[kwlug-disc] New meaning for retro computing?

[Charles M]

I've also done some semi-retro stuff in that I bought a XEON E5-1650
v0 CPU and an Atermiter X79 Turbo motherboard from China just before
the pandemic hit. Surprisingly it took only 1 month to arrive (and
about 3 weeks of that was coming from British Columbia to Kitchener).
I got 3 notices from Canada Post apologizing for the delay, but it
arrived just shy of 1 month. The GSkill Ripjaws DDR3 1866MHz RAM from
my old AMD-based system (can't remember the Gigabyte motherboard, but
had an A8-5600K APU in there) only runs at 1333MHz, but I also haven't
taken the time to go through all the motherboard BIOS (the BIOS has a
lot more options than a typical motherboard, and no manual). Packaging
was decent, a nice box within a not-so nice box that obviously had
something set on top of it. (Board has been okay).

I blogged about it here:
https://www.chaslinux.com/article/installing-atermiter-x79-turbo-motherboard

I bought my motherboard from the "atermiter store" on AliExpress, but
when you scan that QR Code on the front of the box it actually takes
you to the "CPU store" so I suspect they may either be the same thing
or neighbours.

atermiter store:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000808938829.html?spm=a2g0o.store_pc_home.productList_1031796786.subject_5
CPU store: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32941784993.html

The board claims to support NVMe 3rd gen, but I just have a couple of
old SATA SSDs attached. Back when I wrote the post I was thinking of
buying a better graphics card than my NVidia GTX650Ti Boost (650, not
1650), but the market was/is still crazy. At the moment not adding on
to it, but I might end up buying a 1TB WD Black NVMe to replace one of
the 2 SSDs I have.

Computer Recycling still gets the odd server CPU outside of cases,
though I think most of what we have are LGA1366 era stuff, there may
still be a few other 4 core XEON processors, and I'm pretty sure we
have a few Core 2 Quad processors around.

On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 1:46 PM Ron Singh <ronsingh149 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is absolutely a ton of life left in these older boxes and laptops.
> My office PC(which I use only 2 times a week) still rocks a 2008-era SuperMicro mobo and a Q6700 CPU(!) It has 8G of RAM, an SSD  and runs W10 quite fine.
>
> To this day, I still use a fleet of Tinkpads, X220, X201, T520, T420s for fin work, computer work, personal stuff, never had a reason to say anything is slow. Why do this? It's all about that classic Thinkpad keyboard. The 2nd gen TP units were the last to get that keyboard, may they live for the next 11 years when I decide to exit the IT and fin world.
>
> Perversely, I use a newly-acquired P17 behemoth for doing nothing more than Zoom/Skype meets this far, but it's only been 6 weeks. The keyboard is...OK, I guess.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ron S.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 10:36 AM Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:
>>
>> A couple of days ago I have changed my office box from E3 server board
>> to AMD Phenom II. I am going retro :) This was my first own completely
>> built desktop. Before that I was just a non-Apple laptop consumer. And
>> before that I just didn't own those 386 and Pentium boxes.
>>
>> AMD Phenom is retro for me. Half PCI slots are PCI. Five (?) years back
>> I bought probably the last retail Gigabit NIC for PCI.
>>
>> These several days I am doing some Android development, and device
>> emulator has a black screen. It turns out, Android studio emulator for
>> devices uses ssse3 cpu instruction that isn't yet present in AMD Phenom.
>>
>> So, for a time being, split keyboard and portrait oriented screens are
>> connected to Lenovo ThinkPad E540 with i7-4702MQ CPU.
>>
>> Phenom: 42nm
>>
>> ThinkPad i7: 22nm
>>
>> Threadripper: 7nm
>>
>> 42 is retro now.
>>
>>
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-- 
Charles
Blog: https://chaslinux.com/
(My Asteroids reboot) Fasteroids: http://chaslinux.itch.io/fasteroids
Twitter/Identica/Google+: @chaslinux