Perhaps because you are more of an "appliance operator" you don't appreciate the science and engineering behind the scenes.

Working with old hardware, like new hardware, presents a lot of challenges. The learning that takes place is very useful.

Unlike new hardware, old hardware is cheap and plentiful. Yard sales, garages, surplus stores... this is the place to go. For new hardware, you are looking at some money.

The learning that takes place on the old hardware is useful on problems beyond this "ancient platform". The folks that accomplished this port have flexed their brains around complicated problems, and are thus able to process other complicated problems more efficiently.

Bottom line, some people are passionate about engineering and science, and do it because they enjoy the learning process.

As a former m68k user, I can tell you this is a very good distro.

You can really breath new life into older computers. The results are often startling and better than their intel cousins from the same era. Not to say that this is a good "production environment" strategy, but if you have old macs collecting dust, and you'd like to learn some real linux-fu, install m68k linux on them. You will end up with useful computers, sometimes even useful for light desktop. Definitely useful for low-volume web servers, mail, ssh, etc.

This is a lot of fun and there are plenty of old macs available for almost nothing. Get out there and learn!

True. But in all other respects it (SE) is superior. And I'll bet someone had a card for external color display. Maybe Radius?

I don't see why they couldn't just put a few megs of ram. And for that matter, an SD card reader like my Hp-48g+ has.

Oh wait, that's why I switched to HP...

"That is all about to change now" Really? "320x240 16-bit color display, 3.5MB of flash ROM, and 21KB of RAM" I think my Mac SE had better specs than that. I think a gameboy might. This is not impressive, and I'm sure it will still cost too much. $100-$150? Not likely. TI will sell a lot of these, I'm sure, but overall their success has nothing to do with the technical specifications of their device. It has to do with clever marketing. Note to students: Buy the minimum calculator that the teacher requires (if they do require anything). Get a computer with some good plotting software if you need to graph functions to help you understand complicated new ideas. You could probably use the computer for other things too...

It isn't the AC to DC conversion that is releasing the heat. It is the high voltage to low voltage conversion taking the 120 volts AC down to probably 14 volts AC or so (using a transformer, as you pointed out). Distributing DC has its merits, but your example isn't one. High frequency (400 Hz or so) might make more sense for this, since switching power supplies would be simpler.

But of course, if we grow humans in an artificial womb, they wouldn't really alive until we take them out at the end of the 9-month procedure, right?

1: SWR caused by mismatched antennas (and influenced by the area around the antennas) causes the RF front-end a lot more stress and can lead to breakdown. The front-end on these wifi cards is about as cheap as it gets.

2: Bad or cheap components. As others have pointed out, bad caps can cause major problems and do plague modern electronics. Your RF bias circuits could swing all over the place if the caps are going bad. Or the heatsinking in the power supply. There are lots of potential failure points in circuit components.

3: SNR: Some other folks pointed out that as the wifi band gets crowded, it's harder to get a good signal. When you buy a new router, perhaps it has more intelligent rate algorithms and interference mitigation techniques?

Really though, ask yourself why *anything* electronic needs replacement. There are usually a number of believable answers.

PS: As someone who works a lot on wifi drivers, antennas, and systems, I use an RT-N56U at home and it works quite well. Ugly but great.

I don't think he's serious about the windows on an aircraft, and anyone who does needs his head examined.

Having said that, I'm not hiring him to be in charge of aircraft design. Nor am I hiring a religious leader. (Noted because I think mormonism is pretty odd too.)

We're considering him for a president. I'd rather debate on his policy, record, etc. And I'm not claiming to agree with all of it or think highly of him on these merits, but this is the domain we need to be in, not the "batshit crazy."

It's easy to attack and make fun of these guys -- nearly all past and present political figures. I enjoy it too. But I don't make decisions based on it.

...given his legacy with windows.