Computers

by

For work related reasons, I’ve found myself using a Mac for the past two weeks rather than my aging Latitude. Along with whatever the sale related winds happen to be when Stark finally retired, I suppose this will influence whether my next laptop ends up an XPS or a MacBook, lol.

Having adapted an iPad and fiddled around with old-ass PowerBooks, I’m already well aware that Apple has its own standards when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, and that it’s probably as old as anyone else’s :P.

One of the most annoying points of transition for me isn’t the control, option, and command thing — rather it’s the differences in use. For the most part these modifiers are what you’d expect compared to control, alt, and super (windows). The part that will corrupt my muscle memory is some everyday control+shortcuts are control+shortcuts and some are command+shortcuts. Unlike a simple difference in modifier layout: this calls for learning which ones are and aren’t different modifiers; not just different key positions.

While the pattern is pretty straight forward for application specific shortcuts, e.g., cntrl+t to open a tab will almost always be cmd+t instead and changing tabs remains the control+tab of a PC; it’s the cursor movements for hopping by words and lines with the arrow keys that are harder to muscle memory. Those feel to have much less rime to reason to me. To balance that out, macOS comes with a version of vim pre-installed!

My relationship to Mac OSX was mostly focused on the unix layer. BSD with bits of GNU, and a little fruit on the side. Apple’s GUI itself never interested me much when I was getting deeper into computers.

As a consequence: I find the macOS window manager very “Different”, but surprisingly interesting. An early source of confusion for me was control+up versus control+down. One of these effectively shows the windows on the desktop and one of these effectively shows the windows for the current application. That’s the key.

macOS’s window manager is decidedly modern but it has rather classic notions!

Another source of such confusion is differences between cmd+tab and cmd+`, a distinction between applications and windows quickly becomes a “Huh” when you start having handfuls of terminal windows intermixed with handfuls and handfuls of other application windows. If I hadn’t played with the classic MacOS, I’m not sure I would have figured that distinction out as quick since no modern platform really does the difference between application window group and windows of the current application that way.

Actually, it’s surprising how much macOS has retained from the ‘90s and ‘80s era system software. Both in spirit and in direct function. While at the same time embracing UNIX, which typically takes a more “PC” approach to things once you leap from minicomputers to microcomputers.

Windows: oh, so poorly defined

by

Wondering what the heck Rimuru is so lethargic at I/O, to the point that programs take minutes to launch from the start menu and Explorer instances minutes to refresh.

Task Manager reports that my NVMe drive is at locked on 100% but only registers tens of MB/s in I/O. That’s kind of silly in more ways than one.

Running perfmon /res from PowerShell, imagine my greater surprise when the Resource Monitor paints the finger at PID 4, SYSTEM and shows executable files from the new XBox advanced management feature.

Now here’s the real kicker! Of the top three entries two are for a file that no longer exists on disk because I uninstalled the game a few weeks ago. Both marked at roughly 10~11 MB/s reads if you translate the B/s into reality. The third is installed but is registering ~4.5 MB/s reads for a file that is 600 something KB in size.

But I suspect that this non-sense is also a red herring, as system performance has leveled off despite the silly entries in the monitor. Whatever really sledgehammered the drive at startup is likely long since gone by the time I could get the monitors up and running.

That said, I kind of have to wonder what kind of I/O pattern could possibly register tens of megabytes of reads on a file that does not exist for thirty plus minutes and going, and if it did exist, would probably fit on a floppy diskette with plenty of room to spare.

Done it again

by

So, it seems like I’ve done a naughty thing: I bought another vintage PowerBook. This time it’s a Duo 2300c.

A downside of 30-year-old Mac is the trackball is sometimes finicky and has proven resilient to my efforts. I’ve actually thought about acquiring a Wombat ADB-USB bridge so that I can use a modern mouse^ with my Duo 230. Later models tended to retain some serious hardware compatibility and reuse but eventually replaced the trackball with a standard trackpad. 

I’ve thought about acquiring a junked late model Duo for parts or trying to find piece meal parts of the old upgrade kits to refit my Duo 230 with a trackpad. Given the age of parts, probably better off with the Wombat approach. Encountering a 2300c in good shape that doesn’t cost more than a decent modern laptop of course was too tempting a target.

In my tastes for PowerBooks, things tend to lean more in the direction of subnotebook and ultra-portables. Even today, the Duo series greatly reflects my tastes in computing. 20-year-old-Mac’s PowerPC processor has been kind of nifty since it can emulate Motorola 68k and run native PPC code. But the ‘Street series is too damned hefty for my tastes even if its G3 blazes compared to an old ’30.

Interchangeability of parts between the Duo 200 series seems to be pretty high, but I’m not sure how true that is with the 2300c for internals. But unlike other PowerPC models I’d care for, because it’s the last Duo: it’s compatible with my peripherals. By contrast, other options lead in the direction of proprietary model-specific gear. The 2300c has the same dock port as the earlier Duo 200 series.

Depending on what shape its internals are in, I might end up with two functioning machines or kit bashing them together. I’ve been more interested in the 68k / system 7 era, but I can’t say that I really mind prospects of a 603e at nearly triple the clockrate of my 68030.

^ While I’m sure Apple must have made a decent ADB mouse at some point, I can’t say that I enjoy the rolling ball mice of old as much as I do an actual track ball or an optical based mouse.

by

Here are the most interesting USB-C accessories at CES 2022

Now that’s a trend I’d like to see more of: USB-C hubs that have more USB-C downstream ports than USB-A all over.
While Tech News Outlets ™ have been groaning and moaning about the need for dongles, I’ve been more interested in when more USB-C centric hubs would get some lime light. Most that I’ve seen in recent years have been a tad pricey.

Getting with the 21st century

by

Thanks to a bit of Christmas goodness and Microcenter having them 50% off, I finally got myself a NVMe style portable drive. A while ago, I had tried to find one that would have a slot for my lanyard and only could find expensive SanDisks that would meet that criterion. Thus, fire sale equal fire win.

Which gives me a superb replacement for my ruggedized USB-A hard drive. My old drive has served well, but it’s a spinning platter that I bought back in 2014. Making it about 8 years old. Getting USB-C and fancy speed is just a win. Since it includes a suitable C-to-C and a C-to-A adapter even my old development beast, Stark, can utilize it. I had figured the old drive would remain for his backups but probably not.
Rimuru’s 10 Gbit/s ports give me in the neighborhood of 860 MByte/s reads and writes. Rimuru and Stark’s 5 Gbit/s ports basically max out around 460 MByte/s.
Sorting through my usual backpack, I’ve decided while I’m retiring the ruggedized hard drive from my standard work and travel kit, my null modem cable is going with. As much use as I’ve gotten out of a serial cable in the past decade, I’ve also found it somewhat sad that I still carry a null modem cable…. lol.
by

Why iMac G4 is still the greatest Mac ever made 20 years later

While I can’t say that I ever thought much of the iMacs until I saw the modern style flats on people’s desks, I have to admit that the G4 certainly had a unique design. The original CRT design, I think would be deserving whether you wanted to give it an award for excellence or failure in style. But the lamp style G4s, at least were unique.
But I’m pretty sure most people don’t want to experience 20 year old processors and the modern Internet :P.
by

Steve Jobs once chucked an iPhone prototype to impress a room full of journalists.

I kind of love this concept. Not because it’s the kind of gambit he might pull, but because it illustrates the point so perfectly. Unscathed or smashed beyond all recognition anyone’s question about the device’s durability would have been reasonably answered beyond all doubt.
Plus there’s another point: not to be afraid of trying. I’m sure some engineer somewhere had quite the puckered ass at the time. But you can’t be held back by fear if you want to accomplish something meaningful.
by

For the most part I’ve met iOS updates with the mindset, “I’ll just be happy if it’s stable”. Because when iPadOS 13 landed the features were much needed but the stability was crapola on my then young iPad Pro. Recent releases have thankfully been less hazardous and iPadOS 14 would become pretty stable for me.

Upgrading to iPadOS 15 thus far has passed the stability requirement. Plus for the first time it feels like new features have landed in a polished form. Running multiple applications using split screen, slide over, and the would probably confuse non nerdy users multiple instances thing, now work really damn well. iPadOS 15’s the best implementation of such things I’ve had since Samsung started to screw over theirs in favor of Googly multitasking and focusing on DeX.

So while I honestly could have cared less about the multitasking features earlier on, beyond slide over being a common offender in my iPadOS 13 instability, iPadOS 15 actually makes me view the fancy split screening stuff as a feature I can use.