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Alien

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Posts posted by Alien


  1. Quote:
    I had some trouble with a dexxa (cheap) optical mouse because of the patterns in the cloth the mouse sometimes didn't detect the movement correctly. So I bought a logitech optical and I have no such problems since. The logitech is probably more precise.

    :nods: Yep, I love my Logitech one. I'm gonna have to get another 1 when I get round to building a secondary machine, as I don't think I could stand going back to my old serial ball mouse for long. Infact I'd rather have the hassle of keep switching my Logitech between machines than use an old serial ball 1.

  2. well going on the delay between when Radeon cards have been released in USA/Canada & when they've become available over here, I reckon there ought to be 256MB AIWs over here by oh... late 2004-ish! We still haven't got the 128MB AIW 9700Pro yet! [except on pre-order] I'm really PO'd @ ATI for not releasing cards they made themselves in this country, thereby making us wait for other companies [AFAIK Hercules & Saphire are the only ones that will be releasing AIW variants] to get around to releasing their products.


  3. I read somewhere that the 256MB version will be using DDR II not original DDR, dunno what truth there is in that though.

     

    As for prices coming down, yeah - would be nice, but what would be really nice is if 9700 AIWs eventually got released in this country!!! The longer it is until they're released, the longer it it will be before there's any price drop in them.

     

    Another thing that sucks is that Tyan apparently aren't making an AIW version of their 9700 Pro with hardware monitoring & heatsink covering not just GPU but RAM on both sides as well. frown


  4. Thanks, you may have helped, albeit indirectly. smile I had another look in the help, & whilst there isn't anyway round that exact problem, I did stumble accross something different - there is another way to achieve the same result that I wanted, or @ least it seems to work. Instead of the Page Banner function I'm trying the Shared Borders function. [or could that just be M$ being their usual awkward selves & using frames but giving it a different name? it doesn't look like the way FP does frames, but who knows what goes on in the minds of MS programmers? ;-)

     

    I'll play with it more later, as I have to go out, but thanks again anyway. wave.gif


  5. Please can anybody tell me how I can use the themes function in Frontpage [2002] without it automatically putting text over any page banner I insert? It's driving me nuts. I can see how some ppl might find that useful, but I don't.

     

    BTW, please don't tell me to learn how to use CSS's manually, as that kinda defeats the whole point of having a themes function. I don't want to have to go to the hassle of learning that, I want something nice & easy, like the themes function, but without the stupid text it insists on putting over the page banner.


  6. IE 6. I can make them look larger, but it requires using the Accessibility option to "Ignore specified font sizes", which takes 6 clicks every time you want to turn it on or off, & it doesn't just affect the 1 window, it affects all open IE windows & any future 1s you open until you turn it off again, which is a pain.


  7. Philipp - PLEASE can you do something about replacing the fixed-sized fonts with variable sized 1s. I have asked you about this before, & you said you would do something about it soon, & I know you're a busy guy, but that was months ago!

     

    Just to show you why it bothers me so much, I've taken a couple of screen-grabs of the prob. I use a resolution of 1024x768 [& have a 20" monitor, so it's not a monitor size issue], & have IE's View -> Text Size setting set to Largest. Another forum I read regularly uses variable sized fonts, & with the way I have IE set, it looks like this:

     

    just%20right.jpg

     

    Nice & readable.

    But here's what NTC looks like:

     

    too%20small%2001.jpg

     

    The text is about 1/2 the size [maybe even less than 1/2] than that in the 1st example. Changing the Text Size setting makes absolutely no difference to it whatsoever, because it's done with fixed sized fonts. Fixed sized fonts are evil evil.gif & using evil fonts is bad, m'kay? laugh

     

    PS - same applies to the main page, & can you also fix the "read more" links on the main page so that they open in a new window like they used to please.


  8. 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.....


  9. Adam, I was the 1 who put it together, & I very much doubt the company I got the mobo/CPU/HSF bundle from would replace it free.

     

    Mark, RoyalMail will be coughing up the cash for it. I've already phoned customer services, & they said all we need to do is for my friend to take it to her local post office to show them the problem, & for us [not sure, either her or me] to fill out a form, & they'll cough up the money. @ least Special Delivery is insured upto £250, which more than covers the replacement cost of the parts that need replacing [£130].


  10. I Built a barebones system [case (no PSU), mobo, CPU, heatsink, & 2 case fans] for a friend, & posted it to her by Special Delivery. For those not in the UK, Special Delivery is supposed to be a sort of premium service offered by the Royal Mail, our national mail service. I paid £18.30, which includes insurance to cover upto a value of £250, & guaranteed next [working] day delivery by 12pm. They are also supposed to take better care of stuff sent by Special Delivery than by normal mail.

     

    It arrived with her this morning. She emailed me [from her old PC] to tell me that it had, but that the HS had come off. My 1st thought was that the middle lugs had broken off of the socket, & that the HS being able to move freely around the interior of the case may have caused further damage. After sending pics that I had taken of the way it was supposed to look & asking her to describe what she could see [she doesn't have a digital camera or webcam] it seemed apparent that the socket had literally come off the mobo, still attached to the heatsink!!! I got her to sit it on her scanner, so I could see it for myself, & that pic is what she sent. Apparently all the little metal pins/contacts/whatever of the socket are still sticking out of the mobo.

     

    I've seen this happen to other connectors if they were pulled much too hard, but never heard of it happening to a CPU socket. I had even taken the fan off of the heatsink to reduce weight attached to the socket, & secured it elsewhere inside the case. I got her to weigh the heatsink, fan adapter, CPU & heatsink, which were all still joined together, & they only came to 330g, which is only 30g over AMD's max reccomended limit, & then there's the chip & socket as part of that weight too, so the difference is even less.


  11. Quote:
    Yes i sit and do this till it turns on frown

    You don't list what PSU you're using in your sig - from what I've read, & given your symptoms, it wouldn't hurt to see if you can borrow another PSU from somebody & try that with it, or failing that try stripping your system down to the bare minimum [no drives, 1 stick of RAM, etc] & see if it still has the same prob. If you do that & it doesn't, try adding 1 device @ a time.

    If the problem reappears after a specific piece of hardware is added, then try leaving that out & adding everything else. If you can do that with no probs then it's that 1 piece of hardware - either the device itself is faulty, or it's just too hungry for your PSU. If the prob reappears with multiple combinations of hardware, but not the bare minimum then I would be inclined to suspect the PSU.

  12. 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.


  13. If there's 1 thing I really hate, it's when a movie company is doing publicity for their film & they only release the trailers in quicktime format. I don't want quicktime on my system, & I don't like the idea of a video format that will only play in its own player. Doesn't matter anyway, I did a search on WinMX & am downloading the trailer in DivX .avi format.


  14. I know this won't be a popular opinion, but my favourite Bond is Timothy Dalton. I'm not really sure why, maybe it's because he was in my favourite bond film [The Living Daylights], or maybe it's just cos maybe he's more like the way I think Bond should be. :shrug: Brosnan would be my 2nd choice, but I'm not sure who I prefer out of Connery & Moore - it's been a while since I've seen any of the older films.

     

    BTW, as to the dreadful Bond film that everyone tries not to think about - it was Casino Royale.


  15. Fortrex "Magic" MG-780 ATX Full Tower case

    Macron MPT-300 PSU

    Athlon XP 1900+ [1.6Ghz] cooled by Zalman CNPS5100-Cu

    Abit KT7A-RAID v1.3 [northbridge HSF = Zalman ZM-NB32J & 45mm fan]

    768MB RAM [2x128MB + 1x512MB PC133]

    60GB Maxtor 5TO60H6 [DiamondMax Plus 60]

    30GB IBM DeathStar 75GXP

    ATI Radeon 64MB DDR ViVo

    Creative Labs Audigy [OEM, cos it's cheaper ]

    Lite-On LTR 12101B [12x 10x 32x]

    Lite-On LTR-16SH DVD

    3.5" FDD

    Antec EzUSB

    2 Realtek RTL8029 based NICs

    Kensiko translucent blue PS2 keyboard [the ones Staples sell]

    Logitech USB Dual Optical Wheelmouse

    Motorola Surfboard 3100 cable modem

    Eizo Flexscan 9400 20" monitor


  16. 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. laugh

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