Elsewhere: Nazis!

My sense of impending doom has been going off fairly constantly for the last few weeks. Luckily, I know why, but this has made it a lot less useful than it was before. My sense of impending humor isn't working properly either, which irritates me a lot more.

In other news, I was able to painlessly reformat my 160GB external hard drive to vfat so that I could use it with Windows and OS X as well as Linux. The transfer times are a bit higher now, and copying over 100GBs of anime is a pain, but I think that it's worth it. Also, I can now easily reformat harddrives, which is always a plus.

The Story of the RAID Card

So, as it turns out, the thing which needs to be done to get Windows XP to recognize the RAID card is reflashing the RAID card's BIOS. Which, based on the instructions, is probably more likely to make the Motherboard think that it's a RAID card, but whatever. If it works, it will work, and if it doesn't work, I'll have to deal with installing Windows on a motherboard that thinks it is a RAID Card, and Windows will have to not only figure out how to run on that motherboard, but also how to address a RAID card which is attached to a motherboard which thinks that it is a RAID card.

Actually, that might be worse. Ah, well. At least this way this whole debacle might be done in a few days.

(And I'll be a bit closer to getting an Ultra-portable Laptop! Horray! Asus' Eee PC, in case you were wondering - not very fast, but very portable, and portability is what I want).

I Hate Technology

Or, more specifically, the Windows "Operating System" (it barely works. Why should it be called an operating system? Something like GNU/Linux is an operating system. Windows is a joke). Here's the story behind this:

I recently got the chance to build a really high-end system for some money. By high end, I mean a Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.66GHz, 2 Gigs of ECC RAM, a high-end GPU, and a 15K RPM hard drive. That's the part where it all started going wrong. To start with, the hard drive needed to run off of a SAS card (the motherboard only had SATA). Well, that's fine, it just added a week and an extra $200+ to the cost of the system.

At this point (yesterday) all of the hardware was working fine - the SAS card would recognize the hard drive, the RAM had its cool heatsinks, all of the other heatsinks on the motherboard were doing fine, and the entire thing was pretty quiet (it only has three fans in it - the CPU fan).

However, then I had to install Windows XP on it. Shouldn't be a problem, I thought. I mean, it will recognize the drivers, right? As it turns out, no. After ripping my computers Floppy drive out to hook up to it, Windows would load the drivers successfully, but would still complain that there were no hard drives in the system. Even though there is one there, the SAS Card's BIOS recognizes it, and it is working perfectly. Apparently, the drivers do not allow Windows to recognize the drive as a valid device to install to.

This is a very bad thing, as the 15K RPM hard drive is one of the best things about this system. It's also the thing which the person who this system is for was the most excited about - it literally would not work to downgrade to a lowly 7.2K RPM SATA drive at this point. Well, I suppose that we could, and just not tell him, but that wouldn't be very honest.

As it stands, I have three options: install Linux on the drive, run Windows in a virtual machine, and explain to the recipient that this is vastly more secure (he's really paranoid: the main thing this system is going to do is run a virus-scanner 24/7). I could also install Windows on a Flash drive, or another really small and fast hard drive, and mess around with the defaults to make all programs, etc. install to the 15K RPM hard drive (This would probably not work very well. A Flash drive would have a tendency to fail very, very quickly, and a SSD would cost far to much). I could also install windows on an old 10GB hard drive I have lieing around and image it over onto the 15K RPM drive (this would probably not work. Windows is picky like that).

So, basically, I hate Windows. As it is, the debacle of the hard drive has more than doubled the time I expected to invest in this project, and there is no obvious end in sight.

Of course, this entire thing is my fault: I should have just said that a 15K RPM hard drive is just not viable, and gone with a 7.2K SATA instead. In the future, I'm going to say that any requests about hard drives which does not relate to the size will not work (or, alternatively, make the customer install the OS - which would be more fun, but would probably result in a lot of irritated customers).

Quad-core for $700

So, here's my guide for what to buy if you want a Quad-core system for an affordable price. This system will not include a hard drive, optical drive, case, or really anything other than the core components. Also note that prices are subject to change (I'm not going to update this guide), and that you should check through all of the components before buying a system (I will not take responsibility for anything bad that happens as a result of my advice).

So, let's get started.
Goals: a fast (>2.0GHz) quad core system, with 4GB of RAM, and a fairly modern GPU. The Motherboard should have plenty of room for expansion, and the components used should have few, if any, known issues (of the issues, temperature will probably be one of them).

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield - $260. however, there is no warranty (for an extra $20, you can get the chip from Retail with a 3-year limited warranty on parts and labor).

CPU Fan: Masscool 8WA741 92mm Ball CPU Cooler - $20.99. Lots of airflow, not that expensive.

Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - $5.99. Thermal Compound is very important, as it allows the CPU to dissipate heat into the CPU Fan/Heatsink.

Motherboard: Intel BLKD975XBX2KR LGA 775 ATX Motherboard - $189.99. Supports Quad-core processors with a 1066/800MHz Bus, 4x240pin DDR2 800 Dual Channel (this standard of memory is very cheap right now), up to 8GB RAM, 3 PCI Express x16 slots (however, only one is electrical x16. The other two are x8 and x4, respectively), and two PCI slots. 1 ATA100 slot (IDE, for all of you who use that term), and 8 SATA 3Gb/s. There is no onboard video, but there is 8-channel onboard audio, and it's going to have a high-end GPU put in anyways. The LAN is 10/100/1000Mbs (Gigabit Ethernet, anyone?), and it has 4 USB 2.0 ports, and 1 Firewire port (with the same available on on the motherboard, for front-panel connectors). The power supply is 24 pin.

RAM: G.Skill 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-pin DDR2 800 Dual Channel - $54.99 x 2. Might as well fill up all of the slots, so that this system will have 4GBs of total RAM (considered the minimum to run Vista, if you happen to feel like that).

GPU: EVGA GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3, PCI Express x16, SLI Supported - $89.99. Not the best GPU, so gamers might want to spend an extra $100 here to get a higher end GPU, but this will be good enough for mos things. It has a trio of connectors - VGA, DVI, and TV (supporting HDTV, S-Video, or Composite), so it should be able to support most monitors you might have.

PSU: For this system, Newegg's Power Supply Calculator suggests at least 742W (That's with everything here, and support for all of the motherboard's 8 HDD (at 7200RPM), and two Combo ODDs. The calculator can be found here, and I suggest that you recalculate with any additional components you plan on including put in. For example, if you are planning on putting in additional GPUs, the power consumption will increase a lot.

With that in mind, it seems like the PSU could end up being very expensive. This ETASIS ET850 ATX12V / EPS12V True 850W PSU ($159.99) looks like it would do the job - it has a 24pin Motherboard connector, 8 SATA connectors, and pretty much everything else that would be needed. However, it is a LOT more expensive than I would want a PSU to be - but sometimes you have to deal with it.

Total cost: $836.93 + Shipping & Tax, and the cost of whatever operating system you would want to put in this. A case, Hard Drives, and Optical drives could easily cost another $200 (that's for only 80GB of storage). Certainly more than $700, but still a good deal.

The price might be able to be trimmed as much as, or more than, $100 - dropping the PSU down to around 600W (still enough for 4 HDDs and 1 ODD), and trimming down the RAM to 2GB would do that much.

If you end up buying/building this system, drop me a line at aetuneo.pheonix / gmail.com (figure out where the @ goes!), and tell me how it went (my bet is that anyone who built this would have to spend an extra $20 at least on cooling, and that it would be very noisy).

My Computer

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a bit crazy about computers. I suppose that I could be described as a Technophile - after all, I spend most of my Saturdays fixing up old systems at the ACCRC, and messing around with various levels of technology. I used to constantly tinker with my computer (not anymore - it works perfectly), and I'm planning on upgrading it in a year or two (to a quad-core system. But that, of course, is another story). So, anyways, here are it's specs:

CPU: 3.33GHz Celeron D.
RAM: 2GB, 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2
GPU: GeForce FX 5200, Dual VGA Out
PCI: NIC (10/100), Fan (for the GPU). 1 PCI slot is available.
Motherboard: Machspeed P4MSD-800D2
HDD: 40GB SATA, 320GB SATA (formatted so that only 270GB of it is available), 160GB IDE (the IDE drive is somewhat questionable, nothing important is on it. I'm going to be moving it over into an external enclosure soon, so that I can have a lot of portable storage). Only 97.9GB are free right now - I have a LOT of Anime.
Fans: 7 80mm (CPU, 2 in a PCI slot, 3 case fans put wherever I feel like it, 1 in the power supply), 1 120mm (the other power supply fan). It's rather noisy, but not so much.
Monitors: 2 17-inch CRTs, each running at 768x1024, 85hz. Having two monitors is nice, though it has occasionally made me think that I should be able to move the cursor from my monitors onto a laptop.
Speakers: Standard 2-unit desktop.
Keyboard and Mouse: Wireless keyboard, 5-button Microsoft optical IntelliMouse. Both connect via USB.

That's it, I suppose. When I feel like it, I'll explain my plan to upgrade to a quad-core system (it's a lot cheaper than you think - if all you need is a new CPU (and a CPU fan), Motherboard, GPU, and some RAM, you can buy one for under $600 or $700. And I can support that assertion).

A change in pace.

I've decided to remove most of the historical posts I've made, as a beginning of changing the aim of this blog. So, basically, you'll lose a lot of me claiming that I'll get stuff done in the next week. What anyone who might read it will gain is not having all of that stuff to sort through: only posts which I consider to be interesting will remain. Expect some new, interesting posts in the future; I'm going to aim for one or two a week, possibly including some sort stories (I have been told that I probably need a place to get rid of my excess creativity, so I'll try to do that). Expect some very eclectic writings (and some of the pictures I've taken) to start showing up over the next few months.

Disclaimer: I am probably using the word "eclectic" incorrectly. Deal with it.

EDIT: Done. The Blog is down to two posts, one of which is this one.

A Thought

When you think about it, the plots of most science fiction books tend to be very, very similar: otherwise normal person gets caught up in events that are (initially) beyond their control, and gradually becomes more powerful. This might not be the best phrasing, but it gets the idea across, I think. This is true of the Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, Eragon, many of the Xanth books, some Discworld books (although less often), and many other books that I haven't read, or don't recall. Interestingly, this pattern is more common in longer books, and series. In short books, this pattern is somewhat less common, but still noticeable. It's not very realistic, but it certainly appeals to people. It's like the American Dream: a belief that anyone, no matter what situation they begin in, can become rich, powerful, etc. It promotes the belief which most people hold at some (or most) points in their lives: that they are special, and could be powerful and rich if they put their minds to it.

I'll let you make of this statement what you will; aside from its main point, it may, perhaps, have some bearing on the direction I bring Aetuneo in, if I ever manage to get the energy/motivation together to start working on it again. I could say that I'll try to start again this month, but really, who would believe me? I know I wouldn't. There's just too much to do, especially with some new stuff I need to get done for next year.