I have enough 120V lines and Cat5 around to say "bull" to this. I run Cat5 through the rat's maze behind my stereo. The speaker wires, power wires, RCA cables, other wires, etc. do not seem to interfere with each other.
What does seem to cause problems, strangely enough, is my USB Logitech mouse. Put it's wire near the low level RCA cables and get a loud ass buzz. Thus my stereo connection to the computer is in back, and the mouse is on the front USB port.
Why should I go out, buy some horribly expensive rig with an Athlon 3200+, 7200RPM harddrives, 2GB of ram, 20 fans, etc. and then underclock the thing to 486 speeds? I mean, c'mon - I can get 486's for free. Besides it's great fun and satisfying to do useful things with ancient hardware that I would otherwise have to pay to get rid of, and everyone else thinks is useless.
The quality of the onboard sound on most computers I have used is plenty good. The motherboard I have has a Creative 128 chip soldered on, and it works beautifully through my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 setup or the stereo.
The only difference I notice between the built in sound and many seperate audio cards is the volume. My last computer did not have built in sound, so I got some $30 PCI card. While it was pretty cheap, it had good sound and had no problems driving my Sony studio monitor headphones plugged straight into the back of the computer.
The built in Creative chip on my new computer, with all volume settings maxed, was no quiet loud enough. I have to turn on the Klipsch speakers and use the amp in there to get enough volume for the headphones. Luckily the amp in those speakers is really good, so no noise is introduced that I can pick out.
I think it boils down to the fact there just isn't enough room on the motherboard to include a more powerful amp and the other components to support it. Heat may be an issue too. I remember that PCI card was pretty crammed full of stuff.
I think you kind of missed the point. Sure, you can overclock a P4 2.4Ghz pretty insanely if you want to, buy why? For most common tasks you would be very hard pressed to tell the difference between a 2.4Ghz and a 3.2Ghz chip. I know I couldn't. Even in many games, a P2.4 is quite enough to run it with a decent framerate.
The benifits for me would be so marginal I would just keep it clocked at 2.4Ghz and use a quieter cooler and not worry about potential unstability due to overclocking. And I bet most people are the same way.
Back a few years ago though, overclocking something like a 486DX2-50 to a 486DX2-80 would of been *huge*, and the speed difference would be felt just about everywhere. It was a lot more worthwhile back then to tinker.
Yeah, the fan/heat problem is a big one. You could probably run a VIA chip or something in the desk, and it will stay cool enough in the drawers so the harddisks won't overheat, but if you want to run something like an Athlon with a good video card and 7200RPM drives, you'll need an entire closet for enough ambient air. It does work well though.
I suppose I could of done that. But then again I installed Windows 2000 on a 1998-1999 era computer. AMD K6-3 with PA-2013 motherboard if I remember right. Granted there were a whole bunch of PCI cards (Ethernet, ATA-100, USB, something else) - but none of them were really bleeding edge. 2000 didn't see any of them (even the USB, which was a PITA to get working). Linux handled them fine.
Besides, installing 98SE on a 1994 era P75 yeilded the same results (640x480 @ 16 colors. WTF?)
Well I have quite a collection of music videoes. The DiVX encoded ones are not that bad. It's the SVCD ones that cause troubles. It seems about 90% of them will play with just about any codec, but the remaining 10% of them have problems and will only play with one or two codecs. After much tweaking with Zoom Player I can get all but about 2 or 3 to play, even though the player will crash at times.
Xine however plays about anything I throw at it, without me having to do anything. Even the version on the Knoppix CD does great.
I installed Mandrake 9.0, and I think I had to reboot it once. Longest part was the actual copying of data. Once it started up and booted into KDE, like magic my sound, video, network, modem, etc. just worked. Just about every program I need already installed and ready to go. Just add Opera and Seti@Home. Time spent 60 minutes max.
Windows 2000: Install it. Takes like 45-60 minutes. And I am presented with a 640x480 screen with 16 colors, no sound, no network. Couple of hours later, countless reboots. Drivers in. Now Windows update. Many 100's of MB later, and dozens of reboots later, that's done. Now install programs. Several hours later that's done. Also throw in a couple of hours to install video codecs, and getting all the different ones to work with each other without conflict and crashes (UGH!) Time spent: 1 day atleast.
Linux is lightyears ahead of Windows in the install the OS department. I will admit though, installing programs in Windows is easy, so easy that they install all by themselves at times! (heh). Installing software in Linux is tedious and confusing at times.
What I find most amazing is Knoppix. Throw a CD in the drive, reboot the computer, and in 5 minutes I'm sitting in front of a fully functional Linux desktop with all my sound/video/network all working, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and countless applications already installed and ready to go - and it's all running off the CD and ramdisk! Utterly amazing.
Provided it doesn't nuke itself first, that is. We'll have to see if Windows 95 can make it that far. Previous tests have shown it generally craps itself out at about 20-25 days, but right now I have a P100 running Win95C with 47 days 12:14 minutes of uptime. This Saturday that box is GOING DOWN!!!
The reason they carry it on is that people want it and need it. Serial is hardly useless, it is needed for older (but not that old) devices like Palms and HP Calculators. Also, the best modems generally are external that use serial ports.
Older printers (and some new ones) still use parallel ports.
PS/2 is hardly dead either. PS/2 keyboards just work. They have ironed out most of the bugs with USB keyboards, but you still have minor issues with Linux, old dos stuff, etc. Besides, all the good keyboards are either PS/2 or even the old AT style plug. USB keyboards are crap. Bottom line is, I better be able to hook up my Model M's to any computer I buy.
I noticed that it only comes with a 90W power supply. I don't think that is going to work very well, with a P4 consuming upwards of 70W or more of power. How will there be anything left to run the disk drives, video, etc.?
It's much harder to and more expensive to find a better software solution than a hardware solution. You can either optomize the code, program in assembler, cut out the unnessecary stuff, optomize more, pull some cool tricks, etc. - OR - you can just throw some more hardware at your sloppy code and get (basically) the same results.
Throw in the fact that computer makers have an interest in having people purchase a new computer every few years, and it's not hard to see why we have 3Ghz systems with a gigabyte of ram that consume 300W while idling.
While I'm sure these computers will still have their uses, I would think for most people the Tranquil PC would work much better, with it's 1Ghz, harddrive, and fanless operation.
Do what I just did. Build a system, put it into a closet or another less-used room, and run the cables out to monitor/keyboard/mouse/etc. My AMD Athlon 2000 now lives in the closet, with it's 2 HDDs, 7 fans, and all that other stuff and I can barely hear it when I shut the closet door. Plus, all my shirts now come preheated! (the closet is like 110 degrees F, seriously)
The big question is, of course, could it handle being wired directly to a car's electrical system?
Which generally puts out a not very clean 11-14.5 volts DC depending on various factors. I'm guessing it can't - but if it could it would be damn nice.
I bet your backlight bulb is getting close to the end of it's life.
The lifetime of those bulbs are usually measured in the thousands of hours. Sounds like yours has logged over 8,000 hours. But then again it sounds like you got your money's worth out of it.
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I have enough 120V lines and Cat5 around to say "bull" to this. I run Cat5 through the rat's maze behind my stereo. The speaker wires, power wires, RCA cables, other wires, etc. do not seem to interfere with each other.
What does seem to cause problems, strangely enough, is my USB Logitech mouse. Put it's wire near the low level RCA cables and get a loud ass buzz. Thus my stereo connection to the computer is in back, and the mouse is on the front USB port.
Why should I go out, buy some horribly expensive rig with an Athlon 3200+, 7200RPM harddrives, 2GB of ram, 20 fans, etc. and then underclock the thing to 486 speeds? I mean, c'mon - I can get 486's for free. Besides it's great fun and satisfying to do useful things with ancient hardware that I would otherwise have to pay to get rid of, and everyone else thinks is useless.
I agree. Some computers are simply not boxes.
I mean, what in the hell is this then? Or this?
The quality of the onboard sound on most computers I have used is plenty good. The motherboard I have has a Creative 128 chip soldered on, and it works beautifully through my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 setup or the stereo.
The only difference I notice between the built in sound and many seperate audio cards is the volume. My last computer did not have built in sound, so I got some $30 PCI card. While it was pretty cheap, it had good sound and had no problems driving my Sony studio monitor headphones plugged straight into the back of the computer.
The built in Creative chip on my new computer, with all volume settings maxed, was no quiet loud enough. I have to turn on the Klipsch speakers and use the amp in there to get enough volume for the headphones. Luckily the amp in those speakers is really good, so no noise is introduced that I can pick out.
I think it boils down to the fact there just isn't enough room on the motherboard to include a more powerful amp and the other components to support it. Heat may be an issue too. I remember that PCI card was pretty crammed full of stuff.
I think you kind of missed the point. Sure, you can overclock a P4 2.4Ghz pretty insanely if you want to, buy why? For most common tasks you would be very hard pressed to tell the difference between a 2.4Ghz and a 3.2Ghz chip. I know I couldn't. Even in many games, a P2.4 is quite enough to run it with a decent framerate.
The benifits for me would be so marginal I would just keep it clocked at 2.4Ghz and use a quieter cooler and not worry about potential unstability due to overclocking. And I bet most people are the same way.
Back a few years ago though, overclocking something like a 486DX2-50 to a 486DX2-80 would of been *huge*, and the speed difference would be felt just about everywhere. It was a lot more worthwhile back then to tinker.
I would think this wouldn't be an issue if your case is properly grounded via the 3rd prong in the power cable. But you never know I guess.
Yeah, the fan/heat problem is a big one. You could probably run a VIA chip or something in the desk, and it will stay cool enough in the drawers so the harddisks won't overheat, but if you want to run something like an Athlon with a good video card and 7200RPM drives, you'll need an entire closet for enough ambient air. It does work well though.
I can't hear the whirl of my HDDs over the fans, so how about that?
I suppose I could of done that. But then again I installed Windows 2000 on a 1998-1999 era computer. AMD K6-3 with PA-2013 motherboard if I remember right. Granted there were a whole bunch of PCI cards (Ethernet, ATA-100, USB, something else) - but none of them were really bleeding edge. 2000 didn't see any of them (even the USB, which was a PITA to get working). Linux handled them fine.
Besides, installing 98SE on a 1994 era P75 yeilded the same results (640x480 @ 16 colors. WTF?)
Well I have quite a collection of music videoes. The DiVX encoded ones are not that bad. It's the SVCD ones that cause troubles. It seems about 90% of them will play with just about any codec, but the remaining 10% of them have problems and will only play with one or two codecs. After much tweaking with Zoom Player I can get all but about 2 or 3 to play, even though the player will crash at times.
Xine however plays about anything I throw at it, without me having to do anything. Even the version on the Knoppix CD does great.
Your kidding, right?
I installed Mandrake 9.0, and I think I had to reboot it once. Longest part was the actual copying of data. Once it started up and booted into KDE, like magic my sound, video, network, modem, etc. just worked. Just about every program I need already installed and ready to go. Just add Opera and Seti@Home. Time spent 60 minutes max.
Windows 2000: Install it. Takes like 45-60 minutes. And I am presented with a 640x480 screen with 16 colors, no sound, no network. Couple of hours later, countless reboots. Drivers in. Now Windows update. Many 100's of MB later, and dozens of reboots later, that's done. Now install programs. Several hours later that's done. Also throw in a couple of hours to install video codecs, and getting all the different ones to work with each other without conflict and crashes (UGH!) Time spent: 1 day atleast.
Linux is lightyears ahead of Windows in the install the OS department. I will admit though, installing programs in Windows is easy, so easy that they install all by themselves at times! (heh). Installing software in Linux is tedious and confusing at times.
What I find most amazing is Knoppix. Throw a CD in the drive, reboot the computer, and in 5 minutes I'm sitting in front of a fully functional Linux desktop with all my sound/video/network all working, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and countless applications already installed and ready to go - and it's all running off the CD and ramdisk! Utterly amazing.
And we all know those lovely Macs are made out of translucent, multi-colored, brushed metal - don't we?
A year? Try two. Actually it's getting close to three now. And at the rate they are going, it's going to be 5 years, or never if you ask me.
l
Here is a comic that sums things up pretty well:
http://darkness.diabloii.net/rrcomic4.shtm
You know what the funniest part of it is? The date.
My bank lists Netscape 6.xx-7.xx, IE 5.xx-6.xx, and the various AOL browsers which are just IE in disguise anyway.
Funny thing is, it works just dandy with Opera, which is I use so no complaints.
I don't have it installed on this box anymore, but Mandrake 9.0 ran beautifully on my ATI Radeon 8500 64MB card. Of course that's just my experience.
Going to Google fights...
... 305 000 results ... 90 600 results
Google is a good god
Google is an evil god
Whew! That was a close one.
Not to mention I died and it locked Opera 7.1 up. Good thing I wasn't in IE...
Provided it doesn't nuke itself first, that is. We'll have to see if Windows 95 can make it that far. Previous tests have shown it generally craps itself out at about 20-25 days, but right now I have a P100 running Win95C with 47 days 12:14 minutes of uptime. This Saturday that box is GOING DOWN!!!
The reason they carry it on is that people want it and need it. Serial is hardly useless, it is needed for older (but not that old) devices like Palms and HP Calculators. Also, the best modems generally are external that use serial ports.
Older printers (and some new ones) still use parallel ports.
PS/2 is hardly dead either. PS/2 keyboards just work. They have ironed out most of the bugs with USB keyboards, but you still have minor issues with Linux, old dos stuff, etc. Besides, all the good keyboards are either PS/2 or even the old AT style plug. USB keyboards are crap. Bottom line is, I better be able to hook up my Model M's to any computer I buy.
I noticed that it only comes with a 90W power supply. I don't think that is going to work very well, with a P4 consuming upwards of 70W or more of power. How will there be anything left to run the disk drives, video, etc.?
It all comes down to what is cheaper and easier.
It's much harder to and more expensive to find a better software solution than a hardware solution. You can either optomize the code, program in assembler, cut out the unnessecary stuff, optomize more, pull some cool tricks, etc. - OR - you can just throw some more hardware at your sloppy code and get (basically) the same results.
Throw in the fact that computer makers have an interest in having people purchase a new computer every few years, and it's not hard to see why we have 3Ghz systems with a gigabyte of ram that consume 300W while idling.
While I'm sure these computers will still have their uses, I would think for most people the Tranquil PC would work much better, with it's 1Ghz, harddrive, and fanless operation.
http://www.tranquilpc.co.uk/
Do what I just did. Build a system, put it into a closet or another less-used room, and run the cables out to monitor/keyboard/mouse/etc. My AMD Athlon 2000 now lives in the closet, with it's 2 HDDs, 7 fans, and all that other stuff and I can barely hear it when I shut the closet door. Plus, all my shirts now come preheated! (the closet is like 110 degrees F, seriously)
The big question is, of course, could it handle being wired directly to a car's electrical system? Which generally puts out a not very clean 11-14.5 volts DC depending on various factors. I'm guessing it can't - but if it could it would be damn nice.
I bet your backlight bulb is getting close to the end of it's life.
The lifetime of those bulbs are usually measured in the thousands of hours. Sounds like yours has logged over 8,000 hours. But then again it sounds like you got your money's worth out of it.