1 SSD an O.S. and Trainz...

Very true. :)

I love how some of these kids, I read about on the tech sites, overclock, burn out, and replace hardware as though it's nothing. I cried when I fried a USB port on the motherboard I just replaced!

In this case, though, the waiting game will pay off with faster hardware. Right now these SSDs cost about what the old Seagate 40MB hard drives cost about 20 years ago. Now hard drives 7 times that size go for about $200.

John

I hear you. The current rig I run was a second hand one build by a friend of a friend who's nephew could be described as one of those kids you mentioned. The nephew wanted the latest and greatest and I was looking for bang for my buck. Worked out well and I remain grateful! I do think the price will come down a bit more too as time goes on. Folks in shoes like mine will want to migrate up to something in the middle of the pack as time goes on. Plus, it looks like SSD is here to stay (esp. with some of the speeds I've been reading). From that article you posted and I want to quote two specs that blew my mind:

1) "2.5GB/s and a write speed of 1.5GB"
2) "It's hard to look over an SSD that can extract 38GB archives in less than a minute or backup 45GB of images in a little over two minutes."

Geez! I grew up with a Commodore 64 that had 128k of memory. With 5 1/4 floppys! Makes you wonder what technology people will use in 20 years time!

That said, to have the latest and greatest comes with a hefty price (to buy the SSD and the components [IE MoBo, RAM, etc...to keep up with it] ). It's still amazing to see the gains once you move up to the next level though (even if it is middle of the pack or so). I felt that way several years ago when I started using my current rig. :)

I want to thank everyone, especially the OP as this has been a very enlightening thread.

Eating a bit of crow after doing more research. Ref. post 4 of this thread. I was going to use a SSD for my operating system and TANE in a new computer, but like many on these forums I'm retired, so after thinking about it, counting my pennies and weighing the benefits, I have decided a WD 1TB black HDD is going to have to do.

I'm running a HPe9110t built in August of 2009: Intel core 2 Quad cpu@ 2.33GHz, 6GB RAM, so I figure a new system with a i5 6600 6M 3.3GHz cpu, 8GB RAM and GTX 970 videocard should prove a huge improvement.

Maybe I'll save the SSD for next Christmas.

Regards,

I have learned quite a bit and am very happy to hear that this was useful to you too! I run 2 WD Caviar Black 750 GB HDDs myself and I do personally have to attest for their quality and longevity (no issues, continue to work perfectly). I run a similar set up: AMD Phenom II X4 965 (~3.4 GHz) with 8 GB DDR3 and a AMD HD Powercolour 6850. Your video card is leaps and bounds above mine so I imagine you'll see huge gains compared to your current system.

Not to start a flame war but from what I've read John, AMD is a more cost-effective option in general compared to Intel (at least for GPUs). I do hear that Intel seems to win slightly on performance, but for the price one pays for that premium, AMD is what I go with and I have no regrets. Since you are doing research before you upgrade, it's something to consider.

You could also consider, like I am, just getting a smaller SSD (maybe in the area of 128 GB) just for your OS. I still think the price would justify it for the gains you get in speed for your OS and executables. You might not see a huge difference in Trainz, but I'm betting you use your computer for other things too.

As for me, I'll be waiting until after Xmas for an SSD. Doubt our exchange rate will improve much but I can wait...
 
Last edited:
Interesting. What MoBo did you buy?

On reading this article I was amused by the price per gigabyte. I can recall shopping in Frys (California) looking for hard disks at $1 per megabyte.

Hi Paul,

I ended up with an MSI GODLike motherboard with an Intel i7-5930K Haswell processor, and 64GB of RAM. I kept my GTX780Ti and hard drives. At the time I made my purchase, the new Intel Skylake i7s were just released, but were nearly impossible to purchase. One company had them and was selling them with a 400% markup over the retail price! Because I needed to build a system, I went one generation behind. The system works fine for my needs and the extra memory helps, especially when running two copies of T:ANE plus TS12 at the same time. I couldn't have made this purchase if I didn't have a special running on my PayPal credit account at the time. They had this no payments or interest for 6 months, which was a godsend for stuff like this, and I wouldn't have done it otherwise.

I remember those days too with hard drives. Thinking back new SSDs are priced right in where the older 40 MB drives used to cost so many years ago. I paid $365 each way back when and had two in my system. When they outlived their usefulness because they couldn't be used any longer since they were not even ATA drives, they donated their parts to my brother's workshop where their magnets are used to hold stuff to the workbench even today.

John
 
Last edited:
Personal budgets are always, well, personal. But it can be revealing to do a basic cost-benefit analysis on items that seem to have a high initial cost .... but which turn out to be things that provide a lot of use. Computer parts are often like this - high initial cost but in terms of cost/hour-used, very inexpensive indeed.

To give an example of the opposite scenario: consider the regular purchase of a newspaper. It costs, say, $1 a daily issue so you pay $365 per year. You spend an hour reading each one but any benefit or value your get from doing so is questionable. :)

For $365 you could instead have a capacious SSD or a fast GPU for you computer. It will probably serve for 3 - 5 years; and if you are a Trainzer you will derive hundreds if not thousands of hours genuine pleasure from it. The cost per hour is maybe $0.25 or less.

In addition, you may even be able to sell the computer part for a few dollars when you upgrade it. In all events, it continues to have value for years and years, unlike the newspaper, which may have no value, not even on the day you read it! (Fish & chip shops pay nothing for those newspapers as wrappers, by the way).

Lataxe, doing some crude accounting.
 
Personal budgets are always, well, personal. But it can be revealing to do a basic cost-benefit analysis on items that seem to have a high initial cost .... but which turn out to be things that provide a lot of use. Computer parts are often like this - high initial cost but in terms of cost/hour-used, very inexpensive indeed.

To give an example of the opposite scenario: consider the regular purchase of a newspaper. It costs, say, $1 a daily issue so you pay $365 per year. You spend an hour reading each one but any benefit or value your get from doing so is questionable. :)

For $365 you could instead have a capacious SSD or a fast GPU for you computer. It will probably serve for 3 - 5 years; and if you are a Trainzer you will derive hundreds if not thousands of hours genuine pleasure from it. The cost per hour is maybe $0.25 or less.

In addition, you may even be able to sell the computer part for a few dollars when you upgrade it. In all events, it continues to have value for years and years, unlike the newspaper, which may have no value, not even on the day you read it! (Fish & chip shops pay nothing for those newspapers as wrappers, by the way).

Lataxe, doing some crude accounting.

This is a great point and one I have found myself resorting to from time to time. When I think about how expensive it would be to go out for a night of drinking or to see a professional sports team play, it is quite sobering and refreshing to think about what has value to myself (and to others) and how I generally try to get better value this way. For some (who have the income) dropping 2K on a purse would bring happiness, but to me it would seem like madness and yet I suppose to others, dropping the money I wish I could on a video card would seem just as mad accordingly. I guess that's why they call us trainzers? :D

Even though I find myself longing for retirement (I just started full-time work again a year ago lol) I also find myself asking questions in relation to how much things cost. I ask myself "Is this object worth 8 hours of my time on a rough day at my job?" If so, then it is a good purchase. If not, then I hesitate and reconsider.

All I know is that given how our written media is owned by those with select...agendas, I will continue to refuse to buy papers based on my personal beliefs (and your cost/hour used formula :D ). Hence, that is why I pay a ton on my cellphone to read the news online (among other things I use my phone for).

I am also the type to try to exact as much value from bigger ticket purchases so I expect ideally to run them into the ground. I sincerely doubt anyone would want my used 6850 at this point in time, but it still carries itself for the time being and will fulfill its destiny until I upgrade (or, knock on wood, it dies and I am forced to upgrade).

Getting back on topic...a 128 GB SSD HD should be enough for Windows 7 and some executables, no? I might see if I can get a 120 GB and a 256 GB SSD drive (for my OS and trainz).
 
This is a great point and one I have found myself resorting to from time to time. When I think about how expensive it would be to go out for a night of drinking or to see a professional sports team play, it is quite sobering and refreshing to think about what has value to myself (and to others) and how I generally try to get better value this way. For some (who have the income) dropping 2K on a purse would bring happiness, but to me it would seem like madness and yet I suppose to others, dropping the money I wish I could on a video card would seem just as mad accordingly. I guess that's why they call us trainzers? :D

Even though I find myself longing for retirement (I just started full-time work again a year ago lol) I also find myself asking questions in relation to how much things cost. I ask myself "Is this object worth 8 hours of my time on a rough day at my job?" If so, then it is a good purchase. If not, then I hesitate and reconsider.

All I know is that given how our written media is owned by those with select...agendas, I will continue to refuse to buy papers based on my personal beliefs (and your cost/hour used formula :D ). Hence, that is why I pay a ton on my cellphone to read the news online (among other things I use my phone for).

I am also the type to try to exact as much value from bigger ticket purchases so I expect ideally to run them into the ground. I sincerely doubt anyone would want my used 6850 at this point in time, but it still carries itself for the time being and will fulfill its destiny until I upgrade (or, knock on wood, it dies and I am forced to upgrade).

Getting back on topic...a 128 GB SSD HD should be enough for Windows 7 and some executables, no? I might see if I can get a 120 GB and a 256 GB SSD drive (for my OS and trainz).

Your are doing this the smart way, but as someone who worked in this crazy industry and even built early PCs in the mid-1980s, I will say this.

Look at what you have to spend, set a budget and work within it. I never skimp out on the important stuff like memory, CPU, and video cards, and even hard drives, and I will buy not the bleeding edge, but not the least expensive either. I will try to get the best bang for my buck to realize at least 3-5 years out of the machine. In the industry and business it's called ROI or Return on Investment.

The other thing too is you don't want to buy a cheap computer to start and build up/upgrade from the base. That can actually cost more in the long run because you end up buying things twice. The other thing too is look at your needs. If you make models, play simulators, make movies, and so on like so many of us, you want a machine with a good hard drive subsystem, decent processor, motherboard, and video card, and of course RAM. Given that RAM is really so cheap these days, compared to even a few years ago, you can get quite a lot for so little, all things being equal. I paid $350 for 64GB, which is the same price I paid for 16GB about 4 years ago. This was matched RAM too, which is another thing to consider.

The video card doesn't have to be the most super-fastest and most expense model offered. Go top end in the class you can afford.

Repeat the same with the processor and motherboard, and you'll have a great system.

Getting now to your last question on the 128GB SSD... Those are quite small by today's standards. You could go bigger than that which will allow room for your applications, and in the future content. I went with a 240GB when I purchased mine about a year ago. Today the same drive is going for about 40% less today than it was when I bought it when it's on sale at places such as New Egg. That's the problem I really can't quote a price for one. If anything go with the biggest one you can afford, and check around on websites such as www.newegg.com Anyway, we will help you when it comes to that point, and do keep in mind what we've said here.

Oh, by the way, hardware in my house never dies usually. We end up trickling it down through the family. What was once my top-end machine 6 years ago now, is my dad' machine which he uses for his graphics he does plus his card game he plays. It still runs well, rock solid, just a bit slow for today's 3d simulators we play.

Retirement is great if it were just that and you have plenty of money saved up behind you. When it comes suddenly, as I found ending up on disability and now at the whim of an insurance payout and SSDI. In all honesty I would rather be working 60-plus hours like I used to. Being at the whim of others who could decide that they no longer want to play their part is scary, besides, the fixed limited income with no other resources is scary too.

John
 
Thanks for the advice John. When I built my rig at the time, I was starting from scratch, so I spent a bit more than I wanted to but with the expectation that some of what I bought would last me for some time (soundcard, speakers). That said, I agree about the key components (and in not skimping). I'd add a proper PSU to that list as well.

64 GB? Wow, your computer must literally fly! I have 8 GB now and am starting to feel things slow down a bit here and there. Still a good rig for what I need and use it for...I wish I could say I trainzed a lot but with work and life I don't have that much time, which is also why I am being more economical.

Newegg is great and there are deals to be found there if you wait for the right timing. I'll keep my eyes peeled for an SSD from there too if I can.

Yeah, I'm thinking a 240 GB SSD would be better. I bet it's more like 210 GB in practice, once formatted.

I will definitely ask around when it's time to make a new beast. Perhaps in the summer if everything goes extremely well. I like how your hardware trickles down. My wife has called dibs on my current rig, which if it lasts until then, might be okay for her (with an upgrade here or there maybe).

Sorry to hear about your situation, retirement wise. Life is a strange thing in that we can plan all we want but it does it's own thing. Worse, when you are a statistical number with the bean counters...I hope things improve in the ways you want them to for you.

Thanks again for all the (free) advice. Lord knows I don't have much money either...
 
Just to add to John's sage comments: a 128GB SSD for the Windows installation is too small. I have a 240gb SSD for Windows, a 2TB fast HDD for my data and development stuff, and a 240GB SSD for Trainz.

My 240GB Windows SSD currently has 163GB in use and I tend to install most of my applications on my 2TB drive. What's using all this space? Well, Windows is one, but every Tom, Dick and Harry application wants to store stuff in the user folders which, of course, are on C: drive. T:ANE, by default, stores its user data on C: drive and there was a minor riot by users during the beta testing about this. Consequently, you can now have your T:ANE user data elsewhere.
 
Even though I find myself longing for retirement (I just started full-time work again a year ago lol) I also find myself asking questions in relation to how much things cost. I ask myself "Is this object worth 8 hours of my time on a rough day at my job?" If so, then it is a good purchase. If not, then I hesitate and reconsider.

I am also the type to try to exact as much value from bigger ticket purchases so I expect ideally to run them into the ground. I sincerely doubt anyone would want my used 6850 at this point in time, but it still carries itself for the time being and will fulfill its destiny until I upgrade (or, knock on wood, it dies and I am forced to upgrade).

Getting back on topic...a 128 GB SSD HD should be enough for Windows 7 and some executables, no? I might see if I can get a 120 GB and a 256 GB SSD drive (for my OS and trainz).

Gisa,

Commiserations on having to return to work (spit) instead of into retirement. :) I've been retired nearly 11 years now myself and never more content.

There is a lot to be said for rejecting the modern consumer-producer treadmill in favour of a more old-fashioned lifestyle in which one attempts to acquire things of lasting value. I manage to do this with high quality wood working tools (which not only last several lifetimes but can be resold for as much or more than one paid) and also with clothes (I am a walking fashion didaster, with clothes often made by the ladywife that are 20 or more years old).

Certain things are not amenable to this approach, of course, computer stuff being one such class of stuff. It is possible to pay a lot for something that will last a long while (a large and high quality monitor, for example) but much else will become inadequate in no time as the evolving software makes greater demands, as with Trainz. In this case, one sometimes has to practice "delayed gratification" whilst waiting for something like SSDs to become mainstream and hence more reliable, higher capacity, faster & cheaper. That stage has probably been reached for SSDs - although those superfast items that plug directly into a motherboard slot seem likely to become "the thing" over the next year of three, replacing SATA III SSDs.

Still, at the moment you can buy a very nice 250Gb SSD that will greatly improve your PC's performance over it's spinning disk perfomance - especially with software like that of Trainz, which involves the constant loading of hundreds or even thousands of individual files to paint the ever-changing screen-scene.

Until recently I ran the OS (64bit Win7), all programs (including capacity-eaters such as Photoshop/Lightroom) and one version of Trainz (TS12) from a single 250Gb SSD. As my TS12 userdata began to increase, with various newly-made routes & their resources from the DLS, this SSD got to be 80% full, so I acquired a second 250Gb SSD for Trainz alone, which now also includes T:ANE (not that I run it much - hoping it will become better with various SPs, in time). I also confine my interest to British routes only.

You do have to be careful not to choke your SSD with spurious Trainz assets. It's all too easy to try a new route, including it's associated hundreds of megabits of assets, then decide you don't like it. Deleting the route doesn't delete the assets downloaded to make it all work, so one must be careful to delete those too from one's userdata, otherwise that SSD will soon be full.

The best tactic is to download a route + it's assets in an "isolated time slot", then quickly peruse the route to make a decision as to whether to keep it or not. If not, go back to the first downloaded asset of that route, in the DLS, and delete everything from there up to "now".

I'm always surprised to read of lads who download everything from the DLS. They must have terrabytes of stuff they never use!

Lataxe the frugal
 
Just to add to John's sage comments: a 128GB SSD for the Windows installation is too small. I have a 240gb SSD for Windows, a 2TB fast HDD for my data and development stuff, and a 240GB SSD for Trainz.

My 240GB Windows SSD currently has 163GB in use and I tend to install most of my applications on my 2TB drive. What's using all this space? Well, Windows is one, but every Tom, Dick and Harry application wants to store stuff in the user folders which, of course, are on C: drive. T:ANE, by default, stores its user data on C: drive and there was a minor riot by users during the beta testing about this. Consequently, you can now have your T:ANE user data elsewhere.

Thank you for confirming that. I still think my HDDs have some life left in them but I'd still want to have a 240 GB SSD just for the OS (with everything else backed up) just in case.

I did not do any of the beta testing for TANE but I can imagine how that would have cheesed a lot of folks off. I would normally never put any game on my C drive: just windows and executables because, if my logic is right, things would slow down a lot if one's computer was trying to run a game and the data for an OS in the background at the same time.

Gisa,

Commiserations on having to return to work (spit) instead of into retirement. :) I've been retired nearly 11 years now myself and never more content.

There is a lot to be said for rejecting the modern consumer-producer treadmill in favour of a more old-fashioned lifestyle in which one attempts to acquire things of lasting value. I manage to do this with high quality wood working tools (which not only last several lifetimes but can be resold for as much or more than one paid) and also with clothes (I am a walking fashion didaster, with clothes often made by the ladywife that are 20 or more years old).

Certain things are not amenable to this approach, of course, computer stuff being one such class of stuff. It is possible to pay a lot for something that will last a long while (a large and high quality monitor, for example) but much else will become inadequate in no time as the evolving software makes greater demands, as with Trainz. In this case, one sometimes has to practice "delayed gratification" whilst waiting for something like SSDs to become mainstream and hence more reliable, higher capacity, faster & cheaper. That stage has probably been reached for SSDs - although those superfast items that plug directly into a motherboard slot seem likely to become "the thing" over the next year of three, replacing SATA III SSDs.

Still, at the moment you can buy a very nice 250Gb SSD that will greatly improve your PC's performance over it's spinning disk perfomance - especially with software like that of Trainz, which involves the constant loading of hundreds or even thousands of individual files to paint the ever-changing screen-scene.

Until recently I ran the OS (64bit Win7), all programs (including capacity-eaters such as Photoshop/Lightroom) and one version of Trainz (TS12) from a single 250Gb SSD. As my TS12 userdata began to increase, with various newly-made routes & their resources from the DLS, this SSD got to be 80% full, so I acquired a second 250Gb SSD for Trainz alone, which now also includes T:ANE (not that I run it much - hoping it will become better with various SPs, in time). I also confine my interest to British routes only.

You do have to be careful not to choke your SSD with spurious Trainz assets. It's all too easy to try a new route, including it's associated hundreds of megabits of assets, then decide you don't like it. Deleting the route doesn't delete the assets downloaded to make it all work, so one must be careful to delete those too from one's userdata, otherwise that SSD will soon be full.

The best tactic is to download a route + it's assets in an "isolated time slot", then quickly peruse the route to make a decision as to whether to keep it or not. If not, go back to the first downloaded asset of that route, in the DLS, and delete everything from there up to "now".

I'm always surprised to read of lads who download everything from the DLS. They must have terrabytes of stuff they never use!

Lataxe the frugal

Thanks Lataxe. It's a long story regarding work but I came back from working overseas at a very bad time. I've compromised some and I'm almost where I would like to be as a result but it has been long and painful and I'm sure not just for myself either.

I respect your fiscal prudence and wisdom and am in the same boat. Even if I had money to burn, I think I would not change much. I do not like the idea of wasting and consuming just for the sake of doing so. Our grandchildren will spit on our graves for the mess we are leaving them now...but I digress.

Yeah, I saw those things you were talking about! The new class of SSDs? They look more like memory chips. Incredible stuff! I agree that in about 2-3 years, that they will be the next thing. It really does make you wonder what is next for other components as well. I too am waiting for the SP1 patch and I also confine objects to my areas of interest (North American railroading).

Excellent advice you gave regarding data and assets for them. I revisited that lesson I learned some time ago fairly recently (I went through an object deleting purge where I likely deleted close to at least 50 GB worth of files I rarely/never used). This is something I wish everyone in the community could learn quickly, because it is so beneficial. Otherwise, one gets drowned in content and I do believe that affects performance in some way or form.

Unlike several years ago, I'm also very picky in the routes I download and keep. This is also excellent advice (noting the time you downloaded a route and its dependencies). Of course, there are some routes that are legendary and I never tire of and they keep me busy when I am looking to take a train or two for a drive.

I wonder who in the community has the most assets on their machine. I would seriously not be surprised to see that numbering around 400 GB or more...
 
You are right Lataxe, you can muster up quite a collection of assets never to be seen again once they enter into the local hard drive. I am one of those lads that mustered up, ahem, one of those multi-thousands of assets over the past 12-years. How foolish I was! Speaking of which my 12th anniversary of Trainz will be on December 28th this year! Live in learn and as I migrate over to T:ANE SP1, I plan on pruning my assets. I won't delete stuff from my hard drive, however, my actual Trainz installs will be smaller. I plan on migrating over my content that I use the most and leave the old stuff behind in offline hard drive storage. That I can get to should I need it some day.

I agree too with Lataxe, Gisa. There are some things that really don't have lasting value such as computer parts. We hold on to stuff because it becomes obsolete so quickly. Why throw away a perfectly working computer hard drive even if it's small, it's still working right? So my basement is the classic computer graveyard. I boxes of old hardware and software tucked away, which "I might use some day" including 2 Sun Sparc Workstations with their huge monitors, old SCSI drives and controllers, floppy discs by the gazillions, and other stuff. I will admit though I have found goodies in there when needed.

That said my investments were made in musical instruments. I have a grand piano, harpsichord, and clavichord. These instruments will at least hold their value over the years rather than be worthless like the old Sun Workstations are today. :)

John
 
You are right Lataxe, you can muster up quite a collection of assets never to be seen again once they enter into the local hard drive. I am one of those lads that mustered up, ahem, one of those multi-thousands of assets over the past 12-years. How foolish I was! Speaking of which my 12th anniversary of Trainz will be on December 28th this year! Live in learn and as I migrate over to T:ANE SP1, I plan on pruning my assets. I won't delete stuff from my hard drive, however, my actual Trainz installs will be smaller. I plan on migrating over my content that I use the most and leave the old stuff behind in offline hard drive storage. That I can get to should I need it some day.

I agree too with Lataxe, Gisa. There are some things that really don't have lasting value such as computer parts. We hold on to stuff because it becomes obsolete so quickly. Why throw away a perfectly working computer hard drive even if it's small, it's still working right? So my basement is the classic computer graveyard. I boxes of old hardware and software tucked away, which "I might use some day" including 2 Sun Sparc Workstations with their huge monitors, old SCSI drives and controllers, floppy discs by the gazillions, and other stuff. I will admit though I have found goodies in there when needed.

That said my investments were made in musical instruments. I have a grand piano, harpsichord, and clavichord. These instruments will at least hold their value over the years rather than be worthless like the old Sun Workstations are today. :)

John

Mr C,

I feel you have the hoarder gene! The cure is ebay, from which one may make dosh out of loft or cellar junk, to spend on shiny new things. One man's junk is another's lovely retro fetish-object. I once made the £1400 to spend on the (then) state of the art NEC 30" monitor I'm currently gawping at by selling old racing bicycle items, long ago replaced by rather more efficient modern stuff. The old parts were happily of that ilk that, for reasons of mere fashion, became retro fetish objects. :)

Some old computer stuff is like this; but most remains junk, I'm afraid.

Concerning the SSD & Trainz .... Every now and then I read of someone planning to put only the OS & programs on the SSD with all the data, including Trainz data, on a spinning disc. Photos and sound files may well be happy to be accessed in reasonable times from a spinning disc but the zillion Trainz assets will often introduce stutters and delays if they have to trudge from the spinning disc rather than being whisked toot-sweet from an SSD.

I know this, having made the same mistake when I initially obtained an SSD. The difference in the response times for SSD-painted and spinning disc-painted Trainz scenes can be a large difference - especially when changing from one driver to another in a different section of a route.

Regarding redundant Trainz assets and their identification then elimination .... I've long wanted a DLS means to make the query that would pull up all those assets in the userdata folder which have no other assets dependent on them. For some reason this query has never been possible as a global rather than individual-item query. Perhaps the value for "View Dependent Assets" is only generated for each item in a DLS display when the query is actually made on that asset, rather than permanently stored as values or pointers in one's Trainz database?

In all events, such a query, if it could be made globally on the whole of a Trainz userdata database, would be a very useful procedure for keeping the data load down.

Lataxe
 
Mr C,

I feel you have the hoarder gene! The cure is ebay, from which one may make dosh out of loft or cellar junk, to spend on shiny new things. One man's junk is another's lovely retro fetish-object. I once made the £1400 to spend on the (then) state of the art NEC 30" monitor I'm currently gawping at by selling old racing bicycle items, long ago replaced by rather more efficient modern stuff. The old parts were happily of that ilk that, for reasons of mere fashion, became retro fetish objects. :)

Some old computer stuff is like this; but most remains junk, I'm afraid.

Concerning the SSD & Trainz .... Every now and then I read of someone planning to put only the OS & programs on the SSD with all the data, including Trainz data, on a spinning disc. Photos and sound files may well be happy to be accessed in reasonable times from a spinning disc but the zillion Trainz assets will often introduce stutters and delays if they have to trudge from the spinning disc rather than being whisked toot-sweet from an SSD.

I know this, having made the same mistake when I initially obtained an SSD. The difference in the response times for SSD-painted and spinning disc-painted Trainz scenes can be a large difference - especially when changing from one driver to another in a different section of a route.

Regarding redundant Trainz assets and their identification then elimination .... I've long wanted a DLS means to make the query that would pull up all those assets in the userdata folder which have no other assets dependent on them. For some reason this query has never been possible as a global rather than individual-item query. Perhaps the value for "View Dependent Assets" is only generated for each item in a DLS display when the query is actually made on that asset, rather than permanently stored as values or pointers in one's Trainz database?

In all events, such a query, if it could be made globally on the whole of a Trainz userdata database, would be a very useful procedure for keeping the data load down.

Lataxe

Mr. Lataxe.

I have to admit I probably do have that gene, and so does my brother. I have to say though that having the old stuff around does come in handy sometimes. My brother works in the graphics industry and one of his customers needed to replace a PC used to run an embroidery machine. He purchased a new I7 machine from Dell thinking it would work. Nope! The new machine was too fast to run the controller card. I so happened to have the parts in my basement and we sold him an old-rebuilt machine for a good price. :) We did the same with another machine used to run a RIP for an image-setter. That one was a '486 DX50 (not a turbo'd 25Mhz to 50Mhz, but a real 50Mhz '486). The board was a problem though because it had to be an EISA board capable of supporting a special SCSI controller. I so happened to have the parts in my basement, and we were up and running again. Getting Windows 3.1 to install was a chore and remembering how to configure the old 3-Com network cards was quite a challenge. Those things required editing a config file which controlled the bindings to the protocols, and getting Apple-Talk drivers to run on Windows 3.1. The last time I did this chore as 20 years ago, talk about refreshing brain cells.

But alas, I will be getting rid of stuff soon. It definitely is time to clean up the junk. EBay is one outlet and the other is a quick call to 1-800-Got-Junk. Seriously... A company with this telephone number, whatever it's numbers are, will come by and leave a skip for us to toss stuff into. When the dumpster is stuffed, they'll pick it up. I do look forward to doing this in the spring when I get some money.

On the asset clean up. I too wish that capability was global as well as local as that would save time. The new dependents filter works and I have tested this with bunches of assets at a time. It's time consuming but not as bad as it was in TS12 though.

SSDs though for me are still new, and until I have firm proof that they don't quit suddenly, I'll continue to keep my data safe. :)

John
 
Mr C,

I feel you have the hoarder gene! The cure is ebay, from which one may make dosh out of loft or cellar junk, to spend on shiny new things. One man's junk is another's lovely retro fetish-object. I once made the £1400 to spend on the (then) state of the art NEC 30" monitor I'm currently gawping at by selling old racing bicycle items, long ago replaced by rather more efficient modern stuff. The old parts were happily of that ilk that, for reasons of mere fashion, became retro fetish objects. :)

Some old computer stuff is like this; but most remains junk, I'm afraid.

Concerning the SSD & Trainz .... Every now and then I read of someone planning to put only the OS & programs on the SSD with all the data, including Trainz data, on a spinning disc. Photos and sound files may well be happy to be accessed in reasonable times from a spinning disc but the zillion Trainz assets will often introduce stutters and delays if they have to trudge from the spinning disc rather than being whisked toot-sweet from an SSD.

I know this, having made the same mistake when I initially obtained an SSD. The difference in the response times for SSD-painted and spinning disc-painted Trainz scenes can be a large difference - especially when changing from one driver to another in a different section of a route.

Regarding redundant Trainz assets and their identification then elimination .... I've long wanted a DLS means to make the query that would pull up all those assets in the userdata folder which have no other assets dependent on them. For some reason this query has never been possible as a global rather than individual-item query. Perhaps the value for "View Dependent Assets" is only generated for each item in a DLS display when the query is actually made on that asset, rather than permanently stored as values or pointers in one's Trainz database?

In all events, such a query, if it could be made globally on the whole of a Trainz userdata database, would be a very useful procedure for keeping the data load down.

Lataxe


Mr. Lataxe.

I have to admit I probably do have that gene, and so does my brother. I have to say though that having the old stuff around does come in handy sometimes. My brother works in the graphics industry and one of his customers needed to replace a PC used to run an embroidery machine. He purchased a new I7 machine from Dell thinking it would work. Nope! The new machine was too fast to run the controller card. I so happened to have the parts in my basement and we sold him an old-rebuilt machine for a good price. :) We did the same with another machine used to run a RIP for an image-setter. That one was a '486 DX50 (not a turbo'd 25Mhz to 50Mhz, but a real 50Mhz '486). The board was a problem though because it had to be an EISA board capable of supporting a special SCSI controller. I so happened to have the parts in my basement, and we were up and running again. Getting Windows 3.1 to install was a chore and remembering how to configure the old 3-Com network cards was quite a challenge. Those things required editing a config file which controlled the bindings to the protocols, and getting Apple-Talk drivers to run on Windows 3.1. The last time I did this chore as 20 years ago, talk about refreshing brain cells.

But alas, I will be getting rid of stuff soon. It definitely is time to clean up the junk. EBay is one outlet and the other is a quick call to 1-800-Got-Junk. Seriously... A company with this telephone number, whatever it's numbers are, will come by and leave a skip for us to toss stuff into. When the dumpster is stuffed, they'll pick it up. I do look forward to doing this in the spring when I get some money.

On the asset clean up. I too wish that capability was global as well as local as that would save time. The new dependents filter works and I have tested this with bunches of assets at a time. It's time consuming but not as bad as it was in TS12 though.

SSDs though for me are still new, and until I have firm proof that they don't quit suddenly, I'll continue to keep my data safe. :)

John

Having just (as I type this) spent two nights sifting through some content I know I won't likely be using, there definitely needs to be a filter for this. How much time would it have saved me if I could apply something along the lines of "has dependent asset = true/false". I went through manually of course (because it had to be done and when I port over to TANE, I'd rather do it quickly with less to sift/delete later on. Did manage to free up 14 GB though. :|

Another issue N3V needs to consider is how to go about languages and content. There are some talented creators from all over the world and many speak so many different languages. I wonder how many fabulous assets I deleted or never used simply because I could not understand what it was. Yes, on a small scale, one can manually change the name of an object but on a macro scale...good luck!

If all goes well, I'll aim for two SSDs this summer (240 GB for my OS and 240 GB just for TANE).

Good luck on selling all the old stuff. I hope you can get a good price for as much as you can. I try the same with the odd bit of technology that I've grown beyond but have not been very successful as of yet.
 
Back
Top