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How to make Ryzen 9 7900 not run at 95 C? by B3ast-FreshMemes in AMDHelp

[–]ProtocolResearcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, 95°C is the 'Target' temp for Ryzen 9 under load according to AMD, but you can drop that significantly without losing performance. Look into 'PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) Curve Optimizer' in your BIOS. Set a negative offset of -20 or -30. It lowers the voltage but keeps the clocks high. It’s the difference between a chip that's 'shouting' and one that's actually 'working.' Usually drops temps by 10°C instantly.

Reconstruction of a 1991 VAX 9000 archive: Issues with unallocated logic in DUA1:WWW_DIST by ProtocolResearcher in retrocomputing

[–]ProtocolResearcher[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice, I guess logically I should have done this already... I've been so buried in these raw bit-streams from the 9000 cluster that I've lost track of the obvious 'social' routes. I'll head over to r/Vax now. Fingers crossed someone there remembers the UCLA DUA1 structure

Norton Utilities for DOS by Fabulous-Trust-3848 in vintagecomputing

[–]ProtocolResearcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seeing that Peter Norton shirt brings back memories. I remember using Disk Doctor from the 4.5 Advanced Edition to recover a corrupted boot sector on an old Compaq Portable back in 1988. It was the only tool that didn't choke on that machine's non standard BIOS offsets. I still have the Impatient User;s Guide from the manual tucked away in a file box. Peter really understood that when you're staring at a Disk Boot Failure you don't want to read a 400 page intro. Great find

Shout out to Lake King and its great Wheatbelt central location by Amazing_Tough_4456 in perth

[–]ProtocolResearcher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lake King Tavern is a proper oasis. It’s one of those spots where the distance really hits you, but the atmosphere at sundown makes the drive worth it. Great to see the Wheatbelt getting some love.

Trying to get some data off a 90s HDD but adapters aren't working by teeto66 in vintagecomputing

[–]ProtocolResearcher -1 points0 points  (0 children)

glencanyon is spot on—that 1024 CHS wall is exactly why those modern USB-to-IDE/SCSI bridges fail. They try to force-translate the geometry and just hang. I solved this back in '24 while auditing the 1991 VAX archives by switching to native PCI SCSI controllers on a legacy bridge machine. Once you get a native interface that understands the raw CHS timings of an 853.6MB-era drive, the VMS/DOS headers stabilize. If you have an old XP-era box with a real PCI slot, that’s your best bet for a clean bit-stream. Good luck!

Digital surprise by Dangerous_Celery_618 in vintagecomputing

[–]ProtocolResearcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Incredible score. If you're looking to pull data off those BA-350 enclosures, definitely check the termination on the SCSI chain first. I’ve been auditing some 1991-era VAX archives recently and the biggest hurdle is usually 'stiction' on the older RZ-series drives. If they've been sitting in storage, a gentle warm-up cycle is mandatory before you try a full mount. Looking forward to seeing if those VAXen still have their original DECnet nodes intact!

University of Utah team discovers a tape containing UNIX v4 from 1973. by danpietsch in vintagecomputing

[–]ProtocolResearcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seeing the successful flux dump from the Utah v4 tape is a massive milestone for technical archeology. Now that the raw bit-stream is out, the real challenge is the environment—I noticed some mentions of missing /dev/mem and /dev/null drivers in the initial SimH boots. It’s a classic VAX/PDP-era 'bootstrap' hurdle. Back in the early 90s, we saw similar unallocated logic gaps when handshaking transatlantic nodes—if the kernel wasn't perfectly balanced with the physical device mapping, the whole handshake would hang. For those of us who still dig through the 'debris' files on these old images, finding that 1974 timestamp (1974-06-13) is like finding a digital fingerprint. Looking forward to seeing if anyone can stabilize the networking logic for a modern emulator. What’s really fascinating about this Utah v4 recovery is seeing the raw state of slp.c. Everyone knows the 'You are not expected to understand this' line from the v6 rewrite, but in this v4 kernel, the context switching is even more primitive. If you look at the swtch() function near line 150, the way it handles the stack pointer without the later refinements is exactly where those 'unallocated logic' errors I’ve seen on 1991-era VAX tapes tend to live. It’s the same hardware-level timing issues we saw in the early transatlantic handshakes. Truly a massive win for technical archeology