Alternative everyday computer/games system.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Sun Jan 02, 2022 4:36 am

On 1/1/2022 at 8:11 PM, Scott Robison said:

I'm on the list. It's there a Retroholics Anonymous? I fear I may need a 12 step program...

Same here. Over the holidays, I bought parts for my MiSTer (including a serious power supply upgrade) and a Minimig board. I'm also strongly considering the Multisystem board and a Mini Pet. Thing is - I'm out of room. So I need to make some changes to either my acquisition habits or my living space.

Scott Robison · Post by **Scott Robison** » Sun Jan 02, 2022 4:53 am

On 1/1/2022 at 9:36 PM, TomXP411 said:

Same here. Over the holidays, I bought parts for my MiSTer (including a serious power supply upgrade) and a Minimig board. I'm also strongly considering the Multisystem board and a Mini Pet. Thing is - I'm out of room. So I need to make some changes to either my acquisition habits or my living space.

I've received my DE10-NANO a couple days ago, though the multisystem is at least a couple months out.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Sun Jan 02, 2022 5:35 am

On 1/1/2022 at 8:53 PM, Scott Robison said:

I've received my DE10-NANO a couple days ago, though the multisystem is at least a couple months out.

Several cores will work with just the FPGA board and a USB OTG hub, although the good ones do need the RAM module….

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Sun Jan 02, 2022 7:58 pm

@BruceMcF I hear ya on the display, that little 2.8 inch screen on the GPi Case, while nice and sharp, is a pain for me to see. Even though I recently got it all fixed and working as it should, I am rarely using it becasue of the tiny display. I do wear glasses, but that's to help me see at distance, so I really only wear them while driving, especially at night. I don't wear them at home because I can see just fine, normally, at the close distances. Still, that GPi screen is only really viewable for me at full arms length. Go figure. I almost need two pairs of glasses, or bifocals. lol

Also, I feel the holiday pinch in the pocketbook as well, we blow so much money each year. It's kinda crazy, thankfully it's only once per year.

@TomXP411 I had that same problem with my first 3B+ Pi when I got it, and wasn't 100% sure why becasue I was using USB chargers with ample ratings, or so I thought, 5V @ 2A. This is where my path took me...

After doing a bit of research, I found out what I sort of already knew but dismissed for whatever reason at the time, that most USB chargers suck under any "heavy" load that requires stable clean power, too much voltage drop, and their quality is a lottery for most brands. I seen a lot of recommendations to use Samsung 2.5A chargers if you had one, becasue they performed better under the loads the Pi puts on it and had that extra .5A of headroom, especially considering all USB devices are also pulling power from that same source. So my wife gave me an old one she had and my power issues went away. When I got my 2nd 3B+, this time I bought a CanaKit power supply specifically designed for the Pi, and I could not have been happier. Worked great from day one, even when overclocked. They have the extra headroom as well, and maintain a stable clean output under load.

When I got my Pi4, I was originally powering it with a 5V 5A output buck converter because I didn't have anything else. So again, I ordered CanaKit's Pi4 power supply, and it's also been working great.

So I highly recommend them if all else fails. It's an extra $10 to the cost of t he Pi, but I think it was worth it in the long run. ?

Also, I want a MiSTer, and I don't. My tinkering retro loving brain wants one to play with, but my logical brain has trouble with the cost. I get the whole idea of it being better than software emulation, and I love me some FPGA goodness, but I am honestly perfectly happy with modern emulation. Besides, I am going down another rabbit hole thanks to the stupid Atomic Pi, and it's a lot cheaper. lol

@Scott Robison As far as Retroholics Anonymous goes, sign me up! Though I think it will take at least a 16-bit...err...16 step program to even make a dent. ?

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Sun Jan 02, 2022 9:22 pm

Been messing with the Pi4 for the past couple hours, and here is what I get out of mine.

Notes:

Bluetooth is disabled (dtoverlay=disable-bt) in /boot/config.txt.

Not currently overclocked.

GPU mem set to 512mb, becasue why not, got 8GB available that I will never use. lol

Wired net connection, WiFi not being used.

These are the apps I use the most on mine. Performance in all these apps is great, with two exceptions, listed below.

Boot to desktop: About 15 seconds. (Cold boot.)

LibreOffice: About 2.5 seconds when closed. About one second with base loaded.

Fritzing: About 20 seconds (has a TON of assets to load).

Arduino IDE: About 4 seconds.

Geany: About 1.5 seconds.

Thonny Python IDE: About 1.5 seconds.

Chromium: About 3.5 seconds. (See notes below)

Firefox ESR: About 3.5 seconds. (See notes below)

VLC Media Player: About 1 second.

GIMP 2.10.8: About 5 seconds.

Synaptic Package Manager: About 4 seconds.

Thunar File Manager: About 1 second

Games & Emulators

Beneath a Steel Sky (ScummVM): About 1.5 seconds for ScummVM to start game.

ScummVM Alone: About 1 second.

Chocolate Doom: About 1.5 seconds.

DOSBox: About 1.5 seconds.

FS-UAE: About 3 seconds.

Steam Link: About 4.5 seconds. (Has no issues streaming 1080P games from my primary desktop PC.)

RetroArch: About 4 seconds.

Both Chromium and Firefox perform about the same. Their performance on sites like YouTube are most definitely painfully slow when it comes to loading the page and or video. Once a video is playing, the playback is hit and miss. Some videos play fine, others hiccup, and require you to bump down the resolution. That being said I really don't do a lot of video streaming on the Pi, today was the first time I really appreciated how slow it was on YouTube.

Image heavy sites like Amazon load slower on the Pi than on a desktop as well, but it's more than fine for someone like me, especially since again, I don't really do it much on the Pi. A vast majority of my Pi's web use is forums and searching for information, and in those cases, both browsers are plenty fast. I ran across several posts claiming the reason they are so slow with some sites, like YouTube, is more of a software/driver issue than hardware. Time will tell I guess.

Video playback from a local source using VLC however is flawless, at least it was with all the videos I tried, mostly all 1080P, streaming from my NAS.

While I most definitely would like to see better storage options and much improved performance on the image/video heavy side of the web. I can honestly say I am still pleased with it's overall performance. Then again, it's all going to come down to what you're wanting to do with it.

Now I guess it's time to overclock. These Argon cases have good cooling, so why not. ?

Edit:

Well, I just pushed it to 2GHz on the ARM, and 750 on the GPU, with an overvolt of 6. I can confirm, YouTube is still slow. lol

Honestly, I really didn't notice any real improvements over the stock operation. The system was "snappy" already, and the software I use already ran good. I will have to check it using something that will actually benefit from the faster clocks, maybe some more demanding console emulation.

I know one thing, I wont be leaving it overclocked. It does what I want it to do at stock, so no point in shortening it's life if it's not necessary and there is no real benefit to it for my specific use case.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Mon Jan 03, 2022 2:03 am

On 1/2/2022 at 11:58 AM, Strider said:

I had that same problem with my first 3B+ Pi when I got it, and wasn't 100% sure why becasue I was using USB chargers with ample ratings, or so I thought, 5V @ 2A. This is where my path took me...

After doing a bit of research, I found out what I sort of already knew but dismissed for whatever reason at the time, that most USB chargers suck under any "heavy" load that requires stable clean power, too much voltage drop, and their quality is a lottery for most brands. I seen a lot of recommendations to use Samsung 2.5A chargers if you had one, becasue they performed better under the loads the Pi puts on it and had that extra .5A of headroom, especially considering all USB devices are also pulling power from that same source. So my wife gave me an old one she had and my power issues went away. When I got my 2nd 3B+, this time I bought a CanaKit power supply specifically designed for the Pi, and I could not have been happier. Worked great from day one, even when overclocked. They have the extra headroom as well, and maintain a stable clean output under load.

When I got my Pi4, I was originally powering it with a 5V 5A output buck converter because I didn't have anything else. So again, I ordered CanaKit's Pi4 power supply, and it's also been working great.

So I highly recommend them if all else fails. It's an extra $10 to the cost of t he Pi, but I think it was worth it in the long run. ?

Also, I want a MiSTer, and I don't. My tinkering retro loving brain wants one to play with, but my logical brain has trouble with the cost. I get the whole idea of it being better than software emulation, and I love me some FPGA goodness, but I am honestly perfectly happy with modern emulation. Besides, I am going down another rabbit hole thanks to the stupid Atomic Pi, and it's a lot cheaper. lol

Yes, there are some power adapters that will work, but they need a really low internal resistance and higher voltage than spec.

Here's a video that breaks it down:

What I did is recreate his setup using one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNDGFT6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Now I'm thinking of reproducing that video's test with my own 3B+. I'll probably buy a couple of USB cables I and another buck converter that I can sacrifice for the cause.

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Mon Jan 03, 2022 3:34 am

On 1/2/2022 at 8:03 PM, TomXP411 said:

Yes, there are some power adapters that will work, but they need a really low internal resistance and higher voltage than spec.

Here's a video that breaks it down:

What I did is recreate his setup using one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNDGFT6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Now I'm thinking of reproducing that video's test with my own 3B+. I'll probably buy a couple of USB cables I and another buck converter that I can sacrifice for the cause.

That makes perfect sense.

I also wonder how much "silicon lottery" is involved. My Pi3's, using the CanaKit adapters, both run at full speed no problems. I haven't seen the old lighting bolt since I got them. Same for the Pi 4, and I just had that thing running at 2GHz with an overvolt of 6 with no power issues. That also explains why my buck converter worked so well, it's a bit over 5V at 5.2. Or maybe that issue was addressed at some point? Both of my 3B+ units were purchased in late 2020, I think... Can't remember now. From Element 14, well, one form Element directly and one from their Amazon store.

Do you like that buck PS you have? I was actually looking at it recently. I currently use these...

For testing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NALDSJ0/

In final projects as needed: https://www.amazon.com/MP1584EN-DC-DC-Converter-Adjustable-Module/dp/B01MQGMOKI/

And I am thinking of building my own "bench power supply" using one of the many good spare PC PSU's I have lying around, since I really only need 3.3V, 5V, and 12V anyway. Plus, it's another project to keep me busy, and it's easy to do. lol

Either way, I want a good variable buck PSU for testing, and that one was on my list. I have had good luck with DROK products.

I know I am rambling, but I am also seriously looking at an EspoTek Labrador. For what I do, it's all the scope I need. Plus, I get to build it up how I want it. Ever mess with it? Or hear much about it?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CVB7ZJG/

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Mon Jan 03, 2022 8:33 am

On 1/2/2022 at 7:34 PM, Strider said:

Do you like that buck PS you have? I was actually looking at it recently. I currently use these...

For testing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NALDSJ0/

In final projects as needed: https://www.amazon.com/MP1584EN-DC-DC-Converter-Adjustable-Module/dp/B01MQGMOKI/

And I am thinking of building my own "bench power supply" using one of the many good spare PC PSU's I have lying around, since I really only need 3.3V, 5V, and 12V anyway. Plus, it's another project to keep me busy, and it's easy to do. lol

I like that one because it has a barrel jack input, so I can use one of my old laptop power supplies to power it. So I plan to get 3-4 more of those and use them with other projects. As I said, I'll use one with the 3B+ (when I get around to doing something with that one), and I plan to use one for my Minimig (also being driven from the 12V power supply.) I've also got a Spectrum 128, Ultimate 64, and plan to add a Mini PET at some point, so they will all be powered from a single 12V rail, rather than individual wall-warts.

orsoon · Post by **orsoon** » Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:50 pm

phones, xbox. But mostly I am active PC user and gamer. Used to check new games on the pirate bay tracker. It is absolutely safe , if it is a closed larger group ( if it is a smaller group , you don't need a torrent ). It is legal to use torrents , but illegal to transmit copyrighted content in it. I uaully use to download many games from past.