[dhwilkin]

Quote:

mcbiff said... I'm not really qualified to talk about it since it's been like a year since I read about it, but from what I remember it involved making a couple of connections and soldering on a resistor or two. Don't quote me on that though.

OK, I won't quote you on... umm... oops...

 

[mcbiff]

Quote:

Originally posted by dhwilkin OK, I won't quote you on... umm... oops...

Too late.

 

[davidcotton]

Quote:

Originally posted by ai0tron well i upgraded it anyway. Some of you may have noticed that i sold all my audio equpment except for the HD600's and my DIY headphones with DENON drivers. Well i did it to upgrade my computer,

Hey look on the bright side, it gives you the perfect excuse to start from scratch on the audio side, with all the knowledge youve gained you should be able to get a nice system together..

 

[kerykeion]

Man, I looked at your specs.. dual Athlon .. (starts drooling)....

Now if you had a 15k rpm SCSI hd ....

 

[Neruda]

yeah, it's sure amazing what you can buy when you get to enjoy the benifits of capitalism...ai0tron.

 

[Xander]

Just make sure those cooling fans keep chugging along. My friends Athlon 1.2 lasted 5 seconds after the fan died, the processor was charred, socket MELTED. Athlon's have no thermal protection units...

Makes you want to invest in really good cooling fans.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Dual AMD's? Sweet...(shudders in sympathetic ecstasy at the thought of that much power)...

I just bought a 1.5GHz machine, myself...it _was_ the fastest thing on my block...for a couple of seconds, there, anyway...

 

[mcbiff]

Quote:

Originally posted by Neruda yeah, it's sure amazing what you can buy when you get to enjoy the benifits of capitalism...ai0tron.

Yeah, double standards are nice when you benefit from them yourself. Right?

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xander Just make sure those cooling fans keep chugging along. My friends Athlon 1.2 lasted 5 seconds after the fan died, the processor was charred, socket MELTED. Athlon's have no thermal protection units... Makes you want to invest in really good cooling fans.

Well, I won't upgrade to any of the AMD Athlons... Not only do you need an EXPENSIVE fan to cool them (thus nearly eliminating any price savings the 1GHz Athlon offers over a 1GHz Pentium III), but those flimsy clips that are commonly found on Athlon-compatible fan/heatsink combos can unclip themselves from that Socket A!

I am back to an el-cheapo 8MB PCI graphics board that I borrowed from a friend of mine right now... None of the recent AGP graphics boards work properly on my current system...

They refresh VERY slowly on that AGP2X slot! I read the box to find out that AGP 2.0 is required on all of those recent AGP graphics boards! And all AGP2X slots are only AGP 1.0 compliant - and fail to meet AGP 2.0 standards! (It's now all but impossible to buy a NEW AGP graphics board that is fully compatible with such an older AGP slot.) Which means that chipset support for AGP4X is required on nearly ALL of the new AGP graphics cards!

I think I'm going to upgrade slightly to a 1GHz Pentium III... and which chipset to go with? Intel 815-series or VIA 694-series? Or maybe an "overpriced" Pentium 4 may be better?

 

[raymondlin]

Eagle, why don't you get a old nVidia TNT2 ultra? 32MD ram should be enough. I have a AGP2X and have the same card, works great.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

But then, I can't play any of the games that I have been playing recently! (At least without switching my resolution to an extremely low setting and turning off all detail.) And no, I don't trust buying ANYTHING used at all - that old board that most buyers have been foisting off are often on their very last legs of life. I require at least 100fps at 1024x768 at 32-bit color (my games recommend that particular resolution/colour depth combination!) - and with those games, that TNT2 Ultra is barely playable at all with those games! (That is, the frame rate is much slower than the refresh rate of my monitor.) I used to own one, and got fed up with its choppy play.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

RAID can be utilized with either IDE or SCSI interfaces, and would only allow him to use multiple drives as mirrors of one drive, or multiple drives as one physical drive. It wouldent give him any more speed, or bandwidth so to speak.

Actually, that's not quite true, Xander. RAID Level 0, while not fault tolerant, does indeed significantly increase I/O by spreading the data and I/O load across multiple drives. Certain higher levels of RAID increase the speed even more, while also offering data redundancy, or even encryption.

 

[ai0tron]

thanks for the compliments. I wanted to upgrade the Hard drive but i am not sure what technology to go for. The guy at best buy, I know they are generally dorks, but anyway he says that scsi is no better than IDE because of access times. However, i can get a 36 gig scsi 160 15000 rpm HDD for $245. IT SEEM TO ME that it would HAVE to be faster than my current drive but who knows.... I personally think HDDs are doomed to obscurity within the next 10 years. I mean how fast can you spin that disk before it becomes imminently unstable? What would happen if a current 15,000 rpm platter shattered? I don't know ho wmuch centrifugal force that is but I know it's alot. It might even explode, which would be pretty cool to witness I am sure.

Neruda,

I don't have to like capitalism to buy anything... Since it is in fact my only option in America I kinda have to go with it. Believe it or not, buying and selling did exist before capitalism.

 

[ai0tron]

If anyone knows where I can get a decent yet relatively inexpensive raid array I am down with that. Or even putting together my own raid array although i am not so sure what is necessary for that. i am guessing just a raid controller card and a couple of harddrives. Although the price of just that kinda scares me.

About the RPM mattering more than the IO standard. My dad called some harddrive people at seagate and they told him that the most important factor affecting performance is RPM's and access speed. The two of which kinda go hand in hand.

As for ata 66 vs ata 100, while ata 66 i noticed was a big improvement over ata 33 i have heard that ata 100 is a much smaller improvement over ata 66. Mainly because IDE has been maxed out.

 

[dhwilkin]

Quote:

ai0tron said... The guy at best buy, I know they are generally dorks, but anyway he says that scsi is no better than IDE because of access times.

Ah hah, I think I see the problem now!

First, the guy's wrong. Second, the guy's wrong. Third... well, you can figure it out. For any and all hard drive information (including RAID), read this site.