The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Posts Tagged ‘computer’

Comparison list of small and energy friendly systems similar to Raspberry Pi

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/05

Sometimes the comments in threads are more interesting than the main topic.

–jeroen

via: Raspberry Pi brengt goedkopere Model A uit in Europa – Computer – Nieuws – Tweakers.

Posted in Power User | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

New Micro Cornucopia issues on BitSavers (including the Final May 1990 issue)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/26

Back in the days I started programming, Micro Cornucopia was a wonderful magazine, so I’m glad that BitSavers scanned a few more issues and put them online today, a week after some great PDF scans: Turbo Assembler/Debugger (1993/1994), Borland C++/Object Windows Library (1993):

They covered a lot of languages (x86 and 68k assembly, C, C++, Turbo Pascal and many more), and very interesting hardware designs.

–jeroen

via: Index of /pdf/microCornucopia.

Posted in Assembly Language, BitSavers.org, C, C++, Delphi, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Assembler, Turbo Pascal, x86 | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

vSphere 5.1 (ESXi 5.1) can run any hardware level since ESX Server 3.5

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/17

Last year, I missed this tiny sentence:

So in plain English, any VM that was generated on VMware ESX Server 3.5 or later can run atop ESXi 5.1 unchanged.

Which means it is a snap to move your VMs from older ESX / ESXi / vSphere versions as long as they are ESX 3.x or later.

In fact hardware version 7 has the widest compatibility amongst ESX/ESXi/vSphere/Fusion/Workstation/Player versions (see the table at the bottom).

The free version still has a 32 gigabyte physical RAM limit (people are still confused by the vRAM / Physical RAM distinction, especially since vRAM is not limited any more). Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, Excel, Fusion, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation, Word | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Mid 2013: Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC supports 10-finger, guesture, multiple-user & 2 hr battery life.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/17

In the past you have seen my interest in multi-touch Windows devices (for instance the Dell’s S2340T 23″ Multi-touch monitor and Microsoft Surface 2.0).

This year a I expect vendors to deliver Windows 8 based computers that resemble a lot of the Microsoft PixelSense (formerly “Microsoft Surface”) technology:

  • 10 or more finger touch
  • guesture support
  • multi-user
  • capability to see more than just fingers (i.e. tags, or mobile controllers)

Lenovo seems the first to announce, with an expected availability in June 2013: IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC, with support for 10-finger, guesture, multiple-user, and two-hour battery life.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

New BitSavers.org PDF scans: Turbo Assembler/Debugger (1993/1994), Borland C++/Object Windows Library (1993)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/17

The PDF Archive at bitsavers.org has recently put online these raster image PDF scans from Turbo Assembler/Debugger (1993/1994) and Borland C++/Object Windows Library (1993)

Remnants of the past, usefull for RAD Studio, Delphi and C++ Builder developers wanting to know a bit of history (: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Assembly Language, BitSavers.org, Borland C++, C, C++, Delphi, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Assembler, Turbo Pascal, x86 | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

1.5 TB 2.5 inch laptop HDD drives with 12.5mm, and ≈ 1 TB 9.5 mm SSD drives finally seem to have arrived

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/12

Large capacity notebook HDD drives

It appears that finally this kind of laptop HDD drives have arrived:

  • 1.5 TB capacity
  • 2.5 inch
  • 12.5 mm high (fits few standard drive bays, but often fits an adapter for the CD/DVD drive bay)

I’ve hoped for these drives to appear for a long time, and wrote blog posts on it in March 2012 (HDD market seems recovered, and WD introduced 4 TB 3.5 HDDs: when are 2.5 inch 12.5 mm 1.5+ TB drives coming?) and September 2012 (When are the 12.5mm 1.5 TB and 14.8mm 2 TB notebook drives coming?).

Finally they seem to be there, but there is still confusion of model number and exact drive height, so here are some links that I collected with information:

The YouTube video indicates the Seagate drive inside the GoFlex is indeed 12.5 mm high, but doesn’t reveal the product number of the drive.

Given the below Toshiba model numbers and specs, my gut feeling is that they are all the same drive (USA pricing currently varies between USD 125 and USD 140):

  • MQ01ABC150: Toshiba, 1.5TB, 2.5 inch, 12.5 mm, SATA 3.0 Gb/s, 5400 rpm, 8 MB cache.
  • MQ01ABD150: Toshiba, 1.5TB, 2.5 inch, 12.5 mm, SATA 3.0 Gb/s, 5400 rpm, 8 MB cache.
  • PX1830E-1HK0: Toshiba, 1.5 TB, 2.5 inch, 9?? mm, SATA 3.0 Gb/s, 5400 rpm, 8 MB cache.

Large capacity notebook SSD drives

In the mean time, the largest capacity of SSD drives available is approximately 1 TB:

Not available yet, but announced:

It looks like most (if not all) 960 GB drives internally use some form of RAID 0. The OWC is, and the Mushkin is too, but the M500 might be non-raid (we will know for sure after it ships) as it is supposed to use 128 Gb NAND dies (the OCZ Octane does, but when it got introduced, these were really expensive).

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, Power User, SSD | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

openSUSE 12.x: “A plain `halt` will not shutdown the system properly.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/12/30

Just noticed that in openSUSE 12.x, A plain halt will not shutdown the system properly.
On my system, it would leave the screen as shown on the right:

Only halt -p works, none of the other hints in the shutdown does not power off thread work, nor the acpi=off or acpi=oldboot settings.

The odd thing: a plain reboot still works properly.

If someone knows a better workaround: please let me know in the comments.

I hope they will fix this in a future openSUSE version; at least for 12.1 they have a “CHECKIT” marker in the documentation, but it has disappeared as of the 2.3 docs, but still fails:

5.4. systemd: System Shutdown

CHECKIT for 12.3. Is this entry still required?

To halt and poweroff the system when using systemd, issue halt -p or shutdown -h now on the command-line or use the shutdown button provided by your desktop environment.

Note: A plain halt will not shutdown the system properly.

Luckily, my openSUSE is a VM, which I can reboot from the ESXi host.
On a physical system, you will end up without any option to resurrect the system.

Later

After installing antivir, a plain halt works sort of: it says it is halted, but ESXi still thinks it is not:

After installing antivir, a plain halt works.

After installing antivir, a plain halt appears to work, but it doesn’t.

ESXi is sure the system didn't actually power down.

ESXi is sure the system didn’t actually power down.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, SuSE Linux | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

WordPress.com silently fixed the “tab order broken” issue. Thanks!

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/12/29

WordPress.com silently restored the Please restore the tab order the way it worked 2 weeks ago problem.

I wished they’d send update notifications on those fixes (it seems the underlying ticket 21340 was fixed about 2 months ago in changeset 22250 when I was on a long holiday), so I’m glad to announce it works again.

Even better: you don’t need the tab key to go from “Edit” next to “Publish immediately” into the Month field:
When you press “Edit” the focus automagically shifts to the Month field.

Thanks!

–jeroen

Posted in SocialMedia, WordPress | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Three XE3 hotfixes at the Delphi Registered User Downloads page

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/09/28

There are three RAD Studio / Delphi XE3 hotfixes on the Delphi Registered User Downloads page.

Hotfix 3 is for the Professional edition only.

The others are for all editions.

RAD Studio XE3 Hotfix 3: Hotfix 3 for RAD Studio XE3.

This Hotfix addresses an issue in using SQLite driver on the Professional edition.

Available only to registered users of Professional edition of Delphi XE3, C++Builder XE3, RAD Studio XE3, and Embarcadero All-Access XE

1MB; Download

RAD Studio XE3 Hotfix 2: Hotfix 2 for RAD Studio XE3.

This Hotfix addresses a regression with using the GestureManager in a FireMonkey application.

Available only to registered users of Delphi XE3, C++Builder XE3, RAD Studio XE3, and Embarcadero All-Access XE

60MBDownload

RAD Studio XE3 Hotfix 1: Hotfix 1 for RAD Studio XE3.

This Hotfix addresses an issue with ShowMessage in a FireMonkey application on certain locales on Mac OS X.

Available only to registered users of Delphi XE3, C++Builder XE3, RAD Studio XE3, and Embarcadero All-Access XE

12.1MBDownload

–jeroen

via: Delphi Registered User Downloads.

Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE3, Development, Software Development | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Delphi: path names both in .dpr and .dproj, why? (refactoring – How to reorganize the folder structure of my units in Delphi? – Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/09/27

Cool: learned something new here:

About the path names of files being in the .dproj as well as in the .dpr:

@Jeroen – Looks like msbuild might need those entries, otherwise they’re possibly redundant, AFAICT… In any case, there is not much editing involved, just delete ‘dccreference’ entries and then a ‘save all’ in the IDE regenerates them. – Sertac Akyuz

–jeroen

via: refactoring – How to reorganize the folder structure of my units in Delphi? – Stack Overflow.

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Software Development | Tagged: , , , , , , | 14 Comments »