45 replies to this topic

[Murph]

And how did it turn out?  Did your new system arrive, and does it work well?

[Murph]

Well Best Buy had a great deal on laptops and so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on Sarah's college laptop. https://www.bestbuy....p?skuId=6188321   They had this one on sale for $1099 for about three days and sold out.  I made the girls a deal, that they got a new laptop when they entered High School (not a top of the line one), and then when they are ready to go to college, I would save up and get them a really good laptop that will last them for the four years of college.  So I got it, a mouse, external 2 tb Western Digital Hard drive, a USB A to USB C dongle, and Office student as a bundle along with the three year warranty, so I think I got a good deal, and she is set up with a great laptop.    

[Rickard N]

I'm thinking of replacing my gaming machine and since I've got a decent load of disks in it I'm considering trying to move them to the new machine. What are the odds that it will work?

 

/R - too lazy to reinstall

[Tim the Tank Nut]

just taking the hard drive from the old machine and adding it to the new one as an extra,

probably will work mostly.  Depends on the game, too

 

Moving files over via ethernet connection seems less likely to work although it will work for Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition (notoriously hard to make work on newer systems)

[Murph]

I did that, moved two drives to my current system.

[GregShaw]

Got a pile of parts sitting on my dining room table.

 

Corsair Carbide 200 case

Corsair 750 Watt Gold power supply

32 gb Corsair 2666 DDR

Corsair H75 AIO liquid cooler

512 mb Crucial NVM SSD

4 TB Seagate 7200 rpm Red HD

3-4 year old NIB Seagate 1 TB 5400 rpm Green HD

Radeon RX 580 8 gb video card

2x Viewsonic 24 in 1080p LCD (each has 1x HDMI, 1x DVI and 1x VGA, so I can run my Raspberry Pie 3 and couple laptops off them as well)

10.14 Hackintosh installer flash drive

 

Waiting on the Intel I7 8700k to arrive so I can put it together. Prime 2 day delivery is pushing  5 days so far. Need to make a Win10 installer flash drive, then pickup another 256 - 512 mb cheap SSD to set it up as a dual boot OS X and Win10 machine.

 

Once I get both OS working I'll try overclocking to see if I can reach 5.0 gHz. My old I7 2700k Sandy Bridge machine was originally going to be overclocked, but it's still rolling at stock speeds, once the new one is working I may see if I can get it to 4.5 gHz.

 

I've been watching a lot of Youtube, found I can take my old 775 chipset Vista machine and replace the 2.4 gHz Core 2 duo and replace it with a 3.x gHz Xeon for < $50 off of Ebay. Have to get a new power supply, upgrade to 16 or 32 mb of RAM and couple of 4+ TB drives then install Windows 10 or Linux Mint for grins.

Edited by GregShaw, 27 November 2018 - 2107 PM.

[Rickard N]

I'm thinking of moving the system disk to the new machine, well, plus all the other...

Considering that I've got data on one disk I'm thinking it might take a while to get it sorted IF it works at all

 

/R

[Murph]

Well I just got the Spouse-Unit a new HP AMD Ryzen 7 laptop. She got tired of shoveling coal in her older laptop, so I switched them out (I got busted, but that is another story). So I took her old laptop and installed Mint 19.1 on it tonight. Here is what she had, and I now have:

 

Operating System • Windows 10 Home(1) NOT ANY MORE!!!

Processor • 7th Generation AMD FX™ 9800P APU(2a)

• Quad-Core

Processor Speed • 2.7GHz up to 3.6GHz(7)

Processor Cache • 2MB Cache

Memory • 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM (1 DIMM)

Accessible memory

slots

• Memory slot not user accessible

Video Graphics • AMD Radeon™ R7 graphics(14)

Hard Drive • 1TB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive(4b)

Finish and Features • HP finish in dark ash silver

• Front-facing HP Wide Vision HD Webcam with integrated dual

array digital microphones(9)

Display • 15.6-inch diagonal Full HD(39) IPS UWVA WLED-backlit

multitouch-enabled edge-to-edge glass (1920 x 1080)

Wireless Option • 2x2 802.11ac WLAN(19) and Bluetooth®(26)

Digital Media • Multi-Format Digital Media Card Reader

Audio • Bang & Olufsen with dual speakers

Keyboard • Full-size island-style backlit keyboard with numeric keypad

Pointing Device • HP Imagepad with multi-touch gesture support

External Notebook

Ports

• 1 USB 3.0 Type-C™(42)

• 2 USB 3.0 Type-A (1 HP USB Boost)

• 1 HDMI

• 1 Headphone-out/microphone-in combo jack

Dimensions • Unpackaged: 0.74 in (H) x 14.96 in (W) x 9.84 in (D)

• Packaged: 2.72 in (H) x 21.73 in (W) x 12 in (D)

Weight • Unpackaged: 4.79 lb(76)

• Packaged: 7.54 lb

Security • Kensington MicroSaver® lock slot

• Power-on password

• Accepts 3rd party security lock devices

Power • 45W AC adapter

• 4-cell 55.67 WHr Li-ion prismatic battery

 

In two paychecks, I am going to install a 1 tb SSD (probably an MX-500), in the system. In the mean time I will be using this with the built in 7200 rpm drive. So far Mint seems to have no issues with the Radeon R7. I am now doing the configuration, and software updates. So far, so good.  

 

I thought I would just switch out laptops, and Lupe would never notice the difference, she busted me out right away.  The new one has a brighter screen, boots uber fast, and has the power button in a different location.  But she was not too mad, since she was tired of shoveling coal in her laptop to make windows work.  Linux Mint seems faster, a few little glitches, but I am working them out.  This gives me two Linux boxen, and so far it works, Wifi seems much faster than on winders.  

[Murph]

Ok, got the new SSD (Crucial MX500 500gb) which I was going to install to replace the slow 5400 rpm drive that was in the computer.  I managed to take the bottom cover off with the help of a magnetic screwdriver.  I then installed the new drive and the fun began. after much cussing and a dropped screw (which landed on the dog, so she was freaking out while I was pawing through her fur to get the blasted screw), the ZIF cable was not a Zero Insertion Force, it was a "No way in heck am I coming out of this socket" cable. So I had to remove the battery to get the hard drive out since the battery blocked the ZIF. Once it was out, things went ok, till one of the rubber feet fell off the desk (again onto the dog, who by this time was completely traumatized since she thought she was getting a bath or something), re-assembled it, got a CMOS error, rebooted into Mint from the USB drive, and it has worked so far. Alright, now I am configuring things. Keep your fingers crossed.

 

Ok talk about small footprint! With 13 gb of music files, photos, etc I am only using 28 gb of space on the 500 gb ssd. Now I just wonder how it will run Civilization V? Oh snap, it found, installed, and is now printing from the HP Officejet printer, and I did not do anything, Mint found it, installed it, and it just works. It plays Civ V, but the charger is not powerful enough to charge it while I am playing a game, it keeps losing power.  I can play on medium settings.  I went to this site to optimize Mint https://easylinuxtip...ot.com/p/1.html   and tried to optimize the swappiness of the SSD.

 

I tried to reduce Swappiness and keep getting an error:

[email protected]:~$ xed admin:///etc/sysctl.conf

 

** (xed:7071): WARNING **: 13:19:51.059: The specified location is not mounted

 

(xed:7071): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 13:19:51.063: gdk_window_get_window_type: assertion 'GDK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed

 

I then tried this:

 

 

[email protected]:~$ sudo xed etc/sysctl.conf

[sudo] password for murph: 

 

(xed:6986): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 13:18:22.703: gdk_window_get_window_type: assertion 'GDK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed

[TTK Ciar]

Both "admin:///etc/sysctl.conf" and "etc/sysctl.conf" (without the leading slash) look wrong to me, unless xed knows to do something special with the "admin:///" bit.

Perhaps "sudo xed /etc/sysctl.conf"?  Or try a different editor, like "sudo emacs /etc/sysctl.conf" (you might need to install emacs)

[Murph]

Both "admin:///etc/sysctl.conf" and "etc/sysctl.conf" (without the leading slash) look wrong to me, unless xed knows to do something special with the "admin:///" bit.

Perhaps "sudo xed /etc/sysctl.conf"?  Or try a different editor, like "sudo emacs /etc/sysctl.conf" (you might need to install emacs)

I'll try that.

[Murph]

Well tried it again and got this:

 

[email protected]:~$ sudo xed /etc/sysctl.conf

[sudo] password for murph:     

 

(xed:2379): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 17:16:32.179: gdk_window_get_window_type: assertion 'GDK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed

 

** (xed:2379): WARNING **: 17:17:20.301: Set document metadata failed: Setting attribute metadata::xed-position not supported

[email protected]:~$ 

 

Using Nano, I had no issues.  GO figure.  I like Nano.

 

I go here for stuff: https://easylinuxtip...ot.com/p/1.html     

[TTK Ciar]

Aye, I like simpler editors.  One of my colleagues swears by nano.  I'm a long-time jove user.

[GregShaw]

Forced myself to learn VI 20 years ago, still don't like it, still have to use my cheat sheet with it. But, it is virtually guaranteed to be installed on any Linux/Unix machine you run across. 

[Murph]

Forced myself to learn VI 20 years ago, still don't like it, still have to use my cheat sheet with it. But, it is virtually guaranteed to be installed on any Linux/Unix machine you run across. 

True, but it is so painful to use.  I really like Nano; small, light, fast, and can be installed on any machine as well.  

[Ivanhoe]

Aye, I like simpler editors.  One of my colleagues swears by nano.  I'm a long-time jove user.

 

Wow!!! I haven't seen reference to that since, well, the last century! 

 

What forced me to become at least marginally competent with 6 was taking Red Hat exams, back in the day.  

[GregShaw]

 

Forced myself to learn VI 20 years ago, still don't like it, still have to use my cheat sheet with it. But, it is virtually guaranteed to be installed on any Linux/Unix machine you run across. 

True, but it is so painful to use.  I really like Nano; small, light, fast, and can be installed on any machine as well.  

 

In IT support I've worked with Linux machines that I didn't have authority to install anything, so VI was it. Was outside support for a company that had a Red Hat server running as their mail server, and it was struggling. Was setup by their old IT guy they fired to have us support it, nobody had any clue about it. Had to investigate what was wrong, turned out 1 gb of RAM was inadequate to run a mailserver in 2008.

 

Never did learn Emacs, joke back then was that Emacs was very user friendly, it was just picky about what users it was friendly with.

[Ivanhoe]

Emacs is very user-friendly, especially for those of us coming over from the VAX/VMS world. 

[Murph]

 

Aye, I like simpler editors.  One of my colleagues swears by nano.  I'm a long-time jove user.

 

Wow!!! I haven't seen reference to that since, well, the last century! 

 

What forced me to become at least marginally competent with 6 was taking Red Hat exams, back in the day.  

 

I never learned it since I was never in a position where I had to learn it.  Nano works well for me since it reminds me of Wordstar, and with SUDO it gets the job done better than Xed.  Emacs is rather intimidating, and I am not really sure what to do since it is so powerful.  I have it loaded, but don't use it at all since Nano works for me.  

 

The only real gripe I have with the new laptop is that the battery life is terrible, and the included 45 watt charger just does not have enough power to charge the battery when I am playing games.  Other than that, I really like it, almost more than this one I am typing on, the early 2018 HP Spectre x360 13.3" model.  The 15 inch screen is very nice on the new one.

[Ivanhoe]

I never learned it since I was never in a position where I had to learn it.  Nano works well for me since it reminds me of Wordstar, and with SUDO it gets the job done better than Xed.  Emacs is rather intimidating, and I am not really sure what to do since it is so powerful.  I have it loaded, but don't use it at all since Nano works for me.

Emacs really pays off when you are doing lots of text editing via command line. Most effective when editing big source code files.