@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbtMy 13 year old laptop is definitely antique, but sadly it's not the steampunk one!!
It's a 2012 Dell Precision Workstation M4700 maxxed out to 32GB of RAM, 2.5TB storage in three drives, Intel i7, with an upgraded screen and an upgraded GPU ... now likely to become triple boot if I get serious about Linux given it won't run Win11 easily. Insanely maintainable, these things were really build to last.
@JamieR@toot.wales@Natasha_Jay I read that spec as pretty high … kicking the arse out of most ‘off the self’ laptops, and it struggles to run win 11? Just how resource intensive is 11? Windows keep offering me an upgrade, I keep telling them no but the specs of my laptop are nothing like yours. It would tank it by all accounts.
As soon as I’ve archived everything I want, my daughter is switching me over to Linux. Thankfully
@Natasha_Jay@JamieR
The mobile workstations are incredible, they're designed for CAD/CAM work by Dell, HP and a few others
My W11 problem is Microsoft put minimum hardware at an i8 CPU and TPM2.0 (I had i7 and 1.2. In theory you can bypass it but support may become an issue ...
@Natasha_Jay I’m running Linux on a 2009 MBP - still going strong!
@Natasha_Jay My ThinkPad of the same vintage runs Debian like a dream. Indistinguishable from my over-specced desktop I bought a couple of years ago.
Also I can be sure nobody will ever nick it because it's too heavy to run off with.
![The humble standalone serial terminal might be long gone from the collective computing experience, but in the ghostly form of a software virtual terminal and a serial converter it remains the most basic fall-back and essential tool of the computer hardware hacker. [Mitsuru Yamada] has created the product that should have been made in the serial terminal’s heyday, a standalone handheld terminal using a 6809 microprocessor and vintage HP dot matrix LEDs. In a die-cast box with full push-button keyboard it’s entirely ready to roll up to a DB-25 wall socket and log into the PDP/11 in the basement.
Using today’s parts we might achieve the same feat with a single-chip microcontroller and a small LCD or OLED panel, but with an older microcomputer there is more system-building required. The 6809 is a wise choice from the 1970s arsenal because it has some on-board RAM, thus there’s no need for a RAM chip. Thus the whole thing is achieved with only a 2716 EPROM for the software, a 6850 UART with MAX232 driver for the serial port, and a few 74 chips for glue logic, chip selects, and I/O ports to handle keyboard and display. There’s no battery in the case, but no doubt that could be easily accommodated. Also there’s not much information on the keyboard itself, but in the video below we catch a glimpse of its wiring as the box is opened.](https://media.beige.party/media_attachments/files/113/743/013/610/533/407/original/da024734005943bb.png "The humble standalone serial terminal might be long gone from the collective computing experience, but in the ghostly form of a software virtual terminal and a serial converter it remains the most basic fall-back and essential tool of the computer hardware hacker. [Mitsuru Yamada] has created the product that should have been made in the serial terminal’s heyday, a standalone handheld terminal using a 6809 microprocessor and vintage HP dot matrix LEDs. In a die-cast box with full push-button keyboard it’s entirely ready to roll up to a DB-25 wall socket and log into the PDP/11 in the basement.
Using today’s parts we might achieve the same feat with a single-chip microcontroller and a small LCD or OLED panel, but with an older microcomputer there is more system-building required. The 6809 is a wise choice from the 1970s arsenal because it has some on-board RAM, thus there’s no need for a RAM chip. Thus the whole thing is achieved with only a 2716 EPROM for the software, a 6850 UART with MAX232 driver for the serial port, and a few 74 chips for glue logic, chip selects, and I/O ports to handle keyboard and display. There’s no battery in the case, but no doubt that could be easily accommodated. Also there’s not much information on the keyboard itself, but in the video below we catch a glimpse of its wiring as the box is opened.")