Jolt Country

Anyone who flashes their BIOS in Windows deserves what happens to them.

The only flash I've ever seen fail was a Windows-based flasher. As a matter of fact, this just happened today.. with WinPhlash. Should call it WinPhuck.

i love this thread.. you guys all get your parts from the same places I do and you go for the same makers (AMD, et al) *sniff*

PS: I hate floppy drives.. i needed one a while back because I had a Sony Mavica that used 3.5" disks.. shit you not, I lost 3 floppy drives in the 2 years we had the damn thing. and can you believe I ran a BBS off of 5.25" disks in 1994?

Those MVCFD** cams are a fucking racket. They will go through drives like I go through kind buds. It's a known issue.. Sony knows about it and doesn't care. It's worth it to keep slapping "new" (which are mostly refurbed ones from other broken cams) because past the first 90 days, it's $139 for a new drive and $171 after that. Total cost to them is basically nothing as you can buy a complete floppy drive for what.. nine bucks? And they manufacture them..
When I worked for Sony, no lie, it seemed like HALF of the camera calls were service on those damn floppy disk cameras. It doesn't matter what model, they all are GUARANTEED to crap out after a certain amount of time. The whole thing screams of "product recall" but it's much deeper than that.. a line of 6-10 cams (at least) across 6 years.. they know exactly what they did and they're making a killing off of it.

Also: WALDO!!!

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:Jonsey: Hogwash! Many modern BIOSs can be flashed from inside Windows.

Much like Flavor Flav's attitude towards the white man, I don't truss it. Jesus, what if you just want to bring a file home from work? I don't agree that we should Mac-out our PCs and remove the floppy disk. I can not recommend that.

USB flash memory drive - hell, you can probably find a 64m or 32m one for $10 or so. You'll never use a floppy again. Hell, Mrs W keeps a tiny purple one on her keychain in case she wants to bring any data home from work.

But then, I'm talking to a guy who keeps a 5.25" drive in his system.

Ah ha... I don't have that hooked up right now. I ran out of power connectors on my power supply. If I decide to drop more than twenty bucks on a power supply in the future I would hook it back up. I still got my 5.25" disks, ho ho ho.

You have no y-adapters? I've got a zillion of the things. Well, several at least. Sniff around there at work, I bet you could find a spare.

Wait a second! What the hell am I doing? DON'T do that, you don't need a 5.25" drive!

I get the sense that Debaser isn't going to want to upgrade his components as regularly as we do. I go very piecemeal, but the Athlon 64 is the best CPU for someone who wants to do this once every three years and no sooner.

Actually, it's the opposite. If you were interested in upgrading often, Athlon64 would be better as it's a platform that's still new, and your motherboard will be around for the long term. An Athlon XP is basically at the end of its lifecycle - chances are, when you upgrade, you'll scrap your motherboard and memory entirely.

The real-world speed is not going to be significantly different. The 64-bit is cool, but MS is now saying that WinXP 64-bit won't be out 'til sometime next year - and that's just the latest in a long string of postponements. (Intel's probably doing everything they can to make sure their 32/64bit chip is established ahead of time. Followers!) In the meantime, the 64-bits offer little advantage - and the Athlon XP motherboards are extremely stable and refined at this point.

With a $500 price point, it's best, like I said, to spend money on the video rather than the CPU.

Also, FWIW, we have an aging Sony Mavica camera here at work. Aging, as in large, heavy, and with a top setting of 640x480, and uses 3.5" floppies.

While pointing out that the picture quality is atrocious - the low resolution isn't (completely) to blame, it's just got horrible components - I'll say that the thing has been problem-free for all these years. So they don't all go bad. Though I don't doubt that it's common. It probably helps that ours gets less use than most. The only thing it's really used for is pictures for our badges.

If you were interested in upgrading often, Athlon64 would be better as it's a platform that's still new, and your motherboard will be around for the long term. An Athlon XP is basically at the end of its lifecycle - chances are, when you upgrade, you'll scrap your motherboard and memory entirely.

Wait, what? Then wouldn't I want want the newer motherboard so that that's less I have to replace when the time comes? I'm confused.

Debaser wrote:

If you were interested in upgrading often, Athlon64 would be better as it's a platform that's still new, and your motherboard will be around for the long term. An Athlon XP is basically at the end of its lifecycle - chances are, when you upgrade, you'll scrap your motherboard and memory entirely.

Wait, what? Then wouldn't I want want the newer motherboard so that that's less I have to replace when the time comes? I'm confused.

you want the Athlon64 board because its new to market technology. Since it is so new, it won't go obsolete tomorrow like the Athlon XP is getting close to doing. And he was also stating that if you want to upgrade to a newer processor, you should be able to do so as they come out with faster versions of the Athlon64, since the board should be capable for years to come. all that in a nutshell, and that if you went with an AthlonXP, if you ever upgraded beyond that you'd have to get new memory, too. So you might as well go for an Athlon64 and save yourself some grief in 2-3 years time.

Yeah, that makes sense, but JQW is advising me to not to get the 64.

pinback wrote:Floppy drives are obsolete and unnecessary, unless you have a large archive of data on floppy, in which case they are only necessary for the 30 minutes it will take to get the data off of the floppys and onto a more "together", "hip", "with-it" medium. What are you talking about?

No, they're not. You're wrong, and actually very stupid. You're a very stupid person for thinking this.

Especially since... wait for it... DEBASER ALREADY HAS A FLOPPY DRIVE.

Listen to you fucking retards... you'd think that Floppy Drives were like the sun or a woman sitting by herself at a bar or something, you're so frightened of them.

Debaser's got a floppy drive. He should hook it up. Someday he's going to want it hooked up. Either he'll want to update his BIOS, or get a file from work he doesn't want to send over the corporate infrastructure or his Internet connection will be down or he'll need to do some file swapping or something. This is you and Walrustitty:

"You'll never need it, don't install it."
Well, what if you need it?
"Oh. I guess, install it then if you have to, but you won't."

Here's me. Are you ready? This is me. This is me doing my "me" face:

"You already have a floppy drive? Install it in this computer, too, while you're building it."

I'm going to go ahead and award myself 537 BULLETIN BOARD POINTS because I'm smarter -- and better! -- than Pinback and Walrustitty.

waldo wrote:i love this thread.. you guys all get your parts from the same places I do and you go for the same makers (AMD, et al) *sniff*

Waldo!!! Nice to see you again, bud.

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:USB flash memory drive - hell, you can probably find a 64m or 32m one for $10 or so. You'll never use a floppy again. Hell, Mrs W keeps a tiny purple one on her keychain in case she wants to bring any data home from work.

So rather than hook up the floppy disk he already has, he should buy more equipment. Gotcha.

What's wrong with you? Next you'll be telling him to get a one-button mouse.

But then, I'm talking to a guy who keeps a 5.25" drive in his system.

Wait a second! What the hell am I doing? DON'T do that, you don't need a 5.25" drive!

Yeah, well, maybe when all the bugs get worked out of Dosbox that will be the case.

Actually, it's the opposite. If you were interested in upgrading often, Athlon64 would be better as it's a platform that's still new, and your motherboard will be around for the long term. An Athlon XP is basically at the end of its lifecycle - chances are, when you upgrade, you'll scrap your motherboard and memory entirely.

Huh? He's not going to have to upgrade anything for three years if he gets an Athlon 64 right now. Well, aside from his video card because we live in a world where people drop $150 for a piece of equipment wholly obsolete in seven months.

I don't think an Athlon 64 system can be done for less than $500, unfortunately.

http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/ has an attractive Athlon XP system for just under $500 on their front page...

So I'd do this:

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ "Barton", 333MHz FSB, 512K Cache Processor - Retail: $94

ASUS "A7V8X-X" KT400 Chipset Motherboard: $56

MSI ATI RX9800PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/S-Video: $194

ATX Case with 400 Watt Power Supply: $25 + $12.99 shipping

... That leaves some 3200 DDR RAM and I think everything else is taken care of. We're at $382 right here according to my calculations.

Where are people buying RAM from these days?

Re: Athlon64. Debaser - in 3 years, no matter what you buy now, it will all be obsolete. Specifically, the motherboard, CPU, and memory - the other components will probably be OK, but if you don't plan on doing regular upgrades, there's no point in having an upgrade-friendly motherboard. (Oh, and Waldo is specifically wrong on one point - whether you get an AthXP or Ath64, you'll get the same memory - DDR400)

Athlon XP motherboards are upgradable too, but you won't be getting a huge boost - 3200+ is the fastest at the moment, and probably the fastest they'll ever run.

Put it this way:
Athlon XP pros: Cheap, reliable, extremely stable and mature
Athlon XP cons: not very upgradable
Athlon 64 pros: Cheap compared to Intel, ungodly fast, some motherboards support the Fast-n-Cool to lower temps, potentially more upgradable if you ignore the inevitable faster bus speeds, memory requirements, and possibly going to the Opteron socket for mass-market CPUs
Athlon 64 cons: still immature, not much motherboard support, future revisions may change sockets necessitating a new motherboard anyway, a lower dollar-to-performance ratio than AthXP

There is still not a great motherboard chipset available for the Athlon 64. The Via and the nForce3 are both OK but neither stands out. The upcoming updated nForce3 might be good.

Re: floppy. If you have one, fine. But don't spend money on one. And regardless, a USB memory drive beats the holy hell out of floppies. If you want to do BIOS upgrades from DOS, make a bootable CD-RW or better bet, make your USB drive bootable. Most all modern motherboards support booting from a USB drive.

Breaking down Jonsey's specific recommendations:

I'd say go with OEM. The stock fans are iffy at best. $15 shipped gets you this bitchin-cool (and quiet) fan.

Motherboard - I'd go with an nForce 2 chipset. If you want better sound, get one with SoundStorm. (There's a list on their page of what motherboards have it - not many do.)

Video - I'm not sure that an extra $70 for a 9800 Pro as compared to a 9600 Pro is worth it. I'd go with a 9600 and maybe put a little extra into a high-quality case - that's one thing that you probably shouldn't need to upgrade for years. (Intel has started pushing a new format of case to replace ATX the way ATX replaced AT, but all the case manufacturers hate it. Which pretty much kills it before it gets started.)

Re: RAM. I generally get generic MWave stuff. Probably no good for overclocking, but generally solid and reliable. I almost always buy the MWave motherboard bundles - generally, that's the best deal for such things. You can pay a ton of money for fancy RAM, but it's really a horrlble dollar-to-performance tradeoff.

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:Re: Athlon64. Debaser - in 3 years, no matter what you buy now, it will all be obsolete.

My argument is that the Athlon XP will be obsolete sooner.

Motherboard - I'd go with an nForce 2 chipset. If you want better sound, get one with SoundStorm. (There's a list on their page of what motherboards have it - not many do.)

I grabbed an nForce motherboard when I built Davis's computer. It was awful. I'm good on nForce motherboards for now. VIA hasn't done me wrong yet and as a bonus all their manuals and installation CDs are in hilarious Engrish.

Video - I'm not sure that an extra $70 for a 9800 Pro as compared to a 9600 Pro is worth it. I'd go with a 9600 and maybe put a little extra into a high-quality case

You should be shot for suggesting someone go less on a video card so they can go higher on a case.

Hey Debaser, you should get a neon upgrade kit while you're at it and, ah, grab a 3dfx Voodoo2 video card instead of the Radeon 9800.

Re: RAM. I generally get generic MWave stuff. Probably no good for overclocking, but generally solid and reliable. I almost always buy the MWave motherboard bundles - generally, that's the best deal for such things. You can pay a ton of money for fancy RAM, but it's really a horrlble dollar-to-performance tradeoff.

Cool, thanks.

I know it would be incredibly <i>gauche</i> of me to get all demanding over a favor you're doing, Robb, but what's the over/under on when you'll have a final inventory for me?

LOL NERDZ!!!

Debaser wrote:I know it would be incredibly <i>gauche</i> of me to get all demanding over a favor you're doing, Robb, but what's the over/under on when you'll have a final inventory for me?

I'm sorry. It isn't gauche.

I think I have everything but the comparable Athlon 64 system. I was then hit over the head with jeep's post on Caltrops in which he detailed a very affordable and quick Intel system.

You probably saw it, but here goes:

Intel D865GCLCK mobo (good office board: sound, video, gigabit ethernet) ($109)
Intel 2.8E Prescott Chip (800mhz fsb!) ($167)
2x512MB crucial sticks (dual channel 400mhz) ($194)
Athenatech Micro ATX Case (blue, glowy) ($38)
WD 7200 WD800JD Hard Drive SATA = Fast ($70)
DVD+/-RW 8X Sony DWU18A BLK DVD burner ($76)

Now that's $654 for a machine that's going to get faster the next couple of years as Windows catches up with the hardware

You do not need a hard drive or DVD re writer, so that puts you at $508 before video card. Let's say you go with 512 MB of RAM rather than a gig -- that's $100 for your video card. If you go to $130 you can get one of those Radeon jobbers.

Okay, I'll have my final Intel, Athlon XP and Athlon 64 totals for you by the close of business today here at work. Then we can get with the purchasing and take it from there.

Excuse me, but remind again why you'd even consider Intel?

From MWave:
$86 Athlon XP 2800+
$145 Athlon 64 2800+
$174 Pentium 4 2.8gHz

Considering that I don't think it's worth spending the extra bones for the Ath64, what sense would it make to spend more than twice the price for a Pentium 4 over than Athlon 64?

And what bonehead thinks that his system is going to get "faster" when Windows "catches up" with his system? What a fucking idiot! They recommends an SATA hard drive and a gig of memory? Get real.

Re: nForce. nForce 1 was nothing special. Apparently the basic nForce 3 is the same. However, the nForce 2 is great - and this is coming from a guy who hates nVidia. Trust me on this one. I guess nVidia's chipsets are like Star Trek movies - avoid the odd-numbered ones. (Actually, I say, avoid them all.) (The movies, not the chipsets.)

Last word on Ath64/AthXP:
Ath64 is great. No arguement. But if you think you'll be able to take your current Ath64 motherboard and use it in three years - you're dreaming. Unless you want only a slight bump in speed. What with memory speeds increasing soon (expect DDR533 to be the norm soon), faster bus speeds (see memory), and dueling sockets (Opterons using different sockets than consumer-grade Ath64s), the chances are that today's Ath64 motherboards will be obsolete soon. Every new CPU has these changes happen a lot in the early days. Remember the whole Pentium 2 "slot" debacle?

The 64-bit part offers no benefit at the moment and won't for another at least six months. Probably a year. When it does arrive, it's unlikely to offer many tangible benefits for a while. So ignore that part of the equation.

The performance of the Athlon 64 is potentially much higher, but you have to pay. You won't see a huge difference between an AthXP 2800+ and an Ath64 2800+ - that's the whole point of the performance ranking numbers. So is it worth the extra ~$100 for the Ath64 CPU and motherboard, especially when the Ath64 motherboards are still a bit immature? I don't think so. If you're going high-end - then by all means, Ath64. For low-to-medium, AthXP is still a great setup with no downsides.

If you do go Ath64, I'll state that the MSI "Neo" motherboard (despite the dumb name) worked very well for me.

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:Ath64 is great. No arguement. But if you think you'll be able to take your current Ath64 motherboard and use it in three years - you're dreaming.

That's not the argument.

He will not have to upgrade his system for a set amount of time (call it three years) if he gets an Athlon 64 system.

He will have to do it much sooner if he gets an XP system. Or else he can't, if he gets the fastest XP.

He'd have to upgrade either way in three years, it's just as to whether or not he'd like to run everything in the meantime.

Ok, I recommend the following:

Asus K8V motherboard. : $118


Athlon 64 3000 w/ fan: $175

MSI ATI RX9800PRO Video Card, 128MB: $194

ATX Case with 400 Watt Power Supply: $25 + $12.99 shipping

512 MB of 3200 DDR RAM: $125.99

$650.98 total.

You could get a Radeon 9600 pro at 256MB for $119 according to Pricewatch to get it closer to $500.

This, I think, is my "final answer," Regis.