Computer Thread

[Stein]

Roadrunner has never even let me host game servers (even after port forwarding). So no, I don't really

.

 

[Chris]

because roadrunner sucks

 

[Stein]

I know

I can't figure out what other ISPs I can get from my house. I'm pretty sure just RR.

No Verizon yet

.

 

[Chris]

I know

I can't figure out what other ISPs I can get from my house. I'm pretty sure just RR.

No Verizon yet

.

I have midcoast internet. They are pretty good..

dumping 3 hours of miviDV tapes from a concert I just shot... video editing.. oh joy...

 

[boxer3main]

Hey great thread. I ran from nasioc, even with an old school thread.

I had a problem, bizarre, reported it to a mod (it got that childishly offensive) to find out it was a mod I had a problem with. Darn kids with big servers. I wonder if they know what 17mm wrenches do on a sube...for 30 years.

Anyhoo. pc building is my hobby. I saw 1ghz in 2000 (that was a big deal), I have built 7, started in 1998. the drama, the trauma, and even the law. Today is a dreamy lack of info'd internet compared to just 10 years ago. It was the wild west...

My current is way not up to date, but learned to acheive longevity. its a 3.4ghz prescott, 3gb of ram, custom cooled, and 20000 hours.platinum mobo, decent. I recently asked to be part of an experiment at a pc forum I frequent..

I wait for i7 and a bit more facts for my next one. 11 years now, I am not so excited anout latest and greatest.

 

[Stein]

What is your pc forum?

I would honestly stay away from i7. Unless you do hardcore rendering or something (which I doubt considering you're on a pentium 4), i7 is just overpriced. If you want the latest and greatest, sure, do it. But bang/buck right now is either with the newer 775 stuff (an e8x00 dual core or a quad) or with the AMD Phenom IIs.

P.S. My rig (socket 939 Opteron 175, DFI NF4 Ultra-D, 2x1gb of G.Skill PC4000HZ) is from the same era as pentium 4s

. Even at stock an overclocked P4 couldn't catch up to me.

 

[Chris]

That is because P4s suck. Both now, and in their era.

 

[Stein]

I'm thinking of switching out my dad's P4 3.4ghz w/2x512mb of DDR2 533 ram with my old 939 hardware (I've replaced each main component): MSI K8N motherboard, Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4ghz single core), 2x512mb of DDR400. It's going to be a lot better from what I can tell.

 

[Chris]

Why don't you stop buying computer parts and buy a car?

I have a new hobby I have started to spend money on... motorized bicycles...

 

[Stein]

I actually got the motherboard and processor free, and the RAM only cost me $60.

The other parts are just sitting in the basement, and my dad's having problems with the P4 system.

 

[Chris]

I hate computers GRRRRRRR.

I was encoding video and then making a DVD. I was getting horrible hard drive speeds. WTF? Last time I did this it was blazingly fast... Check the raid5... there is a drive missing...?!?!! Not even on the failed list, just plain missing. Ok... swap the drive to another SATA port, and bingo, it appears again. Good smart status, not failed, I guess the port failed, or something... Anyway, rebuild the RAID. All is well, and the system freezes up again. Only programs that were in RAM still work, well, at least I have 4GBs of ram and all the raid tools were loaded. no big deal. But when I pulled one of the crappy cheap SATA power cables off the drive it somehow shorted and brought the system down... with a completely degraded RAID. SH*******************T!!!!!

At least I had the brains to set up the system with grub and /boot on a separate partition not on the RAID so I can boot to an initrd, and maybe load some other stuff in through serial, or something... I dunno... I have a concert to go sing in an hour so I won't get back till late, and all the crap I was working on is deadlined for tomorrow. AANHDONEHTDUNEUDI

Sorry for the rant, I'm just pissed off...

 

[Stein]

why would you ever unplug a hard drive with the computer on/plugged in?

I thought RAID 5 would keep working unless you lost two drives, did you?

edit:

Striped set with distributed parity or interleave parity. Distributed parity requires all drives but one to be present to operate; drive failure requires replacement, but the array is not destroyed by a single drive failure. Upon drive failure, any subsequent reads can be calculated from the distributed parity such that the drive failure is masked from the end user. The array will have data loss in the event of a second drive failure and is vulnerable until the data that was on the failed drive is rebuilt onto a replacement drive. A single drive failure in the set will result in reduced performance of the entire set until the failed drive has been replaced and rebuilt.

I assume you have four drives? Why not just RAID-10?

 

[Chris]

why would you ever unplug a hard drive with the computer on/plugged in?I thought RAID 5 would keep working unless you lost two drives, did you?

edit:

I assume you have four drives? Why not just RAID-10?

RAID10 is a waste of hard drives.

I found out what happened, and it makes me pissed at myself..

I have 3 hard drives. They are all cooled, but the graphics card spits out hot air into one of them, and since today is so hot the hard drive overheated as I was doing hard drive intensive work. And it shut off. That is why it disappeared. So I went to unplug it, and plug it back in to restart it. But I unplugged the wrong one. Then I had a completely degraded raid5 with only one drive still active in the array. No big deal though, I have all the raid tools in ram still, I can fix it. Right? And at this time, rebooting is a bad idea because the system wouldn't come back up. So I went to reboot the drive that was the original problem, but it is on one of the cables on the PSU which are really crappy and it somehow shorted and shut off the system. GRRRR

I actually have a box of high quality SATA power connectors that I just swapped in, so this wouldn't happen again.

So anyway, I found out a way to fix it. Fortunately the first partition on the first drive is a stand-alone partition with /boot on it, the files responsible for loading up the initrd, and ultimately the linux kernel. So I created a custom initrd on my laptop with the raid tools, put it on the drive via a USB to SATA adapter, and booted to the custom initrd. Now I'm working on rebuilding the raid from that.

At least I know WTF I'm doing, otherwise this would be a real pain

 

[Stein]

Thank god I didn't end up going RAID.

 

[2point5RS_Dan]

Thank god I didn't end up going RAID.

Raid's worth it, I love my software raid 5.

 

[Chris]

RAID5 is wonderful.

If I didn't poorly design my case, then unplug the wrong drive, AND then short the connector, it would still be going fine and happy. The RAID would probably have rebuild by now and wouldn't have interrupted anything.

If you make something idiot proof, they'll make a better idiot

RAID is idiot proof, and I'm, well... an idiot. That's most of the reason I'm mad about it.

 

[boxer3main]

speaking of heat...

I just applied some of that hyped up diamond based thermal compound onto an older 3.4ghz prescott. very nice. 20 degrees less on same stress tests...

Heat is my most common quest to conquer. the vid cards do have a after oem swap one could try. The heat on the hard drives is backwards flow..no need of that heh...and it is an old problem. Go get a cooler for the card?

 

[Stein]

I believe you're talking about IC Diamond 7. Wait, what TIM did you have before? It's supposed to be good, but not that good!

I bet maybe your cooler wasn't mounted correctly or something.

 

[Chris]

I believe you're talking about IC Diamond 7. Wait, what TIM did you have before? It's supposed to be good, but not that good!I bet maybe your cooler wasn't mounted correctly or something.

+1

I was gonna say the same thing.

 

[Stein]

Anyway, I'm curious what parts you'd use for a $4000 computer Chris.