Brian Frank

Quote: Only people who have an on-screen name beginning with "B" should be allowed them. I have no problems with that

On the other hand, you can say that's job security. I have a feeling that ignorance and stupidity will keep people's jobs.

ISA's already bit the dust---at least the slots have. I still like to have my legacy PS/2 ports. PCI-X and 3GIO are a little off, so I'm not terribly concerned with them at this point. Server boards will/do have them (PCI-X is on some server-class boards right now), but it could be awhile before they trickle down into mainstream motherboards. I'm not totally crazy about PCI-X as it's a faily long slot---and could be a problem on standard ATX boards or ones even smaller (ITX, if they decide that PCI-X would be a good implementation). Of course it's marketing. There's nothing that AGP 8x is gonna do except give you more of a future with the product that most of us will replace long before it's actually being taxed.

Philipp: I saw someone here with a graphic in their signature, so I'm wondering if that's allowable or not. If it's okay, some guidelines on the file size and dimensions would be helpful

I'm not as much of a fan of the Quake series and like Unreal better--it's just more fun to me. I've played the UT03 demo, and while I think the first one is better, the bombing run is pretty dang sweet. My b-day's coming up in exactly a month, so it's on the list. If I don't get it then, there's always Christmas.

I actually like the Hercules Fortissimo II better than the Audigy---which I should sell as I'm not using it. Hercules > Creative. The only Creative product I'll buy is their speakers as they sound good enough to me and aren't that pricey (the ones I buy anyway).

I don't think I've put 2 systems I've assembled last time I updated this thread. TRANSMATiC-- Iwill P4D (i845) P4 1.6A@ 2.32GHz 256MB PC2700 Samsung ATi Radeon 8500LE @ 290/317 Maxtor 20GB 5400RPM ATA100 Toshiba 6x DVD-ROM Hercules Fortissimo II SIIG IEEE1394 Realtek 8129 10/100 NIC SuperCase mid-tower Stock Intel P4 cooler Win XP Pro Novell box (for now) Tyan Trinity 400 P3 800E 128MB PC133 Infineon IBM 10GB 5400RPM ATA100 Panasonic 32x CD-ROM PNY GF2 Ti 64MB D-Link DFE 538 TX + 10/100 NIC SuperCase Mid-tower stock Intel P3 cooler Novell 5.1 server eval/500 client liscense (Linux later on Mandrake 9.0 or SuSe 7.2)

Plus, if, and a big if, the drive is bad (which doesn't seem so) if he's backed up his data, what's the deal. Hard drives will fail eventually. Hopefully a while after you are done using them, but they will eventually go. Hard drives are cheap, and if you've got your stuff backed up, like I said, "...what's the deal?"

Probably. I just haven't been spamming...errr, posting like I used to. I'm sure if someone like AlecStarr would post every day, he'd probably knock off the 4k post before clutch.

However, I've not had real good luck trying that, so I advocate doing a clean install in the event of a motherboard swap---unless you're switching boards with the EXACT same chipset.

Either route, he's still gonna have to move data somehow, but the reformatting will significantly cheaper.

I wonder who will spam their way to the 4k post around here. Each notch on the 1000 scale has been passed by a different member.

Quote: Im not buying an AMD CPU until they sort out there motherboards, i dont care how fast they are, if you cant get a stable system then whats the point. Since when has AMD made motherboards available for public purchase? Chipset wise, the nForce 2 preliminary results show it laying the smack down on Via's KT400. In terms of stability and speed, nForce 1 is the best platform for the Athlon. Save, possibly, AMD's own 760 (and it's variants) chipset, it is the best thing on the market for AMD to ride with. AMD's biggest Achilles heel is the chipsets available. I personally haven't had problems with Via, but I can buy an nForce board with just about everything I want on it and doesn't suck for less than what a similar Via based board runs. nForce boards are a lot cheaper than the Via powered boards like the Soyo Dragon KT333 Platinum and Abit AT7-Max. People are too concerned with overclocking---which is fun---but should not be the only goal in computing. Being a geek can be expensive. I know I went off on a tangent, but I really believe that if the nForce 2 can hit it off big in the AMD sector, it could help convert some Intel guys to the dark side of the force. AMD isn't nearly as large as Intel and thus cannot pump out the number of chipsets Intel can. A 3rd party chipset that does leave a bad taste in people's mouths is what they really need---and you probably know what I think.

Quote: You have no password on your admin account? What's your IP address (j/k) That's pretty evil

Ditto there man. nForce is the best chipset available for the AMD side of things. Stable computing for me helped big time when I stopped using Win9x, but moving to an nForce and not overclocking helped my uptime tremendously. I do have a KT133 board (Asus A7V---the best KT133 board, IMO) as my file server, and I don't use that much---but it does work fine. I do think that certain companies can build better products based on a particular chipset than other companies can---I've not had trouble with Tyan or Asus products running any chipset---but I do think that Via is going to have to haul ass since they have to contend with SiS and nVidia (and ALi/Iwill). I try to be as neutral as possible, but now that there are good alternatives to Via, I'm going to be checking them out.

Crash? Nope. After I found out which drivers and settings worked, I left stuff alone. *worships nForce and i845*

If your AMD boxes are working well for you, I personally wouldn't switch. If you do get a P4 box, I fail to see a good reason as to why you'd want to buy a separate heatsink, as these are quite good. I'm personally happy with both AMD and Intel boxes, and probably will continue to use systems with processors from both companies. Both are quite stable. However, if you are having stability issues that are directly related to your AMD boxes, by all means, go with a P4/i845 combo (unless you want to go all the way and go for the super RDRAM---do it if you have the money).

I bought a Lite-On 40x burner a while back. I don't do a lot of burning, but it's still very fast and makes short work of what I need to burn.

Quote: well your first mistake was to buy anything intel. LOL! What are you smoking? Intel---at least CPU and chipset-wise---is basically king. If you'd said Via, I could understand...

Sober? What's that?

You have to enable sharing on a hard drive or folder.

Picked up a 128MB PC133 stick and a 10GB hard drive for the Novell box.

Got the monitor, got the digi-cam...what I need is some decent rechargeables for the digi-cam. 'Nother thing on my purchase list *goes to order Novell 5.1 eval for classes*

Quote: ibm also makes a 15k drive ;( IBM can burn in hell for all I care! I will never purchase another one of their crappy drives. Reliablility is something IBM can't seem to get with their IDE drives and I'd avoid their SCSI ones in case their workmanship---or lack of---filters into the SCSI line.