i love computers.

i still have vivid memories of using computers in elementary school. we had an ancient computer in our kindergarten room and i was one of the only kids who preferred to use it when everyone else was playing with toys. the only program we had installed was a math program, but that didn't matter to me -- something about using a computer was intoxicating. a few years later, we started going to the school's computer lab periodically. they had these banks of old tandy computers -- i don't remember if they were TRS-80s or what -- and some of them had monochrome amber CRTs. i loved using those.

eventually we ended up getting a computer at home, and it was a 286 from leading technology. it ran ms-dos and had a gui on top called hyperDOS that was basically just a launcher. my mom always had to pry me off of it. at the beginning, it was simple games, battle chess, shareware classics like commander keen, and so on. the box art from wing commander at the local software etc is what really pushed me over the edge, and that is what got me to commit to gaming. our parents never let us get a NES or SNES, despite our pleading, but eventually got us a sega master system (well after the SNES was the entrenched console du jour) from a discount toy store at the outlets in rehoboth, delaware. that led to my discovery of phantasy star, and eventually the preference of RPGs over any other genre.

a few years after that, magic: the gathering started to get big in my area (1995 or so), and that led to a brief hiatus on the computer, until we discovered daggerfall, but that's a story for a newer computer...

if you ever played games on a dos-era pc then you know all about autoexec.bat and config.sys; if you're unfortunate, you also know about EMM, trying to keep conventional memory use minimized, and deciding for each boot disk whether or not you needed to include the resource-hungry mouse support. i never managed to get ultima vii to work. but somewhere in there i also discovered BASIC and how to create simple programs. games were always my focus and i always wanted to create them, but beyond the simplest of games i never really had any success.

eventually, the skills i picked up trying to get games to work and just keeping the household computer(s) maintained turned into a hobby in its own right. i still play games quite a bit, but my practical skills of perpetual computer use ended up getting me into my current career path.

current equipment (processor, storage, ram + os):

• asus rog zephyrus 2024 (ryzen 8945HS, 2TB, 32GB, rtx 4070) + win11

eventually decided to upgrade my gaming laptop because i could. i had banked a bunch of amex rewards and my work threw about $1k at me for discretionary expenses like this, so it was basically free. huzzah. the 2024 model has much better cooling than previous years and honestly performs better than my desktop. i was hesitant to buy a new laptop with soldered RAM -- which is usually a hard no -- but 32 GB is pretty much as much as i'd want in there anyway. hopefully will not have any issues for a long time.

upgrades: swapped the 1TB drive for a 2TB.

• lenovo thinkpad l15 gen2 (ryzen 5850u, 256GB, 32GB) + arch (KDE)

will hopefully last me for years to come.

i've done a few OS shuffles on this guy, but ended up switching back to pure arch. endeavourOS was nice, but just a little too full-fat for my tastes and if i need windows i can always switch to one of my other bajillion computers, with parsec picking up the slack if needed.

i hesitate to say that this guy got "relegated" to anything, but currently it doesn't fill a niche at home beyond being my only full-powered dedicated linux machine (the evolve iii maestro is so anemic that it basically doesn't count). i ended up making this desktop machine #4 on my KVM switch, replacing the fanless generic htpc.

upgrades: swapped out the 8GB RAM module for 2x16GB, swapped out the 256GB m.2 2280 SSD for a 2TB drive. dropped the 256GB drive back in to repurpose that drive for the gpd win max 2. since i sold the gpd win max 2, that drive is going to get put back in here once i have the time and inclination. dropped the 2TB drive in the new zephyrus and reverted to the 256GB drive.

• custom desktop (ryzen 5600x, 4TB+4TB, 64GB) + win11/endeavourOS (kde)

with all the "oomph" this guy has, i have various flavors of linux debian running as a VM that i spin up when needed. i can allocate 32GB of memory to each VM if i'm running them one-at-a-time, or i can allocate less and run them in parallel if i need to. i decided to dual-boot with endeavourOS as it does everything i want it to do with a minimum of fuss, but honestly i spend most of my time in windows land because that's where my music production software lives, as well as the few games that don't run with steam's proton compatability layer.

currently using vmware for vm hosting; previously tried several versions of virtualbox, but it would crash my vm when i used my hdmi switch to go back and forth between machines, so that was the nail in the coffin.

last year i upgraded the storage drives from 2TBx2 to 12TBx2. i scored a pair of gently-used server drives for pretty cheap, and they work great. however, this got me down a rabbit hole -- my MB doesn't support native RAID in the way that i want, windows storage spaces is terrible (it takes several days to mirror a 12TB drive, and they'll go back into continuous sync for basically no reason), and i don't have an accessible pcie slot to hook up a dedicated hardware RAID card (the only ones that are accessible are populated with my video card and a wifi card). i could use one of the open pcie x16 slots, but that would eat up half the lanes going to my graphics card. the only other solution would have been to get a riser cable and run that from one of the pcie x1 slots and then just lay the card somewhere in my case, but i decided that was getting a little too fast and loose. eventually i opted to set up a recurring robocopy job to mirror one drive to the other nightly. in order to maximize their lives, i set each drive to spin down after a minute of inactivity, then offlined them. they get onlined via a scheduled task 2 minutes before the backup job kicks off, then get offlined again about 2 hours later. the other option would be to build (or buy) a dedicated NAS and keep the big drives in that, but at this point i feel like buying additional computers to run 24/7 is verging on lunacy.

this year i finally splurged on a m.2 nvme 4TB ssd, performed a clean install of endeavourOS and windows, and then turned my old 4TB SSD into the a storage drive. at the same time, i also decided to retire using built-in hdd storage. the drives spun up frequently even when not needed, and now i just keep them in a 2-slot toaster for use whenever i need to perform a backup or archive.

this is also where i do my music creation/production. currently that's fl studio, absynth, and audacity. not a huge kit, but it does what i want.

• fujitsu biblo loox u1010 (a110, 40GB, 1GB) + puppy

a curiosity. rarely used.

• compaq armada m300 (pentium iii) + win xp

a curiosity, but one that i actually use from time to time. mostly for vintage DOS and windows games. however, after my "upgrade" below, i found myself unable to use the ess maestro for both sound and music at the same time, so that put an end to my vintage gaming for the moment.

upgrade: replaced the anemic 6GB IBM travelstar IDE HDD with a no-name chinese 64GB IDE SSD. had to reinstall windows 98se, which was an ordeal, but i eventually figured out the best way to do it:

• leave the drive unformatted and install from an OEM disk, which will set up the drive and create a FAT32 partition, though not the entire drive.
• let the install finish and set up windows.
• remove the drive and hook it up to an external USB cable.
• use gparted (or your linux tool of choice) and expand the partition to the entire drive.

the other option would be to install MS-DOS first and create a small 2GB FAT16 partition, then use the drive converter tool in windows to convert the partition from FAT16 to FAT32. i believe that it will also let you resize the disk when you do that, but i don't know if it would support modern drive sizes, so you'd probably have to end up resizing it in some flavor of linux anyway. i tried to do most of this from the laptop itself using whatever linux distros would work, but that list is vanishingly small, having only success with DSL (damn small linux). and DSL doesn't include partitioning software -- not even parted! -- in the version that i downloaded.

eventually i got tired of having to fight with win98 over the audio drivers, which never got working right after the SSD upgrade, so i tested xp as an upgrade and it just worked. i know it's a little bit of a betrayal since there's no longer "real" MS-DOS on there, but it just works, dammit.

• beelink ser5 mini pc (ryzen 5560u, 500GB, 16GB) + win11

finally got fed up with stuttering issues on the old htpc and general lagginess. not passively-cooled, but thankfully it has simple fan controls in the uefi -- not quite a full fan curve, but you can set the temp where fans kick in and at what percent power, and then at what power they go to full blast, so for general use, it's essentially silent. haven't had the chance to kick the tires completely, but it feels very snappy and responsive. given the processor and ram, i'd be shocked if it had problems doing 4k streaming.

• evolve iii maestro (n3450, 64GB, 4GB) + arch (lxqt)

sometimes you're at micro center and see that they're selling a new laptop for $60. i've gotten better about impulse buys over the years, but this time i just had to know. it's a pretty terrible machine, all things considered, but it is small and if i break it i won't sweat too much. the onboard wifi, in particular, is terrible. i can get about 10 mbps using the onboard but >100 mbps in the same spot switching to a usb dongle. in fact, there's so much throughput at that speed that the browser/disk can't keep up, thanks to the anemic processor and the emmc storage. i was using mint previously, but i discovered that the realtek module is now supported natively in the linux kernel, so i no longer needed a custom ppa, and i've been having a bit of an arch revival these days. with that taken care of, everything "just works" out of the box, even if it's comparatively slow as hell.

• asus transformer pad t100ta (atom z3775) + win10

recently revived, after a little bit of idle curiosity. i had debian running on it before, but i needed another spare windows machine more than i needed another linux box.

• clockworkpi uconsole (raspberry pi cm4, 4GB) + raspbian

still working on customizing it. tentatively, it does what i wanted it to do (dosbox + portable terminal). i 3d printed an antenna mount and a front plate/cover, replaced the side screws with ones that had built-in d-rings, and made a clasped webbing strap. i also glued a strong magnet to the interior side of the battery bumpout (farthest from the batteries) so that i can keep the allen key at hand. some of the users have noted that the wifi performance with the included flat antenna actually isn't bad as long as you have some sort of spacer between it and the case; i might do some testing and see what the gain difference is, and if it's not huge, i will probably switch back. the antenna mount that i printed is pretty close to one of the d-rings and interferes with the shoulder strap. i modified the model of the front plate to include 2 slots for cable ties and my current process is to keep the external antenna tied to the front of the case, and then whenver i want to use it i can untie and and screw it on. not an elegant solution.

i ended up switching back to the flat antenna because the performance was adequate without the need for the full-sized one. the only real issue i have with this guy at the moment is the keyboard; i really dislike the membrane keys and some keys just take significantly more force or repeated presses to register, which is less than ideal. i've fooled around with 3d printing a new keyboard and/or some hard bits to try and improve the experience, but so far i've come up completely empty-handed. there are a few models out there for printed back covers, which i think i might do just because one of them has a magnetic cover over the battery pack, which will make replacing batteries much easier (right now you have to unscrew the entire backplace to accomplish that). unfortunately that will also impact cooling because right now the entire thing is passively-cooled by having a fat blob of thermal material between the processor and the metal backplate.

• pocket c.h.i.p (allwinner R8) + debian (xfce)

while waiting for the clockworkpi uconsole, i decided to revisit this archaeological curiosity. now that i have a 3d printer, i went ahead and printed a faceplate and keyboard. that alone massively improved the typing experience, as the metal dome switches in the built-in keyboard are "technically functional" but little beyond that. of course, now i have to figure out the best way to label the keys; i have a template printed on paper, but my cutting skills are not fantastic.

sometime in the last year, i had gone through the trouble of re-flashing it, upgrading debian, and updating the apt sources to point at the correct repos for preservation. the pocket home app is still installed if i want the launcher, but by default it boots into the xfce desktop with wifi, audio, and battery handled by monitors in the system panel. the resistive touchscreen is very finnicky and is probably the worst part of the experience, beyond the low-res display, relatively weak processor, low ram, and lack of speaker; having a trackball or some other way of controlling the pointer would be fantastic. still, despite those issues, i am relatively pleased with it.

• raspberry pi inventory:
  • 1 b+
  • 1 2b+
  • 1 3b+
  • 1 4b (8GB)
  • 1 zero
  • 1 zero w
• phone: pixel 8a (256gb) + android 14

i upgraded the 6a to the 8a a bit early because the 8a had 2 features i was gunning for: big storage and 7 years of guaranteed updates. the increased storage means that i can keep all of my music on the phone now without having to pick and choose. the 6a is still around as a backup in case something happens to the 8a.

• inputs: logitech g502 and vortex tab 90m (cherry mx silent reds)
• mic: blue snowball
• headphones: status audio cb-1 (over-ear), zero audio carbo tenore (in-ear, wired), pixel buds a-series (in-ear, wireless)
• desk: vari sit/stand desk, with dual-monitor booms and a $60 shenzhen special KVM, which so far is working great
• networking: 6x tp-link deco x55
• 3d printer: bambu lab p1s

those are some old (and/or weird) computers.

i don't believe in getting rid of technology just because it's old to get the latest and greatest. the zephyrus (RIP) was a compromise because i needed a more modern computer and i do most of my gaming these days on the couch; moreover, with crypto mining and the global supply chain issues, desktop graphics cards aren't priced reasonably (and the entire laptop was about as much as a RTX 3070 card was retailing for at the time). in general i prefer to use the x220t day-to-day because it can be easily serviced and replacement parts can still be had, and with both an extended battery and a slice battery i can get all-day usage. however, the display recently started to fail and i was unable to repair it, so i will need to replace that soon. this led to me upgrading the z585 with a new battery and 16 GB of ram, but the wifi chip is pitifully slow, the battery life is awful, and the overall build quality is dramatically inferior to the thinkpad. lenovo also has an unfortunate propensity for only allowing whitelisted wifi modules, so i can't just pop in a newer module and expect it to work because the machine will stop during POST and tell you that the wifi card is unauthorized. ask me how i know. i also discovered that the chipset only recognizes 8GB of RAM, so its chance to be a replacement for the thinkpad is nil. all of this led to the new thinkpad l15, which works great and didn't cost very much at all; the zephyrus was sold locally, and the old thinkpad was finally recycled after the display started to go and the replacement display cable led to a pre-boot diagnostic error.

the compaq armada is strictly for vintage gaming (currently ascendancy, daggerfall, missionforce:cyberstorm, and diablo). it was originally on win95 but i made the jump to 98se to make use of the usb port for data transfer. the docking station does offer a cd-rom and 3.5" floppy drive, but those have their limitations. it's a testament to the power of the deep web that i was still able to find drivers for the ess maestro soundcard, to say nothing of replacement batteries.

i really wanted to like the fujitsu u1010, but the fact that there's no touchscreen support beyond windows xp was a real letdown, and now i can't even find those drivers anymore (not that i'd really want to use a computer running xp that ever touches the internet). as i've gotten older my tolerance for using umpcs has definitely dwindled, and the tiny display and anemic processor make it more of a curiosity. these days, i mainly keep it around so that if i ever run into one of those cf-type drives i have something that can read it.

doing anything fun with all those raspberry pis?

no. one is running as a headless cups server, and the rest were bought with various projects in mind but never seemed to go anywhere. the rpi 3+ is currently hooked up to a pimoroni 4" hat and has raspbian, but beyond that is just a vanilla installation. long-term, i had notions of creating a portable game console or cyberdeck, but we'll see if those ever pan out; now that i have a 3d printer, i should probably get cracking on that.

device graveyard

retired (still own, could return to service):

• fanless generic htpc (i3-6006u, 120GB, 8GB) + win10

replaced by the beelink ser5 as the household htpc.

• zotac zbox (n3150, 240GB, 8GB) + arch (lxde)

not currently used. was originally purchased to be used as a standalone firewall using the dual NICs but never got around to setting it up. for a while i used it as a dedicated pc for downloading over TOR/VPN for work purposes, e.g. getting copies of exfil'd data from TA sites on the dark web.

• surface duo 128GB (android 11)

finally had a bad enough drop that i don't want to use it anymore. the rear glass is cracking on both sides, the plastic around the charging port has been broken for some time, the sim tray is broken, and the corners are now scuffed and chipped, including at both hinges. i was really pulling for it, but the fact that there are no reasonably-good cases for it beyond simple bumpers was the nail in the coffin. i may resurrect it as a dedicated ebook reader, if i can get a decent case for it.

overall i really like the surface duo, but there are some major gripes: using the camera is a pain, the one-screen mode is uncomfortable to hold, it's impossible to find a good case and the official bumper is inadequate, very few apps support spanned/dual-screen modes, the device occasionally forgets which screen(s) should be active, some apps just freak out in general, etc. but even with those gripes, when it works, it's like poetry. reading books in kindle is about as perfect as you could expect. you can do emulation comfortably in retroarch, with the controls on the bottom screen. similarly, if you need to type out an email or other semi-longform text, you can put it into basically "mini-laptop" mode and the keyboard will span to cover the bottom screen. and of course, if you need to have two apps open at the same time, it's great to have them side-by-side.

• pixel 3 128GB (android 12)

got fed up with general poor performance, connectivity issues, and EOL status now that it's no longer getting any updates. lineageOS mitigated the update issues but introduced others, mostly some apps just refusing to work for whatever reason. eventually reflashed the stock rom and left it in a stock state for use as a backup in case my current phone fails. recently i also replaced the battery since i had bought a kit a long time ago from ifixit and was irritated that i had never followed through. honestly, if it was still getting security updates i would consider using it as my primary phone. it's still fast enough, and it's a little smaller than my 6a, which is a huge plus for me.

• hp pro tablet 608 g1 (atom x5-Z8500) + win10

on paper, this was exactly what i wanted -- windows on an 8" tablet with a good display ratio. in practice, it's a laggy nightmare. the biggest offender is the touchscreen, which frequently has between a quarter and half second of delay between a touch event occurring and it actually registering. this makes some activities like using the on-screen keyboard downright maddening, and the extra delay on every touch makes tasks that are already slow enough given the anemic processor seem downright glacial. i tried running several flavors of linux on it, but none of them had remotely decent performance on the hardware and i ended up reinstalling windows. currently suffering the same fate as the asus transformer pad.

• asus zenpad s 8.0 (atom z3560) + android 6.0

android on intel was abandoned by all parties, and it hasn't received any updates (security or otherwise) in years. still technically usable, but it stutters and lags like hell and it's not safe due to the lack of security updates. could use as an ebook reader or other offline use.

• moto g power (2020) + android 11

too big, too slow. lots of apps are janky. android auto dies for no reason. fingerprint reader is atrocious. using one as a dedicated work phone. great battery life, though, and microSD slot.

• pixel OG (128 GB) + android ?

just like the pixel 3, but EOL'd sooner and with worse battery life.

• nexus 5

way past EOL, battery is completely shot and quality replacements just don't exist anymore. i tried to buy third-party replacements and they wouldn't charge, and in the process of replacing it the second time i accidentally broke some of the retaining clips on the back cover.

• others too numerous to list (galaxy nexus, asus zenfone 2, various prepaid android phones on virgin mobile, etc)

gifted/sold/returned:

• lenovo ideapad gaming 3 (ryzen 5600h, 1TB+480GB, 16GB) + win11/endeavourOS (kde)

after i decided to buy the new zephyrus, i gifted this to someone in my D&D group who was in desperate need of a new laptop.

• gpd win max 2 2023 (ryzen 7840u, 2TB, 64GB) + win11

despite the ludicrous specs, i found myself rarely using it. my lenovo ideapad gaming 3 has better gaming chops and is more comfortable to use. i never took advantage of the 64GB of RAM. and while there are custom programs and scripts to manage the tdp and such, they're extremely fiddly and take a lot of tinkering to get it to work how i'd want. yes, a traditional gaming laptop is bigger, but it also "just works". there's something to be said for that.

i had previously owned the first-gen, original gpd win, which had an anemic atom processor. it functioned well enough but definitely had some dodgy qc. when i saw the specs for their most recent product, i decided that they had enough products and iterations to smooth out some of the problems, and moreover the specs offered were fantastic. it's performed amazingly well. there are custom programs that they have provided to customize the button mappings, processor tdp, etc. and they seem to do exactly what they say they do.

the only real complaint that i had was that the usb ports were upside down, which made using devices like my yubikey a little cumbersome, but otherwise it seemed solid.

• steam deck (amd zen 2, 512 GB, 16GB) + steamOS

it's not a bad device, but i am not much of a controller guy and adjusting to controller layouts takes a lot of effort for me. about 95% of its use was playing vampire survivors before bed.

gifted to my brother as an early christmas present.

• old custom desktop (i7-3770k, 480GB, 16GB) + none

gifted to my brother.

• gpd win (OG)

gifted to my brother.

• hp envy x360 convert 13-ay1035nr (ryzen 7 5800u, 512GB, 16GB) + win11

i ended up returning it. there is no reasonable wifi support in linux and performance in a vm was not what i was hoping. additionally, laptop is outright hostile to serviceability -- two torx screws plus three phillips screws (the latter are under an adhesive rubber strip that breaks and deforms with almost no force) are needed to "detach" the bottom cover, which also needs to be pried open with herculean force to get the first retaining clips to detach, but the opening you need to pry is barely wide enough to fit in a razorblade, let alone an opening pick or pry tool. the coating on the chassis also scratches for basically no reason. i opened the case exactly twice: once to put in a larger ssd, and once to replace the original drive before wiping and mailing it back, and still it looks like the device was given to some unusually large and energetic dogs as a chew toy. i typically pride myself on being very gentle and delicate when repairing devices but this was a nightmare.

• rog zephyrus g14 (ryzen 5900hs, 1TB, 16GB) + win10

now that i have a robust desktop, i no longer needed a highly-performant laptop like this, so i sold it. i might have kept it long-term, but honestly the amount of heat that it generates is extremely worrisome for longevity, especially since most of that exhaust heat blows directly up towards the display. fun fact: i actually have owned two of these laptops (one 2020 model and one 2021 model), and the heat/noise were slightly better on the 2021 model. the 2020 model got painfully hot on the chassis, like immediate-recoil-painful-hot. if i was still commuting to work on the train for several hours every day, it would have been perfect to keep, though the steam deck gpd win max is definitely filling a similar niche.

deceased (recycled):

• lenovo thinkpad x220t (i7-2620m, 480GB, 16GB) + arch (lxde)

my previous laptop. finally died after i attempted to replace the display cable, and when i put it back together, it gave me the terse message "thermal sensing error" on boot, which prevents it from even getting into the bios. it could be an easy fix, but after taking the entire machine and display apart, and given my preexisting reservations about maintaining such an old device, i decided to retire it for good.

• lenovo ideapad z585 (a10-4600m, 480GB+1TB, "16"GB) + arch (lxde)

chipset only recognizes 8 GB of memory. really frustrated at how bad this laptop is, based on how good it could have been. finally decided that it cannot serve a meaningful purpose as a modern computer, so it will regrettably end up as e-waste. i tried seeing if it could be used as a thin client for game streaming using parsec, but even with a good wifi dongle it struggles to keep up, though part of that is due to the fact that parsec does not recognize the apu's integrated graphics and forces software decoding. still, even normal tasks (e.g. basic browsing) are incredibly slow and there are lag spikes that make it incredibly frustrating to use for much of anything.

• acer aspire one netbook (atom n270) + win7

planned obsolescence caught up with it.

• acer aspire travelmate es-111m (celeron n2840) + win10

random throttling/lagging, touchpad would frequently stop working until a power cycle. woefully underpowered, but so light it felt like nothing. i really wanted to like it more than i did.

• apple powerbook g4 aluminum a1095 (powerpc g4 7447A) + freeBSD

found next to a dumpster and gently coaxed back to life, but i never finished getting it fully set up, and i only have so much love to give.