Centroid.EU Blog

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30 Years of Personal Computing History

March 6th, 2016

I have updated my chart of all computers I have ever bought (except the RPI) that I last left in this article. Had I an accumulated computer of all clockcycles and RAM my computer today would be a single core 50 GHz computer with nearly 100 GB of RAM. Wow! However I don't have all the computers anymore so it's less than that in reality. Here is the updated chart...

year  , computer type       , Mhz     ,acc. Mhz , RAM        ,accumulated RAM
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1986  , Sinclair ZX-81      , 1    Mhz, 1    Mhz, 4        KB,  4         KB
1988  , Commodore C-64      , 2    Mhz, 3    Mhz, 64       KB,  68        KB
1992  , IBM-PC 386-SX25     , 25   Mhz, 28   Mhz, 4096     KB,  4164      KB
1994  , IBM-PC 486-66DX2    , 66   Mhz, 94   Mhz, 8192     KB,  12356     KB
1996  , Intel Pentium 120   , 120  Mhz, 214  Mhz, 32767    KB,  45123     KB
1999  , Intel P-II-350      , 350  Mhz, 564  Mhz, 131072   KB,  176195    KB
1999  , Intel P-II-350      , 350  Mhz, 914  Mhz, 131072   KB,  307267    KB
2000  , AMD Athlon 1000     , 992  Mhz, 1906 Mhz, 262144   KB,  569411    KB
2001  , Apple G3 iBook      , 500  Mhz, 2406 Mhz, 131072   KB,  700483    KB
2001  , Apple G4 Cube       , 450  Mhz, 2856 Mhz, 131072   KB,  831555    KB
2003  , Intel Pentium 200   , 200  Mhz, 3056 Mhz, 65535    KB,  897090    KB
2005  , AMD Athlon64 3500+  , 2200 Mhz, 5256 Mhz, 4194304  KB,  5091394   KB
2010  , Intel Core i7 4core , 9600 Mhz,14000 Mhz, 8192000  KB, 13000000   KB
2011  , Intel Atom N270	    , 1600 Mhz,15600 Mhz, 1024000  KB, 14000000   KB
2012  , AMD C-60 "Ontario"  , 1000 Mhz,16600 Mhz, 4096000  KB, 18000000   KB
2013  , Apple Mac mini      , 8400 Mhz,25000 Mhz,16000000  KB, 34000000   KB
2014  , Intel Xeon E3-      ,14000 Mhz,39000 Mhz,32000000  KB, 66000000   KB
2015  , Celeron CPU N2940   , 7200 Mhz,46000 Mhz, 4096000  KB, 70000000   KB
2015  , Apple MBP Core i5   , 5800 Mhz,52000 Mhz,16000000  KB, 86000000   KB
2015  , PC-Engines APU 2    , ?       , ?       , 2048000  KB, 88000000   KB
2016  , PC-Engines APU 4    , ?       , ?       , 4092000  KB, 92000000   KB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's see a "computer generation" is 1.5 years and 4 years have passed did 3 generations after doubling each generation hold true for me?
generation 1 - 36
generation 2 - 72
generation 3 - 144

So judging by this I should be buying a 64 GB RAM machine at mid year in 2016. (In order to stay true to Moores law...) Sorry that's not gonna happen, I plan on keeping at a bit of a standstill until 2020. But since this will be another generation past, I'll be expected to get a 256 GB RAM machine or so (by 2020). Wow! I do hope I find a use for it, but with Virtual Reality on the horizon I'm sure there will be.

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After 16 years, I got a TV

March 6th, 2016

I finally got a TV after 16 years. It's a 48" Samsung and just blows my mind. I also bought a few other things with it. Now it's almost time to save up money again. I'm feeling really lucky though. It's great to be having money to spend and make use of these things. Thanks to a job!

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Ordered a backup Firewall

March 3rd, 2016

I have ordered a backup APU firewall. I'll keep this around in case the one I use now breaks. Having venus break was a wakeup call for me. Basically I can't afford to lose gamma my main firewall, or have a backup for it. I chose the latter. I wouldn't need this if I didn't work from home, btw. Looking in my chart logically this backup firewall will be called "delta".

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New VDSL modem turned on

March 1st, 2016

I have turned on this new VDSL2 modem that I got the other day. Here is the link stats from my current ADSL.

I'm slowly getting ready to get a new provider (one that offers VDSL2 with vectoring) giving me 100 Mbit/40 Mbit. I'm just waiting for the venus soekris board to be returned to me with whatever fixes, and then I'm initiating a switch.

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19 days until March Equinox

March 1st, 2016

Happy March. We'll see the transition from winter to summer in this month at least officially as a number because the equinox is officially the markation point at which spring starts and winter ends. Can't wait!

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New Access Point in my apartment

February 24th, 2016

I have bought and installed an ASUS EA-AC87 Wireless AC1800 access point in place of my Fritzbox. It took some nerves to configure my repeaters to it but now everythign is functioning. Just too bad the soekris died. I'm monitoring the health of this wireless access point but so far so good. I can't do test scp's to see how much faster everything is becuaes I lost the soekris/venus and will have to wait until it's replaced.

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Venus broke

February 24th, 2016

My Soekris net6501 firewall broke. It's still on warranty but until then I'll be missing it from my network. I'm in contact with the reseller regarding RMA.

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Registered domain zeropager.de

February 23th, 2016

I have registered the domain zeropager.de. I did this because as a youth me and my buddies got pagers. Back then it was the in thing to do to have a pager as mobile phones were still too expensive to have. Public phone booths were aplenty back then and we used to make little 3 number codes to identify ourselves who were were, if the call was urgent or if we're inquiring where someone is. It was pretty fun. I had a dream about paging my old friend last night. It gave me a thought of perhaps making a SIP based paging business where people carry a raspberry pi zero around that writes on a LED display what people are paging them via SMS or email. Who knows perhaps it'll lead to something cool. I'm just riding my imagination right now.

And yes since I'm a kernel programmer newbie I'm sure to hit a zeropage some where if I was using it in hacker sense. I'm just buggy :P.

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Getting a TV after 16 years having none

February 20th, 2016

I've decided to get a TV. I also decided to change my ISP that will give me triple play (Internet, VOIP Phone, TV over IP). All in all I'm going to turn this around in the next month or so. Stay tuned.

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Apple is right (in this case)

February 18th, 2016

Apple has released a "letter to customer" outlining why they will fight the US government to put a back door into IOS products. In this case they (apple) are right, and I'm proud to have an IoS device now. It takes a large corporation with good will to stand up to the strongest country in the world, and this time they are actually defending freedoms! My how upside-down that sounds, usually corporations take away freedoms and the government has to protect consumer rights. Just a sign though that there is people in government with great powers that want to take all of our privacy away, to know everything about us to hurt us in the end. We have a lack of good people in government it seems.

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