Brian Frank

LG Flatron Wide L196WTQ I use a table as a desk, and the Dell 17" Trinitron CRT has made it bow some when on the thing. Still works, but boy, these LCD's have gotten nicer, and quite acceptable, even for a nitpicky person like I can be sometimes.

Oh wow! This thing is still going on after 6-7 years. For the heck of it: Main box: -DFI LanPartyUT Ultra-D -Athlon64 X2 3800+ -2x512MB Ballistix PC3200 -PNY GeForce 7900GS -Western Digital 160GB SATA -Seagate 160GB SATA -Pioneer 16x DVDRW -Samsung 52x CDRW -Philips Dynamic Edge 4.1 -CMD ATA100 PCI -Artic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro -Thermaltake ToughPower 600W -WinXP Pro SP2 Second box: -MSI P965 Neo-F -Pentium D 920 (2.8GHz) -2x512MB SuperTalent PC5300 DDR2 -Sapphire Radeon X1650 512MB -Seagate 80GB SATA -Pioneer 16x DVDRW -Hercules Fortissimo II -IEEE1394 PCI card -Intel stock LGA775 cooler -OCZ ModStream 450 -Windows XP SP2 *Nix box -Asus A8V-MX -Athlon 3700+ -2x256MB PC2700 -Hercules GeForce 2 MX -Seagate 120GB PATA -Lite-ON 52x CD-ROM -ThermalTake SilentBoost K8 -Antec TruePower 330 -CentOS x86-64 5.0 (yes, I know 5.1 is out)

Hmm...I guess I never posted my current rigs, which have settled at two + a laptop. Quite a bit lower than the 5 I've had a few times throughout my geekness hobby. Main box: -DFI LanPartyUT NF4 Ultra-D -Athlon64 3000+ -512MB (2x256) Patriot PC3200+XBL -eVGA GeForce 6600GT 128MB -Western Digital 7200RPM 60GB -Maxtor 5400RPM 40GB -Samsung 52x CDRW (SW-252B) -Pioneer A109BK 16x DVD+-RW -Philips Dynamic Edge -CMD ATA100 PCI controller -Enermax EG565P-VE 535W -Chaintech VNF3-250 -Athlon64 3000+ -512MB Samsung PC2700 -Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 128MB -Maxtor 45GB -Maxtor 40GB -Toshiba 6x DVD-ROM (the longest used piece of hardware I own) -PCI Firewire card -Antec TruePower 330

You sure the CD Drive isn't going out? *and don't type in all caps: it's considered shouting---which is rude.

See if there's anything relating to System Defaults, or BIOS/CMOS Default settings on the main screen of the BIOS utility. Failing that, you could always clear CMOS with the jumper (see your motherboard manual for the location and how to clear CMOS). If that doesn't do the job, Google Memtest and download that. You can download it to be used on a floppy, or you can download an .ISO and burn that to CD (it's bootable, and quite handy for future troubleshooting). If you can run that for 12+ hours without any errors, the RAM is good. If not, test each stick at a time.

Try running the game in compatibility mode if you haven't already. Also, check the compatibility database. I might be wrong, but I just seem to recall FF7 needing a few things done to get it working. Of course, the newer hardware may also be an issue too, but I'm not sure.

I had some guy insisting that a 3DFX V3 3000 was more powerful than a GeForce 4 Ti4600...or something like that. This was also after 3DFX was long gone and the V3 was no longer a high-end card.

Comp upgrade time. I order some stuff from ZipZoomFly yesterday and I can't way for my new toys. -DFI NF4 Ultra-D -Athlon 64 3000+ (Winchester) retail -eVGA GeForce 6600GT -512MB (2x256MB) Patriot PDP+XBL PC3200 -Enermax EG565P-VE FMA SLI PSU

Make sure your floppies aren't write-protected and that they are formatted. What program are you using to burn a CD?

I wonder if Philipp has an announcement feature built in. That'd be very useful to display one message across every forum: DO NOT start any more Sims 2 threads. [link to sims 2 thread] is the place to ask them and search for your problems. Failure to follow this will result in your demise. (j/k).

I'd have at least a dual CPU rig with SLI and some GeForce 6800 Ultras for starters. Probably 2-4GB of RAM too. Probably 2-3TB (and I could do it pretty easily too with 400GB drives available. Get the largest watt PSU that PC Power & Cooling has... I'd use some LN2 cooling setup...for everything, but if something couldn't work, I supposed I'd do a peltier setup and just toss in a 300-400W power supply just to run the peltiers.

I don't come by here as much as I used to like a few years ago, but I regularly hit up: [H]ardOCP, 2CPU, PC Perspective, and Zone365 (then again, you would hit up a website you're on staff with ).

I'm not up on what you plan to do, but I know vBulletin has a feature that allows people to send the admin/mods an alert about a member's post. The reason I bring this up is mostly because I've noticed what I would consider a pimp in the Buy/Sell/Trade forum.

The Athlon 64's run pretty cool, but the Athlon XP's are different. True, the Barton/Thorton core is fairly cool, but the Northwood core P4's run pretty cool themselves. The Prescott core is the flaming hot one, and part of the problem lies when it's in Socket 478 packaging. Mainly because S478 wasn't designed for the Prescott core; LGA775 was. In otherwords, your blanket statement isn't true in all cases.

Yup. I work thirds, so I can see someone and then a few minutes later go "Haven't seen you since last year"