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Victory!!!

Postby dolphinius_rex on Fri Feb 25, 2005 2:41 am

Hopefully most of you have not noticed... but I have been in a serious battle with my main PC for the last several weeks. It's been up and down, and virus ridden for the whole time, and it only got worse when I threw a massive hardware upgrade at it. However, with much battling and cursing, I believe I have reached a compromise with it.

The result?

I now have 2 fully functional machines usable for recording DVDRs! it's broken down like so:

Athalon XP 1700+
512MB RAM
Seagate 80GB SATA HDD running OS
BenQ DW1620 (for testing)
LiteON SOHW-832s (for testing)
Plextor Premium (for testing)
LG 4163B (for reviewing)

Athalon 64 3000+
512MB RAM
Seagate 200GB SATA HDD running OS
Plextor PX-712a (for testing)
BenQ DW1620 (for testing)
NEC 3500a (for...looking at?)
Empty slot (tower case sucks, filling this would break a capacitor on my MB!)

So now I'll be able to break up my testing between the two systems, and be able to run multiple tests at the same time, thus reducing the overall amount of time it takes to test each disc. For those interested, that second system listed WAS an Athalon Thunderbird 850, running 384MB of Ram, with some slow as hell IBM POS HDD running the OS :o

They aren't top of the line systems by any means, but they certainly get the job done, and I'm very proud of them :D

So just give me another day or two to finish loading software and configuring various crap on my new install, and I'll finish up the remaining work to be done on the LG 4163B review. I know you've all been dying to see it :wink:

One more thing.... anyone NOT running their OS off of an SATA drive, doesn't know what they're missing!!!! :D :D :D
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby Spazmogen on Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:40 pm

What kind and wattage of power supply are you running in each system?


I'm just curious.
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Postby LoneWolf on Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:55 pm

Spazmogen wrote:What kind and wattage of power supply are you running in each system?

I'm just curious.

To answer your question (though from my system, not Dolph's) look at the specs in my sig below, which are somewhat similar regarding his Athlon 64 at least.

I'm running on an Enermax Noisetaker AX 470w PSU, ATX 1.3 compliant. It's got dual 12v rails (15A on rail 1, 16A on rail two I believe, could be other way around). It's a solid supply and I've been very happy with it. I've become really picky about PSU's in my primary box, and Enermax has done very well for me. A good one is going to set you back $80-120 depending on what you want.

Other good mid-level power supplies include the Fortron Blue Storm, and the Seasonic Tornado series. The Antec Neo isn't bad either.
Intel Q9450 @3.2GHz, Gigabyte GA EP45-UD3P, 4 x 2GB G.Skill @4-4-4-12
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Fri Feb 25, 2005 4:20 pm

Spazmogen wrote:What kind and wattage of power supply are you running in each system?


I'm just curious.


I don't recall for my slower system, but my new Athalon 64 is running on a "Sparkle 300W PSU". I'm tempted to call it "Mr. Sparkle" :wink:

I'm planning on adding another 300W PSU for running my burners on as soon as I get my new Tower case (so that I can HOLD 2 PSU's)
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby Ian on Fri Feb 25, 2005 5:32 pm

Mr. Sparkle!!!

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"Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt." - Steve Jobs
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Fri Feb 25, 2005 10:40 pm

hrm, somethings wrong with the system again.... not sure what now though :cry:
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Re: Victory!!!

Postby dodecahedron on Sat Feb 26, 2005 5:51 am

dolphinius_rex wrote:I know you've all been dying to see it :wink:

wink or no wink, i know i'm dying to see it! :D

dolphinius_rex wrote:hrm, somethings wrong with the system again.... not sure what now though :cry:

good luck!
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
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Postby Jim on Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:42 am

Antec makes decent power supplies. I'm using a TRUE380 to power my 3.2 Prescott, 4 DVD/CD-ROM burners, and 6 IDE hard drives, and 1 SATA Raptor. I monitor its usage through my Belkin UPS and it's handling everything fine.
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Sat Feb 26, 2005 7:09 pm

argh! My system started working again.... although it's only booted once since it decided to randomely freeze (with an error on the screen saying the HDD was not responding...). I'm just grabbing the Nero Demo quickly to backup the e-mails I've already received, and then I'll try a reboot with a scandisc test on the HDD.

Why is this NEVER easy??
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby aviationwiz on Sun Feb 27, 2005 12:43 am

I don't think a 300 watter from a no-name company is enough juice. Try and get like an Antec TruePower 430 Watt at least.
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:23 am

aviationwiz wrote:I don't think a 300 watter from a no-name company is enough juice. Try and get like an Antec TruePower 430 Watt at least.


You might be surprised! This "no name" brand has some excellent customer reviews, from people who abuse it far more then me (power gamers with OC'd machines).

Do not underestimate Mr. Sparkle! :lol:
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby aviationwiz on Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:48 am

Well, I'd still say a 300W just isn't enough.
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:35 am

aviationwiz wrote:Well, I'd still say a 300W just isn't enough.


Well, I'm still having problems even when I ONLY have the HDD and the motherboard and CPU plugged in. I took out all the burners, and STILL it's giving me the same problem when booting.

I think maybe the power WAS an issue, but after I took stuff out to reduce the power consumption, it messed other things up in windows, and now I need to fix those.

ARGH!!!
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby dodecahedron on Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:44 am

i think that in the meantime, till you iron everything out, you should edit the topic of the thread to Defeat!!!
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
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Postby wicked1 on Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:31 am

antec trucontrol 550 man. Power everything fine and you can get a better OC.
Pioneer dvr-108,NEC 3540,BenQ 1640,LiteOn 1693S
Intel pentium D 930 oc to 4.2 ghz
2 gb ddr2 1066 mhz ram
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hardware mpeg2 encoder card

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good
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Postby Spazmogen on Sun Feb 27, 2005 9:31 am

If you know that power is NOT the issue, then I suggest starting with the basics.

Replace your SATA cable and make sure that both ends are fully connected...
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Postby cfitz on Sun Feb 27, 2005 11:28 am

dodecahedron wrote:i think that in the meantime, till you iron everything out, you should edit the topic of the thread to Defeat!!!

LOL. Not nice, but true. :wink:

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Postby aviationwiz on Sun Feb 27, 2005 3:37 pm

Good one dodeca, :lol:
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:36 pm

ok.... I formatted C: and reinstalled windows again, and everything seems to be going smoothly. I think I'll keep it to 1 DVD burner, and 2 HDD's for a limited amount of time, until I get all my data recovered from my previous HDD. Then I'll drop the second HDD, and keep the DVD Burner installed. When I can get my second PSU installed to run the other peripherals, I'll add the other DVD Burners back :)

Back to Vicotry! ....for now :roll:
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby dodecahedron on Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:36 pm

:o
no ill intentions, i just meant it as a joke. :D
but i can see now that it might appear snide or condescending, sorry if it came off that way.

i wish the dolphin the best of luck with his battle against the machine!
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Sun Feb 27, 2005 8:32 pm

Things are continuing to go well. I've got the second HDD with important data back in the system, and only one DVD Burner. I've copied most of the important stuff now, and soon I'll take the second HDD out for good. I've got more of my programs installed now then I did before, so i've actually made some progress from where I was on Friday.... and on top of that, the bootup is still going smoothly.

From what I can guess now, I think there was too much drain on the PSU with 2 HDDs and 3 dvd burners, and it caused the HDD to not get enough power, causing the system to freeze. Somewhere in the bootup, the boot sector got screwed up, but continued to work partially. So now that I've fixed the software problems, everything should be fine as long I don't overload the PSU again... until I can get the second PSU installed that is! :wink:
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby aviationwiz on Sun Feb 27, 2005 9:45 pm

As I said before... not enough power, :lol:
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Postby Ian on Sun Feb 27, 2005 10:42 pm

Better upgrade and get a Flux Capacitor
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Mon Feb 28, 2005 2:17 am

aviationwiz wrote:As I said before... not enough power, :lol:


I know there's a Home Improvement joke sitting here somewhere :P
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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Postby dolphinius_rex on Mon Feb 28, 2005 2:17 am

Ian wrote:Better upgrade and get a Flux Capacitor


Hrm... I always wanted a time traveling computer! :D
Punch Cards -> Paper Tape -> Tape Drive -> 8" Floppy Diskette -> 5 1/4" Floppy Diskette -> 3 1/2" "Flippy" Diskette -> CD-R -> DVD±R -> BD-R

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