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what alias do you fly under?

FlashGordon ... just kidding

I don't have an alias & I did never try playing D3 online - any suggestions ?

eliminator could be your pilot name

Sounds good eliminatoR

... but I was thinking more on your advice of how/where to start online fragging...??

well, first you have to aouto update to version 1.4, do this by clicking the auto update buttom in the main d3 launcher, once your up to 1.4, the omly way to play online is thru parallax online (pxo), note, you dont click the pxo link in th main launcher, you press play and in d3, click multiplayer and then parallax online, you need an account, but dont worry its free, if you dont fell like signining up, someone made a universal account, the user name is chat and the password is chat, if you need help in descent theese are some excelent sites:

www.descentbb.net
www.planetdescent.com
www.planetdescent.com/d3help

in descentbb and planetdescent, i am known as ccb056 if you were wondering

hope this helps and happy fragging

Thanks a lot, will do & will let you know how it went !!

cfitz wrote:

slimeballzz wrote:what if you already had a dvd rom drive?? Would you want another dvd/cd rom combo still? and are there ever any firmware upgrades for cd-rom drives?

No, nor would I want a straight CD-ROM drive either. For me personally, one DVD-ROM and one CD-RW drive is more than sufficient.

cfitz

If it isn't too late to bring this up , what about dvd/cd rom combos? Would you give up anything by just having one of those? Skip the DVD-ROM and the CD-RW. Any tradeoffs in a combo unit?

You will probably end up paying somewhat more for a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo unit than a separate DVD-ROM and CD-RW. Also, it used to be that the combo units typically gave up some performance in terms of reading and writing speeds. But these days you can get a combo that pretty much matches, performance wise, separates. Take, for example, the Samsung SM-348B:

http://www.samsungelectronics.com/odd/c ... _348b.html

It reads DVD at 16x, writes CD-R at 48x, rewrites CD-RW at 24x, and reads CD at 48x.

One thing you obviously give up is the ability to copy CDs on the fly. But that isn't an important feature to many people, including myself.

If you move up all the way to a combo DVD writer/CD-RW drive, then you will definitely pay more. And the CD writing speeds won't be as high as for a dedicated CD-RW drive. But you will gain the ability to burn DVDs.

As with all of life, compromises must be made. Decide what is most important to you, and buy accordingly.

cfitz

I am a big fan of the PX-40TS, in case anyone has not noticed yet.

Yes, the Plextor UltraPlex 40TSi is still the best CD-ROM regarding DAE accuracy and speed. However, most people don't own UltraSCSI cards anymore, and even fewer people want to pay $100 for a CD-ROM. The Asus 52X is under $20 and is faster than the 40TSi regarding data reading, is just as accurate as the 40TSi regarding DAE (and is almost as fast too). The Asus is also quieter when reading and extracting than the Plextor. Don't get me wrong, I still love my Plextor 40TSi, but the Asus 52X can do 99% of what the Plextor can do for 1/5th the cost (and that's not factoring in the SCSI adaptor) and is quieter too. The only reason I still have my Plextor is its refusal to die after over 5 years of loyal service; perhaps this is where my $100 went. However, if my Plextor died tomorrow I'd mourn for a couple seconds, toss it in the trash, sell the SCSI card on eBay and buy another Asus 52X. The Plextor was the best, but now the Asus 52X has assumed the throne.

Thanks for the tips on the Asus. I will keep that in mind for when my 40TSi breaks four and a half years from now . Maybe by then they will have re-introduced multi-beam pickups like Zen was selling with Kenwood. Very sad that they were so expensive; they were awesome. A CD can't spin much faster than 10k rpm, so they will need to come up with something if they are going to read faster. I was thinking maybe about some sort of cooling system since the heat buildup is one of the major contributors to CD breakdown at high rpm's.

I love the ASUS, the only sad thing is that it doesnt do C2.