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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 01 - 06 JANUARY, 2024
Hello and Welcome,
Welcoming Members to January 2024
Happy 2024
Our Committee hopes you are all still enjoying the festive activities, so we have decided not to hold any meetings during January. This will give members more time with family and friends and recharge their batteries, ready for another busy year.
We will be holding our club's Annual General Meeting very soon; however, it is prompting an urgent call for Committee nominations. Please consider.
— John Lucke
Meetings This Week
NO MEETINGS
Meetings Next Week
NO MEETINGS
Schedule of Current & Upcoming Meetings
First Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Main Meeting
First Saturday 13:00-14:00 — Penrith Group
Second Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Programming
Third Tuesday 10:00-12:00 — Tuesday Group
Third Saturday 14:00-16:00 — Web Design
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Go to the official Sydney PC Calendar for this month's meeting details.
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Penrith meetings are held every 2nd month on the 1st Saturday from 1-2 pm.
The next scheduled meetings are in January, March and May 2024.
NOTE: THERE ARE NO CLUB MEETINGS in JANUARY — [ See the Committee notice, above. ]
ASCCA News:Tech News:
The Weird Time CPUs Came on Cards (And Why They Stopped)
See the How-To Geek article by SYDNEY BUTLER | PUBLISHED 21 December 2023.
Sometimes, you'll play your cards wrong.
Pentium II
If you've ever installed a CPU (or watched it done), you've almost certainly seen a small square object slot into a flat socket on a motherboard. For a brief time in PC history, though, desktop processors looked like NES cartridges [ Nintendo Entertainment System ], sometimes with fans strapped to them!
The Rise of the Slot CPU: Pentium II's Debut
In May of 1997, Intel launched the Pentium II. Rather than launching these processors in a package where a grid of pins was inserted into a grid of holes in a motherboard socket, the "Slot 1" design used an edge connector. This made it more like a graphics card, which still uses a processor on card design.
Even back then, the competition between Intel and AMD was red-hot in the CPU market, so unsurprisingly, AMD soon followed with its imaginatively named "Slot A." "1" and "A" are at the top of their respective stacks! Since AMD played follow-the-leader so swiftly, you'd be forgiven for thinking there must have been something to this approach, and you'd be right.
Why a Slot CPU?
There are genuine benefits to moving your CPU onto a card format like this. How vital those benefits are in practice is debatable, but they are undeniable:
— Thermal and power benefits: If your CPU is on a card, you can precisely build the right cooling solution. Cool it from both sides of the PCB and ensure the proper airflow reaches your parts. This is still true for graphics cards today, and the Pentium II was a hot and hungry chip by the standards of the time. I had no problem overclocking my Pentium II 400 to 500Mhz using just the stock cooling, so there was a nice chunk of overhead.
— CPU installation for dummies: You don't have to go far on the internet to find horror tales of people bending or breaking pins on their CPUs. You only need to mess up a single pin out of the hundreds or thousands for the entire CPU to be ruined. A slot design like this is as robust as installing RAM or an expansion card. You'd have to be Mr. Bean to mess up a slot installation.
— Integrated Cache Memory: During the Pentium II era, cache memory was not on-die as it is with modern CPUs. With a card design, Intel and AMD could put cache memory chips close to the CPU, with plenty of bandwidth and negligible latency.
Even today, Slot 1 Pentium II CPUs seem more futuristic than the latest ones, so you can imagine how we thought this would be what CPUs would look like going ahead. What happened is that some Pentium III CPUs used Slot 1, but that was the end of it, with Socket 370 taking the PIII back to a traditional socket design. Since then, desktop CPUs have generally used a socket design, increasing the number of pins. The significant change was moving the pins from the CPU package to the motherboard, so if you bent any pins, at least the CPU would be OK.
Why Didn't Card Slot CPUs Work Out?
Even in hindsight, it's hard to pinpoint any factor that killed off the idea of a CPU card. By the early 2000s, Intel and AMD phased out slot-style CPUs in favour of the more familiar socket approach. This shift was driven mainly by the need for more compact, cost-effective, and efficient designs. Three key factors are responsible, in my opinion:
— Size and space: While the card design approach gives you more control over the cooling design, you don't have as much room to expand as with a vertical design. By the Pentium 4, CPU heat had already gone out of control, and even today, high-performance CPUs need tall air coolers with plenty of heatsink volume and even liquid cooling.
— Cost and complexity: The slot approach means making a traditional CPU and making the slotted PCB it goes into. This is more complex and costly, and the financial incentive for the slot design probably faded quickly as CPU technology progressed.
— On-die cache: While the Pentium Pro already had on-die cache (integrated into the CPU itself) in 1995, this was too expensive for consumer CPUs, so the Pentium II launched with its L2 cache as an external chip running at half the CPU's clock speed. During this time, Intel experimented with on-die cache for the cheaper Celeron CPUs, which led to a situation where cheaper Celerons with on-die cache could outperform more expensive Pentium IIs with off-die cache. By the time the "Coppermine" Pentium IIIs launched, the on-die L2 cache was already the norm, so one primary reason for the slot design fell away.
The socket design for CPUs still is the best way to go about it, but we shouldn't think we'll never see another approach. CPUs are again heading for several technological walls, and new and radical CPU designs might need a different way to connect to the rest of the computer. Half the fun of being a computer geek is seeing what wild new approaches engineers come up with!
Five Ways You Can Install Ubuntu on External Storage
See the How-To Geek article by BEMFICA DE OLIVA | PUBLISHED 19 December 2023.
In case you don't want to mess with your Windows installation.
USB stick
Ubuntu's open-source nature makes it, like any Linux distribution, extremely flexible. Not only can it boot from external storage rather than your PC's interal storage, but also there are multiple ways to do this. We're listing a few external boot methods so you can choose the best for your Ubuntu setup.
Keep in mind that installing Ubuntu on an external drive is different from using a USB stick as a live disk. Live disks are portable "semi-installations" designed to allow people to try Ubuntu, test hardware compatibility, or just use the system for quick navigation on public computers.
Because of that, live disks use different methods to boot. An external Ubuntu installation in contrast uses an ISO or a bootable USB live disk to install the system on another USB drive for a more permanent but still portable operating system.
Should I Boot Ubuntu From External Storage?
Whether or not you should boot Ubuntu from an external disk depends in part on your performance requirements as well as the limitations of your hardware.
Installing an operating system (OS) on your computer is relatively simple nowadays. However, doing the same on a removable drive is a bit trickier.
The first issue is the drive's speed. Out of the box, Ubuntu is somewhat light—traditional live disks run considerably snappy from USB 2.0 ports. But if you want to apply themes, install lots of apps, or just store files alongside the OS, it may get slower over time, and that happens quickly and more notably if your drive isn't fast enough.
If you're okay with that, or if your computer has faster ports, installing Ubuntu to external disks is mostly the same as to an internal drive. It may require a couple of additional steps, though, so be prepared for some technical work.
Method 1: Make an Ubuntu Live Disk With a Persistent Partition
To be fair, this isn't exactly installing Ubuntu on an external disk. However, it's the best option if all you want is a portable Ubuntu installation that doesn't wipe everything at shutdown.
Persistent storage means the drive also has a partition where files can be placed safely. Regular live disks delete all the files and apps when you finish using them.
Other than that, both solutions are the same. For that reason, the installation is also the same.
If you're on Windows, tools like Ventoy and Rufus do the trick. All you need to do is select the persistent partition if using Rufus—Ventoy has a persistent partition by design. balenaEtcher, the other tool on the linked article, doesn't have this feature.
If you're already on Ubuntu, the best method is mkusb. It's supported by the community and is safe and stable.
Method 2: Installing Ubuntu to External HDDs/SSDs
The requirements to install Ubuntu to an external drive are a USB (or DVD) live disk and an external HDD or SDD.
Running Ubuntu from external storage has several advantages over a live disk with a persistent partition. It boots faster, allows user accounts, and is upgradeable, to name some. All in all, it's the same as running the system from an internal drive, but you can take it with you and use it on any computer.
This guide on GitHub explains how to install Ubuntu on an external hard drive. For the most part, it's the same as installing to an internal disk, but it requires you to partition the target HDD or SSD (using GParted on the live disk) before installing.
Make sure the EFI partition is correctly placed on the external storage—the installer may ignore your settings and put it on the internal disk; that's hit-and-miss.
...
Method 3: Installing Ubuntu From ISO Without a Live Disk
Method 4: Installing Ubuntu to a Memory Card
Method 5: Virtualized Ubuntu on External Storage
...
Ubuntu on an External Disk Makes for a (Really) Portable Installation
Whether you choose an external HDD/SSD, a memory card, a live disk, or even a virtualized installation, Ubuntu shows its flexibility by becoming truly portable. You can just plug in the media of your choice and have a fully functional system in a couple of minutes. Good to keep your internal disk out of trouble, great to carry your own Linux installation around, complete with customizations and preferred apps.
Fun Facts:
All about BSB numbers
See the Web page description from Statrys by Béatrice Ozanne | Founder & COO.
What is a BSB?
A BSB number, or Bank State Branch number, is a 6-digit number that distinguishes banks and branches across Australia.
Australian banks use a bank branch identifier to identify an account's bank branch.
It's used with a bank account number to send money to a recipient.
You may have heard of the SWIFT code used for international transfers worldwide.
It is similar but used for local and international transfers to Australia.
The Format of a Bank State Branch Number
The format of a Bank State Branch code is XXY–ZZZ.
The first two digits (XX) indicate the bank or financial institution where the money is transferred.
The third digit (Y) refers to the state of the branch in Australia.
The last three digits (ZZZ) provide the unique address of the branch.
New Zealand Bank Numbers
The differences between bank account formats in Australia and New Zealand.
In Australia, you need the Bank State Branch and account numbers to recognize an individual bank account and transfer money, but BSB numbers are not used in New Zealand.
The difference is that banks in New Zealand set one 16-digit number to enable users to transfer money between accounts, the format of which is as follows: XXXXXX YYYYYYY ZZZ.
6-digits: XXXXXX — Bank and Branch Code,
7-digits: YYYYYYY — Individual Bank Account Number,
3-digits: ZZZ — Type of Account: checking, business, savings, etc.
Lists of BSB numbers
Go to the List of BSB Numbers to see them 10 - 100 entries per page.
This is tedious, mainly since they are split into eight State Lists.
That's why I downloaded them and combined them into a single list (15,119 entries), then sorted them into "BSB", "3-digit Bank Code", and "Bank Location" orders.
They are on three separate pages, which allows searching through the entire set, sorted, using CNTRL/F in the above categories.
Find the lists on BSB, BANK or BANK LOCATION.
Sorting BSB Codes
It's interesting just scrolling down the lists to see what odd Banks there are.
One strange feature is finding a description of "Closed". What? Are they still listing Closed Branches?
Yes, the list shows 42 Banks that have bitten the dust over time:
012-212 ANZ Closed Belrose NSW 2085,
012-265 ANZ Closed Chatswood NSW 2067,
012-313 ANZ Closed Lakemba NSW 2195,
012-364 ANZ Closed Panania NSW 2213,
012-434 ANZ Closed Ryde NSW 2112,
012-650 ANZ Closed Wagga Wagga NSW 2650,
012-770 ANZ Closed Newcastle NSW 2300,
013-165 ANZ Closed Melbourne VIC 3000,
013-217 ANZ Closed Mentone VIC 3194,
013-267 ANZ Closed Cheltenham VIC 3192,
013-317 ANZ Closed Essendon North VIC 3041,
013-433 ANZ Closed Wantirna South VIC 3152,
013-507 ANZ Closed Ringwood VIC 3134,
013-555 ANZ Closed Casterton VIC 3311,
013-639 ANZ Closed Garfield VIC 3814,
013-704 ANZ Closed Koo Wee Rup VIC 3981,
013-750 ANZ Closed Numurkah VIC 3636,
013-830 ANZ Closed Wodonga VIC 3690,
013-905 ANZ Closed Wedderburn VIC 3518,
015-134 ANZ Closed Blackwood SA 5051,
015-255 ANZ Closed Hindmarsh SA 5007,
015-458 ANZ Closed Wingfield SA 5013,
015-629 ANZ Closed Murray Bridge SA 5253,
016-313 ANZ Closed Canning Vale WA 6155,
016-485 ANZ Closed Woodvale WA 6026,
017-038 ANZ Closed Glenorchy TAS 7010,
017-312 ANZ Closed North Hobart TAS 7002,
242-205 CTI Closed Sydney NSW 2000,
242-230 CTI Closed Sydney NSW 2000,
244-400 CTI Closed Sydney NSW 2000,
405-201 CST 96 King William Street (Closed) Adelaide SA 5000,
453-000 OCB Closed Melbourne VIC 3000,
453-001 OCB Closed Melbourne VIC 3000,
664-000 SUN Closed Brisbane QLD 4000,
664-001 SUN Closed Brisbane QLD 4000,
917-114 ARA Closed Campsie NSW 2194,
917-116 ARA Closed Auburn NSW 2144,
917-117 ARA Closed Liverpool NSW 2170,
917-118 ARA Closed Westmead NSW 2145,
917-311 ARA Closed Sunshine VIC 3020,
917-312 ARA Closed Melbourne VIC 3000,
917-314 ARA Closed Dandenong VIC 3175.
Meeting Location & Disclaimer
Bob Backstrom
~ Newsletter Editor ~
Information for Members and Visitors:
Link to — Sydney PC & Technology User Group
All Meetings, unless explicitly stated above, are held on the
1st Floor, Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney.
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