Re: [H] Help?
Is this the type of drive enclosure you are looking for? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111203 I have several of the Sans Digital eSata Towers and they work well (and eSata is nothing to be scared about! :) Just a thought. There are a bunch similar at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENEDEPA=0Order=BESTM ATCHDescription=sans+digital+tower+usbN=-1isNodeId=1 James Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of DSinc Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2014 1:45 PM To: HWG Subject: [H] Help? Can anyone share links to some form of box/container I can instal 2 or more sata emc drives to that will connect to a PC via USB? NO! I do not wish to get involved with ESATA. I don't understand esata yet! This is just because a USB device like a Seagate 'Free Agent' external hard drive announces itself in the M$ 'My computer' menu, and, M$ just assigns a new hard drive letter to it. I assume that multiple drives post multiple drive letters.(?) I've spent the past 2 years trying to share 'NAS' to my older Brother. 2 trys (nas boxes); 2 failures. I now wait for the 2d nas box to arrive on my front porch. I suspect he only know copy/paste or cut/paste between M$ drive letters. Anyway; this is where I am ATM. Disappointed and frustrated. Thanks, Duncan
Re: [H] Post OS install question?
I always used to segregate my system disk, programs disk and virtual disk to different partitions or disks. With the advent of SSDs, I have finally embraced the Microsoft ideal of using C:\ for everything. I use the SSD for the system, programs and virtual disk and larger mechanical disks for mass storage. When I segregated, I always imaged C:\, the system partition, and E:\, the programs disk. Now I just image the C:\ partition and get the system and programs at once. Plus, the speed advantage of SSD is put to good use. Each system has its advantages, so the choice is up to you! :) Neither is wrong! James Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of DSinc Subject: [H] Post OS install question? Is it normal to install any/all post-OS applications into the Windows default location of c:\windows\program files Many years back I was convinced not to do this, so, I would install these post- OS programs on other drive partitions. It seemed to make program control easier. Now I wonder...? Opinions welcome! Thanks, Duncan
Re: [H] Problem with Driver installation in Windows Home Server 2011
-Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of tmse...@rlrnews.com Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2014 11:12 PM To: hardw...@lists.hardwaregroup.com Cc: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] Problem with Driver installation in Windows Home Server 2011 On 2014-03-09 20:07, James Maki wrote: I have installed Windows Home Server 2011 on an ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ FM2+ / FM2 AMD A88X (Bolton D4) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard. The drivers installation disk does not seem to do the job of installing all the drivers, leaving the Sata RAID, USB 3.0 and two USB drivers not installed. I tried to manually install the RAID drivers but get the error message: This package requires AMD Catalyst Install Manager, but it is not found on the system. Please obtain and install AMD Catalyst Install Manager from AMD.com to continue installing this package. When I used the disk-based Catalyst install software, it generated an error message, but did install the video drivers. Is this just an incompatibility with the new chipset and Windows Home Server? Is there a way to get the drivers to install? Thanks for any insight or direction you can provide. Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net The driver CD on the Asrock is worthless because it's expecting Windows7 (or maybe 8) WHS2011 is more closely to Server 2008R2. So, here's what you've got to do.. Forget the 'manual install' method you may be trying, the best method is to grab AMD's latest.. and EXTRACT it. Don't even try to run any part of it's install. Download the SATA Floppy Install. FYI, Do NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT use the RAID function on the board. While Server2011 doesn't do drive pooling the same way that WHSv1 did, the RAID controller support in it is not good for the way that AMD does it.. you'll find yourself losing a ton of data with it. Just grab Flexraid. I use a lot of WHS2011 because it's cheap, combine with Flexraid and you're still about $90 here (WHS: $39, FlexRaid: $39 when it goes on sale) As to USB 3.0.. That gets slightly trickier, but not by much. Grab the AMD driver package, but extract it (WinRAR will) just use the INFs and install through Device manager. I believe I have attempted to do what you have instructed. I did get the USB 3.0 driver to install, but still have 2 USB controllers and the RAID controller uninstalled in device manager. I don't plan on utilizing RAID on this board and do plan on using FlexRAID. I have already installed FlexRAID on a similar board but have been unable to get the parity option to work. It always stalls at less than complete. The drive pooling alone works just fine and I find it very useful. The system appears to be working so I may just leave it alone. I just realized the missing RAID controller in device manager is probably the Highpoint RocketRaid SAS card I have installed but not yet utilized! :( I have been so fixated on the missing items with the motherboard I skipped that installation. Back to the drawing board! Thanks for your input and suggestions! Jim
[H] Problem with Driver installation in Windows Home Server 2011
I have installed Windows Home Server 2011 on an ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ FM2+ / FM2 AMD A88X (Bolton D4) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard. The drivers installation disk does not seem to do the job of installing all the drivers, leaving the Sata RAID, USB 3.0 and two USB drivers not installed. I tried to manually install the RAID drivers but get the error message: This package requires AMD Catalyst Install Manager, but it is not found on the system. Please obtain and install AMD Catalyst Install Manager from AMD.com to continue installing this package. When I used the disk-based Catalyst install software, it generated an error message, but did install the video drivers. Is this just an incompatibility with the new chipset and Windows Home Server? Is there a way to get the drivers to install? Thanks for any insight or direction you can provide. Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Three Monitor Mania!
Several years ago I purchased a HIS H675F1GD Radeon HD 6750 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity. At the time, I was just running two monitors off the HDMI and DVI ports. I recently wanted to add our HDTV to the mix, but the 3rd port is a DisplayPort. As a short cut, I added a second video card (a Radeon, but of a different version). Things worked but later I noticed that the Catalyst software was not working and I could not upgrade the drivers. I assumed it was because of the two different Radeon versions. So I went in search of a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter cable. Found it was not easy or straight forward. There were active and passive converters. Some worked for some people, other people felt Eyefinity was a disaster and running three monitors (where one of them WAS NOT a DisplayPort equipped monitor) was not possible. I took a chance and purchased an Active converter. It arrived and, of course, it DID NOT work. So, I seem to have four options: 1) Purchase a new monitor (too expensive and I already have the monitor), 2) Purchase another HD 6750 video card (which don't seem to be easily available - being old), 3) purchase a new video card that DOES do 3 monitors, NONE of which is a DisplayPort Monitor, or 4) Purchase 2 identical new cards. So, I am looking for firsthand experience with people who have successfully run a setup with 3 or more monitors (with DVI or HDMI inputs). When you read the forums you see lots of people saying I heard it CAN be done, but few that have actually accomplished the task. I read that there are nVidia cards that can do 4 monitors (but only 3 in a surround environment and the 4th as a ???). So, suggestions? I appreciate the input and suggestions. This has been such a frustration experience for what should be a simple task. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] Three Monitor Mania!
Yes, I was aware. Just didn't want to spend $70-$100 on old tech. Rather spend it on a new card/net tech. But thanks for the heads up. Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Jeff Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 3:23 PM To: hardw...@lists.hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] Three Monitor Mania! Jim, You probably already knew this, but, just in case. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0. H0_nkw =HD+6750+video+card+_sacat=0_from=R40 Your six is clear, just rest the nose on the horizon and enjoy the sunset. Jeff Several years ago I purchased a HIS H675F1GD Radeon HD 6750 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity. At the time, I was just running two monitors off the HDMI and DVI ports. I recently wanted to add our HDTV to the mix, but the 3rd port is a DisplayPort. As a short cut, I added a second video card (a Radeon, but of a different version). Things worked but later I noticed that the Catalyst software was not working and I could not upgrade the drivers. I assumed it was because of the two different Radeon versions. So I went in search of a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter cable. Found it was not easy or straight forward. There were active and passive converters. Some worked for some people, other people felt Eyefinity was a disaster and running three monitors (where one of them WAS NOT a DisplayPort equipped monitor) was not possible. I took a chance and purchased an Active converter. It arrived and, of course, it DID NOT work. So, I seem to have four options: 1) Purchase a new monitor (too expensive and I already have the monitor), 2) Purchase another HD 6750 video card (which don't seem to be easily available - being old), 3) purchase a new video card that DOES do 3 monitors, NONE of which is a DisplayPort Monitor, or 4) Purchase 2 identical new cards. So, I am looking for firsthand experience with people who have successfully run a setup with 3 or more monitors (with DVI or HDMI inputs). When you read the forums you see lots of people saying I heard it CAN be done, but few that have actually accomplished the task. I read that there are nVidia cards that can do 4 monitors (but only 3 in a surround environment and the 4th as a ???). So, suggestions? I appreciate the input and suggestions. This has been such a frustration experience for what should be a simple task. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] What are we up to (Was-Are we alive?)
That's how I started! :) But the desire for ease of use for my family (if it's not in plain sight, they can't find the drive, folder or location of a desired movie or TV show) and it just got out of control! A couple of drives here. A Sans Digital tower there. A new HTPC in the family room. Gigabit network hooking upstairs bedroom to the main computer downstairs. You name it, it got added. I ended up spending lots of time cataloging, especially when adding drives. The pooling aspect of FlexRAID allows me to have one BIG drive with a folder for Blu-rays, one for DVDs, and another for recorded TV shows. Previously, a desired file might have been on one of 4 computers and any one of the approximately 30 drives. I did compromise awhile back and create 8 and 10 TB JBODs on the Sans Digital towers and internal in the main HTPC. This made it slightly easier to catalog. Of course, all of this ignores the building computers, etc. is fun factor of this hobby. :) If nothing else, I have learned lots about SAS (which had intimidated me before), building my own NAS, and a little about Server software. Always a fun (if not occasionally, frustrating) experience. To Brian: I am doing exactly that-One big drive with 3 shared folders. The multiple pool idea was to facilitate doing smaller Updates/validates that could be done overnight rather than over 3 or 4 days. Once I get the drive set up as desired, I will give the parity backup another try and see if once it is set if the periodic updates of a static pool are quick. Thanks for the input and feedback. Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Anthony Q. Martin You guys are so sophisticated! I'm just stringing all my drives off a PC with external enclosures (10 drives inside the box, 8 more in two four-bay enclosures). Using 3 and 4 TB drives (greens, mostly, from WD and seagate). Mine or just NTFS mount volumes all shared over my GB network. That way, I can just navigate to any drive and any folder to play my rips from my other HTPCs. Easy setup. If a drive goes down, I just re-rip as I have all the optical discs as backup. Poor man's setup. Lazy man's setup. :) Raid is too complicated for my brain and I don't see my use as super critical. Ripping to mkv is mostly done in the background while working on other stuff. On 2/24/2014 8:30 AM, Brian Weeden wrote: Jim, have you thought about setting up multiple shares instead of multiple pools? For example, you could have one big drive pool with all your data but share out any folder on that pool as a separate network share. - Brian On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Brian Weeden brian.wee...@gmail.comwrote: If you're doing an initialization and building parity for 23 TB of data, I can expect that to take quite a while. The update I'm not so sure about. It should only need up update parity for whatever files were changed. So if the update needs just as long, that indicates maybe all your data changed. But if it's just video files then it shouldn't. I do know people have talked about exempting things like nfo files and thumbnails from the RAID so the parity process will skip them. - Brian On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 2:17 PM, James Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.netwrote: Hi Brian, I switched to FlexRAID to combine a total of 23 2tb drives spread over 5 Sans Digital port multiplier towers plus extra drives on several PCs used as HTPCs. I have ripped all my Blu-ray, DVDs and recorded TV to the various arrays and over time had just gotten too large to easily manage. I wanted to centralize everything on one system. The system I started with utilized a AMD FM2 motherboard with 8 onboard SATA ports, 2 SAS ports on an add-on card (for a total of 8 additional SATA ports, and 3 of the Sans Digital towers (5 disks each) for a total of 31 drives distributed as 1 OS drive, 4 parity drives and 26 data drives (several were empty). When this continued to fail on creation, I moved the Sans Digital based drives to a 6 port SAS controller card. When I still had problems, I found that several drives were bad (scan disk), including the 1st parity drive. Replacing the drives gave me a successful creation but it took 4 days. The Update took another 4 days. That's when I started having second thoughts on using the Parity backup option. I guess I am just expected too much from the software. That's when I thought creating several pools would reduce the strain for each update/validate. I am using a modestly powered AMD dual core 3.2 GHz processor and mostly consumer drives (mixed with a few WD reds). I went with Windows Home Server for economy reasons ($50 vs. $90-130 for Windows 7 Home Premium/Professional). I utilized a HighPoint RocketRAID 2760A SAS RAID controller card. I am using RAID over
Re: [H] What are we up to (Was-Are we alive?)
Are you using the SnapRAID function of FlexRAID? If so, how long does it take for updates to the parity drives? You are not REQUIRED to use RAID with the Sans Digital port expander towers. I was using them as JBOD or using Windows 7 build in JBOD function to create a 10 tb ARRAY. When I started having problems creating the FlexRAID pool, I thought it MIGHT be due to slow access to the Sans Digital tower due to a small pipeline, squeezing 5 drives output through 1 SATA port. Turned out it was probably some defective drives. Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Chris Reeves I've never combined sans digital with flexraid.. Aren't they creating their own raid5 internally? I currently keep 70TB online in flexraid with no issues, I know I had mentioned it before.
Re: [H] What are we up to (Was-Are we alive?)
What is the main advantage of XBMC over, for instance, MPC and PowerDVD? It looks like an interesting program that needs addition investigation on my part. I support movie only ripping, but my wife and daughter often spend hours watching the extras from some movies. It takes me extra time to try and catalog the extras whereas using the ISO and PowerDVD menu structure, it is simple. Thanks for any input. Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Anthony Q. Martin Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 7:43 AM To: hardw...@lists.hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] What are we up to (Was-Are we alive?) Oh...I run XBMC on mine tooI just have to add folders...and you do that once and you're done. That's when you get a nice interface. BTW, I had initially ripped to ISO...the I decided I don't want ISOs...so I'm re- ripping to mkv. That is taking a long time, but I do a few each day. the recent stuff is already mkv...but stuff I ripped two years ago is what i'm working on now. I assume you guys are all using mkv, right? On 2/24/2014 9:45 AM, Brian Weeden wrote: Anthony, I'd also add to Jim's comments that once you have one big central drive you can use someting like XBMC to have a very nice interface on all your HTPCs in the house and accessibility to all your content. - Brian On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:42 AM, James Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.netwrote: That's how I started! :) But the desire for ease of use for my family (if it's not in plain sight, they can't find the drive, folder or location of a desired movie or TV show) and it just got out of control! A couple of drives here. A Sans Digital tower there. A new HTPC in the family room. Gigabit network hooking upstairs bedroom to the main computer downstairs. You name it, it got added. I ended up spending lots of time cataloging, especially when adding drives. The pooling aspect of FlexRAID allows me to have one BIG drive with a folder for Blu-rays, one for DVDs, and another for recorded TV shows. Previously, a desired file might have been on one of 4 computers and any one of the approximately 30 drives. I did compromise awhile back and create 8 and 10 TB JBODs on the Sans Digital towers and internal in the main HTPC. This made it slightly easier to catalog. Of course, all of this ignores the building computers, etc. is fun factor of this hobby. :) If nothing else, I have learned lots about SAS (which had intimidated me before), building my own NAS, and a little about Server software. Always a fun (if not occasionally, frustrating) experience. To Brian: I am doing exactly that-One big drive with 3 shared folders. The multiple pool idea was to facilitate doing smaller Updates/validates that could be done overnight rather than over 3 or 4 days. Once I get the drive set up as desired, I will give the parity backup another try and see if once it is set if the periodic updates of a static pool are quick. Thanks for the input and feedback. Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Anthony Q. Martin You guys are so sophisticated! I'm just stringing all my drives off a PC with external enclosures (10 drives inside the box, 8 more in two four-bay enclosures). Using 3 and 4 TB drives (greens, mostly, from WD and seagate). Mine or just NTFS mount volumes all shared over my GB network. That way, I can just navigate to any drive and any folder to play my rips from my other HTPCs. Easy setup. If a drive goes down, I just re-rip as I have all the optical discs as backup. Poor man's setup. Lazy man's setup. :) Raid is too complicated for my brain and I don't see my use as super critical. Ripping to mkv is mostly done in the background while working on other stuff. On 2/24/2014 8:30 AM, Brian Weeden wrote: Jim, have you thought about setting up multiple shares instead of multiple pools? For example, you could have one big drive pool with all your data but share out any folder on that pool as a separate network share. - Brian On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Brian Weeden brian.wee...@gmail.comwrote: If you're doing an initialization and building parity for 23 TB of data, I can expect that to take quite a while. The update I'm not so sure about. It should only need up update parity for whatever files were changed. So if the update needs just as long, that indicates maybe all your data changed. But if it's just video files then it shouldn't. I do know people have talked about exempting things like nfo files and thumbnails from the RAID so the parity process will skip them. - Brian On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 2:17 PM, James Maki
Re: [H] What are we up to (Was-Are we alive?)
Hi Brian, I switched to FlexRAID to combine a total of 23 2tb drives spread over 5 Sans Digital port multiplier towers plus extra drives on several PCs used as HTPCs. I have ripped all my Blu-ray, DVDs and recorded TV to the various arrays and over time had just gotten too large to easily manage. I wanted to centralize everything on one system. The system I started with utilized a AMD FM2 motherboard with 8 onboard SATA ports, 2 SAS ports on an add-on card (for a total of 8 additional SATA ports, and 3 of the Sans Digital towers (5 disks each) for a total of 31 drives distributed as 1 OS drive, 4 parity drives and 26 data drives (several were empty). When this continued to fail on creation, I moved the Sans Digital based drives to a 6 port SAS controller card. When I still had problems, I found that several drives were bad (scan disk), including the 1st parity drive. Replacing the drives gave me a successful creation but it took 4 days. The Update took another 4 days. That's when I started having second thoughts on using the Parity backup option. I guess I am just expected too much from the software. That's when I thought creating several pools would reduce the strain for each update/validate. I am using a modestly powered AMD dual core 3.2 GHz processor and mostly consumer drives (mixed with a few WD reds). I went with Windows Home Server for economy reasons ($50 vs. $90-130 for Windows 7 Home Premium/Professional). I utilized a HighPoint RocketRAID 2760A SAS RAID controller card. I am using RAID over File System 2.0u12, SnapRAID 1.4 Stable and Storage Pool 1.0 Stable (although not using the SnapRAID at this point). Overall, I am happy with the pooling facility of the software. I just wish my large setup would not choke the parity option. Thanks for all the input. Not sure if there is an answer to my problem. More powerful hardware? Reading the forums seems to indicate that hardware should NOT be the bottleneck. There seems to be the option of Updating/Validating only portions of the RAID each night. More research is needed on that front. My current plan at this point is to fill the RAID in the pooling only mode, make sure all names and organization is correct, then commit to a stable, unchanging file system that I will then commit to the SnapRAID parity option. That way I will only need to Validate/Verify periodically. Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2014 6:06 AM To: hardware Cc: hwg Subject: Re: [H] What are we up to (Was-Are we alive?) Hi Jim. Sorry to hear you're having such troubles, especially since I think I'm the one who introduced FlexRAID to the list. I've been running it on my HTPC for several years now and (knock on wood) it's been running fine. Not sure how big your setup is, I'm running 7 DRUs and 2 PRUs of 2 TB each. I have them mounted as a single pool that is shared on my LAN. I run nightly parity updates. Initilaizing my setup did take several hours, but my updates don't take very long. Sometimes when I add several ripped HD movies at once it might take a few hours but that's it. How much data are you calcluating parity for at the initialization? Do you have a lot of little files (like thousand of pictures) or lots of files that change often? Either of those could greatly increase the time it takes to calcluate parity. I'm running it under Win7, and unfortunately I don't have any experience with Server 2011 or any of the Windows Server builds. From what I've gathered you can only have one pool per system. I think that's a limit of how things work. But I've never needed more than one pool, so it hasn't bothered me. For hardware, I'm running the following based largely on a HTPC hardware guide I found online. It's based on a server chipset to maximize the bandwidth to the drives. Intel Xeon E3-1225 Asus P8B WS LGA 1155 Intel C206 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM Corsair TX750 V2 750W 2x Intel RAID Controller Card SATA/SAS PCI-E x8 Antec 1200 V3 Case 3x 5in1 hot swap HDD cages Part of the key is the controller cards. I'm not actually using the on-board RAID, just using it for the ports and the bandwidth. I've got two SAS to SATA cables plugged into each card, which gives me a total of 16 SATA ports. The cards are each on an 8x PCIe bus that gives them a lot of bandwidth. Boot drive is an older SSD that is attached to one of the SATA ports on the mobo. Once trick I figured out early on was to initialize your array with the biggest number of DRUs you think you'll eventually have, even if you don't actually have that many drives at the start. That way you can add new DRUs and not have to reinitialize the array. When I started using FlexRAID it was basically a part-time project being run by Brahim. He's now created a fully-fledged business out of it and has gone way beyond just
[H] What are we up to (Was-Are we alive?)
I have beating my head against the wall trying to install FlexRAID on Windows Home Server 2011 since the beginning of the year. I spent the first month trying to install using several Sans Digital port expanding towers. I kept having errors/crashes when the system tried to calculate parity on the initial install. I thought it might be the slow access to the port-multiplier set-up, but I finally ran scan disk on all the drives and found one parity drive (out of 4) had disk errors that were probably causing the problem. Then, the initial install was taking over 4 days. I found this unacceptable and kept looking for a reason and whether this was typical. I upgraded to a hardware RAID care (?), with multiple SAS ports. The Create process was still very slow. The Parity Update took a similar length of time. As did the Validate Parity procedure. And I assume the Verify procedure would take a similar period of time. The suggestion is to run the Update every night, the Validate weekly, and the Verify monthly. With the length of time for an Update, it would be impossible to keep up with this schedule. The program seems to be in a period of flux, with the developer not sure of its direction. There is no firm documentation, just the wiki, forums, and some how-tos. It is easy to find the how to do the general set-up, but I believe most are going with small RAID sizes. Now, my storage needs are more for convenience and video access rather than any important, can't be replaced files (for the most part). My business and personal files are saved to a different system. The attraction of FlexRAID is its ability to combine multiple hard drives into a single pool to the user. This is what attracted me to the software. Also, removing FlexRAID gave you access to the individual drives and contents, unlike most traditional RAID setups. Its T(infinity) parity was an added bonus. With multiple parity drives, it was reported that you could lose multiple drives and still be able to reconstruct the missing drives from the parity drives. It is just that the time involved in parity creation and checking, as well as the amount of time it would take to reconstruct 1 missing, let alone multiple missing, drives just seems to great. The RAID would wear out the drives creating, validating and checking the RAID contents! Right now I am using the software for drive pooling only, and am fairly happy with the results. Are there any FlexRAID users, experts or fan bois out there in HardwareGroup land? I have several questions I have not been able to answer by reading the forums, wikis and how-tos. The most pressing is that it seems that you cannot create more than a single pool? I wanted to make several pools which would allow parity validation to be more easily managed. TRUE? Although I paid for FlexRAID with Parity, I am not married to the software. Other suggestions and why would be appreciated. So, what have you been working on that you have neglected the HardwareGroup? I always find the discussions interesting and useful. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Moving on after MAPS subscription
Has anyone moved on to retail Microsoft software after having a MAPS subscription? I am thinking of discontinuing my MAPS subscription and am looking for options to minimize the hassle of upgrading the software to retail/oem/upgrade versions without doing a complete re-install. I am using Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit as the OS on 2 systems with Office Pro 2010 productivity software. In addition, I have two systems using Win 7 Pro 64 bit as the OS for HTPCs without an Office product. First, I have two copies of Windows XP Pro that I can use to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, if possible. I am considering Win 7 Home Premium OEM for the HTPCs. Any ideas suggestions to make this as painless as possible? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Wireless Mouse
I am looking for a wireless mouse. I have a large hand and most mice are too small. I do not need all the bells and whistles; two buttons and a scroll wheel are sufficient. I seem to only find notebook and small sized mice unless I want to spend $100 for a gaming mouse! This is for a media computer in the bedroom. I have been using a keyboard with trackball, but just had the second one fail (the trackball portion) in a year. Any economical suggestions? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.nt
[H] New Router Recommendations
Hi, Just lost my router this morning (along with keyboard, but that's another story) and am looking for recommendations for a replacement. I have read the group's new favorite is the ASUS brand. Which model(s) are favorites and which (if any) should be avoided? Need 4 or more LAN connections and wireless. Thanks for your input. Money is an object, but future proofing is also good. The defunct router is a D-Link DGL-4300 I purchased almost 10 years ago. It has given good service, except for a power supply replacement about 5 years ago. P.S. Any suggestions for confirming the death of the D-Link? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Using 3 TB Drives
Hi, As a follow-up on my question regarding WD Red drives in a software RAID vs. NAS, I am trying to decipher the ins and outs of 3 TB drives. As far as I can figure out, 3 TB drives will always work with 64 bit Windows 7 as data drives, but to boot from a 3 TB the motherboard MUST support an EFI/UEFI BIOS. So, it would seem that I could RAID 4 or 5 3 TB drives in Windows 7 Professional on an older (circa 2011) Gigabyte Motherboard that does not state that it supports EFI/UEFI for data. Any warnings or caveats on this idea? Am I missing any important points that would destroy my vision? I guess I waited too long on the 2tb Reds. They were $119.99 over the weekend and then jumped to $159.99 at NewEgg today. The 3tb remain at $179.99. So 2tb at $80/gig vs. the 3 tb at $60/gig. Still disappointed that I didn't buy a bunch of Samsung 2tb before the floods and price increases last year. The last one I purchased was $70 for 2tb and had a 3 year warranty vs. the new Seagate branded Samsung's 1 year warranty costing $130. Thanks to those who responded to my initial WD Red post regarding utilizing WD Reds in a software RAID vs. NAS. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] WD Red Drive in Software RAID
Hi, I am looking to expand my storage and have been reading up on the new WD Red drives. All the reviews I see focus on the NAS application for this drive. I am wondering at its application in a desktop software RAID, a DIY NAS so to speak. Any comments or direction, cautions or expected problems with this application that would preclude using WD Red in this type of environment? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] PSU problems
Thanks Thane and Christopher. I have initiated the RMA process. Hope the replacement holds up better. Jim -Original Message- On Mon, 12 Jul 2010, Thane Sherrington wrote: At 06:42 PM 11/07/2010, James Maki wrote: Before I initiate the RMA process, is there anything else I should be looking at to isolate/identify the problem? Sounds like it can't handle any real load. There's no way I know of to test this perfectly without expensive test equipment, but I'd say you've done enough. Agreed, with a PSU I just verify that the problem follows the power supply and then ship the thing back. Christopher Fisk
[H] PSU problems
I have an OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ700MXSP 700W PSU I was using to power an older Abit IP35 pro socket 775 motherboard. It has been working without issue for over a year, with moderate (1-4 hours use per day max). Thursday evening last week it would not boot after being used just several hours earlier. It would cycle on and off with NO video display. The motherboard lcd would cycle up to 8.3, then change to CC, which represents the CMOS Clear switch is depressed (which was not). I did some various troubleshooting, thinking it was a motherboard problem. Removing the 8-pin cpu plug resulted in a slightly different lcd boot number result (several steps farther in the process), but still no boot or video. Finally got down to the PSU and switched to an old Antec 400 watt I had sitting on the shelf. Had to use a 20-24 pin ATX cable adapter and a 4-8 pin CPU cable adapter. The system booted just fine and has been running without problem since. I took the OCZ PSU out of the case and hooked up a single hard drive for load and followed the instructions at the OCZ site to check the voltages. All voltages seem fine. Moved the OCZ PSU to an old system and again the system will not boot. No Video. Before I initiate the RMA process, is there anything else I should be looking at to isolate/identify the problem? Thanks for your input. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] Open question?
Wired, but run wireless for the daughter's laptop when she visits from college. Jim -Original Message- From: DSinc Is it fair for me to NOW believe that the majority of this LIST is now actively using WIFI for their internal home LANs?
Re: [H] Problems with HP Proliant DL140
I was worried about that potential, so I moved the motherboard back to the original case. Hooked up the power supply and switch and still did not boot. I added back the fans and found that it will only boot if 1 fan in each bank is connected (There are a total of 5 fans, 2 for each CPU and on for other corridor of the blade server). These fans have 5 pin connectors. Is there a way to fool the motherboard into thinking I have the fans connected? I am checking the web for potential answers. Thanks for the feedback. Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of JRS Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 1:10 PM To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] Problems with HP Proliant DL140 check to make sure the new backplate is not touching the case. -- J The original cpu heatsink mounting hardware connected directly to the case bottom. The new heatsinks in the new case required a backplate.
Re: [H] Problems with HP Proliant DL140
Reconnected to the original power supply with the same results -- the system will not boot. Found out it is a failsafe for the fans not being connected. Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Gaffer Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 11:25 AM To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] Problems with HP Proliant DL140 Hi James, On Thursday 08 April 2010 04:22:41 James Maki wrote: I purchased a refurbished HP Blade server, Proliant DL140 with dual 3.06 GHz Xeon CPUs. It worked just fine and I was able to install Windows Server 2008. I had a slim format HP laptop DVD I was going to utilize, but the interface was different. In addition, the server was LOAD! So I decided to move the server to a different case. I removed the motherboard and placed in a full tower Antec case and purchased 2 3U heatpipe equipped heatsinks. When I try to start the server now, the power light comes on for several seconds and then shuts down again. The system does not have a speaker so I don't know if I am getting any beep codes. The only things connected to the motherboard are the two cpus and power connectors and original power switch. Any ideas on how to trouble shoot this situation? The original cpu heatsink mounting hardware connected directly to the case bottom. The new heatsinks in the new case required a backplate. Otherwise, it seems I have everything connected in the same way as it was in the original blade server case. Any hints or suggestions are most welcome. Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net Check that the Antec PSU has the same pin connections as the one in the server case. -- Best Regards: Derrick. Running Open SuSE 11.1 KDE 3.5.10 Desktop. Pontefract Linux Users Group. plug @ play-net.co.uk
[H] Problems with HP Proliant DL140
I purchased a refurbished HP Blade server, Proliant DL140 with dual 3.06 GHz Xeon CPUs. It worked just fine and I was able to install Windows Server 2008. I had a slim format HP laptop DVD I was going to utilize, but the interface was different. In addition, the server was LOAD! So I decided to move the server to a different case. I removed the motherboard and placed in a full tower Antec case and purchased 2 3U heatpipe equipped heatsinks. When I try to start the server now, the power light comes on for several seconds and then shuts down again. The system does not have a speaker so I don't know if I am getting any beep codes. The only things connected to the motherboard are the two cpus and power connectors and original power switch. Any ideas on how to trouble shoot this situation? The original cpu heatsink mounting hardware connected directly to the case bottom. The new heatsinks in the new case required a backplate. Otherwise, it seems I have everything connected in the same way as it was in the original blade server case. Any hints or suggestions are most welcome. Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] eSATA and internal SATA port?
Depends on the chipset/mobo and how it is set up. Some allow the mobo SATA ports to be safely removed, others don't. For instance, I have an nVidia based board that will even allow the system drives to be removed, although I have never tried. Another board with an Intel ICH9R south bridge will not allow me to safely remove in RAID, SATA or IDE mode, although it is supposed to work in non-RAID modes. My main board has an Intel ICH10R south bridge with 2x SAS adapters. I have not found a combination that allows safe removal from any of the onboard SATA ports. I had to install a PCIe x1 JMicron SATA adapter to get a removable eSata port. So YMMV! Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin I got a new case that has an eSATA connector on the front panel. The mobo has a bunch of SATA ports on it. I'm only using two in my default situation. Can I connect the eSATA connector to one of these SATA ports on the mobo? I'd be plugging in and unplugging from this port as one does with USB ports. Hot swapping, so to speak.
Re: [H] DVI to HDMI Adapters
I have purchased DVI to HDMI cables that work fine for the video. They will not carry the audio, that must have its own cable. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Steve Tomporowski Okay, I've been reading on the web and this has got me confused. Are there any real adapters that can take the output from an NVIDIA video card and connect to the HDMI input of my widescreen TV? The audio can have an alternate route, that's no problem, I'm just wondering about the video. Or is there an interface that can do both audio and video from an NVIDIA video card to HDMI for TV? I've seen a bunch of stuff that says yes and a lot of stuff that says no. Just beginning to look at products, but most of them will not tell you what they work with, just that they are DVI to HDMI adapters. Thanks...Steve
Re: [H] Seeking SW
Don't know about technet (but would assume a similar situation), but MAPS software is not to be used outside the subscriber's business. Just an FYI. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: tmse...@rlrnews.com Find someone with maps/technet. :) --Original Message-- From: DSinc Sender: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com To: Hardware Group ReplyTo: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: [H] Seeking SW Sent: Nov 2, 2009 4:03 PM Does anyone have a new/used copy of Windows 2003 Server? I'd like to buy the CD and the License. I think, after CW's last share, it is time to push my very old server closer to 'modern.' It now runs Windows 2000 Server. And, damn, it runs well still. Best, Duncan Sent via BlackBerry
[H] 1.5 TB 2.0 TB hard drives
I am looking to add some storage space and am wondering if I need to worry about compatibility with the new larger hard drives. I haven't had any problems with 1 TB drives (Western Digital and Samsung). Any warnings or caveats? Any favorites in the 1.5 and 2.0 TB manufacturers? Any warnings? Thanks for your input. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] OT: Comcast 250 GB limit
Well, it has been over a year since Comcast instituted their 250 GB cap and they still do not have a way to monitor your usage. Has anybody run afoul of the limit? Was this a power play by Comcast to get people to self limit themselves or intimidation to limit movie and television downloads from non-Comcast sites? It seems fishy that they are able to declare a limit and in a year's time still not provide a way to monitor subscribers own usage. Curious as to everybody's take on this. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] D-Link DGL-4300 power adapter died (?)
Duncan, Steve and Zulfiqar, Thanks for the replies. I cobbled together a cord running from the +5 volt of a power supply to the jack and the router came back to life! So the power brick had just given up the ghost. Will now have to find a replacement. Thanks for the input. P.S. I did do the sniff test and the router passed :0) Jim jwm_maill...@comcast.net James Maki wrote: Hi all, Tonight I lost my internet connection and notice all the lights on my router were out. It has been really hot and the power adapter was hot. Can I safely assume (yes, I know the what happens when ...) it is the power supply, or must I worry that the unit itself is gone belly up? It is four years old. The replacement adapters are NOT readily available and I wonder if spending ~$30+ for an adapter that may or may not solve the problem is a wise investment. Any insight and/or suggestions? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] D-Link DGL-4300 power adapter died (?)
Hi all, Tonight I lost my internet connection and notice all the lights on my router were out. It has been really hot and the power adapter was hot. Can I safely assume (yes, I know the what happens when ...) it is the power supply, or must I worry that the unit itself is gone belly up? It is four years old. The replacement adapters are NOT readily available and I wonder if spending ~$30+ for an adapter that may or may not solve the problem is a wise investment. Any insight and/or suggestions? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] Hard Drive remembers it use to be a RAID0 member
Tim, Thanks for the tip! I had to go back into the BIOS and set the hard drives for RAID, load the Intel driver BIOS on boot and delete the RAID. Once I set it back to AHCI, all was well and I have two drives again. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Tim Lider If the RAID info is in the firmware only way to do it is use the RAID controller and set them up as JBOD. Tim Lider
[H] Motherboard Hard Drive Interface Performance
I just put together a new system (P6T6 WS Revolution) that has an SAS interface as well as SATA II. I setup the boot array on a pair of 15000rpm Fujitsu SAS drives in RAID0. HD Tune gives a transfer rate of about 171 MB/sec. The single WD Black 1TB drives benchmark at 87 MB/sec in IDE mode. Looking into a hardware RAID solution seems to show that few support Vista as the OS. The transfer speeds seem substantially greater than the on-board software RAID. Why these limitations? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] Core i7 new computer
If we are talking price concerns and future upgrades, I can see your point on waiting and concentrating on the upcoming i5 cpu. The fallacy in this philosophy FOR ME is I rarely upgrade within a socket type. The one time I did upgrade, I now feel I spent too much to upgrade a socket 939 (at its end of life) single core AMD64 3700 to an Opteron 185. It gave the system new life, but cost $235 for an obsolete chip. I usually build a system and use it for several years and then build a new system from scratch (at least, mb, cpu, and ram) as much from want as necessity as the technogies change. So I may spend a little more now for an X58 mb, i7 920, and DDR3, but the investment will cover me for the next couple of years till the new next best thing. Only potential pitfall is if the cpu fails (and I have not ever had a cpu fail) and having to spend an arm and leg to replace. In the meantime, I have a (for the time being) state of the art system. The happiness factor has to be worth SOMETHING! Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: jason.to...@cliffordchance.com Basically, i7 is going to be re-branded as the high end and as such boards and cpu prices will remain very high. Going the i5 route will give a considerably cheaper future upgrade path. -Original Message- From: James Maki -Original Message- From: jason.to...@cliffordchance.com With the recent announcement on i7 and i5, I wouldn't even consider an i7 anymore. Not good news either for those of us who jumped on the i7 bandwagon early :( I'm a bit confused by this comment. My understanding is that the i5 is inferior to the i7 and aimed at budget computing. Am I missing something? Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] Core i7 new computer
-Original Message- From: jason.to...@cliffordchance.com With the recent announcement on i7 and i5, I wouldn't even consider an i7 anymore. Not good news either for those of us who jumped on the i7 bandwagon early :( I'm a bit confused by this comment. My understanding is that the i5 is inferior to the i7 and aimed at budget computing. Am I missing something? Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Core i7 new computer
Thinking of making the plunge and building a new Core i7 based system w/ X58 chipset. Is there anything coming down the pike that would be worth waiting a few months? Thanks, Jim
Re: [H] HDTV Math
Yes, I have read about how comcast compresses their already compressed (by the network) signals trying to cram more HD stations into less space. I am just trying to figure out why our local NBC affiliate seems to be getting compressed to a greater extent with worse results? FOX and CW give a better picture (one at 720p and the other at 1080i). I am just looking for confirmation if my calculation is correct or I am approaching the problem incorrectly. Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: Eli Allen You know Comcast recompresses, right? -Original Message- From: James Maki I discovered something this week and am trying to understand its ramifications. I noticed lots of pixelation and motion blur the last two weeks of Heroes. NBC broadcasts at 1080i for HDTV. I checked the statistics for the show I recorded via HD Homerun tuners using Comcast cable, and NBC is averaging about 4.8 GB per hour for a 1080i show. I thought is a bit low but was even more surprised when I checked out shows on the other broadcast networks.
Re: [H] HDTV Math
Brian, I pay for HD and would like to think I get HD, but if comcast is only giving 2/3 of the bandwidth that is considered HD, I may look elsewhere. I have read that digital over the air broadcasts better than analog. I am about 30-40 miles from Seattle and Tacoma, where all the networks have broadcast towers, so am thinking of investigating an antenna. It is a shame that we have investing in a switch-over to HD only to not really be getting HD. I would rather have 100 quality stations than 600 crappy stations. But that is just me. I am sure there are people who get cable just for the soap network or game network, but not me. Anyway, I was just looking for confirmation or correction on my math. Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden If you looked at satellite HD broadcasts I would suspect you would find even worse bitrates among several of the HD stations. Brian Weeden Technical Consultant On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 1:35 AM, James Maki I discovered something this week and am trying to understand its ramifications. I noticed lots of pixelation and motion blur the last two weeks of Heroes. NBC is averaging about 4.8 GB per hour for a 1080i show. I thought is a bit low I am wondering if my math is correct). I am not sure how to factor in the fps figures, if at all. If you can add some insight, it would be appreciated. Thanks, Jim Maki
[H] HDTV Math
I discovered something this week and am trying to understand its ramifications. I noticed lots of pixelation and motion blur the last two weeks of Heroes. NBC broadcasts at 1080i for HDTV. I checked the statistics for the show I recorded via HD Homerun tuners using Comcast cable, and NBC is averaging about 4.8 GB per hour for a 1080i show. I thought is a bit low but was even more surprised when I checked out shows on the other broadcast networks. ABC 720p/60fps 6.3 GB NBC 1080i/29.97fps 4.8 GB CBS 1080i/29.97fps 5.6 GB PBS 720p/60fps 5.4 GB CW 1080i/29.97fps 7.9 GB FOX 720p/60fps 7.3 GB I find it strange that NBC has the lowest total file size but is broadcasting at 1080i, so I assuming (and I know the drawback of that!) it is compressed more than the other channels and am again assuming that is why I am seeing the picture degradation. Calling Comcast is a joke, so I wanted to do the math to calculate the 'bits-per-second for each case, but am not exactly sure if I am doing this correctly. It would seem that 4.8 GB/hr would calculate as: 4.8 GB/hr * 1 hr/60 min * 1 min/60 sec * 1024 MB/GB * 8 Mb/MB = 10.9 Mbps. One online source indicated that for quality 1080i you should have at least 15 Mbps. For the FOX network, the calculation would give 16.6 Mbps, far better than the 12 Mbps my online source gave for quality 720p broadcasts. I can't understand why the 720p broadcast is actually providing better throughput than the 1080i. It seems backwards (which is why I am wondering if my math is correct). I am not sure how to factor in the fps figures, if at all. If you can add some insight, it would be appreciated. Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] Project Falling by the wayside....
-Original Message- From: Bino Gopal Hmm, ok on that note, what's the 1 Ghz for the splitter refer to-or the 4/0db unbalanced thing? I've got TW Cable at home and have it split 4 ways (this is after it's split once to the bedroom and living room from the junction box at the back of the apt) but the cable techs have tested the signal strength and said it's actually still moderately high-even after the 4-way split-so I should be good... I've just got a simple 4-way splitter and if there's a better one I can get (or an amplifier or something else that can clean/improve the signal) I'd definitely consider it! I just upgraded my TivoHD to a 1GB HD and I'm getting occasional drops and I'm thinking it's the signal now (I thought it was the hard drive before, but it's still happening even after I replaced the hard drive, so now it's pointing to something else) so rather than have the techs come out again and say it's fine, I was wondering on what I could do myself. Anyone got any pointers on what to look for or where? Bino, I was running 3 televisions, cable modem, Cable PVR, 5 computer TV tuners and was having signal strength problems. My modem was losing its signal and some of the higher television stations had terrible quality. I had tried a cheap wal-mart/Philips signal amplifier (that actually made the reception worse). After lots of Googling, I found some information on the following item: ELECTROLINE EDA-FT08100 8 PORT CABLE TV AMPLIFER. It solved all my problems. I split the line coming into the house for front room and office. The office line is split for modem and all other inputs. The other inputs goes into the EDA-FT08100 amplifier to run my HDTV, PVR, and computer tuners. Signal strength is good for the tuners and modem. I got what I thought was a good deal at http://www.mjsales.net/. No connection other than a satisfied customer. Hope this help. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
Anthony, I use my computer to play Blu-ray discs. That is one of the reasons I am upset that I cannot get the computer connected with HDMI to output any audio. Today is a new day and I hope to get back to the problem. I was on chat with Comcast for hours yesterday and they haven't a clue! They work from a script and began with: Problem : running an hdmi cable from motorola dch3416 to a Westinghouse HDTV. No audio. Also looking at the compatibility of attaching the dvr to a yamaha av receiver but get an error message. Comcast Connect the cable from the wall outlet to the Cable In input on the DCT. James_ done Comcast Connect a cable from the Video output on the DCT to the Video input of the TV . Comcast Or Connect a S-Video Cable from the S-Video output on the DCT to the S-Video input on the TV When she started talking about using an S-Video cable I knew I was in trouble! I indicated that everything worked fine with component cables for video and RCA cables for audio and I wanted to utilize the HDMI cable for both audio and video, her next script began with a description on how to add a VCR to the mix! We went in circles and it ended up that she said that what I wanted to do SHOULD work, but since it didn't, resort to component to TV and optical digital to receiver for audio, oh, and have a nice day :) Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin James, Which Blu-ray player do you have? Focus on that. The cable boxes are known to be problematic apparently, but the Blu-ray should work to your receiver and then receiver to TV. I would remove everything else from HDMI until you get this part working. For sure there are setting with the player that you need to adjust to get it to output over HDMI. James Maki wrote: I am not blaming HDMI directly. Just the entire mess that doesn't allow equipment to work together.
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
Anthony, I had everything working just fine, using a DVI-HDMI cable for the computer to the HDTV, and either 5.1 Speakers out or coax SPDIF for the computer and HDMI-HDMI cable for cable box to HDTV and Optical SPDIF out for 5.1 sound for cable. I also have the upconverting DVD that requiures a coax SPDIF for 5.1 surround, so I was out of input jacks on the receiver (hence, the 5.1 speaker out on the computer audio). Since I had extra HDMI inputs on the receiver, I thought (in my apparent ignorance), that a video card with HDMI out would solve my problem! Unfortunately, it has only complicated my life, for the moment. I may just remove the DVD from the mix and use the computer to play DVDs (which will not make my wife happy because she hate and the remotes and different procedures and has the playing of DVDs down pat!). I cannot find a HDMI cable audio in the HDTV menu options, other than a selection for port 1 which selects digital or analog (port one has the HDMI port plus the RCA cable input for stereo sound). It is just discouraging to purchase the proper items and then not have them play nice together. The chat with Comcast was extruciating! I did other things while she thought about my input. It often took her 5 or more minutes to respond, and then it would be a question like: So James, did you hook up the RCA cables? or You must run an HDMI cable from the dvr to the HDTV and another HDMI cable to the cable box. Idiot, the DVR is the cable box? At one point I asked her if she even knew what a Motorola DCH3416 even was! That took her a long time to respond to. Then she apologized and said she was refering to the VCR as the other box! I don't have a VCR in the MIX! Anyway, Hope YOU have a great day! I am not so sure about mine. Thanks for letting me rant! Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin James, Ok...the computer complicates things. Also, since you have the motorola receiver, and that is known to be flakey, things are doubly complicated. Did you check in the menu system of your TV to see if it needs to be set to get sound off the HDMI cable? If it works, you're only going to get two channel sound out the TV speakers using this approach. Does your TV have an HDMI out too? I have a motorala HD receiver too, but I don't know which model. I didn't have to do anything special other than plug it into the receiver using the HDMI output, IIRC. I would not have the patience to stay on the line with cable company people. I run my monitor on my PC using a cable that is DVI on one end and HDMI on the other. However, the sound comes out the PC via the sound out jacks and goes to the speakers. Only the video goes over HDMI. Good luck.
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
-Original Message- From: James Maki Is HDMI ready for prime time? Just a quick update on some of the things I have found out about HDMI audio. First, the Yamaha receiver I purchased (and MANY others) does not utilize the HDMI audio signal at all! It only passes it on to the HDTV. This seems like a real waste since most HDTVs only process STEREO sound. I found in the manual that to have the receiver process the audio, you need to use either RCA cables, digital optical or digital coax cables. What is the point? Second, as Anthony mentioned, there are known issues with; 1) Comcast cable boxes, and, 2) ATI video cards with HDMI ports. They advertise dolby 7.1 sound, but I was surprised at the number of people complaining that they cannot get it to work at all. Lastly, I have a suspicion that my HDTV cannot process the HDMI audio signal. So far, I have been unable to get any sound even with direct HDMI connections, from my PC, cable box, or DVD player. I guess I will just go back to the SPDIF connections. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
Isn't DRM just grand! It doesn't really protect the material, just makes it difficult for us to use it, to enjoy what we pay for. So how do you get tru-hd or dts-hd from a set top blu-ray player? The HDMI receiver passes it on to the HDTV (which is stereo). Can't use the SPDIF without it degrading the quality. What other options are we left with to process the sound? This just keeps getting better and better! Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden There are also known issues with spdif ports and Bluray, specifically getting any tru-hd or dts-hd decoded. Spdif Is not considered a protected channel for drm and thus the pc might end up downgrading the signal. --- Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
Most of the followup posts address ripping the Blu-ray to the harddrive to play. I was asking the question regarding a regular set top blu-ray player. If my receiver just passes the HDMI audio signal along to the HDTV, how do I connect the audio from the blu-ray player to the receiver? More of a thought question since I do use my computer. Some of these gyrations sound more difficult than what you get out of them! Personally, I use AnydvdHD to play blu-ray discs. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 5:13 PM To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems Rip the Bluray to HD, re-encode the audio to FLAC and mux back into an mkv file with the video and any subs you need. Works great. --- Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundtion.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 7:32 PM, James Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.netwrote: Isn't DRM just grand! It doesn't really protect the material, just makes it difficult for us to use it, to enjoy what we pay for. So how do you get tru-hd or dts-hd from a set top blu-ray player? The HDMI receiver passes it on to the HDTV (which is stereo). Can't use the SPDIF without it degrading the quality. What other options are we left with to process the sound? This just keeps getting better and better! Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden There are also known issues with spdif ports and Bluray, specifically getting any tru-hd or dts-hd decoded. Spdif Is not considered a protected channel for drm and thus the pc might end up downgrading the signal. --- Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation
[H] HDMI Audio Problems
Is HDMI ready for prime time? I was excited to purchase an HDMI capable reciever that would do 5.1 sound. It seems to give me nothing but problems. I can't hook up my Comcast DVR because it complains that the route is not HDCP compatible, which it is supposed to be. Same problem with me DVD player. So, I have the Comcast DVR hooked up directly to the HDTV and use the SPDIF Digital Optical out to the reciever for the audio. Works okay, but not elegant like HDMI promised. I have the DVD player hooked up via component cables because I can't even hook it up to the tv directly. It has a pinkish hue as if one of the color components isn't registering. But, it works fine with component. It has a coax digital out SPDIF which I also hooked up to the reciever. That works fine. That left my computer to be hooked up as multi-channel from the soundcard to the multi-channel in. Worked, but I wanted digital audio. My reciever has only 1 coax in, and the DVD was occupying that position. So, I purchased a new video card, an ATI HD 4670 with direct HDMI output, supporting 7.1 sound. I figured this would solve my problem. NOPE! I installed the new video card and now have NO audio. The ATI HDMI audio is installed, it just doesn't make a sound. And, it says my reciever does not support DTS Audio, or Dolby Audio, which is does. I then moved the HDMI to connect directly to the HDTV. Still no joy! (or audio). To make things worse, the HDMI audio configuration only allows selecting STEREO. No 5.1 surround sound available. I am at a loss. I have googled the problem for hours and found lots of people with similar problems, but not any actual solutions. Some complain that you have to update the Realtek drivers for your motherboard, which doesn't make sense, and also didn't work! The ATI/Sapphire websites both extoll the virtures of HDMI with superior picture quality and 7.1 sound, but no where can I find anyplace that gives instructions on installing or using the audio features. It is not in the Catalyst Control Center (or, at least I haven't been able to locate it!). If anyone has any ideas, I would sure like to hear them. Sorry for the rant, but it has been a frustrating day that I had been very excited about! Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
-Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin nothing but problems. The receiver or the other stuff? Which receiver? Yamaha RX-V365 Each component works fine on its own. --DVD player works via component cables (and not when hooked up via HDMI to anything). --Comcast PVR works fine, but not if connected to the Receiver or HDTV via HDMI. I can get audio via digital optical to the reciever. All works fine if connected via component cables. Computer works fine if connected via 5.1 cables from sound card to reciever. No sound available over HDMI through reciever or HDTV. Yes, this sucks. Do you have your component cables switched? No. I can't get digital audio via the component cables. What HDMI cable are you using? A generic cable. To make things worse, the HDMI audio configuration only allows selecting STEREO. No 5.1 surround sound available. Where is this setting being made? Video card driver? The audio control in the right hand area of the task bar, or via Sound in the control panel. Well, you have a PC in your system that I don't have. I have an Onkyo 706 receiver. The HD cable receiver plugs in via HDMI, the blu-ray player plugs in via HDMI, the TIVO series 2 plug in via S-video optical. All of this is outputted to the TV via HDMI and it all works fine. Perhaps there is some settings that you need to make to tell things to output over HDMI or such. I know the blu-ray player has several options that have to do with on-board decoding or output over bitstream. Since like at one thing component ought to work, though. Is there some setting in the receiver? Perhaps it is faulty. I am pretty sure the problem lies in the HDMI Audio setup on the computer and the problems associated with HDMI/HDCP DMI interference. Both the Comcast PVR and DVD player complain about when hooked up via the HDMI. That is a separate problem, I believe, than the inability to get any sound out of the new HD 4670 video card. Still searching for an answer, but may just go back to the old setup which at least worked even if it didn't give me digital audio from my computer. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
Yep! Not ready for prime time! -Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin Check this out: *How HDCP can mess up HDMI, and how to handle it*
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
I REALLY REALLY want to uses HDMI. I just can't get it to work as it should. My cable box won't work with my receiver. My new HD4670 doesn't want to output audio via the HDMI. I am chatting online with Comcast as I type, and I don't think they have ANY idea of what HDMI is for. The rep is asking if I have the RCA cables connected to the receiver so I can get the surround sound! It's a joke! And my Comcast DVR isn't even putting audio out to my HDTV via HDMI! Great picture, no sound! Just frustrating. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: tmse...@rlrnews.com *laugh* I've been using all hdmi for more then 2 years. I wouldn't go back for anything. And since its the only way to get 1080p. --Original Message-- From: James Maki Yep! Not ready for prime time! -Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin Check this out: *How HDCP can mess up HDMI, and how to handle it*
Re: [H] HDMI Audio Problems
I am not blaming HDMI directly. Just the entire mess that doesn't allow equipment to work together. -Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin Actually, the HDCP that's the problem and that's in the various components that need to handshake. I don't think you can blame HDMI for this. My stuff works and works well. James Maki wrote: Yep! Not ready for prime time! -Original Message- From: Anthony Q. Martin Check this out: *How HDCP can mess up HDMI, and how to handle it*
Re: [H] Bluray drive?
-Original Message- From: Scott Sipe Hi all, Any recommendations for a bluray drive to be added to a vista htpc box? Was looking at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136133 Scott Scott, I purchased this drive back in December for $94.99 from NewEgg and have been very happy with it. I don't have an HDCP compliant system (no video HDMI output), so rely on AnyDVD to play Blu-Ray and HDDVD disks. I picked up about 10 HDDVDs for less than $100 total for Christmas on the cheap. I have several other LG drives and all have given me good service. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Hard Drive Upgrade Options HP Laptop dv5141us
I have an older HP Laptop (purchased 2006) that currently has a 120 GB Fujitsu PATA hard drive. I haven't been able to find what,if any, the size limit of this laptop might be. This system is almost always hooked up to AC power, so I would like to upgrade to a 7200rpm drive of larger capacity, if possible. The plate on the laptop says dv5000 while the actual number for the system purchased is dv5140us. It is the AMD64 Turion based system. Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] Hard Drive Upgrade Options HP Laptop dv5141us
I think I may have gotten the cart before the horse. I could not find ANY 7200rpm 2.5 PATA drives. The link you sent was for an Intel based system. HP was confusing in using similar model numbers for Intel and AMD based laptops. I read that the Intel based systems used a SATA drive while the AMD based system used PATA. That said, I think the number in the title is incorrect. The 5140us has an AMD64 Turion based laptop with 120 GB PATA hard drive system. The controller is definitely IDE ATA/ATAPI. It is only a 4200rpm drive, so maybe the 5400rpm might be worth the investment. Thanks for the input. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Rick Glazier Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 2:12 PM That's WAY past when *everyone* should have switched to a BIOS with 48bitLBA. The bad news is the PATA part. BUT. I did a quick search and found that model with an 80G SATA drive. Some confusion there too, look at the title on that page. (The whole Laptop is out of stock obviously.) http://www.amazon.com/Pavilion-dv5140us-Bluetooth-Widescreen- remarketed/dp/B000O3K9R2 I'd pull the drive and remove the convertor socket (if any) to be sure. Warning: The HP SATAs use a small convertor on the drive that makes it look funny. Rick Glazier From: James MakiHard Drive Upgrade Options HP Laptop dv5141us I have an older HP Laptop (purchased 2006) that currently has a 120 GB Fujitsu PATA hard drive. I haven't been able to find what, if any, the size limit of this laptop might be.
Re: [H] Hard Drive Upgrade Options HP Laptop dv5141us
Rick, Haven't looked at the physical hard drive, but it shows up as an IDE/ATA/ATAPI controller in device manager. Will of course open the laptop before actually ordering, but thanks for the reminder! :) Not your fault Amazon used the wrong information. Wouldn't mind a similar sized drive (120-160GB) if I could get the 7200rpm. Can always use an external for extra storage. Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: Rick Glazier Right. 320G max. I mentioned confusion in that link. Sorry I did not look closer. Did you physically check the drive, or get the model number and look up what you have that way? HP is sort of dumb for using both types different CPUs. I'm glad I always pull them before ordering. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=599language=en Note: Even with SATA, you give up speed to get size. WD Scorpio Black vs Blue Rick Glazier - Original Message - From: James Maki I think I may have gotten the cart before the horse. I could not find ANY 7200rpm 2.5 PATA drives.
Re: [H] Hard Drive Upgrade Options HP Laptop dv5141us
A day late and a dollar short! The story of my life when it comes to updating older equipment. Thanks for the information that they USED to be available. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net -Original Message- From: JRS I just updated 3 laptops to 7200 rpm PATA drives a few months ago, NewEgg had them, but you are right, I just looked and they show none of them anymore. :( -- JRS stei...@pacbell.net
Re: [H] Advice on HTPC components
-Original Message- From: James Maki Suggestions for motherboard/cpu combination and video card to handle the 720p output for cheap would be appreciated. Going to answer my own post. After getting no suggestions I continued to explore the forums, reviews, etc. It seemed that people were getting good results with the new 4000 series radeon video cards with low power processors. I had an older socket 939 board with built-in video (nVidia 6100?) and powered by a single core AMD 64 3700+. The on board video was not up to the task of powering HD video, although it had been great for SD television and AVIs. It also had a PCIe 16x slot that was unused. I purchased a Radeon 4350 with VGA/DVI/S-video output for under $50 and now this system will output 720p MKV files with CPU utilization in the 50-80% range. Fast enough that I see no delays, stutters or dropped frames. This turned out to be the most cost effective solution for me. Just an FYI. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Advice on HTPC components
I have an old AMD XP3200+ based system I used for an HTPC in the bedroom, using it to stream video from my main system via 10/100 wired network. Since going to HD on my main system, I find this old system struggles to play MKV (720p) content (I haven't even attempted actual HD content). Suggestions for motherboard/cpu combination and video card to handle the 720p output for cheap would be appreciated. I am currently outputing to an analog television, but hope to add an HD television in the future (too few $$$ at the moment), so SD and HD output would be a nice plus. Thanks for the input. Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
[H] Hard drive not found in Removable Tray
I have several SATA trays on two computers. I formatted a disk in computer 2 and then stored some files on it on computer 1. Now, computer 1 does not see the disk while computer 2 does. Computer 2 sees all four of my removeable drives while computer 1 only sees 2 of them. All drives have been used in computer 1 to transfer files from the computer to the removable drives. Now some aren't visible on computer 1. I am at a loss why computer 1 will not recognize some of the drives. When the drive is not seen in windows, it was not seen on the computers POST screen either. Any suggestions on where to look or what to do? Thanks, Jim Maki jwm_maill...@comcast.net
Re: [H] will this work with vista ultimate retail
I am pretty sure you can only activate ONE of the two varieties. You are not buying TWO licenses, just one. The same NUMBER will activate either version, just not BOTH. -Original Message- From: Winterlight If I have Vista Ultimate Retail and first install 32 bit on partition E can I then install 64 bit, I assume using the same key, on partition D. So two versions 32bit and 64 bit from the same box, with the same key on the same PC. Will that work? I am not interested in the fine points of the license, I just want to know if it will work?
Re: [H] Non booting case
Sam, I once had an old 386 computer I sold to a friend. He called after setting it up that it wasn't working. I took it home, openned it up and checked everything. It was working fine. I closed up the case and returned it, and again, it did not work for him. Thinking it was something in his home setup, I made a housecall. Took the system apart to troubleshoot and it was working fine. Put it back together, and it stopped working. Finally, I saw the problem! Removing the case cover reduced stress somewhere in the motherboard that allowed the system to boot. As soon as I attached to case cover, the motherboard was strained and would not boot. I replaced the motherboard and all was well, again. Long story short, does turning the case on its side de-stress some part of the motherboard or some other connection. Just a thought and wag. Good luck. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Sam Franc I have an Antec case with a Gigabyte mobo that has a strange boot operation. If I press the start button and it doesn't boot, I turn the case on it's side and it starts. I can turn the tower back on it's base and it continues to run fine. I turn it off for the night and it may start fine in the upright position or I may have to turn it in it's side to get it to boot. I have replaced the start switch with no difference in operation. What voltage should be across the start switch terminals? Any ideas of what to explore? I know this is a crazy problem with no obvious exploration paths. Sam
Re: [H] new m/b mounted
-Original Message- From: Winterlight I just bought a ASUS MAXIMUMS motherboard and in the manual it specifically says do not use internal ports as external. Why... is there something different about an external port? Don't know if this is the reason, but on my Abit IP35 Pro motherboard, the ICH9R controller does not allow the hard drives to be removed. The two external JMicron ports can be removed. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] 4 gig memory ?
I ran 4 gigs on an XP machine. With a 512 MB video card, system showed 3.5 GB. When I added a second 512 MB card, system memory fell to 3.0 GB. The system never exhibited any strange problems. Just my experience and YMMV. Jim Mak [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: FORC5 any problems putting 4 gig of memory in XP ? I know it will only see 3 but 4 gig for $60 any chance any programs will use it ? and problems with the OS not liking it ? opinions appreciated ? fp
Re: [H] server died again #2
-Original Message- From: Ben Ruset $700 is steep for Win2k3. You could get an Action Pack, which would get you Win2k3 (or Win2k8 now) as well as pretty much every other piece of software that Microsoft makes for much, much cheaper. The catch, it has to be for home/demonstration use, which would be perfect for what you're doing. http://www.petri.co.il/ms_action_pack_subscription.htm One point not mentioned at this website is that the $299 is a yearly subscription cost. Stop paying and you are expected to stop using. Just an FYI. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] HD PC recording
-Original Message- From: maccrawj You don't want the data off a Comcast DVR, it's so compressed that it bands like 16bit graphics and even subtitle data is lost. This was on a Minneapolis, MN market SA DVR. What's the alternative? Even If I could get OTA HD, what about Sci-Fi etc. in HD? Since the DVR is the tuner, watching the recorded version is the same quality as the live version. When CC gets around to enabling SA's SARA OS' DRM features it will disallow/degrade recorded playback or even tuner output via component or whatever else they choose. As long as they're in control of the STB you'll never get what you pay for! If they disallow/degrade the recorded playback, cable is gone from this house. That would make the whole concept ludicris. I can't compare OTA HD and Cable HD, but Cable HD is worlds better than SD cable. The output from the HD PVR is not as good as the original, but again, worlds better than SD and/or a VCR. I agree that the ownership of the STB by the cable company and the fact that you can't get the service without, puts the consumers at a distinct disadvantage. But I repeat, what is the alternative? --What is SARA? Thanks for the input. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] HD PC recording
-Original Message- From: Winterlight As long as comcast doesn't start encrypting the local QAM channels this is a great setup. If by local you mean the big networks that broadcast over the air... then that would be in violation of Federal law. When has that stopped Comcast from trying?
Re: [H] HD PC recording
-Original Message- From: Greg Sevart Clock and cores. x264, for its part, loves fast quad-cores. Your encoder may vary. I've heard that it doesn't scale nearly as well beyond 4 unless you use very high quality settings. You also have to watch your input filters, if you're using avisynth to frameserve it in. (running a 3.6GHz Q6600) My initial reaction to your suggests was ??? I have been doing fairly simple coding. Analog TV capture. Run it through Nero Vision which recodes fairly quickly thanks to smart encoding and then run through AutoGK to create an xvid/AVI file. Didn't have to do a lot of investigation to produce a satisfactory file. Now everything is different. I am running a core 2 duo E6750 2.66G oc'd to 3.0 GHz. Can only dream about a core 2 quad at this time. Thanks for the info. Jim
Re: [H] HD PC recording
-Original Message- From: Winterlight I bought one of these as well, but I haven't installed it yet. Right now it only gets 1080i ... not p, but that is what cable broadcasts. So this is a non-issue for me at this time. And it only does stereo, not surround. Hauppauge says a BIOS update will update the stereo to surround Dolby soon I haven't upgraded my receiver to take advantage of 5.1 or digital optical, so this also is a non-issue at this time. What Hauppauge has done is taken advantage of a loophole in the DRM law. There is currently no provision for the area between the device... cable modem, and the PC using component cables... that is why it isn't using modern, and convenient HDMI cables. I decided to buy one before they plug that loophole! At this time I believe this is the only way to get HD content off of a cable company STB. I know Comcast doesn't care that their PVR only holds about 20 hours of HD content and doesn't give you any way to save it to an external drive. Not an ideal or perfect solution, but one that allows some additional flexibility with HDTV. Just wish they weren't quite so expensive! Jim
[H] (Somewhat OT): HDTV broadcast inconsistencies
I have noticed that many stations seem to screw up their HD broadcasts. I hate it when an HD broadcast is sent with black boarders on all four sides! It looks like perhaps a 720p broadcast with 1080i parameters!? Personally, I hate it when they stretch a standard broadcast on the HD channel. History Channel HD is guilty of this with the Universe and other series. The planets are no longer round! Are these technical or practical or personal choice issues? Or just poor broadcast policies? /rant Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Vista FireWire support
Thank you so much for the reply and info. Still not sure I want to spend the money (actually $69.95). My motherboard also has only a single PATA controller and onboard firewire, so looking at this as an option. And since I just noticed that FireWire Depot is going out of business at the end of the month, I will not be buying from them! Jim -Original Message- From: maccrawj Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2008 1:37 PM To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] Vista FireWire support FW depot is a reseller, Oxford is a chipset manufacturer, the bridge board is likely made by a 3rd party. Since FWD does not manufacture they have nothing to do with the driver and likely lack even an educated TS department, hence the simpleton response.
[H] Vista FireWire support
I am looking at a firewire-to-ide bridge board at FireWire Depot; http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product_info.php/products_id/1643 In the description, it states that it Support Win98SE, ME, 2K, XP, Linux, FreeBSDS and MAC OS 8.6 or higher. No mention of Vista. I wrote customer support asking about Vista x64 support and received the following cryptic (at least to me) message in return: only microsoft writes driver for vista so you would need to check to see if microsoft is publishing a vista firewire driver for oxford 911+ chip set I find it strange that the manufacturer would not already know this information. I am running two external cases with the oxforde 911 and 911+ chipset and it works. I just want to bring the drives (two IDE dvd drives) into a case. Anyone see a problem I am missing? I am just a bit put off by the lack of a definitive answer from the manufacturer on this subject. Thanks for you input. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Comcast 250 GB Limit and monitoring software
And to make matters more upsetting, I am seeing Comcast ads for their internet service touting downloading movies, tv and music. They have a special price for new customers of only $24.99 per month for the rest of the year. Now, why does a company that is complaining of network saturation by their current customers go out of their way to reduce their income to attract NEW customers? Makes NO sense unless they only want customers who utilize 2-3 GB per month so they can get rid of the ones who actually utilize their capacity! /soapbox again. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[H] Comcast 250 GB Limit and monitoring software
I received my letter from Comcast this past week about the upcoming 250 GB bandwidth limit. I am lax to trust their own 2-3 GB as the median usage but have no idea what I am currently using. Curious, I downloaded several programs, Bandwidth Monitor 2 from Rokario Software Ltd. and ShaPlus bandwidth Meter 1.2. In 3.5 hours, they show about 3 GB of upload/download in a 3.5 hours! Am I reading the program logs incorrectly or am I actually running close to 1 GB per hour! That would put me at 700GB+ per month and that seems ridiculous. I have done nothing spectacular (that I know of) other than e-mail and web browsing. Any suggestions on how to monitor the internet connection. I have a local lan with 2 computers and one laptop running (none of which is doing any significant downloading). Am I monitoring the LAN or the internet connection with these programs? The programs seem to be monitoring the network card and I am now wondering if I am monitoring the lan communication between the computers in addition to the internet connection. Looking for a freeware solution just to make sure I am not going to run into trouble with the Comcast police next month! I really appreciate any input and/or suggestions on how to get to the bottom of this question. I am running Vista Ultimate x64 up-to-date, Avast! Anti-virus (no problems found), Windows Defender and the built-in firewall. Thanks for any insight. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] AHCI vs SATA support on ICH9R controller
Replying to my own post with additional info... I have done further investigation of this problem and have come to the conclusion that you can't hot swap if you select RAID in the bios. Even though RAID is supposed to be a superset of AHCI, I have not found a way to hot swap the single drives attached to the ICH9R controller. Running the Intel Matrix Storage Manager indicates the single drives are using NCQ, but they do not show up in the safely remove hardware control. I have googled the problem and keep coming up with posts regarding changing to AHCI to enable hot-swap or people with the same problem as I have. Lots of answers saying IT SHOULD be hot swappable according to Intel's website, but no one who actually claims to be able to do it. Selecting RAID in the bios (I have the OS installed on a SATA RAID attached to the ICH9R, so RAID is the required selection and you don't seem to be able to select individually which channels are RAID and which non-RAID) makes the drives attached not hot-swappable. Is anyone actually running a P35 chipset with RAID and non-RAID drives that has been able to enable hot swap with the ICH9R controller? I have several drives in drive bays I would like to be able to swap, although it is not imperative. It was a no-brainer with an nForce4 chipset. All attached SATA drives were hot swappable, INCLUDING the OS drive(s). All the official Intel websites indicate that the drives should be hot-swappable, but I have yet to find anyone who says they have actually done in or found a tweak in the BIOS to allow hot-swapping. This question has gotten under my skin now, and I would like to find a definitive answer. I would be glad to hear from anyone who has one. Thanks, Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: James Maki So, it SHOULD [be hot swappable]... -Original Message- From: maccrawj http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-012308.htm http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022304.htm This one seems to suggest RAID mode is RAID + AHCI: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-015988.htm
[H] AHCI vs SATA support on ICH9R controller
I installed Vista Ultimate x64 on a RAID0 disk array of WD Raptors on an Abit IP35 Pro motherboard. The other disk drives are all SATAII. I notice the message AHCI Bios Not Installed during the boot sequence. The disk drives are NOT hot swappable. Reading up on AHCI, it seems this supports hot swap and NCQ for SATA drives. All the drives are connected to the ICH9R controller and it seems there is no way to independantly select between RAID, IDE and AHCI for the drives. Since I am booting from a RAID0, I have selected RAID for the controller. Am I missing something that would allow me to make the other drives hot-swappable? My last system used nForce4 and all the drives were hot-swappable. The lack of hot-swap is not an issue, but am I also losing out on NCQ? I have googled the problem, but have not found my circumstances. Most seem to focus on installing on IDE and then switching to AHCI. Others seem to indicate that RAID implements AHCI, but I wonder since I do not have the hot-swap feature. Curiosity killed the cat, but I still find myself bothered by the AHCI Bios Not Installed message each time I boot. Any insight is most appreciated! Thanks, Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] WWII First Person Shooter Suggestions
Okay! You've sold me. Will give it a try. Thanks! -Original Message- From: Veech Sorry for late reply, I've spent the last 3 hours playing TF2. ;) Anyway, good question about 2 copies for 2 computers. I think the stand-alone game is just $19.95 so 2 copies would still be around $40. Still, start with 1 copy and try it? There is The Orange Box by Valve which includes Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, all three games are fantastic. You could buy it, practice your FPS on HL2 then join TF2 online once you get the mouse/WASD movements down if that is an issue. Yes, TF2 is free online, there are about 300 or so servers constantly hosting about 10 different maps. I love the Dustbowl map which has 6 capture points. Other maps are capture-the-flag style. You just click a link to find servers then sort by map (try Dustbowl first), find one with like 20 out of 24 playing so you know there is room for you, then click join. There is an option to observe, so you can watch the others playing for a bit just to get an idea. I held off on joining an online game for years, and TF2 is the only one I've ever played. I only tried it because the other two games in the Orange Box set were so wonderful, I thought it must be pretty good as well. Up until a few months ago, I was strictly playing solo FPS vs the computer. But here's the thing that may be a selling point with your daughter, even solo games with advanced AI are no match for the thrill of actually communicating with other team members and planning and executing a strategy against another team. Once I got past my initial reservations (after about half an hour) I was hooked. I laid out $80 for a Logitech G9 wired optical mouse to help improve my aim, and $40 for a microphone/headset combo which is essential in order to talk to your team-mate, we warn each other of incoming baddies. For example you'll hear look out to your left in the heat of battle, swing left, see three bad guys, and POW take 'em out with a burst of heavy weapons fire. It's the communicating with other people and the cheers and (yes) jeers that makes the thing so damned much fun. In fact it's so much fun that I haven't touched a single-player game since I started TF2 about four months ago. Crysis literally sits unplayed on my computer for the time being, barely past the first chapter. Anyway, at the very least grab the stand alone version and give it a try, I believe you will love it.
Re: [H] WWII First Person Shooter Suggestions
Reading up on Halo cooperative mode seems to indicate this is not available for the PC version. Is this correct? I think cooperative mode is exactly what I am interested in to play on the same side as my daughter against the computer!? Thanks to all that have responded to my original post. I have appreciated the suggestions. Unfortunately, it seems the games that interest me are not vista compatible. Also, seems the game console versions are more prevalent (i.e., many games are only available for the console and only a version on 2 available for the PC -- is this a wide spread problem for PC owners?) Again, thanks for the input. Gave me lots to track down on the internet. Jim -Original Message- From: John Steinbruner True, Halo 1-2-3 are great in Cooperative mode. :) On Jun 22, 2008, at 12:24 PM, Bobby Heid wrote: Jim, Also check out Halo... Another great FPS. Bobby
Re: [H] WWII First Person Shooter Suggestions
-Original Message- From: Veech Try Valve's Team Fortress 2. It is a team-based online game, generally a team of 12 vs 12, sometimes more. It is very balanced and a total blast to play. No fee other than the cost of buying the game (not sure why no online play for you?). Anyway, reason I recommend it is because there are `12 different characters you can play, soldier, sniper, spy, medic, demoman, pyro, etc etc. There is a combination called the medic/heavy combo which takes two people to play, with the medic constantly healing the very powerful (but slow) heavy weapons guy. When done properly, they are almost unstoppable, It takes a bit of practice, but the game is absolutely a hoot to play. Skirmishes are between 5 and 20 minutes long. You and your daughter could sign on to the same server, join the same side and team up together to wreak havoc and have a blast. You'd just have to know my daughter to understand! :) She enjoys the solitary play but gets very involved and would be put off if she didn't do well in a team setting. She even gets mad at me if I kibbitz while she is playing. If it was just her and I against the computer, I think she would enjoy that type of group play. Team Fortress does sound interesting. I will take a look at it. I tend to stay away from online play due to additional expenses I thought would be involved. Free online play is definitely something I will look into. I really don't spend a lot of time playing games, hence the reason I am quite the neophyte with the fps genre in general. Thanks for the info on Team Fortress. I will check it out and also see what my daughter thinks of the idea. I take it we would have to purchase 2 copies and install on 2 systems to play simultaneously. Also, can you just join a random team? Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] HD PC recording
-Original Message- From: Wayne Johnson Haupauge has a component capture device HD PVR http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html If when one decides to acquire this device would you please let us know how you like it ? Wonder how long before the powers that be find a way to squash this product? Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] HD PC recording
-Original Message- From: Winterlight Wonder how long before the powers that be find a way to squash this product? Why? Tivo has a similar product, as do others. Tivo allows you to transfer a HD recording to your computer? Even scrambled cable channels?
[H] WWII First Person Shooter Suggestions
On a lark, I purchased Call of Duty War Chest on special from NewEgg. This was my first fps, and I really enjoyed it. In addition, my 20 year old daughter has really enjoyed playing the game. I am looking for suggestions for similar games. I would particularly like a game where my daughter and I can play on a lan on the SAME side AGAINST the AI. Are there any games like that? NOT online. We are not locked to the WWII theme, but do enjoy that time period of history, weapons etc. wise. Just looking for some suggestions. They do not need to be the latest and greatest, in fact, older might be better so they don't stress the hardware. Up to the task as far as cpu, but not the vid card side. Vista compatibility a must. Thanks for your input. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Three monitors on XP
-Original Message- From: Thane Sherrington I know there was a thread about this earlier, but I didn't follow it closely. If I want to run two 20 LCDs and one 65 LCD, can I do this with two video cards with an Asus P5K-E and two PCIe video cards (using the DVI and VGA on one and the DVI on the other?) T Thane, I started the thread and have successfully implemented 3 monitors or two Radeon hd 2600 pro PCI-e cards. I am running an ABIT IP35 PRO motherboard which has two PCI-e x16 slots. One is electrically x16 and the other is x4. I have a 19 DVI LCD and 42 LCD HDTV on the primary card (x16) and a 15 analog LCD on the second. It works flawlessly. After installing the ATI drivers and catalyst software, Display Properties | Settings shows 4 available monitors. One thing I noticed (and half expected) is that when I added the second video card (I have 2 512 MB cards), my recognized memory fell from 3.5 GB (of 4 GB installed) to 3.0 GB. Makes me think that Windows XP x64 might come in handy. My video cards have dual DVI outputs and I use an analog adapter to run the 15 VGA LCD. Good luck with your setup. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] xp sp3 ?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4 Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 1 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $559.96 ($139.99 each) What about Western Digital's new VelociRaptor? 10K RPM SATA II 300 gb drive. Should be available RSN. About $300 each -- total $600 for 2 with 600 GB vs $560 for 300 GB of the older Raptor drives. Perhaps worth the wait? Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
I don't need that kind of video processing power, or the price! Found 2 512 MB 2600pros for $120 total with $20 MIR. Should satisfy my needs nicely. Thanks Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Behalf Of j maccraw There is also the 3870X2 from Asus which has quad DVI ports though I know not if it suffers from the fan issues of other 3870x2's and then there is the price. James Maki wrote: Thanks for the response. It seems that multiple video cards to drive multiple monitors is successful.
Re: [H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:34:13 -0700 James Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't need that kind of video processing power, or the price! Found 2 512 MB 2600pros for $120 total with $20 MIR. Should satisfy my needs nicely. Thanks I was just looking at: http://www.techreport.com/r.x/geforce-9800gtx/tri-sli-rig.jpg http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14610 Care to share a link to those MB 2600pros? SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 2600PRO 512MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102152 I purchased the 256MB version several months ago (for $80). It has performed flawless for my needs (mostly Office, video encoding, and a little gaming-CivIV and Call of Duty 12). No problem driving a 42 1080p LCD tv. The links you sent show a pretty fully loaded system! Is there room for any other cards? Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:36:04 -0700 James Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Care to share a link to those MB 2600pros? SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 2600PRO 512MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102152 Special savings, while supplies last(limit 100 per customer) Hehe Thanks for the link. I'll grab a couple, myself. What mobo are you using them on? I plan on using them on an Abit IP35 Pro socket 775 and Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939 mb whose original ATI x600 card is having problems. I plan on leaving the 256 MB version of the vid card on the Abit board (in the x16/x4 bandwidth slot) to run a 15 analog LCD I use as a second screen and let the 512 MB version run my 19 LCD and 42 HDTV. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:18:25 -0700 James Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I plan on leaving the 256 MB version of the vid card on the Abit board (in the x16/x4 bandwidth slot) to run a 15 analog LCD I use as a second screen and let the 512 MB version run my 19 LCD and 42 HDTV. So, on the 512 GPU, it's two of the three outputs at any one time? In other words, the 512 GPU can't do the 15 analog, 19 LCD and HDTV at the same time? My understanding is you can run 1 or 2 monitors in any configuration of the 3 ports on a dual head video card, but I don't believe you can run all 3 ports simultaneously. Perhaps you could clone two of the ports to show the same display on two monitors... Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
-Original Message- From: Wayne Johnson At 06:58 PM 4/30/2008, James Maki typed: Perhaps you could clone two of the ports to show the same display on two monitors... Why would one want to do that unless they're giving a presentation ? Don't know. But since I have not actually tried it, didn't want to give a definite NO! to the question of whether you could hook 3 monitors to a single card. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
I searched and cannot find a definitive answer to the question of running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro. I have an Abit IP35 Pro (socket 775) board with two PCI-e x16 slots. One operates at x16, the other at x4. I am currently running a dual monitor setup with a DVI 19 4x3 screen and a vga 15 4x3 screen connected to a Sapphire HD 2600 Pro video card. I also have a Westinghouse 42 LCD 1080p television that I would like to hook up for occasional use to this system. It is currently attached to my htpc, but I would like to be able to utilize the extra screen at times for my main system. Can I add another HD 2600 Pro video card to the x4 PCI-e x16 slot? I plan on switching the LCD TV to the card on the x16 slot and moving the older vga monitor to the x4 slot card. I am not much of a gamer. I recently purchased Call of Duty War Chest (incudes CoD 1, CoD 1 expansion pak, and CoD 2). I have no problems running the game on my current system. In fact, it runs just fine on the HTPC utilizing on-board video to run the 42 LCD. So my video needs are modest. I would just like to be able to hook up the 42 LCD to my main system on occasion while maintaining my current 2 panel setup. Thoughts, suggestions, caveats? All appreciated. Thanks, Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
Rick, Thanks for the response. I have several additional questions-- 1) Do all 4 monitors show up Properties | Settings? 2) Are all the video cards of similar vintage/type? 3) Are you using PCIe (x16 or x4) or a mixture of PCIe, AGP and/or PCI? Thanks Jim -Original Message- From: Richard Quilhot I've run xp with 4 attached 5th tcp/ip with no problems. I had 1 dual head 2 single cards Rick Q
Re: [H] Running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro
Thanks for the response. It seems that multiple video cards to drive multiple monitors is successful. After finally figuring out the correct search phrase (PCI-E X16 x4 bandwidth) I found several sites that discuss using a pci-e x16 video card in a x16/x4 bandwidth slots. Thanks for the help. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:59:02 -0700 James Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I searched and cannot find a definitive answer to the question of running 3 monitors in Windows XP Pro. My internet PC is running two dual head cards. Both Matrox; one AGP and one PCI.
[H] MyRebates411.com
Anyone have experience with this rebate house? I just went thru an 8 month ordeal trying to get a rebate for a Foxconn motherboard purchased from NewEgg. This is the first, and so far only, rebate I have had a problem obtaining. To me, that says a lot about this organization's policies. Just wanted to give you the 411 as I see it on this fraud squad. After eight months, NewEgg is going to refund the rebate although they maintain it is the manufacturer's and rebate house's respondsibility. YMMV and JMHO. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Nice Case Mid Size Tower
-Original Message- From: Joe User http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Chassis/fulltower/armor/va8000bws.a sp OK thats a sweet chassis -- Regards, joeuser - Still looking for the 'any' key... I went with the Thermaltake ArmorPlus(Armor+) VH6000BWS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133056 when it was available with free shipping from newegg (which is good because it weighs a ton). I have been extremely happy with the case. It is big (roomy) and heavy (solid construction), but if you are looking for a full sized tower, check it out. It dropped my idle temp by 3 degrees, has room for 7 internal 3.5 inch druves and 7 external 3.5/5.5 drives. Front panel firewire, USB and eSata. Best big case I have ever used (and the most expensive). Not for LAN parties! Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Nice Case Mid Size Tower
I guess I understand your commens, but I am running 2 optical drives and 4 SATA drives in removeable enclosures, a floppy drive, and then 4 more SATA drives internally. I could add 4 more internal drives before the space in maxed out. Remove the floppy (only used for F6 installation of drivers), and I have another external bay available. The icydock takes up 3 bays of 7 total, leaving you with 4 external and 7 internal. That's a lot of storage space. I find it more than sufficient. Of course, YMMV. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: j maccraw If only they had not screwed with the Armor's 11-bays to make the plus I'd have considered it. I was very purposeful it wanting all 5.25 bays so *I* could choose how I want to utilize my space. Like knowing I could put something like this in later without running out of 5.25 bays for other devices. http://www.icydock.com/product/images/MB455SPF-kit-lowres.jpg James Maki wrote: I went with the Thermaltake ArmorPlus(Armor+) VH6000BWS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133056
Re: [H] DTV-boxes-not
Duncan, If I remember correctly from you original post, don't you run several VCRs in your system? If so, you will still run into a problem trying to utilize them when the analog signals go black. IIRC, all televisions above a certain size now require a built in ATSC tuner, so any TV you purchase will be able to receive OTA hdtv. If you are talking about a pure monitor (as in for a computer), then you would need some sort of external tuner. Personally, I would look at 1080p capable sets, although these are larger and more expensive. The smaller ones are usually 720p. The more inputs, the more versatile the hdtv. If you just want to hook up a coax cable, then the other inputs are extraneous. I was surprised how fast the inputs disappeared on my HDTV: Coax cable input for analog and clear QAM stations on cable, 2 component for DVD and Cable Box (with PVR), HDMI for computer and VGA for second computer. If you want to hook up a game console, extra HDMI ports are useful. I remember trying to figure out all the angles of HDTV before my Christmas 2007 purchase. I do not regret the expense of purchasing an HDTV. The difference between analog and HD is dramatic. Be forwarned, the old analog shows don't hold up to HDTV too well. I find watching them in a smaller window via my computer to give a better overall presentation. At least in my area, Comcast has told me that I will continue to receive analog signals for most stations after the Feb 2009 deadline, so I am keeping several analog televisions and my investment in DVR equipment. Good Luck, Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: DHSinclair OK, I've spent the weekend studying all the various DTV boxes offered to allow us folk with older analog TV hardware to rcv the (current?) new ATSC digital signals post 2/9/09. Boy, did I get a cook's tour! And, nowhere I looked did I find a (the!) solution I sought. See, I have an antenna in the garage rafters. To this antenna connects a good distribution amp. To this distribution amp I have a cable run to a bedroom, the living room, and the garage (have an old component TV [Mitubishi] for watching NASCAR races while puttering in the garage on Sundays. So, I've decided to retire (give away, sell, toss, ?, UPGRADE) all my old analog TV gear and move on to what is now available. I figure I'll spend ~$3000 to complete this exercise..(?) I have no plans to build a home theatre ATM. One Question: Do all of the newer WS LCD/Plasma solutions I see have internal tuners? Some that I see only mention having HDMI imputs and/or an imput for a PC. I read this to mean that this screen will require an outboard A/V Reciever like Denon, Onkyo, Sony, etc.. Am I close? I believe my first purchase will be a Viewsonic N2635W LCD WS HDTW/Monitor for the bedroom. Box says it has both HDTV and NTSC tunners built-in. OD has it on sale for $499. Anyone have any negative comments on this choice? Best, Duncan
Re: [H] DTV-boxes-not
Duncan, My comments are inline: -Original Message- From: DHSinclair My confusion is over the acromyn-clutter. I assume that if you tell me a given device has an 'HDTV' tuner built in, that means it will by default also receive DTV. Am I correct? I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that all HDTV is DTV, but not all DTV is HDTV. DTV refers to the way the signal is transmitted. HD refers to the quality of the content. You can broadcast analog tv on a digital signal to give you DTV, but that does not make it HDTV. Personally, I would look at 1080p capable sets, although these are larger and more expensive. The smaller ones are usually 720p. Yes, the initial purchase for the bedroom will be a 720p. When I get to the livingroom change I will be planning 1080p. The garage will be whatever the budget allows. :) This goes back to my previous post. My understanding is that HDTV is either 1080p (nobody, AFAIK, has a broadcast 1080p signal - BluRay Discs utilizes a 1080p signal), 1080i (NBC, CBS, CS), or 720p (ABC, PBS, FOX). Regular analog is 480i. I think there are other resolutions, but these are the HDTV resolutions. Higher is better, progressive (p) is better than interlaced (i). I don't know which is better, 720p or 1080i. My computer video card can output 1080p, so I shopped for a 1080p compatible HDTV with VGA and HDMI inputs. extra HDMI ports are useful. OK, so I can equate HDMI ports as potential console game ports to the screen? Useful for more than just game consoles. I have my computer hooked up from the DVI output to the HDMI input of the HDTV. I think the video is better with the digital, but find the text a little better with the VGA. Might be my imagination :) At least in my area, Comcast has told me that I will continue to receive analog signals for most stations after the Feb 2009 deadline, so I am keeping several analog televisions and my investment in DVR equipment. I get my TV OTA. Comcast is the local robber-baron here. I plan to wait until our local electric company completes their FIOS build-out to review a subscription service. I do have DISH, DirectTV, and dedicated (expensive, tweaky) SAT services also available. I expect that ATT will also enter the market before too long. Can not justify ATM. Best, Duncan JMHO, but there will always be something cheaper and better on the horizon. Comcast provides a service I would be hard pressed to give up (internet and cable w/ HD). My hope is that competition will bring down the price and increase the service, but am unwilling to wait for that golden day. Till then, I will go with Comcast, the only real alternative, and pay their price. Jim [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Freaky Friday WinXP install -- Update
I installed a new power supply in the computer and it made no difference. I had the same problems in the same places. Initially, I disconnected everything and tried the new power supply with only the video card, and SATA RAID0 boot array. No Go. It would boot just fine. Added the DVD/RW but True Image would still not see the array. Added the 750 GB WD SATA II drive and the system froze at the nVidia boot screen. Adding a Sil3132 pcie-x1 controller with the 750 GB WD attached and the system booted fine. Added the JMicron pcie-X1 controller and the rest of the drives and the system would boot just fine. Tried to boot to True Image and it could see only 1 drive. Moved the drive to a different controller, and True Image could still only see that one drive. This is suspicious that the location of the drive is unimportant. True Image can see it and not any other drive regardless of the controller. May be a True Image problem after all. Will try re-installing and creating a new recovery disk. Did some investigation on the purchase of a new socket 939 that will accept the Opteron 185. The only ones I could find were either VERY expensive server boards, or some ~$100 Tyan and Asus server boards at Newegg. The reviews were less than perfect, although some people raved about the boards, other had boot problems and other indicated the board layout precluded using a large HSF and pcie-X16 video board. So, does anyone have any more suggestions or observations? Or is there an Intel core 2 duo in my future? Thanks, Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[H] Strange Hard Drive Problem
About a month and a half ago, I related a problem I was having with a new Western Digital WD7500AYYS 750GB SATA II drive. Transfers to the drive seems very slow. I moved the drive around between several adapters on 2 different computers. Finally, I put it in an external drive and it worked fine, so I moved on to other problems. Yesterday, while trying to re-install WinXP (another problem/post) I placed the WD 750 in the computer case. It immediately started exhibiting the slow transfers. On a hunch, I switched out the power supply connection for the external power for this drive only, and lo and behold, the transfer times returned to normal. Have any of you seen this problem where a single drive has problems with the PS and exhibits slow transfers, but otherwise operate normally? I will just use the drive in the external case, but am curious as to the reasons. This is a Sparkle Power FSP550-60PLN-B 550 Watts EPS12V Switching Power Supply purchased June of 2005. No other signs of problems. Thanks for your input. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[H] FW: Freaky Friday WinXP install -- (a bit long)
Well, I should know better, but yesterday I decided it was time to re-install WinXP Pro on my main computer. It had been exhibiting some strange behavior, including slow to non-existant shutdowns (I had to physically push the power button), and occasional blue screens crashes. The first install went fine, except that I left all my drives connected so that WinXP designated my boot drive as I: (it was on a SATA RAID0 Array). So I disconnected the other drives and repeated the initial install. During the video card installation, something hiccupped and the system would not boot. So I started again! This time, I completed the initial installation which consisted of WinXP w/ SP1, SP2 upgrade, Virus protection, Video drivers and True Image 11. I made an image of the boot drive. As a precaution, I booted to the rescue disk and discovered that True Image 11 saw only one SATA drive out of 6 drives and one RAID0 array. Stranger, the one drive it did see shared a controller with another drive which True Image 11 DID NOT see! I tried to move the SATA RAID0 array back to the nVidia SATA controllers hoping that might be the problem. No Luck. Furthermore, when I tried to boot the system, I got a message that I MUST activate before I could log on. This was on a system that had been installed less than an hour earlier. What happened to the 30 day activation period?! At this point I was getting ready to panic because I could not get WinXP installed nor could I use my True Image backups to restore to the original state. I have restored numerous times using this system, and now suddenly, nothing is working or being recognized. I was finally able to get back to a working system by moving the drive with the image to another computer, installing the image on that drive and moving it back to the original system. I then used THAT instance of WinXP to copy the image back to the SATA RAID0 array. As long as True Image was utilized within WinXP, it would work. As soon as it re-booted (to Linux), it no longer recognized the SATA RAID0 array or any other SATA disk, save 1. At this point, I am considering some sort of hardware failure/problem. I re-installed the BIOS and saw no difference. I am at a loss on where to look next. I would really like to get this setup working without issue as it is my main work computer. If I can't get it working without problems, I would have to put together a new system. Since this is a socket939 with DDR400, it would probably require new MB, new CPU and new Memory. I would rather not spend that much right now. Other possible issue: The Opteron 185 requires the use of a beta BIOS on this motherboard, a Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9 nForce4 Ultra. Any insight would be most appreciated. I spent about 24 hours just to get back to where I started! Another 8-10 hours trying to figure out what was going on. Thanks, Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [H] Freaky Friday WinXP install -- (a bit long)
Yes it is. Too many problems that don't seem to point to a single solution. Jim -Original Message- From: DHSinclair Jim, It this system (winXP-reinstall) the same system that was having trouble with the WD hard drive? Best, Duncan At 11:27 03/09/2008 -0700, you wrote: Well, I should know better, but yesterday I decided it was time to re-install WinXP Pro on my main computer.
Re: [H] Freaky Friday WinXP install -- (a bit long)
1: First of all, everything was working fine on Friday morning before this fiasco! 2: Drives 2 WD 36 GB Raptors in RAID0 as C, D, E, F (System, Downloads, Programs, and Files) on nVidia SATA II controller 1 WD 750 GB SATA II as I (video files) on nVidia SATA II controller 5 Seagate 320 GB SATA II for general storage and backups, working discs (I record a lot of shows from TV and convert them to xvid avi files), on nVidia SATA II controller, Sil3132 SATA II pcie-X1 controller, JMicron SATA II pcie-X1 controller. 2 DVD/RW burners on separate IDE channels 3: Originally used F6 to load drivers for nVidia Sil3114 (which would not allow me to create a boot drive system on the RAID0 array, so it is installed on the nVidia controler and no drives are currently using the Sil3114 SATA I controller) 4: When I did the re-install, I loaded drivers with F6 for the nVidia, Sil3114 and Sil3132 controllers. The JMicron controller thru an error for its floppy disk and had to be installed from within Windows. Things that used to work, such as True Image 11 to re-install an image, no longer work. Strange problems with installation not booting or Windows DEMANDING activation after only an hour or so. It seems that there are just too many seemingly unrelated problems cropping up. Of particular distress is the failure of True Image to be able to re-install a saved image. I have depended on that utility to get me out of many a jam. Usually can get the system up in running within a half hour of a software problem with the boot drive. Jim Maki [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden What are all the drives in your system for? Can you describe your storage layout? One thing I'm not sure if you tried but hitting F6 while the WinXP setup is loading will allow you do load storage drivers. That has helped me in the past for things that XP didn't have a native driver for. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation
Re: [H] Freaky Friday WinXP install -- (a bit long)
I had that thought, but how would a power supply problem affect True Image and its ability to see the SATA RAID0 and other hard drives? Jim -Original Message- From: DHSinclair Jim, Thanks for that bit of info. Went back and read both recent posts again. I truly believe you have a power problem; too many things the need oomph and not enough oomph to give. I'd do some power recalculation, but I vote that your psu is giving up the fight. It reads like a classic sag situation. JMHO. Best, Duncan
Re: [H] Freaky Friday WinXP install -- (a bit long)
I have the same problem if only the SATA RAID0 drives are the only drives attached. I will try a different PSU and see if it makes a difference. Thanks, Jim -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden Having had flaky PSUs cause weird hard-to-diagnose problems before I would agree with Duncan. If drives are having problems spinning up all at the same time that could lead to problems with them being seen I would think. - Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation
