exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I'm curious Exxos to know what software you use in Windows 7 I worked in electronics for 10 years then IT/Retail for 20 and now back in electronics and I upgrade every time especially since Windows is effectively free (what it's not free I hear you say!!!! well it is Install Windows 10 or 11 say I have no key sign in with an Microsoft account and it will fully activate. If people remember back to when W10 launched MS were offering upgrades for free, eventually they removed the upgrade tool but if anyone cared to read the info the tool was all they removed). I would wait 6 months after a major release of Windows though for it to settle down but I can't think of a single piece of old software that isn't easily replaced by something new and more often than not free.

I'm a recent convert to KiCAD 6 I had tried Eagle quite a few times and hated it, we used CadStar at work and I was looking at Altium the free one to use at home but then I tried KiCAD 6 and its awesome, I have to say it's got a bit of growing to do (there are two dev trees for it also a free volunteer dev team and another team you can pay if you need a feature now) but it's so easy to use anyone with half a brain will be up and running in no time and if you have knowledge of ECAD then you'll be up to speed in hours.

I did spend quite some time engaging with the Linux community many years ago Ubuntu, Suse and Red Hat amongst many others around User experience and engagement and Linux on the desktop but Linux whilst being a very capable OS it's only fit for nerds! Why do I say this? to start with I am one and well the average user just wants a black box of voodoo that does 'their' thing, they don't want to know what's inside (hence the success of the ipad) and they don't care how it works, they're not interested in command lines or recompiling the OS when their sound or graphics card doesn't work which is EXACTLY what they main install of Linux users DO WANT. Linux on the desktop is a long way from supplanting the Windows experience for 99% of the userbase. I was quite often asked when I worked in IT why I didn't use Apple for my own machines and my answer was why would I pay twice the price for a machine that's no faster where my telescope doesn't work, my games won't work, I can't use my CAD software, my drone software won't work on and on the same is true for Linux but without the price tag. OK I know now things have gotten better and compatibility is better but Linux will never be main stream on desktops because the people pushing Linux have the experience they want and they can't understand that that's not the experience that 95% of users want (Apple have shown them the way just look at their success but they're still not listening). One command line, one sudo and you've lost most people.

The sheer availability of products both software and hardware that just work on Windows makes it very hard to beat.

I haven't switched all my software to 'free' versions I buy CAD (TurboCAD), WinZIP (yep I paid for it), CyberLink Power Director/ PowerDVD Ultra (every Update) if I think the product is good and/or I want to support the dev (I purchased NO Man's Sky originally because of the way that Hello Games stood by their product when they were receiving hell from the public after a bad launch I didn't even want the game, it's not often a Dev stands up takes all the hits and just gets their heads down and just makes something better for their customers and I wanted to support someone who was standing out from the crowd in doing that. I did get round to playing it it's not half bad).

Well that was a long meandering thing that didn't really go anywhere lol I guess I was trying to say I personally don't think you would suffer much from upgrading Windows after the first 6 months of a new release unless you have some super old really expensive software or something but I can't think of any.

UTR

@UnderTheRain

UT2004 :D Though I do think people got this working on later versions of Windows.. Eventually.. But even my Sound Blaster card did not have drivers for win7, they were done by third party. Most of my hardware is from 2012. A lot will not have drivers, I would need a new computer.. And printer.. And hassle of getting my 3-D printer software working.. And the printer drivers.. It would just end up in a never-ending battle is a really cannot be bothered with again.

My girlfriend ran win10 on her laptop, gave up in the end, put win7 back on it. Can't find anything to get anything done. I'm still waiting for those free versions of windows to start spamming adverts unless you pay a subscription for windows. They gotta get paid somehow ? Selling your data by the sounds of it. Just waiting for the royal "screw you" by microsoft.. People paying them to keep your data, fair enough, but you must pay to keep windows running to access your data which we will also change you for.. :lol: Then charge you for backups.. then when it all goes wrong, you need to pay a subscription for technical support.. :lol: Gotta buy a whole new computer before then yet anyway :lol:

Some software is locked to my previous motherboard serial number. I use a program which fakes the serial number of my current computer so that the soft where will continue to function. I will not say which because it is probably a license violation :lol: Plus I fellout with a some software companies because they would not admit their software had bugs :roll: So to get my licence transferred over to a new machine.. nope. There would probably want money and lots of it. I think Windows new security will prevent a lot of my old software from running. I really do not want to spend the next five years looking for workarounds for it all. As by that time there will be a new windows and will have to go through it all over again. I really just cannot be bothered anymore.

I said the same many times already. It my current PC dies totally I probably just won't bother doing stuff any more. I more thinking of retiring then continuing stuff these days. And again I said it many times, how many more years of people going to be interested in Ataris. 5-10 years ?

After it taking about 2 years just to get my new server running. Jumping from ubuntu 14 to Ubuntu 20 Fixing piles of stuff which wouldn't work in php7.. Waiting for the SQL people to fix their crap for months. NEVER AGAIN! :lol: to much time and stress involved :crazy: :pullhair:

Yeah I can get behind that I'm not in retirement mode yet coming back into electronics has majorly refreshed my nerd mode lol I just find I don't have enough time to finish things. I've been a massive computer nerd since I was maybe 17 when I got my first ST never stopped since then and working for a large computer business for 20 years I've done more than a few upgrades I guess I'm just dulled to the pain lol. I used to be heavy into PC games and I'd be surprised if a year went by without some sort of upgrade.

What 3D printer do you have? I have an Ultimaker 2+ it was expensive when I purchased it but after being scammed and then a second rather poor effort on kickstarter I saved for a year and I thought if I still want it at the end of the year then I want it and I will buy it and I'm super happy I did as from just 1 it's just worked hardly ever fails and when something does its usually my fault. I got my resin printer a few weeks ago and got as far as unboxing it but haven't used it yet penned in for the weekend after next so I can give it a whole weekend I just have too many projects on the go.

As for the Atari's I see new people every day on the FB groups coming over to the dark side lol and I have a couple of small hardware projects I might into.

Do you run your own server for the forum? I was playing around with the software but just hosted everything on fasthosts it's a lot of work hosting your own servers. Hell for me it's a lot of work finishing the web pages alone :P

Oh and UT is a sick game :)

Brian

UnderTheRain wrote: 24 Jun 2022 20:13 Yeah I can get behind that I'm not in retirement mode yet coming back into electronics has majorly refreshed my nerd mode lol

A few people here are like that :)

UnderTheRain wrote: 24 Jun 2022 20:13 I just find I don't have enough time to finish things.

I hear'ya there! I've got about 20 projects to finish off yet.

UnderTheRain wrote: 24 Jun 2022 20:13 I've been a massive computer nerd since I was maybe 17 when I got my first ST never stopped since then and working for a large computer business for 20 years I've done more than a few upgrades I guess I'm just dulled to the pain lol. I used to be heavy into PC games and I'd be surprised if a year went by without some sort of upgrade.

I used to play PC games a fair bit, from DOOM, Quake, MAX Payne, FEAR, etc I don't play many these days because of my RSI And lack of time. Was normally when I get into a game, the game server goes off-line and you can never play it again. As there is very few direct IP games I want to play, I tend to fallback to UT2004 and play with my girlfriend. I think I have something like 3000 maps.

UnderTheRain wrote: 24 Jun 2022 20:13 What 3D printer do you have? I have an Ultimaker 2+ it was expensive when I purchased it but after being scammed and then a second rather poor effort on kickstarter I saved for a year and I thought if I still want it at the end of the year then I want it and I will buy it and I'm super happy I did as from just 1 it's just worked hardly ever fails and when something does its usually my fault. I got my resin printer a few weeks ago and got as far as unboxing it but haven't used it yet penned in for the weekend after next so I can give it a whole weekend I just have too many projects on the go.

Search my blog for "printer" many many pages of chaos there.

UnderTheRain wrote: 24 Jun 2022 20:13 As for the Atari's I see new people every day on the FB groups coming over to the dark side lol and I have a couple of small hardware projects I might into.

I pretty much quit all the FB groups other than the ones I moderate. I'm keeping away from people these days. Oddly there seems to be a lot of people buying stuff from my store who never come on the forum. People are out there, but unsurprisingly, they probably just keep to themselves.

UnderTheRain wrote: 24 Jun 2022 20:13 Do you run your own server for the forum? I was playing around with the software but just hosted everything on fasthosts it's a lot of work hosting your own servers. Hell for me it's a lot of work finishing the web pages alone :P

I run my own server, but do not own the hardware, it is from ramnode.. So "rented" I guess. indeed running my own server is a nightmare. I think it took about 2 years to move servers. Of course there is a huge long epic load of drama going on in that I had to figure out how to set up a server and a new payment system and I think I did it all in a couple weeks. The amount of broken guides on the Internet is unbelievable. Just one typo or one slight omission and absolutely nothing works. The old server had that many things wrong with it.. But I did slowly unravel it over the years.

We used to use fasthosts I think, also ukhosts4u and a few others. Basically fell out with them all. Like they wanted a extra £100 a year to have one domain name even though I barely use any resources out of the hosting plan. I had been with them For a few years as well. I basically told them to get lost, then got the usual "sting in the tail" for leaving. I was always coming to blows with Cpanel just being too limited and too buggy. I think there was a Linux control panel as well but it was such a long time ago now. There were just too limited for what I wanted to do all the time.

So while running a server is a lot of work, I can do whatever I like with it. I can add 1000 domain names onto it if I want to. I can set up scripts install any add-ons I want without fighting with the hosting company to install stuff. Always technical support was dire useless and unhelpful. The packages were just too limiting for the options they gave. I just could not put up with it any longer.

Of course if I went with a incredibly expensive package I could probably do what I wanted to. Problem being I would still be waiting for third-party technical support. But also where would the money come from to fund such a thing ? I basically run this forum and my website out of my own pocket. If I was to pay like £1,000 a year for a package and service which I needed, I would just not be able to afford it anyway.

I went with ramnode after benchmarking a lot of the lower costs hosting companies and they were one of the fastest. Mostly I emailed companies asking basic or even dumb questions and a lot of them did not even reply. Ramnode ALWAYS did. In fact I open up support tickets about stuff they really don't have anything to do with and they always try to help. I generally get a response within 10minutes. They seem to have technical guys who know what they are doing and talking about. Support is important to me.

Their prices are not too bad either and these of their service are not that bad either. So something generally goes wrong, is generally my own stupid damn fault. But at least I have the power to fix it myself and generally in a timely manner. Not fighting with some third rate technical support scripted monkeys where the problem will just never gets solved. That was generally the case for UK companies, I was really sick to death of them.

So I deliberately went for a USA based company as support always seemed better. Just so happens they also run servers in the Netherlands so that is where my server is hosted. In fact it was originally hosted in New York I think. But the ping time from UK was terrible. When I was uploading the shop library I think it literally took endless hours. Not because the file sizes were large, but the connection times. So I asked them it was possible to move to the Netherlands server, and they pretty much did it straight away. Things like floppyshop take like 30mins now to upload instead of all day.

So yeah, running my own server is a pain, but at least problems are solvable. Dealing with third-party companies with a dedicated hosting plan may be easier, but dealing with technical support is a total nightmare and was just always pointless. So in terms of nightmares, I go with a nightmare can be fixed. IE, run my own server and be done with it all.

:cry: :cry:

Replaced loads of bent missing pins on those, easy to do so long as you have a dead donor one to chop pins off

exxos wrote: 28 Jun 2022 13:40 :cry: :cry:
IMG_0641.JPG

I think that's ground. Could perhaps clip it and kinar jumper it to another ground?

BW

Badwolf wrote: 28 Jun 2022 13:59 I think that's ground. Could perhaps clip it and kinar jumper it to another ground?

That's a good idea, glad I thought of that! :lol:

Got these in the post today. I know I smell bad due to lack of time for showers etc. But I thought the smell was generally contained to my bedroom. :lol:

exxos wrote: 29 Jun 2022 21:05 Got these in the post today. I know I smell bad due to lack of time for showers etc. But I thought the smell was generally contained to my bedroom. :lol:

So from now on there will be a Herby or Lemon Grassy smelling Exxos. :D