Recent Posts

3676

Official Announcements / Re: Change to Official License Key Policy

« Last post by nudone on December 22, 2005, 01:29 AM »

sorry, to everyone if i sounded down on the licenses. i'm glad everyone feels like taking a stronger standpoint about the site. personally, i don't have a problem about any kind of license system. i'd jump through any kind of hoop to be able to use 'Find and Run Robot', time and time again.

please consider this a momentary negative relapse on my part. the shame, the shame.

3677

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 21, 2005, 05:22 PM »

jpfx, sorry to hear Half-Life 2 didn't agree with you. i really enjoyed it - played it through 3 times, but it did hurt my eyes when i tried it the other day - maybe you just have to get used to it.

pictures should be up tomorrow of my new machine. thanks all to those who've advised me so far.

3678

Official Announcements / Re: Change to Official License Key Policy

« Last post by nudone on December 21, 2005, 12:51 PM »

poll, yeah, needs to be done anyway - otherwise it's just guessing all the time.

licenses, i'd get rid of them. just so that it completely shuts up those whinging bastards that can't be bothered to spend a few minutes obtaining one. i'd rather they be silent and satisfied that they are getting 'free'ware rather than listen to any more of their complaints - maybe after a period of time they'll have a change of heart and donate. if not, then let them stay in their selfish little world - they deserve it.

people will keep making donations, surely, won't they? if they won't then i guess it's time for a rethink. i really haven't got any bright ideas other than things that don't sound like donationware.

3679

General Software Discussion / Re: duh, how do i get this to work?

« Last post by nudone on December 21, 2005, 07:07 AM »

no bookmarking then.

3680

General Software Discussion / Re: duh, how do i get this to work?

« Last post by nudone on December 21, 2005, 06:49 AM »

thanks, mouser.

i've just been playing about and now i realise there is a 'topic' notify and a 'board' notify.

the notify thing does work a treat but i've been using it for 'bookmarking' topics that i can come back to and read again.

do we have to 'bookmark' things in this way or could we have a proper 'bookmark' button type thingy and 'bookmark' list in our profile.

it's just a thought.

3681

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 21, 2005, 06:39 AM »

i agree with the you, Carol.

3682

General Software Discussion / duh, how do i get this to work?

« Last post by nudone on December 21, 2005, 05:01 AM »

i should know this sort of thing by now...

in my forum profile, at the bottom of the 'notifications and email' page, there's a section that says:

"Current Board Notifications
You aren't receiving notifications on any boards right now.

To request notifications from a specific board, click the "notify" button in the index of that board."

and yet, above that i've got a load of things that are under "current topic notifications".

duh, how do i get the notifications to work?

i've got all these turned on also:

Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email.
Receive reply notification only for the first unread reply.
Turn notification on when you post or reply to a topic.

it's about time i understood how to use this forum. pleeeaaaase help.

3683

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 21, 2005, 04:42 AM »

thanks, jpfx. not read the article yet - saved it for later.

i hear what you are saying and it makes perfect sense. normally, i would just take the advice of better informed people - i have a subscription to a 'performance' pc magazine and they don't really recommend using raid 0, which surprised me as i thought they'd do anything for that extra bit of speed.

so, instead of taking my usual line of sticking to what is safe territory, with this new computer build i thought i would just try all these exotic things like raid and sata and dual core. as i've never seen such things in action in real life i decided i would just have to pay up and get them myself. my curiosity needed satisfying more than the health of my bank account.

i didn't even buy products that were considered value for money. paying the premium rate for all the hardware is something i can live with even though i don't expect to see a premium performance from the machine - again, my curiosity needed to be satisfied.

currently, the machine is just about finished. it's quieter than the one i'm using right now... but it's not silent. it's faster than the one i'm using right now (an athlon xp2200 with 1.5 gig ram)... but it's not stupendously faster.

admittedly, i've not really tried to push the new machine. it plays modern games really smoothly (F.E.A.R. crashed after about 15 minutes - oh joy) but i'm hoping to see really big improvements when i do things like video encoding and editing.

the raptor raid 0 appears quick to me but i wouldn't be surprised to find that a sata II drive all on it's own would be very similar - that's what i keep reading elsewhere anyway.

things i have noticed so far during the new machine's brief lifespan: windows installed within 15 minutes, service pack 2 took less than 5 minutes, boot up and shutdown are quicker than i've seen on anything else. it's early days yet so i'm sure things will grind to a halt as i install more and more programs.

i've yet to put the 'silent' cooling fan onto the graphics card and drill a few holes here and there, after that's done i'll post some photos and a bit of commentary.

3684

Older Newsletters / Re: Newsletter 2005-12-20 - Codename "brotherS gets it going"

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 11:13 AM »

agreed, great job brotherS.

3685

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 06:42 AM »

ah even better, f0dder.

as you can see, at this moment in time i'm likely to believe anything regarding raid, as it's all new to me.

3686

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: "Stop Me From Closing It" - prevent easy closing of a program

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 05:10 AM »

yeah, good point about Maxthon, Carol.

3687

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 05:09 AM »

Carol, i'm glad you disagree with 'smids'.

i suppose what i should do is try both setups - i wouldn't be surprised if there isn't any difference at all, or at least nothing worth worrying about.

i'll let you know if i get that far.

3688

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 04:55 AM »

i've just been advised not to partition the raptor drives. simply because it would decrease the speed aspect that the raid 0 was meant to be designed for in the first place.

here's the thread http://forums.overcl...hread.php?t=17511887 that 'smids' showed me.

it seems convincing to me but i suppose the only way to find out is to test the different setups of partitioned and non partitioned raid 0 drives.

at the moment i really don't know what do to - it would be a waste to lose the performance of the raptor drives if this is what partitioning would do. but if partitioning has no detrimental effect then i'd prefer the partitioned setup.

????????????????

3689

Living Room / Re: The Avenging Unicorn and other Unique Gifts - mcphee.com

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 01:57 AM »

nice, think i'd have to buy an army of them to satisfy my needs though.

3690

General Software Discussion / Re: Program Wanted

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 01:53 AM »

not exactly what you want to hear but i let the 'do you want to reboot' message appear (or whatever it says) and then i just move it down to the bottom of my screen so that i can only just see the top edge of the window poking up, then i forget about it - it doesn't ask again.

3691

General Software Discussion / Re: Agnitum just sent me a newsletter...Outpost Pro 3.5 due in February

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 01:49 AM »

i'm probably not going to give zone alarm security suite a whirl then Carol - i should have known it was a pop up king nuisance.

Hirudin, i know exactly what you mean. i spend time each day doing the remove/install process for norton - the school i work at lets the pupils bring latops in to use on the network so i have to set them up (real exciting). when i first learnt what i had to do to get norton installed i thought it was a joke. okay, most of the time it's just a time waster job but i've had it were i've had to manually search and remove about 50 registry entries because an older version of norton wouldn't uninstall - all the bad mouthing about norton/symantec is thoroughly deserved from my view point.

3692

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 20, 2005, 01:37 AM »

thanks Carol, i thought you'd come to the rescue on that one - i'll give partition magic a go then. i'll only be putting other xp systems onto the new partitions so it sounds pretty simple to me. i've used a free boot manager in the past (xosl i think it is called(?)) which seemed pretty good to me - can't remember the exact details but the method i followed allowed me to install win98 on an area of the hard drive past the usual boundary limit (it was something you weren't meant to be able to do anyway but with xosl it worked fine).

jpfx, that is one mean looking setup. the definition of water cooling i'd say. i know what you mean about he raptors clicking away - i've got a couple of aluminium cases to put them in that should silence them but not got around to it yet.

unfortunately this is my first time using sata drives and first time with raid also so i've nothing to compare the raptors performance against. i'd appreciate if you could explain a little more as to why you were dissappointed with them. i've read in 'Custom PC' (UK magazine) that they don't see much point in using raid stripes compared with a good sata II drive and they didn't even bother to mention the raptors so i had big doubts about buying the raptors. in the end i just bought them to give me peace of mind otherwise i would be constantly wondering what they would have been like.

please let me know why you didn't rate the raptors anyway, it will be very useful information for my next pc build project.

thanks.

(not read the extreme-tech article yet mouser - going to in a minute.)

3693

General Software Discussion / Re: Agnitum just sent me a newsletter...Outpost Pro 3.5 due in February

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 02:04 PM »

anyone have any thoughts on the zone alarm security suite - they appear to love it in PC Pro (uk magazine)?

3694

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 02:02 PM »

okay, call me lazy because i'm half sure you've already answered this question but i'll ask it again...

at the moment i've got a raid 0 striped array spanning 2 hard drives - each drive is 74 gig so the total is about 140 gig recognised as one partition.

i'd like to partition this setup without having to start at the very beginning whilst installing windows.

i'm much prefer to use a program like paritition magic or anything else that can successfully do it.

any views as what is best way to do it - i'd like to put another operating system onto this raid 0 arrangement - maybe have 3 or 4 operating systems on the raid 0 drive in total.

i would start experimenting myself but as it's taken so long to get windows on i'd prefer to have head start using someone advice (my new dvd drive wouldn't read my xp cd and the old cd drive that worked was a bit dodgy also).

thanks

3695

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 01:41 PM »

ah, that does make sense then brotherS.

3696

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 01:15 PM »

i'll post some 'close-up' photos that will hopefully explain things better when it's all together properly - just spent the last 2 hours trying to get xp on the raid drives. yeah, real fun - like i really know what i'm doing.

don't really know why the psu is at the bottom. but it's in a seperate chamber to the motherboard. there is a 120mm high through put kind of fan in that bottom chamber so it's a bit like a wind tunnel - the case is meant to be very cool and very quiet. i haven't got the side panels on yet so i can't say for sure how quiet it is.

so far the loudest thing appears to be the fan on the graphics card - thankfully i have a 'super quiet' one to replace it with.

on with the building...

3697

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 09:00 AM »

i'm finding any excuse not to carry on with building this new computer so here are a couple of photos.

i'll take a few more of the 'detail' inside when i've got that far - i've not even got the hard drives in yet...

award for the most 'over-the-top' packaging so far, goes to XFX for the 'X' shaped graphics card box - it may look nice on the shop shelf but i nearly came close to getting a hacksaw to open it.

3698

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - extended audio mixer

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 07:12 AM »

i think we've talked about one such program on the forum before but i can't remember what it's called now. it isn't freeware so you might not be interested. maybe it couldn't be configured for individual programs?????

i'm sure someone around here will know exactly which program i mean and will let you know.

3699

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder.com Logo Contest is Over - We Have a New Official Mascot/Logo!

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 06:20 AM »

thanks, brotherS.

3700

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 19, 2005, 06:15 AM »

thanks all for the comments and advice.

i've now bought all the hardware, here's the list for all you geeks:

Antec P180 SPCR Advanced Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Black) (CA-049-AN)
Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-002-SS)
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-111-AS)
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL Pro TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-093-CS)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4800CDBOX) (CP-129-AM)
Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK)
ThermalRight SI-120 (Socket 754/939/478) Heatsink (HS-023-TR)
Plextor PX-740A 16x16 Dual Layer DVD±RW ReWriter - (Beige) Retail (CD-031-PL)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Edition - Retail (SC-032-CL)
XFX GeForce 7800GTX Extreme Edition 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT70F-UDE7) (GX-057-XF)
Zalman VF700-CU Quiet Copper VGA Cooler (HS-013-ZA)
TWO OF Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-015-WD)
TWO OF OcUK Silentmaxx Aluminium Hard Drive Enclosure (HS-000-OK)
Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA)
Saitek PZ30AU Eclipse Illuminated Keyboard (KB-015-SK)

(total cost so far, about £2200.00.)

(still waiting for the Eizo 21" widescreen monitor to come back into stock.)

i'm half way through putting it all together - i have to keep taking a break to relieve the stress of it all. when it's all done i'll post a nice picture for you to look at.

the two raptor drives will be in raid 0 (striped) as i just wanted to feel the speed (they are inside the silentmaxx enclosures to keep them quiet). the third drive, the samsung spinpoint, will be used for storage and backup - i'll be doing regular backups of operating system and important files onto this drive and a networked drive so that's why i've not gone for raid 0+1 or 5 or any other variation.

the fans are relatively quiet (four 120mm fans, most on low spin) but i wouldn't call it a 'silent' system - oh well, i suppose that means i'll have to try water cooling sooner rather than later.