Behind The Silence: Commercial NET Plus Hardware Upgrades

12/31/2023

Shortly after the release of GAPCM, we moved our base back to where we started. Long story short: a lot was lost, but a good chunk remained. I then became employed, which severed my spare time and strength to a small fraction--understandably--hence our silence throughout the second half. However, a lot has happened behind it.

To start, our web infrastructure--or NET--received a major upgrade for a commercial-use web application. The upgrade is currently too much to port back here and especially J-Card Template, which is where the application started. As far as we can recall, this upgrade features basic internationalization support, a few conditional mapping functions, and many, many other small improvements to the JavaScript libraries.

Then, we also learned some Visual Basic .NET, Windows Forms, SQL Server, and currently PHP. While we ourselves have no uses for them at this time, they are certainly great tools that realize any prospective projects. Notably, we should be able to make some server-based application soon.

Along the way, we finally reopened official support for Microsoft Windows, which has gone a long way since the moment we moved out four years ago. The newest iteration: 11 23H2--while broken--is not bad, and is somehow officially supported on the Latitude despite being a Kaby Lake machine but with TPM 2.0 via a firmware upgrade. So be sure to upgrade yours.

We also did a couple of hardware upgrades to the Latitude: first, we swapped its original four-gigabyte memory (RAM) stick with an eight-gigabyte, totalling to sixteen or quadruple its initial capacity; then, to faciliate our return to Windows, we quadrupled its storage capacity to a whopping terabyte on an M.2 PCIe SSD (from an M.2 SATA). Despite all the above, Windows 11 felt rather slow. Therefore, we also finally let the CPU run free, but only on Windows; Turbo Boost remains disabled on Debian.

Right now, we are shopping for parts for our new Motherlord Workstation to replace our dead, low-end Aspire M3985. This one will be substantially unique compared to those we have and had. Stay tuned, and--please--a peaceful 2024.