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Entries tagged 'cat:Computers'

Alternative Operating System: Sortix
This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

sortix

Sortiix is one of the more mature hobby OSs. In fact, the first time I booted it I checked that it really isn't "just" a Linux distribution that's trying to hide that fact on the surface. And it isn't. Sortix is a Unix-like, POSIX compliant OS with it's own kernel, system tools and libraries. It contains packages that have been ported from Debian. But all the most interesting core compeonents are implemented anew.<

Sortix has made steady progress over like 15 years. That's probably the biggest difference between it and similar hobby OSs. Version 1.0 was released in 22016. Even in that form it is really usable. It boots without any issues on real hardware. It's stable, comes with all the core unix tools you'd exopect, but it didn't have a GUI and network support, yet. It switched to nighly releases after that. Since then, features have been added to the point that not many things separate it from being as useful for daily usage as HaikuOS.

Alternative Operating System: MikeOS
This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

MikeOS

A very limited and simple operating system written in assembler for 286 computers (and newer compatible architechtures, obviously). Pretty much what I would imagine as a successful outcome if I would write one to see that I can do it. It works, there's a text editor, a game, you can list, edit and execute files. Not much more though at first glance. I didn't look into writing additional software for it myself, yet. There are many forks of MikeOS. Most of them named after the forker and not under active development. It's a project I'd look into if I'd want to learn x86 assembler. Simple, not looking like any other OS I've seen.

MikeOS is neither UNIX-like in any way nor is it similar to CP/M or DOS. It is closer to being a BASIC interpreter with a program menu. But there is a bit more to it. Everything is in the same text mode in VGA resolution. After booting, you get a box with list of menu items in pointing to submenus or executable programs. Among those programs are a BASIC interpreter, some simple games, a text editor and a file browser. That's about the gist of what you get. It's all very simple and fast. Enough to write your own applications or scripts. And it all fits on a single 3.5" HD floppy. There are third-party applications to be found on the internet. But almost all that I stumbled upon were part of MikeOS forks.

Next to the menu there is also a command line with a very small list of commands. To be honest, from a user point of view, I don't know what to do with it.

There are quite a few forks. It seems to be a great hobby project. And because it's all relatively simple it's a project you can actually finish after a while, not like writing your own UNIX clone with system tools, glibc port and modern GUI. MikeOS forks usually come with some additional apps and scripts and some changes in UI. Some add to the few system calls, add their own menu. Some even started to add network support. One MikeOS fork I have to mention is MichalOS because it overhauled the UI to make it more pleasing and added quite a few simple apps and games that all seem to be very stable. It has an image viewer and a music program. TomOS is a fork that adds support for directories. ShoockOS seems to be about simplifying things even more.

On the MikeOS web site there are handbooks, resources for development and links to software projects for MiikeOS. MikeOS is a great help if you want to learn x86 assembly in a practical way without starting from zero. But it is also useful as an OS for embedded applications or simple hobby projects (interacting with Arduino, other serial communication tasks, …). And it could also be considered useful for everyday tasks if you found a home computer from the mid 80s useful.

tba: creenshots

crAzy!modz

In den 2000er-Jahren habe ich gerne Webseiten für Projekte gebaut, die ich vor hatte, mit anderen oder alleine, zu in einen Zustand zu bringen, in dem sie Content für eine Webseite abwerfen würden. Begonnene und nie auf einen vorzeigbaren Stand fortgeführte Projekte waren schon damals ein Ding in meinem Leben. So haben die meisten Webseiten, die ich zu der Zeit gebaut habe, nie ihren Weg auf einen öffentlich zugänglichen Webserver gebracht. Daher habe ich einige offensichtlich sehr unfertige Webseiten, die zu erwähnen ich keinen Sinn sehe. Kürzlich bin ich über ein Backup unter anderem davon gestoßen. Eine Seite war aber darunter, über die ich gerne ein paar Sätze verlieren würde.

crAzy!modz war der Name, den wir für die Webseite gewählt haben, auf der wir unsere Case-Modding-Resultate sowie Tipps für einzelne Mods präsentieren wollten. "Wir" meint dabei drei junge Menschen aus Bad Dürkheim, die nichts als ihr interesse für Case Modding verbandt.

Unter denen meiner Webseiten aus dieser Zeit, die nie einen Zustand errecht haben, in dem ich sie veröffentlichen wollte, ist c!m wahrscheinlich die am weitesten fortgeschrittene. Als ich sie neulich wiederfand dachte ich sogar daran, den bisher darin enthaltenen Content ein klein wenig aufzubereiten und alle Platzhalter und Links auf noch nicht gefüllte Seiten zu entfernen. Danach wäre die Seite tatsächlich vorzeigbar, auch wenn sie nicht das kollaborative Projekt darstellen würde, das ich hoffte, dass aus ihr werden würde. Aber der Nutzen ihres Inhalts wäre nicht groß genug um mich dazu zu bewegen, die Peinlichkeit einzugehen, meine Texte von damals zu veröffentlichen. Da müsste ich schon noch weitere Modding-Tipps und How-Tos ergänzen. Und diese Inhalte würde ich heute eher hier veröffentlichen. Ich werde einfach diesem Eintrag hier einen Screenshot oder drei Anhängen und die Sache dann weitestgehend wieder vergessen. Die Bedeutung des Wortes "Nutte" werde ich einfsch mal nicht erklären.

Das A in crAzy!modz ist großgeschrieben, weil ich ursprünglich die kleine Variante des Logos (auch für's Favicon) ein großes A in einem Kreis machen wollte. Die beiden anderen Beteiligten waren aber nicht so freundlich mit den Ideen des Anarchismus, weshalb diese Variante des Logos nicht in der Webseite enthalten ist.

Die Seite enthielt ein Showcase von Casemods des Teams (Beispiel im Anhang), Ideen für kleine Mods (runde IDE-Kabel, individuelle Lüftergitter, in Software schaltbare Beleuchtung), Links zu anderen Modding-Seiten und hätte noch viel Platz für aufwendigere Mods und detailliertere HowTos gehabt. Meine Wahrnehmung war, dass ich gerne weiter an dem Projekt gearbeitet hätte, wenn positives Feedback mir den nötigen Ansporn dazu gegeben hätte. Damals wusste ich noch nicht, dass alle meine Projekte so verlaufen würden.

Die Seite dürfte eine der letzten gewesen sein, die ich in Hand und mit Frames geschrieben habe. Ich mag den Stil noch genau so sehr wie damals. Grün auf Dunkelgrau, Links, deren Hintergrundfarbe sich beim Hovern ändert: Sehr cool.

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F(x)tex Pro¹ X

So, I've hand this device with the weirdly complicated name spelling for a while now. But I haven't used it as my main phone since recently because I first wanted to flash a different OS onto it. I didn't have the capacity/time to take care of that among other reasons because it's something that I've rarely done, and never before successfully. After several failed attempts to get /e/OS to run on it, I've now settled fore LineageOS. Since I want to use it as my main phone from now on I don't think I'll experiment with any other systems on it for now, even though it would be the perfect phone to get some experience with Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish or some other Linux Distro.

Battery

The last time I've written about this device it looked like the battery was affected too much by having been empty for years, notz even allowing the phone to charge its own battery. Android suddenly shut down seemingly randomly and had 3 to 20 % battery when turning it back on minutes later evewn though it displayed 30 to 50 % when it turned off. Sometimes it displayed a higher battery charge after turning back on than when it turned itself off. Sometimes it would last less than five hours usage before it went down. This became better over time. It seems that Android became better at guessing the current battery charge. Now on LineageOS the battery doesn't last a whole day when it's used a lot, but so far it didn't do any surprise jumps or shutdowns. Technically, it lasts a bit over 24 hours with moderate usage. But that is with the last couple of hours under a warning LED (if I hadn't turned that off). According to the LineageOS settings, the battery is healthy and has 100% of its original capacity of 3313 mAh. That would be 113 mAh more than advertised. Maybe I'm just too spoiled by my previous 4000+ mAh devices with smaller and low-rews displays. I didn't do any independent measurement yet. (Edit: More on that in the last part of this entry.)

Keyboard

Probably the most important thing of this phone is the keyboard that makes it unique on today's marked. It is very similar to those of the later Nokia smartphones that still had keyboards. I sort of see it as an N900 with more room for a larger keyboard. It is crammed, but none of the keys are too hard too reach. Not even the number row, that has smaller keys very close to the screen. And every key on this board has a good reason to be there. As somebody coming from a Unihertz Titan Pocket with a Blackberry-style keyboard with a very reduced layout, I'm glad not only punctuatioin and number keys but also for proper arrow keys and four modifier keys of which the ones that are used as lot appear twice. I chose a German keyboard layourt because I'm used to it and can find every symbol I need on it, and it's useful to have the extra letters when I write in German. The Android it came with had only one German QUERTZ layout to select and it didn't match the labeling exactly. Some special characters were switched or missing, and it couldn't produce an apostrophe (') by any means. With LineageOS there is a 'F(x)tec QUERTZ' and that works perfectly now. After the first getting used to they keyboard is a delight to type on compared to any other phone I held in my hands in the last 5 years. I think I still like the Nokia N9300 and N9500 keyboard better. But the more layout closer to PCs does make more sense with a phone where apps aren't developed for that keyboard specifically. And I am enjoying the extra keys, especially on the command line. The backlight also works as one would expect, which is not a given in keyboard smartphones.

Camera

Let's not get into it too much. The camera isn't good. 48 MP doesn't mean anything when every picture that it produces is automatically heavily mushed by noise reductin. It's better than my last phone camera. It's able to produce photos with room light that aren't blurred to the point where you can't read anything. That's enough for me right now. It does have the bug where the camera app gets rotated when you open the phone (which forces all apps into landscape mode), but the image isn't rotated, but its dimensions are. The viewfinder isn't really usable with the keyboard open. But it's not as bad as it is with the Planet Computer phones/PDAs.

Display

Once a smartphone display has reached a certain quality, I don't have much to say about it. And that quality point has been matched even in cheap phones for years. It's bright enough, resolution is high enough, I don't know or care about the maximum frame rate, colours seem fine, viewing angle isn't an issue (very good actually), touch resolution is fine enough that it isn't a problem. It does have black spots in some corners. Apparently that is something that can happen when you bend a panel that maybe isn't advanced enough to be bent that much. The rounded edges are nice though and I don't mind the black spots as long as they aren't growing. I've never accidentally activaterd the touch screen while typing.

Fingerprint Sensor

It's located below the power button on the right. I haven't found a comfortable way of using it to unlock the phone, yet. Maybe I won't use it. It's irritating how often it thinks it's been used when I handle the phone and vibrated he phone. Sometimes it's locked for too many failed attempts once I actually want to use it.

Exterior

As for ports, there are two: USB-C and a headset jack. No more or less than necessary. There's one fingerprint sensor. There are four buttons: Power, volume up, volume down and camera. And then there's a SIM and SD card tray.

Sound

It has stereo speakers, which are actually placed on opposite sides, facing left and right when in landscape mode. They are loud enough and sound like phone speakers sound nowadays: clear, without any surprises and enough bass to not miss it during any sort of speech recording. The position of the speakers could be worse. They arent covered when the phone rests on somthing and they can't be accidentally covered both at the same time. But they aren't facing you directly and can't possibly both face you at the same time. So the sound will always be roomy if both speakers are on. Their distance also creates a problem that I've rarely heard in a phone: If both ar producing the same or almost the same sound waves, parts of them will cancel each other out before the reach your ears, especially if the phone isn't exactly in the middle between your ears and exactly horizontal and straight. At 50 cm distance, if you want to watch a video with sound, in order to understand ecerything, you have to turn up the volume so much that others in the room are wondering why you're watching at that volume. At least I have to and I would wonder. My solution is to turn one of the speakers off almost completely. One is still loud enough usually. In Google's Android the audio settings are hidden in advanced accessibility settings. On LineageOS audio adjustments are directly on the accessibility settings screen. Set to mono you'll still hear everything. The setting does not influence bluetooth earphones.

Practical Usage

Whether the screen is activated by opening the keyboard or by pressing the power button, it takes a second until the screen comes on. That's annoying, but I'm going to get used to it. It's the case with both stock Android and LineageOS.

For daily usage so far it has been great, except for the battery life. Once I've stopped downloading and installing lots of stuff every day and trying things out it has become better. Also I think the battery charge indication has been caribrated. Because it doens't turn off with two digits of battery charge left. I'be decided to go with the battery enabled all the time. This way it lasts well over one day, even when I use it a bit more than usual. According to both the phones own and my measurement the capacity is almost exactly as advertised. (4 to 13 mAh more. I didn't factor in the voltage.) But the fact that it's runtime is at least a third shorter than that of by previous phone (with a smaller battery) makes me think it that the screen and other parts are probably not as energy efficient. I glady charge it more often for the experience with the better keyboard.

Beautiful Heatsinks

(I can't find many free photos of what I want to show here. Maybe I could buy some.) See the links behind the model names for nice pictures.

Heatsinks are a mostly practical thing. They usually aren't seen, so visual design is not very important. Exceptions are where part of a device's case is acting as a heatsink and devices assembled by enthusiasts who care how their internals look (including devices that show off their components, like open PC builds and PCs with windows in their case). This post in about the latter: heatsinks for PC components for people who care how their coolers look like.

To be frank, this entry is specifically abnout Zalman heatsinks. I don't know much about the company. Apparently they are Korean with a name that sounds so un-asian that I doubt that the beginnings really were in Korea. But I know that they made several CPU coolers that I like visually. A heatsink needs to fulfil the task of transporting heat from a small surface to a larger surface where other mechanisms then may exchange heated melecules with molecules from even farther evay. Heatsinks can store more heat energy if they have a larger mass. They transport the heat quicker if they are made of materials that are good at that sort of thing, like copper. And they are better at exchanging heat with their envirement if their surface area is larger. If a chip needs to be cooled better, what's mostly done is put a larger heatsink onto it (can take in more energy) or blow more air through it (larger/faster fans). It's relatively cheap to just increase the amount of aluminium and/or plastic and call it a cooler. But making the heatsink larger mainly increases the capacity for how much heat energy it can take in from the die quickly, which is good for eneryg bursts, but not for constant heat absorbtion. And blowing more air through it makes the cooler louder. Zalman took a different applroach around 2000 and was very successful with it in the early 2000s, as it appears to me. They used mainly copper for their heatsinks (even just a copper core used to be a sign for a higher value PC heatsinks before) and they drastically increased the surface area. I don't knwo who invented the style or manufacturing principle of copper sheets intertwined with a copper base to form a fan-like (as in paper fan) structure. But Zalman did this with the most sense for beauty and with a target market of enthusiast PC builders. I couldn't afford any of their products at the time. But I was a fan from the moment I saw a Zalman Flower for the first time.

Under the name flower they released a number of very different, round CPU coolers as well as at least one chipset cooler. The name started in the 90s, where it was used for a ciurcular aluminium CPU cooler for socket 370 (Pentium III, Celeron). I like those, too. But they are impossible to find and I'm not aware of anybody making anything similar with that much metal around the fan. In my perception the copper goodness started with the CNPS 3000 series, a passive CPU cooler. Right there we have a unique design that hasn't been matched by any other manufacturer. If I would find one of these and I could buy it for < 30 €, I would get it for a future retro build. It got a makeover with the CNPS 6000 series later for socket A.

The CNPS 5000 is hardly worth mentioning. It follows the design of the Intel Standard LGA 775 coolers, but without the goal of being cheap. The CNPS 7000 series has a layout simialr to the original Flower, round with fins surrounding the fan blades from all sides except the top. Not a new design, but again, now it was available in beautiful and with a lot of copper (optionally, as it usually was from the CNMPS 5000 onwards) fins.

The CNPS 8000 has less roundness and more boringness and shall be skipped here. Now we're already in a time were CPU cooler mounts were designed similar to the way they are today and so some of these coolers are still usable with modern CPUs without making a custom bracket, for some you would need to make your own or adapt a bracket. But it's a realistic undertaking. In the CNPS 9000 series there are two beautiful models. The CNPS 9500 and the CNPS 9900.

Another unique design (as far as I've seen) is the fanless external water cooler Reserator 1, of which several version exits but all are called Reserator 1. CPU coolers aside, most of Zalman's coolers are designed for PC GPUs, understandably. There is one design that I'd like to point out here. And that's the ZM-80. Here are reviews of the ZM-80C and the ZM-80D. I bought an early version of the ZM-80 (without a fan) because it was the best way to passively cool my GPU back then. I'm not a gamer. But I still believed that I could use a powerful graphics card. And those had started to require active cooling. The two giant and massive metal plates of the ZM-80, connected with a heat pipe, made the graphics card an uncommonly large part. It was the first time that I've seen an extension card block its neighbor slot. There are similar coolers. Thermaltake < a href="https://www.techpowerup.com/review/thermaltake-schooner/">took this design to the extreme (although nowadays there are larger GPU heatsinks).

The more time advances, the more boring Zalman's product range becomes.