Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

Op is a Pak Protector

I was thinking the poster was a JRPG boss

This is pretty much exactly what was going through my mind as well. I was excited the aliens had started reading HN. Now I'm just sad.

Actually, it's more complex than this in France. There is 5 systems:

- depending of the Ministry of Eduction :

   - for toddlers : maternelle (3-6 yo)

   - Primary : CP (6 yo, primary), CE1 (elementary 1), CE2, CM1 (middle 1), CM2

   - Secondary :

       - College (not the US one!) : 6th (~11 yo), 5th, 4th, 3th (with exam at the end)

       - Lycée : 2nd (~15 yo), 1st, Terminal (with 'Baccalauréat' exam at the end)

However, I think that in some other french-talking countries (Belgium, Swissland) they did it simpler

Nothing compared to the order I went through in Germany: 1, 2, 3, 4 (elementary school until here), then VI (read in Latin, sexta), V (quinta), IV (quarta), lower III (tertia), upper III, lower II (secunda), 11, 1st semester, 2nd semester, 3rd semester, 4th semester.

French and Brits do a lot of things the other way around, like imperial system, ATON/NATO, driving on the other side of the road.

Just mentioned the age bracket. Kids who are younger or older are outliers.

I'm also from NI, our school officially used year 8 to year 14, but everyone knew both ways around and just switched between them.

Edit: I should clarify I'm currently in uni so this was fairly recent.

Typically no. In secondary school its just said as "Year 7", "Year 8" etc to 11, then Sixth Form.

In Britain the first high school graduation happens after 11th grade; attending sixth form is optional and is primarily done by students intending to study at University. In these years you specialise in a couple of subjects relevant to your intended course of study, and for university you apply and are accepted for and study exclusively one subject from day 1.

So arguably the US equalivalent is the freshman year of college.

I guess some people in the US call someone beyond their 12th grade in high school, or fourth year in an undergraduate program a "super senior."

Am educational form, an antiquated word for a bench.

> first gen of Steam controllers, which were created by Valve themselves

The best goddamn controllers ever made, too, I still have one in a box somewhere around here and I won't use it because it's so awesome I don't want it to break. Pretty dumb eh? The two touchpads were the absolute best, I've never had control like that in an FPS and to this day I can't play any FPS with a stick because I was ruined on the Steam Controller.

Perhaps I am unfairly lumping Alienware in with some of the other Steam Machines, which very much did look almost identical to their manufacturer’s other PCs at the time.

As someone who at the time was VERY into buying the “console-like” PC gaming experience that Valve was seemingly selling, I remember being pretty disappointed not just by the SteamOS delays, but also how much most of the Steam Machines still basically looked, to me as an uninformed buyer, at least, to basically just be a different SKU of their regular lines rather than the true “Steam experience” that I was hoping for (and which the Steam Deck eventually delivered).

I still use my steam link all the time. I have it fiber back hauled to the computer that it runs off of. I'm thinking of buying a couple more. Give one to my kid and one put on a projector so I don't have to keep moving it back and forth.

Also, I think the device you're looking for is a deck because you can plug that into a television and use a wireless remote with it.

The steam link is the best remote display device I've ever used. No frame drops or artifacting, even on scenes that make the 3090 chug. It forwards controllers to the PC.

Now, the software, "big picture mode" and otherwise using a controller for PC input aren't the greatest, but you gotta figure it's me and like 2 other people still using this.

BTW airscreen/miracaat/screen mirroring/"wireless display" all suck. If your TV has smart bullt in that supports miracast, that in my limited experience is the second lowest latency, then firetv devices, and then roku and everything else. Roku only usable for presentation or digital signage, unless first party built in.

No idea why.

I guess Proton/Wine/Linux gaming wasn't mature enough back then. Also a handheld wasn't really an option because there weren't any powerful enough yet energy efficient and cheap x86 chips available either.

Go to the gaming machine and upgrade it to > home or edu version if needed. Enable remote desktop with auth on your network for that machine. As long as Windows is booted and able to be logged in to on the gaming machine you can go on your other machine:

Win+R mstsc.exe and put in the gaming machine's name or IP and follow the instructions, checking all "remember this" boxes (there's 2, three if you count the certificate).

RDP won't let you play games but it is functionally identical to sitting at the machine itself.

consider a different remote access option i.e. sunshine + moonlight instead of using steam remote play

You can definitely run graphical environments without a screen in a virtual environment, e.g. https://github.com/selkies-project/docker-nvidia-egl-desktop which is even GPU accelerated

Parsec has a driver which adds virtual monitors so you should be able to use that instead of a dummy HDMI plug.

Another issue is not having a mouse plugged in will mean you have no mouse cursor when remoting in.

Back in days (around twenty years ago) I used NoMachine on Debian/SPARC to do exactly this: run GNOME remotely.

Waypipe nowadays allows the same, but I don't think it has resuming support.

Headless X11 machines were a thing then it was all abandoned.

macOS has no issues with no monitor fwiw

Ran into problems, but that's probably because of the proxmox pcie passthrough nvidia gpu torture chamber I went through, and not the driver.

The issue is usually with the graphics card itself in my experience.

This is easily "fixed" on a DVI port by plugging a resistor of the correct value into two of the tiny pin sockets. The diagram is very easy to find online and you don't have to open the computer. That's become a thing of the past as far as I know.

Okay this all sounds great, what specs do I need on the machine connected to the TV? Will a Raspberry Pi 3 work? Pine64? Atomic Pi? (That's x86_64, intel Celeron)

Anything more than that and the value proposition goes way down. For every 50 grams lighter I am willing to lose 1fps. For every fan removed I will drop an entire resolution (4k -> 2k -> FHD...) Change "lighter" to heavier if it makes sense. My comfort and aesthetic matters more than competition quality, pixel perfect yadda

I keep starring these remote display projects but none have convinced me to provision a client machine for the purpose yet.

Same. My Steam Deck has completely replaced my old gaming VM.

There are a good amount of lower power ones (e.g. with an N100 CPU) that draw ~15W usually and not that much more at full bore, and some of them are starting to come with USB-PD power inputs (even if they come with a DC power adapter some will accept USB-PD on another port).

Look for "PD in" on this sheet for some examples (columns BW-BY): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SWqLJ6tGmYHzqGaa4RZs...

I run a N97 based MiniPC off a power bank when I'm travelling, works fine along with my mobile hotspot.

> But now I want a power bank with hot swappable batteries/modules

I think it’s possible to build one. Get a bunch of 18650 cells from a reputable brand (or just an old laptop battery, if you’re brave enough), then look for a 18650 powerbank kit on AliExpress – some of these would be with slots you can just plug the cells into, without welding/soldering.

Can you already do this just by daisy chaining them?

NUCs are basically office machines though, I don't think any of them have the kind of graphics capabilities of a Legion Go, for example.

There are SFF PCs a little bigger than NUCs that do have strong graphics but they're crazy expensive.

I have one and my main gripe with it is how large the power brick is. It's practically like carrying a second mini pc; I didn't take this into account when I got it, lesson learned.

Yeah they look good. Unfortunately from what I've seen they have limited availability outside of the US and EU. I could probably get hold of one but not sure if they'd cover the warranty outside of their sales area.

Not very power efficient, and warranty is meh.

Had to do a repaste to get proper cooling.

> Zotac with discrete NVidia GPUs for $3-4k

Crazy expensive.

I do actually use the laptop as a second screen in this way most of the time. However, it's amazing how many hotels lack any table deep enough to place a 15" laptop on a stand with a keyboard in front of it.

For their CES coverage they said they used MacBooks. They just also brought a Mac mini along that they hooked up to fast internet in a nearby e-sports venue that they used as a backup option to remote into and edit videos from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYXh0AdBw-I

They don't, but they do idle as low a 4W for the whole system[1] so running one off a large portable battery would be possible (if not exactly elegant).

1: https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253

I was spinning a ThinkPad diagonal corners between my palms, fumbled it, my catch attempt put more energy in to it, landed on front right corner on the kitchen floor, bounced.

Nothing wrong with it, nothing broke, everything worked.

This was back when IBM still ran the brand.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone to try that with my HP x360.

Short answer: no

Long answer: Vision Pro (if you are comfortable with the weight/price). Immersed Visor and Play for Dream Mr headsets are likely the first available coding VR headsets at reasonable prices but this will all be commodities very soon.

Your best bet is to resist being at the cutting edge for this year and pick up the winner after the next 11 months

It’s basically like working on a projector. Everything is just a bit too hard to read.

Fonts render at whatever size you tell them to. That doesn't change.

I have the Viture not the Xreals, but anyways... my experience:

I do find that there's significant optical aberration that makes text more blurry towards the edges. I also have astigmatism; not a deal-breaker but it means the built-in myopia adjustment only partially corrects my vision. I basically got contacts again just so I can use these a bit better. But it still feels less clear than a regular screen with glasses or contacts. Doable but not great for text.