WHY DON'T I LISTEN TO YOU GUYS SOMETIMES???

[Santilli]

Well, this cheap computer is turning into a money hole.

The GA-K8NSC-939 Gigabyte board came with a dead ATA channel. So, it's going back. In the meantime, I bought a K8nS Ultra "Limited Edition", and put the 3000 processor on that, with the Swifttech heat sink, and vantec fan.
1 gig ram. I let the guy at the shop, who's putting this together convince me to try Windows 64 bit.

I know that guys have been having problems with the Nvidia video cards, and this motherboard. I figure I've got a 50-50 chance this is going to work, figuring ATI has written drivers already and I'm sure they will work..

No joy. So, I spent a bunch of money on the guys advice, and ended up going back to Windows XP 32 bit, since the card, ATI 700XL with 256 mb vram, works fine in dos, and in another computer prior. They of course charge me for two hours, after spending 4, I get a box that doesn't even have a working OS, and the guy is telling me the video card is bad.

So, you can guess what I'm doing right now, formatting..............

I've also got to figure out why the front USB ports don't work...

If I would have listened to Mercutio, I would have gone with Windows XP32 right off the bat, and saved a bunch of money, and frustration.

Plus, I can use my ATTO UL3D raid card, since I know they have 32 bit drivers for XP, but they aren't going to write 64 bit drivers.

Right now, I'm installing XP just to make sure the video card works...

s

 

[Santilli]

75%. Darn, these 160 gig ATA drives take forever to format...
s

 

[Santilli]

93%. Why I love SCSI drives.....
s :mrgrn:

 

[Santilli]

Splash:
I would like to say, your advice on the Supermicro, dual Xeon 2.8 ghz, with adaptec 2010s, and the SCA box is just the cat's meow.

Everytime I use this thing I'm just amazed.

The ATI 800XL I put in it isn't bad, either. :wink:

s

 

[Santilli]

The ATI card has 256 mb of vram, and, I put two gigs of ram in this thing.

It's quiet, and it seriously rocks :excl: :excl: :excl:

Thanks for the advice.

S

 

[Tannin]

You need GDIDK. Formats a 160GB drive in about 10 seconds. PM me if you don't have it. (It's freeware, as I recall.)

PS: I probably don't have it here, but I'll be at the office again in about 64 hours.

(sigh)

 

[Santilli]

Thanks. Up and running. So far, looks ok. Apparently the lit keyboard only works out of the back USB ports, which sort of sucks.

Running at 1.8 ghz, and it's pretty quick. Can't wait to get cables, and reinstall on cheetahs.
XL 700 seems to work fine with 32 bit OS. ATI drivers suck again.

s

 

[Mercutio]

If I would have listened to Mercutio, I would have gone with Windows XP32 right off the bat, and saved a bunch of money, and frustration.

Ah, the sweetest three words in the English language: "I was right."

You know Greg, sometimes people actually pay me money for knowing what I'm talking about. And sometimes I do things - like install 64-bit Windows XP - just so I have knowledge of them when the topic comes up on SF.

Who is this jerk who is giving you advice? Why not listen to the sensible people here, like Buck? Are you sure he is in fact qualified to work on a computer? 'Cause it doesn't sound like it. And what are you doing taking your PC to a shop in the first place?

 

[Tannin]

Never take your PC to a shop. You could wind up talking to someone like me.

 

[Mercutio]

Tannin, we all know you are in the business of gently prying money away from the poor innocent people who accidently mistake Redhill for a Harvey Normal's.

 

[Bozo]

During the install of XP, why didn't you select 'Quick Format' ???

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[mubs]

GDIDK. Hmmmm. Google asks if I meant FDISK? I've never heard of it, and apparently neither has Google (shows a bunch of links in foreign languages).

 

[Buck]

GDIDK. Hmmmm. Google asks if I meant FDISK? I've never heard of it, and apparently neither has Google (shows a bunch of links in foreign languages).

No point, just do a Quick Format in XP, it's the same thing. The difference between a regular Format and a Quick Format is that a regular format spends the time to do a read verify of every sector - other then that, they're the same.

 

[Santilli]

Haven't figured it all out right now, but, running with an ATI 700XL, it seems to run games as fast, or faster, then the ATI 800XL, on the Xeon dual 2.8ghz.

NO PROBLEMS WITH THE VIDEO CARD. It must be ATI's drivers for Windows 64 bit that aren't compatible with the Nvidia 3 chipset.
Guess games are just processor speed, and duals don't make any difference, because most games don't use two processors?

So far, I'm impressed. Probably build another one, when I get the bad motherboard back. For the money, it's pretty quick.

Can't make up my mind if I should pull the 160 gig Maxtor, and replace with LVD dual channel, and a 36 gig Cheetah, or 18 gig for a boot. Problem is, if I take something like this to school, I better get an uglier case. the Antec P 160 is just too nice, and too flashy...

I could setup a dual channel raid, with two 36 gig drives, and raid zero to give me enough hard drive space. But, I want to keep those drives for data backup, since they are SCA drives.


Currently, it's got a gig of ram, a NEC 3250 DVD player, if I got the numbers right,
Athlon 939 3000+, Diamondmax 160 gig, and the Ultra Kns8 Gigabyte motherboard, with a 400 watt nearly silent power supply, I want to say sea something...Antec P 160 case, Sony 19 inch flat CPD 400 monitor, and the ATI 700XL, 256 mb vram, Swiftech heat sink, with a vantec 92mm fan on it.
Not noisy, but it works.

120 mm case fan.

The processor stays between 79-88 Farenheit. If not for the bad motherboard, it would have been a LOT cheaper.

s

 

[Buck]

Why not listen to the sensible people here, like Buck?

I was giving advice, for free? Shame on me.

 

[Mercutio]

Those ATI X700s are super-nice cards for the money. They're somewhat faster than 9800s, substantially faster for DX9 stuff, and the price, $120ish, certainly is right.

Wish I could find one that's passively cooled.

 

[Buck]

Gigabyte GV-RX70128D I wish I could find them too. My distributor hasn't had any for a while and pricewatch was showing zero.

 

[Tannin]

GDIDK. Hmmmm. Google asks if I meant FDISK? I've never heard of it, and apparently neither has Google (shows a bunch of links in foreign languages).

No point, just do a Quick Format in XP, it's the same thing. The difference between a regular Format and a Quick Format is that a regular format spends the time to do a read verify of every sector - other then that, they're the same.

Nonsense Buck.

* 1. In my post above, MUBS, for "GDIK" read GDISK. (Never assume I can type!)

* 2. You can't do a quick format in XP if you don't have XP (or some suitable other) operating system installed

* 3. Windows FDISK has a number of limitations, some of them severe. For example, in XP you can only format your boot partition to NTFS. This is probably OK for your own system (you are sensible, keep backups, and don't screw round with disc security systems you don't understand because they might wind up not letting you access your own data, yes?) but a potential disaster for systems belonging to less skilled and careful users. Or, to put it another way, every time you send a machine out there into moron land with an NTFS boot drive, you are saving up a potential data recovery disaster for the future, 'cause it won't let you crack into it if the user does something stupid. Other Windows FDISK versions have different limitations instead, such as an inability to make a partition bigger than ... er ... some quite small value that you regularly want to exceed but which I can't remember becase I never use Windows FDISK because, apart from being glacially slow, it has some stupid size limitation which I can't remember because I never use Windows FDISK because, apart from being glacially slow..... Err .... I seem to be stuck in a loop.

 

[iGary]

GDIDK. Hmmmm. Google asks if I meant FDISK? I've never heard of it...

Tannin The Galavanting Owl must've had a talon spasm. It's called GDISK. Information on GDISK is HERE.

 

[iGary]

Nonsense Buck....

* 1. In my post above, MUBS, for "GDIK" read GDISK. (Never assume I can type!)

Damn Tony! You beat me by 1 minute! Yes, GDISK.

 

[mubs]

Thanks, Tony and Gary.

 

[Buck]

* 2. You can't do a quick format in XP if you don't have XP (or some suitable other) operating system installed.

Based on this post and your previous one, GDISK was recommended for speed. When you have a blank (write zeros to if you need) disk and boot from a Windows XP Professional (or Home) CD (non-upgrade), when it comes time to partition and format, the options read:

• 
  Format the partition using the NTFS file system (Quick)
  Format the partition using the NTFS file system
  

I just tried it again on a WD2500JD (the second option is automatically highlighted). After I highlighted and pressed enter for the first option, it took ~13 seconds (250GB drive) and the entire partition/format process was done with the XP installation showing the progress bar for copying files.

As far as using FAT32, I can't say much because I haven't had any problems with my customers using NTFS.

 

[Mercutio]

XP's partitioning will only format partitions under 32GB with FAT32.

Personally, I never bother. Someday, you guys will learn the value and the power of sysprep. Ghost means never having to use fdisk or gdisk or any other disk, folks.

 

[Handruin]

I will put in another good word along side Mercutio's for sysprep. VMware + sysprep = easily distributable environments at work.

 

[Tannin]

I despise Ghost. Most over-rated, pox-ridden, bugzilla of a difficult-to-use and never-does-what-you-expect-it-to utility I ever saw. It doesn't matter what version you have or how much you paid for it, you always find that you have to buy yet another version to do the job you need to do this time because the one you have is not good enough. (And yes, to my intense shame, I have been known to actually pay for this junk now and then, I don't know why.)

 

[Tannin]

In general, I agree about FAT32 vs NTFS Buck. I've been using NTFS/HPFS on my own systems since ... er ... maybe 12 or 14 years? Since OS/2 2.1 came out anyway, which is certainly well over ten years ago.

But I am careful with nackups and almost fanatical about not buggering my system up. In fact, in all that time I can only think of two times when one of my primary systems has become unbootable (other than when I've stripped it down myself, I mean). One was a physical hard driive failure (well, OK, it was a Micropolis - I was young and stupid once), and the other was caused by Windows Update. (I've seen that happen to other systems too - not many, but it's worth remembering that the Windows Update system is not perfect. I think I posted at length about that here at the time. Or maybe Tea did - it was about 6 months ago. No, 119 days ago, I just checked.)

But Joe Average in general, and Joe Average's kids in particular stuff their systems up all the time, and the first thing they always want is for you to rescue their emails and their accounts and so on - and Joe Average backs up regularly. Like at least once a year.

If it's FAT32, no problem.

If it's NTFS, you have to buggerise about finding a spare system that is running W2K or XP and which is not doing anything useful and slave Joe's drive into it, and even then it's not nearly as good as booting off the original install in some limp-along mode. And if Joe has stuffed about with NTFS security settings, or he has multiple uses in his XP install, it gets really hard.

So for anyone in the Joe Average sort of category, I make it a rule: never format the boot partition with NTFS.

 

[Handruin]

I've heard good things about Acronis to be used as an alternative to ghost, and it is less expensive.

Another key feature for vmware cloning is that ghost (or any other imaging program) is not needed. Cloning a virtual machine is a simple as copying it's monolithic file to another location and you're done.

 

[Tannin]

But I am careful with nackups ....

But not very careful with proofreading, it seems.

 

[Handruin]

I thought you actually meant nackups as creative word play. (like nagging backups: nackups)

 

[Tannin]

Acronis looks good, Doug. Reminder to self: try it out. Soon.

 

[Handruin]

Before spending your hard earned money, give the 15 day free trial a test run to see if it'll do what you need.

 

[Mercutio]

Sigh.

Tannin, one of these days I am going to make a trip to bloody Oz just to teach you how to run your shop properly.

 

[Tannin]

PM me the flight number. I'll be waiting at the airport.

 

[Buck]

<holding breath> . . . <turning blue> . . . <lights are dimming>

 

[Santilli]

Actually, I would REALLY like to surf North Point, Margaret River sometime...
s

 

[Tannin]

No problem. Margaret River is just up the road from here. No further away from my place than ... oh ... about the distance from your front door to Argentina. :wink: If we take turns at the wheel and only stop for meals, we could be there in less than a week, easy.

 

[Santilli]

Great. I need to go to San D to pick up a couple surfboards. After my torn
hamstring, and gaining 5 pounds, I have no idea if I'll fit in my wetsuits, or, if I'll even be able to stand up..

Keep in mind, I surfed the North Shore of oahu for 10 years....
s

 

[cquinn]

Would you guys consider the X700 as better than a 6600GT?

I'm returning a (refurbished) Leadtek card that does not want
to work in the primary PCIE slot, and was considering whether I
should try another Nvidia or go back to ATI.

 

[Tannin]

Merc utterly despises Nvidia products of any form, shape or flavour.
I utterly despise ATI products of any form, shape or flavour.

Guess you need a different opinion.

 

[Bozo]

Hmmm...That leaves Matrox

Bozo :mrgrn: