And ABF enters the 21st century

[A Black Falcon]

... after a few weeks waiting (including a delay), my new computer finally arrived... it'll be quite a big hassle for some time to get stuff installed on it and all that, and it's not ALL new because I didn't get a new monitor or speakers/headphones (so I'm using the same old 17" Dell CRT and my 2 speakers which I usually don't use in favor of some decent headphones I have), but I think it's a very nice system indeed...

Motherboard - Asus P5N-E SLI
Pentium Core2 Duo 2.40Ghz (E6600)
2GB DDR2 DRAM
NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320Mb
2x320GB SATA II HDDs (600GB actual total space)
Creative Labs SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Windows Vista Home Premium
DVD +/-RW drive
3.5" floppy drive (yup! :))
flashcard reader (SD, CF, etc)

Cost nearly $2000 including shipping, not that I paid for it myself(it's a graduation gift from last summer I put off on getting for various reasons, essentially).

... since I got it from a site that allows extensive customization (cyberpower.com) I selected all the parts - the case, motherboard, various accessories, etc, but I'm not going to list everything...)

... and it came with a free copy of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, too.

[alien space marine]

Make yourself comfortable have some coffee and donuts we left for you.

[Great Rumbler]

$50 says he still uses 800x600 screen resolution.

[DMiller]

My computer is going on 8 years old now, but my first priority is a place to live which will be coming this summer. I imagine I'll have a new computer sometime next year so I can join you ABF.

[A Black Falcon]

Technically my last computer is from the 21st century too, really, but just barely... (Sept. 2001)

$50 says he still uses 800x600 screen resolution.

For now I'm using the default 1024x768, but I just got it today... finished re-partitioning things (so I have 4 ~150GB partitions instead of two 300GB ones), etc. Lots to do though... anyway, resolution? We'll see. :) (it is only 17"...)

My computer is going on 8 years old now, but my first priority is a place to live which will be coming this summer. I imagine I'll have a new computer sometime next year so I can join you ABF.

But you have a Mac so not being able to play new games on it doesn't matter anyway, right? :)

[Great Rumbler]

For now I'm using the default 1024x768

Be still, my beating heart!

[Dark Jaguar]

Well it's his moniter that's holding him back. If only he'd upgrade that we'd never have to hear him complain again.

Get Oblivion ABF, and then get all these awesome tweak mods, which your awesome video card CAN handle, to make it look about a bunch of times better than it already does.

[EdenMaster]

A...floppy drive?

...

Um...why?

[Dark Jaguar]

Well even after all this time, they are still needed for a lot of things, mostly related to backwards compatibility and initial system setup. Outside of that, I tend to use my old laptop hard drive in a USB enclosure for all my file transfers.

As just an example, if you have some totally wasted system and the BIOS does not support loading from a CD-ROM, you are pretty much forced to use a floppy drive. I myself keep both a USB floppy drive and an old fasioned one around just for such situations.

They really are a must if you regularly find yourself fixing outdated machines.

[A Black Falcon]

Well it's his moniter that's holding him back. If only he'd upgrade that we'd never have to hear him complain again.Get Oblivion ABF, and then get all these awesome tweak mods, which your awesome video card CAN handle, to make it look about a bunch of times better than it already does.

After my experience with Morrowind, and telling myself I'd never play it again fairly early in (after getting utterly bored and frusterated with its tedium and very high barrier to entry/difficulty curve), I doubt I'll be doing that anytime soon...

I'm sure that by this summer I most certainly will be buying Neverwinter Nights 2, though. Obsidian... ex-Black Isle... :) :)

Well it's his moniter that's holding him back. If only he'd upgrade that we'd never have to hear him complain again.

I'm not completely convinced that I want an LCD monitor, though... I know they're nice and small, but they're not quite as good... but by 'monitor holding me back', do you mean the screensize? 17" isn't THAT small... the resolution? 1600x1200 max? The fact that it's not widescreen (I doubt I'd want a widescreen monitor anyway, really...)?

A...floppy drive?

So if I ever want to directly use any of those boxes of old floppy games we have, I can.

Also so I can see if it works with DOS boot disks and stuff.

[/QUOTE]

As just an example, if you have some totally wasted system and the BIOS does not support loading from a CD-ROM, you are pretty much forced to use a floppy drive. I myself keep both a USB floppy drive and an old fasioned one around just for such situations.

They really are a must if you regularly find yourself fixing outdated machines.[QUOTE]

This is true too.

(oh, did I mention that the computer case (including the DVD drive, floppy drive, and media card reader drive thing), mouse, and keyboard are all green? :))

My main concern right now: how to transfer files between the computers. After spending a while trying to figure out how to get a network working with ethernet cable, and then with dvd, and having no success with either (well maybe dvd would work, eventually, but it'd be horribly slow and inefficient...), so all I can think of is plugging the old HDDs directly into this computer... bah, that would be annoying too... but transferring things 1GB at a time with the flashdrive would take forever, so that's pretty much out. Blah.

... and I don't even want to THINK about how long it'll take to install all of my games again...

[Dark Jaguar]

I just said "bigger", not LCD or widescreen or even "new". :D

Buy a used CRT screen that breaks the 20" mark and you should be set.
ABF, let me ask you one thing. Have you rolled back to XP or are you sticking it out with Vista?

Anyway, Oblivion is, at least in my opinion, a FAR better game than Morrowind ever was.

Well, if not that game, what exactly are you planning on using to put your system to the test?

[A Black Falcon]

Buy a used CRT screen that breaks the 20" mark and you should be set.
ABF, let me ask you one thing. Have you rolled back to XP or are you sticking it out with Vista?

20" CRT... that would be large... I'm not sure if my desk would fit it comfortably. That's the problem with CRTs, the depth. But either way, I won't have a new monitor soon, unless this one suddenly burns out or something (I hope not). Summer... maybe. We'll see.

As for XP... erm, the reason I said 'joins the 21st century' is because I was thinking people remembered that my old computer has Millennium on it, not XP... sorry, can't go back to an OS I don't have. :)

Well, if not that game, what exactly are you planning on using to put your system to the test?

Getting a consistent high framerate in Guild Wars, where my previous machine would have choked and gone down to 5fps in places (and WITH 4x anti-aliasing! :))? The game that came with it, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic (that game's recent)? Demos? ... Morrowind (it didn't run completely smoothly on my old computer...)? I don't know...

... the only game installed on it so far is GW... I've spent most of my time hating my DVD burner/discs and inability to get networking to work.

[Weltall]

Just swap out hard drives. By far, the least hassling method.

And, you can get a decent LCD screen for under three hundred bucks now.

[DMiller]

But you have a Mac so not being able to play new games on it doesn't matter anyway, right? :)

Used to be a problem, but if I had a newer Mac I can run Windows since they now use Intel processors.

[Dark Jaguar]

So you are using Windows then? Mac OS has come a LONG way, they gave up and told you to install Windows :D.

[Dark Jaguar]

Just swap out hard drives. By far, the least hassling method.

What exactly are you suggesting here? I'm not sure I understand. He's trying to set up a network, which is greatly advantageous in and of itself. Is it the DVD burner for backups thing? I'd go with buying a cheap enclosure kit to use a second hard drive for USB.

[A Black Falcon]

What exactly are you suggesting here? I'm not sure I understand. He's trying to set up a network, which is greatly advantageous in and of itself. Is it the DVD burner for backups thing? I'd go with buying a cheap enclosure kit to use a second hard drive for USB.

DVD burner for burning a DVDRW and putting it in the other system and copying those files as a way to back things up... had some problems with discs not being able to be read.

Network as in trying to connect the two computers with an ethernet wire and get them to see eachother... couldn't figure out how to do it and gave up (and besides, each one of them has only one ethernet port, so I can't both connect them and connect to the internet at the same time...)

Ryan's probably right, swapping out the hard drives (temporarily plugging them into the new computer and copying over the data) probably IS fastest, as tedious and annoying as it is...

[Dark Jaguar]

Ah I see. Your problem in setting up a direct computer to computer connection is you don't have a direct cable. You need the one that "reverses" midway through.

Your other option is to use a router. In this way you can simply connect both computers to the router and after setting up that connection, turn on file sharing and select the needed files.

[Weltall]

I'm suggesting hooking two hard drives into the new PC and copying files directly. It's the fastest way to go.

[Dark Jaguar]

If he doesn't have an enclosure kit, you're right. I just wasn't aware he'd be copying all sorts of files, but I guess I should have expected as much.

[A Black Falcon]

Ah I see. Your problem in setting up a direct computer to computer connection is you don't have a direct cable. You need the one that "reverses" midway through.

Crossover cable? Ah... yeah, the two I have here are just normal ones I guess, for connecting the ethernet port to the wall for internet.

Your other option is to use a router. In this way you can simply connect both computers to the router and after setting up that connection, turn on file sharing and select the needed files.

That would mean waiting a month before I can do anything, essentially, if I wanted to do that.

And even then, would WinME and Vista be able to see eachother on a network?

I'm suggesting hooking two hard drives into the new PC and copying files directly. It's the fastest way to go.

Yeah, I just did that. With ideas 1, 2, and 3 failed (900MB at a time on the flashdrive would take FOREVER on my old PC's slower USB speeds, DVD-RW discs are not reliable it seems and also take a long time to both burn and copy, and ethernet... yeah, discussed that), I had to do it...

I knew that this motherboard model supports four IDE devices and four SATA devices (among many other things). The two HDDs are new, so they're on SATA; the DVD-RW drive is one one IDE line. It didn't even include a cable for the second IDE line. Unfortunately, that other IDE line is in an extremely inaccessible location on the motherboard, in the bottom righthand side right underneath a big bundle of wires and the twisting floppy drive cable... and they install sideways (into the side of the motherboard essentially), instead of being vertical plugs like the IDE ports are on my old computer. I eventually gave up on trying to get the stupid cable into that port and instead unplugged the DVD drive and used that one. So, after some experimentation and a lot of moving around the two cases, I ended up using a spare power lead to connect the two HDDs, still in my old computer, to my new one -- in the old Dell's case, the two internal 3.5" HDD bays are in a rotating cage you can turn out of the case, making it possible to connect them to IDE and power leads from the other machine when both have their sides off and are facing eachother... :) (the new case isn't so nice; the HDDs go inside, no rotating cage or sliders or anything... oh well.)

... hey, it's probably easier than unscrewing the two HDDs from the old PC and then having to re-attach them after the transferring was complete! :)

(what, no one cares? Oh well.) Yeah, so now I've got the two computers next to eachother, facing in opposite directions, with their sides off, and have seven HDD partitions (four new, three old) and no CD/DVD drive listed. :D At least I managed to get a power lead to them so I don't need to have both computers on just to use the drives...

[A Black Falcon]

Guess which ones are the old ones... (it's kind of weird though, they are out of order... Peregrine is C:, Merlin D:, and Gyrfalcon E:...)
(yes, I did fill up about 35GB (above what it came with, namely Vista) on the new pc in day one...)

[Dark Jaguar]

Wow, those are some nerdy hard disk names. Knights of the Round Platter?

Anyway, if you are worried about a proper connection, so long as ME supports file sharing and a home network, they can see each other. Those sorts of connections don't care about OS so much as protocols.

[etoven]

Wow, those are some nerdy hard disk names. Knights of the Round Platter?

Anyway, if you are worried about a proper connection, so long as ME supports file sharing and a home network, they can see each other. Those sorts of connections don't care about OS so much as protocols.

As long as your Vista machine is trying to access an ME share your OK, but try to share you Vista machine to your ME machine and NTFS or NT-FAT32 will stop you dead in your tracks. BTW you can't share with out a router or a crossover cable like DJ said. Routers probably the way to go since crossover cables are a pain in the ass to configure.

[A Black Falcon]

Wow, those are some nerdy hard disk names. Knights of the Round Platter?

Not quite. Look at the names again, they're all based off of different types of the same thing...

Anyway, if you are worried about a proper connection, so long as ME supports file sharing and a home network, they can see each other. Those sorts of connections don't care about OS so much as protocols.

I'd just need the right cable then, I guess.

As long as your Vista machine is trying to acess an ME share your ok, but try to share you Vista machine to your ME machine and NTFS or NT-FAT32 will stop you dead in your tracks.

What, WinME and its FAT32 partitions wouldn't be able to access Vista's NTFS ones?

[etoven]

What, WinME and its FAT32 partitions wouldn't be able to access Vista's NTFS ones?

Yes, because on NT based kernels such as XP, 2000, Vista, and NT can access NTFS shares because of the security negotiations required. ME tries to use the INET_WANUSER account for all share point access and promptly gets an access denied message plus it doesn't have the protocols built in to negate NTFS file system security even if it could prompt you for the password. However, I think there may be some third party tools that address this, or Vista may address this but I doubt it.

[etoven]

I did some checking for you it is possible to access an NTFS share from a 9x machine but difficult, procedure below only works on professional versions of xp and vista...

1. On the Vista machine go to folder options then the view tab
   
   1. Disable Simple File Sharing
      
2. On the ME machine go to network neighborhood and install the protocol "NetBooie"
   
3. Enable File and Printer Sharing on the ME machine
   
4. On the Vista Machine right clink on the folder to share click properties
   
   1. Under Sharing Tab enable and name the share....
      
   2. Under the Security tab add the group "Users" to the list box by clicking the add button.
      
   3. If simple file sharing is still enabled there will be no security tab! It must be disabled first.
      
   4. Click on "Users" in the list and then check every box under permissions and then click apply.
      
   5. Click the "advanced" button in the security tab in the properties dialog and check the "reset permission on all child objects...." check box and click OK.
      
5. enable simple file sharing on Vista
   
6. Network neighborhood should be happy now.... :)
   

[EdenMaster]

Wow, those are some nerdy hard disk names. Knights of the Round Platter?

That's nothing. When I had three drives, I named them Din, Nayru, and Farore :D.

[A Black Falcon]

My Network Places, actually, not Network Neighborhood (in ME). :)

If I ever get a crossover cable and link them, that's what I'll have to do then...

One thing I am wondering about is what the heck this box that came with the graphics card is for. It looks like it gives you S-Video and Component out, but it also has ports labelled 'svid in' and 'video in' (yellow) which I can't find a purpose for... and no can I find anything that tells me what they're for... I'll figure it out eventually, I guess.

Not quite. Look at the names again, they're all based off of different types of the same thing...

Is that enough of a hint, or do I just need to say what the drive names reference... :)

[A Black Falcon]

Wow, NTFS is better... FAT32 - 688MB directory = 732MB used; NTFS - same folder, 688MB directory = 694MB used.

[Dark Jaguar]

Yep, it is better. It's just not entirely backwards compatible with older operating systems, in case you were wanting to do a duel boot system.

As it stands, DOSBox is your solution for old games. Are you having any trouble with any old games that actually use the DX standard on Vista?

Anyway, yeah Etoven that's the way. I guess I forgot that normally XP has "simple networking" on by default. It's something I used to do rather often, moving files between my XP machine and someone else's 98 machine. I'm used to setting up some unusual protocols, but again, like I said, it all comes down to using the right ones. If it requests it that way, it's more like the protocol is asking for the file and then sending it than a strange other computer doing the talking.

My own hard drives are named after my cats.

Oh, video in and audio in have a great purpose. You can turn all that hard disk space (using the right program) into your own cheap DVR.

By the way, that's not enough of a hint I'm afraid. I only recognized enough of those names to think "Arthur?".

[A Black Falcon]

[Sacred Jellybean]

Wow, what a riveting discussion this is, trying to figure out the references of names you've given to your hard drives. :D I think we've breeched a new frontier in geekiness.

Am I the only one whose hard drive names are simply the letter defaults the OS assigns?

[A Black Falcon]

Am I the only one whose hard drive names are simply the letter defaults the OS assigns?

Yes, because that's boring. :)

[Sacred Jellybean]

I've never been so glad to be called boring in my entire life. :D

A couple hours ago, I witnessed something similar... my room mate calling my other room mate a moron because he didn't know that Deep Space Nine was a Star Trek series.

From that discussion, I walked away with the priceless knowledge that there are 5 Star Trek series (and apparently there was an animated one as well). My friends are hilarious... they also like to quiz each other back and forth on comic book trivia.

"OH! I got a good one..." *asks something akin to the name of Ghost Rider's friend who died in the beginning, but more obscure* I can't even begin to repeat some of the comic book trivia these guys were rattling off on each other, full of DC and Marvel universes, and "reserve avengers", and other weird/random stuff.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well here's a test. It's one thing to have this or that knowledge about Ghost Rider or Riker's Beard (the most powerful entity ever), but try stuff about reality. Ask them if they can identify this:

<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/science.jpg">

If they can't, well congrats, they have ONLY collated data on things that will NEVER help anyone.

[TheBiggah]

War3 sometime?

[A Black Falcon]

Sure, I'll just need to see if my war3 discs are still in good enough shape to install... otherwise, older pc it is. :) I haven't gotten around to installing much yet... right now I've still got the two computers side by side with their side doors off and the old HDDs attached to the new machine. Once I manage to get through all the stuff on drive C, I'll be able to disconnect them and re-hook up the dvd drive... but C has a lot of stuff on it and going through it all takes time.

There are, of course, some programs which I don't have the disks/discs for and want to install on the new PC, but can't... I don't have the Tabworks disks here, to see how it responds to Vista, and I don't have the Wordperfect 10 disc either... maybe that will just work from the copied folder though. Most programs can run without their registry keys, right? :D

[Dark Jaguar]

Fortunatly I keep all my disks in top condition. I do have friends who are not as... careful. I actually saw cigarette burns on a few disks...

[A Black Falcon]

I try to keep them in good condition, but they end up getting moved fairly frequently during some parts of the year, and I think that all the moving must get them scratched sometimes... I certainly keep them in their cases all the time.

For Warcraft III, and Starcraft before it, though, I think it might just be wear. SC, BW, WCIII, and TFT are all discs I have used very heavily, since a disc needs to be in for the game to play, and over time that runs down the disc, I guess.

[Dark Jaguar]

Runs down? Not really. Save for scratches those things last a long time. My old disks for things like Final Fantasy 7 and so on still work fine. Moving is probably what did it.

[A Black Falcon]

That would certainly explain some things, but it's not like all of my game CDs wear at the same rate. Some still work fine despite being pretty old, while others don't... and when two of my PC game CDs that work the worst are probably TFT and BW, the two PC games I have played the most (followed by Guild Wars, which doesn't require a CD in to play), it can't be a coincidence... I had one SC disc fail on me, and my BW disc failed and had to be resurfaced, and currently sometimes TFT doesn't recognize the disc... admittedly there are a few other PC game CDs that have gotten scratched, including one Diablo II cd and a few others, but the SC/WC3 ones are among the worst, and are my most-played games. There's an obvious connection there, I'd say.

Remember, I'm not just talking about age of the disc. I'm talking about amount of use. King's Quest V's CD is probably from 1990-1992, but works just fine because it's almost never been used...

[Dark Jaguar]

But you see there's no real reason that spinning a disk would "wear it out". Certainly it wouldn't result in scratch marks unless there's some problem inside the CD reader.

[A Black Falcon]

There's just no other plausible explanation, though.

[Dark Jaguar]

There are plenty of plausible explanations. It is far more likely it just got scratched at some point than it was somehow warped from centrifugal forces.

[Dark Jaguar]

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Every single one! And not just in America...

[A Black Falcon]

There are plenty of plausible explanations. It is far more likely it just got scratched at some point than it was somehow warped from centrifugal forces.

And the more you use the disc in the drive, the more likely it is to scratch, which is entirely the point!

Anyway... I finally got around to actually playing some game demos that tell me why I bought this thing...

Supreme Commander = awesome... not as awesome as Starcraft 2 will be whenever they finish it though, to continue the ancient "SC vs Total Annihalation" debate... :D (Supreme Commander is from the same designer)

[Dark Jaguar]

Drives don't scratch disks though, unless as I said the drive itself has been damaged. The danger period would only be in the person putting the disk in and taking it back out.

Well, let me just ask you this. How often is it that you have disks lying face up on the top of your computer, in perhaps a stack? Perhaps you often open a box to find it either empty or with another game's disk in it, perhaps two other game disks forcibly stacked onto the spindle in the case? These are the sorts of things I've seen others do, and it isn't pretty.

[A Black Falcon]

Well, let me just ask you this. How often is it that you have disks lying face up on the top of your computer, in perhaps a stack? Perhaps you often open a box to find it either empty or with another game's disk in it, perhaps two other game disks forcibly stacked onto the spindle in the case? These are the sorts of things I've seen others do, and it isn't pretty.

Virtually never. As I said, I keep them in their cases or in the drive, not loose in piles.

I have done some disc stacking (that is, putting two discs in a space meant for one), but only for some console games, to fit them into the cases I have (I keep my console discs in CD holder cases, not their cases), never for PC games.

Drives don't scratch disks though, unless as I said the drive itself has been damaged. The danger period would only be in the person putting the disk in and taking it back out.

I just don't think that that's completely true...

[Dark Jaguar]

And what exactly, save for a damaged drive, would cause scratches to appear on the disk? The disk is lifted up, so it's not like it is rubbing against the tray it is on, and the laser is not actually touching it. Further, since you are using a desktop, the problem of tilting the drive and the angular momentum throwing it into the side and scratching it is not an issue either. The laser light itself is very weak and won't cause damage either. The fact is, I have a number of old game disks I've played off and on ever since I got them that are in perfect condition. Some are scratched but I remember exactly what I did to them to cause that (dropping one on concrete, accidently grabbing one I dropped in an awkward way and slamming it into the edge of a desk, that sort of thing).