 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
"scott" <sco### [at] scott com> wrote:
> > I'm looking at a Samsung 22" SyncMaster 2243wm. What I love is the
> > 1680x1050
> > resolution. I'm a LaTeX freak and for the first time I can see two
> > 800x1000
> > portrait windows that show me the source and a full page that don't
> > overlap.
>
> Check that you can return the monitor if you have dead/bright pixels (or at
> least check it before you hand over the cash). I got two Samsungs recently
> and they both had bright pixels quite near the center of the screen.
It's a work PC, but I seem to have 1,764,000 functioning pixels.
JimT
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
OK, so I popped in the AGP Radeon 3850 board, and a new 500W power
supply, because I knew the 320 watt that had been keeping my computer up
and running was woefully inadequate for the graphics card. The new
supply had a 24-pin ATX connector and my motherboard had a good ol'
classic 20 pin connector. From the looks of it, the 24-pin beastie was
designed to be "Universal" or so the manual states. Just line up the
litte locking lug thinamajig and good to go. Hook in the additional 12v
connector to the main board and connect the PCIe connector to the
graphics card. Only the board is 8 pin and the power supply is a 6 pin.
No problem, they have an adaptor that will connect to the board's 8 pin
to 2 molex connectors. Just get one from each molex-chain and I'll be
good to go. Flip the hard switch on the power supply (no smoke, yet...
that's a good sign!) and punch the "On" button on the front of the
computer. Success! It boots. Load up Vista, which has taken on the
default resolution, and the computer promptly locks hard.
Hmm. Not good.
Reboot, and ... Nothing! Really not good.
Fine, power down, make sure everything is seated well, and power up.
Nothing for a few seconds (pretty normal for this motherboard on a cold
boot) then I hear something from the speakers. So, I turn the speakers
up.... It's a scratchy, poorly sampled, female voice stating repeatedly
something that sounds astonishingly like "System failed CPU check"
Oh, crap! the new PSU fried the processor. crap crap crap. OK, maybe
it's something else. In desperation, I yank the plugs from the new PSU,
plug in the old PSU, and power up the computer. Same result. :( Double
not good. My face turned pale, my wife kept asking if there was anything
she could get me. "A new computer?"
Hmmm. Vexing. So, I put back in the old video card. Fire up the system,
same disheartening result. Auggh. Wife pulls up the dell site, and hands
me her card. "Just buy it" After arguing back and forth about purchasing
a computer we can't afford on HER credit card (our main emergency card)
I finally sit at her computer. As a last ditch, I keyed in Asus and the
audio message I was hearing. Someone made a post on a Quicken forum (of
all things) about forgetting to plug in the power supply to the video
card. Aha! I intentionally didn't plug it in in an effort to speed
things up when I put the old card in. So, I go back, plug it in and the
system boots. Now, why won't the new card work?
Swap in the new card. Notice that it's precariously close to my old HDTV
tuner that I haven't used since I finally bought a real HDTV. OK, that
card can go. New card seems to fit well, so I tie it down, plug the
power connectors in and hook up the new PSU. System boots.
I installed the drivers, and fired up Spore, which ran just fine. Nice
and smooth on the movies, too. Good. good. Run the little Vista
Experience test, and the system goes from 4 to 2.9 the Aero rating was a
2.9 Hmmm. Well, I knew there were problems with Vista and this
particular card, and handily ATI released a hotfix just for this
situation. Started that install and went to bed.
Woke up, did some finishing touches, ran spore again. The intro video to
the cell stage was glassy smooth. Niiice. Everything was definitely
smoother. Everything was automatically cranked to max, too, in the
settings dialog. Thanks for that :) Though it does expose the CPU bottle
neck, since it procedurally generates textures, creatures, buildings and
other things still have a basic color for a few seconds.
But, Spore was not the reason for this video card. Oh, no ... Spore only
requires DX9. I wanted it for something that supports DX10. FSX. So,
this morning I fired up FSX and cranked the sliders to medium-high, just
to see what it did and it ran .... reasonably well. Again, exposing some
of the bottle-necks expected on an aging AGP system.
I have yet to enable DX10 support... So, I'll have to try that later.
But I'm happy, if a little shaken by the whole installation nightmare.
In retrospect, "System failed CPU check" was probably "System failed
video check" ...
I much prefer the characteristic 2 long beeps followed by 4 short beeps.
I at least KNOW what that is, and it isn't subject to a subjective
interpretation of poorly sampled speech.
The good thing is, even with the GPU-hungry FSX my new power supply ran
as cool as can be.
--
~Mike
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
"Mike Raiford" <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:48e6119b$1@news.povray.org...
>
> But I'm happy, if a little shaken by the whole installation nightmare.
Not fun.
Worst I had was not seating the CPU properly then switching the machine on.
The system did nothing. No beeps, nothing on screen, zip.
>
> I much prefer the characteristic 2 long beeps followed by 4 short beeps. I
> at least KNOW what that is, and it isn't subject to a subjective
> interpretation of poorly sampled speech.
Do you, by any chance remember what a single beep signifies?
I'm getting it intermittently from one of my machines on startup.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48e3a9aa$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>> Yes. 32 and 64 apps running fine. That's games, graphics stuff, dev
>> stuff. I've had no problems with apps at all.
>
> Good to know. I was just thinking about how I'm going to upgrade my aging
> machine.
I have however had problems with drivers, even ones that are supposed to
work on Vista 64.
Ever since I installed the wireless network card and drivers, my machine
frequently hangs on bootup. They're supposed to work, but I get the feeling
it was a half-done job for an older card.
> Has anyone used an XBox as a media center extender on Vista? I've still
> got an N64 and a 15-year-old TV downstairs. Time to upgrade that too
> maybe.
No. On my list of things to do is to 'persuade' the Xbox to talk to the
Server 2003 machine.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Gail wrote:
> Do you, by any chance remember what a single beep signifies?
> I'm getting it intermittently from one of my machines on startup.
Depends on the motherboard. On most "modern" systems that don't have a
POST beep, it usually means the BIOS has a message on-screen. it could
be as simple as a keyboard error, or something like a message stating
the processor was overclocked too much (Yes-- I've seen it, no I didn't
overclock, I think CMOS memory got junked somewhere along the way.)
But, check with the OEM or board manufacturer for any codes.
Of course, on some systems there's a beep on start-up if everything is
fine.
--
~Mike
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Gail wrote:
> Ever since I installed the wireless network card and drivers, my machine
> frequently hangs on bootup.
Wireless seems to be a bugaboo for everyone, which is rather surprising
to me.
Interestingly (at least mildly so), my machine has been hanging trying
to log out, with some compute-bound process locking up for 2 or 3
minutes when I log out. I finally got around to replacing a failing DVD
drive, and all of a sudden, it's not failing again. I wonder how much of
the "My Windows slows down over time" kind of complaint is just hardware
that's wearing out and causing hangs during retries in places where the
kernel really doesn't need to be waiting for retries.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
"Mike Raiford" <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:48e63bfd$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Depends on the motherboard. On most "modern" systems that don't have a
> POST beep, it usually means the BIOS has a message on-screen. it could be
> as simple as a keyboard error, or something like a message stating the
> processor was overclocked too much (Yes-- I've seen it, no I didn't
> overclock, I think CMOS memory got junked somewhere along the way.)
The screen's black at the time, so no message
> But, check with the OEM or board manufacturer for any codes.
Intel board, intel processor.
I'll search their site, see if anything comes up. I should have the manual
for it somewhere.
> Of course, on some systems there's a beep on start-up if everything is
> fine.
This is intemittant, so...
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Gail wrote:
>
> Not fun.
> Worst I had was not seating the CPU properly then switching the machine
> on. The system did nothing. No beeps, nothing on screen, zip.
1999 oslt, I had just fried ~half of my summer-job payment to new
hardware (AMD K6-2 350MHz, MoBo, 128MiB SDRAM DIMM etc). I carefully
loaded the set to my case, checked everything and re-checked everything.
I flipped the switch and the light at the ceiling of the room came out.
That kind of... hmm.. freaked me out a bit.
--
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
http://www.zbxt.net
aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
A peace of advice:
1) You may want a 64-bit Windows, if u r gonna use Windows, on 4G system
since is a tricky business to get Windows XP/(maybe Vista) 32-bit to
recognize 3+ GB of RAM even 2+ GB 'coz of the PAE (Physical Address
Extension) support on motherboards and their ability to successfully
remap hardware addresses above the 4 GB limit and keep device drivers
still working properly.
2) Don't forget to buy memory modules in even pair(s) to enable
Dual-Channel and Dynamic Page mode on a Intel platform.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Here's what I ordered today:
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
* Xigmatek HDT-S1283 CPU cooler
* Asus P5Q-E motherboard
* Corsair 4GB DDR2 800
* 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB 7200RPM drives (for RAID1 configuration)
* Asus EN9800GT video card
* Samsung 22X DVD burner
* Antec Three Hundred case
* Antec 850W power supply
* Samsung 2232BW+ 22" LCD
* Window Vista Ultimate 64-bit
It should be pretty sweet, so long as everything plays nice together. We'll see when
it all gets here...
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
