Brian Frank

Sean Connery is da man. Pierce Bronson is a close 2nd.

I've always voted since I've been legally eligible to.

I'm taking a Unix class and a Novell 5.1 admin class this semester, and while I'm not fond of the command prompt, I'm thinking that Unix-based OS's are going to be the way to go. Novell is fairly easy to use, but I still don't like it. I'm most comfortable with Windows, but my Unix prof is really good and he's made things easy to understand.

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

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.

SiS may suck, but we can't forget companies like ALi and Via

Are you a student? If so, you can get a discounted version of software cheaper than the retail version. And, so long as you have a fairly recent version of Windows, you can just buy the upgrade of XP.

ECS=Extreme Crap Systems. I built a system with a K7S6A (I know different board) for a friend and his family. That is the last time I will ever mess with anything ECS. I was gonna put in a PCI ATA controller, but the damn thing would refuse to display any video, regardless of a PCI or AGP graphics card. Also, I ended up having to get a different modem because ECS boards have some apparent incompatibility with BroadXtent/Creative cards/chipsets. Spend some decent money and save a headache. ECS may be cheap, but you pay trying to figure out what the hell is the problem.

The Yamaha one, right?

I'm not really big on Doom or Quake. I'm more intrested in Unreal 2

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)

I have my own webspace (free in fact), but I like to show off my specs, so I put my boxes up at Overclockers Australia in their PC Database and link my stuff to that. I have a sig pic, but it's a bit too large for here, so I won't put it in their.

Riva Tuner.

Good job, Philipp. Good design

Did you get the Win2k/AMD patch that was supposed to fix the lockups. I'd heard about it before I used Win2k so I got it before trouble started.

[H]ard|OCP, 2CPU, T-Break, AMDMB.com, Mikhailtech, Dan's Data, Tweak Town, Guru of 3D, and Gideon Tech are good ones. THG is full of BS. His site presents opinions as facts. Anand is decent, but success has gone to his head. They are 2 sites I pretty much avoid anymore. Tom Pabst and his cohorts are morons, plain and simple. They think they know more than they really do.

75GXP and later are the drives to avoid. Both of my 60GXP were shot within 6months of purchase. I do have an older 34GXP 10GB in my Novell 5.1 box (temp server), but I won't put an IBM in any box that's crucial to me. I've had the least issues with WD. Maxtor is a close second. I've only had one Seagate, and it was an old 150MB one. AFAIK, it's still working. Basically, stay the hell away from IBM drives and you'll be fine.

I like NS7. I only keep IE around as the OS kinda needs it and a website I have to use for school is pretty picky about what browser you use.

That might've sounded a bit sarcastic, but so far, it's pretty good. I got Netscape 7.0 downloaded to try out for the heck of it, as I've been having trouble on another message board---and it turned out to be IE6 for some reason. Not NS7 isn't flawless yet, as I do have trouble with one site currently, but it's more of a continual popping up with some message than anything terribly serious. I do miss the use of the programmable buttons on my mouse---but then again, I haven't installed the drivers for it yet (didn't need to using IE6), so that's probably fixable.

Norton System works will do the trick, but as others have hinted at---it sucks. I refuse to install Systemworks on any of my PCs ever again because it ends up "fixing" things that are fine. If you just need an undelete util, NSW is a waste (well...it kinda is to begin with)

Definitely make sure it's a high-quality PSU. When I put together my P4 box, the 300W PSU didn't work. It was ATX 2.03 compliant, but it wasn't good enough to power up the system. It currently runs fine powering a dual P3 box with several drives---kinda wierd to me, but hey, that's just my experience. On the other hand, you can't have too large of one either. Again, you don't want a POS either here, but if it's not that much more go for a 350 or 400W---just to be safe. My P4 box is pretty basic in it's configuration 1 hdd, 1 optical, video card, NIC...not overclocked presently. YMMV, but just pick your PSU carefully like one from Antec, Sparkle or Enermax.

I don't use a computer for my work---then again, they probably don't have good computer controlled floor scrubbing machines yet. There are a few computers, but they're the Compaq iPaqs using some sub 1GHz Celeron with Windows 98. They're good enough for what we need---basically training courses.

Dang it! I didn't notice that until you said something! Now it's buggin me. Curse you!!!!

I've had an A7V (1.02) , a Duron 800 and a Hercules 3D Prophet II MX (GF2 MX) running fine for almost 2 years now. I'm using BIOS 1007 and the 21.81 drivers. Under Win2k I stuck with the 10.80's for quite some time. I know you've fixed yer problem, but I've had this system running like this for quite a while.

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