# Computer!



## PhilinYuma (Nov 5, 2009)

Sometime this morning, a USP truck from La Puente, CA, east bound on highway 10, passed about 50 miles due north of my house, headed to Phoenix 150 miles away. It has since deposited a 9lb package addressed to me, and soon the package will be driven SE (I live to the SW of Phoenix) to Highway 8 and then due west to my house, thereby adding 350 miles to the shortest route. This is called "expedited shipping!"

It is that time of year, again, when I play a joke on myself. Last year, it was starting to keep mantids without any practical idea about their husbandry whatsoever. This year I am going to build a computer with about as much knowledge of computers as I had of mantids. I'm not a gamer; I don't have enough files to need a home server; home theater, maybe, but not worth setting up with one of those tiny form factor mobos, so I decided to have a Blue Machine. Tomorrow I shall get the Raidmax Smilodon case, with lots of blue led fans, which I shall supplement with flourescent wands and whatnot, an Apevia 550W PSU with a nice blue cooling fan, and an Asus mobo that uses all blue plastic cooling fins. Is that cool or not?

I shall keep you all up to date. It should be as exciting as one of those NASCAR races (are they really banning bump drafting in restrictor plate races? Boo, hiss!), where no one pays attention until there is a nice collision. If there is a blue flash, I shall try and get a pic.

Wish me luck!


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## sbugir (Nov 5, 2009)

Good luck.


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## Katnapper (Nov 6, 2009)

Hmmm.... and I thought you had enough mantids (and feeders) to keep you busy!  Best of luck with it, Phil!


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## revmdn (Nov 6, 2009)

Good luck with all that. I have my own personal IT gal here at home. Just getting her to do stuff is the real trouble, or maybe it's the way that she tells me she can't believe that I can't do the computer stuff.


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## Rick (Nov 6, 2009)

I laughed at the expidited shipping part. I often wonder why I will see several delivery trucks drive past my house doing deliveries yet my stuff is always on the last one.


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## kamakiri (Nov 6, 2009)

Godd luck winning that NASCAR race! uh, that *is* what you're doing, right?


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 21, 2009)

Well, it's "toches ahfen tish"* time for me. The rest of the stuff for my rig arrived yesterday, and tomorrow I shall put it together. It shouldn't take more than a day or so, unless something goes wrong.

As I mentioned before, the informing theme for this machine is "blue," and I have come up with a blue speaker system and a few other things to promote the theme. My son Dave was a BMX biker as a kid, and I remember that he used to wrap his handlebars in metallic tape, so I shall check out our local bike shop for metallic tape to wrap the various cables. I have been wondering about an appropriate accent to place on top of the machine and today I found what I want. Absolut Vodka has come out with blue mirror glass bottles for Xmas, and one or two (or three!) of those would make an excellent accent. All I have to do now is work out what to do with the vodka (glug glug). Any ideas?  

*Do Yiddish speaking folks not keep mantids? Tell us if you do!


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## sbugir (Nov 21, 2009)

Phil, why exactly are you making your own rig? Does someone want to play WoW???


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## revmdn (Nov 21, 2009)

I don't speak it as a language but I know plenty of Yiddish working in the clothing biz. But isn't Yiddish just German slang from European Jews?


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## sbugir (Nov 21, 2009)

I always thought Yiddish was it's own language adopted by European Jews.

Oops sorry didn't read the "from", my bad.


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 21, 2009)

revmdn said:


> I don't speak it as a language but I know plenty of Yiddish working in the clothing biz. But isn't Yiddish just German slang from European Jews?


That's pretty much all you'll hear in America, these days. I think that there are only about half a million Yiddish speakers in the U.S against about 22 million in Europe in the 1920's. But no, Yiddish is a Germanic language in its own right. In fact, I think that one of Isaac Bashevis Singers' first translations into Yiddish was Thomas Mann's _Der Zauberberg_. It also contains a number of Slavic loan words. Balagan (mess) is from Russian and Takeh (that's right) is from the Polish "tak"and of course it is uses not only Hebrew characters (or near enough!) but many words as well, such as "Mazel" from "Mazal".

And no, I don't speak it, either, but it's a hard language not to love!


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## revmdn (Nov 21, 2009)

Phil, I know there is a Yiddish language website that pronounces the words for you. I'm sure you could find it using your best friend of course. It was pretty cool.


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 23, 2009)

Those of you who have some French, and a few of you who don't, know that "le petit mort" ("the little death") is code for orgasm. Well, that's what I thought too, until today. It turns out that the _real_ "petit mort" is experienced when you spend well over a grand on computer parts and several hours jamming them into the case (remember, I know shinola about this stuff), plug in the power cable, hit the start button, and the computer just sits there doing nothing.  Fortunately, I found that I had inserted a plug (the proprietary Asus "Q" connector, for those who care) upside down. Once I fixed that, I had busy fans and glowing lights all over! The next thing will be to attach a monitor and see if I POST, then work on the BIOS. Wish me luck!


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## revmdn (Nov 23, 2009)

Good luck Phil. But it really sounds like you got it.


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## Katnapper (Nov 23, 2009)

Sending luck from Illinois to Yuma!!


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## kamakiri (Nov 25, 2009)

Several weeks later, your expedited shipping story reminds me of my coworker's phone case...

IF he didn't intercept it, it would have gone FedEx and sorted about 6 miles east of our office. Then the next day it would head west about 5.9996 miles west to get to our office.

The phone case manufacturer was across the street.

My coworker called and asked if he could walk over and pick it up. They said no, but that they'd put it in the mail. At least it got to him later that afternoon instead of the next day. But it's sad that they were still willing to lose $2.95.


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 25, 2009)

revmdn said:


> Good luck Phil. But it really sounds like you got it.


Well, it turns out that you were right, revmdn. I spent several hours yesterday, trying to POST with no success and wondered if both of my OEM HDDs -- rather casually wrapped -- hadn't arrived DOA. But this morning, I hit "exit" instead of "tab" and everything worked. Hallelujah!

The nice thing is that if I can build a computer, anyone can, really, anyone. You can buy "build your own computer" books, most of which are out of date by the time they are published, but I based every step on a great video from http://www.homepcbuilder.com/ From the little that I remember of business formulae from days gone by, this guy is selling his video and support at about 50% of its fair market value. Check it out!

And for those who care:

Case: Raidmax Smilodon mid tower ATX. Clear acrylic window and lotsa blue LEDs!

PSU: Coolmax CUL 550 (if I had to do it again, I'd get a 650W). "Semi" modular. I got it for the blue LED fan(!).

Mobo: Asus M4A79XTD EVO. A good AMD board that takes DDR3 and is overclocking friendly. Also, the passive cooling fins are metallic blue, and look a bit like the Sydney Opera House.

CPU: AMD Phenom IIX4 Black, with its own cooler. No longer the top of AMD's line, so the price, but not the quality of this CPU has dropped substantially.

HDD: Two Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB disks without RAID set up (they are configured as one 1TB disk, and I have slots for two more). One day, I'll shift the OS to a tiny SSD and spend hours getting permission from some Microsoft tech!

Memory: 4GB Corsair DDR3 1660 RAM (for now).

Optical disc: Plextor DVD/CD writer. "24X Super multi Format" with 48X playback. I'll get a blue ray writer when the price comes down (soon).

GPU: Power color HD3450. This is a tiny video card because I am not a gamer, so all that I need is 2D capability and an HDMI out. It does not take power from the PSU, which substantially reduces power output requirement.

O.S. Win7 64 bit (Sunny insisted!).

A few extra odds and ends like a Hauppage dual TV tuner that I'll connect to a Phillips TV tuner, and a household wiring network. I have working machines for Win ME, Win XP, Win Vista, and Win 7, lol!

Peripherals: I'll be using this with my favorite, elderly PS 2 keyboard (in turn-of-the-century beige), a Kengsington Elite trackball with a blue ball (of course) that I'll have to buy from the UK, and a 24" LCD, HDMI monitor. yes, of course, i'll have to get a second one!

And that's it, folks, and special thanks to those of you who wished me luck!


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## Katnapper (Nov 25, 2009)

Congratulations!!! I'm rather proud of you!


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## sbugir (Nov 25, 2009)

Nice Phil. Sorry, but you have a Win ME machine? Roflmao.


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## PhilinYuma (Dec 4, 2009)

Yay! Is this the coolest accessory to put on a blue-theme computer case or what?  

http://www.smithsonianstore.com/catalog/pr...productId=17568

Does Victory Dance. Trips over Dog.  

(So, Lemmiwinks, how old were you when Win ME came out?  It was the most unstable and irritating of all the Windows flavors, much worse than Vista, but it did introduce plug 'n play and System Restore.)


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## sbugir (Dec 4, 2009)

Phil, I believe I was 7 years old when Win Me came out. All I can say is, it really did suck. My whole 7 year old life was ruined by the stupid OS...Okay not really, but still. If I'm not mistaken Phil, plug n play was Win95. Actually, Microsoft took the idea of plug and play from Apple ^.^


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## PhilinYuma (Dec 4, 2009)

lemmiwinks said:


> Phil, I believe I was 7 years old when Win Me came out. All I can say is, it really did suck. My whole 7 year old life was ruined by the stupid OS...Okay not really, but still. If I'm not mistaken Phil, plug n play was Win95. Actually, Microsoft took the idea of plug and play from Apple ^.^


Haha, lemmiwinks! You laugh when I write my long, convoluted answers, and then when I write an oversimplified one, you jump on me!  

You're right, of course, Win 95 had the dreaded "plug and pray", and Win 98 improveds on it. Win ME, though, introduced UPnP (Universal Plag and Play) which is still in use in W7, and is what I was thinking of in my too-brief post.

I've never checked out the idea that Microsoft "stole" the idea of PnP fromApple. It wouldn't surprise me, but I think that IBM's PS/2 (1987?) had a rudimentary integration device (a bunch of disks as I remember -- I never owned one) instead of using jumpers*, while Apple II, which was still in production in the late '80's (early 90's?) still expected wires to be soldered together to accomodate a new device! :lol: 

Here's a thought for an eager computer historian such as yourself, though. Win ME required 320 MB disk space for installation. Win XP required 5X that much and Vista amazed everyone by requiring a "bloated" 15GB for 32 bit. The same pundits are now praising W7, but few mention that it requires 1GB more space than Vista for the 32 bit version, and the 64bit that I installed requires 20GB! To put that in perspective, a 20GB HDD in 2000 would have cost $250 -$300, and you would have no space left over to run any progs or store any files!

*As i write this, I have an old "Toshiba Samsung" optical drive, from late 2006 on my desk, with an IDE jumper showing it to be a "master". Some devices, which probably only had their function/value set once in their working lives, didn't even bother with DIP switches.


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## sbugir (Dec 4, 2009)

PhilinYuma said:


> Haha, lemmiwinks! You laugh when I write my long, convoluted answers, and then when I write an oversimplified one, you jump on me!  You're right, of course, Win 95 had the dreaded "plug and pray", and Win 98 improveds on it. Win ME, though, introduced UPnP (Universal Plag and Play) which is still in use in W7, and is what I was thinking of in my too-brief post.
> 
> I've never checked out the idea that Microsoft "stole" the idea of PnP fromApple. It wouldn't surprise me, but I think that IBM's PS/2 (1987?) had a rudimentary integration device (a bunch of disks as I remember -- I never owned one) instead of using jumpers*, while Apple II, which was still in production in the late '80's (early 90's?) still expected wires to be soldered together to accomodate a new device! :lol:
> 
> ...


Phil, I never laugh at your long, over explained answers, I am boggled and amazed by them; and find them to be amusing and knowledgeable. As for jumping on you, I couldn't resist. (Okay, come to think of it, I have laughed...)

I believe you're right about IBM's PS/2 integration system, as for the Apple II's soldering wires to accommodate new devices statement, all I can say is LOL. Funny. Interestingly, the Apple II had so many external drives and inputs that it was really flexible and universal, provided you had the dough to sustain the accessories needed  and of course the soldering skills needed :lol: .

As for memory being so expensive back in the day, it's amazing how cheap it is now. 2TB HD costs &gt;$200, is that amazing or what? I recently purchased a 4TB mirrored hard drive for less than $250. And, being the Apple fanboy that I am, I have it hooked up to my Apple TV with every single song, video, and photo backed up, and ready to view/listen  .

Ohhh, and I forgot to add, as for the Windows OS memory usage, I find it hilarious how much memory it does take up when virtually/essentially the OS hasn't changed much whatsoever. Seriously, it takes me 32G (to have 15GB free) to load XP onto my Mac just so I can play games via Bootcamp. Ridiculous. Honestly, Windows XP requires more space than the new Mac OS Snow Leopard (6GB). Oh, and does anyone else find the "I'm a PC campaign advertisements" funny? Recently there was a commercial where this 10 year old kid is like "Oh wow Vista! And 4GB of RAM WOW!" Seriously kid? Do you even know what Ram is? Vista practically needs those 4GB of RAM to run moderately smooth. Or how about the commercial with the Windows movie maker/picture viewer? Seriously, I just laughed when I saw a little Asian girl modifying her picture. I waited for the machine to crash. And what is even more amusing, is how they found metadata of Apple machines editing those commercials... Microsoft reacted by scrubbing the metadata after the commercials were released. Hilarious eh?

Ooo, just read your specs. I guess I missed that post lol. Seems like a good machine, just curious as to why you're using an AMD cpu? I mean, they're great and all, but you could have easily gotten an Intel for the same price and probably runs faster. And, remember how you asked about BioShock 2? You'll be needing something a bit more powerful  , but I do realize you said your not exactly a gamer. I'm hoping BioShock 2 will be released in 3D, I'd love to get the Nvidia 3D vision.

Nonetheless, looks like you did well. Great machine, ha, and that's coming from an avid Mac user  .


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## PhilinYuma (Dec 11, 2009)

And a week later...still having innocent fun! I must confess that one of the stimuli for this project was a book on computers for "Elders". It had a simple sentence structure, a rather large font, and i think that you could redeem a coupon for hot chocolate at the back. Recently I saw a line in my huge Win7 book, warning ignoramuses, let alone Elder ignoramuses from messing around with repartitioning, so I immediately sent off for the Paragon partition manager and reduced my C drive to 100GB, just for the OS and a few start up odds and ends.

When I installed W7, it did not restart automatically during the process, and I had to do it manually. With a partion managrer, though, restarting manually SUYD (Screws Up Yr Disk). Ouch! I had to replace it with Drive #2 (easy to reformat later) and reinstall the OS with the same prob. I installed all of the cute things on the mobo disk, but nothing has changed. I still suspect a missing driver, but I'll check that on the BIOS settings tomorrow. I was also hoping to flash the BIOS (what a great thought! I even bought new underwear!  ) but this one is only four mos old, so I doubt that that will do much.

But I shall most certainly prevail; it's just a matter of time, so as always, wish me luck.


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