Do you ever look at old stuff...

[Rand]

I do. I used to have some old benchmark programs from back in the early DX9 days that I would run when I got a new video card. It made for interesting study to realize where the companies were spending their time. I recall noticing that it seemed the 2D performance was dropping over the years. Unfortunately I lost the programs and all of my stored data during a hard drive crash.

Still might see if I can find some of those programs again one day.

I still run an oooollld benchmark called 'Final Reality' everytime I upgrade, it's good for amusements sake. I think it might have been made my Futuremark or whatever the 3DMark creators are calling themselves these days.
Every single GPU upgrade since the Voodoo 3 3000 my score on it has gotten progressively worse.

It's entertaining to look back and read older new/review bits sometimes. I tend to keep a most of my old hardware around just for memories sake.
I have an old 200 something MB HDD that still works too.

Fun stuff. Once upon a time 120MHz Pentium seemed unbelievably powerful.
I do miss the Celery 300 @450. Buy low end get performance that matches or exceeds the most expensive processor around in minutes.

[AMD64Blondie]

Still running a HP A7217A 24-inch wide-screen CRT,as well as 2 IBM Model M keyboards.

Some old hardware is,well,old..while some old hardware is cool.

[nanoflower]

I do. I used to have some old benchmark programs from back in the early DX9 days that I would run when I got a new video card. It made for interesting study to realize where the companies were spending their time. I recall noticing that it seemed the 2D performance was dropping over the years. Unfortunately I lost the programs and all of my stored data during a hard drive crash.

Still might see if I can find some of those programs again one day.

I still run an oooollld benchmark called 'Final Reality' everytime I upgrade, it's good for amusements sake. I think it might have been made my Futuremark or whatever the 3DMark creators are calling themselves these days.
Every single GPU upgrade since the Voodoo 3 3000 my score on it has gotten progressively worse.

Hurray! That's the name of the program that I used to run. I also had benchmarks running back to my Voodoo2/Rendition Verite days. Unfortunately all that data is gone. As you say each successive GPU seems to do worse on many of those tests.

[Chrispy_]

Heh, Final Reality was a product of Remedy's game engine which spawned an offshoot project under the guise of MadOnion called 3DMark; You may have heard of that before somewhere

It stopped being fun, but I used to go back and run Quake2 timedemos every time I upgraded, also Aquamark which eventually just started crashing (probably an x64 issue).

[Chrispy_]

Awwwww, I can't run 3DMark 2000 anymore because I need at least 4MB of VRAM on my graphics card.

[peartart]

Am I the only person that misses the old, fun DRM? DRM that involved you breaking codes with the provided booklet, filling in blanks to phrases in the manual, referencing game compendiums or just looking at the tables and answering what was in certain cells. Nothing said "please don't steal" like "please don't steal" written on the floppy or a half hearted DRM attempt. Don't treat us like a criminal, regardless of whether we purchase it or not.

I played Master of Orion so much that I can still name most of the ship designs without using the manual.

[nanoflower]

Took a little doing but I did find a source for the Final Reality benchmark:
http://www.scene.org/file.php?file=%2Fdemos%2Fgroups%2Fremedy%2Ffr101.exe&fileinfo

I did know the relationship between Final Reality and the 3DMark programs. I just liked this one because it was so small (which was especially important in the early days.)

[puppetworx]

I don't have a clue about what any of you guys are talking about...which makes me feel better.

I do remember Computer Shopper magazines being the size of a phone book though, you had to hunt really hard between adverts to find an article on why PC133MHz RAM was the absolute balls.

[anotherengineer]

Ya I fondly remember my first computer, I think it was called an abacus and had 8 colors

[mdk77777]

Well, my dad had these Slide rules...never learned to use them.

However, My HP 15 C still runs great.

Coming right on 30 years. That is value.

[Captain Ned]

However, My HP 15 C still runs great.

Own 2 HP 12Cs, one for 25+ years, one for 16 years. Both are on just their second set of batteries and both are simply indestructible. Why buy the phone app when the original is still chugging along?

[JustAnEngineer]

I used my HP 15C as recently as last night. I've got a good stockpile of silver oxide button batteries for it, too (50 for under $10). I probably use a calculator app on my phone more frequently these days because it's always in my pocket, but the 15C is still in my desk.

[Savyg]

Your recollection is almost certainly correct. Between GDI+ and the WDDM a lot of those tasks were no longer hardware accelerated, but even before that it became less and less of a priority for driver writers.

Now we do have Direct2D/WinRT replacing all that though.

I hope that someday in the next three years I won't have any GDI apps on my computer.

[mdk77777]

Yeah, I know the date pretty well, Bought it for my Freshman Year of College....So August 1982.

Have started also to use the phone now that you can get the app to use RPN.

My kids just expect their I-phones to fail after 3 years..(can't replace the battery so a good assumption.)

Just bought a Lenovo W530 because you can replace almost everything ....Wish more stuff was made to last. Willing to pay the premium not to have disposable crap.

[Chrispy_]

Wish more stuff was made to last. Willing to pay the premium not to have disposable crap

This, x1000

[ludi]

Willing to pay the premium not to have disposable crap.

I dunno, I've scrapped out an awful lot of computer equipment from the 1980s and 1990s that was "built to last" and did...well beyond its usable service life, leaving behind perfectly functional components that had no intrinsic value beyond scrap metal, and a lot of toxic stuff that made them hard to recycle.

[Walkintarget]

I still have a PIII 1ghz chip, a rare 100FSB one in fact, running on a slotket on a PC Chips mATX M726 AT (!!!!!) board tucked behind the furnace where the wife can't see it. No idea why I am holding onto it, but it was a fun project to shove that 'modern' chip into a Gateway 2000 server that held a 386 chip a the time. This was probably 2000-2001 when I put it together.

[Captain Ned]

A PC Chips board that runs?? How??

[mdk77777]

and a lot of toxic stuff that made them hard to recycle.

And you think those IPADS, and $300 laptops, and throwaway I-phones have less toxic crap?

You think have any recycle value?

If something lasts 30 instead of 3 years, haven't we "saved the environment" by a factor of 10x ????

[ludi]

And you think those IPADS, and $300 laptops, and throwaway I-phones have less toxic crap?

I hope so. Wasn't that a goal of measures like RoHS and EPEAT?

You think have any recycle value?

Yes -- the glass face, the metal and plastic elements of the frame, and the battery are generally designed to be readily disassembled for recycling.

If something lasts 30 instead of 3 years, haven't we "saved the environment" by a factor of 10x ????

If the technology is obsolete in three years and nobody is going to use it for the next 27 years regardless of whether it works or not, then no -- extra material resources and energy were expended in manufacturing to overbuild the device for a use it will never see.

[Voldenuit]

Somebody posted a link comparing 14 or so GPUs of various vintages on the TR forums a few months ago. Anybody remember that and got the link?

[mdk77777]

I hope so. Wasn't that a goal of measures like RoHS and EPEAT?

You believe in the tooth-fairy and unicorns too?

There might be some reduction in compounds that might leach into the water supply....the process to make electronics is still mineral, and energy intensive.

You think Lithium grows on trees? Nope...has to be mined.

the battery are generally designed to be readily disassembled for recycling.

And that happens how often? 1 in 10....1 in 100...1 in a 1000?

last article I read said the average US citizen has 3 or more old phones laying around the house. (with My wife and kids, we have probably 8 )

then no -- extra material resources and energy were expended in manufacturing to overbuild the device for a use it will never see.

Really easy to avoid. Make the battery replaceable. My oldest laptop lasted 5 years longer than the battery.
Don't overbuild...build intelligently...I had a NEXTEL phone last 7 years...No glass to break...not so thin it would break under its own weight...worked great when I stopped using it. The only reason I stopped was Sprint bought out NEXTEL and decommissioned the towers(intentionally forcing customer to upgrade to higher margin Sprint plans)

Look, I am not a left wing environmentalist nut job...but there are ways to save money and incidentally the environment, but not buying all the BS commercialism and throw away planned obsolescence feed to you as cool by companies like APPLE.

he glass face, the metal and plastic elements of the frame, and the battery are generally designed to be readily disassembled for recycling.

PS, you obviously don't spend much time in the materials/recycling industry.

Very little glass is recycled. It takes less energy to make from pure raw materials than the energy to transport and subsequently sort and refine contaminated recycled glass.

This is especially true of highly engineered glass like "gorilla" glass. I would be willing to bet the amount recycled back into the original application is exactly 0.

Same with plastics. Most are one use non-reversible heat set. Not going to be "recycled" .

People love the sound of RECYCLING until they come up against the logistical and energy consumption realities.

PSS.

Just FYI, I ship 2000 tons per year of a bio-waste, that actually is used in the world's most recycled material-STEEL.

[MadManOriginal]

2000 tons of bio-waste? pfft, I pass that under 6 months into the year

[shaq_mobile]

Am I the only person that misses the old, fun DRM? DRM that involved you breaking codes with the provided booklet, filling in blanks to phrases in the manual, referencing game compendiums or just looking at the tables and answering what was in certain cells. Nothing said "please don't steal" like "please don't steal" written on the floppy or a half hearted DRM attempt. Don't treat us like a criminal, regardless of whether we purchase it or not.

I played Master of Orion so much that I can still name most of the ship designs without using the manual.

See? That kind of DRM even brings back positive memories. There will always be a way around DRM, given time. I wish companies these days would be a little more creative...

[BIF]

2000 tons of bio-waste? pfft, I pass that under 6 months into the year

...putting my gas mask on...

[shaq_mobile]

he glass face, the metal and plastic elements of the frame, and the battery are generally designed to be readily disassembled for recycling.

PS, you obviously don't spend much time in the materials/recycling industry.

Very little glass is recycled. It takes less energy to make from pure raw materials than the energy to transport and subsequently sort and refine contaminated recycled glass.

This is especially true of highly engineered glass like "gorilla" glass. I would be willing to bet the amount recycled back into the original application is exactly 0.

Same with plastics. Most are one use non-reversible heat set. Not going to be "recycled" .

People love the sound of RECYCLING until they come up against the logistical and energy consumption realities.

PSS.

Just FYI, I ship 2000 tons per year of a bio-waste, that actually is used in the world's most recycled material-STEEL.

I'm curious why the recycle rate is low. Wikipedia says it's fairly efficient to recycle glass. Are they being narrow by only referencing certain types of glass in that statement? I respect on the job experience a lot, so I don't want to say just because I read something (albeit without lots of additional research) that I'm willing to disagree. I'm just curious about your perspective. I have done very little research into recycling and I usually just try to do it because it's not THAT difficult and seems like at worst its as bad as throwing it away, unless recycling techniques are really THAT bad.

[mdk77777]

Well, A lot has to do with your definitions..

What is a great deal? Does subsidized recycling count? etc. etc. etc.

Here is a good summary.

http://earth911.com/news/2009/06/22/tru ... recycling/

If you have to pay 10x to sort, and 10x to transport something...do you really consider that economic value?

I don't.

PS. Ever think about why your bottled water doesn't come in a glass container?

Pick up a case of water at Walmart and what do you notice...pretty light...the plastic bottles are so thin, you can crinkle them up like a tissue.

Why? It costs money to transport that container. The lighter the container, the less fuel used in transportation. The less raw materials used...the less plastic that needs to be recycled.

Glass is heavy. Glass requires huge amounts of energy to form.
That weight makes it expensive to collect, expensive to ship, and expensive to remelt.

Can it be recycled? Sure. Perhaps I didn't really make my point initially. What I was getting at is that it is 1000x better not to waste on consumerism than to give yourself the false sense of "doing good" by recycling.

Steel is "recycled" at something close to 90% in the US depending at what source you look at.
http://www.steel.org/Sustainability/Ste ... cling.aspx

While that is not a bad thing, don't kid yourself...it takes a great deal of heat to melt steel.
It is still 100x better to keep using something than to delude yourself into thinking that recycling is an excuse for throw-away design.


I was talking to a farmer about ethanol.

He went on about the affect on buying machinery, and helping the economy of the region, etc. etc. etc.

This is of course a false analogy. You can do the same thing by just giving people money. Wasting money producing an energy source that requires more input energy than you get out is still a waste...no matter the social benefits of your waste.

The same could be said about any labor. Well, if you pay this garbage man $50,000 to pick up glass, look at the investment he will make in his community, and the economic multiplying affect...
Heck if that is a good idea...why not hire two guys and pay them $50K...just have them try and pick up some more glass...but don't worry...its not the cost of the raw material we're interested in...its the social benefit.
How about 4 guys...why not 20 guys...Why not just pay everyone in the country $50K as long as they spend 2 hours a day sorting and recycling...just think of the 300 million times multiplying affect of that $50K....we will all be billionaires overnight

[just brew it!]

I've heard that aluminum is one of the more profitable items to recycle, mainly because refining "virgin" aluminum from raw ore is so energy-intensive.

Back on-topic: I've got half a crawlspace filled with "old stuff", going all the way back to the start of the PC revolution back in the 1970s. I know I've posted pics of some of it before (too lazy right now to go back and find the threads), but there's old S-100 hardware, acoustic couplers (predecessor of the dial-up modem), and a near-complete set of BYTE magazine (IIRC missing just the 1st year or two). Some of the bulkier stuff (DECWriter hardcopy terminal, Ampex serial CRT terminals, full-height 5-1/4" hard and floppy drives) has been ditched in moves over the years, but there's still a fairly substantial pile of stuff stretching back more than a quarter of a century.

Another aspect of "old stuff" to consider: Legacy computing standards we still use today. The venerable 4-pin Molex power connector (which is still with us, but finally showing signs of following the dinosaurs into extinction) was designed in the 1960s. The RS-232 serial protocol (which is still used fairly extensively today, though it is now more of a behind-the-scenes thing rather than something end users see) is also a product of the 1960s. The default width of CLI windows (80 columns) in most operating systems was chosen because it matches the width of "old school" text-only terminals and teletypes, which in turn was determined by the width of IBM punch cards (invented in 1928). The QWERTY keyboard layout was invented in the late 1800s... stop and think about that for a moment: when you type on your tablet's touch screen, you are effectively using a bleeding edge high-tech simulation of a mechanical device that is over 100 years old!

[ludi]

It is still 100x better to keep using something than to delude yourself into thinking that recycling is an excuse for throw-away design.

While I appreciate the value your perspective adds, nobody was making this particular argument.

[Captain Ned]

I've heard that aluminum is one of the more profitable items to recycle, mainly because refining "virgin" aluminum from raw ore is so energy-intensive.

5% of the energy expended in the original smelting, though process losses to impurities are higher.