From: Stephen Ramsden <sramsden@natca.net>
Date: July 10, 2019 12:15:00 PM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: Bypassing Radeon chip on 2011 Macbook Pro?
Well, if you did happen to write the software on a PC, that would be the only reason I can imagine buying another PC.
From my iPhone (sorry if it's short)
Stephen W. Ramsden
Director
Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project
404-543-7616
On Jul 10, 2019, at 1:19 PM, maupperl@gmail.com [Astro_IIDC] <Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Hi Tim, Allan and Stephen;
I've never heard of this procedure, but one would have to be very cautious indeed. I've pulled components off motherboards before, but nothing that tiny. I'd be worried about cooking the board and having solder flow where it should not be.
Allan and Stephen suggestion of buying now before Macs start shipping with the "New and Improved" OS X is probably your best bet. I'd check out Apple's Refurbed Macs too. My most recent Mac (17" 2010 Mac Book Pro) was a refurb and I replaced the old 5400 rpm HD with an SSD for a big speed boost. Still running fines, as is my upgraded (I replaced the CPU and added an SSD to) Mac 2007 Mini that runs Snow Leopard and occasionally Lion.
As to Allan's "suggestion" I come out of retirement and work on Astro IIDC, that's a different story :)
If I did, it would make very little sense to do it on the Mac, as I'd be rewriting the Carbon software more or less from scratch. Apple is making noise of closing the ecosystem completely and only using their own Custom locked ARM chips for CPU's, which means all my SSE code would be dead, so a 400% hit on CPU intensive code. Everything will likely be run through the Store (with Apple 33% tax still in place), which still has all the hardware restrictions in place. And if Apple changes it's mind on something, you have no recourse at all - just like the iPhone / Tablet
It would make much more sense to move to Windows, whom aren't as heavy handed as Apple is and have far more variety and cheaper hardware to supply you with. The code has to be re-written anyhow (Carbon -> Swift Apple or Carbon-> C++/C# Windows) and it would likely take less effort on the low level Driver front (lots of Drivers and support from Windows) than on the Mac.
And please don't take this as a possibility of Astro IIDC coming back. I'd have to think long and hard on this before I would make any decision on it.
Have a great day everyone...
Milton J. Aupperle
http://www3.telus.net/maupperl