, I'm still learning about this topic, please click on the Chat button below to speak to an agent."

the thing is, this isnt about learning, its about comprehension and common sense.

I think even a chimpanzee would understand that if you request a signature delivery, and they dont take a signature and leave a £500 item on the doorstep, this is a problem!

and we are told that AI will soon make humans obsolete. in their imaginations maybe.

 

[Richard1234]

Unsure if it is Win11 issue or KB layout issue.

I get the " mark by holding down Shift and then pressing 2 on my KB. So: Shift + 2 = "

I am now in Win10, and the " is fine every time, and with both keyboards,
so it is a Win11 problem!

also Win 10 does have HDR, see this screenshot:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/win10/win10_HDR.jpg

also, notice in this screenshot, that I have the taskbar on the right which you cant do with win11, but as you said maybe via a 3rd party interface.

I am just backing up passwords and favourites, before starting on the Linux Mint install.

 

[Aeacus]

what is the idea of "toggle BBcode"?

what happens with the default versus if you toggle the BBcode?

By default, BBcode is enabled in the reply type area. If you disable it, all BBcode formating tags are visible.

I often disable BBcode while typing the reply, since i like to manually type out some BBcode tags. Namely when i insert images or type the Spoiler tags.
If BBcode is enabled, entire image shows up. But when disabled, only tags and image link is shown, making the reply area neater. Also, sometimes when i copy info over, the BBcode format is copied with the text, messing up the flow of written data. So, i then disable BBcode and remove the tags that mess up the text.

But once you post the reply, BBcode is automatically applied, if you have BBcode tags in your reply.

how many draft saves are done?
how do you reload an earlier draft?

I haven't tested the amount of it. Since i finish my reply before i move to another topic.

As far as reload goes, that happens automatically when you open up the topic where you had the draft saved. Once you scroll down to reply type area, your previously written text is loaded in. There is no need to manually load the draft.

what's the way to optimise the memory profile for the current memory?

Well, enabling the built-in RAM OC profile (EXPO) is easiest way. But you can still optimize RAM timings by tightening them.

Short video about it. Either watch entire thing, or from 2:34;

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yed-a9vqTYc


But to validate it, you have to use memtest86 with at least 2 full passes (4 full passes is considered acceptable), to see if RAM throws errors or not. And this validation takes time, A LOT of time. E.g for 2x 8GB, one full pass takes ~2,5h. Since you have 2x 48 GB, one full pass would take ~15h. 4x full passes would take ~60 hours. And you need to validate it every time you manually change RAM timings to see if it holds true.
Due to the long validating time of memtest86, many people doesn't bother tightening their RAM timings. Most are happy when built-in RAM OC profile works and they doesn't have to run JEDEC default speeds (which for DDR5 is 4800 MT/s).

Now, for 6600 MT/s frequency, the EXPO profile timings for your RAM are: 32-39-39-76 at 1.4V. If you want to tighten the timings, whereby frequency and voltage remains same, then maybe 31-38-38-70 may work. But tRAS value must be at least double of CAS Latency value. Preferably even more. Mythical timings for your RAM at 6600 MT/s and at 1.4V, would be: 30-35-35-62 but i'm sure it will never be stable. Maybe it is stable at higher voltage and/or lower frequency. I don't know. It is unknown territory. You have to validate it by memtest86 to know for sure.

can be worth doing a few times, as that forces you to become aware of what things are.

If you dabble around UEFI too much, you can brick your system. So, other than enabling RAM OC profile, setting fan profiles and change boot order, i don't advise novice users to do anything else within UEFI. That is, unless you want the test first and lesson afterwards, with an impact to your wallet.

In a similar sense; when you buy a car, you can fine tune and optimize the car engine as well. E.g to get more horsepower/torque out of it. Or perhaps even reduce fuel consumption. Are you going to do that with your car? Or do you run the factory default configurations?

with the 2010 Gigabyte mobo, if I power off at the mains, then power on at the mains, I can start the PC by just pressing any key on the PS2 keyboard.

You need to look that from UEFI. For sure there are PC awake via KB/mice. Unsure if there is PC power-on as well.

Another thing is, PS/2 KB input signals interrupt whatever CPU is doing and are forcing CPU to deal with KB input. USB KB, in the other hand, operates in package mode, where packages wait in line, to be processed by CPU. So, there is some additional latency there. Also, many USB KBs doesn't work until OS is booted into. Meaning that during POST, you can't even enter into UEFI.

also the wireless one has BOTH @ and " above the 2, but if I use shift 2, I just get the @,

Besides ", i too have @ under 2 key as well. But to get @, i have to hold down CTRL, ALT and then press 2. Command: CTRL + ALT + 2 = @

german also has that for a, o and u, and capital versions also, but I am not sure of the escape sequence for those, I tend to cut and paste those symbols. with german, you can put ae, oe and ue instead.

I also tend to copy/paste special characters, rather than typing it out via ALT + XXXX command. E.g like ALT + 0176 to get ° .

that's an annoying thing about the 2023 HP laptop, no numeric keypad.

Since laptops idea is portability, laptops often can't have full-sized KB. Hence why most laptops doesn't have numeric pad. And some even doesn't have the dedicated page keys (Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down), instead, those are embedded under other keys, activated by holding down Fn (function) key and then pressing the corresponding key.

no idea at all!

Idea of the Scroll Lock is, that when enabled, the arrow keys scroll the contents of a text window instead of moving the cursor. But this function is rarely used and supported at current date. Especially since we now have mice to accurately place the cursor where needed.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll_Lock

just with the PC, I have used alt-F4 and alt-F12, no idea about the others!

Few others that i know/use:
F1 - brings up Help screen on many programs. (I know it, but doesn't use it.)
F2 - when file or folder is selected, it enables the name change of that file/folder.
F5 - refresh of the explorer window or internet browser window.
F11 - full-screen mode for web browser, when using Firefox.
F12 - captures in-game fullscreen screenshot when playing games via Steam.

ALT + F4 - closes the opened window/application. Can lead to data corruption when closing the game, without properly exiting first.

Full list of their functions here + other helpful Windows commands,
link: https://unacademy.com/content/keral...-word-processing/shortcut-keys-function-keys/

Spoiler: A bit of off-topic

ok, didnt know you had professional training in this. in the UK, electricians rake in money, just to have anything done will cost you maybe £200, they can earn £400 a day! by doing one job in the morning, and one in the afternoon.

I asked an electrician some prices, he said:

install a new double plug with cable set onto wall: £50
extend a double plug on wall to a further double plug £30
install a new light switch £40
install a brand new batten light without bulb £35
convert a ceiling pendant light to batten light, reuse bulb, £25
rewire a double light switch so that both switches are down when on £10
remove a wall light £25

a money fest!

Yes, works of electrician are expensive.

In these nick of the woods, only certified electricians can offer their services. And electrician has to renew their certificate every 2 years, which also includes some additional training they have to pass. On the flip side, hiring certified electrician means that all works made by certified electrician come with 2 years of warranty.

Did look the prices and biggest electricity company has them:
€78 for 1st working hour, €54 for any following working hour, per electrician + cost of materials.
€54 for expedited service + same hourly rate as normal.

Small certified firm:
€51 for 1st working hour, €36 for any following working hour, per electrician.
€50 for emergency service call-out (electrician arrives within 2 hours, available 24/7) + €51 hourly rate, per electrician + cost of materials.

Personally, i like to deal with small firms. Far less bureaucracy, service is faster and electrician is far more friendlier. Not to mention cheaper than big firm.

I got someone to send me a parcel worth more than £500 by Yodel using the signature option. the idea being to force them to hand me the parcel, rather than leaving it on the doorstep where it could be stolen.

but they left it on the doorstep without getting my signature, which defeated the point.

Courier services work here in a very simple method:
1. At the morning of delivery date, i get a SMS to my phone, stating the delivery window time. E.g between 11:00-13:00.
2. Call before arrival.
When courier is about to deliver parcel/box to me, before even starting to drive at my location, courier always calls me beforehand, to ask if either i'm at home, or if there is someone at home who can accept the delivery. Courier also tells the time when they will be arriving, usually within 2-10mins.

If i'm not at home or there isn't anyone to accept the delivery, courier takes my delivery back to depot, whereby 2nd delivery date is offered. If 2nd date/time doesn't suit me, i can either:
* let the package to be delivered to parcel machine (so i can go and collect it at my convenience)
* let the package sent back to the sender

There are also additional security features one can opt-in with couriers. Sometimes, i have to sign that i received the delivery. Other times, special code is sent to my phone, with the delivery time SMS. And once courier arrives, i have to tell the security code to the courier, before they hand over the delivery. This ensures that the right person gets the delivery. And depending on the delivery security option, only the person who made the order can accept the delivery. So, even a family member can't accept the delivery. Sometimes, i've had to show my ID, so that courier can confirm that i'm the correct recipient.

NEVER is the delivery left outside, unattended. If there isn't a person to accept the delivery, delivery won't be made.
Due to this, porch pirates are not a thing here.

I sometimes wonder, do courier services in other countries really doesn't care about package thefts? By leaving deliveries just outside, behind the door.

 

[Richard1234]

first a progress report, decided to work into the night on this, backed up the passwords and favourites, and found an add on for Firefox that enables backing up of history, called "History Export", have exported but not tried importing with that.

with Linux Mint, decided to risk the OEM install for manufacturers at the initial GRUB menu, there are lots of steps, till the option (a) to install alongside existing OSes, an option to overwrite these, and an option to choose the partition. decided to try (a), this used up the entire remaining space, which was a bit more than 1TB.

now with Linux Mint installed, the graphics is much better, pixel perfect, whereas with the "try without installing" DVD, it is very blurry 800 x 600 resolution. but now pixel perfect and fonts too small, but I made them bigger via
start button
-> preferences
-> appearance
-> fonts

on rebooting, it just went to win11 with the reboot to win10 option.

rebooted again pressing F11 repeatedly and it does have an Ubuntu option. with that in tiny font, it has 2 windows options, tried one and it boots directly to win11 with the win10 reboot option, I forgot to try the other windows option, to see if it boots directly to win10, will try that later.

with the Linux mint option, it wasnt allowing me to modify some disks, as its not yet for the end user. thus next time I wont use the OEM install. with the disk management software, I tried the resize partition option, but that refused to resize as the partition was active.

decided to reboot Linux from the DVD "try without installing", and now was able to resize the disk to 300GB, as that is a different installation of the same OS, and thus the other partition now inactive, rebooted, and it worked. the resizing took a bit of time.

I am just wondering whether I can resize the win10 and win11 installs? rather than reinstalling from scratch?

possibly I will install the graphics card next, and then to reinstalling everything from scratch.

I found how to export the Thunderbird email client settings, and then also found that both the win10 and win11 Thunderbird installs had the same colour tags, where you can tag an email header in different colours to make it easier to locate emails with important info, where you can filter by colour. so these tags probably are done at the server and not at Thunderbird!

By default, BBcode is enabled in the reply type area. If you disable it, all BBcode formating tags are visible.

ok, tried it just now, and it does make the red font user header done by tags, eg trying it just now I created a quote by an imaginary user!

imaginary quote

I wont do that again, just this once as an experiment.

this could be useful when one cannot get the quoting to work, which sometimes happens, possibly when editting an existing message.

I often disable BBcode while typing the reply, since i like to manually type out some BBcode tags. Namely when i insert images or type the Spoiler tags.
If BBcode is enabled, entire image shows up. But when disabled, only tags and image link is shown, making the reply area neater. Also, sometimes when i copy info over, the BBcode format is copied with the text, messing up the flow of written data. So, i then disable BBcode and remove the tags that mess up the text.

But once you post the reply, BBcode is automatically applied, if you have BBcode tags in your reply.

I think BB must mean "bulletin board", where BBS's were pre-cursors of the internet, where you dialled a phone number with the modem, and then could download and upload files directly from someone's computer, not via the internet. I was using these approx 1993.

I haven't tested the amount of it. Since i finish my reply before i move to another topic.

As far as reload goes, that happens automatically when you open up the topic where you had the draft saved. Once you scroll down to reply type area, your previously written text is loaded in. There is no need to manually load the draft.


Well, enabling the built-in RAM OC profile (EXPO) is easiest way. But you can still optimize RAM timings by tightening them.

Short video about it. Either watch entire thing, or from 2:34;

have watched the entire vid, I think in the earlier topic you gave a link on this,

is there an automatic way to load the offical values?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yed-a9vqTYc


But to validate it, you have to use memtest86 with at least 2 full passes (4 full passes is considered acceptable), to see if RAM throws errors or not. And this validation takes time, A LOT of time. E.g for 2x 8GB, one full pass takes ~2,5h. Since you have 2x 48 GB, one full pass would take ~15h. 4x full passes would take ~60 hours. And you need to validate it every time you manually change RAM timings to see if it holds true.
Due to the long validating time of memtest86, many people doesn't bother tightening their RAM timings. Most are happy when built-in RAM OC profile works and they doesn't have to run JEDEC default speeds (which for DDR5 is 4800 MT/s).

Now, for 6600 MT/s frequency, the EXPO profile timings for your RAM are: 32-39-39-76 at 1.4V. If you want to tighten the timings, whereby frequency and voltage remains same, then maybe 31-38-38-70 may work. But tRAS value must be at least double of CAS Latency value. Preferably even more. Mythical timings for your RAM at 6600 MT/s and at 1.4V, would be: 30-35-35-62 but i'm sure it will never be stable. Maybe it is stable at higher voltage and/or lower frequency. I don't know. It is unknown territory. You have to validate it by memtest86 to know for sure.

I think I will keep to the official values, but it is useful to know the possibility to go faster.

are you saying 32-39-39-76 + 1.4V are the official numbers?

I forgot to look at what was written on the memory modules.

not sure what you mean by EXPO,

with this kind of thing, my attitude is that even if you overclock, if you wait some months the new hardware of that future time at the same price point will be some steps faster, thus you can never win and its like trying to get to the setting sun on the horizon!

now in the old days eg 1994, technology progressed much slower, and you could buy some impressive hardware, and it would remain impressive for years. eg I bought a 68030 "accelerator" card for my Amiga 1200.

the moment you buy something, it starts drifting slowly to obsolescence, where your overclocked machine will be outdone by the unoverclocked machines down the road of time.

its a dilemma, similar also to the second hand car dilemma, that with each year, the price of a car drops further, eg in the UK the moment you buy a car new, the price drops 20%, because 20% VAT is only on new cars, each year it becomes cheaper. but at some point it becomes difficult to get spare parts. so at which year should you buy the car?

Spoiler: expand for off topic comments

there are some people who buy a brand new car on finance, and then refinance every year, that way they always drive a brand new car with the latest technology, but they pay the finance forever. they explained this to me when I got given a no commitment quote for a brand new Renault, where I could choose what technology it had, eg sunroof, satnav, and what colour, metallic red was the most expensive, something like £500 then metallic blue, £400 extra, then all the other colours, and I think silver colour gratis! whereas with 2nd hand you are stuck with whatever the original buyer chose, usually silver, without the extras.

a newer car has more advanced technology, eg my car from 2013 has a satnav built in, although that isnt much use as the roads arent updated, and entire roundabouts have been created which arent on it! it also has 2 trip "computers", which you can reset to 0, which show mileage in 0.1 mile steps, very useful, and show miles per gallon, unreliable, better to just see the exact amount of fuel when refuelling, and the mileage covered since the previous refuelling, then you know the exact miles per gallon.

Peugeot told me the hand brake, pedals, steering wheel are all fake, where they send the signal electronically to machinery which does the work, where you can drive with the handbrake on, where it gives warning sounds! basically power assisted steering wheel etc. old era cars I think you had to personally supply the power. my dad's Peugeot 504 of 1978, you had to wind down the windows physically!

they told me also no danger if when going at 70mph, I went into reverse gear! but that old era cars that would be major trouble!

because the firmware filters out the error!


its like with my PC build, if I wait, USB4 will eventually become a standard socket, and keep waiting and USB4 drives will appear. but the thing is if I wait till that, if I wait even longer, USB5 will eventually become the standard, and keep waiting and USB5 drives will appear, eventually if I wait long enough, hell will freeze over!

this is a philosophical problem of machines and technology.

eg I had XP, and opted out of Vista, 7, 8, etc, and only opted in at 10, and didnt have to learn a load of things which became obsolete, other than XP.

I look at the overclocking like that, if I really want a faster speed, to then delay purchasing by 6 months and not overclock!

I think 10 is a seminal version of Windows, as it is the cross over version from 32 bit to 64 bit, so is special. and I will focus on it. I think 11 will get superceded by a better version and soon forgotten like Vista. nobody talks of Vista!

with the computing degree, the lecturers told us you shouldnt worry about a factor of 2 with programming, better if the program is 30% slower, and easier to maintain and enhance. than a faster program which is impossible to alter. they said you shouldnt waste time trying to make a program 10% faster.

I prefer to just keep to the official recommended amounts, eg to keep to the speed limits, I dont let the satnav speed go above the speed limit, but the speedometer I allow to go above, so it might be 73mph on the speedometer, and 70mph on the satnav.

for an insurance claim, if you are speeding, you are then at fault. that is the most important reason for not speeding!


some people become tax exiles to pay less tax, I just accept the official tax, and only reduce my tax by what is allowed by not leaving the country!

having to leave the country seems like a hindrance. I feel that overclocking not covered by reliability guarantees is like going to a tax haven to pay less tax. tax havens are unregulated places with no social protections.

If you dabble around UEFI too much, you can brick your system. So, other than enabling RAM OC profile, setting fan profiles and change boot order, i don't advise novice users to do anything else within UEFI. That is, unless you want the test first and lesson afterwards, with an impact to your wallet.

In a similar sense; when you buy a car, you can fine tune and optimize the car engine as well. E.g to get more horsepower/torque out of it. Or perhaps even reduce fuel consumption. Are you going to do that with your car? Or do you run the factory default configurations?

I learnt to drive in 2015, an era when people no longer do that. but the people who learnt in the 1980s and earlier would dabble with their cars.

You need to look that from UEFI. For sure there are PC awake via KB/mice.

with the MSI mobos, how do I navigate to that with the UEFI?

Unsure if there is PC power-on as well.

Another thing is, PS/2 KB input signals interrupt whatever CPU is doing and are forcing CPU to deal with KB input. USB KB, in the other hand, operates in package mode, where packages wait in line, to be processed by CPU. So, there is some additional latency there. Also, many USB KBs doesn't work until OS is booted into. Meaning that during POST, you can't even enter into UEFI.

the wireless keyboard wont work for that with the 2010 mobo, havent tried a USB keyboard, just a PS2 one.

some mobos emulate legacy hardware such as PS2 and floppies via USB. where they have firmware USB drivers for fundamental hardware such as floppies. eg my boot programs written for the ancient PC floppy hardware, work correctly with USB floppies.

where legacy floppies use a unique hardware protocol just for floppy disk drives, eg they have special commands to recalibrate the drives, as the reading hardware starts to drift, and needs to be reset sometimes.

I think with disk drives, the mobo firmware handles a subset of FAT directly, that is probably why the new partition format has some strange extra partitions, those possibly mimic FAT, enabling the booting to happen. because if you boot from a USB disk, there are no OS drivers to do that, as those have to be loaded from the boot disk, a catch 22 problem.

I have some mice which have a USB to PS2 adapter, I forget which way round it goes.

Besides ", i too have @ under 2 key as well. But to get @, i have to hold down CTRL, ALT and then press 2. Command: CTRL + ALT + 2 = @

I tried ctrl + alt + 2 and got this: ²
which is a new trick to say x² rather than x^2!

I also tend to copy/paste special characters, rather than typing it out via ALT + XXXX command. E.g like ALT + 0176 to get ° .


Since laptops idea is portability, laptops often can't have full-sized KB. Hence why most laptops doesn't have numeric pad. And some even doesn't have the dedicated page keys (Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down), instead, those are embedded under other keys, activated by holding down Fn (function) key and then pressing the corresponding key.

the 2023 HP doesnt, the 2007 Fujitsu-Siemens, has 1 column of keys to the right, which are Scroll lock, Home, PgUp, PgDn, End with no other characters on those.

Idea of the Scroll Lock is, that when enabled, the arrow keys scroll the contents of a text window instead of moving the cursor. But this function is rarely used and supported at current date. Especially since we now have mice to accurately place the cursor where needed.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll_Lock


Few others that i know/use:
F1 - brings up Help screen on many programs. (I know it, but doesn't use it.)
F2 - when file or folder is selected, it enables the name change of that file/folder.
F5 - refresh of the explorer window or internet browser window.
F11 - full-screen mode for web browser, when using Firefox.
F12 - captures in-game fullscreen screenshot when playing games via Steam.

ok, I tried those, and F2, F5, F11 work and look like useful tricks.

I put stickers on the keyboard for tricks, eg I have the codes for °£€ on a sticker on the wireless keyboard.

ALT + F4 - closes the opened window/application. Can lead to data corruption when closing the game, without properly exiting first.

I use Alt-F4 on the desktop to shut down the computer, doesnt work with the wireless keyboard but does with the Lidl

Full list of their functions here + other helpful Windows commands,
link: https://unacademy.com/content/keral...-word-processing/shortcut-keys-function-keys/

Spoiler: A bit of off-topic

Yes, works of electrician are expensive.

In these nick of the woods, only certified electricians can offer their services. And electrician has to renew their certificate every 2 years, which also includes some additional training they have to pass. On the flip side, hiring certified electrician means that all works made by certified electrician come with 2 years of warranty.

Spoiler: A bit of off-topic

Spoiler: expand for off topic on electrics

kitchen electrics in the UK can only be done by certified electricians, namely Part P of the building regulations. its because kitchen electrics is very high power, so needs more advanced shielding,

all new kitchen installs need a modern fusebox called a "consumer unit" which shields both equipment and users, and a switch trips rather than a fuse blowing. eg mowing the lawn with a mains powered hedge trimmer, I noticed some climbing plants to the left, went for them, then some further to the left, eventually going full circle and cutting the mains cable! there was a brief sound and flame. the modern fusebox had tripped. luckily just the extension cable was cut, the integral cable intact. reconnected that, untripped the fusebox and everything fine, and I hadnt got a shock.

amateurs can do non kitchen electrics, but you need to be careful that if damage is caused, the customer has to claim on professional indemnity insurance otherwise they can take legal action, and this insurance is only given to appropriately certified people.

thus it is for insurance reasons that you should only use certified people, in particular you have to check the tradesman is insured.

it is unprofessional to do physical works without insurance, eg what if you break something valuable?

same way by law in the UK all cars have to be insured, unless you get a SORN (statutory off road notice, where you arent allowed to use the car on legal roads, but could probably use it on a private farm).

this is why big firms do many things through lawyers, because if a mistake is made, they can claim on the lawyers insurance.

eg to sack someone, the lawyer will deal with this. because the person might claim unfair dismissal and win, and you have to payout a hefty sum and go bankrupt.

you will be hearing from our lawyers!

Did look the prices and biggest electricity company has them:
€78 for 1st working hour, €54 for any following working hour, per electrician + cost of materials.
€54 for expedited service + same hourly rate as normal.

Small certified firm:
€51 for 1st working hour, €36 for any following working hour, per electrician.
€50 for emergency service call-out (electrician arrives within 2 hours, available 24/7) + €51 hourly rate, per electrician + cost of materials.

Personally, i like to deal with small firms. Far less bureaucracy, service is faster and electrician is far more friendlier. Not to mention cheaper than big firm.

Spoiler: expand for off topic comments about electricians

these days I check the online reviews, eg Google Maps gives reviews of each firm. in particular read the worst reviews, to assess whether those are valid.

in the UK by law registered firms have to give their registered address on all communications, whether an advert or a website or an email, so I generally reject any firm which doesnt give an address in an advert eg junk mail.

small firms can be good or bad, as can big firms.

when I had my kitchen renovated, the guy at the kitchen shop told me that a good electrician never advertises, because they get more business than they can handle via repeat custom and recommendation.

Courier services work here in a very simple method:
1. At the morning of delivery date, i get a SMS to my phone, stating the delivery window time. E.g between 11:00-13:00.
2. Call before arrival.
When courier is about to deliver parcel/box to me, before even starting to drive at my location, courier always calls me beforehand, to ask if either i'm at home, or if there is someone at home who can accept the delivery. Courier also tells the time when they will be arriving, usually within 2-10mins.

If i'm not at home or there isn't anyone to accept the delivery, courier takes my delivery back to depot, whereby 2nd delivery date is offered. If 2nd date/time doesn't suit me, i can either:
* let the package to be delivered to parcel machine (so i can go and collect it at my convenience)
* let the package sent back to the sender

There are also additional security features one can opt-in with couriers.

here, the sender has to pay extra for each opt in, eg guaranteed delivery timewindow, signature,

Sometimes, i have to sign that i received the delivery. Other times, special code is sent to my phone, with the delivery time SMS.

only had a code once, possibly one of the PC components.

And once courier arrives, i have to tell the security code to the courier, before they hand over the delivery. This ensures that the right person gets the delivery. And depending on the delivery security option, only the person who made the order can accept the delivery. So, even a family member can't accept the delivery.

this is partly to prevent customer fraud, where someone accepts delivery and then alleges the item wasnt delivered, and wants their money back. this is more important for expensive items. for cheap items, people wont try to defraud, and most people are honest.

also to prevent courier fraud, where the courier pretends they delivered, and keeps the item for themself!

the courier probably doesnt know the security code, and has to enter this, so once entered that means it was received by the customer.

Sometimes, i've had to show my ID, so that courier can confirm that i'm the correct recipient.

NEVER is the delivery left outside, unattended. If there isn't a person to accept the delivery, delivery won't be made.
Due to this, porch pirates are not a thing here.

I sometimes wonder, do courier services in other countries really doesn't care about package thefts? By leaving deliveries just outside, behind the door.

it happens a lot here, this is why I try to get all my amazon purchases at collection points, which also means I dont need to wait around all day, AND its cheaper. eg when I bought Norton 360 to get anti track for free, by going for collection, it was free postage,
with delivery it would be an extra 4.99! because the delivery van has to drive down several roads to deliver a small cardboard envelope.

amazon appear to only do returns via post offices here, where they must have a deal with the post office. but for collections, they use other shops.

 

[Aeacus]

I am just wondering whether I can resize the win10 and win11 installs? rather than reinstalling from scratch?

If you're asking to resize the Win partition, then technically you can. But i advise against it, since it can lead to all sorts of problems, including OS not being bootable anymore.

Better to do it properly off the bat, e.g:
* format
* unallocate all partitions
* allocate new partitions in correct sizes
* install OS to new (reduced) partition

I think BB must mean "bulletin board"

Yes.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode

not sure what you mean by EXPO,

AMD EXPO is:

The AMD Extended Profiles for Overclocking (AMD EXPO Technology) was developed to allow for user-friendly memory overclocking support of all types of memory, giving users an easy path to accelerated power to achieve accelerated memory in their system. Created for AMD Ryzen™ processors on socket AM5, users get easy DDR5 memory overclocking with AMD Ryzen-optimized profiles for the best performance and experience.

Source: https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/technologies/expo.html

is there an automatic way to load the offical values?

Yes, when you select the EXPO profile. It is called A-XMP profile in your UEFI.

are you saying 32-39-39-76 + 1.4V are the official numbers?

For your RAM, you only have one A-XMP profile, which sets your RAM from;
4800 Mhz, 40-40-40-77, 1.1V
to
6600 Mhz, 32-39-39-76, 1.4V

You just need to select A-XMP Profile 1;

now in the old days eg 1994, technology progressed much slower, and you could buy some impressive hardware, and it would remain impressive for years. eg I bought a 68030 "accelerator" card for my Amiga 1200.

True. However, hardware and it's capabilities doesn't need to be "impressive". "Good enough" is more than adequate for day-to-day usage.
E.g my main PC, with i5-6600K, despite CPU being now 8 years old, is still good enough for my use.

with the MSI mobos, how do I navigate to that with the UEFI?

In your UEFI, you have Help section. Open it up and read it.

In my UEFI, i have it under: Settings - Advanced - Wake Up Event Setup

I tried ctrl + alt + 2 and got this: ²
which is a new trick to say x² rather than x^2!

Then yes, you have different KB layout.

Like i said, i have Estonian layout. But Nordic layout would also put " and @ under 2.

Spoiler: Special character commands on my KB layout

Number row, from left to right;
ˇ
SHIFT + ˇ = ~
SHIFT + 1 = !
SHIFT + 2 = "
CTRL + ALT + 2 = @
SHIFT + 3 = #
CTRL + ALT + 3 = £
SHIFT + 4 = ¤
CTRL + ALT + 4 = $
SHIFT + 5 = %
CTRL + ALT + 5 = €
SHIFT + 6 = &
SHIFT + 7 = /
CTRL + ALT + 7 = {
SHIFT + 8 = (
CTRL + ALT + 8 = [
SHIFT + 9 = )
CTRL + ALT + 9 = ]
SHIFT + 0 = =
CTRL + ALT + 0 = }
+
SHIFT + + = ?
´
SHIFT + ´ = `
Backspace key

Some special chars are under letters as well, e.g:
CTRL + ALT + e = €
CTRL + ALT + ä = ^
CTRL + ALT + õ =§

And some others as well:
'
SHIFT + ' = *
CTRL + ALT + ' = ½
,
SHIFT + , = ;
.
SHIFT + . = :
-
SHIFT + - = _

Now, i can not produce < , > and | since i've binded my "g" letter to that key (original g letter key doesn't work anymore, after a small spill of liquid years ago).
Without rebind, it works like so:
<
SHIFT + < = >
CTRL + ALT + < = |

I use Alt-F4 on the desktop to shut down the computer, doesnt work with the wireless keyboard but does with the Lidl

I've sometimes use the so called "3 fingers" command: CTRL + ALT + DELETE to bring up Task Manager. On Win7 and later OSes, it brings up additional menu, where you can select Task Manager, Shut Down the PC and other options as well.

I also often use:
CTRL + C (copy)
CTRL + V (paste)
CTRL + X (cut)
CTRL + Z (undo)
to make my life easier when doing my tasks.

Spoiler: Off-topic part

similar also to the second hand car dilemma, that with each year, the price of a car drops further, eg in the UK the moment you buy a car new, the price drops 20%, because 20% VAT is only on new cars, each year it becomes cheaper. but at some point it becomes difficult to get spare parts. so at which year should you buy the car?

Car purchase depends if you want to only use the car for few years and then sell it. Or if you be the forever owner of the car.

I'm the latter type. The car i have, i will keep it as long as i can. Since i've kept my car in a very good condition, i expect it to last a long time.

there are some people who buy a brand new car on finance, and then refinance every year, that way they always drive a brand new car with the latest technology, but they pay the finance forever.

Yes. I even know some such people personally.

To be able to do that, you need to have good income, so that the bank would be willing to finance the car for you. Those people who's income is below the threshold of what banks require for car finance, have to buy and use pre-owned cars.

If given choice, i do not like to drive around with brand new car, financed by the bank. Since in the end of the day, the car belongs to the bank and i essentially drive around with rental car. With financed car, i'm only allowed to visit those repair shops that are allowed by the bank. Also, i can not customize the car to my likening. At best, i need to ask bank's approval for all and any changes to the car. At worst, i can't even make minor changes (e.g different brand tires).

So, my biggest beef of financed cars is, that the car isn't MINE. I need the car to be mine. Since i don't have €50000 in my back pocket to pay for the brand new car in whole, i drive around with pre-owned (used) car, that i was able to afford. And since my car is mine and mine alone, i have it customized to my likening.

I learnt to drive in 2015, an era when people no longer do that. but the people who learnt in the 1980s and earlier would dabble with their cars.

I learned to drive in 2005. And while cars of that era are relatively simple mechanics wise, tinkering with the engine/drive-train isn't to my likening. I prefer PC hardware instead.

 

[Richard1234]

progress report: at the moment I have been trying to capture data from the 2010 PC, I found a way to capture the Firefox history, because I cannot get new addons for my XP Firefox, eg there is an addon for history. the trick is to view history, then on the left the history appears as folders, but the bookmarks also appear as folders, where you can copy and paste contents of those folders to a bookmarks folder, and now when you save bookmarks the history appears as bookmarks. This in fact will help me locate some youtube vids where I didnt bookmark them.

now on Windows 10 32 bit, which in fact is moderately different from Windows 10 64 bit, you cant copy and paste from history folders to bookmark folders, but when you select the history items, you can right select "Bookmark pages..." to a bookmarks folder. The History Export addon would also work, but I now prefer this MO, as the bookmarks interface is much nicer with the favicons for websites, which make it much easier to locate say Youtube vids, as those have a red favicon. you can also get a lower level form of the history, by doing a file search for places.sqlite, which located 4 of these. there is some software which will directly process the Firefox history, and also will process the places.sqlite files, just at the text level:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html

and it will export this to .csv format also.

I searched around and found a PS2 to USB adapter:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/tower/PS2_to_USB_adapter.jpg
http://www.directemails.info/tom/tower/PS2_to_USB_adapter2.jpg

this suggests that PS2 to USB is straightforward, and probably they designed the USB mouse and keyboard protocol to be compatible with this, where I think possibly if you connect a USB mouse or keyboard directly to the mobo USB sockets, that it will be the same as PS2. The USB floppies seem also to be identical to old era ones.

it would need experiments to confirm deny this theory, but essentially the firmware probably has some basic USB driver, and also some basic FAT driver, because its a bootstrap problem, that you need USB mouse, keyboard and sometimes disk to boot, but USB is only available AFTER the bootstrap code has loaded and run for some time. thus you need some USB and filesystem support in the firmware in order to start the system, but it doesnt need to be fully fledged.

I remember long ago reading that with FAT, you can program directly to access some files, without needing to program the entire FAT filesystem. which enables boot code to access some files. Its something I ought to study, but there are so many things I ought to study, that only a fragment will get studied!

the plan at the moment is to not immediately reformat everything, but I want to install a second Windows 10 64 bit first, where the OSes are:

Win10 ; Win11 ; Linux Mint ; Win10 ; maybe Win11

in order to see how the Win10 deals with the 3 preceding ones, also how it deals with two Win10's, and then same with the 2nd Win11,

ALSO with the 2nd Win10, I will do some experiments with Firefox, to study what happens if I import different history, password, and favourites files, what happens to the earlier ones?

as it will all be reformatted later, it doesnt matter if it goes wrong. I have already found out that the OEM install of Linux Mint is to be avoided, as its a 2 stage install, one for the OEM company, and then a secondary one for the user.

If you're asking to resize the Win partition, then technically you can. But i advise against it, since it can lead to all sorts of problems, including OS not being bootable anymore.

Better to do it properly off the bat, e.g:
* format
* unallocate all partitions
* allocate new partitions in correct sizes
* install OS to new (reduced) partition

ok, I'll reformat and install from scratch. 64 bit windows 10 also introduces some extra partitions, where I wouldnt know what to do with those. "dont dabble with what you dont understand"!

Yes.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode

ok, I didnt know it was so involved. I used them approx 1993, to get Amiga software with my modem. and then places such as AOL approx 1995. AOL was somewhere between BBS's and internet forums. it was forums, but not proper internet, you just dialled up with some software. today it probably is internet forums.

AMD EXPO is:

Source: https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/technologies/expo.html


Yes, when you select the EXPO profile. It is called A-XMP profile in your UEFI.


For your RAM, you only have one A-XMP profile, which sets your RAM from;
4800 Mhz, 40-40-40-77, 1.1V
to
6600 Mhz, 32-39-39-76, 1.4V

You just need to select A-XMP Profile 1;

but I would just click the "1"?

if I do things correctly, will that large font 4800 become 6600?

also what are the fTPM 2.0, ErP Ready options?

True. However, hardware and it's capabilities doesn't need to be "impressive". "Good enough" is more than adequate for day-to-day usage.
E.g my main PC, with i5-6600K, despite CPU being now 8 years old, is still good enough for my use.

Spoiler: expand for slightly off topic ideas

it does depend on the era! in the early 1990s, hardware was so much slower, that eg going from the 68000 to the 68020 was a major improvement, and going from the 68020 to the 68030 a major improvement, where all kinds of things noticeably faster and no longer slow.
but by the time you reach 2004 when I bought my first PC, which was a low end HP Pavilion with Intel Celeron, I was dumbfounded by the ATi Radeon Chimp and Butterfly demo, as that was way beyond anything I had imagined.

at that point in time, even the low end rubbish was high quality! where that HP Pavilion was probably more powerful than our uni mainframe!

in the Amiga 500 era, the Acorn Archimedes had the Virus 3D game by David Braben as a flagship program, where the idea was that you couldnt do that on an Amiga 500 or an Atari ST. but eventually because the Archimedes wasnt selling, he redid it for the Amiga and Atari, and it was just as impressive. so in fact it wasnt the impressiveness of the Acorn Archimedes hardware with the original ARM chip, but was the impressiveness of the programming.

In your UEFI, you have Help section. Open it up and read it.

its of limited use! eg I looked up fTPM and it doesnt say anything!

In my UEFI, i have it under: Settings - Advanced - Wake Up Event Setup

I will have a look, as mentioned its possible that a cabled USB keyboard or mouse attached to mobo USB will work like PS2, but if you connect it via a hub, that might not work. wireless and bluetooth I think wont work, as those only become available after the desktop has loaded.

Then yes, you have different KB layout.

Like i said, i have Estonian layout. But Nordic layout would also put " and @ under 2.

Spoiler: Special character commands on my KB layout

Number row, from left to right;
ˇ
SHIFT + ˇ = ~
SHIFT + 1 = !
SHIFT + 2 = "
CTRL + ALT + 2 = @
SHIFT + 3 = #
CTRL + ALT + 3 = £
SHIFT + 4 = ¤
CTRL + ALT + 4 = $
SHIFT + 5 = %
CTRL + ALT + 5 = €
SHIFT + 6 = &
SHIFT + 7 = /
CTRL + ALT + 7 = {
SHIFT + 8 = (
CTRL + ALT + 8 = [
SHIFT + 9 = )
CTRL + ALT + 9 = ]
SHIFT + 0 = =
CTRL + ALT + 0 = }
+
SHIFT + + = ?
´
SHIFT + ´ = `
Backspace key

Some special chars are under letters as well, e.g:
CTRL + ALT + e = €
CTRL + ALT + ä = ^
CTRL + ALT + õ =§

And some others as well:
'
SHIFT + ' = *
CTRL + ALT + ' = ½
,
SHIFT + , = ;
.
SHIFT + . = :
-
SHIFT + - = _

Spoiler: Special character commands on my KB layout

some are similar, and with some my keymap must be different from what is on the keyboard,

here is a photo of my higher quality wireless keyboard:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/tower/wireless_keyboard.jpg

one problem is a very confusing alt key, which has another symbol on it, and so far I havent deciphered that.

the prt screen, scroll lock and pause break keys have been repurposed for accessing 3 PCs, and those original keys have been shunted right above the numeric keypad, but with hieroglyphs instead of text, and in a different order, because the screen capture is now second from the left, whereas normally it is leftmost.

I chose this keyboard specifically to have a USB C recharging, and not AA or AAA recharging. as the lithium ion recharging charge lasts much longer,

I have a USB C rechargeable torch and also lamp by Stanley, where they also do AA (or AAA?) ones very similar.

I use the lamp when trying to attach the SATA cable through the jungle of cables!

because it provides ambient light, whereas the torch is too directed.

Now, i can not produce < , > and | since i've binded my "g" letter to that key (original g letter key doesn't work anymore, after a small spill of liquid years ago).
Without rebind, it works like so:
<
SHIFT + < = >
CTRL + ALT + < = |

< and > are important, as you need them for maths,

I've sometimes use the so called "3 fingers" command: CTRL + ALT + DELETE to bring up Task Manager. On Win7 and later OSes, it brings up additional menu, where you can select Task Manager, Shut Down the PC and other options as well.

there is a similar 3 finger command on the Amiga which is a hardware reset, to force a reboot eg if it freezes up.

I also often use:
CTRL + C (copy)
CTRL + V (paste)
CTRL + X (cut)

I think these 3 are all used on the Amiga as well, where you can select some text, then go ctrl-C, then move the cursor elsewhere and ctrol-V.

CTRL + Z (undo)
to make my life easier when doing my tasks.

Spoiler: Off-topic part

Car purchase depends if you want to only use the car for few years and then sell it. Or if you be the forever owner of the car.

I'm the latter type. The car i have, i will keep it as long as i can. Since i've kept my car in a very good condition, i expect it to last a long time.

Spoiler: Off-topic part

that was what I wanted to do, but Peugeot use artificial scarcity, where I have no option but to eventually replace the car, which was manufactured in 2013.

eg when the clutch deteriorated, where say 4th gear wasnt having effect, I requested a brand new clutch, and they said no longer available, where I got a reconditioned one, this from the authorised Peugeot dealer.

also they are bringing in clean air zones to all british cities, Bristol's one began I think early 2023, and with London I think october 2022,

where they have cameras which detect number plates automatically, and you have to pay some 12 every day you travel in those zones, which tend to be the central areas.

I visited a place near Birmingham called Sutton Coldfield, and the 2nd journey the satnav sent me through Birmingham city, and some weeks later I got a fine of some £60,

I have kept the car in good condition, and it is fine, but eventually I have no choice.

I took the car for repair + service + MOT on 21st March, and it needs a spare part, and it took almost a month for them to get the part, which will be installed on 23rd April.

Yes. I even know some such people personally.

To be able to do that, you need to have good income, so that the bank would be willing to finance the car for you. Those people who's income is below the threshold of what banks require for car finance, have to buy and use pre-owned cars.

If given choice, i do not like to drive around with brand new car, financed by the bank. Since in the end of the day, the car belongs to the bank and i essentially drive around with rental car. With financed car, i'm only allowed to visit those repair shops that are allowed by the bank. Also, i can not customize the car to my likening. At best, i need to ask bank's approval for all and any changes to the car. At worst, i can't even make minor changes (e.g different brand tires).

car finance is less tricky than most finance, because the car is the collateral, and the insurance covers if the car gets damaged.

I regard everything as being equivalent to being rented, because nothing lasts forever, eg most machines dont last more than 20 years, if they do eg if you dont use them much, the technology can become obsolete, eg with old era cameras, cassette recorders, CRTs, my HP Pavilion PC!

I bought a nice frost free LG fridge I think 2003, and that lasted I think till 2017, when this ice started forming under the lowest drawer, no frost anywhere else. caused by a drain for condensed water which got blocked, where it lasted some 14 years. I replaced it with a new LG where the drain is no longer in the freezer compartment, that one is still going well, 7 years later.

I got a brand new Bosch central heating boiler in 2003, but in 2019, the radiator overflow water began leaking out, and rather than spending maybe 300 on a repair, which is throwing good money after bad, I replaced the boiler with a brand new condensing boiler.

today they want everyone to use heat pumps. in 2019 they wanted everyone to use condensing boilers.

all equipment deteriorates a small bit every time you use it, eventually it falls apart, this is why maintenance is often more important than purchase! eg with roads, potholes eventually form, which need to be fixed, vehicles continually thunder down a road, and it gradually disintegrates. so maintenance needs continually surveying of the stuff, and then fixing. you see this problem with supermarkets, where often they dont maintain the car park and trolleys properly, as most people dont understand the concept of wear and tear and maintenance. eg the wheels wear out, as these are subject to the most stress, eg they get stuck. with buses, the fabric covers of the seats gradually wear out, the main bus company in Bristol never replaces these, and the windows also wear out, rattling. but there is another bus company of a nearby district, where their buses are always perfect as they understand maintenance.

with aeroplanes, the high speeds, severe cold, the UV light, the major temperature changes, means everything deteriorates, and they have to do a maintenance check before EVERY flight, also modern planes need to be in almost continual use, otherwise the system clogs up. so they land, they are quickly cleaned, maintenance checks are done, and soon they fly again.

if a plane is unused for some weeks, it basically becomes junk.

with our computing department, they told us they use all equipment continually till it breaks down. they then call the maintenance contract people, who appear in a van, the item is repaired. they continue using it, till it breaks down again, the maintenance people repair it, etc, until one day it can no longer be repaired. they dont waste any time and immediately throw it out in the skip, and order a new machine, from whatever is currently available! the cost is not a problem because of the next ideas:

say some commercial equipment costs 20000, accountants will say that equipment lasts 20 years typically, so they amortise the cost as 1000 per year. they do this for ALL equipment, the idea that equipment lasts forever is alien to them. the firm has to set aside 1000 each year, because in 20 years time, they will need to replace the equipment, where they will need the 20000. smaller firms often dont understand this, and can go bankrupt when their equipment finally needs replacing!

eg you might have noticed that with moving stairs of malls or department stores, sometimes the stairs will be closed off for repairs or maintenance. these are in continual use, with people walking up to the stairs, then being lifted diagonally to the next floor, sometimes eg metro stations at rush hour, there could be hundreds of people on the moving stairs! hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year, at some point something goes kaput.


I bought some stuff from a guy on ebay, who has a classic open topped VW Beetle, in perfect condition. but he will drive it a few times each year as a classic car in good weather. enabling it to last so long. but even things like plastic and rubber, eventually fall apart just from the open air. eg if you leave some rubber bands on a table, eventually they become crumbly. But if you keep them in an airtight plastic bag they remain good. you get this with electric power cables, where the plastic coating eventually starts crumbling.

So, my biggest beef of financed cars is, that the car isn't MINE. I need the car to be mine. Since i don't have €50000 in my back pocket to pay for the brand new car in whole, i drive around with pre-owned (used) car, that i was able to afford. And since my car is mine and mine alone, i have it customized to my likening.

up to a point yes. but if something is perfect, you cant improve it!

eg if you bought a top end Mercedes or Audi, its better to leave it as supplied,

but when its that good, it will cost you an arm and a leg!

and I prefer stand alone satnavs and dashcams, which the financiers wont mind.

ultimately its about the overall cost, continual finance will be more expensive, but maybe driving around with cutting edge technology forever is worth it!

you dont need finance to do this, you just need to buy outright with cash, then sell after a year, and recycle that money towards a new one. with that you would own it outright.

now my idea is to say buy 2nd hand 2 years old, then sell maybe 2 years later, then I would always be driving around in a car 2 to 4 years old, with good technology, but not cutting edge. a neighbour bought a 2 year old Renault, and it looked in super new condition. when something is brand new it has a certain aura. that 2 year old car still had that aura.

or buy 3 year old, and sell within 3 years.

if a vehicle is too old, one problem is everything starts falling apart, and it could be a false economy. the newer the vehicle, the longer everything will last. the engine heat, the cold nights, the hot summer days, the sunshine, the wind, the rain, these things gradually erode the car, like the weather erodes rocks and mountains!

my parents bought a second hand land rover to ship to Nigeria, and it kept breaking down. at the time we were less aware of maintenance, as this is a more modern elite idea of big firms, the main population dont understand it. they are puzzled when their books start falling apart, not knowing that all books eventually fall apart!

with Nigeria, spare parts can be trickier, and you need to buy new. my parents bought 2 other vehicles brand new and no problem. Buying those in Nigeria, the supply system for parts was better, eg my dad got a Peugeot 504, long car with 3 rows of seats. and that was one of the most popular cars in Nigeria. so no problem with parts. Eventually he replaced it with a new Peugeot 504.

I learned to drive in 2005. And while cars of that era are relatively simple mechanics wise, tinkering with the engine/drive-train isn't to my likening. I prefer PC hardware instead.

in some parts of England, a lot of the young men want to become mechanics, as its a safe profession if you are good, as there are tons of vehicles, and these ongoingly will be deteriorating as explained above. that kind of person likes to dabble with their own car.

 

[Richard1234]

progress report: I did various experiments, eg with the Linux Mint boot, there are 2 windows boot options, the first one continues as the usual win11 boot, which then has an option to reboot to win10.

I finally tried the other option, and it leads to a blue screen with error messages. so that one is a dud.

on win11, with Firefox, I backed up everything, ie passwords, bookmarks and history (manually), then I imported the XP Firefox bookmarks + history, and it overrides the win11 ones. ie it doesnt merge them. I tried both the .json file (I call those Jason files!), and the .html export, and neither get merged.

later on realised the thing to do is to export the current bookmarks + history to html, then manually merge the history subset of the XP htlm export of bookmarks + history. I had an initial look, and should be possible, but I have to decipher the html encoding they use.

you can view the exported html file on a browser, but that doesnt have the nice formatting with favicons that you get if you import it as bookmarks. Thus they are using an unusual system, which they have their own interpretation of when it is bookmarks. the file in fact includes the favicons, where I think it literally has the graphical bitmap, which does bloat up the export file.

the XP one is 39MB!

I was planning to install the Windows 10, but it had reached 5am and I was getting mentally and physically exhausted from the continual run around. en route, I also tried starting up the old 2006 PC (I have had several PCs: 2004, 2006, 2007 (Fujitsu-Siemens laptop), 2010, 2023 win11 HP laptop, and now this one.

it didnt start up, I checked the 2032 battery with a voltmeter, and it was defunct, replaced that and it still didnt boot. replaced the PSU with the functioning earlier PSU of my 2010 PC, the PSU came on but nothing further. Possibly I was using the wrong boot disk, which is an IDE disk.


wont have much further time today, but tomorrow I take the car at 2pm for a repair whilst I wait, after that some shopping, then I have the rest of the day to work on the computer.

I am thinking also of installing the new win10 etc to the other M.2 drive, that way I can revert to these ones if necessary. but later may reformat this drive. I wont just reformat in one step, but I will delete the most recent install partition first, to see what happens, whether the earlier installs boot. also if I delete win11 + Linux, will the win10 boot?

these experiments are important, because if you have installed a lot of stuff, and arent careful you can lose access. that happened to me once, where I installed a further OS, either Ubuntu Linux or XP, and I could no longer access the earlier installs.

so these days, I try to do a sector backup of the entire drive, before these low level changes.

the Linux Mint install is unsual, as it has its own loader in the UEFI, where I can directly boot to win11, or directly boot to Linux Mint and then manbe continue on to win11.

with XP, somewhere in the system, you could reconfigure which OSes were displayed to boot from. I think XP had a better multi OS boot than Win 10. I have noticed also that 32 bit Win 10 is moderately different from 64 bit. 64 bit is much better.

I might also create a smaller install of win10 and win11, for testing things out, as scratch installs. eg testing out importing of bookmarks etc with Firefox and MS Edge.

Spoiler: Special character commands on my KB layout

Now, i can not produce < , > and | since i've binded my "g" letter to that key (original g letter key doesn't work anymore, after a small spill of liquid years ago).

Spoiler: Special character commands on my KB layout

this is the wear and tear I mentioned, if you cant repair it, the time has come to buy a new one!

if its a top end one, then I can understand a reluctance, but you can get insurance against accidental damage with higher end ones.

I got something like 3 years protection for the high end logitech wireless keyboard, where they will replace it with brand new if a problem.

you said "years ago", plural, so that must be at least 2 years ago, you shouldnt endure kaput functionality for that long, unless the stuff is discontinued technology or very expensive.

nowadays I handle all equipment and structures such as doors and windows carefully, eg with speed bumps, I slow down the car, and I shut the doors and boots with minimum force. originally I would slam the upward opening boot door. then at some point it wouldnt keep shut, Peugeot told me this was from slamming the boot door. so after that I use absolute minimum force.

with windows I never push the pane, just the handles, as pushing the pane can deteriorate the seal leading to misted up windows.

with electric cables, you will see that after many years, the plastic or rubber coating is no longer supple. this is from mould in the air which gradually eats the coating. if you keep such things in sealed bags, they keep good, as the bag air only has a limited amount of mould.

in the open air, the mould keeps being replenished. this is most impressive with rubber bands, where bagged ones keep for years and years, but in the open air, they become crumbly within months.

with the 2006 PC, the coatings are slightly rigid, not as bad as say my hifi cables from 1985 nor my computer cables from 1995 to 2000.

if you dont wash a car regularly, moss and lichen starts to grow, eg at the rubber seals! at a supermarket car park, the next car had a small plant growing on the side!

with roof gutters also, these gradually fill up with junk, and eventually grass and other plants start growing.

if you dont regularly wash a car, eventually the surface becomes permanently damaged.

 

[USAFRet]

I might also create a smaller install of win10 and win11, for testing things out, as scratch installs. eg testing out importing of bookmarks etc with Firefox and MS Edge.

Virtual Machines.
Whole system encapsulated in a single "file".

I have several, for testing stuff.

 

[Richard1234]

Virtual Machines.
Whole system encapsulated in a single "file".

cool!

I will delay asking about this till later, because I am already trying to do too many different things!

but it could be the way to deal with software incompatible with Windows 11.

I have several, for testing stuff.

can you use the boot disk of an ancient PC, or do you have to install the virtual machine from scratch?

I think normally if you put the boot disk of one PC in another PC, it wont work.

today got back from the car repair at 18:16, later than anticipated, so havent gotten as much done as planned. Needed a meal, then because exhausted, a nap.

I thought I'd check the CMOS battery, to verify the voltage is alright, and also bought some spares with use by date sep 2035, in case I need them.

I measured the voltage of the 1 tricky to remove newly purchased CR2032 battery, which is supposed to be 3V, but the voltmeter said something like 2.25V, is this normal for it to be significantly below the specification?

also was pondering whether to install the graphics card now.

I had a look at both matters in the mobo manual.

now potentially the graphics card will obstruct access to the CMOS battery, so decided to check the CMOS battery first.

the graphics card physical install looks straightforward.

now the mobo manual p54 seems to say the CMOS battery is in a capsule on a wire cord and plug.

it has a diagram where this is.

opened up the machine, and it doesnt relate to the manual.


the problem is that entire zone is eclipsed by a huge cover plate, one of their frozrs,
which is screwless, compare this photo with p54 of the manual:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/cmos_battery.jpg

where the green arrow points to where I think the CMOS battery is on p54. Adobe Acrobat isnt working currently, so I cannot directly search the manual, will try later on the 2010 PC.

to the left is the screw based frozr cover plate of the M2_2 + M2_3, and to the left of that, is the screw based frozr plate of the M2_4.

I had a look at the M2_1 cover plate, which is also screwless, and the M2_1 installation info explains how to open that, which is a bit mystifying, you have to press a metal plate.

but I cannot find such a plate on the cover plate at the CMOS battery.

this is a slightly blurry photo of the cover plate of M2_1:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/M1_1_cover_plate.jpg

where on the left is the metal plate which has to be pushed rightwards for removal + insertion of the cover plate.

for the photo, I placed it on the mobo instructions which are a bit confusing, eg that red arrow on the left of the background page, is referring to the metal plate on the left, diagram versus photo: what a difference!


these manuals really ought to use photos rather than these stupid diagrams.

on the right is the upper thermal pad, which has a plastic cover saying "REMOVE", for when you install an M.2 drive.

relating to this, but not relating to the current subtopic, here is a photo of the lower thermal plate of M2_1:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/M1_1_lower_thermal_pad.jpg

which also has a plastic cover to remove.

I opened that just to see if that gave some clues how to open the other cover plate, but whilst open, took some photos, as I dont like tampering with the equipment unnecessarily.

I cannot find any such sliding plate switch on the cover plate of the CMOS battery.

I am delaying installing the graphics card, whilst I try to find out how to access the CMOS battery.

I decided to delay merging the Firefox histories, as that is tricky to do manually, Win11 Notepad takes ages to work on the 39MB html text file.

I will write some interactive software to navigate the bookmarks, because different versions of Firefox use different MOs, so the problem is best dealt with interactively, but this can wait till the future. the alternative is to just load each history to a scratch install of Firefox on a scratch install of Windows 10 or 11 and not try to merge them.

One further photo, this is what the boot loader options are:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/ubuntu_loader.jpg

where the top option is the Windows 11 boot, which then has the option to reboot to Windows 10.

the 2nd item says "ubuntu (Samsung SSD....)", that is the Linux Mint boot loader, not sure why it says ubuntu rather than say Linux or Linux Mint. with that one, it then boots to some boot options, with one it progresses to Linux Mint 21.1, with the other it progresses to the Windows 11 boot, which then has the aforementioned option to reboot to Windows 10. when I say "progresses", I mean without a reboot, ie to continue on, rather than to restart.

here is a photo of this, its in fact in a tiny font, which is an effort to read:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/linux_boot_options.jpg

their boot loader really should determine the screenwidth, and rescale fonts say by an integer factor so I dont need a microscope to read things, same problem with the HP 2023 laptop.


I put these photos as it can help know what to expect, as text by itself can be ambiguous or confusing.

arranging the photos does delay the work, but I think its worth it as the discussion isnt just to help me, everyone has a different assemblage of hardware, and there is a lot of confusion.

I took some photos of the Linux Mint install, where I did the wrong install option, namely the OEM install. I will just give one photo here, which shows the 3 install options, but the mistake is already made of opting for the OEM install:

http://www.directemails.info/tom/mobo/linux_mint_oem_install.jpg

I didnt photograph the earlier step, which is right at the start when you boot the Linux Mint DVD, where it says OEM install for manufacturers. instead next time I will boot to the Linux Mint desktop, and then install.