jmmijo

Quote: btw, since you seem to know your sound systems, what do u think of the Creative MegaWorks 510D 5.1 500W? It's frequency response (32Hz - 18kHz) is a bit worse than the Creative MegaWorks 550 THX 5.1 (25Hz - 20kHz), but I have no idea how my ear will respond to that and the MegaWorks will cost $50 extra. I have the older Cambridge Soundworks 2200 Series, I think that was the model It's a 5.1 system but the analog version when the SB Live sereis was still out. It sounds great on both a Live and an Audigy 1 card. Havn't upgraded to the Audigy 2 yet however. I do recommend upgrading if the audio playback is key, since the two speaker setups will most likely sound a little different, you may want to check out a local dealer of CL/CS speakers and listen for yourself. Of course it will not be definitive since your room/environment will make some changes in the sound playback as well. Another good setup is the Klipsch 5.1, but of course the cost is more so again it comes back to the best sound for the buck

Don't you think that the DMCA here in the states and other IP protection laws are really aimed at one thing, to protect the greed and avarice that has really become the norm for many companies, not just here in the US but worldwide ;(

You might want to try out this piece of software. It runs on pretty much any Win32 box, Win 9x ~ XP. This will allow you to move the drive to another machine and jumper it as a slave drive. The demo version only allows you to recover files/folders under 64K in size but it will at least tell you if that folder you need is shown http://www.r-tt.com/ I used this to recover from a bad RAID 0 array. I couldn't get all the data but most if it

You'll not find this board in any other config, i.e., without sound onboard. If anyone knows of a way then great, please post the info. It's possible that in some regional markets this will happen so I'm basing this on the fact I live in the US. As for the memory, you should do the dual channel mode option, get a matched pair of memory sticks and use this option, you'll be thankful you spent the extra and did this, you may also think about two matched pairs of 512MB sticks, RAM is pretty darn cheap, even PC2700 Also I would change my sound card to the Audigy 2 Platinum unless you're getting a killer deal on the Audigy 1 Platinum. Mainly this is due to the fact that the Audigy 2 has, finally, full 24-bit support. This means both for playback and recording Since you mentioned 3D Design, would this include apps like Maya, Autocad, etc ??? If so you may want to consider one of the Quadro boards or a Fire GL perhaps. Of course the one you chose is no slouch either but with true workstation boards you can also go up to much larger on-board frame buffer capacities. Otherwise it's a fine workstation you have going there.

According to ASUS's website the fastest XP CPU supported is the 2100+ http://www.asus.com/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx Another reason for not supporting some of the later Thourobred cores is that many of the voltage regulator circuits will not handle the lower voltage requirements needed. So in a way this is not always an issue of needing a BIOS update unless of course the mobo manufacturer did think ahead

Well yes, there are a number of EMU's available for many "old school" micro's including the Atari 8-bit, C64/C128, Amiga, Atari ST etc.... Too many to list, and of course there are a ton of EMU's out there to emulate your favorite arcades machines and consoles

I guess I'm the opposite, I like to re-install fresh and get all the devices and drivers up to date this way. With XP I just do a repair over the exisiting install and every app and setting is still there

Copied and pasted from Promises website FAQ's: 288 How can I Boot from Ultra100, CMOS, SCSI, Configuration? Cause: change the Boot Sequence in your CMOS, PCI Slot preference, Motherboard Compataibility. Solution: There are two ways to make the Ultra100 be the bootable device. One way is to make sure there are no HDDs on the motherboard controllers. The motherboard will not find a bootable device, and allow the Ultra100 to boot. The other way is to change the Boot Sequence in your CMOS to boot from SCSI first. Since the system will see the Ultra100 as a SCSI controller, this will tell the motherboard to ignore it’s own controllers and allow our card to be the boot device. Some motherboards do not allow this, so it may not be an option for you. You MAY also be able to turn the auto-detection off on your motherboard and set all the HDDs in the CMOS to ´´None´´ or ´´Not Installed´´. This is if you have devices (other than HDDs) connected to the motherboard. Again, this last suggestion MAY work. Your motherboard may not allow this type of workaround. Here is the link to their FAQ page for this controller, there is another page for their Ultra 133 controller as well: http://www.promise.com/support/faq/faq2_eng.asp?product_id=11&pname=Ultra100%20TX2#

Quote: The device that duhmez is talking about is the standard UDMA or Ultra 100 ATA controller. Promise has the Fasttrak 100 which is indeed their RAID controller card. It seems for some reason that this particular ASUS board is not recognizing this card as a SCSI device, which is what these cards are usually seen as by both the system BIOS and OS. The boot from SCSI device is what the BIOS needs to be set for. Check the Advanced settings and check what the First Boot Device is set for, make sure this is SCSI. Also check which slot you have the Promise controller in, perhaps another PCI card is taking precedence over this card, i.e., try changing the slot that this Promise controller is installed into Good luck.

First thing to check on, make sure that if the motherboard has built-in sound that it's disabled in the sytem BIOS, this includes and legacy sound options as well. Also make sure to download the latest drivers from Creative's website for fixes that address issues under Win 2k/XP. These are rather large drivers as well There has been some mention as to other issues under Win XP-SP1 but I've not seen this to be the case on any of my systems. Another thing that you may need to do is to move the Audigy to it's own non-shared IRQ PCI slot. Sometimes this is neccessary, more so on VIA chipset motherboards then on Intel but it's something else to check on.

Wouldn't you think the interaction between the OS and Diablo II is a symptom of some kind of bug in the software? Could be an issue of timing between all devices that need to be interacted with, i.e., Graphics Card, Sound Card, Mouse, etc... Just saying it's not a bug with D2 doesn't really help. I play this game quite a bit, but only single player or a TCP/IP game with friends and/or relatives and not thru B.net servers. I also seem to recall this very thing being discussed about on the open tech support forums of b.net some time back, can't recall the exact date however, sorry. The fact that the D2 process is still running could point to the cause but the only way I can recommend that you get bye this is to run Task Manger and kill the game.exe process then reload D2 and reconnect to b.net. Have you also sent an email to Blizzards tech support detailing this same info? Basically if using Task Manager to kill the process and relaunching the game works then let them know this as well. Obviously this is not an ideal option, but it may be the only one available to you.

Hello, I just signed up to this board, very nice and lots of good info I must say Anyways here is the issue at hand, I also apologize for the size of this post: After a certain period of time, this can vary from a couple of hours to a couple of days actually, I'll be browsing a web page or two and when I go to click on a link the a new browser window will open instead of opening in the same window. Thinking that I have the Open in a new window option enabled I check this and now it's not. Also note that this behavior was not occuring before this problem occurs! The other two things I've noted when this bahvior occurs is that the scroll wheel on the mouse will act like it's in History mode and go to other web pages that I've already visited, like the back/forward buttons had been pressed and also the keyboard is in CAPS lock mode when the indicator light is not even on So, the problem has followed me to the new machine that I use as my main workstation, although I recycled many of the older parts to the new machine, I did however do a brand new install of XP Pro and all the updates. Other things I've tried to no avail, installed the latest Logitech Mouseware, v9.60 and still it occurs. Okay, I then got a cheap generic two button mouse with the wheel and tried it both with and without the Mouseware installed, it still happens. I then purchased a new Microsoft Intellimouse Wireless, well you guessed it, happens again I tried using Microsofts latest Intellipoint software and it makes no difference at all. I've tried different USB and PS/2 mice with all the same results. I don't recall this happening in Windows 98/98-SE/ME/2k as they were my previous workstation OS's. Since I leave my machine on 24/7 to check email and other things, it gets a lot of use. I can correct the problem by simply logging off and logging back on, I don't need to reboot the machine at all, I was first doing this to correct the problem btw. So, what is the logon process doing to re-initiallize device drivers or what not to correct the problem until of course the next time it happens? Any insite on this behavior and how to correct it would be much appreciated, thanks

Well, just used to that is all, no dsirespect intended at all Also note that I love both their Natural Keyboards and the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer, both very fine products indeed. Perhaps the only con is that the mouse eats thru batteries but this is expected with a wireless device that gets used constantly As for not liking or disliking Microsoft, well I'm a hardware hack from way back, I still have running MAC's, C64/128's and Amiga's ;)I just happen to like a lot of stuff, both hardware and software...

I want to thank everyone that responded to my request for help, it's been a while I know, but I had to make sure the problem was gone. The problem is with the keyboard, a M$ Natural Pro so I'm gonna get an RMA from M$ to get it replaced. My original M$ Natural works just fine without any problems and so does a generic keyboard. The problem only comes back when I plug in the new keyboard again Since the old keyboard has worked for many weeks now I'd have to say the new one has some kind of defect or problem Thanks again...

These are all good suggestions, I have however already d/l the latest Java Runtime from jave.sun.com so I don't think it's that. As for the video card, it's a Leadtek GeForce 2 GTS. I have the latest WHQL drivers v28.32 d/l from nVidia's site. As for the Keybaord, yes this could be a problem as it seems the keybaord and mouse drivers seem to be tied together

Bursar, thanks for the tip, no that's not the problem however. I've tried what you have suggested to no avail either, let me detail another annoying symptom when this occurs. If I click on the web page itself to regain focus like you say, well it ends up selecting/highlighting a bunch of text on the page as well. So again I think this is really something to do with the OS and/or device drivers and not anything else, but I'm gonna try the keyboard suggestion just to make sure. This occurs on any web page that is open at the time. Closing all apps and/or killing via the Task Manager and relaunching them does not resolve the problem either

Hmm, nice idea, I haven't actually thought of that yet. Seems strange however as it's a pretty new M$ Natural Pro, about 2 or 3 months old. It does seem strange that the previous OS's I was using didn't behave this way. I've looked into this on the M$ newgroups and there appears to be a few others with very similar problems to mine, so I'm thinking this is not specifically related to the keyboard but perhaps the device driver in XP. Again thanks for the tip, I'll dig up another keyboard and see what happens with it, but I'm gonna miss my Natural

As for the video card you looked at, I'd have to say no. It's really just a slightly suped up GeForce 2 MX chip. Yes you will see some performance gain over the 2 MX but not by much and the price is almost twice that of a 2 MX card. There are now three models of the GeForce 4 Ti series, some manufactures have released the 4200 model along with a 4400 and the top of the line 4600 model. They are all the same except for the core and perhaps the memory speeds. The suggested retail prices for each is $199, $299 and $399 respectively. Another good alternative is the ATi Radeon 7500/8500 series. http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10313117&loc=425 or even a GeForce 3 Ti 200 is a pretty good buy right now, perhaps even a Ti 500 model would be in this price realm as well http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10315294&hdwt=31001&loc=101 I would also suggest swapping out the 52x CD reader for a DVD reader instead, this gives you the ability ot view DVD media and it serves as a CD reader as well, most will read up to 48x. Also note that you can pick up the TDK VeloCD-RW drive, 40 x 12 x 48, for about $150 now, at least that's what my local Fry's store had them at. I highly recommend these drives as I use them all the time without any problems what so ever