Worst computer hardware feature you have seen?

I wonder how many of us would be using MacOS if they had just sold licenses during the Hackentosh era.

I also wonder why Wintel did not pushback more against Android. They had products that were nice. I still want a 7" Wintel Tablet to convert.
Why they only seemed to push wifi and not cellular handheld devices is weird. 32 Bit UEFI was the death knell.
Like they did not want to compete with Android. Held the door open for them.
Now TMSC is looking at thier "storied" carcass.

 
I think Intels failure is mostly a marketing one. They have the right tech but somehow they hamstring it.

Also the product line is way too confusing.

The sheer number of Xeons they make means you need to be a product specialist just to understand the features.

Part of the reason for Apples success is the simplistic product line. You don't need to study literature. They are all similar. Ironic they don't make a server anymore. Xserver was nice.
 
Phishfry said:
I wonder how many of us would be using MacOS if they had just sold licenses during the Hackentosh era.
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I considered macOS recently but heard they discontinued server editions a while back or something. I wanted to go all-in!

VoodooHDA and kexts were interesting. I'm kind of glad I never had to mess with DSDT patching and seemingly had lucky hardware :p (I had Intel 950GMA and messed with Tiger-Snow Leopard hackintosh; SL's intro was my favorite)
 
Espionage724 said:
I considered macOS recently but heard they discontinued server editions a while back or something. I wanted to go all-in!
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macOS was always my backup plan if Windows became impossible to use. Unfortunately the recent introduction of online activation for the aarch64 builds has compromised that. At least Windows has many open-source activation cracks available.
 
Phishfry said:
Well since you mentioned Win8 and tablets.

One of the worst hardware "features" I have witnessed:

UEFI 32Bit BIOS on 64Bit CPU.

AKA the Z27xx and Z37xx years. Even stymied Linux on that one.

Brought to you by a friendly Wintel Reference Design.
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I experienced an early-ish UEFI bios mb that just played dead when set to UEFI boot. Well, at least it had a header for a bios reset jumper...
 
The unbelievably awful "Brick of Death" PSU for the C64. Seriously, the ENTIRE thing is potted. I don't know if the voltage regulator failing and outputting 12V on the 5V line is a feature, but anyways it is still AWFUL. I guess you could say that cheapness is the "feature" though.

On the other note of actual features, Secure Boot feels pointless. It even fails as Tivoization because you can turn it off!
 
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RetroComputingCollector said:
The unbelievably awful "Brick of Death" PSU for the C64. Seriously, the ENTIRE thing is potted. I don't know if the voltage refulator failing and outputting 12V on the 5V line is a feature, but anyways it is still AWFUL. I guess you could say that cheapness is the "feature" though.

On the other note of actual features, Secure Boot feels pointless. It even fails as Tivoization because you can turn it off!
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Wow, this sounds worse than cheap Apevia PSU that I bought for my very first attempt to build a machine from aftermarket parts. That Apevia PSU fried my Asus B350-M Prime mobo back in 2017. Fortunately, the damage was limited to just mobo and PSU. I had to replace the mobo (Asus does make good ones), but for the PSU, I learned a lesson the hard way - go for known good PSU brands, like EVGA, or pay attention to the brands that reviewers/bloggers tend to use. You usually get what you pay for.
 
astyle said:
Wow, this sounds worse than cheap Apevia PSU that I bought for my very first attempt to build a machine from aftermarket parts. That Apevia PSU fried my Asus B350-M Prime mobo back in 2017. Fortunately, the damage was limited to just mobo and PSU. I had to replace the mobo (Asus does make good ones), but for the PSU, I learned a lesson the hard way - go for known good PSU brands, like EVGA, or pay attention to the brands that reviewers/bloggers tend to use. You usually get what you pay for.
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It was an official Commodore product! (But not under that name of course)
 
astyle said:
[...] I learned a lesson the hard way - go for known good PSU brands, like EVGA, or pay attention to the brands that reviewers/bloggers tend to use. You usually get what you pay for.
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Even that does not protect you. I had a fancy EVGA 1000W Platinum Plus Power Supply that failed weeks after the 10-year warranty was over. That of itself would have been OK, no worries. But it also fried the following components:
  1. Asus X670E-A Mainboard
  2. Ryzen 7950X CPU
  3. Nvidia RTX3080
I was lucky enough to get all these components exchanged under warranty (the RTX3080 days before the warranty expired). While I still buy quality PSUs with ten year warranties, EVGA is now on my personal blacklist.
 
recluce said:
While I still buy quality PSUs with ten year warranties, EVGA is now on my personal blacklist.
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Interesting!

I heard EVGA was one of the best to buy from for PSUs and I got a 600W non-modular one a couple years ago. No problems with a X470 + RTX 3060/RX 6600 XT, but nowadays I have that PSU paper-clip'd on and powering two routers and a cable modem on 12V Molex :p (and fans on 5V)

I had a no-name hec PSU that did fine for games and regular load with a FX-8350 for a while, but I was curious one night and did a GPU and CPU stress test at the same time. PSU died within a second with nothing exciting (just shutdown); bought a new PSU that week and it dropped-in no problem (nothing else fried luckily)

Most fun thing I did was take a Xbox 360 power brick, cut off the console end and wired it up to a ATX PSU on Molex, while the PSU was in a much better gaming desktop :p It worked fine for some months but I gave the 360 its own ATX PSU after a while.
 
cracauer@ said:
What's the worst hardware feature on a laptop or PC that you've seen?

For me it is the touchbar on many medium age Apple Macbook Pros. Still suffering from it.
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The worst I've seen on my laptop, it heats up at the slightest effort of compilation or playing a video, the machine resources shoot through the roof for the clouds.
 
teo said:
The worst I've seen on my laptop, it heats up at the slightest effort of compilation or playing a video, the machine resources shoot through the roof for the clouds.
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My CPU shoots to 90C pretty easy, but with a thin heatsink on a laptop and Intel's clocking I think it's fine (iirc max is 100C; I didn't think I'd reach that and assumed clocks would drop enough if it got there but it looks like it hits 100C and then does something quick to reduce temps; I didn't notice anything real-world and the thermal tech looks working as-intended :p)

I recently recorded a video of UT99 (CPU encoding) and have 3GHz+ clocks with 100+ FPS no problem while sitting around 90-100C:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCk8BwxdZ1o


I use my laptop docked most of the time though and don't know how comfortable that'd be on my lap :p
 
Espionage724 said:
Interesting!

I heard EVGA was one of the best to buy from for PSUs and I got a 600W non-modular one a couple years ago. No problems with a X470 + RTX 3060/RX 6600 XT, but nowadays I have that PSU paper-clip'd on and powering two routers and a cable modem on 12V Molex :p (and fans on 5V)

I had a no-name hec PSU that did fine for games and regular load with a FX-8350 for a while, but I was curious one night and did a GPU and CPU stress test at the same time. PSU died within a second with nothing exciting (just shutdown); bought a new PSU that week and it dropped-in no problem (nothing else fried luckily)

Most fun thing I did was take a Xbox 360 power brick, cut off the console end and wired it up to a ATX PSU on Molex, while the PSU was in a much better gaming desktop :p It worked fine for some months but I gave the 360 its own ATX PSU after a while.
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Please note that this is my personal anecdotal evidence, so your mileage might vary! :)

In my case, the computer just shut down and would not power up again. Turned out the voltage on the 5V rail was way too high and with kind of an AC sinus wave overlaying it. I only have a super-basic oscilloscope feature in my hand-held multi-meter, so I could not see much in the way of details.

I would definitely not buy power supplies of questionably prodigy, without a domestic vendor to hold responsible if it goes up in flames or without a long warranty, best 10 years plus. Also, I would not overburden a PSU to avoid catastrophic failure. My formula is "estimated maximum system power use plus 20%". 20% = 10% as a safety buffer and another 10% to allow for aging of the PSU which will reduce maximum power output over time.
 
I've had really good luck with power supplies ever since I started buying quality ones about 25 years ago*.

Well, unless I pour beer on them, that is.

All of my beer-free power supplies have outlasted the system they were bought for.

* Anyone remember PC Power & Cooling?
 
Zippy/Emacs are my go to if I have room. I have been hoarding them. I do have a white PC Power Cooling I have been saving for something. FSP Zen fanless PS that I need to checkout.
I found some HP Server Hotswaps that I have used in some projects. I also have breakout adapter for Delta 600W for my Pi Bench.
 
I still use SevenTeam's PSUs from when they made desktop products. A very long time without ever a beep from them.
 
I have built frankenservers with Chenbro cases. RM2xxxx. They actually sell riser to LP PCI slot case backplate. The whole back of the chassis.
I have converted some SuperMicro cases the same way. They used to sell the whole back end so you could convert Horizontal slots to low profile.
The bummer is the drive backplanes were not updated in some so SATA2/SAS1 or something like that.
Some SuperMicro CSE chassis allow you to upgrade the backplane.

With good power supplies it seems the connectors change before they die.
I bought my first rackmount case 3U Antec in the nintys. It has seen several motherboards starting with Tyan Tiger MP. AMDs first multi-procesor board.

Tyan S2460

Tyan S2460 is a motherboard based on the AMD 760MP chipset. Get specs, BIOS, documentation and more!
theretroweb.com theretroweb.com
It was really buggy.
 
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Phishfry said:
With good power supplies it seems the connecors change before they die.
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Yup. I have a 20+ year old PC Power & Cooling that I use as a bench power supply. Doesn't have enough connectors or power to be useful with current day motherboards.
 
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