Recent content by gsteemso

You're right about the names. I was a bit less precise there than I meant to be. I didn't know about Sun's SMB implementation - I'd have thought they went out of business before that, but apparently not. :¬)

The mini-DIN-8 connection (the hardware interface) is "LocalTalk". When you activate AppleTalk in the Chooser, that is a protocol stack (implemented in software) called "AppleTalk". AppleTalk can be transported over LocalTalk; in more recent machines, it is usually transported over Ethernet...

That's certainly an... interesting interpretation. What I mentioned above about continuous SYN characters is also RS-232 (what I called "traditional serial signalling") and doesn't really apply to anything else. Correct. I suppose you could say that LocalTalk is synchronous within each...

What exactly do you mean by "synchronous", here? The term refers to communication where both ends are working from the same clock signal. In traditional serial signalling, this is achieved by continuously sending ASCII SYN ("synchronous idle") characters when nothing else is being sent, so...

Alas, it no longer works at lower resolutions either, at least not as far as I can tell. It WAS working, at full resolution even – it just died after a while. That I was, for a time, forced to hot-plug that DVI socket to get the system to boot at all undoubtedly did not help matters...

In this case I can be confident that the GPU core is (probably) OK, because the secondary display output (the one with the lower maximum size in pixels) still works just fine. It’s only the _useful_ output, the one with enough pixels to drive my modern monitor, that has died. Strangely, this...

Eh, I'll just try each type I have on a solder-filled through-hole (there are several) until I get one that mixes properly, then I'll know. (My replacement caps won't all arrive until April because some were on backorder, so it will be a while before I report back on this for anyone in the...

@Byrd, do you know whether the GeForce 6600 would have used lead-free solder? I don't want to try to apply fresh stuff to loosen the old and get the type of it wrong – that makes a horrible mess.

Good to know, thanks!

I do not posses a G4 Mini and can’t actually try it, but the developer’s notes at that Github repo do not show it doing anything OS-related beyond loading the INIT. Logically, it ought to work unchanged on every version available. If they eventually manage to do the “next steps” outlined...

Amazingly, the one GeForce 6600 that is not inaccessible due to being inside the machine seems completely pristine under the heatsink – no thermal discoloration at all! However, the thermal paste can only be called “not crumbly” on a technicality, so it’s a good thing I had a look in there. On...

Heh, if the effect is that drastic, I suspect it will be relatively easy to remember that he did something to it. :¬D

Oh, they're not e-waste, that was an example taken from what other threads on here I've managed to track down. The two cards I'm most concerned with, the Nvidia GeForce 6600s, are Apple OEM cards for a Power Mac G5 dual core machine, and as such never had fans in the first place. When the...

I've been trying to work out how to fix a stack of graphics cards I've got. The most urgent are a pair of Nvidia GeForce 6600s (just 6600, no following letters). Alas, every thread on the topic seems to already have an obvious starting point, in the form of dodgy caps or heat discoloration or...

It does bring up an interesting point re: display efficiency. Presumably it would be a bit more performant if the blitting was suppressed when you knew for a fact that no changes had taken place. This reminds me of an old timer’s opinion I read once, to the effect that you really get a feel...