Old timers who learned something new with newer computer components?

[GreyestGoat]

So for me, i learned that AMD no longer do DDR memory in slot 1 & 2 for dual channel, it has to be slot 1 & 3 like intel.

 

I was running 2x8GB DDR for 5 hours in single channel wondering why some scores were not to par, soon fixed it!

[Letgomyleghoe]

I’m still trying to explain dual channel to my mom, she built some pc’s back in 2000-2010, but she’s getting older and having a hard time understanding stuff.

[lafrente]

18 minutes ago, GreyestGoat said:

So for me, i learned that AMD no longer do DDR memory in slot 1 & 2 for dual channel, it has to be slot 1 & 3 like intel.

 

I was running 2x8GB DDR for 5 hours in single channel wondering why some scores were not to par, soon fixed it!

Mine is 2 & 4

[GreyestGoat]

54 minutes ago, lafrente said:

Mine is 2 & 4

What motherboard are you using?

[lafrente]

9 minutes ago, GreyestGoat said:

What motherboard are you using?

B450 gaming plus max

[TylerDurden!]

What would be considered an old timer?   I have learned everything is so much cheaper and faster, meaning you no longer need to sell a kidney to get a decent machine, unless you want to. 

[mariushm]

1 hour ago, lafrente said:

Mine is 2 & 4

 

1 hour ago, GreyestGoat said:

it has to be slot 1 & 3 like intel.

There's two channels ... channel 1 is  slots 1+3, channel 2 is slots 2+4

The processor doesn't care if you install the memory in the first channel or the second.  The BIOS programmers may be anal about it and insist on particular slots, but normally either would work just as well.

In theory, from an electrical and signal quality point of view, it's better to install the sticks further away from the socket, closer to the termination resistors... in theory it helps a bit if you overclock the memory sticks or if they run at very high frequencies.

 

In the past they also used this arrangement but some motherboards had only 3 slots, in which case maybe it made sense to have slots 1+2.

 

 

[mariushm]

1 minute ago, CircleTech said:

At least she knows the difference between RAM and storage. I try to explain this stuff to my mom and her head spins. 

I always make an analogy to having two sheets of paper in front of you and you reading from both pages at the same time, or using both hands to write information on the two sheets of paper at the same time.

You can have 1 A4 sheet of paper, or you can have 2 A5 sheets of paper ... the amount of characters you can write is the same in both cases (as A5 is exactly half of A4)

With 2 A5 sheets of paper, you can write with both hands and finish writing a number of paragraphs in half the time, compared to using just one hand to write on the A4 sheet.

 

[vf1000ride]

My newest learning experience was open loop water cooling.  Built my first PC from scratch back in 1997, decided the end of last year I would branch out into something new and started my christmas wish list with tubing and piece parts.  It's been fun and rewarding.

[Vodad]

I learned it was way easier to build a computer now then it was 20 years ago.  I mean 2 hours to put it together and about an hour to install everything. That is nothing compared to the whole day it used to take.

 

 

[Vodad]

4 hours ago, TylerDurden! said:

What would be considered an old timer?   I have learned everything is so much cheaper and faster, meaning you no longer need to sell a kidney to get a decent machine, unless you want to. 

This is so true,  I mean I built one once.  4mb of memory for 200 bucks.  Then a 4x CDrom and soundblaster card for 600 bucks.  stuff was expensive

 

[Gegger]

er my mom learned to tell the difference between memory and storage in apple's about my mac thing

[atxcyclist]

1 hour ago, Vodad said:

I learned it was way easier to build a computer now then it was 20 years ago.  I mean 2 hours to put it together and about an hour to install everything. That is nothing compared to the whole day it used to take.

 

 

DIP switches galore, IRQ DMA and I/O assignments, finding a mouse driver...

 

There are a few things I miss about computers back in that time, but I don't miss everything.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

@TylerDurden! "Old timer" to me would be someone who built systems like Apple II, IBM PC 5150, TRS-80, Commodore 64, Xerox Parc/Alto, TI-99A, etc, and were already considered veterans in the industry when they were in development.

I was born spring 1981, and while I used computers since about the late 1980s, my own first experience building a PC didn't come until February 2008.

 

@atxcyclist what about cylinders, heads, sectors, landing zone, interleave, etc?  (MFM hard drives)  And what else had to be manually configured before auto-detection and auto-configuration existed?

I'd like to see Linus and a few others do a video where they hands-off coach some youngsters on building & setting up a gaming system of that vintage.  If it has 30-pin SIMMs, PATA HDDs, a 3.5" floppy drive, PCI slots, USB 1.0 ports, a 15-pin VGA / D-Sub port, ATX case/mobo/PSU, it's too new.  And by the time those came out, the "old timers" I mentioned above would have retired, been drawing social security, etc.

As for how young the kids building them should be ... I'd say as young as Linus's kids in the videos where he built computers with them, up to - the original iPhone was already discontinued, out of warranty, no longer getting OS and security updates, by the time they were born.

 

[atxcyclist]

8 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

@TylerDurden! "Old timer" to me would be someone who built systems like Apple II, IBM PC 5150, TRS-80, Commodore 64, Xerox Parc/Alto, TI-99A, etc, and were already considered veterans in the industry when they were in development.

I was born spring 1981, and while I used computers since about the late 1980s, my own first experience building a PC didn't come until February 2008.

 

@atxcyclist what about cylinders, heads, sectors, landing zone, interleave, etc?  (MFM hard drives)  And what else had to be manually configured before auto-detection and auto-configuration existed?

I'd like to see Linus and a few others do a video where they hands-off coach some youngsters on building & setting up a gaming system of that vintage. (If it has 30-pin SIMMs, PATA HDDs, a 3.5" floppy drive, PCI slots, USB 1.0 ports, a 15-pin VGA / D-Sub port, ATX case/mobo/PSU, it's too new.)

As for how young the kids building them should be ... I'd say as young as Linus's kids in the videos where he built computers with them, up to - the original iPhone was already discontinued, out of warranty, no longer getting OS and security updates, by the time they were born.

 

I remember some of that stuff in the early days of my computing experiences, but I think my mind has blocked many of them out, haha. My first computer I built was an IBM XT from parts back in 1994, I remember the first time reading the table on the hard drive to get it set up, and having a sticky note on the front of my case for a while reminding me to park the hard drive.  The sticky note happened after hearing a story of someone forgetting and moving their computer to another desk and completely wrecking their drive. Thankfully I never forgot before I moved it somewhere, but at 40 lbs or whatever the thing weighed, it didn't get moved very often.

 

People getting into computers these days don't realize how tedious everyday tasks could get on an old system.