Computers and Related Hardware/Software

i just installed and test my new 6600GT card, much improvement in fps in counter strike compare to my old FX5200 :woot:

Wow. That must be like night and day. :D

pcmodem wrote:Got my new PC up and running.

Dual core is nice, especially for encoding / transcoding and picture editing.
...

Thanks for the info. :) I wasn't sure if I should buy a dual core or not. I think I'll get a Athlon 64 X2 4200+.

dvd burner went on the fritz this weekend. :bleh: :grumble:

krim wrote:dvd burner went on the fritz this weekend. :bleh: :grumble:

Pioneer 16X dual-layer at Fry's for $60....

yeah, that's the one i have... i dont know if it's the burner or something in the system got corrupted... i didn't have time to check thoroughly yet, ill have to jump into the root terminal and do all the unix -type system maintainence, reset the PRAM, repair the disk permissions tonight and see if that helps.

krim wrote:yeah, that's the one i have... i dont know if it's the burner or something in the system got corrupted... i didn't have time to check thoroughly yet, ill have to jump into the root terminal and do all the unix -type system maintainence, reset the PRAM, repair the disk permissions tonight and see if that helps.

So you think it's not a hardware failure?

bmwracer wrote:
So you think it's not a hardware failure?

Not really, it doesn't make wierd noises and it's reading DVD's okay... i think it may be that i didn't reset the PRAM when i installed the hard drive it got back from RMA.
I ran tech tool pro on the system components and those were all fine, the SMART system on the drive i was burning off of tested okay too.

had 3 misburns, 1st one cause a software lock up, the second was a coaster and didn't eject the misburn, and the 3rd caused a kernal panic and i had to reboot.. which is the 2nd time i've ever had a kernal panic.

krim wrote:Not really, it doesn't make wierd noises and it's reading DVD's okay... i think it may be that i didn't reset the PRAM when i installed the hard drive it got back from RMA.
I ran tech tool pro on the system components and those were all fine, the SMART system on the drive i was burning off of tested okay too.

had 3 misburns, 1st one cause a software lock up, the second was a coaster and didn't eject the misburn, and the 3rd caused a kernal panic and i had to reboot.. which is the 2nd time i've ever had a kernal panic.

This burner is installed in a Mac?

Sounds like you're doing a lotta fiddling with the burner's firmware... :headscratch:

bmwracer wrote:
This burner is installed in a Mac?

Yeap.

bmwracer wrote:
Sounds like you're doing a lotta fiddling with the burner's firmware... :headscratch:

Not the burners firmware, i updated that when i bought it, but i haven't touched it since. I dont think there's a new firmware for my model (dvr-109), so I dont think that's the cause...

usually doing the mainainence on the OSX kernel fixes most problems... which ill admit i haven't done in a few months, even though i should have.

krim wrote:usually doing the mainainence on the OSX kernel fixes most problems... which ill admit i haven't done in a few months, even though i should have.

Ugh.

And I thought Windows had issues. :sweat:

bmwracer wrote:
Ugh.

And I thought Windows had issues. :sweat:

You thought correctly.

but, like i said, this is the 2nd time i've had a serious problem... since 2002... that's running almost 24/7/365

Ugh, this knucklehead at work decided to play around with the hub in our lab and ended up bringing down the entire network in the company... Grrr. :smack:

After formatting the new drive at least a couple of times (should have used the CD that came with it) and transferring the data...I should have known: the other drive stopped making noises. Oh well, I guess I have another 250GB.

of course!

But the moment something important is stored on the old drive... :bleh:

krim wrote:of course!

But the moment something important is stored on the old drive... :bleh:

I'd really hate to move the 250GB drive into my "crash-and-burn" pile with the 20GB, 40GB drives.

i guess it's overkill for a scratch disk... :hehe:

krim wrote:i guess it's overkill for a scratch disk... :hehe:

I could try to put numerous OSes on it.

yeah, test bed...

bmwracer wrote:Ugh, this knucklehead at work decided to play around with the hub in our lab and ended up bringing down the entire network in the company... Grrr. :smack:

dang, that sucks...
:doh:

This is irrelevant to any of the previous discussions, but......

I'm thinking of buying a Mac (probably around the time Leopard comes out because I'm not too sure if I want to be running OS X, Rosetta and all that with the new Intel Core Duo....just because I don't trust new stuff), and here are some things I love doing on my PC that I hope I can do with Mac....and I know some of you are Mac users, so any advice'd be nice:

1. I use an app called SDP to get streaming media (like those 30 sec commercials on J-sites), do you know if Macs have any similar media stream catchers? If so, can they catch MMS that's wma/wmv and convert to aac/mov?

2. A lot of websites use this DRM thing that prevents users of OS X from enjoying multimedia, is there any other option to enjoy music vids etc. w/o PAYING on iTunes?

3. Is there a Real Alternative for Mac?

4. For G5 users: Is the iSight webcam compatible with other chat progs outside of iChat (because I think that requires a .Mac account! >_<)? It'd be nice to use it with MSN Messenger or Yahoo! (even though Yahoo! never seems to accomodate Mac OS X....only 9, which is weird).?

Thanks for your help. I have other questions about data DVDs, etc., but I've already asked 4, hahaha ^^;;