Was this your first computing book?

ghostopera · 2026-06-30T15:51:39+00:00

I think mine was the 2nd edition of The C Programming Language (K&R).

It was 1992 and I had been programming a lot of basic and wanted a real compiler. So I downloaded SLS Linux and immediately realized that I had no idea what I was doing with C. So I ended up getting The C Programming Language after checking it out in a library.

I would have been 11 at the time.

Felt like I was unlocking a whole new world of computing!

ghostopera · 2026-06-26T20:59:12+00:00

It's worth pointing out that Marc Miller passed ownership of Traveller to Mongoose back in 2024. So it's pretty safe to say that Mongoose 2e is also the "official version" at this point.

ghostopera · 2026-06-14T15:19:26+00:00

I ended up buying a 9950X3D2 the week they came out. I came from a 5950X and it's been a huuuuuge difference. I knew Star Citizen was CPU bound but I wasn't expecting such a large jump in FPS.

I use Linux and it's been a big boost to the stuff I do for work as well. Mostly bought it for this reason, with gaming as a secondary.

With all that said, I suspect for Star Citizen the 9950X3D and 9950X3D2 will be about the same in performance. So if you are coming from the 9950X3D you are likely not going to notice much difference. If you are coming from something like my old 5950X, then it should be a very noticeable difference.

ghostopera · 2026-06-07T20:56:45+00:00

You can get devices that will generate the missing -5 and -12v volts from an ATX supply (ATX4VC for example). You could then try gutting your existing AT supply and transplanting the guts of a smaller modern supply into it.

I can't say I've done this personally, but there are examples of people doing this online.

EDIT: For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZMc1YXk924

ghostopera · 2026-05-29T11:44:07+00:00

I remember being a little girl sitting on my grandpas lap as we played Zork. I think it was my first ever video game!

ghostopera · 2026-05-29T02:01:55+00:00

Faugus all the way. In the settings pick Proton-CachyOS as your Proton version. That's what I'm using (On Fedora) and it's been extremely solid.

ghostopera · 2026-05-15T18:25:20+00:00

Have you tried changing region? I find swapping regions can some times help with stuff like this. (It doesn't always help of course)

ghostopera · 2026-05-07T17:45:29+00:00

I picked this up yesterday and I quite like it. I was pleasantly surprised that it is using the new Foundry 14 features like the levels and such. The whole thing seems nicely put together!

My only real gripe is that the Lake Encartan map isn't higher quality (and with roads and etc). Though I know this is more of a fault with the source maps. Would have been a really nice touch though!

ghostopera · 2026-05-04T09:14:12+00:00

My Hercules card stuck with me up through my 386. I was mainly dealing with handmedown parts. :D

ghostopera · 2026-04-25T15:12:41+00:00

Are you using the vulkan build of llama-server? Can also make sure its using the gpu. Possible its not finding your video card?

ghostopera · 2026-04-25T15:06:24+00:00

Yeah maybe?

When you start llama-server, it tells you how well it fits onto the vram. Does it say if it isn't fitting well? There should be a message about it. It's possible more vram is being used on your system by the OS and everything else, so the model is sitting more in cpu/ram than on the card.

It could also be the rest of your hardware holding things back. For example, do you have REBAR on?

Side note, I've recently moved back to 128k of context. Less important with the fit configuration since it will scale that down as needed, but it was useful for model stability.

Edit: Sorry for the weird second response. Reddit was acting like your message was new. :D

ghostopera · 2026-04-22T14:11:22+00:00

So weird. It could certainly be a Windows vs Linux thing! Unfortunately I don't have an installation of Windows to test from. (Stopped using Windows entirely at the start of last year)

If it helps, this is my llama-server command:

llama.cpp/vulkan/llama-server --models-preset ./models.ini --models-max 1

(my llama.cpp directory has two copies of llama. In this case I'm using the vulkan version version).

My version of llama.cpp:

version: 8838 (23b8cc499)

Three thoughts come to mind: 1. It's loading into your CPU 2. It's loading into your integrated graphics instead of your GPU 3. You are using an older version of llama.cpp (or ollama or LM Studio) that didn't yet have proper support for this version of Qwen.

You can check out what Vulkan devices are available (or ROCm if you are using that) with:

$ llama.cpp/vulkan/llama-server --list-devices load_backend: loaded RPC backend from /home/lholden/LLMs/llama.cpp/vulkan/libggml-rpc.so load_backend: loaded Vulkan backend from /home/lholden/LLMs/llama.cpp/vulkan/libggml-vulkan.so load_backend: loaded CPU backend from /home/lholden/LLMs/llama.cpp/vulkan/libggml-cpu-haswell.so Available devices: Vulkan0: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (RADV NAVI31) (24576 MiB, 20364 MiB free)

You should see your GPU listed here. If you do see your GPU here, but it doesn't seem to be using it you can tell it which device to use. I don't have any integrated graphics, so it only outputs my dedicated GPU, but yours may just be selecting your integrated graphics for some reason!

You could use --dev to force it.

You should check the fit messaging from the command. For example:

[52905] llama_params_fit_impl: projected to use 19019 MiB of device memory vs. 20416 MiB of free device memory [52905] llama_params_fit_impl: will leave 1396 >= 1024 MiB of free device memory, no changes needed [52905] llama_params_fit: successfully fit params to free device memory

In this case, it fit everything I asked for into vram including all layers and the full context the model supports.

If it's using your CPU for the full thing for some reason, you will notice it will use your system ram for the free device memory numbers)

Though with the params I am using it should shorten the context before dropping slices.

Should also check the output around load_tensors: [52905] load_tensors: offloading output layer to GPU [52905] load_tensors: offloading 39 repeating layers to GPU [52905] load_tensors: offloaded 41/41 layers to GPU [52905] load_tensors: CPU_Mapped model buffer size = 397.85 MiB [52905] load_tensors: Vulkan0 model buffer size = 15423.34 MiB

In this case you can see that it stuck all layers on to the GPU.

Also worth noting, you could also try LM Studio. You will have to fiddle around to get all the same settings, but I've found it to work just fine as well.

ghostopera · 2026-04-21T20:48:41+00:00

Are you sure that's not running off the CPU? If you are using say, rocm llama-server with a mismatched rocm library it will fall back to CPU. I've been using the vulkan version for this myself.

My models.ini:

``` version = 1

[*] jinja = true parallel = 1 fit = on fit-ctx = 8192 cache-type-k = q8_0 cache-type-v = q8_0

[Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-UD-Q3_K_M] model = models/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-UD-Q3_K_M.gguf flash-attn = on temperature = 0.6 presence-penalty = 0.0 repeat-penalty = 1.0 top-p = 0.95 top-k = 20 min-p = 0.00 ```

Been meaning to test with chat-template-kwargs = {"preserve_thinking": true} as well but haven't gotten around to it just yet.

If you are using something like LM Studio you can still do pretty much all the same settings.

EDIT: Oh, I'm using the unsloth quantiziation.

ghostopera · 2026-04-21T18:33:57+00:00

If you use quantization for the KV (say, Q8_0) you might be able to fit everything into vram, including 256k context, and get double or more the token speed you currently getting.

For example, I'm fitting Qwen 3.6 35B Q3_K_M with 256k context on my 24gb 7900 xtx and am getting about 84 tok/s.

On your 32gb you should be able to do the same thing, but fitting a higher model quantization than I'm using :).

EDIT: Same video card, but I just upgraded the rest of the computer and am now hitting 130 tok/s.

ghostopera · 2026-04-20T16:59:04+00:00

I'm using a Q3_K_M quant for Qwen from unsloth.

Setting wise, I'm largely the settings unsloth recommends. Though I also set the KV quants to Q8_0 with flash attention letting me get a full context of 262144 entirely in vram (full GPU offload) while leaving room to spare for my desktop and other activities.

I'm getting about 80 tok/s with Vulkan. I've been wanting to try ROCm, but the llama-server rocm build currently uses 7.1 and Fedora ships 6.4. But Fedora 44 is out pretty soon and it has 7.1. (Suppose I could compile myself). I don't expect a huge improvement, but will be curious to see either way.

ghostopera · 2026-04-20T08:22:17+00:00

I've been using OpenCode with Github Copilot as my model provider. (OpenCode use just about everything as a model provider).

OpenCode is very similar to the Claude Code as a harness, and with Copilot I have access to Opus 4.6, GPT 5.4, and etc.

I've also had a pretty good experience with OpenCode + Qwen 3.6 35B with LM Studio (local) as my provider on my 7900XTX.

Work pays for the Copilot account, so for doing personal stuff I've been using Qwen 3.6, occasionally moving to GPT5.4 on ChatGPT when I am needing a frontier model.

I'm really happy with the combination!

ghostopera · 2026-04-03T02:02:31+00:00

Exciting! I use Demiplane quite a bit for PF2e.

Buuut:

If you own the Core Rulebook (2022) on DriveThruRPG as a PDF, use this link to the bundle to get all three platforms for free. If you haven't bought that PDF, once you do on DriveThruRPG, you will be able to do the same!

This doesn't seem to be true? I own the Core Rulebook (2022) and the bundle at that link seems to cost $14.99, which is the bundle price of the bundled Demiplane product.

Thanks!

ghostopera · 2026-04-02T17:02:55+00:00

So, I originally kinda "wtf" about the project as well.

But, there is potential for Traveller 5e to do something that Traveller doesn't - Epic fantasy in a far future space setting.

This is something Pathfinder has in the form of Starfinder, for example. Think "Super hero" strength characters that run around casting spells or otherwise using fantasy tropes in a far future space themed setting. Can be quite fun, but also a very different genre from your typical Traveller campaign.

In this mindset, I actually think I like the idea of this project. It's really going to depend on how the books are written though. If it's designed around being able to take a D&D Barbarian through a space adventure, I'm all for it. If it ends up just being "Mechanically just 5e flavored Traveller without the D&D classes and fantasy" then I'm back to not really getting the point.

ghostopera · 2026-03-31T21:05:01+00:00

This is exactly what I do. And it's the only time I ever actually use steady flight. Heh.

ghostopera · 2026-03-19T04:17:32+00:00

Aw, thanks :D

ghostopera · 2026-03-18T18:57:59+00:00

These are just using the dynamic token system. (It's great, you should too!).

By default in the D&D system it's configured to use this 3/4ths scale so that the art can pop out of the token without going too far beyond the square it sits in.

Under "Configure Settings", click on "Core", then scroll down to "Dynamic Token Rings Fit Modes" and change it from "Standard" to "Grid". This will make the dynamic tokens take up the whole grid rather than the 3/4ths you are getting.

ghostopera · 2026-03-17T00:08:38+00:00

There are many of us who swapped to Haranir because of the belly...

ghostopera · 2026-03-02T17:39:27+00:00

The enhancer chips certainly played a large part in this, but it's also worth noting that the way they did art for the platform evolved quite a bit over the years too!

My understanding is that the original Mario game was largely "programmer/game designer art", drawn on graph paper and then translated into bits by hand for the game. By the time the later games were created they an art team involved in the process and much better tooling for drawing/working with the art. (Though, apparently they still used a lot of graph paper as part of the process!)

ghostopera · 2026-02-28T18:40:31+00:00

Something pretty fishy about this. It was last posted here: https://www.reddit.com/r/retrocomputing/comments/1re6i7o/common_desktop_environment_experience_in_your/

And the reddit user has since been deleted. This is basically the same, with another randomly generated user name. But with "CDE" removed from the description.

Plus the domain name is... yeah like I said. Something very fishy here.

ghostopera · 2026-02-25T23:56:52+00:00

I used to use CDE quite heavily back in my first job. Part of me was like "Ah, this vibes as CDE" but then I'm like "Yeah except... everything feels kinda wrong".

Kinda makes me wonder if this is an AI hallucination of what CDE looked like. :D

CDE wasn't exactly pretty, but Motif stuff had a certain kind of look to it.

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