OT Comp Troubles

[Cyril_Dran]

My computer kirked out the other day and I'm stumped on what did it.. so I decided I'd throw the question to you guys before I spend a couple hundred dollars...

Here's the deal: We installed a huge RAM update on one of my computers the other day, along with a cable for a LAN hookup. Next reboot, the computer completely fritzes and dies.. like, the screen flashes black, then several other charming basic colors and turns itself off. We reset the thing.. everything works fine, except it's stuck in the lowest resolution, 256 colors, and completely hangs within 5 minutes of boot up.

"Dad" says he thinks that the video card fritzed, but I find it kinda suspicious that it died on the first boot after the new components... any thoughts?

[Fallwind]

first things first... reinsert the ram and try again.

if that still doesnt work: put the old ram in and try again.

if that STILL doesnt work then you may have killed the vid card (most likley cause of that would be a static discharge while you were installing the ram)


far more likley then anything is that your ram isnt set in the slots right, that would explain the crash, bad resolution and constent hanging.

[DetailBear]

Same basic solution, go back to where you were before and try it. If it's fritzed then, you may have hardware damage.

Also, if you just added RAM instead of replacing it, you may have incompatable new and old RAM. Some motherboards will talk to any RAM as long as it's all the same in terms of type, access time, etc. , but balk at differences.

[Cyril_Dran]

Thanks, guys.. I'll give it a shot... once Dad gets back in state. Until then, I'm afraid I'm gonna be kinda scarce for a while.. gotta kick lil' bro off TFC to get to the forums now... >_<

[Cyril_Dran]

Aaaand... I'm back. On a 4 meg AGP card. *shudders*

Well, it runs Explorer... don't laugh, I'm just too lazy to convince the family to switch browswers.. and it runs AIM, so, I guess it's ok. I'm still gonna miss NwN tho... *sighs*

-Any stupidity in this post, I blame on the goddam bird that is attempting to eat my glasses at the moment... *ahem*

[Allan_ecker]

The last time I thought seriously about the specifications of my hardware, I had 32MB of RAM, a 2MB VESA Video card, and a 512MB Hard Drive. I considered it to be "tha shiznet" at the time.

Nowadays, I scratch my chin and say "now, when I opened this puppy up last year did I put in 128MB or 200?"

Also, my emphasis has shifted from core performance to peripherals. I have a video capture card, digital camera, tablet, and optical mouse. Glee!

[Randyg]

The last time I thought seriously about the specifications of my hardware, I had 32MB of RAM, a 2MB VESA Video card, and a 512MB Hard Drive. I considered it to be "tha shiznet" at the time.

Nowadays, I scratch my chin and say "now, when I opened this puppy up last year did I put in 128MB or 200?"

Also, my emphasis has shifted from core performance to peripherals. I have a video capture card, digital camera, tablet, and optical mouse. Glee!

Neither of my boxes are that fast, but they have lots of peripherals.. one is a p2-350 w/ 576mb ram, the other a p3-688 w/ 2g ram...

Both run linux, of course.

plugged into them: KVM (I have the two monitors side-by-side, and use software that lets me warp the mouse/keyboard between the two computers... the KVM is only used when doing maintence/etc), two printers (ususally 3 printers, but one is awaiting a new cartridge, and I didn't need it on my table), ethernet switch, two scanners, two graphics tablets (wahh! I want a 6x8 Intuos. my 4x5 is too little, and my 9x12 is too big.... but yet to see one of the just right size for cheap. If anyone has a gd-0608-R or gd-0608-U tablet, with or without pen, tell me how much you'd want for it!), 4 pairs of cordless headphones (3 of which are crap, and the one good pair doesn't work anymore. grr.), of course networked to my laptop docking station, cordless mouse, piece of crap digital camera (can't ever see anything, always dark, blury, low-res...), video capture card (which I've never gotten to work very well... mostly because it's in the p2-350, which is too slow to compress video in real time, so have to save as raw format, and then my slow bus/drives can't keep up), broken cd burner, a total of 360gb drive space (anyone need Red Dwarf? Black Adder? Lexx? Tremors? The collection of girl-doing-guy-with-strapon and enema videos I got from someone? Not to mention >80gb mp3s or so, all classic rock), usb hub (for plugging in both tablets and other stuff at once), stereo (pioneer sx-828 amplifer), and lots of assorted stuff. I have a digital microscope around here somewhere for when I want to take 200x zoom pictures...

now in boxes... god. I have one of just about everything ever made either in my closet or in storage... despite being a wolf/polar bear cross, I sure tend to look a lot like a packrat. :)

I couldn't begin to list all the odd stuff I have in boxes... cables I don't know what they go to, at least 20 different types of mice, touchpads, trackballs, etc, adapters between every type of plug ever made, cards of all desriptions, lots of 4gb hard drives, a few motherboards, somewhere I have another gb of ram that I sure wish I could find, etc, etc...

and then there's the non-computer parts boxes... over 100lbs of pneumatics, about 6 moving boxes of electronics parts (if it exists, there's a good chance I have it, ranging from discrete components, to a few thousand different part numbers of cmos and ttl ics, to various microcontrollers, to really cool LEDs (my brightest is 5 watts)), car parts, plumbing parts, electrical (i.e. house wiring) parts, lasers and optics, about 20 different webcams, IR security cams, a wide collection of tools for both electronics, automotive work, and carpentry... I donated all my r/c stuff to my younger brother at xmas, so at leas that's no longer taking up space.


I hate moving. I really, really do. Last time it took me 3 round trips of 400 miles each way to get all my stuff here. Every bit of surface is covered in boxes... even my kitchen table is home to a number of boxes.


Now, where was I? oh yeah, computer parts. :)

I too don't think too much about processor speed, mostly since there's nothing that needs a faster cpu... but having lots of accessories is fun.

Everything I have I got used/cheap... there's no way I could afford retail on more than a 50th of the stuff I have.


Speaking of which, my students all want to kill me for not getting their homework back before yesterday's midterm, so I probably should get back to grading rather than rambling off on random tangents...


I'm tempted to wear my ears around campus all next week. no tail, just ears. the tail is too much work, and I can't sit down... think I should? :)



--Randy

[Allan_ecker]

Oh, dog bless you for being a furry professor!

It's my life plan, don't ya know.

I've got the dinky graphire and it works fine for my purposes, although dog knows I could always use higher resolution and maybe that keen -tilt- feature. For some bizarre reason, my dinky cheapo laptop has an -amazing- sound card. When I reccord my voice on this puppy, it comes out sounding like -me- instead of the usual nasally impacted asmatic I usually come across as.

Note to self: get Matlab for doing voice manipulation.

[Randyg]

Oh, dog bless you for being a furry professor!

It's my life plan, don't ya know.

I've got the dinky graphire and it works fine for my purposes, although dog knows I could always use higher resolution and maybe that keen -tilt- feature. For some bizarre reason, my dinky cheapo laptop has an -amazing- sound card. When I reccord my voice on this puppy, it comes out sounding like -me- instead of the usual nasally impacted asmatic I usually come across as.

Note to self: get Matlab for doing voice manipulation.

:)

s/furry professor/technically a furry TA due to lack of teaching credential/g

I have rather imprecise hands... with my 4x5 tablet, I find myself always working at 200%+ zoom, since otherwise I can't control the stylus well enough. The 9x12 tablet requires way too much wrist movement, and even if I shrink down the working area, it still takes up my entire desk (and then some), I can't reach my keyboard, etc (it's bloody huge!)... what I need is something in the middle.


I haven't found too much difference between the Intuos and Graphire lines...

The intuos pen has a very slightly nicer feel to it (balanced better I'd guess). I'm going to buy a rubber grip for it (the intuos2 pens comes with one, but I have a plain old intuos...), just to see what it feels like.

Drawing is a bit smoother (don't know quite how to describe it... more accurate I'd guess... not resolution, but absolute accuracy/repeatability. possibly also faster reporting rate, at least with the usb intuos).

Twice the pressure levels is _somtimes_ a help, but having the correct pressure curve selected for the graphire is more than fine, and I haven't noticed much of a change there.

I haven't played much with tilt... GIMP supports it, but in the version I have, it's a little primative... the version I have is rather out of date though, so it might have improved. I'm planning a major upgrade of the software on my p3-688 at some point, will find out then. They're about to come out with a new major release of gimp with whole lots of new features (2.0), so I'm waiting until then before upgrading.

I definitely like the intuos over the graphire, but it's not that big of a difference... the main improvment being the undescribable "feel" of the tablet. Maybe if I get tilt working better (read: upgrade gimp) I'll have more to say on that.

The other thing, which I really like, is it tracks the pen from much further off the tablet... my graphire only gives you about a quarter inch before the cursor stops tracking, while my intuoses (sp?) track over an inch above the tablet.



And, since I hope I'm not the only linux user here, I should point out that the tablets work _excellently_ under linux with the gimp... with the exception of somewhat rudimentary tilt support in old versions (only works with brushes specially designed for tilt, none of which come with the standard install, and they can't be scaled/etc easily), everything graphics tablet related works perfectly... and it's _much_ faster than certian monopoly operating systems and graphics programs. (I can scribble the pen as fast as I can, and even with a large brush or fancy features it still tracks the pen with no perceptable delay and perfect smoothness... on my old box.) It also, of course, never crashes, is easier to use, has more features, and costs infinitely less. :)


I've never tried recording sound on my laptop... the sound card on mine is notoriously buggy, and I did the standard fix of disabling half its features to get it to work reliably. Some of those features were the second dma and second irq, so it's possible I can't record sound even if I tried... output works well though, and plays mp3s quite clearly.


So you think wearing my ears around is a good idea? Might get me more than a few odd looks. :)



--Randy

[Cyril_Dran]

And here I was thinking I'd killed this oh so pointless thread...

The card's not so bad, it just doesn't run anything more complex than WarCraft 3.. which means that the brand new Sims I got is useless, and NwN has to be put on hold.. and I can't download anything sparkly off the net and watch it.. it's actually the old card we pulled out of here a couple years ago...

As for me, I run Windows 2000 that I've upgraded up from Dos 6.0.. It's still running somewhere under the pile of 5 or so Windows upgrades... Of course, this means my computer moves at the rate of an arthritic snail, but it plays any non-MMORPG game fine.. generally.

[Cyril_Dran]

Dad finally got himself a 128 meg card.. so my computer's usable again. ^_^

Thanks for paying attention to a high schooler's plights.. All my old forums would have brutally ignored this post..

I no longer hold accounts on those forums.

[Randyg]

Dad finally got himself a 128 meg card.. so my computer's usable again. ^_^

Thanks for paying attention to a high schooler's plights.. All my old forums would have brutally ignored this post..

I no longer hold accounts on those forums.

I'll assuming you're referring to a video card... what could you possibly need that much ram for? This box's video card has 8mb of ram on it, and it doubles as a capture card, and seems to work just fine...


We're nice here, as long as you don't mind the occasional bit of random sillyness and/or mention of fetishy activities. :P



--Randy

[Randyg]

And, since I hope I'm not the only linux user here, I should point out that the tablets work _excellently_ under linux with the gimp... with the exception of somewhat rudimentary tilt support in old versions (only works with brushes specially designed for tilt, none of which come with the standard install, and they can't be scaled/etc easily), everything graphics tablet related works perfectly...

Gah! My mistake! GIMP does indeed have full tilt sensitivity in modern versions, but just for the ink tool rather than pencil or brush tools. pencil and brush tools still use the somewhat klugey older tilt system, while the ink tool has full tilt support. It's quite likely the upcoming version will have more...



--Randy