The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

about a week ago, i went and got a new pc (so i want to brag a little  ;D). its a BIG step up, from my other one i was using. here is specs, old and current:

OLD:
compaq persario 5000 series
600mhz celeron
384 mb ram
voodoo 5 pci - 64 mb ram
ati radeon 7000 pci - 32 mb ram
15 gb hard drive
56k pctel modem
built in sound - ess ellegro
cdr-cdrw 48-16-48 cd drive/writer


NEW:
hp pavilion
amd athlon xp 3200+ 2.2 ghz
1 gb ram - 2 sticks of 512 - 333 speed
ati radeon 9200 agp - 128 mb ram w/ tv out put
160 gb hard drive - plus my old 15 gb hooked up as slave
old 56k pctel modem (the other one that came with it, isnt good)
built in sound - navidia nforce
2 cd drives: (dvd/player/writer) (regular cd player) dont know speeds?

well thats my new system. feel free to brag, id like to hear what you guys are using.

~DEFIANT

You really like hurting me don't you?  :(

A beowulf cluster of 20 (21 with the head) 1 GHz linux machines, each with 256 MB of RAM, Geforce2 GTS graphics cards, and a possible 1.5 terabytes of network storage. :)

Oh wait, you mean what I use at home;
a 500MHz machine with 512 MB ram, TNT2 32MB gfx card.
also:
a pentium 166 and 133 "clustered" together that I never turn on anymore.

Not to tease DJ - but.....

HP
2.1 Ghz
1024 of RAM
120 GB
DSL internet connection
One burner (32X)
One regular CD-rom

Defiant: Boy - Was that some upgrade!  

EDIT: Custom-made carry-overs from previous setups( gotta love IBM compatbiles)_x means carry-over

Matsonic M-Board SIS chipset with built in sound video and lan hookup
1.1 Ghz CPU
HDs 40 GB(unusable at present NTFS) and 8 GB_x (don't laugh had to scratch some stuff to install UQM)
cd burner 4x_x and DVD rom drive (use CD-RWs anything faster would be pointless)
ATI 3D accelerator uncertain model think it's rage pro_x
OS Win 98SE_x
Yes I still have serial ports.

Maybe this will made DJ feel better

You guys are married and you have better pcs than I have! I mean, you don't really need super-pc for games :( The shame  :-[

-p3 600 MHz
-52x cd-rom
-48x cd-burner(!!!!! Oh yea my pride !!!! )
-320 Sdr(only 256 working because my 600 MHz isn't strong enough)
-9 GB of hardisk... ahem.
-Geforce 4 mx 64 ram
-1 broken fan thats makes noises 10 minutes after I turn on the computer.
-OS: XP pro.
-1.0 MB cable connection(people say there is only 750k or 1.5 MB, but my computer says it is 1.0 mb... ??? )

Donate now to free me... :-/

My main computer is a 1GHz G4 powerbook with 768Mb ram and a 40GB hard drive.  I also have a pc that I mainly use for audio stuff.  It's been severly downgraded since my powersupply blew up last year and destroyed my motherboard, video card, and memory, but it currently has a Duron 800MHz, 128 MB ram, I think 40GB hard drive, and a SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum EX.

Deep-Jiffa, if your interested, and want to spend a little cash, im more than willing to part with my old hardware, for a fair price. anything you might be interested in? i dont have the pc case of the old system, but i do have everything else. motherboard, ram, cd drive, ect.

i got this system just for my emulation games. i like playing playstation, and my old system didnt do to good. also i can use the other graphic filters, to make zsnes and gens look better, and I FINALLY CAN PLAY UQM IN OPEN GL - BILINEAR!! YA! so it was much needed upgrade.

my wife has been putting me off on buying a new pc for three years, we finally get a huge tax return, and my day has finally arrived. she didnt mind, even though i had huge buyers remorse. but im really happy with the performance. just hope i dont burn nothing up with all the playing i do...

~DEFIANT

ps: not to shabby systems' guys. i thought what i bought was mid range as far as speed goes. i was aiming for a pentium 4 3.? ghz, but when i saw the price... um... no, i dont need to be that fast. lol. im good with what i got. heh.

While it isn't super, my machine easily handles anything I want to do:
1.3 GHz CPU
40 GB HDD
256 MB RAM
52X CD-RW
32 MB video

I bought this last summer. Knowing what I'd be doing with it
(mostly programming and web surfing) I went into the local
shops and gave the requirements above. Most of them laughed
me out, saying they didn't carry anything that low range.
Them: "You can't run anything with that!"
Me: "Screw you." *goes to next shop*

It really irks me when sales people don't listen.

u serious? About being laughed out of the store I mean Well i've always been low-end it's not really necessary unless u are a hardcore online gamer playing with 40 other people hell when I first ran Win 95 I was using a 486 DX2 66MHZ.boosted to 144Mhz. with math Co-processor(still not a pentium)

Ummm... DJ - Look at my bio at the forum. I am fifthteen! - Kinda young to be married, don't you think?

In some cultures you should be a father by now! Even in culture 20! But I am talking about most of the guys here...

I, on the other hand, am getting old and still haven't gotten married.
It's interesting looking around and realizing tha most of my friends are
getting married, having kids, looking for homes.
Looking at my parents, they are closer to the age where their friends are retiring and having grand-kids. Isn't it interesting how life works?

Oh, yes, I was serious about being laughed out of the store. I also
had to go to three or four vendors before I found one that would sell
me a hardware modem (since I'm running Linux). One guy even had
the guts to tell me that "hardware modems don't exisit anymore". Well,
now I've got one and all the other techies I know want it :)

this game came out, what, over 10 years ago on the pc. i was 19 when i played it on the 3do. im almost 30 now (less than a week to go!). so it goes to show that most, not all, are going to be a much older age here on these forums. so you are correct to assume that we are older. but im realy glad to see that a new generation of young people, are enjoying this game just as well. in a mixing pot of ages, this game bridges the gap...

~DEFIANT

same only that i was like 8 or 9 and I played the PC verison. Lets put it this way I was born in 1984 and I listen to music of DEFIANT's time. Led Zep and Billy Joel most specifically and I retroplay many consoles from the 80's and earlier most recently I found a C64 Emulator. Much trouble finding one for Neo-Geo and PS2.

TERMINATOR - The obnoxious one
in the event of someone accusing me of mocking DEFIANT don't take it personally, makes it easier to find my posts.

...and here I am, picked it up less than a half year ago. I love it. UQM reaches to all ages.  

Holy crap do I ever hate reading about other people's computer parts. Good thing I only skimmed through.The sad thing is I expected this to be a topic about cars, and that would have pissed me off even more. Car people are so damn annoying.

...

I need to chill out. I'll go grab a drink or something.

sorry Shiver. didnt mean to offend. i was just a little curious on what other people were using. so i take it your not a car lover. im not a grease monkey myself, but i do love the racing games (gran turismo mostly). its a way for me and my son to have that bonding time. he loves to race, and hes pretty darn good at, if i dont say so myself. i need...er, want to get a steering wheel for the ps2, but i doubt my wife would go for that, considering all the money i already spent on this pc.




terminator, i have to agree, tagging your posts makes it alot easier to find them. but i do it for my personal style, so dont worry, your not copying style...just cloning it. ;)



=toast=
to the game of generations, may it always entertain...

~DEFIANT

Don't worry 'bout it.

~DEFIANT
or I could look for my avatar proably the only 8-bit avatar with animation. ur tag looks much better in blue to that green u changed it to.

On a side note is there any way to access a NTFS hard drive with a FAT32 boot. My NTFS needs and activation code which I don't have and I wish to preserve the data.




this is mistaken it's actually just short of 9 GB not 8 and has only 67 MB of free space (too many MP3's) I need to access my 40 GB drive to stuff runs faster I'm too terrified of frezzing my CPU to defrag it I don't see how that would help.

TERMINATOR - the obnoxious one

Defrag simple takes bits and pieces of your hard dive data and saves it in one neat fashion. Result? You have a computer that runs faster and has some space freed up.

i use the colors to project my moods. since im mostly cool all the time 8), its always blue.

blueis my cool mode.

greenas in "green with envy".

redim angry, or least not in a good mood.

yellowif im making an apology, or if im wrong.

~DEFIANT

866 MHz G4 tower
640 Mb RAM
DVD-CDRW

It's ample for coding and surfing. It even does some serious number-crunching now and then.

Im not as computor literate as most people here, but i shall do my best:

1.80 GHz
512 MG of ram

Magic Bright flatscreen moniter
hp all in one (printer/scanner/fax/digital camara stuff)
8 (yes 8) high quality creative speakers 8)
2 creative subwoofer 8) 8)

Just for curiousity, how many inches is your monitor?

I self measured it, so this is rather inacurate, but the diagonal of the screen is 16.5 inches.

ive got 17" flat screen (CRT? i think there called), w/ an "all stop" cover over the front. though id like to get my hands on a 25" LCD wide screen i saw at comp usa. it was pretty nice, for a cool $999.99, that is. i couldnt believe how expensive the LCDs are. too rich for my blood.

~DEFIANT

I saw a 23" for 499$  - Still to expensive for me. Though you can pick up a good used one on ebay for pretty cheap.

I'm running off a CTX CMS-1561M. okay it's old I don't think they make the curved screens anymore I think it used to be white but now it's like beige.  At least ten years old I think it's the only piece of equipment I never changed but I tell u this no problems, but than I can say for my HD. I think the monitor, the chasis, the keyboard, and the mouse are only pieces u can go a long time without replacing.  Think about it this way what is the HD standard capacity of today? roughly 100 GB 10 or 15 years ago it was like 100 MB big change and very easy to fall behind.  How big was SC2 originally on PC? I'l tell u cuz I have it installed(checking differences) 8.69 MB including 2 saves. UQM however is a whooping 120 MB would eat up your whole HD 10 years ago OS included.

TERMINATOR - the obnoxious one

P.S. just change my resolution to 640*480and it's really screwing my up after using 800*600 for the last 10+ years(win3*included).

Most people have to either clean or throw away mouses pretty regularly (about every 2 years)

I had to buy a new mouse when I started to play SC(the other SC StarCraft) online.  Trackball was necessary.

i do not like thoes trackballs. i tried one a awhile ago, for diablo, and i was all over the place. i coulndt get it to do what i wanted, plus click like my life depended on it. so... needless to say, ill stick to my lazer mouse. now thats improvement on technology. no more cleaning the fuzzies out of the rubber ball rollers. ya!

~DEFIANT

oh wow, im a "*smell* controller". i think this post, as a matter of fact. how eventfull...

Takes time to adjust that's all gives u more control on mouse dependant and scrolling games (ie CS SC WC3 etc) note the other SC. My desk being a clutterd as it is I really can't use my PS2(cpu not Playstation) mouse. laser mouse? Never heard of it. Or are u referring to an optical mouse?

TERMINATOR - the obnoxious one

He is referring to  a mouse that instead of using a ball to detect movement, it uses light.

That is the gist of what he said when he referred to 'optical mouse'.

Of course, most mice are optical in another sense anyway; the ball moves against rollers which are attached to grates, and the mouse shines a little light through the grate onto a pair of photo-detectors; its alternation gives the mouse its signal...

The early (I mean VERY early) ones did not have any light - It just had motion sensors (I think)

Do u need the mouse pad that comes with optical mice or is there another reason there is a grid on the pad?

Well certain optical mouses brag that they work so well that you can use them on beds. However, I have never seen that work so I always use a mouse pad, though the lines in it don't seem to help or hurt it in any way from what I have experienced.

It's infrared though, right?  I've never seen any visible light when working inside a plugged-in mouse.  Prior to seeing this, I assumed they were really weak EM signals that were just getting disorted (of course I didn't think about the fact that those little wheels & spokes are plastic).

Optical mouses are indeed infrared - I know that they are experimenting with other kinds too.

I thought optical mice were in the visual spectrum...
Anybody here remember the oldfashioned optical mice that used real lasers, and required special reflective, gridded mousepads?

I've seen one that used a visable red laser, but didnt need any special mouse pad. It worked on anything. A bed, even someones head.

Did they really try that - That is like what certain people thought I did on this forum. (Sticking my head into microwave that has a broken front glass and turning it on)

Motion sensors use light.



An EM signal is, to wit, light (even if low enough frequency to be invisible)


As far as laser mice go, I can use mine directly on my fake wood desk, or on my jeans, or on my left sleeve, the top of my head...

Lasers are not necessarily dangerous. It's possible to make a powerful laser that can cut through things, but thinking a mouse laser is dangerous is like thinking a super soaker is dangerous just because Niagara falls is known to exist.
Yet, like a super-soaker, you don't want to aim a mouse laser at your eye.

If a laser was that dangerous they wouldnt sell it. Pointing a small laser at your head does no damage. I can do damage if you get a laser beam directly in the eye.

checking to see if my mouse works on all things, and so far, all the places mentioned, it works. my head, hand, clothes, wood, paper, gloss paper, plastic, metal, ect..
however i did not try a mirror. im guessing that the signal would get reflected somewhere else, and not work. sometimes though, if i pick my mouse up to readjust my posistion on the pad, my pointer losses its posistion and jumps to some random place on the screen. its more of a annoyance than anything. anyone else experiance this kind of behavoir?

~DEFIANT

D_999 - Quick question, by word a motion sensor dectects motion, but in the early mouses, did it not do it with just mechanical parts?

they detect motion wiht light censors, not touch censors. Light censores have a light on them.

Even the early, early ones? - Like the kind when they were first invented?

I think you forgot some crucial information. An OPTICAL mouse does not use TOUCH censors.

No, no - I am NOT talking about a optical mouse, I am talking about the first "mice" invented!

I believe older mice had rolls and reels inside to judge where it was moved. turn over an old mouse or find one set up in a cpu store remove the ball and feel for the rollers

This was Death_999's point though, those rollers are attached to larger wheels with spokes, and those spokes are in-between a sensor and something that looks like a transistor.  I assume the transistor heats up, gives off IR, and the sensor detects the alternations that are casused by the spokes moving.

Actually when I was like 10 I used to mess with the mice at comp stores, they remove the ball from the mice for obvious reasons, I found out then that the mice of the time at least were mechanical not digital not infared not UV basically the same way a joystick works.

Interesting. I remember hearing that the first widely distributed commercial mouse, the one made for the 1984 Macintosh, used an internal optical sensor. This allowed it to have very little resistance against motion (a problem with early mechanical mice); it also let them keep working for a long time since it had no bending parts aside from the button's spring.