Stuff and Things.

[rubber_jonnie]

Got my eye on an Amstrad NC100, similar to the Z88.

Will go nicely with my Epson HX20.

It is a spares or repairs machine, but I've never let that stop me

[stephen_usher]

With these machines it's pot luck and probably just the lack of a power brick that's the problem. Other machines, such as the C64, it usually means that all the chips are missing and sold for megabucks.

[PhilC]

They were cheap to buy back in the day. Does the NC100 have any kind of online following? They were a bit limited as standard.

[rubber_jonnie]

With these machines it's pot luck and probably just the lack of a power brick that's the problem. Other machines, such as the C64, it usually means that all the chips are missing and sold for megabucks.

You're not wrong:)

[rubber_jonnie]

They were cheap to buy back in the day. Does the NC100 have any kind of online following? They were a bit limited as standard.

I'm not sure, just starting to dig.

[PaulJ]

It's funny, but I've never really had issues with MS and I've been using them since the days of DOS. I don't doubt other people have had problems, but then I could moan about Apple where it seems to have decided that you will have certain options set back to Apple defaults on every iPad and iPhone update. My wife will put off her updates as long as possible because of it.

Well Jon I've had plenty of issues with MS. From the early days when I actually wanted to use windoze and swapped or moved cards to improve hardware and windoze would break saying Its a different computer and I had to call MS to get new key for windoze. I was forced to design software for windoze at work were everything was all IO related and a suppreme pain in the ass compared to Linux. For personal use moving apps from one machine to another is another suppreme pain. Gates thought everyone was stealing his software so they designed the sewer commonly referred to as the registry so its much harder to move an app even if the machines are identical. Microsoft software is riddled with holes so its easily broken into. Last year I purchased a windoze 10 machine to run the software for the prom burner. Prom burner software was marketed to run on xp, windoze 7, and windoze 10. Nope would only run on windoze 10. windoze 10 had a shit load of "FREE" crap that keep trying to sell itself as MS pay to use apps masquerading as windoze apps. Not to mention the longer you use windoze the slower it gets. I could go on but you get the point.

Yes, Apple by no means is perfect. I have seen the changed setting on iPads and iPhones which is irritating. A small price to pay for the security and the great eco system apple provides. For me I'd run MacOS on a ole soup can before using windoze on a supper computer. MACos sports a polished desktop sitting on top of a full Unix system.

Just recently security researchers found a bunch of MS exchange server exploits which were extremely serious. It took MS months to react and in that time a majority of the exchange servers around the world were infected and email compromised.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity ... -timeline/

As for Mac OS, well I can't say, I just don't have the experience, but so far I do think the pairing of OS and hardware does work really well though, I mean to think my 9 yr old MBP would be performing as well as it does and on a par with my XPS 15 is a shocker.

There's a lot of older Mac's kicking around still doing useful work. I still use my 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 since its still very useful and upgradeable. The only downside of the machine is its a power hog. It used to keep my office warm.. and now I need to actually turn on the heat to keep warm.

Going to look into the OD on Catalina subject, because I can't even open files I've copied from there.

Oh, and I may consider an MBP M1 for my next machine, but I really want 2nd generation to arrive before I consider it.

Ya. Intel has to be shaking in their boots, stuck on 14nm for years while Apple has released the 5nm M1. It's somewhat of a bummer for Apple's machines that still use Intel. I don't believe there will be much attention paid to Intel based software moving forward for Apple. I'm kind of pondering should I jump now or wait for the next M1x. They did nail the hardware and it appears to be flawless, it's the software that needs work. You can bet most of Apple's software engineers are working on software for their silicon. The only issues I see with the M1 is a lack of ports and the performance is so great people are using it for high demand tasks and pounding the on board SSD. The swapping is so smooth you don't even notice it's swapping. Look at the FB M1 groups membership rise. This machine has really exceeded all expectations.

[rubber_jonnie]

@PaulJ

It's one of those things in a way, I got into using PCs during the time of DOS and was not actually doing it for a job until I left the RAF and decided that IT was the way I was going.

Of course at the time all of the jobs wanted DOS/Windows people so that's how I ended up going down the MS route.

I totally agree about the registry, and have seen what you said about hardware problems, but mostly it's been a really simple journey for me, though I have had the advantage of owning either Ultimate, Pro, Enterprise or Workstation versions of Windows, and they have generally been trouble free for me.

The only real issue I had with hardware requiring a new key was during a whole mainboard change, something MS do require a key change for. Of course it's all UEFI now with keys stored in HW, something I do not like, give me a license key at any time.

The main problem I had with Apple over the years was cost. Back in the day I could build 2 PCs for the cost of one Apple, and I still see the cost as a bit prohibitive today. The M1 Air is reasonably priced, but I'd want the Pro, and that is starting to border on the too expensive given there is no RAM or Storage upgrade path.

As for the 16" Intel models, well I think they are just way too expensive to buy new, and why would you with the M1 available.

I do really now get the Apple hardware and OS model, I think it is a fantastic combination, even after a few short weeks of use.

There is a however though. I mostly still deal with Windows for work, so I need to keep my eye in. Luckily work do supply a decent Windows laptop, but it still helps enormously for me to have my Windows lab with a domain and VMs to play with whenever I need to.

I think a 16GB MBP M1 with 1 TB SSD would be pretty awesome though and I bet it is in the works.

[PaulJ]

@rubber_jonnie , my first experiences where all with Hewlett Parkard computers running HPUX which is a far cry from dos and windoze. At first we used multiple HP300 machines and then moved to HP400 machines. Dos and windozes never a consideration because they didn't have memory or multitasking OS. As I recall ms was poo-pooing multitasking until they thought they kinda could do multitasking with windoze 95 and then it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. When tasks got bigger we stayed with HP but made dedicated smart 68k smart cards to handle interface protocols which shuttled data to and from the HP's. Eventually project funding was reduced and we were forced to pc's runnin SCO UNIX which was a bastard compared to HPUX. Windows was never a option because it didn't have the capability for real lifting. This is back in the 540k days for windows.

Yes, it's going to take Intel and windoze a long time to catch Apple. The new M1 entry level machines are blowing awai all the pro based Intel based machines while doubling battery life. Insult to injury is when the M1 runs Intel windows simulated significantly faster that windows arm computer running arm windows. I just don't see Intel catching up any time soon if ever.

It's my understanding that M1 Big Sur runs iPad apps natively, while Big Sur on an Intel machines needs the iPad app recompiled to generate Intel code and the developers have no incentive to do it. I'm still in a quandary about getting a M1 mini since the next generation of apple silicon has to be close. But then again it's not like I use these machines for work so it may just be nice to play with.

[rubber_jonnie]

@PaulJ

The HPUX machine must have been nice, my first experience with anything remotely UNIXy was a copy of Red Hat from the early days and I think I was still mostly using 95/98/NT4. I didn't get far with it though I then bought a boxed copy of Suse a bit further down the line.

On thing I did work on a lot in my early days in the industry was MS O/S2, which looked like Win 3.11 but was far more complicated and had some serious bad juju when loading config files at boot, because the files weren't read in order, and they had an internal order of preference as well. You could edit something and it wouldn't work because of the position in the config file. These machines were servers at the heart of networks and provided a Windows 3.11 OS to diskless workstations that booted from a ROM on the network adpaters. Networks were co-ax too and 10Mbps.

One thing that moving into a small rental property and using a Mac with no domain, I do like the freedom and I have decided that my domain must go. I don't need it enough to keep it and running 3 servers was expensive electricity wise.

So I have decided that it's going. I'll recycle my G8 cube as a NAS, as it is really quiet and small, then the RAM from my DL380s will be ripped out and stuffed into another DL380 that I use as my workshop PC. It is a bit noisy, but only gets powered on as and when I need it.

As for swapping to Mac totally? Maybe next year, I'll see what happens, but so far it is definitely a possibility.

[PaulJ]

@rubber_jonnie, in years past the acid test for software was it function as spec'd. That was hard enough when dealing IO. Back then root was all powerful, you could do anything as root. Now days modern computers have been infected with security code to attempt to stop the bad guy from gaining a foothold in the machine and execute their own code. If you want to do anything system or io related it's harder to get through the security layers than getting the functionality operational. I really don't write any code for a modern OS because most of the effort is getting through the security protection. Although MacOS is a fine operating system I'm not writing any IO related code for it. The M1 and successors is going to be worse since the M1 had a lot more security built into the hardware. It's one of the reasons iPad apps will run on it while Intel based machines need additional efforts which developers see no value in.

The funny part of all the security is a large part of all OS's are built on legacy code that were built in the days of "if it runs without issue" it's ok. So we see all the time of huge security issues being uncovered in old libraries. So I will use MacOS kinda like a hammer. It's got great features but too big a pain in the ass to write code for beyond any self contained app that don't need access to much. Have a stable of old Linux machines, the Atari stuff, and good ole SWTPC machines if I actually want to do something.

Still pondering the M1... want one now but really don't need it.. just got the trashcan which was brand new (NOS) from OWC which meets all my needs. Rumor has it there will be a Mac Pro with Apple silicon so I'm most likely going to wait awhile to see what develops. The M1 is a monster.. the swap is so efficient you really don't even notice its in swap without a benchmark program. I suspect Big Sur will be the last Apple OS that will be largely reliable for the Intel machines. You know Apple is going to put all their efforts toward get the OS to run flawlessly on their silicon. Also change made to improve Mx will have detrimental effects on the Intel based machine and in house testing of Intel machines will fade the further we get down the road.

Last but not least Jon, you get what you pay for. IBM did an investigation on the relative costs for businesses that use Apple vs MS. They found it was significantly cheaper to use Apple. So you may pay a little more up front but it's well worth the price.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/12/ibm-mac- ... roductive/
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... ought.html