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  1. Mercutio

    Is there a way to shut up Jason for a while?

    Respectfully, Tannin, those e-mails were kind-of a mess. I don't think I ever got more than half of them. Was anything mailed to Jason after the formal creation of Storageforum?
  2. Mercutio

    The strange career of the Protege

    Mickey on SR would be the person to ask. I'm almost positive he's a drive engineer for WD, even if he won't come right out and say it.
  3. Mercutio

    What Drive is this ? Generic branded QUantum

    LCTs have been sold, in the US at least, as extremely low-cost (40GB for $59.99) store-branded hard disks in at Best Buy and CompUSA, at least in the US. Perhaps Clocker's drive was one of those. The "generic" marking would probably be sufficiently distinct to prevent end-users from seeking a...
  4. Mercutio

    Is there a way to shut up Jason for a while?

    Greg. Tannin: Are you suggesting that there's thereputic value in Jason posting his CNN topics or more-than-once-a-minute two-line replies to every other topic on SR? 'Cause I don't see it. The commonality between Tannin, Santillii (and I'll include myself as well) is that we post about our...
  5. Mercutio

    Is there a way to shut up Jason for a while?

    Perhaps you could take up as OT:Gendarmes (is that spelled properly? Probably not. Close enough)? I don't see anyone putting forward any better ideas. We should start crafting an e-mail.
  6. Mercutio

    New addition to the family...sorta :)

    By the time you put gravel in it, you know you've got roughly 560lbs of static force (note to scientists: Yes, a pound is not a force. I'm not quantifying anything in slugs or Newtons.). Hope your floors can handle it. Fresh water or saltwater tank? We have one of each at the moment, although...
  7. Mercutio

    Is there a way to shut up Jason for a while?

    Pbbbbbt. It's not that I was looking for a job, specifically, but more that I want a steady paycheck. Something I wasn't getting. Making $2000 in four days then not working for a month isn't exactly a stable way to live (but then, Tannin probably remembers the early days of his shop). ... and...
  8. Mercutio

    New front page

    ... and like an idiot I mixed up my email address. Which I noticed immediately AFTER I hit "submit". Oh well. I like the collection of links to hardware vendors. Can anyone here add to the list of downloadable files? Or just Doug/CougTek? Hey, how about a link to Tannin's SF FAQ?
  9. Mercutio

    New front page

    I thought I already registered for the front-page portal. Is it not PHPnuke any more?
  10. Mercutio

    New front page

    Front Page Yes folks, I am just this lazy.
  11. Mercutio

    Is there a way to shut up Jason for a while?

    Like no one here has ever sustained 20 posts a day for awhile. :P I'm frustrated by Jason, too. It sort-of goes against my grain to trash-talk another SR member publicly, but frankly, he knows a lot of people are annoyed by his posting CNN headlines and, well, omnipresence. My read is that he's...
  12. Mercutio

    Epox vs Soltek

    That's cheap shot CougTek. Of course the nvidia card is a problem, but in that circumstance I'd be far more likely to check the RAM and the motherboard before I went ahead and did what comes naturally with nvidia cards. ... playing with the bits of my dremel tool that I never use while laughing...
  13. Mercutio

    Tyan S2460 Troubles

    Ten to one it's the power supply. And I say that will full knowledge of Buck's embrace of the goat-raping horror that is nvidia. The other parts of the system inspire confidence - bad motherboards, in particular, usually do things more annoying than just freezing every so often. ;)
  14. Mercutio

    Thinking about an MSI board...

    Personally I'd say that incompatibility with nvidia cards is a feature, not a problem.
  15. Mercutio

    www.neighborhoodcable.com.au - any good?

    400k? That's barely THREE dirty pictures! I hope they at least mean 400MB. I don't know how you Aussies stand that nonsense. I really don't.
  16. Mercutio

    PC Expertise Certifications... what's needed?

    Something like that, although if some freak of nature got a perfect score on the MCATs - which is something I understand has never happened - there would clearly be an exception to your analogy. My personal view is that you won't be gaining anything personally or professionally by attaining...
  17. Mercutio

    Tech downturn

    Introvert? Moi? Just 'cause I got 0-score on Extrovert-scale of the Keirsey Temperament sorter... I'm an INTP, if anyone cares (or takes the test).
  18. Mercutio

    Tech downturn

    I really wish I was kidding, but I'm not. Don't ask me about reproduction or children. My opinions aren't pretty. But I'd rather direct a choir than a band.
  19. Mercutio

    Tech downturn

    Middle school teachers have my respect and admiration. Personally I think anyone below about 17 years old should be kept chained, in small cage. Like veal.
  20. Mercutio

    Enermax case

    Six internal 3.5" bays. Yum. I don't get the slant, either. The trend is smaller, smaller, smaller. The slant makes that machine take up more space without adding much of anything (a cooling benefit?). Overall I'd say that it seems like a gimmick.
  21. Mercutio

    Memory management

    OS/2 5.0? Or the crappy motherboard? Or some other ECS I'm not thinking of. ECS and Windows NT probably share the lion's share of memory management code.
  22. Mercutio

    Thinking about an MSI board...

    Hey, that extra memory bandwidth makes a big, big difference for video encoding. Don't knock it too much. I got an additional 1.5fps for full-frame DVD to Divx (from 8 to 9.5) in jumping from SDRAM to PC2100 with the same 1.1GHz CPU.
  23. Mercutio

    Enermax case

    You know that's a $400 case, right?
  24. Mercutio

    Tech downturn

    I'm lacking in the Sousa-fetish department. That, and I hate kids. Seriously hate.
  25. Mercutio

    Memory management

    That's 256 bytes, not 32k, as I previously thought. Hardly worthy of the resource meter, is it? Anyhow, msconfig is your friend. Any machine that you get in that condition can damn well be put back into it when you're done fixing the actual problem. That's how I see things. Windows installs...
  26. Mercutio

    Memory management

    Not really. Ever gotten an "out of memory" error on a 9x machine with a half-gig of RAM? What that usually means is that you're out of GDI memory, which IIRC is just a little 32 or 64k stack for making widgets on your screen, but Windows should still be able to handle that RAM properly. Other...
  27. Mercutio

    Laptop HDDs hit 5,400 RPM Now!

    I'm not completely sure what to extract from that, actually. I've heard claims of poor reliability in those disks, and I do believe that if IBM's notebook engineers specified IBM disks, they would be putting IBM disks in their laptops. Perhaps the better thing to say is that IBM's notebook...
  28. Mercutio

    Memory management

    http://www.aumha.org/articlesz.htm http://windows.about.com/mbody.htm Or just ask if there's something specific you want to know.
  29. Mercutio

    PC Expertise Certifications... what's needed?

    The funny thing about certification is, it doesn't really ensure that you're ready or able to work in a given IT position. Certifications are very rarely an actual indicator of knowledge or performance. They're a quick-and-dirty check that you meet a very minimal standard, at least for the...
  30. Mercutio

    Tech downturn

    Well, the Network+ exam represented roughly the most relaxing eight minutes of testing in my life. So I have a sort-of-a job now, thereby giving me something to do three days a week and a steady paycheck. Yay rah paycheck! Now I have a whole pile of books about the A+ and N+ exams that I have...
  31. Mercutio

    Bankrupcy: who do you dream about?

    What kind of commie bastards could vote for ATI over nvidia? You people make me sick.
  32. Mercutio

    www.neighborhoodcable.com.au - any good?

    There are plenty of non-dial-up options out there... Actually, if you can get terrestrial wireless (ie Cellular) internet service down there, I highly recommend it. Seems less prone to interruption than cable/DSL. Another alternative: Get a leased line to your office downtown and set up a...
  33. Mercutio

    Laptop HDDs hit 5,400 RPM Now!

    Probably half of the IBM laptops I see - including both of the IBM laptops I own - have non-IBM disks in them. Does that tell you anything?
  34. Mercutio

    Burning Linux ISO images

    Doesn't Oz have the equivalent of Cheapbytes.com or Linuxmall? Granted, I don't have broadband connection, but $2 (or $4 in the Aussie kind) seems like a minor price to pay not have have to deal with that sort of thing.
  35. Mercutio

    Barebone

    The HOT-591 (the MVP3 board Tannin refers to) the board I had a bad experience with. Specifically, I bought 20 at once, had most of them arrive with bits of the SIMM/DIMM (IIRC that board had both) brackets floating around in the boxes, one with the CPU SOCKET floating around the box (ie...
  36. Mercutio

    PC Expertise Certifications... what's needed?

    Beyond those you really get in to vendor-specific certs. Cisco asks for CCNP certification that you complete, IIRC, four exams, covering topics like Router and Switch configuration. You wouldn't think that stuff would be that hard. Well, neither is brain surgery, if you know what you're doing...
  37. Mercutio

    PC Expertise Certifications... what's needed?

    In the US the absolute entry-level certs are MOUS and A+. I've seen, exactly ONE TIME, a job posting asking for MOUS (I only have it because I won a bunch of free exam vouchers from Prometric and ran out of things to certify in). A+ basically requires that you have a reasonable knowledge of PC...
  38. Mercutio

    Tech downturn

    The place that offered me a job is over in Chesterton, a little three-classroom training company that gets its business fulfilling the training requirements in steelworker's union contracts. I have to take the Network+ exam tomorrow for them... Anyway, I told those people I'd take their offer...
  39. Mercutio

    Totally pointless thread

    Fine. Then I'm taking #996, #997, #999 and #1001. :P
  40. Mercutio

    Celeron 950 vs PIII Power COnsumption

    I don't think you'll have a problem, although Slokets are somewhat less than ideal solution. Certainly you won't have a problem as far as your PSU.
  41. Mercutio

    Celeron 950 vs PIII Power COnsumption

    Does the MSI sloket support voltage regulation?
  42. Mercutio

    Drive for slackware

    WD600AB = $90. 60GB and pretty damn fast for a 5400rpm-class drive. If nothing else a Maxtor DM40+ 20GB will run you a little over $70. I'd pay the $20 for 200% more space.
  43. Mercutio

    Barebone

    Look at the "Systems people buy" thread. Try a Gigabyte GA-72X (GA-7DX if you're not a VIA fan) or an FIC AZ11EA + a Duron 900 or 1GHz, 256MB SDRAM, 40GB WD or Maxtor hard disk... maybe a $500 machine with a decent monitor. Not terribly upgradable but it's a really nice machine for the money...
  44. Mercutio

    compiling own Linux programs?

    You can get some benefit from using processor-specific optimizations in compilation. The benefits of this are dependant on the nature of software. You'll get a lot of mileage out of a well-optimized kernel. I don't even know if you'd notice an optimized version of kword over the precompiled one...
  45. Mercutio

    M747 MB causing major grief

    I don't want to talk trash about your PC, honesty, if it's what you can afford (see threads elsewhere on this site), but for the $15 - $20 difference between a PC Chips and a Soyo, FIC, TekRam, Gigabyte or Epox is really a HUGE difference in terms of reliability. There's a couple of resellers...
  46. Mercutio

    M747 MB causing major grief

    the continuing saga of m747 Have a different ISA slot to try? Can you get sound in DOS (yes, that's probably a hassle to set up, but at least it'll tell you if it's something with the board/card or some Windows problem). I'm not about to go look, but I'm sure I've worked on that board...
  47. Mercutio

    OT: Apology to China

    My first-ever post to a China thread You call 40F cold? That's horrid. Come visit me or Clocker or timwhit (or, if you're truly a glutton for punishment, Cougtek), next time there's a real cold snap. 40F cold... 40F is just about cold enough to put on a jacket, that's how cold 40F is. Of...
  48. Mercutio

    M747 MB causing major grief

    For the 300/450 thing: You've almost certainly got the jumper for 66/100MHz bus operation set incorrectly. If your jumpers are all perfect, fiddle with them anyway. My experience with PC Chips poorly-illiustrated page of documentation is that it's usually wrong. Er, if they're right, maybe you...
  49. Mercutio

    M747 MB causing major grief

    Did you disable the on-board sound device? Nearly every PC Chips board has one, whether the header is on the board or not, and the resources will still be reserved even if you haven't loaded the driver. Make sure your preferred playback device in Windows is the ISA card. I *have* seen it set to...
  50. Mercutio

    Bankrupcy: who do you dream about?

    You're talking about the rack itself, right? Can't say I've ever seen those.
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