After digging for price per performance, I concluded that the cheapest rig I could get the most out of was an AMD X2 system with an nVidia card. Sure, Intel's crap is faster, but its just as expensive, and my system came with onboard 6100 so i can dual monitor it with dual gpu's. This segrigates memory in a way I thought ATI's cards could do only before. Yeah, I can even run Crysis on my $300 machine. Eat that.
And my $500 laptop. and my $450 gaming pc. All are in the same basic config. All are AMD X2 3800/4000 or TK55 or whatever the jesus it is. All have nVidia 6100 (secondary display, mind you)/6800/8400GT/8800GTS
Run vista and xp just fine.
Actually I'm preparing my post for digg right now - I washed my motherboard in the house dishwasher, just take some care and not care about the motherboard and you'll be fine!
Let it dry for 12 hours and it powered on wonderfully.
Compaq in my view is WORSE than HP - they can design nice cases, sort of. They insist on making things in a weird way that makes them totaly propriatary, usually. And you're going to argue that this matters not because its a laptop, well, maybe...
I hate compaq, HP is just a less-compaq compaq...now they are one, giant happy family of mutant computers.
I've done the same to my Dell, and it was running Mandrake 8.2 or something, i cant remember...but I've had it get thrown, dropped, it's fallen (all while on and WITHOUT having power settings on to make the drive power down after a min so it has less head-cash probability...then i put xp on it and whatever, works still. Fujitsu drives rock, as far as I am concerned. That laptop wouldnt ever support networking right (I think its the crap Mandrake 8.2) or I'm just too much of a nix' idiot...
Another dell story of mine....
At my dads work they have carpet that has a gnack for generating huge static charges, anyways, I was replacing a CD-ROM inside a Dell Dimension desktop (they are used as cheap servers) and when i got close to the motherboard I heard a distinct snap of electrisity arching - After turning the machine on the drive wouldnt work until it was rebooted about 10 times.
Hm, oh and my Previously mentioned Dell laptop had a fan failure; the fan got so hot it started itself on fire - smoked and i just was like "hmm, what to do now" and i took it apart and replaced the cooling block - no apperent damage, and it works fine!
Huh, wow. I've only had a few (ok maybe more) incidents with laptops.
Once i left my Dell pos running on a desk and just went to bed. Woke up and it was missing, the keyboard that i had hooked up to it was on the floor and thats about it - started walking around only to find that it was in another room. Cats had gotten caught up in the cords and ran for their lives from this "attacking" machine - and the weird thing was it was still on when i found it - and works to this day.
Hm, speaking of pentium boards (Heh, friggen AT crap...)
Last week i was messing around with a Pentium 150Mhz box, after taking the whole thing apart and cleaning it up for linux use, i put it back toghether...but realized that both power connectors for the motherboard were "identical" minus the leads...and i was too lazy to actually check, so i just stuck whatever on one part and the other connector on the other one - and hit the power switch.
Next I heard a loud CLICK and the power led didnt go on.... After letting it sit and fixing th problem it works, no problems =)
Oh, and does anyone know why the IDE connectors on the old mini-AT motherboards have the 'bump' on the WRONG side?
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After digging for price per performance, I concluded that the cheapest rig I could get the most out of was an AMD X2 system with an nVidia card. Sure, Intel's crap is faster, but its just as expensive, and my system came with onboard 6100 so i can dual monitor it with dual gpu's. This segrigates memory in a way I thought ATI's cards could do only before. Yeah, I can even run Crysis on my $300 machine. Eat that. And my $500 laptop. and my $450 gaming pc. All are in the same basic config. All are AMD X2 3800/4000 or TK55 or whatever the jesus it is. All have nVidia 6100 (secondary display, mind you)/6800/8400GT/8800GTS Run vista and xp just fine.
Actually I'm preparing my post for digg right now - I washed my motherboard in the house dishwasher, just take some care and not care about the motherboard and you'll be fine!
Let it dry for 12 hours and it powered on wonderfully.
I have videos and the like.
Appears that I might look into tivo now, since it finally caught my interest!
Uranus
Compaq in my view is WORSE than HP - they can design nice cases, sort of. They insist on making things in a weird way that makes them totaly propriatary, usually. And you're going to argue that this matters not because its a laptop, well, maybe... I hate compaq, HP is just a less-compaq compaq...now they are one, giant happy family of mutant computers.
I've done the same to my Dell, and it was running Mandrake 8.2 or something, i cant remember...but I've had it get thrown, dropped, it's fallen (all while on and WITHOUT having power settings on to make the drive power down after a min so it has less head-cash probability...then i put xp on it and whatever, works still. Fujitsu drives rock, as far as I am concerned. That laptop wouldnt ever support networking right (I think its the crap Mandrake 8.2) or I'm just too much of a nix' idiot...
Another dell story of mine.... At my dads work they have carpet that has a gnack for generating huge static charges, anyways, I was replacing a CD-ROM inside a Dell Dimension desktop (they are used as cheap servers) and when i got close to the motherboard I heard a distinct snap of electrisity arching - After turning the machine on the drive wouldnt work until it was rebooted about 10 times. Hm, oh and my Previously mentioned Dell laptop had a fan failure; the fan got so hot it started itself on fire - smoked and i just was like "hmm, what to do now" and i took it apart and replaced the cooling block - no apperent damage, and it works fine!
Huh, wow. I've only had a few (ok maybe more) incidents with laptops. Once i left my Dell pos running on a desk and just went to bed. Woke up and it was missing, the keyboard that i had hooked up to it was on the floor and thats about it - started walking around only to find that it was in another room. Cats had gotten caught up in the cords and ran for their lives from this "attacking" machine - and the weird thing was it was still on when i found it - and works to this day.
Hm, speaking of pentium boards (Heh, friggen AT crap...) Last week i was messing around with a Pentium 150Mhz box, after taking the whole thing apart and cleaning it up for linux use, i put it back toghether...but realized that both power connectors for the motherboard were "identical" minus the leads...and i was too lazy to actually check, so i just stuck whatever on one part and the other connector on the other one - and hit the power switch. Next I heard a loud CLICK and the power led didnt go on.... After letting it sit and fixing th problem it works, no problems =) Oh, and does anyone know why the IDE connectors on the old mini-AT motherboards have the 'bump' on the WRONG side?