[00:12] <ball> Oh, my Ubuntu desktop just locked up.
[00:12] <ball> :-(
[00:17] <daftykins> o0
[00:17] <daftykins> and it still switched to a TTY ok?
[00:26] <ball> Sadly no.  I had to hold in the power button.
[00:26] <daftykins> nasty
[00:27] <daftykins> disk check + memtest time perhaps
[00:35]  * ball nods
[00:35] <ball> I should retire all my PCs :-)
[00:36] <ball> I'll be back later, I think.
[00:36] <ball> Need to get my son ready for bed.
[00:38] <daftykins> o/
[03:05] <ball> I'm back!
[12:52] <ball> popey: Thought of you yesterday while I was potching with a ThinkPad.  Think it was an x280.
[12:52] <ball> (we're mostly using T14s at work now)
[12:53] <daftykins> those look alright
[12:56] <ball> daftykins: They seem very nice.
[12:58] <daftykins> i've been fond of the ones i've bought for clients, especially the older generation ones i've snagged on ebay and put Linux on though :D
[12:58] <daftykins> £170 each for a pair of 5th generation intel (broadwell) ones
[13:00] <penguin42> heck, that's nothing
[13:01] <daftykins> yep! and considering you can now ebay 8th generation ones for £450, obviously ignoring all the dodgy listings that have locked firmware etc... when people ask for a system that's where i lean! :D
[13:02] <ball> Do you have to disable "Secure Boot" to install Linux?
[13:03] <daftykins> nah, i think there can be some complications if there's discrete graphics / hybrid graphics in the machine though
[13:05] <ball> I'd probably prefer integrated graphics.  I'm not using a GPU for maths and would happily trade that for lower heat and longer battery life.
[13:05] <daftykins> yeah same here, for laptops my preference is lean and long life
[13:05]  * ball nods
[13:07] <daftykins> any plans to poke around testing your freezing system today?
[13:07] <ball> Only thing about Thinkpads is that there have been so many different models, it's a job to keep track of them.
[13:07] <penguin42> and my experience with Lenovo firmware is it's a lot flakier on the ones with discrete graphics
[13:07] <ball> daftykins: I might run memtest86+, as you suggested.
[13:08] <daftykins> sounds good, may be tedious to wait for, but it saves pulling your hair out :D
[13:09] <ball> daftykins: This is an old computer that a colleague gave us a few years ago.  It was my son's desktop for a while and I "inherited" it after he upgraded to a Raspberry Pi 400.
[13:10] <daftykins> ah ha, does it have an HDD or SSD?
[13:26] <ball> HDD
[13:28] <ball> I don't see the model mentioned in dmesg output and I don't know the Linux equivalent of the commands I'd usually use to ask the disk how it's feeling.
[13:28] <daftykins> doubt it would be responsible for what you described, but it never hurts to look at the SMART data
[13:29] <daftykins> if you install the 'smartmontools' package and then issue "sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda" that'll give you a nice table, or even pipe it directly to termbin and share here
[13:29] <daftykins> i.e. "sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | nc termbin.com 9999"
[13:29]  * ball tries it.
[13:30] <ball> https://termbin.com/tv00
[13:31] <daftykins> "oooooh, barracudaaaa!" :)
[13:32] <penguin42> looks happy
[13:32] <daftykins> i think that looks just fine
[13:33] <ball> It has been spinning for almost four years but I see zero reallocated sectors, so that's a good thing.
[13:33] <ball> The computer was given to me without a hard disk drive so I just popped one in off the shelf.
[13:34] <ball> I have an SSD I could use but that means messing with brackets etc.
[13:34] <daftykins> yeah, although trouble occurs much earlier than a successful remap, i never liked the way Seagates increment 'error' fields for normal operation
[13:35] <daftykins> i don't see the point in mounting SSDs in desktop systems just sat at home, quite happy with dangling them :D
[13:35]  * ball grins
[13:36] <ball> They're light enough that Velcro would probably work.
[13:36] <ball> ...but old habits die hard.
[13:39] <ball> Anyway, disk is find of this old chugger.
[13:42] <ball> I should price up a used ThinkPad though.
[13:46] <daftykins> i quite like looking for the T series on ebay, so each successive intel generation is matched by the second digit... T450 like mine is 5th gen, T460, T470, T480 etc...
[13:47] <daftykins> you can genuinely keep just hopping between and the price ramps up
[13:47] <ball> I wonder how much a T420 would cost me.
[13:47] <daftykins> oh that's way too old to consider
[13:47] <ball> Sorry, T420s
[13:48] <daftykins> i'd even consider 6th generation (skylake) the bottom floor by now, although a 4th or 5th isn't too bad
[13:48] <ball> Hmm... looks like the T440s has m.2.
[13:49] <daftykins> hmm i think that'd be too early
[13:51] <ball> I'm having to look up which "generation" Coffee Lake is.
[13:51] <ball> 8th, apparently
[13:52] <ball> Looks like our T14s are "10th generation"
[13:53] <ball> So Comet Lake or perhaps Sunny Cove
[13:53] <ball> brb
[13:53] <daftykins> yip something like that :D
[14:05] <ball> Looks like they used some high-end Core i5 chips.
[14:08] <daftykins> i5's are my minimum consideration really
[14:11] <ball> I'd be happy with a quad-core i3 but i5 is a sensible choice for our work laptops.
[14:12] <daftykins> i've got an i3-8100 or so in a whitebox server, but i don't know what they perform like first-hand
[14:13] <ball> In my last job we were happy with them for desktops
[14:13] <ball> Let me check my notes
[14:14] <ball> Think we used i3-8100 for the POS machines and perhaps i3-8300 for the office desktops (I liked the extra cache).
[14:14] <daftykins> very different kettle of fish if it's a 45W TDP or greater part versus a laptop CPU with a typical 15W mind
[14:15]  * ball nods
[14:16] <ball> Stacks of Lenovo desktops at work but I've not had a chance to look at those yet.
[14:17] <daftykins> is there an ongoing refresh, or is that old stuff?
[14:42] <ball> They cycle stuff out after a few years, I think.
[14:43] <ball> Currently pulling 2018 models as the opportunity arises.
[14:43] <ball> brb
[14:43] <penguin42> careful, daftykins will camp out in your skip for them
[14:43] <daftykins> haha
[14:59] <ball> I suspect they're leased, though ICBW.
[14:59] <ball> Wouldn't mind one of the tiny desktops, just to potch with.
[15:02] <ball> They
[15:02] <ball> Ugh... my daughter's laptop has a tiny keyboard :-)
[15:08] <ball> I could probably pick one up used.
[15:32]  * ball is distracted by Dell OptiPlex
[15:40] <daftykins> o0
[15:44] <zxmpi> that narrows it down to 28 years or so :-)
[15:51]  * zxmpi looks at the specs of first optiplex :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_OptiPlex#Series_1,_2_and_3
[15:51] <zxmpi> 486!
[15:51] <daftykins> :D
[15:52] <zxmpi> 3 isa and 1 vl slot! :-)
[15:54] <zxmpi> futureproof or what
[15:56] <ball> VLB was awful, mechanically.
[15:56] <zxmpi> it was better than isa
[15:57] <ball> EISA was available then though, iirc
[15:57] <ball> ...and PCI shortly afterwards.
[15:57] <ball> (thankfully)
[15:57] <zxmpi> wasn't it vesa? it's been a while
[15:58] <ball> VESA was the organisation
[15:58] <ball> VLB = Vesa Local Bus
[16:00] <zxmpi> ah yes, eisa to take on mca :-)
[16:00]  * ball nods
[16:00] <zxmpi> don't think i ever saw more than 2-3 mca cards
[16:01] <daftykins> i'm too young to have encountered VLB in the wild
[16:01] <zxmpi> here's an isa network card75 quid. here's the mca equivalent 350shekels. don't know why it didn't succeed
[16:01] <ball> I had a box full of MCA HBAs, NICs etc.
[16:02] <ball> ...it was thrown away.
[16:03] <zxmpi> favourite was an intel aboveboard ram card. added 2mb of memory to a 286 ps/2 and turned it into expanded ram so it was a 286 pretending to be a 386
[16:04] <zxmpi> it was running novell headless non dedicated AND dos with win 3.1 on top running excel.
[16:09] <ball> Extended probably, rather than expanded.
[16:09] <ball> (expanded was an XT thing)
[16:09] <zxmpi> no no, deffo expanded
[16:09] <ball> LIM EMS.
[16:10] <zxmpi> that was the weird thing, and faster than a 386 doing expanded ram with cpu. it was doing it in hardware
[16:10] <ball> Eww.
[16:10] <zxmpi> once had to call ms with a problem with excel on it. when i explained the pc they denied it existed. went all downhill from there
[16:10] <ball> That's vaguely obscene but nice for Lotus 1-2-3
[16:11] <zxmpi> even by then lotus was disappearing fast before excel
[16:11]  * ball nods
[16:12] <ball> Did they ever release Improv for Windows?  I forget.
[16:12] <zxmpi> it looked a lot more modern and was wysiwyg
[16:12] <zxmpi> think they did
[16:13] <zxmpi> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv#Windows_release
[16:13] <ball> ok
[16:22] <ball> I must fight the temptation to buy an Optiplex
[16:38] <zxmpi> just keep telling yourself. it's a dell, it's a dell :-P
[16:39] <ball> Hwh.
[16:46] <daftykins> dude, it's Adele
[17:54] <penguin42> not bad for penguins
[19:09] <ball> penguin42: Is it cold out?
[19:10] <penguin42> ball: I meant Adele's
[19:12] <daftykins> :D
[19:14]  * ball wanders off to sit in the comfy chair.
[19:49] <penguin42> https://gitlab.com/penguin42/ohmy  is the pico project I've been fiddling with; it's at the 'basically works-ish' stage
[19:50] <daftykins> very neat idea :D
[19:52] <penguin42> it came to me after fighting a lot of alarm cabling
[19:52] <daftykins> the tedium of repeated placing probes and glancing?
[19:53] <daftykins> assuming some manual task with a multimeter
[19:55] <penguin42> nod
[19:55] <penguin42> especially when you need to move leads over <------   while opening and closing doors ----->
[19:56] <penguin42> I need to make it a bit better before it's actually useful for that - but getting there
[19:57] <daftykins> :D
[19:57] <daftykins> i had a couple of reolink IP cameras arrive today, i played with zoneminder briefly to start tinkering with handling them both - pretty neat 4K units, £95 for the pair
[20:02] <penguin42> oh that's ok
[20:03] <penguin42> hmm,  I need to get the spider web off one of mine
[20:05] <daftykins> to the trusty broom!
[21:13] <ball> I fell asleep in the comfy chair.
[21:15] <daftykins> :D
[21:15] <daftykins> a fine fate
[23:16] <daftykins> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9OZ2A-c62g - hrmm nasty
[23:16] <daftykins> "Take-Two Suing GTA3 Reverse Engineering devs...and it doesn't look good | MVG"