The: What Computer Part did you buy this week thread

NETWORK
Asoka POWERLINE Homeplug Pluglink USB Bridge Model PL9710-USB Retail $135
Asoka POWERLINE Homeplug Pluglink Ethernet Bridge Model PL9610-Ethernet Retail $135

KEYBOARD
MICROSOFT OFFICE KEYBOARD USB & PS/2 VER. 1.0A - OEM $26

SPEAKERS
Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 THX Certified 6 piece Personal Audio System $368

CDR
2x Lite On 48x12x48 CDRW Model LTR-48125W Retail $93



Just bought these off of newegg. Gonna be waiting for me as soon as I get back!

Absolutely nothing, I sold parts to someone for $200 bucks, haha.

Welp, last week I got:

Plextor CD-RW 40x12x40 (ivory): $150
Plextor CD-RW 40x12x40 (black): $150

Dell Precision 530 PC for myself at work: $4,682.00 (plus shipping and tax)
The system consists of:
2 x 2.0GHz Xeon CPUs
1GB RDRAM
19" Trinitron Display
Quadro4 700XGL Display Adapter
Dual 36GB u320 SCSI drives in RAID 0
16x DVD-ROM (will have the black Plextor burner to keep it company)
Harmon Kardon 395 speakers
Windows XP Pro

ATi Radeon 8500 64MB OEM
newegg.com
$109 total

Upgrading from a Rage 128 Pro

Now I should get over 800 in 3dMark2001SE!

LOL! I didn't buy any PC parts this week, but I did a few weeks ago. I should be gunning for a new PSU and burner in the next few weeks whenever my bonus gets to me (pending on the blasted accounting department)

Thank god, no. The person responsible was on vacation all last week so when my boss found out I hadn't gotten mine, all he could do was wait. It should be on my next paycheck or so.

Bought a NGC - rented luigi's mansion - rapped it - nuff said

Waiting for metroid

Or for a life...whichever comes first

I bought a Liteon 40x12x48 cd writer :-)

And a nice new leather chair.

I had more fun putting the chair together........

Dilligaf

I had no intention to buy anything this week ... but this topic makes me think about throwing some hard earned $$ out of the Windows (no pun!)
I have crappy onboard sound on this A7V333.
I want anything which is not Creative.
Guillemot/Hercules? ... or Turtle?
I WANT very good 5.1 with VERY good drivers. Any idea?

I bought me a Intel Play Microscope and a Intel Play ME2 Cam. The cam doesn't work on XP. SUX

Bought some new drives for the office server in Istanbul.
Bought myself a LG 17" TFT for my new desk at the office.
I have intention to buy the new logitech wireless keyb/mouse.

I already have wireless but those look fantastic... Hell i've got the $'s for it so!

Oh apart from that our weekly OEM spending has way too much zero's in it. but we sell them off for more zero's in the end...
One example would be, today we are getting 50 P4 2GHz 512KB's @ $190 each

Yes we do have meetings in the office, i keep soem handy to give as a present to the big fishy's.

Who said bribery is immoral this is business

Cenk brags as follows:
Hey i am 25, I own my own company, I can't be doing it wrong

I picked up a Lite-ON 40x burner today...of course, my folks are giving me crap about it. Sorry my current one is trash (locks up any PC it's in), or I wouldn't have bought a new one. Sheesh.

It is quite a nice burner isn't it?

Also a great step up from my old one 8rx4rw (put it in my wifes pc - she hasn't noticed)

I think the best thing i've done with it is create video cd's.

My old samsung 709 dvd doesn't read cdr's and the only way i can do a vcd is by doing it on a cdrw. The 12x rewrite is briliant.

Dilligaf

Just ordered a new 120 gig hard drive. for 130 bux

Haven't tried it yet. The circuit the machine I put it in decided to start crapping out the breaker. The circuit breaker problem has been fixed, so I should be enjoying some speed-demon burning shortly.

This week:


sold:
Chenbro NET cube
Abit IT7 -MAX
Pentium 4 1.6a @2.25
Alpha 8942 heatsink
Thermaltake Smartfan 1
6 fans
a case badge

bought:
Coolermaster ATC410 case
Antec TruePower 430 PSU
Abit IT7-MAX
Pentium 4 2.26 @ ?
Alpha 8942 heatsink
Thermaltake Smartfan 2
a few case badges
5 round IDE cables.

round scsi cables

I didn't buy them, per say, but yesterday I got 7 powersupplies.

5 were dead. 2 worked(A DEER 250W and a Sparkle 200W).


I went in looking for dead PSUs to salvage cables from.

Bought some more stuff:

ATI |RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB 8X RTL 1 $369.00
SWITCH BOX BELKIN|KVM 4-PORT PS/2 1 $108.00
WIRELESS ACCESS POINT LINKSYS|WAP11 1 $119.00
POWER SP|550W(P4)EG651P-VE(FMA) RT 1 $188.00


:x

well i didn't buy it but I did get a 10,000 rpm SCSI drive yesterday.

Check out that Belkin KVM. Sweet looking thing.

Also the Enermax PSU. Currently have a 530 or 550 forget which but I'm hoping to quiet down my PC.

Also the WAP11's KICK ASS. Finally got my WAP11 talking to my Wireless BEFS (OVER WIRELESS) router a cpuple of days ago. Woohoo!

Anyone got any idea if they're gonna do an AIW version of the 9700, & if so, any clue on when?

i bought a 15k ibm scsi drive
and reinstalled xp

i found out sunthin...
installing xp with 2 xeons then activating the hyperthread works and is ok.
but it works so much better to install after hyperthreading.

Which KVM is it? I have a couple of the USB/PS2 versions which are nice, but sometimes don't like certain systems. I have to use PS/2 cables for my mouse and keyboard instead of USB on my main workstation, whereas my older Dell box (running RH 7.3) can use the single USB cable. Kind of a bummer...

I just bought a dual head VIVO card from MSI
I am not quite as much of a highroller in the video card market as some of you guys.

Here is the link looks like a pretty sweet card for $107
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/vga/vga_detail.asp?model=G4MX460-VTP

I grabbed some new RAM (512MB) cause mine crapped out - some DDR333 and also a 750VA UPS.

Monitor died, and being out of warranty, I needed a new one.

Dell 17" Trinitron flat-screen. It's used, but it's a steal @ $85.

can't wait until that graphics card gets here
dual 21 inch is gonna be sweet

Hey DF, which KVM model is it? Also, what kind of range do you get on your WAP? Does it support 128bit encryption?

Belkin OmniView SOHO Series 4-Port KVM Switch with Audio PS/2 Platform - RETAIL BOX

http://www.belkin.com/





Linksys WAP11 Instant Wireless Network Access Point

http://www.linksys.com/





WAP 11 SPECS

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=22&prid=429



The v2.2 is alot better than the old vers. V2.2 is HTTP managed like the BEFS over the Ether port on the back. The older vers were managed by a USB cable and SNMP.

Also v2.2 is 100mw instead of needing the hack like the older vers to pump it up that high and it supports bridging to other WAPP11's and finally it recognizes the BEFS as an AP Server so my WAP11 can be an AP Client FINALLY! WOOHOO!!

I already have a WAP11 just want to experiment with 2 WAP11's off of one BEFS Router and experiment with different routes over wireless.

Heh, ignore that USB connection on the back. V2.2 doesn't have it.

Definatly sweet.

I run 1600x1200x2 now and I get frustrated at work with a 19"

So efficient for power users, and even for regular users it provides more flexibility. Plus - from what I have heard - chicks dig it 8)

Yeah, I have 2 of those Belkin units, but with USB and PS/2. They are a lot better with high resolution/refresh rate than KVMs used to be.

The WAP looks cool, and I am thinking of getting one for home to use with my iPAQ. Toys rock.

i kinda like the 2 monitors at work here. never had 2 before.
makes things kinda nice although its a piece of crap matrox.

i dont have room for 2 21's at home

POC Matrox??!! WTF?

yea i like dual
dual procs
dual or more hd for raid
dual nics
dual channel memory
dual etc.

cheap company.. wont shell out for a decent graphics card for cad

oh well got work with whatcha got

well i just found out that the god damn order didn't go through cause I musta fuct something up in the card number or something.
O well I will have to reorder tomorrow and get it next week instead of this week.

Matrox makes some sweet cards for 2D graphics and they tend to go out of their way to get their drivers certified for apps like Solidworks and Pro/E. What don't you like about it?

matrox is ok for still life and 2d but i never use that stuff. it is cheap though

it's very slow and when there are a lot of details solidworks does a bunch of blinking when picking entities. pro/e works a little better because it's better program but if u try and turn the detail up it gets monsterously slow.

the geforce cards work pretty nice on solidworks compaired to the very highend cards but i would call it only acceptable for large pro/e files with max detail.

of course this is all subjective as i have been blessed with working with some pretty darn decent equipment like sgi r10k's, intergraphs with wildcat cards, and regular multi xeons with e&s graphics.

The last set of boxes that I got for the engineers here have been 1.5 and 1.7GHz dual Xeons that were running WinXP. For some reason SW 2001+ acted oddly with them and CosmosWorks (theywould crash out on mesh creation) so we wound up going to Win2K, installing SW 2001, go to SP14, then upgrade to SW 2001+. So far they haven't crashed in the last 4 months or so. All these boxes have Quadros in them, mostly because they don't have the shared backplane buffer issue like the regular GF2/3s did where running multiple models simultaneously would give the flashing and freezing you mentioned. I thought about trying softQuadro to make the drivers "think" they were Quadros, but I was concerned they would do more harm than good.

i have solidworks here and at home. both on xp, 1 matrox and 1 gforce4
i havent run into that problem yet. i only use solidworks when i absolutely have to
there is one guy here that runs gforce4 dual monitor... it will only display solidworks on 1 monitor. we tried all kinds of different drivers but i dont think it's a true dualhead card. (gainward)

hmm that gf4 not being true dual head makes me kinda nervous
I just bought one.
although all the stuff that i need to be on both monitors is 2d
photoshop
premire
visual studio
etc
so hopefully i woln't have any problems.

basically gl apps wont work on 2 monitors
the nvidia site says the the current ogl version does not allow acceleration on more than one device.
not sure if that applies to either of us but it would answer my problem

No offense, but don't you think that's a giant waste of money? Rather than buying extra screen realestate with a second monitor why not learn to toggle (Press Alt + Tab) or use the taskbar and switch between apps. Also there are tons of programs that give you mutliple desktops like unix. Two monitors can also be kind of annoying if you have one of the left and one on the right. You might find that one in the middle directly in front of you is more comfortable. I'm not trying to knock you or call you materialistic. I just don't want to see you waste your money on something that really doesn't do anything special. I mean you can only look at one monitor at a time anyways. I will admit Matrox is doing something cool with three monitors for games, but that too is just money down the drain. We live in a world with pollution, evil, and suffering do you really think 3 monitors is going to ease your pain or anybody else's? What if you bought a small patch of land with the 1000 dollars you didn't spend on a 3 monitor setup. You could grow apples or have a park for your neighborhood or something.

Your funny.

christianb...
u just gotta try it, then u'll be hooked on multi monitors

dude i do photoshop and premire and visual studio etc
the dude that is investing in my business gave me both monitors and he is buying me the graphics card wich only cost 107 bux. also i have used a 17 for years at one point i had 2 17s but then one of them (the cheaper one) caught fire so i was back down to one. I use alt tab all the time. Now i can alt tab with larger areas of maximised screen. and yea i do like one monitor directly in front of me the other is more secondary anyhow.

i bought a hp omnibook laptop for the little woman

man that thing is small

Your woman or the laptop?

AndyF

lol

I have tried it several times on friend's computers and thought that's highly overated. I'm sorry I just don't get it . Too much space, too much money. I mean really what'd you rather have digital camera or two monitors?

For me? 2 monitors.

Got the monitor, got the digi-cam...what I need is some decent rechargeables for the digi-cam. 'Nother thing on my purchase list *goes to order Novell 5.1 eval for classes*

Without a question - duals.

Got my Retail ATI Radeon Pro 128mb today! Woohoo! Gonna test it out when I go home tonight. Any requests by anybody on what you want me to check out? I'm not going to do a full check of it until the weekend but I can do some quick analysis for ya if you want.

Hopefully gonna compare to my GF4 TI4600 on the same system this weekend. Before & After scores.

Just a user perspective instead of all these websites.

I've got a 21" Sony E500 so hopefully I'll be able to judge if there is an IQ increase or not.

well the monitors were given to me so all i had to do was get a graphics card. I have a digital camera so I am happy. I just need more hard drive space. Perhaps a 15k cheeta to run the system off of. I could also use some more ram but ram is mad expensive for my board.

why not have both

Picked up a 128MB PC133 stick and a 10GB hard drive for the Novell box.

I absolutely cannot believe how cheep 15,000 RPM drives have gotten. I take it there is a faster spindle speed out now? You can pick up a 10gig 15K drive for about 125 bucks! That's just crazy, crazy cool (for all you Paula Abdul fans out there, not that the song didn't suck, but she did have good ones, like cold-hearted snake) .

I picked up a slot fan. Major difference. Those things move a lot of air.

Between AMD's ClawHammer & HyperTransport, and the next gen nVidia chipset (NV3x, which is supposedly moving further towards photorealism...) it's going to be a great year!

Also with .NET server on the back-end, Microsoft will finally get more AD installations (many companies have still not completed a full AD installation because of the limitations of the Win2k implementation, and .NET server apparently goes a long way towards solving those problems!!)


...Anyway, what did I buy this week? Well, I caved in and bought a Logitech wireless keyboard & optical mouse combo - and I love it! It makes such a difference not to have to worry about whether the cables will reach, where you're sitting. I think it's got to be one of my best purchases this year!!
I've also got my eye on a DRD-RW/DVD+RW drive but I might wait a bit until the prices drop a bit further.

Rgds
AndyF

i shelled out for a legal copy of xp
(last week)
now i gotta get off my bum and reinstall with my squeaky clean slipstreamed sp1 cd
8)

Got the new Microsoft Multmedia Keyboard and Blue Mouse. Works nicely.

Want a new CDRW, but cannot decide at all which to get

Lite-Ons are supposedly quite good.

And sometime either today or tomorrow, I'm buying a new monitor:

http://www.ctxintl.com/products/pr705f.htm

Yeah, Lite-On drives are generally good quality, but often sold under different brand names. I've had good luck with Lite-On cdrw drives, been able to read subchannel data correctly, too.

I just bought and installed a Hercules GameTheatreXP 6.1 channel sound card.

This is one helluva card. I love it so far. And great drivers too, compared to the Fortissimo card that my friend got.

It doesn't fake 24bit sampling like the audigy cards do. It says it can do 20bit sampling, and that's exactly what it does.

And there are more possible input/output options that I could possible use.

So far, big thumbs up!

Got myself some thumbscrews @ last. They've been a little scarce, or expensive in the UK until now, but now Maplin's doing them in packs of 6 for £2.49 [product code WF78K]. Got 2 packs, but will be getting more.

Well, I bought it yesterday but only hooked it up about 40 minutes ago. All good so far although these damper wires (It's a Trinitron tube) are going to take a bit of getting used to. Anyone know of some good software I can use to set up the geometry settings etc?

This program should help you align the geometry of your crt correctly... http://www.passmark.com/products/monitortest.htm

I'll give that a shot, thanks.

Also, is it just me or do this forums tables not fully extend to the edge of the screen (leaving a huge white patch to the right) when viewed at resolutions greater than 800x600?

Given that I don't use IE (preferring Opera instead) it's probably me but I just thought I'd ask.

Looks ok with IE 6, 1280x1024..

Looks fine for me in IE6, Mozilla, Nutscrape 6, and Galeon at 1280x1024.

A friend gave me an HP scanner a couple of days ago!

Also received Icewind Dale 2, 2 512mb sticks of Corsair PC3200 memory, and a Toshiba DVDROM.

I thought my computer stuff was kinda expensive, but my home theatre is proving to be way worse.

No lovin' for my computer this month

i think i need one or 2 of those 15k scsi drives
i should talk to my invester after i do a little more on this website i am creating
it is a 3d automove aftermarket parts shop that ties over a million products to the site for instant purchase. I am psyched to do a 3d walk thru style site as opposed to the average 2d pages i have been doing.

those 15k hd's will turn your computer into a new machine
i highly recommend

yea that is what i was thinking
i have a 10k now but that is only 4.5 gigs and it just barely holds the system files.

on a side note
since i installed sp1 i have windows diskcache again on this system
8)

well right now i am allreay enjoying the benifits of scsi raid and ide raid
also haveing disks for specific tasks. i have a 10k for my os scsi raid for my programs ide raid for DV etc. etc. i am just looking to speed up my os drive

system drives seem to work much better when they are less than 9 gigs
i put mine at 4or5 gigs and it works nicely

I bought RH 7.3 Pro for work (just in time to hear about v8.0 coming out, oh well I'll get that too if it's worth it ;)). It's a pretty nice box set, and has quite a bit of documentation and a bunch of CDs.

If they made a desktop board like a P4T533=c with 66MHZ PCI slots I would go with SCSI, but otherwise its a waste of money.


Since I have no new computer parts worth mentioning I will tell you what I bought this month:

57" Sony Widescreen HDTV
Sony Progressive Scan DVD
Sony Reciever with Component Inputs, and Dolby Digital II
Already had the Sony speakers with SUB.
Got Digital cable, and Road Runner :P, with HDTV, and video on Demand.
XBOX with HDTV pack.

All hooked up with optical cables for audio and component HDTV cables as well.


Anyways thats why I don't have a new 2.53 GHZ CPU and 512 MB more of ram

I bought a LG -CD-RE-WRiter 32X 10 X Rewrite..

Cool Peace of hardware

I just bought myself a Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro (the one with the integrated USB hub). Next step: Reprogramming these keys at the top to do something useful

I really like this new Blue MS mouse, And the multimedia keyboard is nice. I like MS keys on thier keyboards much better then Logitechs.


PLaying NFL Fever 2003 on the HDTV is something to see. I have shown my wife every Geforce card I have ever had, including all the great looking games, and she always comments "They all look the same to me"

SHe saw Fever 2003 in HDTV Widescreen, and she was passing by and said "WOW, thats looks really good"

IF there was just a way to hook my puter to it

You mean you went to all the trouble of getting an expensive TV & didn't check to make sure it had a 15pin d-sub [or whatever it's called] connector on the back? What about s-vhs?

ms keyboards are great
i have the natural keyboard pro

THe multimedia ones just came out. I have the natural version, No USB ports tho.

As for the DVI connector, only ones that are flat screen LCD's have those connectors.

A bit pricey

mine has 2 usb ports and 19 programmable hot keys

Do you know how to make the Play/Pause, Stop, Prev Track and Next Track buttons control Winamp instead of WMP?

Ive got the programable keys.

Can you send a link to what you got?


I wanna see it

This is what I have:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/det...ce&n=507846

F&T's is basically the same except his has the retarded split key layout. MS don't actually make either of them any more so I can't give you a link to the MS site.

Its a great keyboard except for the fact that, as you'd expect from an MS product (even though they're manufactured, and probably designed as well, by Flextronics), the default assignments for the hotkeys only really works if you use MS software. Since I use neither IE or WMP I've been left with the need to reprogam a few of them.

Since Search and Favourites do nothing in Opera I've reprogrammed them to Lock the workstation and start the Task Manager respectively. Web/Home has been reassigned to specifically launch Opera (by default it just launches the default browser which, in my case, is Netscape Communicator). Media has been specifically programmed to start Winamp3 (instead of it's default of just starting the default media player which, while being WA3 on my machine, protects it from another program, WMP in particular from ever changing it).

The only trouble I'm having is getting the transport buttons (Play/Pause, Stop, Pre. Track and Next Track) to work in Winamp. The IntelliType software doesn't let you assign macro functions to the keys so I can't use any of the "Multimedia Keyboard" plugins for either Winamp 2 or 3. If anyone knows how I can get these keys to work in Winamp it'll be much appreciated.

THe one i have is here:

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/keyboard/nmmk_info.asp

Havent tried winamp yet

usb on the keyboard
too cool

Not DVI, I mean the same type of connector as CRT monitors use - you can get TVs that have that type of connector as an input.

yea you need to download intellitype
and set your media button to start winamp
then the play and pause will work for it



and sapiens74
they took the page with the natural kb pro down
the mulitmedia one you have is just like it just has new colors

I could not for the life of me find a widescreen HDTV with any kind of monitor connnector.

I just got UT 2003. Does that count?

Hmm... That didn't work when I first tried... Perhaps that was because the Media button wasn't explicitly set to start Winamp. Thanks anyway.



The reason they took it down is because they don't make either of these keyboards anymore. And the Multimedia Keyboard looks like it lacks the internet hotkeys and the Internet Keyboard (which my folks have) lacks the multimedia keys and neither have the inbuilt USB hub so it appears that MS can give you one or the other but not both.

my kb has internet keys multimedia keys and 2 usb ports
so it appears they can give you all those features in one they jus aren't doing it anymore.

Mine works for Winamp

Mine works with winamp with the newest software.


I have to wait till Tuesday for UT 2003.

Hawaii takes longer

Yeah, EB, Software Etc., and Best Buy all said that as well, but Software Etc. got their first batch in today and didn't even know that it was coming.

Gamestop here, said Tuesday. So hopefully then

didn't realize ut was here already
well not that i was interested anyhow
i will have to buy it though for all my freinds that like to play

Well HDTV seems to to still be a novelty for the rich here, & not the sorta thing you see in most high-street stores, but I have seen the 15 pin D-Sub connectors on ordinary widescreen TVs. Having done a search on the net [which was more productive when I searched on "XGA" instead of just computer :)] there are plenty with that type of input.... but they're all LCD, Plasma, rear-projection, or actual projectors, which are all a tad pricey.

However, if you'd be willing to settle for SVGA then I did find a place called Electroline that does some HDTVs with SVGA input for somewhat less scarey prices.

wouldn't you want a dvi connector on a digital tv instead of a vga one?

Not instead of, as well as. Not all graphics cards have DVI output. I mean, if it's only gonna have 1 or the other then it should be a 15 pin D-Sub connector, but ideally it ought to have both.

This week i bought the following -

1. Creative Audigy Player
2. Lain-Li Aluminium Case
3. 2 80MM Case Fans with LED's (Looks cool when the light comes through the front of the case) :x
4. A new CPU Fan with Blue LED's
5. An ECS K7SFA Skt A Motherboard
6. Sony STRDE375 Dolby Amplifier (only used for my pc to attach my new audigy so i can get 5.1)
7. Eltax Movieboxx 5.1 (to connect to the sony amp)

This week i broke the following -

1. Gigabyte GA-7DXR+ Motherboard and i had to replace it with the ECS which is not going to compare to my Gigabyte board which had the world on it.

Received:

2 PCI USB 2 Cards.
Some USB2/IEE1394 Cables
ME-320 USB2/IEE1394 External Enclosure

Also order 2 Intel 1G NICS for my 2 PC's and a USB 2 PCMCIA card.

Bought a new HDD this week - a 60GB Maxtor 5TO60H6 [DiamondMax Plus 60]. It's not the 1 I wanted, or was saving up for, [I wanted the WD 120GB Special Edition (although I've seen the 200GB v. is now available :D), which I someday still hope to get]. but I didn't see that I had any choice really, as my DeathStar's bad behaviour was getting worse [like randomly spinning down or refusing to spin up!]. Having fiddled about with my hardware I have both HDDs in & running, & the DeathStar hasn't gone to sleep again since I did the re-arranging [Wednesday, when I bought the Maxtor], so I guess it is possible that its spinning down & refusal to spin up again may have been power related [I've disconnected my old CD ROM [still got CDRW in there] & a cheapo fan I had lying around that I had decided to hook up]. However, the DeathStar has also been occasionally doing that FING (tm) [Fear Inducing Noise of Grinding] that they are known for doing, so I decided that the risk of waiting until I could afford the WD HDD wasn't worth it.

Oh well, @ least I have a bit more elbow room, in terms of storage space. @ the mo I'm just using the DeathStar for stuff like my swap file, temp files & temporary internet files. I'm not really willing to put anything more critical on it, for fear of losing it.

My next intended purchase is some RAM. PC World are selling 512MB sticks of PC133 for only £49!

Quote:

Quote:

the DeathStar

LOL! Hilarious... gotta be the IBM 60-75gb series, right?

(Good name for the DeskStar!)

30GB 75GXP

Quote:

Quote:

I decided that the risk of waiting until I could afford the WD HDD wasn't worth it.

Got one... FLIES!

Git! No need to rub it in! :p

Quote:

(At least your getting some useful mileage outta that "deathstar" (lol) as you call it using it as secondary swappage/temp duties in meantime!)

Yeah, it frees up a bit of space, & also might improve performance a little [probably won't notice it though] as the 2 HDDs are on seperate channels.

Quote:

P.S.=> I dumped my RAID setup & will be doing all that on a Cenatek RocketDrive PCI-ScSi SolidState Ramdrive card soon w/1gb PC-133 SDRAM by Micron on it... it's gonna FLY! Can't wait... 4-5 more weeks tops! apk

I think it would be interesting to take that idea of the SolidState Ramdrive, add more RAM [say a total of 4 or 8GB] & install windows on it, then have some software for incremenetal backup to the HDD when the system is idle. I don't remember the specifics of the card you're talking about, but I remember looking @ 1 that you posted a link for & it had its own PSU, seperate to that of the PC, so that it retained all data when the PC was powered off, like a conventional HDD would. Now that would be FAST!

RAM's currently @ the cheapest I've ever seen it over here [well, in 1 place anyway - might be a sale, but I didn't see it advertised as such]. I woulda bought myself some if I hadn't needed a new HDD more urgently. Hopefully I'll be able to get some before the price goes up or they run out.

A m8 was telling me that they are supposed to be "copy protecting" HDTV signals to prevent copying of films and t,v shows via what ever method - how ever this will dgrade the quality signifigantly

I was like, okay, if someone wanted something that bad they would just get a regualr T.V - also as he said, whay are you paying the high prices for the quality, when it will be degraded.

will try to find the full story.

I got a cell phone that has the abililty to be connected to my PC. Now to get that cable and software...

Arrrggh, meant to bring my list of stuff i bought in with me but I forgot.

Bump for Tuesday.

ASUS P4PE
Radeon 9700 PRO
512MB Corsair DDR PC3200

Got my package from newegg yesterday

2 External USB2/1394 5.25" Enclosures.

One for me and one for a friend

1 USB 2 PCI card
for a friend

1 Soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum

1 black floppy drive

for a friend

ASUS P4PE
P4 2.4Ghz (Rev.B) @ 2.7GHz

Another pack of thumbscrews, & a 512MB stick of PC133 [£44.99 from PC World].

Clutch how you like your P4PE so far.

My switch was a bit rough from my P4T533-C but I got windows back in shape and she runs good so far

I have RedHat 8 on it right now, as I am waiting for some fixes with Debian to come through via the kernel so I could my main OS back on it (Debian). So far, so good. I installed Q3 on it last night with the newest patch, and it ran creamy smooth. Also, my Plextor burner is now being picked up properly by some apps on this mobo, as opposed to my old SOYO where it wouldn't. I haven't tried using the onboard NIC yet, as there were some needed kernel patches and such in Debian and I disabled the sound so I could use my Audigy Platinum. I would have to say that this board is awesome though. It's running the CPU at 150MHz FSB and the RAM at 375 (vs. the rated 333) and is very, very, stable. I guess the Mushkin RAM along with other nice parts help with that though . So what did you get with yours? I got mine with the Broadcom NIC and onboard audio, although I wouldn't have minded the SATA and RAID, but those aren't something I would use right now anyway.

Same here, I didnt want the Serial ATA or raid.


I got my 2.26 @ 2.752 with memory at 434mhz and FSB 162


Great board.


Too bad your using linux on it.

LOL! Why do you say that? There are only 2 games that I even bother playing, and both of them (Q3A and UT2K3) can not only run natively in Linux but have run even faster (generally around 10%) in it than in Windows 2K or XP Pro. As for everything else it's all been great, and I plan on getting the NIC up and running tonight.

Such a sweet board to put such a dull OS on it.

I guess i need to go back to work So i can get bored of Windows as well..........

/sigh

I'm a bit late (by about 2-3 days) for the last week but I recently bought a Pioneer 16X (is it just me or have DVD-ROMs plateued out at this speed? Do DVDs shatter above this speed or something?) DVD-ROM and a Lite-On 48X (now all I need is some 48X media > :)) CD-burner.

Prior to that I bought an AOpen HQ-08 full tower case.

I'm buying this stuff as part of my ongoing quest to have a new computer by years end. I toyed with the idea of putting the burner and DVD drive into this while I waited to get the rest of the components but I desperately needed a new CD-ROM drive and having a burner in here would be much more convenient than having to take a number and wait in line to use the (4X) one in my folks machine.

Next week I'm going to get a new video card (I'm almost afraid to admit its going to be a GF4MX...) and a 128Mb SDRAM for the PII as sort of a holdoff while I buy the parts for (whats going to be) the Athlon box. Hopefully the GF4MX will be able to be taken to the Athlon (I read a note on the wall of a computer shop that mentioned the GF4MX 440 had compatibility issues with KT333-based boards so I'm a bit hesitant on that front) while I save up and buy a "real" video card.

Hmmm, just give it a shot and some time. I seem to remember a certain Intel zealot that used to be hardcore AMD only a short time ago...

I'm a sellout that's for sure.

I have Mandrake Running on my wife's Albatron PE Board, so I'm a little adventurous.

But since I don't work right now, I do not get frustrated with Windows like the days of old.

Mandrake is pretty nice, and is quite a bit easier to configure than many other distros. Maybe you can come on over to www.linuxcompatible.org and we can see about getting that thing doing more...

I had to buy a new CD-ROM as I killed one in a mod attempt (kids, make sure not to force open a CD drawer---it may be fatal).

I want to build a dual PII box in the near future, but I need to make sure I pay my bills and credit card off first (just a few hundred)

asus p4533
2.4g p4
yamaha 44x24x44 burner (burns text on cds *shrug*)
chaintech geforce4 ti4200

a friend needed a new setup... so i set her up.

on a side note her 1 year old liteon burner crapped out.

I have the following ordered from Newegg:
-refurbished Iwill XP333 R
-Duron 1.2
-Thermaltake Volcano 7
-Sparkle 300W PSU

I need to get some more DDR however...and damned if memory prices haven't been going up. The cheapest stick of 256M PC2100 was out--and it was Samsung.

I was looking at some Corsair XMS PC3200, and it went up like 30 doalls in 2 days.

I ordered it before it went up another 30, 3 days later

yea pc3500 is about the same as rambus1066
maybe they figure if peeps will pay for rambus they could squeeze
a little more money out of people

I'll have to pick some up eventually. Until then, I can always swipe the stick of PC2700 from my P4 box.

My system with PC3200 is faster then my Old Rambus 1066.

really?
my rambus system smokes over the ddr alternative

My P4PE lets you set memory independant of Bus Speed, so I can Really Crank up the memory, giving it the same Bandwidth as PC1066, with lower Latency

I just ordered a cheap Dell laptop for school.

P4 1.7GHz
256MB RAM (going to 512 as soon as it arrives)
32MB GF2Go
8X DVD ROM
15" SXGA display
Onboard NIC and Modem
30GB drive

All the software is getting canned and replaced with Debian/KDE (maybe Fluxbox).

How much was it, out of curiousity?

$1375 + shipping and tax. I couldn't even get a refurb for that cost. Dell has promotions for some universities, and they had a special for University of Wisconsin (where I'm going in January).

yea thats an excellent price

OK, scratch that, I found a better combo:

P4 1.7GHz-M
128MB 266DDR-RAM (getting another 512MB from Crucial, and the unit can go to 1GB, vs. the 2650 being capped at 512MB and used 200MHz DDR)
40GB HDD (free upgrade from 30GB HDD)
32MB GF4 440 Go
Internal NIC/Modem
Free spare battery
15" UXGA display (1600x1200)

And this one was $1369.

I was looking at that one too.

The PX now sells Dell direct with free shipping and no taxes plus special interest rates :P

Ahh, the Navy. I haven't heard "PX" since living in GTMO...

It was BX in the USAF... Ahh, the memories.

Cool thing about Hawaii, you have a Huge BX, and a Huge NEX, and they are so much cheaper then local shops

They have actually started mixing the commisary and BX/PX now.

Yeah, the did that in GTMO back in '90, and you could even buy cars and Harleys through the base exchange (not like there were any other dealers on base). It was this mega-mall thing.

Sony 48x 24x 48x burner,

Flashed firmare to make it 52x 24x 52x

got a motorola cable modem
now i can stop paying monthly for the old one i had for years and years

Bought a case for a system I'm working on for someone else and a green LED'd 80mm fan that I've put on a Volcano 7:D

Bought A 3rd Computer

ASUS A7N266-VM

Athlon XP 1700 Retail
256MB PC2700
Enlight Mini Tower w/300w Power Supply

Only 219 Bucks

Shipping was 67 tho

This week i got these -

Intel Pentium 4 2.533Ghz 533Mhz <--- Got her running sweet at 2.8 might take her further
ASUS P4S533-E
512MB 333Mhz PC2700 RAM
Creative Geforce4 Ti4600
Thermaltake Active Memory Cooling Kit
Coolermaster IHC-L7 Fan (not delivered yet)
Antec Arctic silver which should come with the Coolermaster fan
400Watt Power Supply Unit <-- Got home and plugged it in and it made a loud pop noise and lots of flashing so thats going back

Just bought a new 4D Optical mouse and a 48x LG CDWriter

Bought myself -

19" Philips CRT monitor (smallest 19" front to back space requiring monitor)
2x 80GB Western Digital Special Edition HDD's 8mb cache
1x raid controller
200 48x cdr's

Brought a new MEC Extreme 919 case for my new PC which I'll build next week

Just got them, but its friday 13th 8) so a bit frightened to put them in.

Got my ECS K7S5A and Athlon XP 1700+ today

Have u tried running that board yet, as i am having probs with mine and may have a feeling that its to do with the XP chips, maybe BIOS needs upgrade. Let me know if u get probs starting up sometimes.

Cheers

Booted fine everytime for me.

Also brought a Microsoft Internet Keyboard today. It's great.

Bought a Chaintech GF4 MX 440 64MB DDR AGP card off newegg...not for me, but for another rig I'm putting together for someone else (and making a few bucks on). Should give him enough power to actually play some games for once (I have no clue what's powering his grahpics ATM)

Ok, this is more of a "what bits have I bought in the last month" rather than the last week, cos I haven't gotten round to posting.

1st up, I got myself a Zalman ZM-NB32J northbridge heatsink, partly cos it was on sale, & partly just cos I felt like it. Of course, although it can work without a fan [& is intended to], I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't put 1 on it. :-) a 40mm 1 would have fit on perfectly with screws, but the only 40mm fans I had were pretty much dead anyway, so I tied on a 45mm fan I had that was still working ok.

Next I got myself a new HSF for my CPU, another Zalman product, this time it's the CNPS5100-Cu. It keeps my CPU a bit cooler than the stock 1 that came with my retail/boxed athlon XP. It's also noticeably quieter than the stock 1 [even @ full speed without the fan speed thingy] - so much so that when I'd put the side of the case back on & powered it back up I thought there was something wrong with my HDDs because of the amount of noise they were making, then realised that they'd always made that much noise but that I just couldn't hear it because of the HSF noise!

I also got 1 of those slot blower thingies that is intended to take the hot air from your gfx card & shove it straight out the back of the case. It allegedly is supposed to push 42cfm, but I've felt stronger airflow from a <30cfm fan. Oh well, it was only £5.99, I guess you get what you pay for.

Then I found myself with a bit more cash to burn, so I decided to treat myself. I'd been wanting a DVD drive for absolutely ages, but hadn't gotten around to getting 1, then found that the PC World just down the road from me were doing OEM Lite-On LTD-16SH drives for only £35.

While I was in PCW I also decided to have a look @ game controllers. I don't play games all the time, just occasionally - when I feel like it, but for quite a while I'd wanted some sort of joystick or gamepad for the few games I've got where 1 might be useful. I didn't want to splash out on something expensive that could do the dishes & make me a cup of coffee 1st thing in the morning as well, as I already had about £200 earmarked for something else. Sadly they don't let you try them out in store, but they did say I could take it back within 7 days if I didn't like the 1 I chose, which ended up being the Saitek P2500 Rumble Force Pad for £20.

Tomorrow's [Monday] the last day I can take it back, so I'm going to have to try it out on a few other games before I go to bed tonight, but going on the 1 game I've tried it with so far [Moto GP Racing] it's going back. Yes, it looks nice, & it is also comfortable to hold, but whilst there is an option to calibrate the analogue thumb sticks with regard to how far they can be pushed in each direction, there's nothing to calibrate the sensitivity of them. What I mean is, that unless the game includes its own sensitivity option for analogue controllers & you try playing a driving game using the analogue sticks then you may find yourself wondering if your driver/rider is gonna get pulled over & breathalised!!!

Right, almost done - been saving the best for last. What did I have that £200 [actually £199] set aside for? My new pride & joy, & currently my favourite piece of hardware - a Mordaunt-Short 907W 100w sub-woofer [mine's black, not that nasty cherry colour]. Now all the deep bass bits in films sound just like they should.

Went to town? LOL, not exactly - that's yet to come. I have a few other things to get 1st [like a new VCR, TV, DVD player, & possibly a 5.1 amp/decoder & maybe some new speakers], but after that I have a list of stuff I wanna get:

DigiDoc 5
Abit AT7 Max2 [& maybe the Max XP drive bay thingy]
Athlon XP 2700 [maybe higher by the time I get round to it]
512MB of Corsair PC3200
& [hopefully they'll be out by then in this country] a Radeon 9700 Pro AIW
New PSU [haven't made my mind up about make/model yet]
I'm also toying with the idea of an Audigy 2 Platinum.

I bought the following:
2 packs of Cooler Master ramsinks
an Athlon XP2000+ (Paliminio)
and I have a Thermalright SK-7 on order from newegg

I plan on ordering a KVM switch here shortly as well.

Went a bit mad over the last couple of weeks :x :

Vantec Nexus W-Force Super Panel
Swiftech MCX462+ Heatsink with YS-Tech 80mm fan
Chieftec AX-01SLD Aluminium Midi-Tower
Creative Labs Audigy 2 Soundcard

I think it's time to put the plastic away before I get tempted again... 8)

AndyF

I just bought a tricolour cathode light from ebuyer info here 8) , didnt even know you could get such a thing, looks very nice

I think we should retitle this thread "New parts I've just bought" and then we can all post as we buy new things.
Hell, keep the thread going for a couple of years and the first few pages of posts will be very historic

Anyway, my purchases over the last week or so:

ASUS P4G8X-Deluxe motherboard (Granite Bay)
Western Digital WD1200JB HD (120GB, 8MB Cache)
Diamond Internal V92 modem (For some reason my dial-up speed has now increased from 42k to 49k-50k, all very strange).

Dell PowerEdge 1600Sc dual SCSI 320's
640MB ECC REG Ram
Dell 1800FP monitor

I was as surprised as the next person!!
I was using a USR External V90 (flashed to V92) modem.
The connection speeds were a rather constand 40k or 42.6k
It has been this way for years and I've always assumed bad lines where I am.

Over the weekend I was building a PC for the girlfriend, her old machine had an internal modem and I'd sourced a Diamond Internal V92 one - this is a true hardware PCI modem, not WinModem or Software.
After I'd set her machine up of course I wanted to download the critical updates so I hit the net.
First attempt to connect to the net, connected at 44k.
A few more tests after reboots, 46k, 48k, 50k.
I'm now averaging around 48k and the only thing changed is USR External modem removed, Diamond Internal Hardware modem added.

Yer ok, compared to those lucky people with broadband this may seem like nothing, but my online experience does feel that bit better now.

Yeah. My granparents have a local ISP, and they connect at 48k pretty consistantly. Not as fast as the DSL I'm used to, but I'm impressed to say the least.

Ok this week i bought!

Eheim 1048
Danger Den Z-Chip waterblock
Danger Den Maze 3 478 waterblock
Danger Den GF4 waterblock
Black Ice Pro Radiator
Chieftec Silver Dragon full tower
3.5 Bay Rheo-bus
Qtec 550watt PSU
2* 120mm Titan Aluminium fans

Got some more goodies:

Q-tec 550w PSU
Digi Doc 5 [black]
Delta 60mm Focused Flow 36cfm [6800rpm]
FDD with black bezel
Braided sleeving
fan grills [various sizes]
about 2 litres of spraypaint [black undercoat, black gloss, & clear - was on sale, & I hate beige]

BTW, for those who haven't had/got a Delta fan, there are actually 2 reasons why they've earned the nickname "screamer": 1 refers to the noise they make, the other refers to the noise you make if you are unfortunate enough to get your finger caught in them. Maybe they ought to call them Delta Vampires.....

So, one question: what were you doing sticking your finger into a running fan? I hope it was an accident, and not just something you do to pass the time

Rgds
AndyF

Yeah, was an accident. 1 I don't plan on repeating. It didn't bleed for that long, & it only took a little chunk out of the tip of the little finger on my right hand.

I got the Antec-style cases with a precut side window in it today. I plan to get a 4-port KVM switch here shortly as well.

just bought a new ATX case / 512 pc-2100 (but getting pc-3500 for overclocking once i find it - just could not wait!)..lol

possibly buying a new 2.0a chip for some serious over clocking!

I got an iPAQ 5455 yesterday to replace my iPAQ 3850.

I was curious as to whether you condisered another brand Pocket PC.

I had an IPAQ 3765 which I really liked, and was looking into buying a new one soon. THe Dell AXIM is the frontrunner, although I have always been biased toward the IPAQ. Any particular reason you chose yours?

THanks

Ordered my Zonet 4-port KVM switch! Should be here wednesday or thursday.

5 minutes ago I ordered:

NEC 1760NX 17" TFT (16ms response time) and it cost me......a small fortune.
Should have her in my possesion in black tomorrow morning.
I've now got that giddy feeling where I cannot wait to get my hands on it and see it in operation and then on the other hand thinking of all that money I've put on my credit card

I am a major fan of the iPAQs, and the only other unit I thought about was the Sharp Zaurus (Linux-based), but I wanted to use the PPC OS again with Outlook. As for the Dell unit, they haven't been on the market too long so I will just wait and see what they are like in a year or so. Every PDA I have looked at has had issues and needed a lot of firmware and OS updates to get them up to speed, so I just think I'll stick with someone that's been making them for a bit. Also, the utilities that Hew-PAQ released for my 3850 were great (WLAN switcher, dashboard, etc) and most of the time the 3rd party utilities that they bundled with the unit were full versions of the apps and not just demos or freebies that were already available.

I was considering the DELL beacuse of price mostly.

I can order an AXIM with 400MHZ Xscale CPU, and 256MB SD card for 407 bucks shipped.

THe IPAQ i was looking at was closer to 700, although I like it better not sure I can justify the extra 300.

Yeah, mine has integrated Bluetooth (not using it yet) and 802.11b (using that at multiple networks) built-in, which is *very* nice as I don't need to use my sleeve all the time with my PCMCIA NIC just to connect to my network. You should check out Toshiba, which has some nice handhelds that include wireless support as well. Plus, they have built-in CF support whereas these just have SD/MMC support only.

Thats another issue.

I have a SOny DVC and a Kodak Camera so I got 2 kinds of memory as it is.

MY old IPAQ had the expansion sleeve, although it didn't have the SD slot like the new ones.

Wirelss is pointless to me, which I believe is why there is a difference is cost between the IPAQ and AXIM.

Yeah, for me I sometimes store large files on the iPAQ or on the MMC/CF card with it. I have a 512MB CF card and a 128MB MMC card that I keep a bunch of things on (including MP3s :)) for moving between systems. Many times, I use the wireless access between the iPAQ and WAPs, PCs, and other handhelds to move stuff around. This is quite a bit faster than using IR to transfer things. But, if you don't need the 802.11b, Bluetooth, and integrated fingerprint scanner in the handheld (yeah, the 5400 series now has biometric-coupled security options) then get a cheaper one. I just got tired of needing the sleeve all the time.

Yeah with the sleeve the thing was a brick to carry around.

Either way im going with SD card and get a nice 256mb one mostly for files and stuff, maybe an Mp3 or 2

going to be buying a nice C1 stepping CPU either 2.4 or 2.6 for mad over clocking to which in the next few weeks i will be building my ultimate overclocked cpu / gpu / chipset cooled system!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!