Had Mikey's Christening and our house warming this past weekend... tired...
had spit lamb. mmmm
More info to come soon.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Friday, April 21, 2006
dyslexic
Goodness gracious me.
I have just reread my prior post and I am sitting here wondering where the dyslexic freak that wrote it has gotten to.
Oh, alas! He is right here, for he, is me!
I suppose that's what I get for writing such a blob of text in such a rapid manner.
Train of thought stuff, train of thought.
I haven't the time for punctuation and capitalisation dammit!
Not to mention the wasteful follies of grammar!
That stuff is for people with nothing better to do than spend all afternoon proofreading!
I say!
Exclamation!
!
!!
I have just reread my prior post and I am sitting here wondering where the dyslexic freak that wrote it has gotten to.
Oh, alas! He is right here, for he, is me!
I suppose that's what I get for writing such a blob of text in such a rapid manner.
Train of thought stuff, train of thought.
I haven't the time for punctuation and capitalisation dammit!
Not to mention the wasteful follies of grammar!
That stuff is for people with nothing better to do than spend all afternoon proofreading!
I say!
Exclamation!
!
!!
So anyway, I built a new computer... :-)
My old computer was starting to give me trouble, it had been giving me periodical trouble for some time, it's getting on a bit in age and since I let dust buildup a summer or two ago the cpu kept over heating and I think I did some damage...
Was all okay again once I got in there and de-dusted, but then when living at the inlaws the power here got shorted and nearly burnt the house down and my PC wasn't quite the same since. Anyway, long story short I think the RAM was a little flakey, the CPU a little fried, the video card dodgy, and the motherboard a bit loopy (including the CMOS battery dead etc, I had to reset bios anytime it was unplugged from mains and then spent forever tryingto get the VGA signal to be recognised etc and then using the rear USB or PCI card firewire would make the comp freeze, a problem for my external HD etc etc)
All in all, too much heat that past summer, a cheap (and possibly overloaded) power supply, and the power probs at the inlaws meant it just wasn't reliable... (eventually I had to put some old cheap ram in there to get it to POST)
So sure I mighta been able to do some heavy surgery and get it fixed but I figured best go for a new one.
So a few weekends ago I did so... mmmmm
I did alot of research online, being that my last computer I built in october 2002, I had some catching up to do.
I almost went for a storebought but after breaking it all down, I think I get more bang for my buck doing it myself.
So anyway, from a couple local computer fairs I bought me:
AMD Athlon X2 4200+ (Dual Core)
Asus A8N SLI Premium Motherboard
Leadtek 7800GT Video Card
LG DVD-ROM
LG DVD-RW Dual Layer
Leadtek TV Tuner Card (analog channels only)
Floppy Drive
Rear case fan for exhaust
Keyboard & Mouse (i was so close to getting a logitech G15 keyboard... but restrained myself)
as far as HDDs and RAM and the case etc there was nothing at the faires that i wanted/suited my needs so I ordered from an online store:
(I ordered from macotechnology, awesome customer service, rapid responses to questions/emails and the stuff arrived safe, sound, well packed and within a day of payment)
2 GB Corsair TWINX2048 3200C2 DDR RAM
2x 250GB WD2500KS HDD's in RAID 0
Coolermaster 550W RealPower PSU
Coolermaster mid Tower Centurion 532
Viewsonic G90F 19" CRT Monitor
and for an OS, last year my in laws got me a legit copy of WinXP for my birthday so:
Windows XP Professional SP2 $0
($0, the perfect price for microsoft products... hehe)
So anyway, having had certain portions of this beast sitting around for more than a week I eventually finished painting mikeys cot (I had promised to get that finished before building the machine) I had the weekend to spare on building the "Feen Machine IV"
Pete came round, and brought with him some nice software disks and we went to work on the kitchen table:
Now the case was interesting in that it is supposedly one of these "tool-less" cases. Now really, I didn't care much one way or the other for tool-lessness and of course it wasn't entirely tool-less, we still needed to screw in the motherboard etc etc... but that's sort of a given.
I got it cos it looked okay, had decent reviews, wasn't too flashy/gimmicky and the price was quite cheap for what seems to really be a fairly quality case.
The drive bays have these plastic clips that were interesting, and certainly it's nice to not have to screw them in.
The pci card things have little plastic clips too, but you can also still screw in which is good cos with that heavy video card that little plastic clip just didn't inspire confidence in the retention stakes. The tuner card tho, no worries.
So anyway, the little metal shields for the drive bays were a pain to snap off, took a lot of work ... but all okay, and I popped in the DVD burner and floppy drive. (I hadn't bought the DVD rom yet).
And I put in the power supply.
So by now Pete shows up, nicely in time for the real work...
so now, I plopped in the CPU to the Motherboard, and nervously affixed the cooler fan. Man those things are just too heavy and bulky and clippery to feel good about jamming it onto your CPU and MoBo... but anyway it all went fine.
Then popped the RAM in... and then we screwed in the motherboard to the case. So far so good.
mmm purdy
Then we plugged in the cables, or rather Pete started rushing ahead plugging in cables... then I started pulling them back out muttering "cable management, must be neat" and berating him for running that one over that one and that one under that one while I raid the supply of cable ties that Maggie left behind when they moved to the US...
Plug in the video card, the HDD's and all that jazz. By this stage I didn't actually have the extra fan, the extra DVD ROM drive, new keyboard/mouse, or the Tuner card.
Anyway, fired it up and ... it works! Wheeee
BIOS!
Now Pete has had more experience with bios stuff than me and I deferred to him for the most part, but I had also done a bunch of reading up and kept scaring the pants off him when I started fiddling with voltages and CAS latency and all this stuff but I held off making any real changes.... for now. Lets get it going at defaults then tweak later.
Now, you'll notice I have a floppy drive in there. Korens first reaction upon meeting my new computer was "What'd you bother with a floppy for?" etc etc... well. I bought two identical harddrives. I wanted to see if I could RAID0 them. Supposedly gives better performance and all that, while I'm not convinced of that fact, and wasn't too fussed whether they were RAIDed or not, I at least wanted to go thru the process of trying to set it up as a learning experience.
It ended up being only one of two real problems in the entire build process.
Stupid Floppys!! I have always hated them and always will.
Working as a CES case manager and then as an IT trainer person back in the day you have no idea how much I came to loathe Floppy drives... or at least loathe the concept of people who carry around a floppy with, say for instance, their only copy of their resume/application letter/life work and memoirs, then put it in a drive, open the file from A drive. Work on it from A drive, then save it to A drive, then take the floppy, pop it in their pocket and then move on. And Surprise surprise when the day comes that they pop that "trusty" floppy in a machine to work on their important file and it Doesnt Work!! - naturally it's their Only Copy!
Well, anyway, floppies suck. And the ONLY way to install RAID drivers during the windows install process is using a floppy!
(well, you can 'slipstream' windows XP... but for various reasons that wasn't an option for me)
Where does one get these drivers? Off the CD that comes with the motherboard.
Can one install the drivers off the CD. No, you need to get them from the CD to the floppy prior to making you computer...
Now sure it's less of an issue if you are installing windows on a HDDrive THEN setting RAID drives later. But I only had the two drives, wanted them as RAID, THEN install windows... so ...
old computer. insert MB drivers disk.
"This application does not recognise any hardware on this computer that is relevant to this CD" (or whatever the hell it was) ... so the autostart application on the CD chooses to NOT display Any options in it's menu other than... exit.
Fun... so I guess I can explore the CD and find the thing I want. Rummaging thru various folders I find what looks like a little app to make the driver disk.
So I dig out the ONE floppy disk I bought in advance for this purpose. and run this little prog which says insert disk, yadda yadda then appears to work but gives no feedback to that effect other than just stopping what it was doing and going back to the "create disk" window.
Sooo... lets get to the install windows part... smash f6 a million times at the right time to make sure it knows I wanna install 3rd party drivers etc....
put in floppy.
okay worries,
another step or two... insert that floppy again.
BahBUhhm
"widows does not recognise... blah blah... damaged... yah whatever..."
Okay, lets try again. nup.
Lets pop this disk back in the other machine and have a look.
Bzzzt chugga chugga chugga... A drive does nothing. You know all those annoying clunky floppy drive sounds you get when it's being an ass.
To be honest I think I may have used the floppy drive in my old computer about once of twice in it's 3 year or so history.
I don't think it ever really worked right...
It sure aint working right now...
hmmm
Pete, got yer laptop? "damn I took it out of my car Just before coming over"
Hmmm
Wait Kristina has a laptop.
Do go find this old laptop of hers which currently has the sole purpose of letting Livy play an old arcade simpsons and pac land thru Mame and Amiga Lemmings thru an emulator on those occasions where she is too bored for a video and I wont let her play sims2 on my computer cos I'm using it for something important (like playing sims 2 myself... or BF2 or UO, or maybe, just maybe doing a uni assignment)
Anyway, lets put this disk in there. Corrupted wont even let us format. Throw it away.
Hmmm, I only have one floppy.
Wait, I know where there are some, rummage in old boxes and find some old floppies that Kristina had uni work teaching stuff on. Okay, format, corrupt, what's on this disk, cant read that, this one works, install the drivers. Oh wait, first we need that motherboard CD.
"this application cannot run on this operating system"
Kristinas laptop is running Windows ME ... and the motherboard disks little program wont even run on this. doh. okay, rummage thru those folders again.
Okay make driver disk... failed corrupt. Okay all these floppies are crap.
Pete rings Frog who was also coming around today but hadn't shown up yet. "Hey frog, got any floppies? Bring em around, etc. You got a floppy drive? Well hey, bring your whole computer...."
Anyway - as we are waiting for frog to rock up I find another floppy laying around in a drawer. lets try this one.
Viola it works! It actually works, a working floppy disk!
raid gets installed no worries.
we partition away, Pete gets annoyed at me for divvying up my 500Gb into 4 partitions.
I say , I like to organise my things...
he's like "folders man folders! that's all you need to be organised"
Yeah I know that realistically the partitions don't do much, but I prefer it that way.
Personal preference.
1 small partition for Windows XP and all the programs etc.
1 bigger partition for worky stuff, like uni work, work, important things.
1 bigger yet partition for games, temp files, swap files, and video capture/dvd ripping.
and then a huge 250gb partition for junk, downloads, pictures, movies, overflow etc.
It's just the way I like it!
Especially when it comes to defragging and backups (I know I dont wanna be defragging 500Gb everytime I wanna defrag my c drive).
Anyway, frog rocks up carrying his huge bloody monster tower as windows gets installed and we get to tell him, sorry, we dont need it.
poor frog.
anyway, we install windows, new drivers, macafee, sygate firewall, updates, etc & so forth and install the net stuff.
Seems the router Pete got of ebay for me was the wrong one so we need to use just my old adsl modem, but that's okay (if only we'd figured it out tho before i'd gone down to the garage to find my big ethernet cable... anyway)
and we are good to go! except for one thing.. No sound.
*sigh*
at that stage I think I know what the problem is... and decide to hold over til tomorrow to fix it
anyway, next day I'm off to the computer faire for a new keyboard (almost got the logitech g15... but instead i'll use that money for mikeys cot mattress), new mouse (just a generic microsoft 3 button optical, it's what I already had and I'm happy enough with it), tv/fm tuner card (got analog only since when I bought it I was thinking I WOULD get the G15 and thus get a cheaper tuner card -- sure they say they'll switch to digital only in a few years, but hey, I should have a new comp by then and I'm sure they really wont by then), and a DVD ROM drive. I really hadn't wanted an LG as I found the LG burner was the loudest component of my new computer, but it was the only decently priced thing I could find with a black face and I wasn't gunna wreck my new stylish machine by putting an ugly beige drive in the front of it...)
oh and I got a fan for the back of the comp, also a blue led coolermaster matching the front one perfectly, hehe
mmm blue glowy glow glow shabadoo....
my small concession to pimping up my pc, hehe
anyway, so I get home from computer faire, and pull apart the machine.
install new drive, tuner card, fan and I'm good to go, tempted to pull out the floppy drive and install the little power reader that came with the power supply but figure it looks like it could be a little tacky and i'll wait til some long term running without fail happens before I pull out that floppy drive.
So, now, to fix the sound.
from the front of the case for the front panel audio usb etc the audio thing we plugged in may have been the wrong one, there was a HD and some ACwhatever it was... basically the cord for the audio had two plugs. To plug it in we pulled off some little blue jumpers from the onboard motherboard audio plugs. Now alas I cant remember which one we plugged in. The ACwhatever it is is the right one, I know that. But maybe Pete plugged in the other one or maybe they are mislabelled.
Anyway, at this stage I just want sound so I unplug the font panel audio and put the blue jumpers back.
Then I spend the next... forever wrangling cables and using those cable ties of maggies.
basically unplugged EVERYTHING and replugged it back in so that stuff was neat.
Never has a case innards looked so neat. Everything snug and running out of the way and tucked into empty drive bay areas etc. mmmm airflow.
sata cables are much nicer than pata/ide ribbon cables... tho there are still them for floppy and cd drive... but they tuck away nicely.
I shoulda taken a photo. anyway, shut up case and try it out.
Sound works! yay, and tuner card and everything else.
And the computer has been running as such since. I know I need to get back in there and try that font panel audio plug again. But I'm happy enough at the moment with the rear audio (justa hassle swapping rom speakers to headphones) so I'm happy to wait til next time I Need to get in there and muck around inside it.
Soon i'm gunna check it for dust and see if it needs a clean so i'll try the front audio then.
Battlefield 2 runs damn nice. 2 GB ram does wonders.
Civ4 now takes mere seconds to load and stuff. I fired up a saved game from my old comp. It was a big map and i'd end up with MINUTES of it doing nothing while it took my through to my next turn. Now, scant moments.
I can play Civ4 while ripping DVD's even, heh
UO, mmmm hi res screen on 19" monitor means I dont have to crowd my play area with spell icons etc, and it runs like a madman! huge black space.
I havent tried any video capture from external sources, nor hooked up my old monitor as a 2nd monitor, but tv capture is nice (despite using rabbit ears thus a poor connection... our house aerial is crap)
I installed quake 4... OMG!
candy...
photoshop ... I pulled up a large pic and rotated it 90 degrees. on my old computer... i'd have to sit there and wait for it to think about doing so. Not anymore. Instant rotation. Bwahah!
ahhhhhh.
needless to say, I'm happy.
Ive only had one crash.
I used itunes to burn an audio cd from a playlist, I went away and came back to see my machine booting up... the cd worked tho. and while I havent burnt another audio cd from itunes as I havent needed to yet, I havent had any other problems. running probe and various other things tell me my temps are nice and low... so yeah. all glowy blue goodness.
I have not taken a proper pic of the final completed machine... but you can sorta see it in the background here:
ahh civ4, hehe
and here's what it looks like sans drives etc:
I had meant to order a black monitor, but stuffed up and forgot to specify that, turns out the were outta black anyway. and besides my other monitor is beige so who cares...
and I'm not yet convinced re lcds' and least not considering how much you'd pay for a 19" with a low enough latency for gaming and video etc...
Was all okay again once I got in there and de-dusted, but then when living at the inlaws the power here got shorted and nearly burnt the house down and my PC wasn't quite the same since. Anyway, long story short I think the RAM was a little flakey, the CPU a little fried, the video card dodgy, and the motherboard a bit loopy (including the CMOS battery dead etc, I had to reset bios anytime it was unplugged from mains and then spent forever tryingto get the VGA signal to be recognised etc and then using the rear USB or PCI card firewire would make the comp freeze, a problem for my external HD etc etc)
All in all, too much heat that past summer, a cheap (and possibly overloaded) power supply, and the power probs at the inlaws meant it just wasn't reliable... (eventually I had to put some old cheap ram in there to get it to POST)
So sure I mighta been able to do some heavy surgery and get it fixed but I figured best go for a new one.
So a few weekends ago I did so... mmmmm
I did alot of research online, being that my last computer I built in october 2002, I had some catching up to do.
I almost went for a storebought but after breaking it all down, I think I get more bang for my buck doing it myself.
So anyway, from a couple local computer fairs I bought me:
AMD Athlon X2 4200+ (Dual Core)
Asus A8N SLI Premium Motherboard
Leadtek 7800GT Video Card
LG DVD-ROM
LG DVD-RW Dual Layer
Leadtek TV Tuner Card (analog channels only)
Floppy Drive
Rear case fan for exhaust
Keyboard & Mouse (i was so close to getting a logitech G15 keyboard... but restrained myself)
as far as HDDs and RAM and the case etc there was nothing at the faires that i wanted/suited my needs so I ordered from an online store:
(I ordered from macotechnology, awesome customer service, rapid responses to questions/emails and the stuff arrived safe, sound, well packed and within a day of payment)
2 GB Corsair TWINX2048 3200C2 DDR RAM
2x 250GB WD2500KS HDD's in RAID 0
Coolermaster 550W RealPower PSU
Coolermaster mid Tower Centurion 532
Viewsonic G90F 19" CRT Monitor
and for an OS, last year my in laws got me a legit copy of WinXP for my birthday so:
Windows XP Professional SP2 $0
($0, the perfect price for microsoft products... hehe)
So anyway, having had certain portions of this beast sitting around for more than a week I eventually finished painting mikeys cot (I had promised to get that finished before building the machine) I had the weekend to spare on building the "Feen Machine IV"
Pete came round, and brought with him some nice software disks and we went to work on the kitchen table:
Now the case was interesting in that it is supposedly one of these "tool-less" cases. Now really, I didn't care much one way or the other for tool-lessness and of course it wasn't entirely tool-less, we still needed to screw in the motherboard etc etc... but that's sort of a given.
I got it cos it looked okay, had decent reviews, wasn't too flashy/gimmicky and the price was quite cheap for what seems to really be a fairly quality case.
The drive bays have these plastic clips that were interesting, and certainly it's nice to not have to screw them in.
The pci card things have little plastic clips too, but you can also still screw in which is good cos with that heavy video card that little plastic clip just didn't inspire confidence in the retention stakes. The tuner card tho, no worries.
So anyway, the little metal shields for the drive bays were a pain to snap off, took a lot of work ... but all okay, and I popped in the DVD burner and floppy drive. (I hadn't bought the DVD rom yet).
And I put in the power supply.
So by now Pete shows up, nicely in time for the real work...
so now, I plopped in the CPU to the Motherboard, and nervously affixed the cooler fan. Man those things are just too heavy and bulky and clippery to feel good about jamming it onto your CPU and MoBo... but anyway it all went fine.
Then popped the RAM in... and then we screwed in the motherboard to the case. So far so good.
mmm purdy
Then we plugged in the cables, or rather Pete started rushing ahead plugging in cables... then I started pulling them back out muttering "cable management, must be neat" and berating him for running that one over that one and that one under that one while I raid the supply of cable ties that Maggie left behind when they moved to the US...
Plug in the video card, the HDD's and all that jazz. By this stage I didn't actually have the extra fan, the extra DVD ROM drive, new keyboard/mouse, or the Tuner card.
Anyway, fired it up and ... it works! Wheeee
BIOS!
Now Pete has had more experience with bios stuff than me and I deferred to him for the most part, but I had also done a bunch of reading up and kept scaring the pants off him when I started fiddling with voltages and CAS latency and all this stuff but I held off making any real changes.... for now. Lets get it going at defaults then tweak later.
Now, you'll notice I have a floppy drive in there. Korens first reaction upon meeting my new computer was "What'd you bother with a floppy for?" etc etc... well. I bought two identical harddrives. I wanted to see if I could RAID0 them. Supposedly gives better performance and all that, while I'm not convinced of that fact, and wasn't too fussed whether they were RAIDed or not, I at least wanted to go thru the process of trying to set it up as a learning experience.
It ended up being only one of two real problems in the entire build process.
Stupid Floppys!! I have always hated them and always will.
Working as a CES case manager and then as an IT trainer person back in the day you have no idea how much I came to loathe Floppy drives... or at least loathe the concept of people who carry around a floppy with, say for instance, their only copy of their resume/application letter/life work and memoirs, then put it in a drive, open the file from A drive. Work on it from A drive, then save it to A drive, then take the floppy, pop it in their pocket and then move on. And Surprise surprise when the day comes that they pop that "trusty" floppy in a machine to work on their important file and it Doesnt Work!! - naturally it's their Only Copy!
Well, anyway, floppies suck. And the ONLY way to install RAID drivers during the windows install process is using a floppy!
(well, you can 'slipstream' windows XP... but for various reasons that wasn't an option for me)
Where does one get these drivers? Off the CD that comes with the motherboard.
Can one install the drivers off the CD. No, you need to get them from the CD to the floppy prior to making you computer...
Now sure it's less of an issue if you are installing windows on a HDDrive THEN setting RAID drives later. But I only had the two drives, wanted them as RAID, THEN install windows... so ...
old computer. insert MB drivers disk.
"This application does not recognise any hardware on this computer that is relevant to this CD" (or whatever the hell it was) ... so the autostart application on the CD chooses to NOT display Any options in it's menu other than... exit.
Fun... so I guess I can explore the CD and find the thing I want. Rummaging thru various folders I find what looks like a little app to make the driver disk.
So I dig out the ONE floppy disk I bought in advance for this purpose. and run this little prog which says insert disk, yadda yadda then appears to work but gives no feedback to that effect other than just stopping what it was doing and going back to the "create disk" window.
Sooo... lets get to the install windows part... smash f6 a million times at the right time to make sure it knows I wanna install 3rd party drivers etc....
put in floppy.
okay worries,
another step or two... insert that floppy again.
BahBUhhm
"widows does not recognise... blah blah... damaged... yah whatever..."
Okay, lets try again. nup.
Lets pop this disk back in the other machine and have a look.
Bzzzt chugga chugga chugga... A drive does nothing. You know all those annoying clunky floppy drive sounds you get when it's being an ass.
To be honest I think I may have used the floppy drive in my old computer about once of twice in it's 3 year or so history.
I don't think it ever really worked right...
It sure aint working right now...
hmmm
Pete, got yer laptop? "damn I took it out of my car Just before coming over"
Hmmm
Wait Kristina has a laptop.
Do go find this old laptop of hers which currently has the sole purpose of letting Livy play an old arcade simpsons and pac land thru Mame and Amiga Lemmings thru an emulator on those occasions where she is too bored for a video and I wont let her play sims2 on my computer cos I'm using it for something important (like playing sims 2 myself... or BF2 or UO, or maybe, just maybe doing a uni assignment)
Anyway, lets put this disk in there. Corrupted wont even let us format. Throw it away.
Hmmm, I only have one floppy.
Wait, I know where there are some, rummage in old boxes and find some old floppies that Kristina had uni work teaching stuff on. Okay, format, corrupt, what's on this disk, cant read that, this one works, install the drivers. Oh wait, first we need that motherboard CD.
"this application cannot run on this operating system"
Kristinas laptop is running Windows ME ... and the motherboard disks little program wont even run on this. doh. okay, rummage thru those folders again.
Okay make driver disk... failed corrupt. Okay all these floppies are crap.
Pete rings Frog who was also coming around today but hadn't shown up yet. "Hey frog, got any floppies? Bring em around, etc. You got a floppy drive? Well hey, bring your whole computer...."
Anyway - as we are waiting for frog to rock up I find another floppy laying around in a drawer. lets try this one.
Viola it works! It actually works, a working floppy disk!
raid gets installed no worries.
we partition away, Pete gets annoyed at me for divvying up my 500Gb into 4 partitions.
I say , I like to organise my things...
he's like "folders man folders! that's all you need to be organised"
Yeah I know that realistically the partitions don't do much, but I prefer it that way.
Personal preference.
1 small partition for Windows XP and all the programs etc.
1 bigger partition for worky stuff, like uni work, work, important things.
1 bigger yet partition for games, temp files, swap files, and video capture/dvd ripping.
and then a huge 250gb partition for junk, downloads, pictures, movies, overflow etc.
It's just the way I like it!
Especially when it comes to defragging and backups (I know I dont wanna be defragging 500Gb everytime I wanna defrag my c drive).
Anyway, frog rocks up carrying his huge bloody monster tower as windows gets installed and we get to tell him, sorry, we dont need it.
poor frog.
anyway, we install windows, new drivers, macafee, sygate firewall, updates, etc & so forth and install the net stuff.
Seems the router Pete got of ebay for me was the wrong one so we need to use just my old adsl modem, but that's okay (if only we'd figured it out tho before i'd gone down to the garage to find my big ethernet cable... anyway)
and we are good to go! except for one thing.. No sound.
*sigh*
at that stage I think I know what the problem is... and decide to hold over til tomorrow to fix it
anyway, next day I'm off to the computer faire for a new keyboard (almost got the logitech g15... but instead i'll use that money for mikeys cot mattress), new mouse (just a generic microsoft 3 button optical, it's what I already had and I'm happy enough with it), tv/fm tuner card (got analog only since when I bought it I was thinking I WOULD get the G15 and thus get a cheaper tuner card -- sure they say they'll switch to digital only in a few years, but hey, I should have a new comp by then and I'm sure they really wont by then), and a DVD ROM drive. I really hadn't wanted an LG as I found the LG burner was the loudest component of my new computer, but it was the only decently priced thing I could find with a black face and I wasn't gunna wreck my new stylish machine by putting an ugly beige drive in the front of it...)
oh and I got a fan for the back of the comp, also a blue led coolermaster matching the front one perfectly, hehe
mmm blue glowy glow glow shabadoo....
my small concession to pimping up my pc, hehe
anyway, so I get home from computer faire, and pull apart the machine.
install new drive, tuner card, fan and I'm good to go, tempted to pull out the floppy drive and install the little power reader that came with the power supply but figure it looks like it could be a little tacky and i'll wait til some long term running without fail happens before I pull out that floppy drive.
So, now, to fix the sound.
from the front of the case for the front panel audio usb etc the audio thing we plugged in may have been the wrong one, there was a HD and some ACwhatever it was... basically the cord for the audio had two plugs. To plug it in we pulled off some little blue jumpers from the onboard motherboard audio plugs. Now alas I cant remember which one we plugged in. The ACwhatever it is is the right one, I know that. But maybe Pete plugged in the other one or maybe they are mislabelled.
Anyway, at this stage I just want sound so I unplug the font panel audio and put the blue jumpers back.
Then I spend the next... forever wrangling cables and using those cable ties of maggies.
basically unplugged EVERYTHING and replugged it back in so that stuff was neat.
Never has a case innards looked so neat. Everything snug and running out of the way and tucked into empty drive bay areas etc. mmmm airflow.
sata cables are much nicer than pata/ide ribbon cables... tho there are still them for floppy and cd drive... but they tuck away nicely.
I shoulda taken a photo. anyway, shut up case and try it out.
Sound works! yay, and tuner card and everything else.
And the computer has been running as such since. I know I need to get back in there and try that font panel audio plug again. But I'm happy enough at the moment with the rear audio (justa hassle swapping rom speakers to headphones) so I'm happy to wait til next time I Need to get in there and muck around inside it.
Soon i'm gunna check it for dust and see if it needs a clean so i'll try the front audio then.
Battlefield 2 runs damn nice. 2 GB ram does wonders.
Civ4 now takes mere seconds to load and stuff. I fired up a saved game from my old comp. It was a big map and i'd end up with MINUTES of it doing nothing while it took my through to my next turn. Now, scant moments.
I can play Civ4 while ripping DVD's even, heh
UO, mmmm hi res screen on 19" monitor means I dont have to crowd my play area with spell icons etc, and it runs like a madman! huge black space.
I havent tried any video capture from external sources, nor hooked up my old monitor as a 2nd monitor, but tv capture is nice (despite using rabbit ears thus a poor connection... our house aerial is crap)
I installed quake 4... OMG!
candy...
photoshop ... I pulled up a large pic and rotated it 90 degrees. on my old computer... i'd have to sit there and wait for it to think about doing so. Not anymore. Instant rotation. Bwahah!
ahhhhhh.
needless to say, I'm happy.
Ive only had one crash.
I used itunes to burn an audio cd from a playlist, I went away and came back to see my machine booting up... the cd worked tho. and while I havent burnt another audio cd from itunes as I havent needed to yet, I havent had any other problems. running probe and various other things tell me my temps are nice and low... so yeah. all glowy blue goodness.
I have not taken a proper pic of the final completed machine... but you can sorta see it in the background here:
ahh civ4, hehe
and here's what it looks like sans drives etc:
I had meant to order a black monitor, but stuffed up and forgot to specify that, turns out the were outta black anyway. and besides my other monitor is beige so who cares...
and I'm not yet convinced re lcds' and least not considering how much you'd pay for a 19" with a low enough latency for gaming and video etc...
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