Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2024 July 18

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July 18

Identify for Commons: these old Intel processors

Hopefully @PantheraLeo1359531: doesn't mind but I saw they posted a question on Commons that I thought the Reference desk detectives may like to look at...

Mysterious Intel microprocessor/IC:

I recently bought 2 Intel processors (I couldn't resist, as they look so similar to the famous Intel 4004), but I don't know what the purpose could be. Looking at the ceramic package, I can imagine that the product was created maybe between 1972 and 1975. Maybe someone can give a hint?

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If you know the answer you can reply here and I will relay to Commons. Commander Keane (talk) 00:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I am very thankful for that ;), and looking forward to fantastic answers :D --PantheraLeo1359531 (talk) 07:07, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I hunted around for some time, but drew a big blank other than similar chips offered on Ebay with no further description, and the pics on Commons. Is it even a CPU in the accepted sense? I could find absolutely no clues. MinorProphet (talk) 17:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Several aeons ago (i.e. perhaps 15 years back), I reckon that yer average search engine would have served up at least ten sites hosting the exact information you seek. I remember realising with utter clarity one day how all my finely-honed search query results seemed to have changed almost overnight: and not for the better. Sadly, this has now become the New World Algorithm™ (available in taupe only, except for our special merch recipients—you know who you are.) All changed, changed utterly. Subscribe! Why not sign up for our weekly podcast, where influencers with the intellectual capacity of a piece of seaweed will babble shit for half an hour! I bet at least some of the sites are still there, (sort of, I'm not a betting man), but if there are any left, they are now not worthy of the search engine's notice, since not easily monetizable. I suspect that the old G**gle search engine is no longer available, even on the Wayback Machine. Is this the case? I think we should be told. </rant> MinorProphet (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the answers. I asked in another forum. One said that it might be DRAM chips. Probably certainly not a microprocessor. :) But it's a big problem when information about historical computer hardware disappears --PantheraLeo1359531 (talk) 14:46, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

University IP address blocked from editing, but something is weird

Just earlier today, while I was at university, I stumbled upon a "This IP address is blocked from editing Wikipedia" banner when I clicked on the edit button of a Wikipedia article to check out some source code. I was like fine, there are thousands of users on this network and so quite inevitable someone's gonna do something bad leading to IP addresses / ranges being blocked from editing. All until I spotted something very odd regarding the IP range that is blocked, compared to the current IP address.

It said, the blocked IP address or range is 122.56.x.x/20, but then it also said, your current IP address is 202.36.x.x. I know quite a bit about subnets and how IPv4 addresses are divided up, so something just didn't seem right to me here! On a /16 to /23 IPv4 range, the left two groups of digits never change. 202.36.x.x is obviously not part of 122.56.x.x/20. I was thinking, how is this possible?!?

If I clicked on the "Talk" or "Contributions" buttons in the upper-right corner, indeed I would get the 202.36.x.x IP address and not one in the 122.56.x.x/20 range. Looking at the IP's contributions, there were like only a dozen or so edits, quite a few from 2019, but absolutely no edits from 2020-2023, and one edit in 2024. The talk page had this shared IP address banner at the top saying that it is registered to the University of Auckland.

According to WHOIS info, the 122.56.x.x/20 subnet is registered to a well-known large ISP for educational institutions here in New Zealand, and the 202.36.x.x IP address is registered under the name of the university itself, with even stuff like the building location address being of the university.

My guess is that the 202.36.* network is actually the university's own "private ISP" kind of network, used for communication between the different campus buildings, while the 122.56.* network is the public ISP that the university network is connected to and is using for internet.

Does anyone else know what's going on here? Man, this issue definitely explains a lot of those IP address unblock requests where the user claims that their IP address is never blocked but they are somehow unable to edit, getting a blocked from editing message. — AP 499D25 (talk) 10:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

202.36.xx.xx is not blocked, as you say. However, at 00:13, 4 August 2023 Ohnoitsjamie blocked 122.56.192.0/18 for two years. Who placed the block which appears on your screen? 2A00:23D0:7C1:5201:5558:3E19:B7AA:479 (talk) 12:45, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

It's probably going to be 122.56.192.0/20 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial)), though I don't think the specific network is particularly relevant. There seems to be two questions here. The first is why you are using two different networks. 122.56.x is a Spark network. In my experience, as well as schools, Spark deals a lot with mobile Internet (wifi, 5G, and so on), and I would guess that may be a factor. I also read in an undated article that Spark is helping 'upgrade' the university's networks. Being two local behemoths they're probably best buddies and all entangled anyway. This type of network splitting seems quite common to me, though whether the difference is explained by device, access point, content filtering, other routing considerations, or something more arbitrary, is beyond me. The university does use its own network for at least some Internet stuff - you can see it regularly edits Wikipedia.

The second and more interesting question, if I'm reading the original post correctly, is why a single block message is showing a different current address to the blocked address. Maybe there's some XFF weirdness, a badly coded template, or just a bug somewhere. I seem to vaguely recall autoblocks and cookie blocks being accused of causing this behaviour, but it seems unlikely, and you should get a different message. Someone over at WP:VPT might have some details. I'd suggest we need to see the block message (with obfuscated IPs if you prefer), if this applies. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

And if you can reproduce the situation, also check which address is reported by WhatIsMyIPAddress.com.  --Lambiam 11:15, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I occasionally have a similar experience, in which my talk page and contribution record show one IP, but when I press "publish" on an edit I get a block notice specifying another IP address. Two examples: I composed an edit under IP 92.8.218.114 but got a block notice on pressing "publish" for 92.8.218.47. I later composed an edit under IP 91.216.246.45, but on pressing "publish" got a block notice for 85.115.54.202, which is a different network. 79.78.116.149 (talk) 11:57, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

At home, the public IP address that appears in my router's info page is different to what I would get when going to one of those "What's my IP?" websites. I found out that my ISP actually uses CGNAT to get around IPv4 address exhaustion (learnt the hard way after hours of trying to port forward a game server to no avail). Though strangely, with my previous ISP, some other public IP finder websites would show a slightly different address, within the same subnet or neighbouring one. One thing for certain is the public IP that appears on my router page is never what I get or see on internet websites though. — AP 499D25 (talk) 12:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Both of you are correct in that the blocked subnet that would appear on the blocked IP address banner was this one (blocked for several years by User:Ohnoitsjamie).

Here's the contribs page for the IP that wasn't blocked btw.

Though to add on to the strangeness, the day after I made this post, when I got back there and tried out the edit button again (on the same Wi-Fi network, using the same laptop, in the same building location), that time it didn't say my IP was blocked, and I seemed to be able to edit! I checked the IP address signature in talk page message previews and the address I would see was the non-blocked one.

I don't remember the block banner saying or mentioning "autoblocked", it was just "This IP address is blocked from editing". — AP 499D25 (talk) 13:08, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Can't remember, if you're subject to an autoblock, does this get mentioned in the message? Autoblocks came to mind for me too, and I thought of the following pathway: (1) First range gets blocked. (2) This person, or someone else, tries to edit with it, and is subjected to the block. (3) Using the same computer, the person moves to the second range and is autoblocked. (4) You use the second range and are autoblocked. Nyttend (talk) 23:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

@Nyttend Last week an admin actually showed me this page, where you can see the various forms of system block messages that can be presented to users, and it includes MediaWiki:Autoblockedtext, which explicitly states in the top that "this account has been automatically blocked from editing". I swear the text on the top was just "This IP address is blocked from editing Wikipedia", the same as what I get on my home public IP address which is actually also blocked from editing after an ANEW report I filed because of some other user edit warring on it. I stand by my saying that "automatically blocked" wasn't mentioned anywhere in the block message banner. — AP 499D25 (talk) 09:22, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Adding this here for the record, since apparently you can still add to archived ref desk threads according to the notice at the top of the page: I just encountered this exact same issue today on my 4G cellular connection, where when logged out and I click on an edit button, it says I'm rangeblocked (and it's the same 122.56.192.0/20 IP range again), but my current IP address is 115.189.89.153. Also worth noting that a few connection resets ago, the "current IP address" I had was actually in the blocked /20 range. So it looks like this issue is not exclusive to the UoA network only.

By the way, when opening the "What is my IP" link mentioned by User:Lambian, I get the IP address 115.189.89.153. — AP 499D25 (talk) 12:16, 2 September 2024 (UTC)