Jan 13, 2015 Extended support means that MS will gladly continue supporting Windoze
7 if you throw money at them. MS is following the Apple policy of killing everything that's more than 5 years old (except in California, which is 7 years):
That's why I'm still in business to seperate such customers from their money. Lazy is good for supporting my decadent and lavish lifestyle.
It's fairly easy to migrate programs and data from most anything to Windoze 7. However, Easy Transfer disappeared in Windoze 8.1, so you're either on your own or purchase a 3rd part program to do the dirty work.
It's easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.
Are you really going to spend $1,300+ for a new machine without even a test drive? Costco has a very good return policy, but you still have to haul it home, get it running, update, tweak, tune, and then try. If unacceptable, you get to try and fit everything back into the original box (which never seems to fit). This is not being lazy.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
On a sunny day (Sun, 02 Nov 2014 10:21:33 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :
It looks a bit under-compensated, as if it takes time for it to respond to a load change. It can probably never be faster than the /\/\/ cycles, but should be possible bette rthan this. Diff part..
I have never been a PID guy, really, I have a simlilar problem here with frequency stabilization. been testing large part of the day, reading many papers, got things working, got severely pissed with Analog Devices (they provide PLL calculation soft that refuses to run under Linux wine, even seems encryped, takes hour to un-encrypt, then cannot find DLLs), OK, then I decided to do it in all software and not buy their chip. I think the software solution can be better than their chip, anyways, experiment is fun :-) I have coded it, but really need to watch some movie to prevent electronics overdose.
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Hard to say. The devil is in the details. I have an i7 and I'm not convinced it is much better if any than other CPUs for most tasks. One problem with the quad core is that that each core still runs at the same speed as a dual core or even slower due to the contention for memory bandwidth. That is why I got a laptop with separate graphic memory. But overall I don't see big speed improvements. I'd be willing to bet you won't see a huge difference between this machine and one costing a few hundred dollars less. BTW, do you really need a new monitor? I expect you can save a couple hundred more by getting a unit without monitor.
I use LibreOffice which is the same package from the developers who jumped ship at Oracle to continue development of OpenOffice the way they think is best. I don't see compatibility issues and 90% of what I use office for is the spreadsheet.
Get something tailor made. You can get both the best machine and the cheapest that way. After all, they are all made from the same parts. It is just a question of who puts them together.
What legacy software? I have Windows 8 and I'm not having problems running anything I ran on my old Vista laptop.
I hear you. The big problem I had with setting up my Win 8 laptop was that a lot of the freeware has become burdened with ads, toolbars and other malware to the point I'm not willing to use it.
You can try finding the computer salesperson in the store. They are limited by store policy of course, but I have met a few who were very willing to help as best they could.
I need to note this somewhere. Writing to the Windows directory is a
*very* bad idea. I can't tell you how many developers do all sorts of things they aren't supposed to under windows. That is the actual cause of many problems people have running older software under Windows. They don't listen to the people providing them with the OS!
Only question is, how can one connect two regular OPC monitors to this?
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Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
==============================================================================
That's the gotcha, you need a different cable to each monitor. I'm no
expert, but I have an ATI Radeon HD5670 that supports 3 monitors and has the
same three connectors so I have my main monitor connected with the DVI-D
cable and my TV set connected with HDMI so I can watch video files on the TV
(I have a Hauppage tuner card and use my pc as dvr). I don't use the third
output. The installation guide shows pictures of adaptors from hdmi and
svga to dvd-d so if you used those you could use all dvd-I monitors, but
I've never looked for them so can't give any advice there. There might be a
lower max resolution on the svga output. The video driver lets me choose
which monitor is which and how to arrange them., so that is painless.
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Regards,
Carl Ijames
On Sun, 02 Nov 2014 07:25:49 -0800, Joerg Gave us:
That actually looks like a really nice deal. You can't go wrong. Mine cost me $2500 and took over a year to build as budgets tightened.
I'll bet my 3930K beats it though.
The newer fabs have higher GHz rates, but are not as fast as their first series were, which the smaller fabs replaced..
I have 6x2 cores, and I don't even know if they do that any more except on Xeons.
I scream past all the benchmarks. Two more cores really makes a difference. I beat machines pegging faster raw "speeds" all the time. Mainly because they only have 4x2 cores.
Not cheap. The i7-3930K was $695, and the X79 Mobo under it was $400. The 32GB RAM was not cheap either for 2133MHz, And that was before the
2400MHz stuff appeared. I can still upgrade the GPU and the RAM and get even faster.
Since I cannot afford to put $1000 into a Titan video card, I miss on a few benchmarks with my $250 GTX650.
On a sunny day (Sun, 2 Nov 2014 12:09:54 -0800 (PST)) it happened Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote in :
VGA is still very useful, I have one HD monitor with an extra VGA to a PC at the other side of the room. Its faster than ssh -Y and does not load the network. It displays lots of technical stuff that I run remote via wireless keyboard and mouse on that PC.
I'm switching at 1.5 MHz and I want constant current for load steps in the picosecond time domain.
The switcher is hysteretic, so there's no PID loop. Being hysteretic means there's no loop compensation to get just-right, and it also means that the switcher is fast and has no memory of the past; every switch cycle stands on its own.
I tried a true hysteretic switcher: current sense resistor, diff gain, schmitt comparator, mosfet driver. That works, but the frequency varies all over the place, which has bad side effects. We had a brainstorm meeting and came up with the hysterical converter. A dflop drives the synchronous switching fets. We clock it ON at 1.5 MHz and let the sense current resistor/amp/comparator clear it OFF when the current hits the setpoint. That results in fixed-frequency PWM, but with no PID or other memory in the loop. (I'm sure the idea has been invented many times before.)
By moving a couple of wires, that can be converted to a first-order delta-sigma loop. It's fun, but has a lot more current ripple than the clocked hysterical converter.
The current-sense resistor has to be small to keep power dissipation down, so we need a ton of differential gain, and there will be volts of 1.5 MHz triangular common-mode junk on the resistor. A MiniCircuits balun seems (in sim) to cut the common-mode noise down by about 20:1.
Like all RF folks, their parts are grossly underspecified. If you want to know the winding and leakage inductances of their parts, you have to measure them. RF is more like plumbing than engineering.
What, me ramble?
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
On a sunny day (Sun, 02 Nov 2014 12:39:52 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :
Yes, OK, then the switcher wil have to swicth off early, or you need to add some analog series regulator.
Yes, I have done that too...
This is what I do here:
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there is a current sense transformer, but also a current sense resistor that triggers a comparator that switches of the MOSFET. The problem is the energy in the inductors and capacitors will NOT suddenly disapear, it takes time. In the sixties I did that (much slower in those days) with an analog transistor series regulator after a thyristor switcher where the thyristor switcher on average held the voltage over the series transistor as low as possible (just above the ripple) that was for the telco here. I dunno what you dissipation issues would be.
Or just plug it into Orcad PSpice, which has an optimizer option, to fit th e response to whatever you need. Start simulation in the afternoon, drink b eer, and show up for the solution in the morning. Not very informative theo ry wise, but it get the job done
I recently awarded myself a short vacation in honor my burning a huge amount of time getting old software to run nicely on Windoze 8.1. Specifically, the DOS versions of various fiduciary programs dating
1996 through 2002, which the customer insisted had to run even though later versions worked just fine. The problem was that the tax rules and tables all changed over the years and they wanted the original versions. I ended up running them under DOSbox, which was originally designed to run ancient games, but works equally well with ancient business applications: I also tried them under VMware and VirtualBox, both of which worked nicely, but DOSbox is easier and faster.
Another horror was Office 2003 on Windoze 8.1. It installs, updates, loads, and looks like it might work, but eventually crashes. All I really needed was Outlook 2003, but that would hang after polling for mail a few times. I probably could have figured out the problem, but convinced the customer that Mozilla Thunderbird would be a suitable option.
Then, there's WordPerfect 12 which I think was introduced in 2002. Amazingly, it worked 99%. However, the 1% was fatal. Windoze file association would not start WP12 if I double clicked on a WPD file (or any of the other WP files). It took a while to figure out that WP12 was trying to use an ancient ODBC version, which required that WP12 beg permission of the Windoze security abomination before it would condescend to even supply an error message. Fixed by running WP12 as administrator, which by passes most of the security mess.
I guess the moral here is to not try to run 12+ year old software on Windoze 8.1. My mistake was assuming that since all the aforementioned software ran just fine in Windoze 7, the new and improved Windoze 8.1 couldn't possibly break something that already worked so well.
It was standard procedure in Windoze 3.1, where almost all applications dropped pick_a_name.ini files in the C:\Windows\ directory. I do have to admit it was handy as the files were easy to find and save. The new and improved versions of Windoze hide these config files in either the registry, or bury them 5 directory layers deep, where few can find them without specialized tools or inside information.
LTspice (aka SwitcherCAD) is a rather old program, with many of the traditions of Windoze 3.1 still present. If you don't like that, try running some of the various NEC antenna modeling programs, that still use the terms "card" and "deck" from the Hollerith punch card era. The common mantra is the same everywhere... if it works, don't touch it.
Looking at the benchmarks at: my Dell Optiplex 755 clunker runs the 3 benchmarks at: 14.5 7.6 3.6 If I upgrade to the fastest machine on the list: 4.0 2.9 1.0 or roughly 3 times faster. Might be worth $1200+.
The database is at: and shows no Windoze 8.1 benchmarks and no SSD, so those will remain an unknown. The benchmark files and instructions are at: If you run the benchmark, be sure to add it to the database.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I ran the benchmarks on my Dell Optiplex 960 (XP-SP3, E8500 3.2GHz,
4GB RAM, 1TB drive). 10.0 11.2 2.5 So, $1200 will get me about 2.5 times faster (ignoring some kind of problem with the Mic2 test).
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
The SSD drive I recommended comes in both SATA3 and mSATA configurations: The specs look fairly close:
I have an older mSATA drive in my Acer C720 running Linux. Very very very very fast, but I haven't compared it with a SATA3 drive.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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