Mmm, I love the smell of fresh components in the morning...

[Dalton]

...specifically, a brand-new Asus K8V SE Deluxe with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and some nice new DDR400 RAM.

Now, is the light on my floppy drive supposed to be on all the time, or is that indicative of me flipping a cable like I tend to do?

[GoldenFalcon]

Now, is the light on my floppy drive supposed to be on all the time, or is that indicative of me flipping a cable like I tend to do?

Well, unless you have a floppy disk, or a program is trying to access something on a disk that isn't there, then you probably did that.

[Dalton]

Now, is the light on my floppy drive supposed to be on all the time, or is that indicative of me flipping a cable like I tend to do?

Well, unless you have a floppy disk, or a program is trying to access something on a disk that isn't there, then you probably did that.

Yes I did, just got finished flipping the cable

[Batman]

Dalton, on any other day I'd propably hate you.

[Shinova]

Ooo, nice! How many megs of that RAM?

[Shadowhawk]

...specifically, a brand-new Asus K8V SE Deluxe with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and some nice new DDR400 RAM.

Why, that looks familiar.
Asus K8V SE Deluxe, Athlon64 3200+ and 1GB PC3200 (DDR400) here, too.
But I also have a GeForce 6800GT.

[Dalton]

Dalton, on any other day I'd propably hate you.

So what makes today special

Ooo, nice! How many megs of that RAM?

1,024 beotch! A full gig!

Why, that looks familiar.
Asus K8V SE Deluxe, Athlon64 3200+ and 1GB PC3200 (DDR400) here, too.

Mine's Corsair, but I'm not sure of the chipset.

But I also have a GeForce 6800GT.

And I have a Radeon 9600XT, motherfucker

Speaking of the GeForce 6800GT, the guys at my local computer store apparently got a rig from their home office to run a store display of Doom 3...unfortunately, the rig had a 350W PSU, there was no room for an exhaust fan and they powered the bloody video card (a 6800GT) with a pair of fan plugs, so the thing was building up a biiiig pocket of hot air right inside the box. Needless to say, the thing got fucking fried.

[Dalton]

Oh, Eric, speaking of the Asus, are you using the onboard Ethernet port? Mine was flaking out and I had to disable it and use my old NIC.

[Dalton]

Update: My computer mysteriously shut itself down somehow during the night. I still haven't figured out why.

[Batman]

Update: My computer mysteriously shut itself down somehow during the night. I still haven't figured out why.

HA-HA!
Sorry.
As to what made that day special, I inherited my Dad's old PC (P2 350) which means I finally have the ability to play FO1 and XCOM:Apoc again (and, hopefully one day, Crusader 1 & 2 and MAX.)

[GoldenFalcon]

Update: My computer mysteriously shut itself down somehow during the night. I still haven't figured out why.

Power connection borked itself? Maybe the motherboard overloaded too, but that's an improbability.

[Sarevok]

Awesome system. I am jeolous.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

...specifically, a brand-new Asus K8V SE Deluxe with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and some nice new DDR400 RAM.

Oh yeah, well I've got some metal stuff, and it's inside this plastic case, and when you run electricity through it it emits a low, irritating whine. Ha! Match that jerkface!

[Dalton]

Update: My computer mysteriously shut itself down somehow during the night. I still haven't figured out why.

Power connection borked itself? Maybe the motherboard overloaded too, but that's an improbability.

This is a 500W PowerMax...I doubt it at this point. I'm thinking that it overheated during the night and shut down automatically.

[Darth Wong]

I never buy bleeding-edge equipment because I'm worried about that sort of thing happening. I always buy one step behind the bleeding edge, so it will be cheap and well-tested by the time I start relying on it.

[Pu-239]

I never buy bleeding-edge equipment because I'm worried about that sort of thing happening. I always buy one step behind the bleeding edge, so it will be cheap and well-tested by the time I start relying on it.

I thought an A64 3.2K wasn't bleeding edge (is it 754 or 939?). Anyways I should quit time oogling at hardware benchmarks and specs since I will never be able to get the hardware until years later , and should get back to programming my game engine.

[Dalton]

It's a 754. Since it and the proc cost me $350 total (and I got a couple other things out of it too...but the Farcry CD is fucked up) I thought it was worth it.

[Shadowhawk]

Oh, Eric, speaking of the Asus, are you using the onboard Ethernet port? Mine was flaking out and I had to disable it and use my old NIC.

Yeah, I'm using the onboard port. Hasn't had a problem.
The only problems I've had are:
1) My new C: drive is a 200GB SATA. XP's installer doesn't have SATA support, so I had to load drivers from a floppy. After an hour of fighting with floppies, I discovered that my floppy drive was bad; had to scavenge one from a computer in the garage. Installed fine after that.
2) My new case and my new PSU (Vantec Stealth 520w) were very nearly incompatible. It just barely fits in the space the Lian-li provides, and it's upside down, making two of its fans almost worthless. Doesn't run hot, though, so I'm not worried.
3) The Timbury nVidia demo runs like utter shit (0-3fps), and the Dawn, Nalu, and Dusk demos crash if I use anything other than 8x AA or AA off. One of these crashes resulted in a BSOD. Almost certainly a driver problem, to be corrected as they mature for the new cards. No problems in any games, though.

You should enable an overheat alarm and a throttle-back for heat problems, rather than a shutdown; at least then you know what the problem is. A random shutdown can be any number of things, and could just be benign as a short brownout your PSU couldn't compensate for (which is why I bought a UPS).

[Dalton]

I'll do that as soon as I figure out how to but I left my computer on overnight with my door open this time and the temperature was around 116 when I got back to it.

Now I have to figure out why it's running 10 degrees hotter than when I first installed it, but I think that's probably because I scavenged some port covers...