What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[B S Magnet]

My uncle owned 3 record/stereo shops in Paterson-Passiac, NJ until 1984
the only music stores left in that area is a Japanese one since 1985 thanks to books kunokuni-ya,

Kinokuni-ya bookstores (which sell music, as well) are a delightful experience, especially if one is looking for stuff made in Japan. I’ve been to two of their stores — one in Tokyo and another in Seattle’s IBD. I would love to see one here where I live, but chances of that happening run about zero.

many latino shops on Main Street in hackensack

That’s awesome to hear they’re still going. There’s still a robust music industry in Latin America, focussing on regional acts and traditional genres.

and several used CD shops that are obscure to find.

These have dwindled around here, as well, although a handful still remain, along with some premiumized, vinyl-only boutiques which tie in heavily with the cleansing of gentrification and the crushing square foot cost of renting storefront space in a cleansed business corridor. The times I’ve stopped into new ones to turn up tend to be really limited, or just plain narrow in their offerings. They tend to sell only new titles, whose media is 180g or greater virgin vinyl. One location to open here a few years back seemed to make it a point to avoid stocking any titles produced during the 1980s (1970s and before was fine, and 1990s and after was fair game; the owner, probably the only staff member, was, well, someone born during either the late ’50s or early ’60s.)

The used stores to survive, at least around here, tend to also have a hand-picked inventory of new (i.e., not “used”, versus “new-release”) titles, mostly vinyl, and are very selective about what they have on the floor as used titles. That is: they don’t just buy everything people want to dump; if anything, they may turn down all of it and pick what they know are very difficult to find as out-of-print titles. This requires staff with incredible knowledge and also being extremely attuned to what their customers are wanting which the latter won’t find elsewhere (and also don’t want to take a risk, particularly on used titles, with an online marketplace like eBay or Discogs). Several of these small independent stores here also participate in Record Store Day events.

What I really miss are the hole-in-the-wall used stores which were kind of dark, you were on your own, and you could spend hours sifting through boxes and bins of used titles. I would never go in with a specific title in mind: I’d always have a long, running list in my mind. If one from the list turned up (and one usually did, along with the occasional surprise), it would be a good visit. That was during a time when retail space, particularly in marginalized city districts, was a lot less costly to lease.

also public libraries carry everything on disc entertainment wise from last century a well.

Yes, they do! Public libraries and their librarians are, quite often, a civil society’s unsung heroes, even civil society’s quiet glue holding communities together.

there was a nice docu on the fall of the CD this year that was worthy of "who dunit"
and the demise of MM release in 2004.

If you happen across the title, I’d be interested to look this up.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Please don’t pillory me too heavily for this: I have no nostalgia at all for Blockbuster, and there’s sort of a valid reason for it.

There's no reason why I would pillory you over holding no nostalgia for Blockbuster. As I mentioned, I switched from them to Indy stores for my video rentals because they were cheaper, better, owned by local people and had a larger range of titles. This is an excerpt from a long defunct site that I stumbled across in the early/mid 2000s that criticises Microsoft and suggests alternatives to their products. It also discusses a range of businesses that are similarly problematic, including...

This critique is even more pertinent now, especially given that many VOD services either refuse to carry controversial content or provide a censored version. Although Sandi Harding at the world's last Blockbuster makes a point of personally overseeing special orders if the store lacks a title by purchasing it herself.

Post-buyout by Blockbuster, in 1992, our stores were re-badged as Blockbuster Music by mid-1993. They didn’t last very long: by 1998, they were sold off, and those music locations went bankrupt maybe three or four years after that. I left just under a year after Blockbuster’s buyout, as re-branding took over and managers were sent to meetings with Blockbuster corporate management, who presented their vision of what they’d turn our stores into.

Their big, uh, humid dream: deprecate, then eliminate special orders — sort of our killer feature (we had a few, actually) — using a then-non-existent technology they envisioned: print-on-demand CDs and sleeve art, downloaded from some central server. All the while, the customer would wait.

Their hubris: they never paused to factor in the tech limits of the time or how much people would be willing to wait and pay for, basically, inferior media (basically, bootleg-quality). T1 connections were costly and scarce (T3 hadn’t really taken hold yet, and the whole World Wide Web had, maybe, 20 or 30 sites). CD-Rs at the time were still more costly, per blank (about $30), than any pre-recorded, glass-master, mass-produced CD. Printing tech would have been some glorified colour laser printer with (probably) a Canon engine. “While-you wait” would take probably a couple of hours, per title, and the company would be taking a massive, per-unit loss to be selling them for the same price as the real thing.

Blockbuster completely overlooked how music buyers and collectors wanted something they could hold, which was, basically, official, tangible, and lasting.

There was also the odious dress code imposition upon women and men both, which saw a lot of the most successful locations’ other killer feature — the extensive, collective, varied knowledge of staff — leave. Most of the most knowledgeable staff ranged from ages 17 to 30, and that is really not the time or place to be imposing uniformity on basically a bunch of musicians, DJs, and cinephiles working their day gig to make a living. We weren’t an office supply store.

When Blockbuster were later served and humbled by Netflix, I was OK with it. “Wow, what a difference,” indeed.

Much of what you've detailed here is covered in the documentary - including the uniforms issue! If you've not already seen it, you should. I think that you'd enjoy it.

 

[eyoungren]

Please don’t pillory me too heavily for this: I have no nostalgia at all for Blockbuster, and there’s sort of a valid reason for it.

I used to work for a regional music and video chain, a partial competitor, which had been around well before Blockbuster went national and turned up on every street. Our stores were founded on selling music — vinyls, cassettes, CDs, and even MiniDisc and DCCs right at the end — but also sold mostly music-oriented VHS tapes (like concerts and music video compilations). We sold Discmans and Walkmans and portable stereos, along with a remarkable variety of blank magnetic media — from cheap, normal-bias cassettes (a brick of five maybe for $8) to metal-bias Sony ceramic series cassettes (they’d go for up to $16 for two, 90-minute blanks, in 1991 freedom dollars.)

Larger locations — namely, locations not inside shopping malls — had pretty robust video rental departments, coupled with a modest sales selection of films on VHS and LaserDisc (usually, recent/new titles not being sold for $80, but for $20). On the last bit, we competed directly with Blockbuster and held our own quite well. Our stores were, typically, open until midnight, seven days a week. On weekends, business would stay brisk right up until closing time.

(Somewhat ironically, our store’s brand mark was also yellow-on-blue, but had been around since 1972; Blockbuster opened in 1985, and unapologetically mirrored the scheme.)

I was considering to go into a long description of how Blockbuster, buying out the chain I worked for in 1992, absolutely ruined music retail by trying to impose their video rental formula and culture onto the one which made, ours, Sound Warehouse, do as well as it did. But I just found someone did a fairly accurate historical overview of what happened.

I’ll still add a few notes from my experiences during the few years I worked for them (both).

Post-buyout by Blockbuster, in 1992, our stores were re-badged as Blockbuster Music by mid-1993. They didn’t last very long: by 1998, they were sold off, and those music locations went bankrupt maybe three or four years after that. I left just under a year after Blockbuster’s buyout, as re-branding took over and managers were sent to meetings with Blockbuster corporate management, who presented their vision of what they’d turn our stores into.

Their big, uh, humid dream: deprecate, then eliminate special orders — sort of our killer feature (we had a few, actually) — using a then-non-existent technology they envisioned: print-on-demand CDs and sleeve art, downloaded from some central server. All the while, the customer would wait.

Their hubris: they never paused to factor in the tech limits of the time or how much people would be willing to wait and pay for, basically, inferior media (basically, bootleg-quality). T1 connections were costly and scarce (T3 hadn’t really taken hold yet, and the whole World Wide Web had, maybe, 20 or 30 sites). CD-Rs at the time were still more costly, per blank (about $30), than any pre-recorded, glass-master, mass-produced CD. Printing tech would have been some glorified colour laser printer with (probably) a Canon engine. “While-you wait” would take probably a couple of hours, per title, and the company would be taking a massive, per-unit loss to be selling them for the same price as the real thing.

Blockbuster completely overlooked how music buyers and collectors wanted something they could hold, which was, basically, official, tangible, and lasting.

There was also the odious dress code imposition upon women and men both, which saw a lot of the most successful locations’ other killer feature — the extensive, collective, varied knowledge of staff — leave. Most of the most knowledgeable staff ranged from ages 17 to 30, and that is really not the time or place to be imposing uniformity on basically a bunch of musicians, DJs, and cinephiles working their day gig to make a living. We weren’t an office supply store.

When Blockbuster were later served and humbled by Netflix, I was OK with it. “Wow, what a difference,” indeed.

I held off getting a Blockbuster membership for quite a long time. I grew up on mom & pop video stores which was all that was available in the rural area I used to live in. To me, Blockbuster had no selection. Everything was just titles that were popular and I'd already seen those movies in the theater. On top of that, their prices for popcorn and candy were ridiculous. Our particular Blockbuster was directly across the street from Safeway, a grocery chain noted for it's high prices. And Safeway was cheaper!

But when my wife discovered that our local Blockbuster had foreign titles and we started to rent heavily I was obliged to get a membership. Ultimately, we switched to another video store down the street a ways which had what my wife wanted and what I wanted. Unfortunately, this was the tail end of the whole industry and that store folded about a year or so after opening.

Today, the former Blockbuster store is a dentist's office and the other video store became a career advancement office, which then turned in to a Mexican party service/supply store (Quinceañeras, weddings, that sort of thing). Was never a fan of Netflix because I would have had to wait for titles to arrive in the mail when Redbox was right there at almost every convenience store/drug store. Still not a fan now as they don't have any programs I want to watch. I did sign up for one show, Wednesday, and will do so again when the second season arrives. But that's the extent of my Netflix use.

Today, most of this stuff is online, or physical copies can be found online.

@B S Magnet Welcome back!

 

[Amethyst1]

Made my recently-acquired ATTO ThunderLink NS 2102 usable. This is the first time I've seen a Thunderbolt 2 version of this thing; people have had fun with the Thunderbolt 1 version before but apparently not this one, so I just had to snag it even though it wasn't as much of a bargain as I hoped.

Thunderbolt stuff comes at a (hefty) premium when it's new, but that thing is built like a tank and just slides open after removing a single screw:

...to reveal an ATTO 10 GbE PCIe card (with a 2012 date code) which will have to go, a Sonnet PCIe "riser" and an "obscure" Sonnet PCB-CUBO-FR-X1A mainboard (with a 2014 date code) featuring the Intel DSL5520 "Falcon Ridge" controller. The tiny fan is much quieter than I expected:

How to make this thing usable? Well, if that ain't blatantly obvious:

This m.2 to PCIe ×4 adapter (which came with my HyperX Predator) can be screwed down to the case after removing its slot cover and the ThunderLink looks almost original:

Speed is what can be expected over Thunderbolt 2, but the ThunderLink is pretty much the smallest single-slot Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure I'm aware of. It's about 30 percent smaller in volume than my AKiTio Thunder2 (2.0L vs 2.6L).

 

[TheShortTimer]

That’s awesome to hear they’re still going. There’s still a robust music industry in Latin America, focussing on regional acts and traditional genres.

Likewise in the Caribbean and it's a location where physical releases continue to have a strong presence. As a cousin pointed out to me, the average vendor over there would look at you with disdain if you told them that you wanted to buy tracks on a USB stick. 😂

Our particular Blockbuster was directly across the street from Safeway, a grocery chain noted for it's high prices. And Safeway was cheaper!

I worked for the UK division of Safeway and I seldom bought my shopping from them because you could find most of the same items at a cheaper price from their rivals! Can't say that I was surprised when the company folded in 2004.

But when my wife discovered that our local Blockbuster had foreign titles and we started to rent heavily I was obliged to get a membership. Ultimately, we switched to another video store down the street a ways which had what my wife wanted and what I wanted. Unfortunately, this was the tail end of the whole industry and that store folded about a year or so after opening.

When I joined the Indy video store that would become my mainstay till I ended up just purchasing DVDs, the founder spoke to me in his office and informed me that it was a family business that prided itself on providing the best quality of service to its customers. He shook my hand and wished me a happy time with my rentals. Could you imagine that level of personalisation with some corporate giant?

Was never a fan of Netflix because I would have had to wait for titles to arrive in the mail when Redbox was right there at almost every convenience store/drug store. Still not a fan now as they don't have any programs I want to watch. I did sign up for one show, Wednesday, and will do so again when the second season arrives. But that's the extent of my Netflix use.

Not a fan either but I will acknowledge that their original content can be pretty good.

Today, most of this stuff is online, or physical copies can be found online.

Yes and I always prefer physical copies. The average stream/VOD offering can never compete with the bitrate (or sometimes even the resolution!) of the same time on Blu-ray.

@B S Magnet Welcome back!

Seconded.

Excellent work with the ATTO @Amethyst1!

 

[B S Magnet]

There's no reason why I would pillory you over holding no nostalgia for Blockbuster. As I mentioned, I switched from them to Indy stores for my video rentals because they were cheaper, better, owned by local people and had a larger range of titles. This is an excerpt from a long defunct site that I stumbled across in the early/mid 2000s that criticises Microsoft and suggests alternatives to their products. It also discusses a range of businesses that are similarly problematic, including...

This critique is even more pertinent now, especially given that many VOD services either refuse to carry controversial content or provide a censored version. Although Sandi Harding at the world's last Blockbuster makes a point of personally overseeing special orders if the store lacks a title by purchasing it herself.

Harding is, in effect, an independent store and survived precisely because accommodating customers is vital.

And yes, we knew Blockbuster had altered versions of certain movies. But even Sound Warehouse weren’t immune: we were prohibited from renting or selling Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, even though we sold probably more copies of Peter Gabriel’s Passion soundtrack (and the complementary Passion: Sources), as our general manager was a huge fan of Real World and David Byrne’s Luaka Bop Records titles. (He was affable and introduced me to a lot of artists, but also kind of a troll in ways which would not fly today.)

Much of what you've detailed here is covered in the documentary - including the uniforms issue! If you've not already seen it, you should. I think that you'd enjoy it.

Yah, I just watched it as I drafted that, and I can vouch for most of its accuracy (including, yes, our inextricable reliance on Bromo distribution, along with external rackjobbers for items like clearance cut-out titles).

There was a bit of a gap over what Sound Warehouse were doing during the 1988 to 1992 window, aside from the Shamrock buy-out. They had this vexatious monthly CD they sent all stores called Sound Check, which was twelve chosen new albums by lesser-known acts, to complement an island kiosk with twelve headphones (all powered by the cheap Sony D-2 Discman model our stores sold). You can see this kiosk, briefly, in the YT clip.

We’d be directed to play the Sound Check disc every four hours, which had a studio voice-over they hired for it, leading into songs (so even the songs weren’t standalone). The voice-over was as annoying as one could imagine: booming, generic, and filler which no customer seemed interested to hear. Most stores would simply never play it, save for when an associate manager with no love for music, would play it on their shift. By end of month, most of us would grow to resent almost every song on that month’s group of twelve, even if we owned the album! Sound Check was brought in under Shamrock’s watch.

Atop the list of in-store receptions of bands and artists, our branch had a few, but there were two other locations in town which were more central and slightly larger than ours and which hosted the bulk of them. Still, I remember Blur doing one at our location in late summer 1991; they complained about the catering because the water served wasn’t Evian. 🙃

The first stage of dress code, under Shamrock ownership, were black polyester vests, emblazoned with the Sound Warehouse brand mark, except gold-on-black (which all co-workers had to wear over their everyday wear from about mid-1991, as memory serves). There were buttons on the vest, but absolutely no one used them. We were mostly spared from wearing flair, but a few co-workers added their favourite artist pins and buttons on theirs to make the most of the uniform enforcement.

I left just before the horrific (and, I’ll add, without a hint of irony in how hyperbolic it sounds, crypto-fascistic) Blockbuster khaki uniform entered the chat. It rolled out in stages on a city-region market basis. The YouTube clip’s inclusion of the gendered dress code, as seen in the newspaper clipping, was from the Austin American-Statesman. When I left, it was at a store in that city (we had, as memory serves, four locations), and I believe Austin was one of the last to be made to fall in line because, well, it was Austin.

 

[B S Magnet]

I held off getting a Blockbuster membership for quite a long time. I grew up on mom & pop video stores which was all that was available in the rural area I used to live in. To me, Blockbuster had no selection. Everything was just titles that were popular and I'd already seen those movies in the theater. On top of that, their prices for popcorn and candy were ridiculous. Our particular Blockbuster was directly across the street from Safeway, a grocery chain noted for it's high prices. And Safeway was cheaper!

Blockbuster thought they could charge cinema prices for candy and snacks because, in their logic, the customer brought home the cinema experience. 🙃 Sound Warehouse did, for a time, sell a few cinema snacks and microwaveable popcorn in the video rental department, but they were basically just a few cents more than the exact same product being sold next door at the Kroger supermarket.

But when my wife discovered that our local Blockbuster had foreign titles and we started to rent heavily I was obliged to get a membership. Ultimately, we switched to another video store down the street a ways which had what my wife wanted and what I wanted. Unfortunately, this was the tail end of the whole industry and that store folded about a year or so after opening.

It’s unfortunate the independent had to fold.

Today, the former Blockbuster store is a dentist's office and the other video store became a career advancement office, which then turned in to a Mexican party service/supply store (Quinceañeras, weddings, that sort of thing). Was never a fan of Netflix because I would have had to wait for titles to arrive in the mail when Redbox was right there at almost every convenience store/drug store. Still not a fan now as they don't have any programs I want to watch. I did sign up for one show, Wednesday, and will do so again when the second season arrives. But that's the extent of my Netflix use.

When Netflix was on the rise, I lived in an exurb of Seattle, some 50km from the city. There were no nearby Blockbuster branches, so my partner and I used the mail DVD service. It was reasonably fast, if one was willing to wait a day or two. We typically planned, a week in advance, what we wanted to watch for the following week.

I don’t use Netflix streaming.

Today, most of this stuff is online, or physical copies can be found online.

Indeed, on both counts.

@B S Magnet Welcome back!

Thank you!

 

[B S Magnet]

I worked for the UK division of Safeway and I seldom bought my shopping from them because you could find most of the same items at a cheaper price from their rivals! Can't say that I was surprised when the company folded in 2004.

To Safeway: good luck beating the Value Range (yes, I know Tesco were owned by Wal-Mart).

When I joined the Indy video store that would become my mainstay till I ended up just purchasing DVDs, the founder spoke to me in his office and informed me that it was a family business that prided itself on providing the best quality of service to its customers. He shook my hand and wished me a happy time with my rentals. Could you imagine that level of personalisation with some corporate giant?

It just doesn’t happen. Just like “fetch” doesn’t happen.

The shareholder is a feature, not a bug.

 

[TheShortTimer]

To Safeway: good luck beating the Value Range (yes, I know Tesco were owned by Wal-Mart).

Tesco has never been owned by Wal-Mart. The latter did own ASDA - a leading UK supermarket chain for several years.

It just doesn’t happen. Just like “fetch” doesn’t happen.

The shareholder is a feature, not a bug.

I like that.

 

[eyoungren]

It’s unfortunate the independent had to fold.

They were cool. The decór, colors and lighting of the store was what you'd find in an actual cinema but they made the mistake of opening around the time that Netflix and Redbox started to dominate. While they had a decent location in a known shopping area close to the freeway, the housing developments around that area were about a decade away in coming in. You had to plan to go there and any potential impulse rentals came solely from Walmart customers (Walmart still dominates that shopping center). They did have an actual GameStop adjacent to the store with a passthrough, but once the video store folded the GameStop only lasted a short time before leaving.

The owners just had really bad timing. Even I was wondering why they opened a video store at the time.

 

[eyoungren]

I worked for the UK division of Safeway and I seldom bought my shopping from them because you could find most of the same items at a cheaper price from their rivals! Can't say that I was surprised when the company folded in 2004.

In Southern California where I lived for 20 years, Safeway is non-existant. It's a Central California chain. So, when we moved to Arizona I was surprised to find that it's a dominant supermarket out here. Sometime in the mid-'00s though, they merged with Albertsons. The Safeway store I mentioned is still there and now it's equidistant to an Albertson's close to us. Albertsons was big in SoCal and where I lived, the little rural area was rocked when an Albertsons opened in 1990.

Today, Kroger (which owns Frys Food in Arizona) is trying to merge with Albertsons/Safeway in order to compete better against Walmart. There's a Fry's down the street from us. I go there (and to Basha's) when I want selection. Walmart beats everybody on price, but no one on selection.

When we were first here though, we were shopping Safeway because it was close and we didn't know the area. 24 years later, we know the area and I'm seldom in Safeway. My bank is there and that's usually the only reason I drive over there.

 

[B S Magnet]

Tesco has never been owned by Wal-Mart. The latter did own ASDA - a leading UK supermarket chain for several years.

My bad! For some reason, I mixed the two. I walked into an ASDA in Newcastle, in 2000 — and left feeling like I had just visited a bizarro-world version of Wal-Mart in the hues of green and yellow (versus, at the time, navy blue and maroon, because Murica).

I like that.

It’s the best I could do without running afoul of PRSI grounds.

 

[MBAir2010]

this thread is why i am on mac rumors, thank you very much!

now to read everyone's messages.....

 

[MBAir2010]

Today, most of this stuff is online, or physical copies can be found online.

3 weeks ago i found iLife for mountain lion....on the archive.org

there is too much data there....

 

[TheShortTimer]

It’s the best I could do without running afoul of PRSI grounds.

What does PRSI stand for? (A web search returns results regarding Ireland's tax contributions scheme…)

Tonight I've conducted some academic reading and note-taking on my 11" 2010 C2D MBA running Catalina.

A fun way to spend your Saturday evening but this is the life that I chose.

Made my recently-acquired ATTO ThunderLink NS 2102 usable. This is the first time I've seen a Thunderbolt 2 version of this thing; people have had fun with the Thunderbolt 1 version before but apparently not this one, so I just had to snag it even though it wasn't as much of a bargain as I hoped.

How much did it cost?

Thunderbolt stuff comes at a (hefty) premium when it's new, but that thing is built like a tank and just slides open after removing a single screw:

It certainly does look sturdy!

How to make this thing usable? Well, if that ain't blatantly obvious:
View attachment 2404673

This m.2 to PCIe ×4 adapter (which came with my HyperX Predator) can be screwed down to the case after removing its slot cover and the ThunderLink looks almost original:

That's a pretty cool example of repurposing tech. You also have the benefit of the TB pass-through option for connecting additional devices in a daisy chain! Awesome.

Those URL's make for interesting reading. People have been pretty creative with these boxes - yourself included.

View attachment 2404674

Speed is what can be expected over Thunderbolt 2, but the ThunderLink is pretty much the smallest single-slot Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure I'm aware of. It's about 30 percent smaller in volume than my AKiTio Thunder2 (2.0L vs 2.6L).

As a eGPU this would actually have greater functionality than either of my official ones because neither of them offer a pass-through facility which means that they have to be placed at the end of any chain.

You've reminded me that I have a long overdue Thunderbolt project of my own to try and get off the ground.

 

[eyoungren]

What does PRSI stand for? (A web search returns results regarding Ireland's tax contributions scheme…)

PRSI stands for Politics, Religion and Social Issues. It was a subforum that was on MacRumors for years, but a year or so ago it was shut down (primarily because it had become an echo chamber cesspit). Forum mods take a very (VERY) dim view of discussions of this nature outside the PRSI forum. And since the PRSI forum no longer exists…well, there are consequences.

 

[TheShortTimer]

PRSI stands for Politics, Religion and Social Issues. It was a subforum that was on MacRumors for years, but a year or so ago it was shut down (primarily because it had become an echo chamber cesspit). Forum mods take a very (VERY) dim view of discussions of this nature outside the PRSI forum. And since the PRSI forum no longer exists…well, there are consequences.

Ah, now I understand!

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[B S Magnet]

PRSI stands for Politics, Religion and Social Issues. It was a subforum that was on MacRumors for years, but a year or so ago it was shut down (primarily because it had become an echo chamber cesspit). Forum mods take a very (VERY) dim view of discussions of this nature outside the PRSI forum. And since the PRSI forum no longer exists…well, there are consequences.

So, uh, yah. Everything Erik said here, with some additional bits.

Spoiler: Fnord.

PRSI went down, finally, around July 2021.

Although I think several members had been sort of nibbling around the question of, “Why is PRSI on here at all,” I posted a thread on the Site Forum and Feedback forum, asking explicitly, with several very recent threads and outbursts as supporting citations, how any of the tirades lent to a mandate of discussing Apple products, software, services, or concerns (like Apple TV+), much less a core mandate of MR forums, upon which all the previous in Apple’s stable it relies.

There were several, repeated, and arguably antisocial threads on PRSI targeting and demeaning marginalized groups of people — underrepresented on the forums — in very indelicate, dehumanizing, and dismissive language, along with plenty of dogwhistles. There was a sense PRSI offered carte blanche for said folks to carry on like that (not unlike I’d imagine a smoky, backroom club with table card games seating one demographic), with few repercussions to worry about which, otherwise, would not fly on the other forums.

The problem: I happened to be part of a couple of the targeted, marginalized groups in those discussions, and yes, it felt like stumbling onto a gallery of rogues on a dark street corner. None of it sat well; very little of it was collegial, civil, or respectful (except between, perhaps, themselves). Confronting these led to my first suspensions on the forum. But as the case was made that PRSI was more business liability than long-term asset, I guess staff reached some kind of consensus and took PRSI offline — much to the outcry of its core regulars who pretty much only spent time on the PRSI forum and lamented no longer being able to do what they’d long loved doing: punching down with no worry of accountability.

I do feel, fwiw, the MR forums have become a healthier place, in aggregate, without that forum’s more… septic presence around.

 

[eyoungren]

So, uh, yah. Everything Erik said here, with some additional bits.

Spoiler: Fnord.

PRSI went down, finally, around July 2021.

Although I think several members had been sort of nibbling around the question of, “Why is PRSI was on here at all,” I posted a thread on the Site Forum and Feedback forum, asking explicitly, with several very recent threads and outbursts as supporting citations, how any of the tirades lent to a mandate of discussing Apple products, software, services, or concerns (like Apple TV+), much less a core mandate of MR forums, upon which all the previous in Apple’s stable it relies.

There were several, repeated, and arguably antisocial threads on PRSI targeting and demeaning marginalized groups of people — underrepresented on the forums — in very indelicate, dehumanizing, and dismissive language, along with plenty of dogwhistles. There was a sense PRSI offered carte blanche for said folks to carry on like that (not unlike I’d imagine a smoky, backroom club with table card games seating one demographic), with few repercussions to worry about which, otherwise, would not fly on the other forums.

The problem: I happened to be part of a couple of the targeted, marginalized groups in those discussions, and yes, it felt like stumbling onto a gallery of rogues on a dark street corner. None of it sat well; very little of it was collegial, civil, or respectful (except between, perhaps, themselves). Confronting these led to my first suspensions on the forum. But as the case was made that PRSI was more business liability than long-term asset, I guess staff reached some kind of consensus and took PRSI offline — much to the outcry of its core regulars who pretty much only spent time on ther PRSI forum and lamented no longer being able to do what they’d long loved doing: punching down with no worry of accountability.

I do feel, fwiw, the MR forums have become a healthier place, in aggregate, without that forum’s more… septic presence around.

I suppose I should say then, that I only really noticed it was gone a year or so ago - which would have been some time after it actually went. It's not a place I went in to on purpose as that isn't why I'm here. The reason it's gone is the same reason I left Facebook in February 2017. So, from that standpoint there was never any impetus for me to go in there.

I'm glad it's gone. There are better things to talk about.

 

[B S Magnet]

I suppose I should say then, that I only really noticed it was gone a year or so ago - which would have been some time after it actually went. It's not a place I went in to on purpose as that isn't why I'm here. The reason it's gone is the same reason I left Facebook in February 2017. So, from that standpoint there was never any impetus for me to go in there.

I'm glad it's gone. There are better things to talk about.

I mostly forget how or why I ended up there. My memory is I may have clicked a link within one thread on a different MR forum which took me to a thread on there.

My reflexive habit, after I’ve viewed a conversation thread, is to use the site nav breadcrumb to get back to the forum index. For instance:

Instinctively, I click on the bold.

And that’s when, I think, some current thread with some really nasty stuff which hit very close to home was up top and pretty active. My mind blocked off the worst of the worst, but I still remember some of the avatars who were prolific in their bile and were long since added to my block list, in case they ever turn up around these parts.

 

[eyoungren]

I mostly forget how or why I ended up there. My memory is I may have clicked a link within one thread on a different MR forum which took me to a thread on there.

My reflexive habit, after I’ve viewed a conversation thread, is to use the site nav breadcrumb to get back to the forum index. For instance:

View attachment 2404899

Instinctively, I click on the bold.

And that’s when, I think, some current thread with some really nasty stuff which hit very close to home was up top and pretty active. My mind blocked off the worst of the worst, but I still remember some of the avatars who were prolific in their bile and were long since added to my block list, in case they ever turn up around these parts.

For me, it was the thread I was involved in getting moved into PRSI. Until then I had no idea PRSI even existed. That would have been probably sometime in 2012-2013 maybe, IDK.

But, I quickly saw that this was a thing that could have me posting 24/7 just responding to garbage. At the time, I was just a couple years in to being on high blood pressure meds and this kind of stuff makes my blood pressure rise. And, honestly it wasn't how I wanted to occupy my time. I go to forums to enjoy myself, something I've been doing since 1985 with BBS systems. I'm not there/here to fill up on rage. I want to help people if I can and otherwise learn stuff.

So, after my points in that particular moved thread were made, I stayed out. Once in a while I took a look around at thread titles and realized it was just getting much worse. I eventually stopped that. With the environment all around us today, I've just doubled down on the reasons I'm here. Macs, iPhones, Apple, etc.

 

[B S Magnet]

But, I quickly saw that this was a thing that could have me posting 24/7 just responding to garbage. At the time, I was just a couple years in to being on high blood pressure meds and this kind of stuff makes my blood pressure rise. And, honestly it wasn't how I wanted to occupy my time. I go to forums to enjoy myself, something I've been doing since 1985 with BBS systems. I'm not there/here to fill up on rage. I want to help people if I can and otherwise learn stuff.

Nor I, though if snark and tirades being aimed at people like me is fair game on this platform, then it was telling me this platform wasn’t a place where I was welcome.

It was right around when I was headlong into SL-PPC testing and reporting on findings, and I’d grown to really enjoy the posts from a lot of y’all on these two forums. So I spoke up; the instigators were probably not expecting push-back. I don’t have second thoughts, either: the forum is since gone, dead, and buried.

So, after my points in that particular moved thread were made, I stayed out. Once in a while I took a look around at thread titles and realized it was just getting much worse. I eventually stopped that. With the environment all around us today, I've just doubled down on the reasons I'm here. Macs, iPhones, Apple, etc.

I would like to think humanity is much better than the messes on there (and yes, I’m not deluding myself: there will probably always be that element somewhere). I would rather people strive to be their best selves, and not strive to tear apart/down other people whom they consider inferior to themselves.

 

[DCBassman]

OK, I've been tasked with upgrading BiL's 17" MBP 5,2, currently running its max OS of El Capitan. Apart from SSD and maxing out the RAM, OS upgrade is hoped for. As far as I can tell, this will be limited to Monterey due to USB 1.1 issues.
Anything else anyone can think of?

 

[eyoungren]

OK, I've been tasked with upgrading BiL's 17" MBP 5,2, currently running its max OS of El Capitan. Apart from SSD and maxing out the RAM, OS upgrade is hoped for. As far as I can tell, this will be limited to Monterey due to USB 1.1 issues.
Anything else anyone can think of?

If you install the root patches after installing Ventura or Sonoma, you'll get USB 1.1 back. I didn't run into the USB problem when installing Sonoma on my Mac Pro, but that was only because the system saw my KVM switch as a USB 2.0 hub. Mouse movement was still a bit janky and I didn't get all my displays back until installing the root patches though.

Process was the same with my 2008 MBP. After the root patches, trackpad and keyboard are fine.

Just putting that out there.

 

[B S Magnet]

OK, I've been tasked with upgrading BiL's 17" MBP 5,2, currently running its max OS of El Capitan. Apart from SSD and maxing out the RAM, OS upgrade is hoped for. As far as I can tell, this will be limited to Monterey due to USB 1.1 issues.
Anything else anyone can think of?

If you really want to do a flex with it, swap out the SuperDrive with a hard drive caddy and make that setup a dual-SSD beast. I did this with my 2011 MBP in 2011, and am still using the same setup to this day. One SSD has Mojave; the other, which is larger, has Snow Leopard and spare storage/scratch disk area.

The caddy kit I bought came with a complimentary, external USB 2.0 enclosure for the OEM SuperDrive, for those instances when I needed to burn or read a disc. I’ve probably used that external enclosure about ten or a dozen times in all the years since. In retrospect, this has been a much better use of the limited space within.

Also, since this is the 17-inch, there might be a couple of ExpressCard add-ons worth exploring.