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Submitted by THX 1138 on
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Tip, tricks, questions, what's new in technology......

THX 1138



I take that back. ares would have been a baby.

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 11:44 AM Permalink
ares

i was even actually born when the original star wars came out, jt. admittedly i was all of 2 months old at the time.

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 12:05 PM Permalink
THX 1138



Hey, it just means the rest of us will die before you.

:-)

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 12:11 PM Permalink
ares

i must admit that i don't think i've ever actually played space invaders or asteroids on an arcade machine. i have, however, played them on a ti calculator.

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 12:13 PM Permalink
THX 1138



Well, you're not missing much by today's standard. They were both awesome at the time. Of course, so was Pong at one time.

http://www.pong-story.com/

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 12:22 PM Permalink
Frosti

I like pong.

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 12:26 PM Permalink
ares

i played pong on an atari 2600. does that count?

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 12:37 PM Permalink
Frosti

i played pong on an atari 2600. does that count?

Nope. The 2600 was One Giant Leap ahead of the original pong. Our pong game had 6 different variations of pong. Quite the deluxe package.

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 2:22 PM Permalink
THX 1138



Frosti's family must be rich?

They had the super deluxe Pong.

:-)

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 2:25 PM Permalink
Frosti

Naw, it was way after pong originally came out. I think the Atari's were out, so pong was a cheap substitute.

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 2:27 PM Permalink
THX 1138



That's cool.

I never owned Pong myself.

I had to suck up to the neighbor kids to play at their house.

:-)

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 2:29 PM Permalink
ares

damn. sucks to be me then.

Mon, 10/28/2002 - 2:39 PM Permalink
Luv2Fly

Hi all, A little help would be appreciated.

Anyone have any good suggestions on a good space-making / cleaning program ? I have Mcafee now and it's an older one that they won't support anymore. Their service is nonexisitent. I was hoping to find something I could download vs. a disk.

Any suggestions ?

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 5:07 PM Permalink
ares

i dunno, rob. i'm the sort of person who usually goes out and buys another disc when i run out of disc space. which explains why i have 330gb of disc space between 2 computers and 60 more in my laptop.

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 5:23 PM Permalink
THX 1138



What ares said.

I can try looking though. Try download.com.

I don't have a disk space program. I just go delete a bunch of crap every once in a while.

You using this for work I assume?

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 5:52 PM Permalink
Luv2Fly

Yea,

I just need to re-claim some disk space. the ol' girl is getting full up.

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 5:55 PM Permalink
THX 1138



How big is your HD?

What exactly are you using it for. You could save a ton of space by simply zipping a lot of files if you don't use them much but don't want to delete them.

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 5:58 PM Permalink
Luv2Fly

How big is your HD?

A rather personal question, gotta at least buy me a drink first sailor.

What exactly are you using it for. You could save a ton of space by simply zipping a lot of files if you don't use them much but don't want to delete them.

Seriously I can make the 'puter do what I need but when it comes to hard drive, gig's, kb's, mb's, rom etc. you might as well be speaking Swahili. All I know is that she's gettin' slow and full. Kinda like me :)

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 6:03 PM Permalink
THX 1138



Go to the Start Menu, go to programs, go to accessories, choose disk cleanup. You should be able to salvage some space that way.

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 6:08 PM Permalink
Luv2Fly

Ah, that's it. That's what I needed, someone to talk to me like a 12 year old.....wait, scratch that a 12 year old would know more about computers. :) Thanks that should help get some space back

What does de-fragmenting do ?

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 6:11 PM Permalink
THX 1138



Defrag won't get you much space back but it may speed it up, as you said you were having trouble with that..

Simply put, when you save a file to disk, it can sometimes be saved in different parts of your Hard Drive (HD). Basically the file can get split into different pieces on the HD even though you only see it as one file on your PC.

Defrag brings the files back together again. So when you access a file, it only has to read it from one space on your HD versus several different spaces. Therefore you'll have less seek time, and therefore a faster PC.

Did that make sense? I'm not good at explaining these things.

Also, defragging can take quite a while to do.

Another suggestion is to add RAM. It can do wonders and it's cheap.

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 6:17 PM Permalink
Luv2Fly

Cool,

I'll give it a try. Thanks man :)

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 6:30 PM Permalink
ares

you explained it beautifully, jt.

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 6:46 PM Permalink
THX 1138



Why thank you, ares.

:-)

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 6:48 PM Permalink
Luv2Fly

Thanks JT,

That really helped.

Now can we install deluxe pong ?

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 7:15 PM Permalink
THX 1138



I found an online Pong somewhere. I'll see if I can find it for ya.

Wed, 10/30/2002 - 8:47 PM Permalink
ares

hey bill, do you find that you have to defrag your ntfs discs under windows 2000 occasionally, too?

Sat, 11/02/2002 - 8:13 AM Permalink
THX 1138



You know, every time I've gone to defrag, it's told me I don't need to because only x% of my disk is fragmented.

That's including my old 2G hard drive on the kids PC.

Sat, 11/02/2002 - 8:53 AM Permalink
King Boreas aka Ian

I started a class today on building a PC, mainly for troubleshooting. It can't be much cheaper building your own, can it?

Tue, 11/19/2002 - 2:46 PM Permalink
ares

the only pc i've ever owned that i didn't build myself is my laptop, ian. i build my own, mostly so that i can specify exactlywhat i want for memory, ram, disc, motherboard, etc. and no, its not necessarily cheaper.

Tue, 11/19/2002 - 2:53 PM Permalink
Clue Master

Norton will detect virus attachments in E-mail. Is that true?

2002 will. But that's the one where my 'subscription' ran out. Oh well, it was annoying anyway waiting for Norton to scan all those in and outgoing E-mails. You can set it for in, out, off or on though. I had to disconnect the scanning for a few different progs to work though. It took awhile to figure out that it was in fact the scanner that was screwing things up. Just an FYI.

Tue, 11/19/2002 - 11:47 PM Permalink
King Boreas aka Ian

UPDATE: Required Upgrade of System BIOS For Your T-Series eMachine

After the manufacture of your eMachines computer, a new systems BIOS was developed for selected eMachines products. As part of our effort to offer all eMachines computer users the latest technology available, we are offering this new systems BIOS to you at no additional cost.

All new eMachines computer systems come pre-loaded with Microsoft® Windows® XP. The new system BIOS removes certain obsolete and legacy functions that are utilized only by computers that use DOS as its operating system. eMachines recommends that you upgrade your systems BIOS to the latest version by following the simple instructions below.

Should I do this ?

Wed, 11/20/2002 - 6:51 PM Permalink
ares

already told ian this, but for the benefit of the rest of the group, the general rule about bios upgrades is this: don't. unless the new bios fixes a problem you've been experiencing, or provides new functionality you need, like back in the day when ls-120 drives first came out so you could replace your floppy drive with one of them and have it work exactly the same.

Wed, 11/20/2002 - 7:23 PM Permalink
King Boreas aka Ian

Case
 ATX 400W Alum Midi Tower (AMD/P4)

Motherboard
 Abit IT7 Socket 478 (Legacy Free)

RAM
 1GB 333MHz DDR RAM (2 x 512MB)

Hard Drive 1
 Seagate 80GB Hard Drive 7,200RPM

Hard Drive 2
 Not Selected

CDRom 1
 CD-ROM Drive 52x Speed

CDRom 2
 CD Re-Writer 48/12/40 BURN PROOF

Floppy Drive
 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive

Zip Drive
 250MB Internal IDE 250MB Zip Drive

Graphic Card
 128MB GeForce4 Ti4200 AGP

PCI Card 1
 Modem - Novatech 56K PCI

PCI Card 2
 Network Card - DLink PCI RJ45 BNC

PCI Card 3
 Creative 128 PCI Sound Card

PCI Card 4
 Not Selected

Keyboard
 Novatech USB Keyboard

Mouse
 Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer

Operating System
 Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

Software
 Microsoft Office XP Developer Edition Full Version

Monitor
 17 Monitor MultiSync FE770/17 FAG .25 70kHz TCO99

1656.99 Pounds=$1150.00 +/-

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 3:09 AM Permalink
THX 1138



Ian, I looked at that page quickly and configured a system that was pretty cheap. Question is, since it's a British site, do they deliver to the U.S. and if so how much will it cost?

I didn't have time to go through the registration to see.

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 6:22 AM Permalink
ares

i can't build my dream machine on that site. they aren't selling and dual cpu boards. nor are they selling radeon 9700 cards, nor are they shipping scsi hard drives, nor ls-120 drives, nor......

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 6:47 AM Permalink
THX 1138



Picky bastard!

:-)

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 6:52 AM Permalink
ares

if i want a machine built with any old parts i'll go to best buy and buy something off the shelf. if i'm building it myself, i want a dual cpu motherboard made by tyan or supermicro, at least a gig of registered ecc memory, multi-processor capable chips, and scsi drives. and yes, i'll pay twice as much to get it too.

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 6:56 AM Permalink
THX 1138



Why? You don't need all that to play GTA.

:-)

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 7:02 AM Permalink
ares

jt, if i had the discs here i could play gta3 right here on my laptop. coincidentally, i'll never own a machine for everyday use again that isn't a laptop. machines that have a case and monitor like that are for building disc farms :)

did i say that 2002 was the only one that scanned for virii, bill? i don't recall, but if i did, i didn't know what i was saying. because i've also used norton and its had the capability to scan for them in email for a long time. i do, however, much prefer mcafee. there's something to be said for a program that actually sits as a device driver between the os and the file system, instead of running as a process. btw, visi has been providing virus scanning (and spam filtering) of incoming email for a few months now. for the time being anyway, i haven't seen any rate increases. and if they do raise rates just to cover that, you can be damn sure i'll opt out of the filtering service as best i can. i'm not gonna pay someone to do for me what software i've already paid for will do on my own machine!

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 7:16 AM Permalink
ares

i would have checked myself except i'm too damn lazy to go hunting for the post i said that in :) i'll take your word that i did. and then turn around and plug mcafee just because i can.

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 7:57 AM Permalink
Clue Master

I mentioned that 2002 Norton scans in & out E-mail in post #645. But I didn't say that it was the 'only' one that did. I wouldn't know about the older versions since I had McCafee (sp) before 2002 Norton.

Thu, 11/21/2002 - 4:54 PM Permalink
King Boreas aka Ian

2. I have a computer with 30 pin memory simms and there are nine chips on each simm. If each chip stores one bit why do I have 9 when a byte is 8 bits long?

3. Can I mix 70ns and 60ns memory?

4. Can I mix EDO and SDRAM memory simms?

5. My computer uses 168 pin DIMMS. How many DIMMS does it take to define an amount of RAM?

6. I replace my floppy drive. Now when I boot up the computer does not start correctly and the floppy drive light stays on all the time. What is wrong?

7. I have two UDMA controllers on my new mother board. The drive cables that came with the new board have a blue 40 pin plug at one end and a black 40 pin plug at the other end. Does it matter which color plug is attached to the drive controlled on the mother board?

8. Can I boot from a CD-ROM drive?

9. My motherboard has a built in sound circuit. I want to install the latest Sound Blaster card. What might I have to do to make this installation work correctly?

10. I want to use a USB port for a keyboard, mouse, external hard drive and printer. Can I use the same USB port?

11. I have forgotten my power-on password and the machine will not boot. What can I possibly do to fix this problem?

12. I have a new 40GB IDE hard drive to install in my machine. How do I identify which way the data cable plugs into the hard drive?

13. My power supply is not providing 12 volts to my drives. What can I do to solve this problem?

14. My machine starts to boot up and I get a funny pattern of sounds both long and short. What could be causing this problem?

15. I am using 72 pin simms. How many does it take to get a useable amount of RAM?

16. I just installed a new mouse and the plug went in a little stiff. Now the mouse does not work. What could be the problem?

17. What is a real handy tool to fix the problem in question 16?

18. If I decide to overclock my new P4 processor what is one condition that I have to worry about?

19. When I move my mouse around on the mouse pad the cursor moves in jerky movements and sometimes won't move at all. Then I bang the mouse on the mouse pad and then it works for awhile. What could be causing the problem?

20. I want to upgrade my PII motherboard to a P4 processor. Can I do that?

Fri, 11/22/2002 - 5:07 AM Permalink
King Boreas aka Ian

8. yes

10. yes, if you use a hub (?)

17. hammer

Fri, 11/22/2002 - 5:17 AM Permalink
ares

1. it would work just fine.
3. probably but i wouldn't recommend it.
4. no.
5. 1.
6. you incorrectly attached the data cable to the floppy drive. open the computer, disconnect the cable, rotate the floppy drive end of it 180 degrees and reattach it.
7. electrically, no. in order to be in full compliance with the udma ide standard, yes.
9. turn off the sound "card" on the motherboard. either with a jumper on the board or somewhere in the bios.
11. open the computer, and pull out the battery from the motherboard. when you re-install the battery, the cmos will have been completely reset.
12. the data cable should only plug in one way to the hard drive, but the general rule is that the striped side of the cable gets plugged in closest to the power connector.
13. invest in a new power supply.
14. bad memory, bad video card, typically bad hardware that is required in order to boot the system. try pulling out the video card and memory and reinserting them.
15. 1 on a 486 system, 2 on pentium systems.
16. you plugged it in upside-down.
18. heat. and system instability.
19. mouse turds have accumulated on the rollers that feel where the mouse ball is moving to. invest in an optical mouse with a little red light underneath that doesn't suffer from this problem.
20. yes. but you need a new processor, motherboard, and probably new memory as well.

how 'bout 15 minutes, bill :)

Fri, 11/22/2002 - 6:45 AM Permalink
THX 1138



ares, you kick ass!

Now where's my ROM's?

:-)

Fri, 11/22/2002 - 6:58 AM Permalink
ares

still on my cousin's computer. i'll get 'em to ya as soon as i get 'em.

Fri, 11/22/2002 - 7:00 AM Permalink