Author Topic: Bought any computing stuff today?  (Read 127239 times)

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #25 on: 21 August, 2012, 01:06:07 pm »
As part of my on going multimedia / mid level home cinema project I bought a new video card Sapphire 7750 Ultimate.  This is a passively cooled card and is a little faster than the HIS ICEQ 5670 it replaced.  In the gloom under my desk I thought the HIS didn't have a hdmi socket, it does. I also bought a Hauppage hvr-440 tv tuner card. 

Fitting was not so easy. I did not think about the oversize heat sinks that come with passive graphics cards. I removed the old card but the new card could not fit in the space slot 1 (pci-e x16) and 2. Slot 0 (pci-e x1) was occupied by the full height sound card. The heat sink needed that space.  So the sound card came out and was moved to slot 3 (pci-e x1).  Fortunately the tv card was low profile and was put in slot 0. Everything fitted phew.  I have a pci-e x16/8 and one of my two pci slots spare, the other contains my scanner's scsi card. I used to think I would hardly use the expansion slots on a modern pc.

Switch it on, Windows XP comes up in VGA mode and messes up my icons. I hadn't updated my video driver so they were too old to recognise the 7750.  I installed the proper driver and the screen was returned to 1920x1080.  I then fed the system the Hauppage cd and all the exclamation marks disappeared from device manager. The sound card was also upset being moved but found its drivers and carried on.  I discovered that Power Dvd will not play sound through my sound card with its optical connection to my hifi when the hdmi sound driver is installed.  The hifi does not speak hdmi until the 8200ap AV preamplifier and 8200p power amplifier arrive on Saturday.

To buy nice TV.
To buy good blu ray player.
To buy high quality hifi speakers and matching centre speaker and another power amplifier.
To buy sub woofer

A lot of money.  A top end plastic bike price.


Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #26 on: 23 August, 2012, 11:11:17 am »
bought a motherboard, processor, memory and psu (£120 all in) for my friends computer - after months of random "freezing" we decided to do a mass replace.
he's happy as it's plenty faster than his old one and i'm happy as i don't get any phone calls!

Biggsy

  • A bodge too far
  • Twit @iceblinker
    • My stuff on eBay
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #27 on: 23 August, 2012, 03:02:41 pm »
I've just paid eleven thousand for a software upgrade!  Gulp.

Ok, that's 11,000 Yen, but it's still a lot of dosh for me (£90).  Silkypix Pro 4 to Pro 5.
●●●  My eBay items  ●●●  Twitter  ●●●

frankly frankie

  • I kid you not
    • Fuchsiaphile
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #28 on: 24 August, 2012, 08:44:35 am »
A 2 GB HDD
Surely TB not GB R?
Er, yes...   :-[
It doesn't seem so long ago since 2GB seemed big!

This seems to be a recurring theme ...

Haven't bought yet but am keeping my eye out for a supermegaonlinedeal for a 256Mb SSD. Still too expensive for my tastes right now.

I'd flog you an old SD card and reader for £20 if I could find one small enough ...
when you're dead you're done, so let the good times roll

plum

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #29 on: 24 August, 2012, 10:51:48 am »
A 2 GB HDD
Surely TB not GB R?
Er, yes...   :-[
It doesn't seem so long ago since 2GB seemed big!

This seems to be a recurring theme ...

Haven't bought yet but am keeping my eye out for a supermegaonlinedeal for a 256Mb SSD. Still too expensive for my tastes right now.

I'd flog you an old SD card and reader for £20 if I could find one small enough ...
That would definitely be too expensive.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #30 on: 03 September, 2012, 09:07:14 pm »
The bits to make a little low power, low price, server for home based on an Atom mini-ITX motherboard and a not top speed pair of disks.

Feanor

  • It's mostly downhill from here.
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #31 on: 03 September, 2012, 09:18:06 pm »
You might like to look at the HP microservers, which ( did ) come with a cashback making them cost a stupidly low sum.

I have 2 here as Lowe Towers, replacing several old behemoths.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #32 on: 03 September, 2012, 09:30:38 pm »
You might like to look at the HP microservers, which ( did ) come with a cashback making them cost a stupidly low sum.

I have 2 here as Lowe Towers, replacing several old behemoths.

I looked at those, yes. In the end the bits I ordered came out marginally cheaper than the HP + the extra disks.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #33 on: 03 September, 2012, 11:07:20 pm »
According to a stealth ninja Parcelfarce card-delivery operative, there's what I believe to be a mobo/CPU/RAM parcel currently in a state of quantum superposition around the post office on Oak Tree Lane.  I will take plenty of bungees and some large panniers (knowing what ebuyer are like with packing material) and attempt to collapse its wave function tomorrow.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #34 on: 04 September, 2012, 11:37:56 am »
Master Pcolbeck bought himself a gaming rig with the money he saved up from washing dishes in the local pub. After a week trying to get the damn thing to run stabley for more than 2 minutes with either Linux or Windows 7 I have just sent the mobo and CPU back. We will see how the replacements do.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Wombat

  • Is it supposed to hurt this much?
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #35 on: 05 September, 2012, 08:01:32 am »
An HP Designjet 111 printer!  Eek, thats big!  It'll enable me to actually print the drawings I produce...  It was delivered by a very nice and helpful Parcelforce man (never thought I'd hear myself saying that) who came back for a second attempt at delivery as I was out in the morning (cos we wuz driving back from Wales)  That said, he probably didn't want to try to heave it out of the van on his own, so hoped I'd be in to help relieve him of the monstrous thing.

Unlike the last HP product I bought, it actually seems to work.  The auto paper cutter is vaguely scary...
Wombat

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #36 on: 05 September, 2012, 11:16:04 am »
The bits to make a little low power, low price, server for home based on an Atom mini-ITX motherboard and a not top speed pair of disks.

Cock. Despite claiming two 3.5" drive bays and standard components it seems that one of the drive bays is about 5mm too shallow to take a standard 3.5" drive.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #37 on: 05 September, 2012, 09:17:11 pm »
Return arranged. New box ordered, from different supplier. I could do without two lots of P&P.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #38 on: 05 September, 2012, 10:35:04 pm »
Got a passive graphics card cooler for my ageing desktop today.  It's about to get a new lease of life in a new (to me) office.   :)

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #39 on: 07 September, 2012, 09:46:40 am »
Return arranged. New box ordered, from different supplier. I could do without two lots of P&P.

New box set up. Much nicer than the old one too - multiple fans, hot swap disks and comes with cable ties and places for tying cables to to keep it tidy. Only down side is the blue light in the fan. It may have to face the wall.

Maverick

  • One of the rural idle
    • Twoberries
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #40 on: 11 September, 2012, 09:34:49 pm »
A package from A & A containing a Firebrick 2500 arrived this morning.  :thumbsup:
Hooked it up to a Vigor 120 modem and all was good - line retrained from 6503571 to 7154016 on connection (still only 20CN here). A quick test with speedtest.com gave me my best ever download rate (6.93Mb/sec up from around 6.3). Firewall needed a bit of tweaking to get stuff through to the server but that was it.
Next up - native IPv6. Getting tempted with the thought of a second line as the Firebrick will do line bonding (goes away to count the pennies...)

Feanor

  • It's mostly downhill from here.
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #41 on: 11 September, 2012, 10:23:03 pm »
A package from A & A containing a Firebrick 2500 arrived this morning.  :thumbsup:
Hooked it up to a Vigor 120 modem and all was good - line retrained from 6503571 to 7154016 on connection (still only 20CN here). A quick test with speedtest.com gave me my best ever download rate (6.93Mb/sec up from around 6.3). Firewall needed a bit of tweaking to get stuff through to the server but that was it.
Next up - native IPv6. Getting tempted with the thought of a second line as the Firebrick will do line bonding (goes away to count the pennies...)

 :thumbsup:

You will have fun!
Your config will now be more-or-less the same as mine.
I have an FB2700 hanging off a vigor120 on an AAISP native IPv6 line too.
( the FB 2500 and 2700 are equal in this respect )

PM or e-mail with any questions if you want.
I don't promise good replies!

Regards,
2001:8b0:b7:1::3


Maverick

  • One of the rural idle
    • Twoberries
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #42 on: 12 September, 2012, 09:46:01 pm »
A package from A & A containing a Firebrick 2500 arrived this morning.  :thumbsup:
Hooked it up to a Vigor 120 modem and all was good - line retrained from 6503571 to 7154016 on connection (still only 20CN here). A quick test with speedtest.com gave me my best ever download rate (6.93Mb/sec up from around 6.3). Firewall needed a bit of tweaking to get stuff through to the server but that was it.
Next up - native IPv6. Getting tempted with the thought of a second line as the Firebrick will do line bonding (goes away to count the pennies...)

 :thumbsup:

You will have fun!
Your config will now be more-or-less the same as mine.
I have an FB2700 hanging off a vigor120 on an AAISP native IPv6 line too.
( the FB 2500 and 2700 are equal in this respect )

PM or e-mail with any questions if you want.
I don't promise good replies!

Regards,
2001:8b0:b7:1::3

Dual stack ipv4/ipv6 up and running. radvd running on the server sorting out ipv6 addresses for the network and my DNS server doing forward lookups. reverse lookups still to do. All OSX/Linux here and they all seem to be playing nicely and now ignoring ipv4 between themselves  :thumbsup:
The only thing I'm not quite understanding at the moment is the way A & A have set up subnets - some could be deleted but I can't quite grasp which ones.
I need to have a word with A & A as I appear to have a /64 block and 2 x /48 blocks allocated to me - I probably have enough addresses for the entire population of Scotland  :o

Currently wandering around in geek heaven ;D

Regards
2001:8b0:6431:eee3::e196

mcshroom

  • Mushroom
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #43 on: 18 October, 2012, 09:16:47 am »
Pretty boring - two hp21 compatible ink cartridges.

The printer also adopted hungry hippo mode last night with respect to paper, but a bit of poking around and percussive maintenance appears to have fixed it.
Climbs like a sprinter, sprints like a climber!

David Martin

  • Thats Dr Oi You thankyouverymuch
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #44 on: 18 October, 2012, 09:33:58 am »
A second Raspberry Pi - this time with 512Mb RAM.
The first one will soon be installed for environmental monitoring when I can get round to writing a Python library to Cosm.
"By creating we think. By living we learn" - Patrick Geddes

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #45 on: 19 October, 2012, 04:00:10 pm »
USB optical wired mouse from the pound shop. It's a bit small, the buttons don't reach all the way to the front, but it works.

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #46 on: 23 October, 2012, 04:17:47 pm »
A Raspberry Pi (512Mb) and a power supply, to be delivered in 5 weeks.

A friend has donated a USB keyboard and mouse!

So have some time to try setting up an SD Micro card with Raspbian (or, if unsuccessful, just order one) before Christmas, so I can learn enough myself to shepherd 10-year-old grandson into using it without too much pain and sweat.

David Martin

  • Thats Dr Oi You thankyouverymuch
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #47 on: 23 October, 2012, 10:04:53 pm »
Have you used a Linux based machine before? Expect the desktop to be sluggish, use it on an HDMI screen, not a RCA video (which really sucks) and it should be OK.

Mine are fine for their embedded usages.  Wireless can be interesting but there are enough people around here who can help if you have questions.
"By creating we think. By living we learn" - Patrick Geddes

Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #48 on: 23 October, 2012, 10:19:45 pm »
Have you used a Linux based machine before? Expect the desktop to be sluggish, use it on an HDMI screen, not a RCA video (which really sucks) and it should be OK.

Mine are fine for their embedded usages.  Wireless can be interesting but there are enough people around here who can help if you have questions.

Thanks, David.  I have used Vector Linux for a number of years, so have the rudiments.  But I thought in the meantime, while waiting for it to arrive, I would experiment with Debian (upon with Raspbian is based).

I'll be sure to ask on here if I get stuck.

David Martin

  • Thats Dr Oi You thankyouverymuch
Re: Bought any computing stuff today?
« Reply #49 on: 23 October, 2012, 10:32:07 pm »
The thing that really got my youngest's attention was the arduino reaction tester. A multicolour led that changes colour, then as soon as it goes out you hit your button. Green for one side, red for the other and a bit of cheat catching too..

Have to recreate that for the Pi. It involved an LCD screen on which the reaction time was displayed.
"By creating we think. By living we learn" - Patrick Geddes