StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Okay just an idea I had, post your expirience with technical stuff that do not work as expected.

Hardware that is inusable due to software refusing to install.

Stuff that is just plain broken and so on.

BUT THIS IS NOT A VENTING THREAD! Take that to HoS just warnings about nice stuff that do not work as expected.

PS3 not running old games as promised is a prime candidate.

If this works out it will get a sticky.

I had a D-Link DI-624 that kept dropping connections at random on the wired portion of the network even after several firmware updates.

I replaced it with a Zyxel P-334W which I still have, but I currently use a Linksys WRT54G v4 that I managed to repair.

I've had several DOA Sony optical drives.

My first PC was a Packard Bell 486 that died three months after purchase, and since the local authorized PB service center couldn't fix it due to lack of parts, I got a 'lemon law' refund and bought an IBM Aptiva with the money.

I've got a Lexmark e232 laser printer that works, but will get a paper jam if you look at it funny.
One jam required me to literally take it apart in order to get all of the paper out.
Normally I'd be really pissed, but I paid only $25 for it new in the box.
On the other hand, my old standby HP LJ1200 is several years old, printed about 6000 pages, and has had only 3 jams and 2 mispicks since I bought it back in 2001.

I've been disappointed with Epson inkjets because the print heads easily clog up to the point that no amount of cleaning cycles will fix it, and the heads are built into the printer, not removable like on some Canons, nor part of the ink cartridge, like most HP's.

No more Epsons for me.

Play Station II Slim. It weighs too little. If you push the button on it it will slide backwards. You have to hold the PS with the other hand. Then you can press the button.

My Computer came with a versio of Power DVD. I have yet to find any DVD that it plays.

The VRML UI in Max... I don´t know what to say. It looks the same as the rest but it works completely different. Stuff and shortcuts that works in the rest of Max won´t work in the VRML part and many other annoying things.

The DoomIII Level Editor. You can not create your own shortcuts or change the old ones.

The A-Link RoadRunner 24 ADSL modems are a tossup whether they will work correctly (or at all) when NAT is enabled (default). Bridging them usually solves that issue.

Edi

Never buy cheap SATA/IDE controllers, at first it goes "what a great deal, I get both what I need (SATA) plus a free IDE channel as well for the same price!" and then you get fucked over by the fact that the card was assembled by retarded monkeys. End result: two replacement cards after the first one died within a month, the first replacement lasted all of 3 weeks (symptoms in both cases included stuff being read corrupted and drives occasionally not showing anywhere) and the second one came with that extra pin used on earlier ATA standards but which isn't compatible with 100/133, for no good reason.

It was also probably the funniest conversation that I had with a IT store guy:
Me: That pin there shouldn't be there and its stopping me from using the card.
SG1: Yeah, I see the problem, hmm, lets see what we can do about it. SG2, take a look at this...
SG2: Wow, what retarded idiot made that? Lets call the boss.
SGB - think Sipowitz from NYPD Blues for the looks and demeanor (after hearing a long technical exposition from his employees - you get the vibe that he got into this because someone convinced him IT supplies are a lucrative business and from any inherent knowledge of the field): Let me get some pliers and lets yank that sucker out!
Me: Erm, how bout you just give me back my money and lets call this experiment failed?
...

So another one bites the dust thanks to the "lemon law" as Glocksman put it.

Another caution goes to the ultracheap Bluetooth adapters and their software. The first one I got was from Canyon and it had good software that did syncing perfectly with my mobile, however it died fast. The next one was based on a Blue Soleil chip and software and that thing was horrific. Stay the fuck away! Today I use it with Windows default drivers just so I can avoid the suck (not to mention that they changed the included software three times in their driver package and none of them work). Thankfully Nokia's phone software is excellent so I don't need to rely on the sucktastic Blue soleil software for syncing.

On the cheap SATA controllers, i bought a 4 port SiS 3114 based SATA controller. It turns out that one can only use 2 ports at a given time on that controller, otherwise it has I/O errors going to the drives.

I had a Radeon 9700 Pro with a bad power regulator. It would play games beautifully, for a while, and then it would take out the entire computer.

Then there was the Gage Applied A/D I was trying to integrate into a system on my first real project. The fucking thing just wouldn't work right, so I started looking at its driver header file and noticed that some of its #def values didn't match manual and tech papers I had. Once I edited their header, it worked. To top it off, when a coworker complained to the sales rep, the rep hung up and blacklisted us. Way to support your products, guys!

Steinberg Cubase started restarting my computer after the soundcard it used for mixdowns just broke for no apparent reason, and wouldn't allow me to change to the onboard one. Extremely frustrating.

It didn't just hang or crash, it fully rebooted it, and often it would wait like 5-10 minutes before doing it.

My first computer was awesome for the time and was a sturdy thing for several years. My second (going by mobo/chip upgrade) was a piece of shit that was always breaking. The third (current) is beautiful by comparison, very reliable, hardly ever crashes. My main bit of advice for anyone making a new PC is to spend as much as you can on the motherboard and RAM, it might save you a ton of problems down the line.

Creative soundcards. Does any more need to be said?

Ace Pace wrote:Creative soundcards. Does any more need to be said?

Perhaps Creative anything.

In my expirience creative is bad and expensive, no idea why people still bys their stuff.

Actually, Creative's sounds cards haven't given me any real grief. But the pre-X-Fi drivers are some the shittiest to ever see the light of day (and I'm surprised that they worked as well as they did, for me at any rate).

Arrow wrote:Actually, Creative's sounds cards haven't given me any real grief. But the pre-X-Fi drivers are some the shittiest to ever see the light of day (and I'm surprised that they worked as well as they did, for me at any rate).

Oh, the cards themselves are fine.

The drivers...