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  1. Mercutio

    Installing a microphone

    If it was onboard sound... A lot of hardware defaults to using those Mic and Line-In connectors for surronud and center/LFE channels for surround audio. Usually there's a program to change the jack function someplace.
  2. Mercutio

    XP repair 'mare

    You need to play along with the installation a bit more. IIRC, you choose to install Windows on the hard disk, select the drive, get "Please Wait While the installer Scans your disk for other Windows installations..." It finds your install and says "Do you want to overwrite or repair?" Maybe...
  3. Mercutio

    SATA 250GB HDD / 2 drives RAID 0 Win XP Pro SP1a no go

    >smacks forehead< Did you look into the (essentially zero) impact RAID0 would have on your gaming? Or the deleterious consequences of a failed array?
  4. Mercutio

    Ever deepening hatred for WD

    Then why was WD building a 5400rpm drive that could compete with slower 7200rpm models of the same generation (e.g. Seagate, Samsung and Maxtor drives of that generation)?
  5. Mercutio

    64-Bit WinXP Beta Available to General Public

    So, I just noticed that the 64-bit extensions Intel has made available with Prescott CPUs are in fact compatible with AMD's x86-64. Which means they'll use the same "Windows for 64-bit Extended Editions" that Athlon64s do. This seems to be a rare time in recent memory where common sense has...
  6. Mercutio

    Credit Card Obnoxiousness

    I have a weird thing happening to me: Since December, I've tried to make a number of purchases online with the debit card for my personal bank account. Shirts and undies from Sears.com. Renewing online pr0n memberships (renew as in, "they took my info in the past and all was well"). The odd...
  7. Mercutio

    Ever deepening hatred for WD

    My personal theory is that WD's more-or-less insistence on best-in-class (for the most part, anyway) performance has led to parts that wear out very quickly. All of my drives were running 24x7 for at least a month prior to failure. (And, as a digression, pretty much every drive I've used for...
  8. Mercutio

    SATA 250GB HDD / 2 drives RAID 0 Win XP Pro SP1a no go

    One thing you might try is installing a simpler OS - Windows 98, say, or maybe Windows 2000 (depending on what that controller supports) - on your array. If 98 works and XP doesn't, it's fair to suggest that your RAID hardware is OK and you'll need to examine your actions during the XP install...
  9. Mercutio

    Ever deepening hatred for WD

    I seem to remember hearing something similar in Intro to Statistics. SR's reliability database works best for anecdotal data, but I'd love to, for example, get ahold of Newegg's RMA rates for hard disks, instead. ... now that I think of it, has anyone ever asked a company like newegg for that...
  10. Mercutio

    Installing a microphone

    Did you check the properties for recording volume and recording source?
  11. Mercutio

    New Toy - High Resolution - Text Too Small

    Display Properties > Settings > Advanced > General Tab > DPI Setting 120dpi is probably fine. You can try custom sizes but they tend to make the various windows widgets look funny.
  12. Mercutio

    Ever deepening hatred for WD

    My collection from 2003 consisted of nine WD drives, from 600ABs to 2000JB. By the end of the year, WD had issued me 14 RMAs, eventually impacting every WD drive I owned.
  13. Mercutio

    What the heck do you do? Anything?

    It's probably well-fed on whatever the heck gets dropped/spilled in there, and it's protected from predators and the elements. Its life could be worse. Just the same, I think I'd ask the humane society what to do about it.
  14. Mercutio

    Ever deepening hatred for WD

    Plus there's the fact that they only give me the ones that break. Is there a way to tell that by the label?
  15. Mercutio

    UT 2K4

    It looks surprisingly good - and runs really well - on an XP1800M/Radeon 9100. The vehicles are #$%# impossible to control. :(
  16. Mercutio

    Where are you on the political spectrum (test)?

    Hm. I'm the least moderate person here. That's interesting. And probably not surprising. Some of time's concerns are addressed in the FAQ. Anyway, I'm familiar with LiamC's reference, but inasmuch as I would like to ascribe King Asshat with true, diabolic evil (in D&D terms "lawful evil" =...
  17. Mercutio

    $29 GA-7VRXP

    I have a bunch of XP1600 and 1700 chips laying around, the result of regular upgrades and a mistake, at one point, in ordering. So I've been looking for a low-cost, high-quality motherboard to pair with my extra chips. Today I noticed this . It's shipped free, and I know from experience that...
  18. Mercutio

    UT 2K4

    I'm still PO'd that the full version of the original UT didn't use the same "Morpheus" level from the UT demo (specifically, the weapon/powerup mix is different).
  19. Mercutio

    DVD audio burning

    Did you ever get this going, Bozo?
  20. Mercutio

    Ever deepening hatred for WD

    <rant> Has anyone been forced to be in the same room with a recent-vintage *JB drive? I'm talking about the 1600JB, 2000JB or 2500JB, here, not the original 80 - 120GB models. I have two of the 250GB models and one 160GB (all, at this point, have "refurbished" stickers on them, by the way)...
  21. Mercutio

    Vday

    Today I was in a retail establishment where a salesman kept following me around and asking if I had purchased a present for my "sweetie". He didn't take me seriously when I explained the particulars of my situation, and continued to pester me. I didn't touch him. Didn't say a word. Just backed...
  22. Mercutio

    Where are you on the political spectrum (test)?

    I dunno. I'm kind of glad that he continues to wear pants.
  23. Mercutio

    Where are you on the political spectrum (test)?

    Economic Left/Right: -8.50 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.13
  24. Mercutio

    Mozilla Firebird is now Firefox

    One thing that I notice is that FireFox is much better about cleaning up after itself. A week ago I said I had a Firebird process using 1.2GB of RAM+swap, with lots of open tabs. Opening a similarly large group of tabs with FireFox and RAM usage is stable at around 550MB. Comparing between them...
  25. Mercutio

    BIOS setting wrong CPU speed

    Depending on what revision of which R/AXP board you get, there will be one or two DIP switches to switch between 100, 133 and 166MHz operation. It's pretty clearly indicated in both the manual and the setup poster that comes with the board. One of the things I really like about gigabyte boards...
  26. Mercutio

    Tools to make Gecko browsers rule even more

    Session Saver for FireFox saves your open tabs when you close the browser.
  27. Mercutio

    Vday

    The problem with that attitude, Tannin, is that the holiday does hold meaning for me. It's easy to sit back and not give a shit about xmas. I don't believe in that. I believe in the idea of Valentine's day. I love the idea of having a special day to celebrate romantic love. I don't care about...
  28. Mercutio

    Music

    Interesting Blues Track (2.2MB, MP3). I heard this on the radio on the way home from a job the other day. The steelworkers in my classes think it's fairly profound.
  29. Mercutio

    Splash: What are you using for new systems at work?

    As far as I recall, the G100 and G200 were released at the same time in... 1998, I think. They were both the subject of massive print advertising campaigns, and they were both lauded as excellent products, because they were. IIRC the main differences between G100 and G200 were memory capacity...
  30. Mercutio

    Vday

    I think there's a real pressure for those who don't have any body. You go to the market and there's roses and hearts everywhere, and I can remember the times it was a special day, but this year it's just "Saturday", and I'm pretty much going to work through it, thinking the whole time that I'm...
  31. Mercutio

    Mozilla Firebird is now Firefox

    Some programs guard those file associations, like ACDSee. And on XP, it doesn't matter much anyway, since the default action is to preview with the fax viewer (just another reason to hate XP, IMO).
  32. Mercutio

    What about Howard Dean?

    Maybe he'll save us the trouble and just give up now.
  33. Mercutio

    Onboard vs. PCI sound and LAN

    ... and therein lies the problem. AC97 receives 44.1 input from, say, an audio CD. This is digital if it's coming through audio extraction or a SPDIF cable. It immediately converts that digital stream to 48kHz. This is the mangling. Once the conversion to 48kHz has been completed, the sound...
  34. Mercutio

    DVD audio burning

    For an audio CD, you'd probably have to convert the AC3 to PCM first. Vdub or FlaskMPEG can do that. I saw an article about homebrew DTS CDs a while back, so if your DVD has a DTS track, and you're working with a sophisticated CD player you can actually keep the fully audio quality of the DVD...
  35. Mercutio

    Onboard vs. PCI sound and LAN

    The upsampling is a digital-to-digital conversion that happens before a DAC gets ahold of anything to convert. Your data arrives pre-mangled, so to speak, even if it's being shot out a SPDIF to an external DAC afterward.
  36. Mercutio

    Vday

    Valentine's day a hard time for anyone else?
  37. Mercutio

    Onboard vs. PCI sound and LAN

    A better question than "why would you want to listen to 44.1kHz upsampled to 48kHz when you can listen to unadulterated 44.1?" A lot of devices that handle digital audio expect a 44.1 digital stream. e.g. Stereo component CD burners, minidisc recorders. AC97 is not cool if you really care...
  38. Mercutio

    Wired Cricket Balls to Enhance Play

    They were better when they had some dark meat in them. :( i, what's your /. ID?
  39. Mercutio

    Lacie 40GB USB 2.0 5,400 RPM External

    Not nearly enough tape on the box. It's sort of a let down. :) The drive itself is pretty cool. It's a notebook drive in a sealed enclosure. It doesn't make noise, and it's very, very light. Why ever did you get rid of it, C?
  40. Mercutio

    Diagnostic tools

    I don't find software-based diagnostics to be useful, generally. I've seen way too many false positives out of the tools I've used. I do use Belarc Advisor when I'm too lazy to open a PC up to find out what hardware I'm dealing with. Very useful, since it can usually ID the system board.
  41. Mercutio

    In search of a super-firewall

    I buy Sonicwall stuff off ebay for maybe $.20 on the dollar, but the products that are readily available there don't handle bandwidth allocation. I've never used the high-end Pro models that do. Free solution: Smoothwall + Squid on a Linux box. Run your own mail server + procmail or the like...
  42. Mercutio

    Mozilla Firebird is now Firefox

    Since "Firefox" is a series of fantasy novels and a really bad Clint Eastwood movie, you can bet it's coming.
  43. Mercutio

    Splash: What are you using for new systems at work?

    IMO Matrox has priced itself out of mainstream markets. If they made a modern equivalent to the G100 I'd buy them day and night. :( IMO you'd be just as well off with a dual-head something-or-other and a PCI video card.
  44. Mercutio

    What about Howard Dean?

    No. I don't like him. There's just nothing compelling about him, other than the fact that he isn't Bush, and I see that as an enormous weakness (the "nothing compelling" part). The problem with Clarke is that he hasn't convinced anyone of his bona-fides as a Democrat. Dems tend to be...
  45. Mercutio

    [NEWS] Dilbert mocks ATI and nVidia

    So, is this evidence of ironic postmodern commentary on the nature of Dilbert's monological dissertation viz. the fleeting imagery associated with the production of 21st Century heteronormative diversionary behaviors? Or is it just a broken link?
  46. Mercutio

    [NEWS] Notebooks using desktop Prescott processors

    This happens every single time a new intel chip gets released, and not just with second-tier guys. I've seen Compaq (third tier in all our hearts, yet sadly first in sales) retail notebooks with desktop P4s in them. ... in fact, I think I posted something about an Alienware laptop I ran into...
  47. Mercutio

    NYT on the stupidity of everyone we know

    I figure this is pretty much the waking life of every single person who might be motivated to visit StorageForum.
  48. Mercutio

    Splash: What are you using for new systems at work?

    Don't you hate it when you've just gotten into your bunny suit and walked into the class 4 clean room, and then realized you hafta take a leak?
  49. Mercutio

    5.1 vs 4.1 speakers

    The center is IMO more important than the left and right surround. I like the increased directional separation and and having the full pan from left to right. You can listen four yourself to the difference with most 5.1-capable receivers if you really want to.
  50. Mercutio

    RAID 0 - a call for a metareview

    My least favorite combination was those stupid low-end Colorado drives combined with Arcserve on a Netware 3 server. If you could get the stupid NLM to not abend your machine, the ^%$^$ing tape drive was almost certain to screw you over.
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