A minor setback

So a minor setback on my reasonably priced PC – Newegg sent me a combo (which they promote) that doesn’t actually work… More details later I guess…

Relatively affordable uber desktop project (part 1)

So someone dropped off a computer at my office door at SWOCC the other day with a note attached “please recycle” – so I took it home. Inside was an ASUS A7V 333 with an Athlon 2.2 GHz cpu inside (mind you that’s the performance rating – its probably like 1.5 GHz or something – the chip’s manufacture date is 1999…) – all the parts were floating around inside (including the PSU) and it had no memory. It also had an 80 gb hdd, and a network card (both of which I gave away). However the case looked solid. Its actually an old Falcon Northwest machine. Little known fact: before their meteoric rise they used to be a local computer shop here in Coos Bay – so its not uncommon to find them at peoples houses around here.

Its a common misconception that super fast PC’s are expensive. So I thought it might make a nice project. How cool a machine could you build for like $500? So far I have (on order) 2x 2GB DDR3 DIMMS (core memory), an AMD Phenom II X4 3 GHz cpu, an ASUS M4A79XTD motherboard, and a Corsair 750 watt power supply. I have a 9800 GX2 I’ll drop in there for video, eBay has that priced at around $100 – so its around $600. I also have a 1 gig hdd coming as well. The machine has a Sony DVD-Recorder already installed – no clue if it works, but everyone knows you can get those for like 30 dollars these days. The OS will probably be Windows 7 Pro x64 (OEM). I noticed Newegg tacked on a printer as well :/ – one of those Canon’s with the $50 rebate… Anyone want a printer?

A similarly configured machine from Falcon today will cost you about $1900. The biggest difference is the case doesn’t look like it was dragged around someone’s car (it has scratches on it…), Falcon NW doesn’t seem to sell AMD systems anymore and it has a GTS 260 – 9800 is older, but should be faster actually since it has 2 GPU’s, and a higher clock speed. Another thing missing from this PC is technical support, but then – if you’re into hardware hacking who needs that right?

Funny note btw – long ago I had an A7V 333 – this was around 2000-2001 I think? I know I was still working at Rulespace . This feels like some stripped down OEM version of the board however since it only has one IDE port. The one I had back in the day had four.

Anyhow once assembled I’ll do some benchmarks and give you my impressions of the relatively affordable uber PC. Once working it will be a nice machine for media (like on my HDTV or something) and a computer I could drag around to lan parties without worrying about getting the case work dinged up. The only thing I’m really worried about is that it will be faster than my demon PC (I call it a demon because its an un-natural machine that really shouldn’t exist) which has cost so much to build at this point I try not to think about it.

Why does the Nintendo Wii suck?

Industry Gamers reports that Nintendo Wii sales are down 50% – wow. Many people blame it on the games, or the lack of HD graphics or graphic muscle that the PS3 and Xbox enjoy. I think the games are just fine – the bigger problem are the controls.

I got rid of my Nintendo Wii – because I never could get used to the motion control gimmick. They are so bad that Nintendo releases the MotionPlus addon (which only works in supported games) and even then I’ve read it isn’t all that great. Search Google for “Wii terrible controls” – you’ll be surprised how many hits come back with people complaining about controls on the Wii.

I think the lesson here is motion controls are fine for certain kinds of games (exercise, virtual sports etc), but leave traditional proven controls to the pro’s (d-pad controllers) – don’t build a console based on a single metaphor.

Here is an article by Kotaku that basically says the same thing.

Fun with printer paper

So the main printer in my lab (the only one really) has a page count of… well check out the screenshot:

So lets do some math. I know that a ream of paper is about 2 inches thick and has 500 sheets in it. So 500/2 = 250. 1124682/250 = 4498.728″ – which is 375′. Still 375 feet isn’t all that impressive.

Multiply 1124682 * 12 you get 13496184″ (if you stood all these pieces of paper end to end) which is about 213 miles according to the google conversion tool. Essentially a piece of paper end to end up the entire Oregon coast – which is a bit more impressive.

UPS is odd…

I ordered a new video card for my desktop PC from some guy on eBay (it was a good price…), but the way its being shipped is odd:

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LOUISVILLE, KY, US	10/06/2009	11:50 A.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
ONTARIO, CA, US	10/06/2009	5:25 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
BALDWIN PARK, CA, US	10/06/2009	12:03 A.M.	ORIGIN SCAN
BALDWIN PARK, CA, US	10/05/2009	7:27 P.M.	FORWARDED TO THE FACILITY IN THE DESTINATION CITY
	10/05/2009	1:16 P.M.	PICKUP SCAN
US	10/05/2009	6:10 P.M.	BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

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So basically its on a little odyssey around the country.

How does DeepFreeze work?

DeepFreeze is a tool made by Faronics corporation that essentially freezes the disk in place so that you can do whatever you like to the PC, but after a restart all the changes are restored to its frozen state. Its a really nice tool for someone who runs a lab, but how does it work?

Playing with it – I believe its a kernel level driver that intercepts filesystem calls to update the MFT (master file table – its a section of the disk that tells the OS where files are located physically and how big they are – stuff like that). Anyhow instead of updating the disk itself – it caches those changes on a separate file or in physical memory (not sure yet) and of course when you reboot those changes are discarded because the memory is reset. I’m still playing around with it – so its a theory still.

Full time work!

So the person I was working with resigned to go work for the county, and I got her old job. So I’ve been working 40 hours a week now .

My work computer sucks again…

The only place I ever worked where the machine on my desktop was even remotely comparable to the one I have at home was Adobe. Example – my machine at home is a 2x quad core Xeon machine with 8 gigs of ram and a NVidia GTX-280. One on my desk right now is a 2 core Core 2 Duo with 2 gigs of ram and some ATI video card.

Nothing wrong with that I guess, but I found I get a bit impatient at this machines performance.

Another PAX come and gone

I had a lot of at PAX this year, but it will probably be the last time I go. It wasn’t that there were too many people (it was way bigger than Blizzcon actually!), but I feel I don’t get as much out of it back when it was a small local convention.

I’ll miss the super-heroes though .

Long time no see?

I’ve been busy moving, and I finally got a new job – but I have to admit its nothing special. It’s part time (19 hours per week) at Southwestern Oregon Community College managing their lab in the evening. However since the students haven’t started I’ve mostly been doing grunt work (moving stuff around, setting up labs etc).

Saw GI-Joe the movie – it was just like the cartoon/comic and the Baroness is still hot .