2025 – Uh oh AMD 650 desktop lost its boot ssd for the second time – and somehow scrambled its bios. Had to use the emergency bios flashback install (note you don’t turn the PC on! you hold the bios button on the back for 3s!)
2024 – Built a new NAS with low powered N100 CPU! had fun with ZFS and an nvme sata adaptor. Also made a Truenas Scale SAS version with an old server case and chuck-out drives!
2023 – I installed 128GB RAM into the AMD 7950X to do 3d reconstructions of Iceland with Metashape – had to lower the RAM speed manually to 3600 (from 5600) to get it to work with four 32GB DDR5 DIMMs.
2022 Built my first ever AMD PC! Zen 4 Ryzen 9 7950x. I was excited to try the 16 core CPU I was using as an example in my lectures!
2020 Covid lockdown meant I finally rebuilt my PC with a 10700K 8 core CPU which is much nicer for video editing and quadcopter photogrammetry! I delved into M.2 NVMe SSDs – which boosted bandwidths to several GiB/s! In this decade I also use a lot of embedded computers from Raspbery Pi to Feathers.
2017 I built myself a liquid-cooled PC for the first time – based on a 4GHz i7-6700K. The aim was a quiet PC while working but a fast one for video, gaming etc. However long runs of photoscan were leaving the CPU hot for a long time – so I swapped to a dual fan larger liquid radiator mounted in the top of the case – it ran much cooler (<70C) under stress.
1997 I switched to a Silicon Graphics O2 at Southampton (a big OS and CPU switch!).
1990s: SUNs were my main systems for developing image processing (see libVIPS). Very costly and extremely slow by today’s standards. First was a 3-150 16MHz/4MB RAM with then later a SPARCstation 20). This let us explore parallel CPUs and massive amounts of optimisation for speed.
1987: In Birkbeck I had a Sun-3 with three boards (R+G+B) to store a 720×575 image. 16MHz 68020 CPU and 12MB RAM really helped focus the mind!
1980s: from an Apricot computer for wordprocessing to custom 68000 based image processing boxes and Vax 11/750 for my PhD.
1970s: My first was a Commodore Pet which helped me learn so many basics!