@tonyw

Quote:

Maybe people aren't impressed. Why waste all that electricity?

Well, already mentioned but, it is currently minus degrees here, so the house needs to be warmed. All electric devices produces heat, that heat reduces the need for electricity needed to keep the house warm used by the boiler..

This, of course will never be acknowledged by all the authorities, politicians, or environmental activists who only presents watts saved without considering that the "high"power lightbulbs and all other electric devices reduces the amount of energy needed to warm a house or apartment with a boiler or another similar system.

This is of course only valid when you need to warm the house, in a climate like in Australia, you have more use of an AC I recon

Last edited by tomazkid on 15-Jan-2010 at 03:39 AM.

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@freeaks

I have to disagree with you. My A4060T was extremely stable. I used it heavily for YAM, IBrowse, Voyager, Doom, Breathless, Songplayer, AMIRC, massive numbers of simultaneous downloads with either a browser or FTP client, FractalPro and so on and so forth, and with a Homer Simpson program and other goodies running in the background. My machine would stay up for usually a week or more. The only app that crashed on a regular basis was Voyager, which typically invalidated my Netter (internet) partition as well. I was going nuts until someone told me all I had to do was open a Shell window, type "info" and press enter. Cleared the invalidation every time. BTW, the A4060T had big uptime numbers with 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9, and each version was heavily hacked. If I had just bought an ethernet board for it, I probably would have kept it as my main system for another 2 or 3 years. I was very happy with that machine. In fact it was probably the most stable computer I had until 2003, when Mac OS X stopped having so many kernel panics.

I had another A4000 that I used as a Toaster/Flyer box. I think most T/F guys would testify to the legendary stability of a good Toaster/Flyer machine.

I also had an Amiga 3000 16Mhz machine. It was really slow, and I didn't use it a lot, but it never crashed. I use the word "never" with full understanding of its definition.

Although I've never tested uptime on my A500, I can say I've never had a crash. Runs 1.3.3. I don't use it much, though.

AmiKit on PCs has been pretty stable, but maybe less than my real Amigas. It also runs dog slow on my quad-core machines. Was much nicer on a single core Athlon.

I now have a Mac Mini and plan to install MorphOS on it. Will I be lucky again???

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@Trev

You want high energy bills? Try a big 1910 house in the middle of a brutal Wisconsin winter. My combined gas and electric bill last January was $1,015.00. Yes, that's for 1 month. Sucks. Why would anyone pay huge energy bills in California -- SoCal, at least -- unless you get gouged by the energy companies.

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@tomazkid

Quote:

. All electric devices produces heat, that heat reduces the need for electricity needed to keep the house warm used by the boiler..

However, that is *only* a valid argument if you would otherwise heat the house with electricity through simple resistive load (e.g. a fan heater). Which is a silly thing to do, because it is rather inefficient. No, not the electricity-to-heat conversion (which is pretty much perfect), but the chemical-to-heat-to-mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion which happens in the power plant; If all you want is heat, you should just be burning the chemical stuff in place (i.e. have a natural gas or oil furnace).

If you want to use electricity, use a reverse cycle air conditioner (i.e. a heat pump). About three times as much warmth for the same amount of electric energy.

@umisef

Quote:

If you want to use electricity, use a reverse cycle air conditioner (i.e. a heat pump). About three times as much warmth for the same amount of electric energy.

Yes, got a three year old heat pump.

It stops at -10 C and uses direct electricity when below -10 C.

The latest heat pumps are up to 5 times at max and works down to - 20 C.

Too expensive to replace it after only three years though.

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@EmperorLongo

My house is about 15 years old, and my highest bill so far has been $550. My grandmother's house is about 35 years ago, and she regularly pays more than $1000, during winter and summer months. (She also has a well and two electric pumps.) Energy is quite expensive in California, but my point was really about overall contributions to pollution. It's quite bad here--much worse than the rest of the nation--despite what the EPA under W. had everyone believing. Winter isn't too bad, but most spring, fall, and summer days are classified as unsafe, i.e. don't go outside, with respect to air quality. Central and Northern California is mostly dust and smog. Southern California has made great strides to improve air quality, but it's still some of the worst in the world. Colder winters and hotter summers haven't helped, either. :-/ Anyhow, this isn't the climate change thread. I turn all my stuff off when I'm not using it; however, much of it stays plugged in, so it's not really "off."

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@Trev

Thanks for the info. I would trade a SoCal winter for a subzero Wisconsin winter any day, but I do remember SoCal smog. I did rangefinder operator training in Long Beach during my Navy days, back in 1989. The rangefinders were up on the roof of a huge warehouse building. The morning would start out nice and clear, but before 11:00 the mountains would be mostly invisible behind a wall of grey smog, the air would stink, and I tended to get headaches from all that pollution. By contrast, I always felt fine a few years later when I spent a week in Hollywood. Go figure.

That said, and looping back on topic, my A4060T did not put out a huge amount of heat, and was not a good surrogate radiator during winters in Seattle, where I rarely paid more than $140 a month in gas. Further, the A4060T was extremely quiet, roughly as quiet as my Mac Mini. So, given its impressive uptime, its extremely fun operating system, its superb online performance, etc. etc., it came close to being A Perfect Machine by the standards of the day. The only big drawback was its horrid internal layout, which made doing any serious work in there such a total drag.

Last edited by EmperorLongo on 15-Jan-2010 at 11:45 AM.

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@EmperorLongo

Quote:

AmiKit on PCs has been pretty stable, but maybe less than my real Amigas. It also runs dog slow on my quad-core machines. Was much nicer on a single core Athlon.

Maybe because of antivirus software? More info here.

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@DWolfman

So I'm resurrecting this old thread. I've had some stability problems on the A1 since I had put that last update on it that ended my previous uptime record. Found out I was pushing the overclock just a tad too much. It's rock stable now that I'm back to running at 1000 MHz, instead of 1066 MHz.

Right now my uptime is:
System has been up since 11/07/2010 7:06 PM (total uptime 26 days, 19:30:11)



While the heat from this pales in comparison to the two PCs sitting next to it, it does help on the gas bill somewhat.

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@DWolfman

Quote:

Right now my uptime is: System has been up since 11/07/2010 7:06 PM (total uptime 26 days, 19:30:11)

GGG! I hardly manage a quarter of a day! Just switching it on and let it idle for a couple of hours (don't ask me why I switched it on in the first place, please!) will find me the thing fully locked up more often then not.
OWB and make/gcc are very suitable in bringing it to a full stop.

I envy you.

OldFart

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Don't understand the uptime. It is how long You need the motherfucker. No? pc 100% AmigaOne not so 100% but nearly.

Save the electricity man. Quite stupid this thread anyways.

@OldFart

Quote:

GGG! I hardly manage a quarter of a day! Just switching it on and let it idle for a couple of hours (don't ask me why I switched it on in the first place, please!) will find me the thing fully locked up more often then not.

You're not by any chance running the screenblanker in prefs/wbstartup?

#6

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@PR

I decided to have a little fun with this topic on that last posting, since the last time around it degraded into a NON-TOPIC related gripe session about the electricity usage.

I never complained about the off-topic postings, until now.

It's not about the electricity usage. I've got my machines doing something useful 24/7 right now, so the electricity isn't being wasted.

It's about the stability of OS4 and the hardware we are running it on. The more stable the OS/hardware is, the longer the uptimes will be.

I've heard of Linux servers staying up for over a year at a time, haven't heard of any AmigaOS machines that could claim that, but we can still get some pretty long uptimes anyway.

So, how about we contribute some useful postings to this thread. What's the longest you've tried to see that your AmigaOS machines will go without crashing or rebooting?

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@EmperorLongo

Quote:

EmperorLongo wrote: @Trev You want high energy bills? Try a big 1910 house in the middle of a brutal Wisconsin winter. My combined gas and electric bill last January was $1,015.00. Yes, that's for 1 month. Sucks. Why would anyone pay huge energy bills in California -- SoCal, at least -- unless you get gouged by the energy companies.

I live in a old wooden house from beginning of 1900s as well and still pretty well insulated and seems to handle even this nov pretty well considering it is coldest in 222 years in my city: http://www.iceagenow.com/Coldest_in_Norway_in_222_years.htm
During a normal winter i only need a small electric heater on coldest days, but sadly need more heating since last winter due to change in climate here.

Old buildings can be just as good if you make sure you insulate it well, have good quality windows and so on.
Meanwhile i know a guy who live in a 20-30 year old house and he struggles now to even keep it at normal temp and gets insane electric bills as well.

Last edited by Tomas on 04-Dec-2010 at 10:25 PM.
Last edited by Tomas on 04-Dec-2010 at 10:24 PM.

@PR

Quote:

PR wrote: Don't understand the uptime. It is how long You need the motherfucker. No? pc 100% AmigaOne not so 100% but nearly. Save the electricity man. Quite stupid this thread anyways.

If you actually read the earlier comments here you would discover that you dont save #### by turning it off. If you live in a cold country like me there is no electricity wasted as the pc helps also keep my apartment nice and warm. Electricity usage actually went up during earth hour here since peoples heaters and such had to kick in harder to compensate from the lack of heat from lightbulbs, electric devices and so on.
This also why power saving bulbs are bull in a country like this and they are full of toxic #### like mercury as well.
And alot of people like me also use it for other stuff. I for example download stuff at night and also use it for tv with satellite dish hooked up to a dvb-s card, use it as a mp3 jukebox and so on..

The sam 533 uses so little electricity that it dosent matter much anyways.

@number6

Quote:

You're not by any chance running the screenblanker in prefs/wbstartup?

No! That was a miser anyway. Why do you need a screenblanker on a TFT screen? It is a residu from CRT-era where you had to avoid a picture burning in into the phosphorous layer. Little chance of this happening with the current crop of flatscreens me thinks.

No, I found pretty soon that the screenblanker could turn things rather bad, so I kicked it out somewhere in the OS4.0 pre-release era.

The thing just stops. Sometimes after half an hour (!) sometimes, especially when I'm lucky, it takes as much as some 3 to 4 hours to lock up.

OldFart

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@number6

Quote:

number6 wrote: @OldFart Quote: GGG! I hardly manage a quarter of a day! Just switching it on and let it idle for a couple of hours (don't ask me why I switched it on in the first place, please!) will find me the thing fully locked up more often then not. You're not by any chance running the screenblanker in prefs/wbstartup? #6

I actually have the screenblanker enabled on my Sam and yet that dosent stop me from getting 30 days+ uptimes.

@Tomas

But electric heating is not as efficient as heating by gas/oil (a kWh electricity costs me about 0.2 EUR, a kWh gas is about 0.1 EUR). Anyway, living my last winter in a badly insulated appartment in an old, beautiful art nouveu-house (IIRC build 1905) I kind of welcome any heat source currently as well. I am looking very forward to move to the recently bought modern and really good insulated house (build 2004) - the sellers will move out in early summer. Winter has just started and I am desperately awaiting spring already. I really don't like snow and cold temperatures - which is really plenty this young winter already.
To topic: I never left my Mac mini MorphOS on for longer than two days. USually I power it on on afternoon and power it down b4 going to bed. I'd say I have a random lock maybe once in 6 weeks.

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@OldFart

Quote:

No, I found pretty soon that the screenblanker could turn things rather bad, so I kicked it out somewhere in the OS4.0 pre-release era.

Same here. Just checking, since our machines are so similar..

#6

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@Zylesea
That is why i also invested in a portable gas oven this year. Normally just one small electric portable oven would have been enough, but with last winter and this one a gas oven would come in very handy.
During a normal winter i only used electric heater for less than a week as amd 64 system seemed to do good enough job rest of the winter.

Too bad gas prices will increase again from new year thanks to even more co2 #### taxes...

Last edited by Tomas on 05-Dec-2010 at 01:16 AM.