External ssd drive

deneban said:

At least there were hard drives and floppy disks. My first computer had 64 kilobytes, of which 16 kilobytes was RAM and an audio cassette tape drive to record and load programs (Commodore 64). Not to mention the predecessor programable calculators that read and recorded programs on gum-strip magnetic media.

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Wow, thanks for reminding me of the Commodore 64. I must correct my previous statement. My FIRST computer was a Commodore 16. Then I graduated to a Commodore 64, with sequential tape storage (Type a few lines of code, save to tape, write some more code, add to tape, wait for the sequential read-process to review the code, etc.), and eventually to a Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 with two floppy disk drives.

Time flies when having fun.

I also feel old my first computer was a Radio shack TRS80 16k of ram and a cassette recorder from program storage.
Just hook it up to the TV and have fun. Boy things have come a long way since then.
At the moment my desktop system has 16gb of memory 27" Samsung HiDef monitor, Nvidia GTX1650, a 500gb SSD C: drive and three - 4GB internal hard drives
one for Trainz alone.
Am looking to upgrade Mother and upgrade To 32gb or 64gb of ram.

I feel old as well. Is started with an Atari 800 and moved up to a Visual V1050 that ran CP/M 3.0 and came with 64k of RAM, 32K video RAM, 2 high-density floppy drives, keyboard and display. The CPU was a 4.77 MHZ Z-80 and the video was controlled with a 6502. A few years later, I got a V1083, Commuter with 512K RAM, but more video options. In both cases, hard drives were optional. The V-1050 supported a 5 or 10 MB HD at the time.

The first one I worked on was a PDP something or other. It had 1 k of memory but we upgraded it to 2k so we could run two programs at once. Paper tape input and output fed into a teletype machine.

Cheerio John

@johnwhelan: That's what I learned Basic on my first year of college in 1976. PDP11 with an ASR33 Teletype. I had to print out my program on the paper tape, wrap it up with a rubber band and turn it in for grading. My term paper was printed on a daisy wheel printer next to the PDP11.

I was programming machine code on development boards before I could afford an assembler. Had to hand assemble the code using the data manuals, and enter the bytes of code on a hex keypad. I think my Heathkit H8 was my first real pc after my Kim1 and other dev boards.

Wow, This memory lane here,,,,I love it.....

First let me sweep the cobwebs out of my Brain.....And ponder for a minute......

Ah yes, it just came up,,,,,,Radio Shack TANDY 99TA or something in 1977,,,,,,,I played with Basic back then, and found out I was great at fixing things on Computer, but as Programmer, nah, no way,,,,,My mind wasn't wired that way.....6 Hertz of speed.......All I know it was slooowwwww......But that was all you had....>Think of Computers Astronauts had going to the Moon, and now our Cell Phones are light years ahead.......Isn't that something..........?

The TRS-80 has a full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, the Zilog Z80 processor, 4 KB DRAM standard memory (when many 8-bit computers shipped with only 1 KB RAM), small size and desk footprint, floating-point Level I BASIC language interpreter in ROM, 64-character per line video monitor, and a starting price of US$600[SUP][1][/SUP] (equivalent to US$2500 in 2020).

And then in 1986 I got a 286SX Computer with 5 meg Hard Drive, had to goto 10, then to 20, and you know the rest of the Story, worked with friends who programmed on 8086 XT or something, it has been to long.........

No such thing as Laptops back then either, boy are we spoiled.........:hehe:

For your External SSD, make sure they can handle all the rewrites they'll get from Trainz........There is a limit on Writes to SSD or Spindle Drives, but Spindles of course can move as fast over SSD, Mechanical over Memory Chips difference Etc.........And how fast your USB bottle neck is, vs internal........

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffnt&q=best+ssd+external&ia=web

Best of luck with your project.......:wave:

I started with a CP/M computer, moved to the Commodore64, then to the DOS PC, followed by Windows 3.1. I don't think any of them had more than 640K Memory, and a 40MB hard drive on an IBM 3270 was like WOW!

Tonight my son said they just came out with the first 512GB DDR RAM stick! Gotta be expensive, and I wonder what machines can use it! Seems like just loading that much RAM, even from an SSD would take a while.

Forester1 said:

I started with a CP/M computer, moved to the Commodore64, then to the DOS PC, followed by Windows 3.1. I don't think any of them had more than 640K Memory, and a 40MB hard drive on an IBM 3270 was like WOW!

Tonight my son said they just came out with the first 512GB DDR RAM stick! Gotta be expensive, and I wonder what machines can use it! Seems like just loading that much RAM, even from an SSD would take a while.

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That's crazy, if you look at MOB's today, your lucky to get 16-32 Max Memory......Must be a special Board he has.......And here's the other thing on Memory, not only does MOB, Windows, need to be able to address that memory, so does normal Software if they wrote it to use that extra memory too, especially for Games......................

Very cool sir.......

Hi Blue. I managed to Google an article. The first computers to use it may be the AMD Zen 4 platform next year, which is rumored to support DDR5. This is a short but interesting article on this new stick: https://www.engadget.com/samsung-unveils-a-512-gb-ddr-5-ram-module-102447443.html

Planned obsolescence

Forester1 said:

I started with a CP/M computer, moved to the Commodore64, then to the DOS PC, followed by Windows 3.1. I don't think any of them had more than 640K Memory, and a 40MB hard drive on an IBM 3270 was like WOW!

Tonight my son said they just came out with the first 512GB DDR RAM stick! Gotta be expensive, and I wonder what machines can use it! Seems like just loading that much RAM, even from an SSD would take a while.

Click to expand...

Just fantasizing... probably won't be long before a 128bit OS or greater will become the norm. The next generations will be witness to a phenomenal future (assuming we can solve the climate crisis, unless one does not believe in science (Ostrich Society?)).

Forester1 said:

Hi Blue. I managed to Google an article. The first computers to use it may be the AMD Zen 4 platform next year, which is rumored to support DDR5. This is a short but interesting article on this new stick: https://www.engadget.com/samsung-unveils-a-512-gb-ddr-5-ram-module-102447443.html

Click to expand...

Good morning Sir,

Thanks for article, going to read it later tonight......I always had Intel Chips etc since 1986, did use AMD Chips and had one burn up on me once back in 1992 or somewhere then, long ago when AMD had problems with their Chips, almost lost my MOB back then, so I switched to Intel Board and Chip later when I could afford it....

Now decades later, AMD has come roaring back and is giving Intel a run for its, money..........And I have one machine with Intel, my this ROG Strix Laptop, and an older Desktop with AMD chip Phenom, that I plan putting a new MOB with

https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-with-graphics

possibly a 3600, or 4000 model,,,,,,,And then I might just buy a Desktop only, due to cost of buying separate items vs computer............

I used to build computers for a hobby and friends, it was fun and I helped a lot of people....But now Systems are at rock bottom prices so one needs to figure is better buy a few pieces for rehab of dated Computer or just trash it and buy whole new system,,,,,,,For me, I have good monitors and keyboards, so I only have to buy the case......Saves a few green.......:wave:

And back on topic. I am using a couple of internal SATA SSD drives for my games. No issues so far.
The main drive is a 1TB M2 SSD on the motherboard. (So far only using less than half of the main drive. So hopefully it will last a long time.)

I never tried to run a modern game with a USB3 external drive, but I suppose it would work.
In that case I would go into settings to make sure the sleep options for the USB3 external drive was disabled if not already.
(I have a USB3 2.5 TB drive I use only for backup that has a real platter that turns. And I let it go to sleep. )