libera/#maemo/ Friday, 2019-09-06

brolin_empeysicelo: I think sixwheeledbeast was replying to an earlier discussion, not to your messages about the LG G4.  Anyway, high-end LG Android smartphones newer than the G5 and V20 are not relevant if you want an easily accessible and removable battery.  Do you live in South Africa?  Or Swaziland (spelling?)?  If I recall correctly, you live in Africa?  I have no idea about the pricing nor availability in Africa but in at least my part of Canada you can buy a08:28
brolin_empeyused or refurbished LG G5 for only around 100 CAD.  I am told that Apple charges around 65 CAD only to replace the battery in an iPhone SE.08:28
brolin_empeyRegarding the integrated keyboard of the ThinkPad X40 lacking a Super key (which has the Microsoft Windows flag logo as the legend), the integrated keyboard of the Dell Latitude X1, which is similar to the ThinkPad X40, has a Super key.  The integrated keyboard of the ThinkPad G40 I have is missing a Super key too.08:52
brolin_empeyI guess you can configure the OS or display server to remap one of the keys the ThinkPad X40 integrated keyboard does have to a Super key, though.08:55
brolin_empeyIf you only need to press the Super key on its own, not in combination with another key, you can try using Ctrl+Esc as a substitute.08:56
brolin_empeyIn closer to on-topic news, apparently Rogers Communication(s)/Rogers Wireless, who, as far as I know, owns the only GSM network in Canada with national coverage, plans to shut down their GSM/GPRS network in Canada in 2020, which may mean that the Nokia N900 will no longer be able to have cellular connectivity in Canada with the integrated cellular modem beginning in 2021 unless the integrated cellular modem of the N900 can still use the Rogers UMTS/HSPA (or11:14
brolin_empey EDGE?) network.  The integrated cellular modem of the N900 does not support the bands used by the UMTS/HSPA networks of Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility, who have the only other cellular network in Canada with national coverage.  Apparently most if not all of the CDMA2000 networks in Canada have been shut down by now.  Apparently analog cellular networks (NMT, which was apparently used in Canada until the 2000s) have almost all been shut down by now,11:14
brolin_empeyglobally, not only in Canada.11:14
brolin_empeyWhich makes me wonder: in notebook computers with an internal cellular modem, is the cellular modem removable, like a Wireless LAN controller card, or is it soldered on the motherboard, like in a typical smartphone with a monolithic hardware design?11:23
brolin_empeyI guess the cellular modem is part of a surface-mounted (BGA) IC on the motherboard of an ARM notebook computer using an SoC, such as the notebook computers already shipping with Windows NT for ARM running on a Qualcomm (Snapdragon?) SoC, but maybe some notebook computers use a miniature PCI Express card or other removable card with a cellular modem, more generally a Wireless WAN controller, and maybe also a Wireless LAN, specifically IEEE 802.11, controller11:33
brolin_empey and Wireless PAN, specifically Bluetooth, controller because I gather that IEEE 802.11 + Bluetooth combination ICs are already used in consumer products because apparently my colleague has a low-cost Lenovo x86 notebook computer with the IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth controllers on the same IC on the motherboard but in this case the interface used is apparently SDIO instead of PCI.11:33
brolin_empeyThat said, I guess a peripheral connected via SDIO still uses PCI because the SD/MMC host controller is a PCI device, at least in a modern x86 computer design.11:36
brolin_empeyIs there any x86-64 computer design that shipped as real hardware in a product that reached production that does not use some form of PCI?11:41
CcxWrkThat would probably entail custom northbridge or southbridge.11:44
brolin_empeyAs far as I know, the answer is no because PCI was already established as the industry standard (local) bus for x86 computers by the time of the market introduction of x86-64 hardware beginning in 2003.11:46
CcxWrkDo you consider PCIe as a distinct thing here?11:47
brolin_empeyI meant the whole PCI family because, as far as I know, all forms of PCI use the same software interface as the original PCI Local Bus from the 1990s (retronym: parallel PCI), which is why PCI Express was a commercial success and is why an operating system that supports PCI but predates the introduction of PCI Express, such as Windows NT up to the early 5.x era, still works on a computer using PCI Express.11:53
CcxWrkIs it significantly different from ISA? It's all memory mapped IO as far the OS is concerned, isn't it? Modulo some interrupt stuff.11:56
brolin_empeyActually, the market introduction of PCI Express was in 2004 if I recall correctly but the market introduction of x86-64 was in 2003 so maybe an early x86-64 (AMD64) motherboard that only uses parallel PCI (PCI or PCI-X but not PCI Express) was produced, somewhat similarly to how the first generation of Power Macintosh models still used NuBus instead of PCI.11:57
CcxWrkI've seen a few PCI-X cards back when. As in I could count them on my fingers and it was all pre-64bit era server stuff.11:58
CcxWrk> HP offered PCI-X 2.0 in some ProLiant servers and offered dual-port 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel adapters, also operating at 266 MHz.[10] AMD supported PCI-X 2.0 (266 MHz) via its 8132 Hypertransport to PCI-X 2.0 tunnel chip.12:01
CcxWrkBut yeah, that didn't catch on.12:01
brolin_empey64-bit versions of Windows NT shipped for Itanium AKA IA-64 as early as 2001, including Windows XP RTM, before the market introduction of x86-64 hardware in 2003 beginning with the AMD Opteron and, later, AMD Athlon 64, and before Windows NT for x86-64 began shipping in 2005.12:03
CcxWrkBy the time AMD64 reached adoption PCI-X was pretty much dead in the water FWIU due to PCIe being released at the same time. (2003 for 1.0a and 2005 for 1.1 respectively)12:07
CcxWrkI definitely weren't paying attention to the high-end server and workstation market at that time though.12:08
CcxWrkAnyway, isn't this quite far from being on topic? :]12:09
brolin_empeyThat said, I guess a diesel convertible car in Canada is more common than an Itanium computer anywhere.  I do not know if any portable Itanium computer was ever produced.  If not then Itanium is similar to the Amiga in that the platform died before it evolved enough for a portable computer to be produced.12:10
CcxWrkThat projected sales graph is kind of a running joke by now.12:12
brolin_empeyFor what?  Itanium?12:13
CcxWrkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_edit.png12:13
brolin_empeyAnyway, to answer your previous question about ISA versus PCI from the perspective of the OS, ISA peripherals in x86 computer designs, at least ones at least partially compatible with the IBM Personal Computer, use the port IO space in addition to MMIO.  However, apparently non-x86 computers, such as the Amiga 2000 (m68k), with ISA slots on the motherboard were produced even though m68k usually only uses MMIO as far as I know but, in this case, I think the12:22
brolin_empeyISA slots were used for some form of IBM PC platform (Sidecar?) that could be added to the m68k-based Amiga so I guess the ISA slots would not be used if the computer was only used as a normal Amiga.  Also, PCI has its own configuration space but it has been over a decade since I wrote software using it so I do not remember the details/specifics.12:22
brolin_empeyAlso, m68k is Big Endian but x86 is Little Endian so even the byte order in memory is different between the Amiga and IBM PC.12:26
brolin_empeyRegarding the discussion being off-topic, I dislike the hardware channel(s) I visited on freenode.  Well, strictly speaking, I dislike some of the persons with whom I interacted in those channels, not the channel itself.  The persons in this channel seem to be more knowledgeable.  The ##hardware and similar channels move way too quickly with lots of discussion about subjects of little relevance and interest to me, such as the latest and greatest desktop12:35
brolin_empeycomputer hardware that requires fans when I still use Intel Core 2 era and older x86 computers and care more about having a completely fanless computer with non-volatile main memory than about having the latest and greatest desktop or notebook computer hardware that has fans and volatile main memory.12:35
brolin_empeyI really do not want to spend multiple hundreds of CAD on a somewhat recent x86 CPU when a Core 2 Duo E8400 I can buy for around 15 CAD including shipping still suffices for my use case in 2019.12:43
brolin_empeySince 2014 June, my car is newer than the desktop computer motherboards and CPUs I use.12:50
brolin_empeyAnd that is only because I had to replace my 1998 car, not because I wanted a new car.12:52
brolin_empeyKotCzarny: Apparently the Win32 (Portable Executable as opposed to New Executable for Win16 or Win32s) build of Mosaic Netscape version 0.91 from 1994, which was, if I recall correctly, the earliest Win32/Portable Executable build of Netscape I could find, still works on Windows 10 for x86-64 with a 3840×2160 high-pixel-density display and can still access the mcom.com Web site thanks to jwz for bringing it back online but needs http10proxy.pl from jwz,13:12
brolin_empeywhich includes my patch to support Facebook, to access most current Web sites.13:12
brolin_empeyThis version of Netscape did not yet even support HTML tables.13:13
brolin_empeyThat said, it already had a print preview function, which Internet Explorer for Windows did not have until version 5.5 in 2000 if I recall correctly.13:17
brolin_empeyAnd which Chromium/Google Chrome still did not have in 2011 (!!!) if I recall correctly.13:18
brolin_empeyBecause running Quake II was a more common use case than print preview for a Web browser in 2010/2011?13:21
sixwheeledbeast~seen halftux23:00
infobothalftux <~pi@i577B9689.versanet.de> was last seen on IRC in channel #maemo, 2d 2h 37m 28s ago, saying: 'freemangordon: thank you'.23:00
brolin_empey~seen infobot23:02
infobotinfobot is currently on #lua-wow (20h 41m 27s) #asterisk-doc (20h 41m 27s) #fossfund (20h 41m 27s) #asterisk-bugs (20h 41m 27s) #handhelds-familiar (20h 41m 27s) #cubieboard (20h 41m 27s) #qi-hardware (20h 41m 27s) #harmattan (20h 41m 27s) #orkut (20h 41m 27s) #brlcad (20h 41m 27s) #bzflag-chat (20h 41m 27s) ##ols (20h 41m 27s) #webos-watercooler (20h 41m 27s) #gl23:02
brolin_empey~seen brolin_empey23:03
infobotbrolin_empey is currently on #maemo #neo900. Has said a total of 35 messages. Is idling for 1s, last said: '~seen brolin_empey'.23:03
sixwheeledbeast~seen seen23:03
infobotsixwheeledbeast: i haven't seen 'seen'23:03
sixwheeledbeast~botsnack23:04
infobotsixwheeledbeast: :)23:04
brolin_empey~seen23:04

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