[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Aroy

Apple Software is known to degrade the performance with time, unlike Windows products.

Is that no longer a problem with Windows? When I last looked, over a decade ago, people were still doing the regular Windows Reinstallation dance due to insoluble problems or general slowdown.

So if you want a stable platform ... ... ... then Apple Products are for you.

In case you want longer ownership, multiple upgrade paths and a lot of DIY, then Windows machines are a better and less expensive proposition.

And if you can escape the vice-grip monopolistic dependence on Windows or Apple, along with their associated softwares and games, Linux is the way to go!

[ajayc123]

Originally Posted by VW2010

If it is windows, probably yes. The best way to explain is intended use. If gaming then desktop gives more flexibility, future upgradability and mainly better GPU.

For everything else the M1 and M2 from apple are extremely fast which is evident even in their M1 iPad Air. I am closing down all my windows PC including an Alienware and a desktop and moving to a Mac laptop with M1 or M2 chip. I use mainly for editing photos and videos and i hardly game these days. For my intended purpose no windows laptop can Match what apple offers at this point.

Oh, what a term for this guy. Since this is still in running condition, but apparently a bit slow, you could check the bottleneck (likely HDD). If it is the HDD, you should explore if you can replace the HDD, with SATA ssd. That could improve the overall performance and render it usable. Finally, give it away to somebody, if you don't have any use.

[Aroy]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

................
And if you can escape the vice-grip monopolistic dependence on Windows or Apple, along with their associated softwares and games, Linux is the way to go!

That depends. A lot of developers need Windows (or Apple) for dedicated software environment, so they are stuck to a particular platform.

As long a comparable (and compatible) software is available on Linux, it the most appropriate platform. I remember that 25 years ago, when I started with Linux in corporate environment it was as an alternative for SCO Unix, now Linux is a mainstream corporate OS and Redhat is making tons of money supporting it. Similarly in the scientific world cluster of thousands of computers use Linux.

[NetfreakBombay]

Came across receipt for the second PC I purchased in 1997



Config :

8 MB RAM
1 MB Video Card
100 MHz CPU (Pentium 1)

It was an upgrade from BBC Micro. IIRC, 4 MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM

[Samfromindia]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

Came across receipt for the second PC I purchased in 1997

Attachment 2370001

Config :

8 MB RAM
1 MB Video Card
100 MHz CPU (Pentium 1)

It was an upgrade from BBC Micro. IIRC, 4 MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM

This cost around 1,45,312 INR today, adjusting to inflation

[ajayc123]

I wish car prices could come down like they have come down for computers and electronics. I recollect having seen the first 17 inch LCD monitor way back in 1999, which had costed 80k at that time, and I guess similar one should be under 8k now.

[Aroy]

Originally Posted by ajayc123

I wish car prices could come down like they have come down for computers and electronics. I recollect having seen the first 17 inch LCD monitor way back in 1999, which had costed 80k at that time, and I guess similar one should be under 8k now.

Yes things were expensive, but have progressively come down. Here are some LCD monitors I bought in past
. 19" Benq - 45K ~ 2000
. 24" LG HD - 30K ~ 2005
. 23" LG HD/TV - 14K ~ 2010
. 23" LG HD - 8K ~ 2016
. 30" LH 4K - 28K ~ 2020

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by Aroy

Here are some LCD monitors I bought in past
. 19" Benq - 45K ~ 2000

This is amazing. LCDs were super rare in that era. Color CRT monitors were mainstream IIRC. 45k was around 1k USD in 2000.

Found an interesting article about LCD prices in 1999 - 2001 :

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/pte...idg/index.html

[deathwalkr]

Looks like the mobo of my pc has conked off. PC powers on, lights turn on, but goes right into "insert boot disk". Does not even get into the bios screen.

Tried a bios reset but no luck.

No power to any of the USB sockets as well.

Gigabyte b450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi. Just over 3 years old and it decides to bite the dust!

What would be a decent mid range board for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor?

[Aroy]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Looks like the mobo of my pc has conked off. PC powers on, lights turn on, but goes right into "insert boot disk". Does not even get into the bios screen.

Tried a bios reset but no luck.

No power to any of the USB sockets as well.

Gigabyte b450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi. Just over 3 years old and it decides to bite the dust!

What would be a decent mid range board for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor?

If you can get hold of a Linux boot disk, try booting Linux.

If successful, then you can go ahead and diagnose the issue. If not then your MB is most probably gone.

I have beed using Desktops since over two decades, my last one was a dual Xeon workstation. I have now moved on to a Ryzen Laptop with two extra monitors. You can go the Laptop way unless :

. You need a lot of storage online - I had 6 HDD of 1T to 2TB on the desktop. Unless you need all of it as well as high speed access (7200 RPM or even 10K RPM), laptop with attached USB disks will do. I have 7 USB and 6 SATA disks for storage and can use 3 USB and 1 SATA at a time. But then you can attach a NAS box and get exabytes of storage.

. You need oodles of RAM. My current Laptop - Lenovo E14 has 24GB installed. Unles you need 64GB or 128GB a normal laptop is fine. Of course there are laptops with upto 256GB of RAM.

. You need a lot of monitors. My current laptop has 3 monitots - 1 native HD on laptop, 1 external 24" HD and one external 27" UHD (4k).

. You need an ultrafast CPU (i9 or R7) and/or GPU. But as you intend to go for Ryzen 5, speed is not what you are looking for. By the way Laptops at the higher end can be configured with i9, R7 or Xeon processors.

The main advantage of Laptop are :

. Portability. You are not stuck to the desk, you can go with the laptop any where.

. No need of UPS. The laptop weathers power outages as it runs on its own battery.

. You get quite reasonable extended warranty for upto 5 years. The extended warranty on Lenovo thinkpads can be as long as 5 years onsite at a reasonable cost.

[deathwalkr]

Thanks. Have absolutely no idea about linux. As for a laptop, well my work machine is a laptop but at home i do like a desktop in my little man cave.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Looks like the mobo of my pc has conked off. PC powers on, lights turn on, but goes right into "insert boot disk". Does not even get into the bios screen.

You need to take a very methodical approach to disconnecting and reconnecting everything, even memory cards. You may find that just one component is preventing the machine from even getting to the BIOS screen stage. Last time that happened to me, it was one hard disk. According to me, that shouldn't happen, but hey, it did.

Whilst I used to take some pleasure in such work, I no longer do. I have a great maintenance company just a few minutes walk away, and I call them. They do it all day: they are so much better at it than I am now. It's worth a try.

They also rebuilt my current system after an actual MB failure. I'd just rather have someone else do the legwork! However, I do have to then do any necessary Linux stuff as they are all Windows guys.

[deep_bang]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Looks like the mobo of my pc has conked off. PC powers on, lights turn on, but goes right into "insert boot disk". Does not even get into the bios screen.

Tried a bios reset but no luck.

No power to any of the USB sockets as well.

Gigabyte b450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi. Just over 3 years old and it decides to bite the dust!

What would be a decent mid range board for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor?

As far as I remember, if you are seeing an 'insert boot disk' message on the monitor, its the bios that's putting up this message. This happens when it cannot find a disk with a boot image on it.

It's more likely that the monitor takes a couple of seconds to come up (it's off because there is no video signal) and the bios screen is gone by the time the monitor comes up.

Can you try getting into the bios knowing that the monitor may show up ths screen a little later? Meaning, pressing the F10 key or F1 or whatever hotkey you need to press to enter bios and keep pressing that again and again. May be you already tried this.

Do you know if your keyboard is working? It's possible that your key inputs add not being taken (and so not going into the bios) because the entire usb host module is fried or not working. Do the lights show up on the keyboard? If the keyboard is a usb one, try to switch to a PS2 one of possible. Since you mentioned that usb's don't have power I am wondering if the keyboard is just not even connected.

If this still does not help solve the issue, it's likely that the bios ROM is corrupt. It's very unlikely, but possible that this happens. A motherboard repair shop may be able to reprogram the bios onto the bios chip. If your motherboard came with a manual, check if there is a way to program the bios ROM - but we now entering a new territory here which may need some extra tools like ROM programmer etc. That's why best to take it to a repair shop - try the laptop repair shops first.

In the worst case, yes, start to look for a new MB.

[CzechItaliaMoto]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Looks like the mobo of my pc has conked off. PC powers on, lights turn on, but goes right into "insert boot disk". Does not even get into the bios screen.

Tried a bios reset but no luck.

No power to any of the USB sockets as well.

Gigabyte b450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi. Just over 3 years old and it decides to bite the dust!

What would be a decent mid range board for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor?

This has happened to me on an Intel motherboard a few years ago. What i did was, remove the sticks of ram first and put them back in a different order, this would work a couple of times. Hard resetting the PC also worked when i repeatedly tried to turn it on and off, but if your PC has a CMOS jumper, I'd say that's your best bet. Insert a bootable USB into your computer and try somethings that could somehow get you into the BIOS setup, and turn off secure boot so that you can boot into your USB stick through legacy. This may or may not work, but based on my past experience this is what I would've done. Pretty much a lot of tinkering


As for the motherboard, you could easily make do with another B450 or B550, A good mid range one would be the MSI Pro Series which I currently use in my Ryzen 5 5700X system. I'm pretty sure it is backwards compatible, so your 3000 series would also work on this board. Atb

[deathwalkr]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

You need to take a very methodical approach to disconnecting and reconnecting everything, even memory cards.

Thanks. Shall give this a go tonight and see if it helps

Originally Posted by deep_bang

As far as I remember, if you are seeing an 'insert boot disk' message on the monitor, its the bios that's putting up this message. This happens when it cannot find a disk with a boot image on it.

Tried pressing keyboard buttons to force the pc to load bios but no luck. None of the USB devices are powering on. And sadly no PS2 port for checking with keyboard.

Removed CMOS, tried shorting the clear cmos jumper but no luck. Does not load bios.

Originally Posted by CzechItaliaMoto

This has happened to me on an Intel motherboard a few years ago. What i did was, remove the sticks of ram first and put them back in a different order, this would work a couple of times.

Yeah, shall try the RAM and see if it helps. Have shortlisted the MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus board. Costs around Rs.14k and should be good enough i guess.

Thanks for all the tips guys. Hope it works