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just brew it! wrote:

The bad knee is too unstable to do that going down; I'll end up falling down the stairs and breaking my neck!

What happened to your knee? A question from a multiple knee surgery recipient.

leor wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

The bad knee is too unstable to do that going down; I'll end up falling down the stairs and breaking my neck!

What happened to your knee? A question from a multiple knee surgery recipient.

Old injury. Tore it up years ago. Unfortunately I wasn't even doing anything exciting at the time; I was just shoveling snow. Slipped, fell, and twisted it the wrong way.

Most of the time it is just a minor annoyance, e.g. things can feel a little unstable when I'm carrying something heavy down a flight of stairs. Occasionally it'll act up; when that happens, taking ibuprofen generally gets it under control within a day or two.

just brew it! wrote:

Old injury. Tore it up years ago. Unfortunately I wasn't even doing anything exciting at the time; I was just shoveling snow. Slipped, fell, and twisted it the wrong way.

Most of the time it is just a minor annoyance, e.g. things can feel a little unstable when I'm carrying something heavy down a flight of stairs. Occasionally it'll act up; when that happens, taking ibuprofen generally gets it under control within a day or two.

Blew mine playing basketball, blew almost everything you can think of and a couple of things I never heard of. Needed 2 surgeries and I pretty much couldn't walk for 2 years - fun times.

I take stairs 2 at a time, but the left leg is way weaker than the right (and always hurts). Never did 2 at a time going down even in teens and 20s, just never saw the point.

Four pages and no cheese option?!

I started lurking around as a teenager trying to convince my parents/grandparents to buy me a Socket 939 rig and using TR's benchmarks as a guide for price/performance

... hasn't really changed much except where the money comes from.
I'm not a teenager any more and actually work in tech that's pretty cool I guess

pikaporeon wrote:

I started lurking around as a teenager trying to convince my parents/grandparents to buy me a Socket 939 rig and using TR's benchmarks as a guide for price/performance

Similarlry, I often came to TR for reference before I finally joined membership. Good 'ol socket 939, it was TR's review 12 years ago: https://techreport.com/review/9681/abit ... herboard/2
that convinced me to build an Abit/Athlon platform. It was a fun build for that time.

Wow! Has it been that long?

G8torbyte wrote:

pikaporeon wrote:

I started lurking around as a teenager trying to convince my parents/grandparents to buy me a Socket 939 rig and using TR's benchmarks as a guide for price/performance

Similarlry, I often came to TR for reference before I finally joined membership. Good 'ol socket 939, it was TR's review 12 years ago: https://techreport.com/review/9681/abit ... herboard/2
that convinced me to build an Abit/Athlon platform. It was a fun build for that time.

Ahhh, I remember the days back before every motherboard was either charcoal gray or flat black. There were some really crazy color schemes in the early part of this century.

derFunkenstein wrote:

G8torbyte wrote:

pikaporeon wrote:

I started lurking around as a teenager trying to convince my parents/grandparents to buy me a Socket 939 rig and using TR's benchmarks as a guide for price/performance

Similarlry, I often came to TR for reference before I finally joined membership. Good 'ol socket 939, it was TR's review 12 years ago: https://techreport.com/review/9681/abit ... herboard/2
that convinced me to build an Abit/Athlon platform. It was a fun build for that time.

Ahhh, I remember the days back before every motherboard was either charcoal gray or flat black. There were some really crazy color schemes in the early part of this century.

I loved my DFI LanParty boards.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

I loved my DFI LanParty boards.

Whoa. That brings back memories. Memories of a TR gone by.

I joined back in 2004. Enthusiasm for PC builds is rare nowadays. TR is more of a social scene.

When was the last time Captain Ned built a PC?

I believe that Ned has CPUs that were manufactured on the same 14nm process that is the state of the semiconductor art at this very instant. He might even have driven all the way from Vermont to Ohio to get a particularly good deal on some of them. Building a new PC every year isn't what makes Ned a hoopy frood, anyway.

End User wrote:

When was the last time Captain Ned built a PC?

March 2015.

I miss when PCs required intelligence to build and configure, and when the games pushed the tech. Getting Unreal to run in 3D at 640x480 and being blown away by it, that's what I miss. It ain't fun anymore.

Back then computers were an enthusiast hobby. Now it's a commodity. It also grew much more back in the day. Now, well, you can't grow much larger than commodity status, so that makes it less exciting than the leaps and bounds of progress we remember.

Vrock wrote:

I miss when PCs required intelligence to build and configure, and when the games pushed the tech. Getting Unreal to run in 3D at 640x480 and being blown away by it, that's what I miss. It ain't fun anymore.

FireGryphon wrote:

Back then computers were an enthusiast hobby. Now it's a commodity. It also grew much more back in the day. Now, well, you can't grow much larger than commodity status, so that makes it less exciting than the leaps and bounds of progress we remember.

I hear you; probably the most fun/excitement I had building a PC was before even the x86 PC era. This was back when it wasn't out of the ordinary to need a soldering iron, or even to hack together your own device driver. Of course things were also a lot simpler then; there were no BGA chips (so doing component-level work with a cheap Radio Shack iron was entirely feasible), and OSes were simple enough (hey, they had to fit in 64K of RAM with enough left over for applications!) that you could hack together and test a device driver in a couple of evenings.

I do still build my own PCs, but whereas a lot of the fun used to be in the tinkering and tweaking, now I generally just want something rock-solid stable that's reasonably affordable and performant. I guess another way to put that is that it is more about the destination than the journey now.

Software is where the action is these days. And the "maker" movement. Limitless possibilities for tinkering, and individual hobbyists can still make major contributions to the respective ecosystems.

Speaking of the bad old days, Alan Cox (the Linux hacker) is developing a Unix-like OS for 8- and 16-bit micros called Fuzix:

http://www.fuzix.org/
https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX/wiki

just brew it! wrote:

I do still build my own PCs, but whereas a lot of the fun used to be in the tinkering and tweaking, now I generally just want something rock-solid stable that's reasonably affordable and performant.

I guess another way to I got a new PC last year, after my old 2600k actually stopped keeping up well with the games I play. And it's the first PC in several decades I haven't built myself. I figured the entusiast oriented shop that does it all day long would do it better then me that only do it once every comp, which was 6 years since last time… so yes, now days I just want stuff to work when it comes to a main machine if I don't have anything special I want to tinker for...

Aphasia wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

I do still build my own PCs, but whereas a lot of the fun used to be in the tinkering and tweaking, now I generally just want something rock-solid stable that's reasonably affordable and performant.

I guess another way to I got a new PC last year, after my old 2600k actually stopped keeping up well with the games I play. And it's the first PC in several decades I haven't built myself. I figured the entusiast oriented shop that does it all day long would do it better then me that only do it once every comp, which was 6 years since last time… so yes, now days I just want stuff to work when it comes to a main machine if I don't have anything special I want to tinker for...

Yes, there's something to be said for that. But even though I don't do as much tinkering or tweaking as I used to (heck, I don't think I've overclocked anything in a decade or more), I still enjoy researching the tech and "window shopping" for parts between builds. The only pre-built PCs I have bought since the 1990s have been laptops; my last pre-built desktop was a Pentium Pro (which now resides in Starfalcon's collection).

I still picked out all the parts I wanted and stuff, just that I let them put it together and get rid of all the packing materials. So in the end, i picked up 2 boxes, one with the computer and all left over tech cables and such in a custom box they deliver such in. Then a new monitor.

The years fly by, way too fast. I started visiting TR for my first (DIY) build in 2003, an old A64 and radeon 9800 pro with 256MB of vram lol. I still remember paying about $175 for a single stick of 512MB DDR400, then the mem manf's got caught for colluding and I got another same stick for about half that. Officially signed on years later, so almost 16 years for me coming here.

Remember when being slashdotted was a thing ?

My best memory is having a fun group of people to talk about life and tech with. I started reading TR about year out of high school and joined the forum like 6 months later. This website is part of an amazing time I had in my 20's. I didn't hate anyone but I had a few spats. It's good to see a bunch of you are still around. These days I read more about home automation and security than the latest computer tech.

Looking at Ned's wayback post: https://web.archive.org/web/20020806220 ... dex.x?pg=1

Captain Ned wrote:

End User wrote:

When was the last time Captain Ned built a PC?

March 2015.

You ok there buddy?!

Either you hit the jack pot and built the perfect machine or you just don't need the horsepower...

I've not had a new machine since my core2duo but I have bought used machines that were upgrades.

A core i7 2600k is still plenty of horsepower for me.

cegras wrote:

10 years of TechReport - the same people arguing about intel and amd in the comments section.

RandomNull wrote:

69. Posted at 01:52 am on Feb 25th 2002
Reply x RandomNull

alright guys enough of the null bashing lets zen bash!

early chuckula?

My favorite memory was meeting LicketySplit in person, stayed and his place and went golfing with him multiple times. RIP

JediNinjaWizard pissed Damage off and got banned one night. He kept advocating the use of add blockers. Damaged changed his signature to irritating rash viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187

I remember reading TR for a number of years, switching from Toms Hardware and Anandtech, while mainly posting on the AMD forums (before I basically switched everything to Intel after the Phenom flop, and not trusting Asmedia in AMD's current chipsets either). After that, I switched to here more (though lurk more than I post). I just realize that I joined all the way back in 2006 though! This always has been a great community, though it sounds like I missed a lot of the early posters.

bthylafh wrote:

Speaking of the bad old days, Alan Cox (the Linux hacker) is developing a Unix-like OS for 8- and 16-bit micros called Fuzix:

http://www.fuzix.org/
https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX/wiki

Wow, that's impressive, also interesting that it's mainly in C. I dabbled with the idea of writing some relatively cross platform stuff for those old 8- and 16-bit chips in C. SDCC looked great for Z80 and was thinking of using OpenWatcom for 8086. After reading about some of the horrible code cc65 has to produce because the 6502 is just not designed for C, I gave up on the idea. Have newer cc65 versions improved on this?

srg86 wrote:

bthylafh wrote:

Speaking of the bad old days, Alan Cox (the Linux hacker) is developing a Unix-like OS for 8- and 16-bit micros called Fuzix:

http://www.fuzix.org/
https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX/wiki

Wow, that's impressive, also interesting that it's mainly in C. I dabbled with the idea of writing some relatively cross platform stuff for those old 8- and 16-bit chips in C. SDCC looked great for Z80 and was thinking of using OpenWatcom for 8086. After reading about some of the horrible code cc65 has to produce because the 6502 is just not designed for C, I gave up on the idea. Have newer cc65 versions improved on this?

Given the limitations of the instruction set, there's a hard limit on how good it can get.

kitsura wrote:

I can't think of anything, I went into an IT job and became jaded which completely put me off tech sites for awhile. Now that i have completely left the industry i'm slowly coming back to tech.

Easier for me to separate the "tech enthusiast" bit from my regular IT work, which produces lots of jade and burnout.

-Multiple TR BBQs (haven't been there as long as others, but I'd say I've done six or seven now, so this year is seven or eight)
-Inside the Second
-The dash (as mentioned)
-Folding Team 2630 (14th place and climbing!)

Plenty more. I've been a member on so many hardware sites over time (XtremeTech, JonnyGuru, HardOCP (remember when it was Overclocker's Palace?), Anandtech, Overclock.net, Thresh's FiringSquad, CDRLabs, NotebookReview, HomeServerShow), but I've always loved the coverage of here, and the members here I've had great friendships and discussions with.

LoneWolf15 wrote:

...HomeServerShow...

Any idea what Dave's up to these days? I wrote some articles for HSS back in the day and did a meetup with them awhile ago. I still have my EX470 sitting around doing nothing.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

LoneWolf15 wrote:

...HomeServerShow...

Any idea what Dave's up to these days? I wrote some articles for HSS back in the day and did a meetup with them awhile ago. I still have my EX470 sitting around doing nothing.

It has been a couple of years, but I think Dave is still doing it. I've met him, and Paul Braren (TinkerTry) and like them very much.

I went to one of the annual meetups in Indianapolis, made friends with them, JoeMiner, and Schoondoggy (I beta tested some of his gear, he even got me a T-shirt, he made them with pride). Then the next year I had to buy a car (2016) and couldn't go. Then, my wife had an injury in 2017, and shattered her shoulder and broke her arm in three places. Three hours of surgery, 32 titanium screws and assorted plates, and a partial joint replacement, and I couldn't go with our medical bills and ensuring she healed okay (she was off work 4 months).

I really need to go back; it's a great community. I believe he's still running the podcast. Those next two years, he reached out to me to see if I was coming, and I was really disappointed I couldn't go. I need to go back to it. It's got the flavor we have here, but with servers, NAS devices and a bit of networking, wireless and IoT.

I didn't write for them, but I published some FAQs and other items on the forum regarding HP servers (Microserver Gen8, ML310e Gen8/ML110/ML30 Gen9) that were well-received.