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  1. Mercutio

    WinXP third party drivers without a f*&%ing floppy

    It can't. What you COULD do is slipstream the drivers you need into an XP install directory, and work from that.
  2. Mercutio

    Best 2D Graphics card for $100

    I bought 16 G450 dualheads for $30 apiece today. :P Honestly, I don't believe that any manufacturer in consumer space is making nvidia-based cards with an emphasis on visual quality. Yes, I'm biased as all hell. I'm also right. :P Really, you want an nvidia card with decent output quality, I...
  3. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Still waiting for a justification of this statement.
  4. Mercutio

    Athlon64 3000 - who's taking the $215 plunge?

    Just to follow up... After some investigation, I discovered that the problem on both of the DFI boards I bought was caused by extra-long bits of "flash" from the soldered traces on the back of the board. These little spikes were just touching the motherboard tray on the chassis. Since I...
  5. Mercutio

    New Tecra (Mercutio probably vomits)

    By the time that happens, HDDVD will be available and... BooST bought some kind of Falcon Northwest boutique fancypants laptop. The hard disk, at least in the T-series notebook, is easily replaceable. Since the R is a hefty beast in comparison - more room to work, I'm sure you'll be OK. The...
  6. Mercutio

    New Firefox out

    I installed it on about 20 PCs today, then found that I couldn't hit texturizer or mozdev for updates. Guess they were too busy? I notice that both it and IE6.xp2 seem to use the same system of putting program information in windows right below the address bar now. I like that. I also like the...
  7. Mercutio

    P4 2.4C Northwood 800mhz, i865PE mobo, Audigy2 ZS

    I'll even buy the board and chip if you'll sell at that price.
  8. Mercutio

    One PC stops entire network

    The NT Server and the router, maybe?
  9. Mercutio

    Windows Media Player: which version is best?

    Part of the license agreement for MP9 was to give microsoft the right to inspect the contents of your hard drive. Offline content or no, I'd call that a security concern.
  10. Mercutio

    New Tecra (Mercutio probably vomits)

    Tannin, will you do yourself a favor and at least LOOK at the IBM stuff? And the clam chowder I had for dinner tonight didn't taste very good the second time.
  11. Mercutio

    Athlon64 3000 - who's taking the $215 plunge?

    Very sensible and utterly unable to boot windows, no matter what I try. Wow. What a great product. Knoppix starts OK at least. :)
  12. Mercutio

    Athlon64 3000 - who's taking the $215 plunge?

    I'd say the S3 Unichrome graphics product looks at least as good as a low-end nvidia-based card. To me they are acceptable, even at 1280x1024.
  13. Mercutio

    One PC stops entire network

    I've seen bad NICs take down whole segments. But that's generally not something that's intermittant. Browser election problems wouldn't cause ping to stop working. Mark's DHCP server scenario sounds really good though. Maybe someone has an 802.11 AP plugged in someplace that had to be reset...
  14. Mercutio

    Shuttle RMA Service

    Shuttle gave me a real hassle about not returning a board to the vendor during the first year of warranty. I had to argue that I had no idea where the board came from (pulled it out of someone's home PC), and I was asking for warrranty service based on dates I found on the PCB. IIRC the board I...
  15. Mercutio

    Athlon64 3000 - who's taking the $215 plunge?

    Bought a couple DFI K8M800-MLVF boards last week (u-ATX integrated everything). We'll see how these are. DFI boards aren't terribly exciting, but this one has a comfortable number of big caps and a VERY sensible layout.
  16. Mercutio

    Windows Media Player: which version is best?

    There's no compelling reason to switch. If nothing else, after 6.4, the new versions just get uglier and uglier, on top of the DRM functionality and the native support for ripping only to crappy .WMA format.
  17. Mercutio

    Samsung HDD running at 110F/43C?

    That's about 5 degrees warmer than any Samsung drive I have, and a lot of mine are sandwiched five in a row in cases with no active drive cooling.
  18. Mercutio

    Best 2D Graphics card for $100

    Blah blah blah nvidia crap blah blah Solid Linux support? Awesome 2D? You want a Matrox card. Find yourself a G450 and bask in the warmth of its greatness.
  19. Mercutio

    Chopper to pluck returning space capsule in mid-air

    I think on the scale we're dealing with, the dynamics might as well be fluid. Air currents to something that weighs thousandths of a gram are anything but insubstantial.
  20. Mercutio

    GMAIL Invite

    David's picture reminds me of something I saw linked through slashdot.
  21. Mercutio

    Chopper to pluck returning space capsule in mid-air

    When you think about what a hard drive actually does, it's positively mind-boggling that they work as well as they do. You've got read-write heads travelling microns above a surface spinning at buzz-saw speeds for hours, days, weeks or months at a time, without so much as a single, disasterous...
  22. Mercutio

    Best GPU for $100

    I was pointing out that the ATI card is pretty much a bargain in comparison. That's all.
  23. Mercutio

    BIOS Issues...

    Grounding problem. Ha! Knew it. :)
  24. Mercutio

    Chopper to pluck returning space capsule in mid-air

    Pretty much all our early rockets blew up on the pad, too. Engineers get to make very expensive mistakes, don't they?
  25. Mercutio

    Best GPU for $100

    If you look at those benchmarks, some of the 9550-series cards actually perform better than 9800SEs in some tests.
  26. Mercutio

    can of worms

    An IT manage at one of the area's casinos came to my office to take some Cisco exams late last year. We were talking about SANs, since I had a book on my desk on the subject, and he told me about *his* experience trying to use Raptors instead of SCSI drives in a cost-saving effort for his SAN...
  27. Mercutio

    Best GPU for $100

    To be fair, I did specify non-SE, didn't I? time posted this roundup of current video card performance specs a couple weeks ago. 5700s are more or less on par with 9600s. For $100 you could buy P5's Rosewell card AND one of those Zalman heatpipe GPU coolers. Not a bad plan, actually, since...
  28. Mercutio

    Best GPU for $100

    There's no good reason to buy a 256MB card. Buy the (non-SE) 128MB version for under $100 and be happy. For that matter, the 9550 is even a little cheaper yet - around $80 for the decent-performing 128bit version - and is probably good enough for anyone in the sub-$100 range.
  29. Mercutio

    GMAIL Invite

    Thank you to timwhit for the invite as well.
  30. Mercutio

    GMAIL Invite

    Amazingly, I got mercutio1@ So that's not too horrible. Plus I have a nice 1GB mounted filesystem for my linux machines.
  31. Mercutio

    can of worms

    IIRC they announced a 200GB model some time ago. Haven't seen it. Actually, Samsung's been REALLY smart about their selection of drives. I couldn't sell a 200GB drive to someone else if my life depended on it. The demand REALLY isn't there, no matter what I personally think. The other guys...
  32. Mercutio

    can of worms

    160GB drives are a respectable capacity, Lunar. The Maxtor 200s are cheaper in $/GB but it's a close thing and the big Maxtors get HOT. Honestly my disk collection has hit a wall at about 6TB because I can't bring myself to buy 250GB drives to replace 160s.
  33. Mercutio

    can of worms

    Where's Samsung? I'd pick Hitachi.
  34. Mercutio

    GMAIL Invite

    Might as well. I can be mercutio12345567 if I hurry.
  35. Mercutio

    Socket 478 System Advice

    The P4 533MHz Northwood 2.4GHz chip can pretty reliably hit 3.2GHz and is one of the cheapest P4 CPUs you can buy.
  36. Mercutio

    Dogmatic thinking is ignorant

    You know Greg, about the 500,000 time someone calls you a "traitor" for not agreeing with the appointed leader of this country, you start to think that maybe, just maybe, there really isn't enough common ground. I'll stand by my earlier estimation. I think there's something wrong with anyone...
  37. Mercutio

    BIOS Issues...

    On a gigabyte board, the second bios is read only. So you'll always have at least a minimal level of functionality. It's certainly not a bad thing.
  38. Mercutio

    BIOS Issues...

    Your better motherboards have a second BIOS to keep stuff like that from happening. Check to make sure your motherboard isn't in electrical contact with the chassis.
  39. Mercutio

    SD or AXDA?

    You either need an AD domain or you don't. Lots of small and midsize businesses don't. I know a lot of places that still have Netware 3 and 4 servers, or run their "server" on a 98 machine. I wouldn't call Samba's functionality as a DC a limitation. It *can* participate as a domain controller in...
  40. Mercutio

    NCQ

    It's something that's of high value to network file/db servers and other devices with an expected high disk load and multiple users. I wouldn't expect it to be that useful on a single-user desktop PC.
  41. Mercutio

    nforce2 Audio strangeness

    Nope. It drops and stays dropped. Forever until I reinstall completely (generally ghost it back). Perhaps I should've said a driver/hardware problem. The nforce APU and associated drivers are held in common between each system, after all. And it's happened with every revision of the nvidia...
  42. Mercutio

    nforce2 Audio strangeness

    Here's an odd thing: I have two machines with nforce chipsets. One is a 2000 Server and has an nforce2 board. The other is running 2003 server on an nforce 220. Both use digital sound outputs. What I've noticed is that periodically on BOTH machines, the volume level of audio output drops...
  43. Mercutio

    Athlon64 3000 - who's taking the $215 plunge?

    It appears that in the case of at least one of my Albatron failures, the BIOS battery literally explodede I didn't notice the scarring on the inside of my chassis when I pulled the old board out, but boy is it visible now. Weird.
  44. Mercutio

    KaZaA Lite sites all down

    I've had pretty good luck with googling for "Kazaa Lite Resurection". I I've also seen older versions on the eDonkey network and on torrent sites like suprnova. Not that I ever go there or use horrible, bad, evil programs liek that. ;)
  45. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Let's put it this way: There is an association in my mind between gun owners and some really unsavory things. In the midwest we have these very unusual things called "Militias". Like the kind Timothy McVeigh belonged to. Now, these guys aren't all out to topple the UN Shadow Government or...
  46. Mercutio

    I found a way to get a free 4GB/20GB IPOD MP3 player..

    Only one taker for the iPod porn? Man you guys are a buncha prudes.
  47. Mercutio

    Athlon64 3000 - who's taking the $215 plunge?

    Does that mean you've taken the plunge, Buck? I got two of my Albatron boards back today. Man, if these don't work out for me their replacements will be available free of charge in the forsale forum.
  48. Mercutio

    SD or AXDA?

    ftp.cdrom.com It was a P100 with 500GB of storage in 1995 or so. At its peak it was serving terabytes of files daily. It ran freeBSD, and yes, it was a testment to what a commodity PC could do. And yes, for those who don't know it, if your file server is built properly, a P100 with 64MB RAM...
  49. Mercutio

    80 MB/sec not enough on today's SCSI controllers?

    Didja notice a big difference with your Ultra133 controller on that Athlon64 from the Ultra100 on your old Tyan? Really, all that U320 added were pretty much limited to datacenter level technologies. The workstation you're using at home does NOT need the refinements made to domain validation or...
  50. Mercutio

    80 MB/sec not enough on today's SCSI controllers?

    Andy: You don't need more STR. Almost no one needs more STR. Unless you're multiplexing realtime AV streams or spend most of your day moving CD Images between drives, you probably don't, either. High STR helps your OS start a touch faster. Sometimes games load more quickly. If you spend hours...
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