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The Legend Lives On


raymac46

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It sits in my workroom and pumps out tunes with Spotify and Rhythmbox. I just updated its MX-18 O/S. It has a motherboard that still supports PCI, ATA 133, Sata II, DDR2 - but can't boot from a USB thumbdrive. It features an original AMD 64 bit dual core from 2006 coupled with an Nvidia GTX950 that probably is bottlenecked. It is over 11 years old as a system. It never ran anything but Linux. It works like a charm for what I use it for. The legend lives on.

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V.T. Eric Layton

Yeah... I've got a couple oldie-goldies out in the shop still...

 

ericsbane05:

 

Cooler Master Chassis Mid Tower Elite 334 Nvidia Edition ATX Casing

Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus - 650watt power supply

785GTM-E45 socket AM2+ motherboard

AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-Core Processor

AMD chipset

4Gig Centon DDR2 800 PC-6400 RAM DDR 800 (slots 1 & 2)

EVGA Nvdia GeForce 450 GTS

IDE 0 Master: Master: DVD Writer 840

IDE 0 Slave: ZIP 100

SATA 0: Western Digital 250Gig

SATA 1: Western Digital 250Gig

SATA 2: Western Digital 250Gig

SATA 3: HLDS GH30N DVD±RW

Standard 3.5" floppy

Seven (7) cooling fans

 

This is actually my ericsshop02 system these days. It's up and running. I have to use the onboard vid, though, because the PCIe socket went bad on me.

 

===

 

ericsbane06

 

Coolermaster Elite 430 case

XFX MDA72P7509 AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI ATX mobo

AMD Phenom X4 9500 CPU

Ultra U12-40656 Carbon X7 CPU Cooler

8 Gig DDR2 PC6400 RAM

Antec 450W PSU

150 Gig WD Raptor 10,000 RPM

160 Gig WD Seagate 7,200 RPM (sync backup of Raptor)

Nvidia GeForce GTX550 Ti

LG SATA DVD

 

This one is usable, but the Raptor drive took a poop on me.

 

===

 

And I also have my AMD Thunderbird mobo and processor out there along with an identical one that came from a system I built for my brother. Now those two are oldies!

 

FUN old junk!

 

Oh, and I have a brand new (in box) Intel Core2 Duo processor and heat sink out there. Anyone interested? ;)

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securitybreach

My oldest tech in use is a WD Caviar Black 1tb drive that was purchased in 2009. Still runs like a champ and has no bad sectors. I recently had to remove the drive to make room for my new 10tb drive. The 1tb drive was smallest out of all the drives in my tower.

 

Heck, I have like 6x 2tb WD Green drives on my dresser. One day, I will buy a harddrive enclosure with like 12 bays. I know that there are some multi bay NASs but they are expensive and I can manage my own drives. Then again, drives are getting so cheap that I may never use those 2tb drives. I just paid $230 for a 10tb drive and I could of gotten one for like $150 but I wanted 7200rpm and a high cache B)

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I was thinking that my oldie but goodie will never become obsolete as long as I use it in such a low tech manner. All it needs is a decent broadband connection via wifi. This may be the first machine of mine that will have to fail utterly in order to get recycled. It's got a decent power supply and I've changed the CMOS battery 3-4 times already. If the HDD goes I'll just put in another junker drive and reinstall. As long as I can burn ISOs on a DVD I'll be OK.

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securitybreach

What are these DVDs you speak of? I've just used USB drives for over a decade. I haven't had a burner in over a decade B)

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It's the only way - aside from a net install - to put Linux on the archaic desktop in the workroom. As stated earlier, it doesn't have a BIOS update that allows a USB boot.

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My daily driver is a Core2Duo system from 2008. I think I changed the CMOS battery once and upgrade a bunch of things, SSD (in 2011), 2 x 1TB Caviar Black, GTX560Ti, and it's on its 3rd power supply.

My other system runs at least twice as fast but I'm in no hurry. :)

Josh, why do you need so much storage? All my data fits on about 5TB and that includes a few very large recording projects, a thousand or so movies and TV series, and about 40,000 songs mainly in FLAC format. I worked out it would take about 3 years to continuously play all those songs! Of course I have ~12TB of drives so everything is backed up.

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securitybreach

Josh, why do you need so much storage? All my data fits on about 5TB and that includes a few very large recording projects, a thousand or so movies and TV series, and about 40,000 songs mainly in FLAC format. I worked out it would take about 3 years to continuously play all those songs! Of course I have ~12TB of drives so everything is backed up.

 

I have my reasons :pirate:

 

Cerberus :: ~ » inxi -D

Drives: Local Storage: total: 22.06 TiB used: 9.87 TiB (44.7%)

ID-1: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: Western Digital model: WD20EARS-00MVWB0 size: 1.82 TiB

ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Western Digital model: WD80EFAX-68KNBN0 size: 7.28 TiB

ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB

ID-4: /dev/sdd vendor: Western Digital model: WD20EARX-00PASB0 size: 1.82 TiB

ID-5: /dev/sde vendor: Western Digital model: WD20EADS-00R6B0 size: 1.82 TiB

ID-6: /dev/sdf vendor: Seagate model: ST10000VN0004-1ZD101 size: 9.10 TiB

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I have my reasons :pirate:

 

Cerberus :: ~ » inxi -D

Drives: Local Storage: total: 22.06 TiB used: 9.87 TiB (44.7%)...

 

Methinks you are a hoarder. :D I may have similar reasons but can't imagine ever getting through all my collection before I die.

Actually, if your 9.87TB includes backups, we have a similar amount of data but you have way more unused space. And as I said, I have a large amount of audio production sessions many of which are 20-30GB each.

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There are a few reasons why these old systems just soldier on into their teens:

  • They are desktops. The motherboard probably had robust components baked in.
  • Desktop CPUs have certainly gotten smaller and have more cores, but the older ones are often as fast in simple tasks. You can stream music or video on something from 2010 and you won't see much difference.
  • A desktop won't get dropped off the table or dunked in the bathtub.
  • You can add more fans to the case to keep things cool.
  • It's fairly easy to add memory, upgrade storage, GPUs, power supplies or monitors - that'll make a machine run so much better.
  • They run Linux. Even if a system struggles with KDE or GNOME, you can find a lighter weight distro that'll be fine. MX Linux seems to be my sweet spot right now for older machines.
  • Most of the older systems are not heavily taxed running graphics rendering or advanced gaming. They do what they always have done - surfing the Web, email, maybe some music.
  • Above all, they have knowledgeable owners who can upgrade and repair rather than recycle.

I don't think that any of these systems would be a primary computer anymore. Certainly my old AMD Athlon X2 isn't for me. But that doesn't mean it's totally useless either.

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securitybreach

I have my reasons :pirate:

 

Cerberus :: ~ » inxi -D

Drives: Local Storage: total: 22.06 TiB used: 9.87 TiB (44.7%)...

 

Methinks you are a hoarder. :D I may have similar reasons but can't imagine ever getting through all my collection before I die.

Actually, if your 9.87TB includes backups, we have a similar amount of data but you have way more unused space. And as I said, I have a large amount of audio production sessions many of which are 20-30GB each.

 

That is only because I just got a 10tb drive. I was about 80% across the array before that.

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securitybreach

There are a few reasons why these old systems just soldier on into their teens:

  • They are desktops. The motherboard probably had robust components baked in.
  • Desktop CPUs have certainly gotten smaller and have more cores, but the older ones are often as fast in simple tasks. You can stream music or video on something from 2010 and you won't see much difference.
  • A desktop won't get dropped off the table or dunked in the bathtub.
  • You can add more fans to the case to keep things cool.
  • It's fairly easy to add memory, upgrade storage, GPUs, power supplies or monitors - that'll make a machine run so much better.
  • They run Linux. Even if a system struggles with KDE or GNOME, you can find a lighter weight distro that'll be fine. MX Linux seems to be my sweet spot right now for older machines.
  • Most of the older systems are not heavily taxed running graphics rendering or advanced gaming. They do what they always have done - surfing the Web, email, maybe some music.
  • Above all, they have knowledgeable owners who can upgrade and repair rather than recycle.

I don't think that any of these systems would be a primary computer anymore. Certainly my old AMD Athlon X2 isn't for me. But that doesn't mean it's totally useless either.

 

But all of that is the same for new hardware as well. Desktops provide all of what you mentioned. For instance, my primary computer has had every single component upgraded numerous time over the years that is it like the Ship of Theseus.

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But all of that is the same for new hardware as well.

Not really. You would never use new hardware as a third PC just to play music in the workroom. Nor would you upgrade it. If you upgrade a primary computer it would probably be after 3-4 years, not keeping it around until it's 10+.

Edited by raymac46
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securitybreach
But all of that is the same for new hardware as well.

Not really. You would never use new hardware as a third PC just to play music in the workroom. Nor would you upgrade it. If you upgrade a primary computer it would probably be after 3-4 years, not keeping it around until it's 10+.

 

Well, yes and no. I do frequently use one of my current laptops to control my MPD server that runs on my desktop. I usually max out (ram and such) machines within the first year and then use them till they cannot handle current technology. Like right now I have 3 laptops that are maxed out on ram and will be used till they die. One is my main travel laptop, one is my main around the house laptop and the last oneis a mobile workstation that stays on a docking station and is only like a year or two old but is too heavy and powerful to lug around. I also have two servers from 2010 that have a lot 192gb ram each and will run for another 10+ years.

 

When I upgrade parts of my desktops, I usually sell off the old part when it gets replaced on ebay if its worth anything. I will not keep around old desktops for the simple fact that my main machine will always be a work in progress as every part has been upgraded multiple times. I sell off or trash the previous parts.

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Living in a house right now with another person who wants to use the computer means I obviously can have 2 desktops. I want something to travel with as well so I have a laptop. Probably if we downsize to an apartment I would just have a laptop and a desktop. But right now I can go overboard with computers so I have a Windows desktop and laptop, two Linux desktops and three Linux laptops. Nothing is what I would describe as new. A couple of the laptops were destined for the landfill before I rescued them. The new(er) desktops have been upgraded over the years, still work well and they are a good 5 years newer than my oldest junker desktop. My newest machine is a 2015 laptop; my oldest is the 2008 desktop. It's all good.

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There's no wrong and right answer about Linux and hardware. Just as we all have our own preferences about distros, DEs, and use of the Terminal, we have our own unique situations when it comes to hardware. For me, it's mostly been a case of using Linux on older machines - recycling stuff that would otherwise be junked.

An old laptop is what it is - either you can't upgrade easily or it isn't worth it. If you are actually buying a used one, you can be careful and get something like my Thinkpad 430. It's great for Linux.

When it comes to desktops I've had two that were Linux only. Both relied on AMD, and maybe that wasn't the best idea. I've been burned a few times with AMD graphics, and there have been times when I knew going in that AMD was an inferior choice. At the end of the day though it didn't matter. I still got a machine that did the job and if I stayed back from the bleeding edge, eventually everything was fine.

My needs for a Linux machine were never too intense. Right now I'm still using Bulldozer technology on my main Linux desktop and my graphics are about three generations back. It all works well for Internet and office work.

I do enjoy building and upgrading so I hope I'll get a chance to do so in future. I can never imagine building a new machine for Windows, but that is just me.

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