Re: [OT] GRAAAAAAAAAHHHH! HULK SMASH STUPID COMPUTER!! >_<#

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 10:23:21 +0000, Nobody <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>On Mon, 26 Dec 2005 21:51:07 -0500, Roger wrote:
>
>>>I wasn't suggesting that people should build their own. Rather, go to a
>>
>> Why not, if they are up to it. It's easy to build one, but the
>> configuration takes some work.
>
>Choosing compatible components requires a certain amount of specialised
>knowledge. I've been using computers for 27 years and have a BSc in

Not much. If a person has enough interest it won't take them long to
lean. Today's computers are a dream to put to gather and configure
compared to just five years ago. I think it depends more on what you
are used to working with.

I started on Westinghouse P2000s way back. three had 16L and one had
32K (of core memory - Looked like a backlash on a bait casting reel)

Learned computer architecture on the old Motorola trainers. As I
recall they were 8088s and data entry (including the program) was from
a numeric keypad and done in hex. That was a *long* time ago and well
before they gave IBM the PC name even though most of us called what we
had PCs. My first was an Ohio Scientific C2-8P with dual 8" floppies.

>Computer Science, but I wouldn't order parts for a system without a
>second opinion from someone who is up-to-date with hardware issues.
>
>The last system I built (the one on which I'm typing this) has a
>P3/800/133 CPU, BX-440 chipset, PC-133 SDRAM, an AGP v1 graphics card and
>ATA/133 IDE. The system I'm currently planning will be a P4 CPU,
>955 chipset, DDR2-533 RAM, PCI-E graphics card, SATA-300 IDE. IOW, I've
>had to re-learn all of the terminology and issues.

Be careful with the SATA RAID, Some run really hot and particularly if
you are doing extended multi gigabyte transfers. I had to build a new
drive bay for the SATA drives and fan cool them. They (Maxtors) were
getting so hot you couldn't touch them.

This one is a 3.4 Gig, 64 Bit Athlon, with dual SATA drives in a
striped RAID. PC-3200 DDR RAM. with the ATA133 drives in addition to
the RAID it has over a terabyte of hard drive space. Plus 2 external
USB drives.

The one to my right is a smaller 3.2 Gig, 32 Bit Athlon with a 400 Gig
SATA RAID and three external drives. One 400 and two 300s for a total
of 1.4 terabytes on that one. The one in the shop has no raid, but
four internal 250 Gig and three external as it mainly serves as the
storage and back up machine.

All four have dual layer DVD/CD R/W drives and I can write to or read
from any one of them from any of the four machines.
>
>> Of course you can make mistakes even if you've been doing this for years.
>
>Yep. If you get the vendor to build the system for you, any mistakes are
>their problem. Given that the cost difference between parts and a
>pre-built system is a fraction of the total cost, the saving is only worth
>it if the probability of screwing up is small.

That is a risk that goes with any do-it-yourself project.
Some are far more expensive than computers<:-))
>
>It isn't just "mistakes" that are an issue. Even if you know what you're
>doing, a faulty PSU can fry the entire system, and the vendor's liability
>may not extend beyond replacing the PSU.

I've never had a bad power supply, but I have blown out a few from
overloading them. In each case they weren't big enough to handle the
load from all the hard drives with one exception. Of all things I had
one taken out by one of those small cabinet fans that apparently
shorted.

>
>>>"grey box" vendor[1] whose business is selling complete PCs built out of
>>>standard, off-the-shelf components.
>>>
>>>[1] Sometimes referred to as "bland-name" (as opposed to "brand-name")
>>>vendors due to their tendency to be named e.g. "XYZ Computers", where XYZ
>>>is the owner's initials.
>>
>> These are generic and tend, overall to be much more forgiving that the
>> so called brand names.
>
>That was my main point. You don't have to worry about having to buy
>vendor-specific components because the that's all that the mobo/case/etc
>was designed to take.
>
>>>Also, if cutting a particular corner saves the manufacture $1/box, a
>>>grey-box vendor wouldn't consider it worth the trouble. But if you're
>>>selling a million boxes a month, a saving of $1/box is significant.
>>>Consequently, they are going to cut corners.
>>
>> And... By the time they are finished you have a bigger, more powerful,
>> better equipped machine for less money.
>
>Or for the same money, with the vendor making a bigger margin. Even if
>it is cheaper, the relatively small cost savings aren't worth the trouble
>for the consumer, only for the (large-scale) vendor.

They are one of my hobbies like watching anime, flying airplanes,
building airplanes (now if you want something that takes faith, build
your own airplane and then test fly it.<G>) 335 MPH aerobatic hot rod.

If I didn't build my own I'd go to one of the three shops around town
and have a custom rig built.

>
>A classic example of a false economy was "integrated" graphics (i.e.
>using main memory for the framebuffer). The cost of an extra couple of
>MB of RAM is minor, but the performance benefit of not having the video
>refresh eat into your memory bandwidth is immense.

Virtually all Motherboards now come with integrated graphics, but one
soft ware switch in the BIOS and they are just a paper weight.

>
>Several years back, a friend of mine spent £1500 on a new Packard-Bell
>P100, which was a state-of-the-art system at the time. The integrated
>graphics meant that it ran at about 70% of the speed of my 486DX2/66.

He's lucky he was able to get that.
All of these are set up for AVI work so it just happens they make good
machines for viewing anime too. <:-))

>
>> As for Dell, my daughter refers to it as Dell's "no service policy".
>> She has also mentioned that once she does get through to their service
>> department it'd be nice if the person on that end could at least speak
>> enough English to be understood and she speaks several languages
>> fluently.
>
>All of the vendors I've dealt with are at least based in the UK. Although
>some of them are in the north, and I'm a southerner, so the communication
>issues can be almost as bad ;)

I know quite a few Brits from the north all the way to the south of
London. At times I think I can understand them better than they can
each other, but it does take some getting used to. <:-)) OTOH there
are some London accents that are like another language.

BTW my degree is also in CS, (minors in math and art) but not much of
it was of any use when it came to PCs <:-)) I was a sysadmin, then
developmental analyst (fancy name for programmer) and finally a
project manager for an industrial database. Actually the database
comes from the UK. Used to be Fisons (sp?) Laboratory Information
Management Systems (LIMS)

The night before last I was watching a movie out in the shop, but the
file was on this machine. Even though it's a gigabit network, after
only a couple of minutes the voice and picture were no longer in sync
out there.

The next machine is not going to be an upgrade, but rather a whole new
dual core, 64 bit system. I may use one of these as a server.

BTW, downloading and watching anime does have its hazards. In the
last week there have been over 305,000 attempts to hack this machine,
and over 80,000 on the one to my right. I'm guessing it's that virus
going around trying to find more hosts.

Roger
Roger
.

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