What To Do With My Old Desktop?

[The Ugly One]

Today I learned that NoMachine uses the GPU to encode, so I don't see any reason to throw out the GPU. A few of my CDs did not survive the 2+ decade journey from when I bought them to today, but I've got about half the unstolen ones ripped. I could run two games at once! No idea why I'd do that, but I could.

I built each of my children their own gaming rigs. The only problem I have is when they start yelling at each other over who's fault it is that they lost that round of Fortnite or whatever. I punish them by making them get off the computers and go to the living room to watch youtube on the big tv. I know that doesn't sound like much punishment, but to them it is. They will beg me to let them back on their computers. I laid the foundations with my kids early and often. Despite my avatar, I'm a big burly mother fucker and you wouldn't want to piss me off. My kids would never act like your nephew because they know what a real spanking is. I don't like spanking them, and I rarely have to do it now days, but the "your ass is lava" option is there and they know it.

A friend of mine managed to grab a 24-core Xeon workstation for cheap and some older datacenter-class GPUs. He somehow rigged it up so that each of his 4 kids has a 6-core VM and half a GPU (think the Teslas and Pascals). Apparently, their games all run at 1080p fine.

 

[seri0us]

A friend of mine managed to grab a 24-core Xeon workstation for cheap and some older datacenter-class GPUs. He somehow rigged it up so that each of his 4 kids has a 6-core VM and half a GPU (think the Teslas and Pascals). Apparently, their games all run at 1080p fine.

Maybe Catgirl Enthusiast should try that and whenever his kids start yelling he'll underclock or entirely disable their VMs.

 

[murph]

You've got to run it over with a tractor, a big one, over a very hard surface. THEN you can use it for target practice.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

Today I learned that NoMachine uses the GPU to encode, so I don't see any reason to throw out the GPU. A few of my CDs did not survive the 2+ decade journey from when I bought them to today, but I've got about half the unstolen ones ripped. I could run two games at once! No idea why I'd do that, but I could.

Your CD's may yet still live! What you needis something of an archaic device now, typically called a "Disc Doctor". It is a manual, rotary buffer with a solution that contains a very fine grit. You put the CD in, put a stripe of the solution down, and then turn the crank. The solution, along with the buffer, strip off the thinnest possible outer layer of the CD's polycarbonate surface. This will typically remove all the diffuse scuffs and small scratches that wreck havoc on the laser trying to read the deeper reflective surface that contains the pits and grooves encoding the data you want. It can typically make a CD look like brand new, assuming the scratches or damage are all superficial.

I'm sure you can still find one somewhere. Although, in all honesty. I probably haven't seen one in at least ~15 years.

 

[The Ugly One]

Your CD's may yet still live! What you needis something of an archaic device now, typically called a "Disc Doctor". It is a manual, rotary buffer with a solution that contains a very fine grit. You put the CD in, put a stripe of the solution down, and then turn the crank. The solution, along with the buffer, strip off the thinnest possible outer layer of the CD's polycarbonate surface. This will typically remove all the diffuse scuffs and small scratches that wreck havoc on the laser trying to read the deeper reflective surface that contains the pits and grooves encoding the data you want. It can typically make a CD look like brand new, assuming the scratches or damage are all superficial.

I'm sure you can still find one somewhere. Although, in all honesty. I probably haven't seen one in at least ~15 years.

I had a disc doctor BITD. Unfortunately, if you can see light through the data layer, you're fuxx0r3d. Got a couple discs it might repair. Unleashed in the East and Blizzard of Ozz are pretty scratched up, but Kings of Metal is fuxx0r3d.

Does anyone know how to get your computer to wake up over WiFi? I saw a solution with a Raspberry Pi. Not sure if there's just a different wifi adapter I should buy (I have a USB dongle right now).

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

but when it comes to transcoding video that is a whole other story. Stick the biggest GPU you can afford in the fucker unless you are a poor fag that likes looking at the loading circle thing.

I might be out of the loop here, why would the video need to be transcoded? 10 years ago TVs played could play h264 from network shares just fine and they even rendered subtitles in whatever language with no problem. Is everything worse now?

 

[Aidan]

I might be out of the loop here, why would the video need to be transcoded? 10 years ago TVs played could play h264 from network shares just fine and they even rendered subtitles in whatever language with no problem. Is everything worse now?

No it's how I watch most of my stuff still.

 

[byuu]

I might be out of the loop here, why would the video need to be transcoded? 10 years ago TVs played could play h264 from network shares just fine and they even rendered subtitles in whatever language with no problem. Is everything worse now?

The author sounds like someone who watches a lot of anime. Which is often 10bit encoded and lots of TVs can't handle that.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Does anyone know how to get your computer to wake up over WiFi? I saw a solution with a Raspberry Pi. Not sure if there's just a different wifi adapter I should buy (I have a USB dongle right now).

You could try fiddling around with your BIOS to see if there's anything there about it, and then enable the 'wake on'... support for the interface in question, wherever that sits in your operating system.

That probably won't work. However, there are readymade devices that can go in between your mobo and the regular power and reset switches, and get powered by the internal USB header or PCI express, so you can remotely control them. They use Chinese IOT servers like Tuya, so it's much harder for pedophiles from the US government to use it to spy on you than something from Amazon or whatever. Or some of them let use an alarm control remote to do it if you're a paranoid.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002776442806.html

 

[std::string]

Your CD's may yet still live! What you needis something of an archaic device now, typically called a "Disc Doctor". It is a manual, rotary buffer with a solution that contains a very fine grit. You put the CD in, put a stripe of the solution down, and then turn the crank. The solution, along with the buffer, strip off the thinnest possible outer layer of the CD's polycarbonate surface. This will typically remove all the diffuse scuffs and small scratches that wreck havoc on the laser trying to read the deeper reflective surface that contains the pits and grooves encoding the data you want. It can typically make a CD look like brand new, assuming the scratches or damage are all superficial.

You can also just do it by hand with a microfiber cloth and isopropyl alcohol.

For CDs that were actually pressed in a factory though. Bad things will happen if you do this to CDRs.

 

[Catgirl Enthusiast]

I might be out of the loop here, why would the video need to be transcoded? 10 years ago TVs played could play h264 from network shares just fine and they even rendered subtitles in whatever language with no problem. Is everything worse now?

The author sounds like someone who watches a lot of anime. Which is often 10bit encoded and lots of TVs can't handle that.

When the video works the audio doesn't. When the video and audio work the subtitles don't. I used to spend a lot of time with handbrake and moving usb drives around. With plex and a decent machine I don't have to worry about that shit anymore. The reason I use plex is because Jellyfin was having problems with some of my 4k files on some of my tvs. Yes I have many tvs. Nearly seamless transition from one device to another is another good reason for a plex or whatever media server.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

When the video works the audio doesn't. When the video and audio work the subtitles don't. I used to spend a lot of time with handbrake and moving usb drives around. With plex and a decent machine I don't have to worry about that shit anymore. The reason I use plex is because Jellyfin was having problems with some of my 4k files on some of my tvs. Yes I have many tvs. Nearly seamless transition from one device to another is another good reason for a plex or whatever media server.

I just used the built in DLNA function, on multiple devices and TVs, never had a problem. I don't know if the Xbox 360 supported subtitles though.

Why does anime need 10bit encoding? They could probably get by with 5bpc(I know that's not supported but the idea of 10bit anime boggles the mind).

 

[ryuichi]

Why does anime need 10bit encoding? They could probably get by with 5bpc(I know that's not supported but the idea of 10bit anime boggles the mind).

My thoughts exactly. Problem do weebs can gasm over pussy Cloud bitch strife.