Next up on the list:
Everything's pretty much happy right
now. Even though I'd really love to upgrade Big Dawg and Anubis to Athlon
64s w/ATI 9800 Radeon Pros. But Oh
well - everything is finally running like they're supposed to, so I'll just leave
them alone for now. (16 Jan 05)
I was contacted by Popular Mechanics magazine about my custom NASCAR machine Rusty
- they asked about running it for an 'Extreme Case Mods' article in an upcoming
issue. Wish me luck, it's a major magazine wanting to show off my junk to
the world. (3 Jan 05)
I know - I'm a geek.
The latest additions and swaps are (starting with the most current):
16 Jan, 2005
- Been a long time
since anything has given me any trouble. Everything's running great so I'm
going to leave it all alone for now.
I decided to build a new machine out of leftovers to replace the
aging Guard Dawg. I need to get the machine up before I head to my Solaris
class next week, since I'm taking it (along with the rest of my SS7 stuff) down
to Dave so he can have some fun with it.
I also smoked the power supply in Rusty. So I snagged a
new Enermax 270 watt PS from MWave.com. I'm going to open up the power
supply case on that sucker and hopefully get some more cooling action in there.
I've also got a couple of case-mods ongoing. One is a
southwestern-style case with an adobe-colored fleckstone paintjob with a dream
catcher for a window and a Kokopelli cut-out of the front panel - lit with a
blue CCFL and Blue LED fans. The other is a shiny black paintjob with a
shadowy skull window cut-out with a similar skull cut-out air-intake on the
front panel, lit with red LED fans and a red CCFL.
23 September, 2004 -
Unfortunately, after about a
month-and-a-half of running great, the motherboard in the laptop crapped out -
right as I showed up to a class in Austin for two weeks. Apparently too much
abuse from the previous owner had taken its toll. I was able to have a notebook
repair shop repair the machine (since they wouldn't just sell me a new mobo).
It ran $700 all said and done, but I'm still several hundred dollars ahead of
the game considering the machine I have.
16 July, 2004
- Scored a monster deal on a laptop.
One of the guys at work had this
machine and it crapped out on him - it would only run for a few minutes at a
time and not even boot. He mentioned selling it for parts on eBay once he found
out how much a new motherboard was going to cost. I offered to buy it from him,
but he wanted to keep the hard drive because of all of his stuff that he was
sure I'd be able to pull off of it after a format - whatever (this guy claims he
knows a ton about computers... but has yet to prove it). I bought a new,
bigger drive for $60... no biggee.
So, I took it home and started
researching everything I could find on it. I found a support forum on Dell's
site that outlined the symptoms it was having and how to fix it - basically that
the machine has a poorly-designed heat exchanger that needs to remain absolutely
clean to work properly. So, I pulled it apart and cleaned out what seemed like
a half pound of dog hair, dust, and cigarette ashes. Once that was taken care
of it ran great for about 45 minutes - long enough to reload Windows XP Pro.
I also discovered that they had
suspect power supplies that would overdrive the power distribution section on
the motherboard, causing a thermal shutdown. So, I got on eBay and found a new
power supply which seemed to solve the problem - the machine runs like a champ.
24 April, 2004 - OK, so it's been
forever since I updated this thing. But, everything's pretty much happy
for now. I just built a machine for one of my friends at the Auto Hobby
Shop at Goodfellow AFB. I screwed up and ordered the wrong video card, the
ATI 9000 AIW has a DVI output, and he still needs an SVGA. So, I ordered
an MSI TV tuner card instead, and he's in business. So, now I'm stuck with
this ATI card, which I think I'll stuff into StoneAge and put him back under the
TV as a TiVo box. I think StoneAge is going to become the real Living Room
machine, since GuardDawg is old and can't run UT2003 or UT2004 when Dave comes
to visit. But the ol' thing just keeps running and running and
running. It just hangs in there and keeps dishing out MP3s and storage for
me. Hey, as long as it's willing to hang in there - it's got a place under
the TV.
I also received the new motherboard for
Rusty when I got all of Don's parts. It's a BioStar mATX board and should
drop right in and take over where the Gigabyte board left off. The
Gigabyte board did fine, but the place I order most of my junk from (MWave.com)
didn't have one in stock, so I had to find another solution.
11 March, 2004 - Of all things, a
major thunderstorm on the 8th took out Rusty. Since the power cord wasn't
long enough to plug into the 30amp surge protector with the rest of the junk,
it's mobo kinda got fried and died a slow death over the next couple days.
So, I grabbed the ever-so-willing StoneAge and slammed it back under the desk to
substitute as the software router/multi-function server until I can get Rusty
back together.
26 December, 2003 - Dave's here and
GuardDawg can't hang with running UT2003, which is the new game we're all
wanting to play now. So, it's time to put Rusty in it's proper place - on
the shelf above BigDawg as my new software router and multi-function
server. With that done, StoneAge has been moved into the living room under
the TV next to GuardDawg, to take over as the new living room multimedia
machine.
Thanksgiving 2003 - Well, I'm
finally done. Meet Rusty, my new software router/multi-functional server
and first ever completely custom machine... I mean completely custom. That
was my 'secret project' from the last entry that I was trying to keep hidden
from some people I know that think NASCAR is a big waste. After two
different attempts at getting the decals squared away, I finally came upon a
solution - adhesive backed photo paper from Office Depot. It seems as if
the water-slip inkjet decals I tried let too much color bleed through the white
areas, and didn't want to stick after a few weeks anyway.
Click on 'Rusty' on the drag-down menu above under 'My Machines'
to see more about this creation.
31 July, 2003 - Wow,
it's been a long time since I've really done anything to these machines. I
guess if they ain't broke, don't fix 'em. Well, one of them was kinda
broke, and not filling the bill for the wife. Her new machine (referenced
as Fred after this entry) was in a case that was a bit too big for the desk it
was housed in. So I snagged a new smaller case and after determining that
it would indeed fit, I decided to try my hand at case modding. My wife is
into Egyptian Mythology, Unreal Tournament, the Sims, likes Journey (the music
group), and a myriad of other things. I decided the mod theme for her case
would be Egyptian. So I painted it a Fleckstone paint Sandstone color, cut
out the Eye of Horus in the front panel, lit it with some green LEDs, painted
the chassis gold, decorated the exterior with hand-painted (by me) heiroglyphics
and crypt murals, painted the drive device faces gold as well, and switched to
rounded cables on the interior. It's finally done and looks pretty good,
actually.
Click on 'Anubis' on the drag-down menu
above under 'My Machines' to see more about this creation.
No progress on the 'Jeep' theme
case. I'm going to start working on my other project... it's a secret
until I make some definitive progress.... sorry. ;-)
10 February, 2003 - OK,
we're getting into nit-noid things now. I just received a Logitech
Cordless Freedom keyboard and Cordless Mouseman for Big Dawg. I got the
keyboard installed and running great, but I didn't realize that the mouse wasn't
optical. Oh well, I'll stick with the optical Mouseman I'm currently
running. It's optical, plus it has a cool blue LED-lit Logitech logo on
it.
I've also decided to mod my case. I'm not going for anything like a
window or like that, but instead a Jeep Theme paintjob... or rather, My Jeep
theme paintjob. It'll be pretty cool I hope. I got the idea from a
friend on The Tech Zone who is making a case for his girlfriend, and she owns a
Jeep. He asked what he could do to his case to make it look like a
Jeep. So I stated telling him all the cool things that are bolted onto
Jeeps (footman loops, hood catches, stone-guards, etc...) and started thinking
about my machine.
I'll post pics in progress and after it's done.
12 January, 2003 - Man, it's been a
long time since I've done anything to this page.
Well, the latest is I just installed an Athlon XP2100+ (Palomino) in Big Dawg
and closed off all of the extra factory vents in the case. This leaves me
with a somewhat quieter machine, as well as the air flow is being directed from
the exact area I want it to come from - the front of the case where it's
cool. The open vents on the back of the case were allowing warm air that's
just been exhausted from both Big Dawg and Stoneage to recirculate back into the
machine, keeping it even warmer. By doing this, it dropped the case temp
from 100 degrees, down to 86 degrees, and the CPU temp from 128 degrees, down to
118 degrees. This is big because before I did this, the CPU temp of the
new Athlon shot up to 133 before the first round of vent clogging.
I also installed an Athon XP1800+ (Thoroughbred) in Fred because my pal Jim
had ordered it for his Soyo Dragon+ motherboard, but it didn't work on his mobo.
The Soyo Dragon+ (K7V - KT233a chipset) would not support the T-bred processor
core. So we did some research and found that the Dragon would handle up to
an XP2100+, but it had to be a Palomino. So I ordered one from Accubyte.com,
and they called me back with a question on my order. They wanted me to be
aware that I was only ordering a processor, and no heat sink or fan. Well,
Duh - I'm upgrading into an existing HSF set-up... And then when I asked
the guy if this processor was going to be a Palomino or Thoroughbred, the guy
answered, "Umm, well, it's an XP2100+," I asked him again,
because my Soyo board would not support a T-bred, and if he knew the
difference... he said he did not. So I cancelled the order since I
couldn't ship it back if it was the wrong one. Then I got online with The
Tech Zone and asked some questions on the forums. A friend had already
posted the specs and differences between the Palomino and T-bred, so armed with
that info, I went looking. I found a good site and ordered 2 of them from NewEgg.com
- I called them a few days after the order was placed and asked if they were
indeed Palominos and not being substituted with T-breds, and the lady (who
sounded confident and knowledgeable) answered that they were indeed Palominos,
and they were on their way - and showed up within a week. After I got it,
I cleaned the regular old white birdshit thermal compound off my Dragon Orb HSF
and smeared on some Arctic Silver 3, slapped one of the 2100+'s in my machine,
and fired it up. After it posted, I had to crank up the front side bus (FSB)
speed from 100 MHz to 133MHz to get it to read the processor as an Athlon 2100+,
as opposed to the 1500+ through the 100 MHz FSB. I called Jim the next day
and swapped processors with him. He be a happy man too.
So far, so good - Jim's machine is running well, Big Dawg's humming right
along, and Fred's even getting those Sims from harddrive to desktop in a much
quicker manner as well.
Still no progress on getting the DNS happy so that the domain names are
working properly. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't - this is
really pissing me off.
21 December 2002 -
OK, this server crap is really hacking me off. All the permissions and
policies are screwed beyond belief. Looks like I'll just revert them all
back to default and work on this FTP problem. It looks like someone
fingered my FTP server and helped themselves to some of my drive space and used
me as a File Server for Kazaa or some other music sharing service. Oh
well, at least the uploaded some good music. But 'anonymous logins' is
shut off for good now. Now I just need to figure out how to share the
folders and keep everybody except the owners and administrator out of them.
7 December 2002 -
Alright, I can't figure out how to get this FTP stuff running the way it was
before Active Directory hosed all my settings. ARGH!!! I guess I'm finally
going to have to do something I really didn't want to do in the first place: run
the FTP server in 'Allow Anonymous Logins' mode. It wouldn't be so bad,
except that I've got a couple of friends depending on my to host their stuff on
the forums. Oh well - hope this works for now.
29 November 2002 -
Man, I think I messed the whole server thing up. I did a DCPROMO to
Stoneage in hopes of getting Windows to automatically configure the DNS server,
and when it loaded Active Directory, if FUBAR'd all my original settings for the
various folders, shares and permissions for the different user accounts and
Group Policies. And to top it all off, my Win2K Adv Server textbook is in
San Antonio with Dave while he works out his issues. ARGH!!! This
sucks, and it means I'll have to figure out how this stuff all works flying
blind. Of course my class notes won't help either since it's all in the
textbook... Geez.
23 November 2002 - I
tried to get the domain names "concho4wheelers.com" and
"mister4x4.net" secured and running, although it appears that the
company I'm going through is a little less than user friendly. Looks like
I need to load a DNS server on Stoneage and get this thing running on my end.
16 November 2002 - I
got my second machine (Lewis's old Cyrix 200+) back from my Mom several months
ago and finally decided to place it on the network. To do that, I used the
existing CAT-5 that was running from the cabinet that Guard Dawg lives in back
to the old computer room, and the old 4-port hub, which has been in the closet
since I got the switch. I hung the hub off Guard Dawg's second NIC, and
plugged in one of the lines to 'Old Dawg,' which is what we're calling the
Cyrix. I've got it running on Windows ME for now, but I'm planning on
loading and running Red Hat Linux 7.0 just for fun and to make the Cyrix
actually have some juice, compared to the struggle it had with Windows-based
OS's. It's only a 200 after all. Linux makes older, less speedy
hardware run more efficiently.
13 July 2002 - Finally
got sick of having the new machine on top of my desk along with another monitor,
so I snagged a Belkin 2-port KVM switch and put Stoneage on the floor next to
Big Dawg, for lack of better places. When I did this, however, it shot the
case temperature of Big Dawg up from 86 degrees, to over 118 - which of course
ran the processer temp up a bit as well! It was so bad that I had to take
a 180mm AC fan from one of the old mainframes I used to work on, open up
BIg Dawg's case and put it in the open slots for now. I don't like this
one bit.
I got smart and installed an 80mm fan into the front
duct of Big Dawg to pull some air from the front - that helped immensely.
OK - we can breathe again - for now.
15 June 2002 - I
finally got pissed at Guard Dawg being flaky under Win2K Adv Server. So I
replaced it with a completely new machine along with a fresh installation of
Win2K Adv Server on it. Guard Dawg has been relegated to playing and
storing MP3s, videos, and other multimedia stuff for playback on the stereo and
through the home theater system. I threw the old Fred in there for a few
weeks, but then someone wanted an older machine for the Internet and asked what
I was doing with Fred... it got sold shortly after.
The new machine is called Stoneage. It's an AMD
1300MHz Duron on an ASUS A7V233B mobo. It's got a 40GB HDD and an ATI 3D
Rage II video card. I also jammed a 3-COM Etherfast III 10/100 Mbis NIC
into it and along with its onboard 10/100 NIC, it'll move Internet bits through
WinRoute 4.1 firewall & software router application. I stuck this
machine on the desk next to the laptop for the time being with its own
monitor.
25 May, 2002 - ARGH!!! IIS Webserver Hell is the accurate
description of my junk. No matter what I tried with Guard Dawg's load of
Win2K Adv. Server, it won't run IIS and Service Pack 2 even blows up when I try
and install it. I think rather than blow it all up and start clean, I may
take the new machine (the wife's old one) and stuff another NIC into it and call
it the router now. I'll need the week to think on it though - I'm pissed.
At least it runs fine in Win2K Pro, so it's not like I need to scramble to
get a production box back online or anything. That's a plus.
24 May, 2002 - I'm so sick of these server griefs. My old junk
is just such crap that I need to flush everything out and start over. I
finally got everything back the way it was with Guard Dawg running as
router/firewall/WWW & FTP server - but it's on Win2K Pro...which only allows
10 connections at a time. Which sucks. Hopefully, I have some luck
configuring Win2K Advanced Server tomorrow finally.
22 May, 2002 - Alright - I got this urge to build a dedicated server
to take some of the heat off of Guard Dawg. So far so good. I got
Win2K Advanced Server loaded up on the wife's old machine and it seems to love
it just fine. IIS is running like a champ and all the services are
plugging along. Seems like the only problems I have now are with WinRoute
Pro. I can't see anything from my side of the firewall, oh well - try it
at work and see what happens.
18 May, 2002 - Got a wild hair and decided to load Windows XP on Big
Dawg....just because. Not too bad so far, and after I found the classic
mode, I like it even better now. I'll still use Win2K more often I'm sure,
but I can't gripe too much about XP now. Seems to run fine and the big
performance gain I saw was with Internet Explorer - this stuff is coming up
scorching fast now. Hmmmm....jury's still out.
11 May, 2002 - Turns out that the new system doesn't much care for The
Sims. Can't say I blame it really....but oh well. Jumped on The Sims
main site and read through tons of FAQs and found out that if I run into the
exact problems I'm having, to run it in Windowed mode...which - so far...so
good. Wait. Now, it's audio is stuttering...which means that the
game ain't too happy. Oh well. Seems like a reboot frees it up -
small price to pay.
I got the ASUS V7100 GeForce 2 dumped into Big Dawg today and decided to
flush out Windows 98 and Win2k Altogether. Had it back up with WinME and
Win2k in about 3 hours...I am getting too good at this stuff. Everything's
happy and Unreal Tournament's running like a champ. I'm going to have to
reload all the racing games that Dave and I installed over Christmas, but oh
well. I think they'll like ME better than Win98SE anyway.
28 April, 2002 - OK, life finally got good again. I finally got
the nerve to flash the BIOS on the MSI Monster Board. And it broke
everything loose finally. I'm always a little leery of flashing the BIOS
on a brand-new mobo, but I guess it's more common-place now. Hopefully, there won't be any major problems. The beast
is up and running on WinME and everything seems good. Unreal Tournament is
absolutely gorgeous. Serious Sam 2 is also looking absolutely awesome, but The
Sims is having some minor problems. Mostly install grief - seems like the
new Vacation expansion pack is buggy. Wait and see and do some more
digging to find out what's up with that.
All I know is that I made that machine happy finally. I ROCK!!
20 April, 2002 - The new RAM showed up and - nothing. Still all
sorts of crap problems. Man this is pissing me off. More research I
guess.
16 April, 2002 - OK - found out from some very reputable sources (my
friends at the TTZ Forums - thanks guys) that the MSI boards need 2 RAM sticks
(which I only bought 1) and it seems to like the better memory...Kingston ain't
it. So I just ordered 2 256 MB sticks of CAS-2 Crucial PC-2100 DDR - so she'll have 512
MB total in her machine. And I'll stuff the other Kingston 256 into Big Dawg
since it seems to like Kingston just fine. Also found out that there are a
couple of new BIOS revisions already...worth looking into.
14 April, 2002 - What the Hell have I done?! This MSI board is
junk! Windows ME loads up and locks before I get a desktop, or sometimes
just after I get the desktop. Win2K is the same. What kind of crap
is this? I tried the included drivers and nothing is working right.
ARGH!!! Oh well - time to do some research before I throw this Monster
Board in the closet for awhile to think about what it's done to me.
6 April, 2002 - OK - life is good. I just received all the goodies to
get the wife's machine running like a scalded dawg. Not a bad deal either
- just shy of $500 for a 1GHz Duron, MSI K7N420 Pro nForce mobo, 256 MB DDR, a
new mid-tower case, FDD, and a GeForce 2 for Big Dawg since the Voodoo3 will get
its lunch eaten by the on-board GeForce 2 on the MSI. This oughta be good.
I'm going to an A+ certification course next week, so she'll just hafta wait til
I get back.
Not much new happened before this - so I'm not blowing this off or anything.
5 January, 2002 - Mom's machine is finally in place, but she hasn't gotten the whole cable-modem thing worked out yet. For now, she's still using a dial-up connection to West Central Net. The machine is working like a champ, and hopefully she'll resist the urge to let Bonzi-Buddy back on to her machine.
The machine absolutely screamed the whole time my pal Dave was here during New Years. We were running some Unreal Tournament with
the wife and having a ball. Then Dave and I got bored with that and loaded up all the Need For Speed games we could get to run. We were running Porsche Unleashed, then NFS Hot Pursuit, then finally NFS High Stakes. It took a lot of patching and downloads to get the games to run on both machines (only 1 CD per game - I cheat...), but we had a blast. Nothing like running head-to-head against somebody driving through town with the cops hot on your tail.
Tried to get online with Guard Dawg's UT server, and it worked...kinda. Her 56.6 modem connection had so much lag that the 'bots were lightin' me up. Still working on that cable modem...
16 December, 2001 - OK - Mom's machine is finally together. I wound up pulling the FIC VA-503+ mobo out of Big Dawg along with its 256MB SDRAM, 8GB HDD, and AMD K6-2/500 processor. In the process of putting her machine together, I had to snag her old machine and pull a couple of goodies out of it. I grabbed her ATI 8MB video card, 56.6K Modem, and Crystal Audio Crystalizer sound card. Add that to the SMC ISA 10/100 NIC and APAC Voodoo 2 3DFX Graphics Accelerator, and she's got a hot little machine for the internet, playing solitaire, and some Unreal Tournament. I've convinced her to check into a cable modem, so hopefully she'll have the internet connection to support online gaming. Plus, they'll give her a new E-mail account and she'll quit using my West Central Net Dial-Up connection (please don't read that part if you work at West Central Net...).
I'm formatting her hard drive and installing Windows 98SE as I type this out. I also cranked up WinAmp on Big Dawg and Holy Cow! It's on-board sound system absolutely Rocks! It's system plus the cool mixer software that comes with it are incredible. I've got it running through a set of Sony MDR-15 headphones (which are the absolute best ultra-lite style headphones you can get...) and the Dragon's on-board sound system sounds a ton better than even the Creative Labs AWE-64 Gold sound card that I had before. Geez - I guess I've really fallen behind the power curve on technology. Come to think of it, it seemed to make those big-ass Altec's sound better as well. Crazy - what a good deal this
has been - now if Mom is happy with her machine, then we'll be all set.
15 December, 2001 - Alright, so the stuff showed up sometime last week. I haven't had a chance to dig into the new gear. I did manage to read up on the mobo and get on a couple of tech sites to get the goods on what to expect from the install and how this sucker's gonna make my machine run. So far, so good.
I actually took tonight off from work since I had already racked up 81.5 hours for the week, even though my boss can't do math and wants all this "advanced notification" crap...whatever. Since I took tonight off, I can finally tear into the new junk and make Big Dawg scream. So I take the whole thing apart and yank the FIC mobo along with all it's on-boards, then take stock in what's left. Heck - it all stays - awesome! Then I pull the mobo backing plate and mount the Dragon. Cool - perfect fit. This time around, I decided to take the time and get all the cables tucked and zip-tied to make sure the airflow is not an issue. After about 3 hours of this, I came up with some decent results, and I had to relocate the CD-ROMs and the FrontX box - now the top 2 bays are empty (maybe it's time for a bay-bus or something, eh?).
3 hours later, I'm done installing and cable-dressing. Time to fire it up - nothing. The next 45 minutes are spent banging my head against the wall when nothing I try seems to work. Finally, it's time to start pulling stuff - which means cutting loose all my cool cable ties - figures. I get a few cables taken loose and decide to clear the CMOS, and it all comes up. I shut it back down and reassemble everything and we're still good. After about an hour of reading the book and playing with BIOS settings to try out different things, I decide to button up the case and start loading Win2K back on - Big Dawg is Back!!!
Now comes the tough part of figuring out what to do with all this new hard drive space - yeah, I'm sure I'll get through it. Well, about the only thing left is to copy stuff from the 'D' drive and yank it out for Mom's new system - part of the deal was that I give her a bigger hard drive since she bought me a 40GB HDD. I'm giving her the 8GB drive out of Big Dawg - which will be huge compared to her current 2.1GB. Once that's done, it'll be time to put her machine together and get it back online.
13 December, 2001 - Whatta Pain in the Ass! I got the domain name registered and set up for both 'mr4x4.net' and 'concho4wheelers.org' and they're both set up for my machine - which rocks! The only problem is that I can only run one "default" website on that IP address. So I have to choose. Of course, this is all running through Win2K IIS, so if there's a way to be a PITA then it will happen here.
Screw this whole 'choosing one or the other' thing. I just genned up a page to allow navigation to both sites for the meantime - I finally got my site set up the way I like it and I also don't want to let the guys in the club down either. I'll figure this crap out, and when I do, look for a major write up on it in this journal. Check it out here.
11 December, 2001 - I went to the Concho 4 Wheelers club meeting tonight and made them an offer - if they pay for my membership fees, I will straighten out all of the website hassle that I created 2 years ago and pay for the name "www.concho4wheelers.org" They liked the idea and I'll get it all squared away with Percy tomorrow.
2 December, 2001 - So here I am ordering the goods to make this whole computer deal happen. Whatta riot - TCWO has the junk, including a new case for Mom along with a 52X CD-ROM and floppy (her junk is my old junk, and trust me when I say it's pretty dang old.). A Soyo K7V Dragon Plus mobo, 256 Kingston DDR RAM, 1GB Duron, Maxtor 40GB HDD, a Dragon Orb 1 HSF and a new Microsoft Natural keyboard (I need a PS2 kybd now...) for me, and a nice mid-tower ATX case w/front USB, that 52X CD-ROM and a new floppy for Mom. $506 - not bad. Hope it gets here soon.
5 November, 2001 - Get this - I get back from DC and I find out that Mom has been hangin' out here on the weekends playing Unreal Tournament with my wife and Dave. Of course, she got hooked and was using Big Dawg during this time, so now she's Jonesing for a new machine. We talked about it for a bit, and it all boils down to the fact that she wants her machine to be able to get online with us to play some UT now and then. I can't blame her - it's an awesome game.
So we're talking, and I let her know what computers run these days and that a new hot-rod machine to run UT is going to cost her somewhere around $700-800. Then I get an idea - if she is willing to upgrade Big Dawg, it would probably run a whole lot less - neighborhood of $500 or so. She agrees and I start working out the figures and which equipment we're going to buy. My wife calls me a turd for taking advantage of my Mom like that. Hey, I'm making this work out for everybody...OK - I feel just a little bad (--><-- about that much...)
20 October, 2001 - OK - I've forgotten about putting stuff down on this page for quite awhile now. I'm now in Washington DC supporting my company's efforts to support the recovery from the Sept 11th attacks. Let me just say that DC Rocks! I love it here and things are going well. I never thought that DC would be so cool. Of course, I'm just visiting and not actually living here...so it might suck after awhile.
Anyway, I went to CompUSA today and snagged a 64Meg RAM Module for LapDawg. The machine is a trooper and doing everything I need it to do, but 32Meg just isn't enough. It was somewhere around $90 for the RAM Module, but well worth it. LapDawg sits up and takes care of bidness now. I can run WinAmp, fire up a Word Document and get online at the same time without the tunes being interrupted. This is a good thing considering I'm rewriting my resume since we found out that BTG lost the contract. I ain't happy about it, but I guess I'll need a job when I get back there.
Click here to check out the pics I've been taking while in DC - the resolution sucks because the ol' Kodak DC-40 is showing her age. One of these days I'll get a new digital camera, but until then - crappy resolution is the status quo.
5 May, 2001 - Holy Cow! It's been forever since I've put anything on this page. But, the systems ae hangin' in there and not much has been done to them, except minor tweaks and such. I reloaded Win98 SE onto Fred today, as the old copy of Win98 was geekin' away and not working right. I also removed Sygate Server (ICS Software) from Guard Dawg in favor of WinRoute Pro 4.1. Installing WinRoute also allowed me to remove the Sygate Client program from the others. WinRoute's firewall is giving us problems advertising our UT server though, so some more tweakin' is in the future. I did learn, however, how to log into the UT server when it's running - and add more 'bots on the fly...which was Very Cool on the bigger maps when more targets are necessary.
Sometime in Early April, 2001 - My buddy Scott E-mailed me this cool link to Speedway PC which has a really cool computer in an interesting case. My wife actually thinks it's a neat idea and has considered buying one for me. What would gain my interest enough to actually make me consider buying a PC, rather than building my own? Would you believe this computer is in the shape of a Winston Cup Race Car? The one I'm looking at is the #2 Miller Light Ford Taurus (Duh - Rusty fan here...). It's a lot of money for a 'basic' computer by today's standards, but even then - it's a substantial upgrade from what I'm using right now. Gotta think hard about this one - thanks, Scott.
10 March, 2001 - I finally rebuilt this page into something I'm getting closer to being proud of. Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day, nor was it rebuilt as quickly when destroyed...so the Links pages are down for now. But there's JAVA on these pages!!! Plus a whole set of new and original graphics.
I also tackled some JAVA for the main page as well. The navigation buttons were JAVA from the last time, but they were download hogs for some reason...these seem to work much better.
13 February, 2001 - Bummer of Bummers. Imagine my surprise to find out that my drawing tablet has no Win2K drivers available at this time. They're working on some Beta drivers at Summagraphics, but nothing substantial. Figures, I finally get around to actually drawing a picture with this tablet I got last year, and it won't work. I've got a work-around for now, which is booting into Win 98SE...which is also how I have to run to play Unreal Tournament and the other games for now, and burn CDs - apparently, my version of Adaptec Easy CD Creator doesn't work through Win2K, either. This is starting to suck.
28 January, 2001 - This was the day I decided to install Windows 2000 Professional on Big Dawg. It worked like a champ and seems pretty happy despite some grievances I've heard about. The big thing is that there's not much support for games. Hopefully, the games I like to play will be supported after I install Service Pack 1 and DirectX 8. For now, everything's running well.
I finally got some results by Verizon with my ADSL outage. Only after being batted around like a beach ball for 2.5 weeks. Whatta pisser! Those guys suck. The thing finally came up after their on-call DSL tech called me earlier to let me know that he wouldn't be coming out until late to 'install' my ADSL. What's wrong with that statement? (It's already installed and has been working for 3 months) They don't communicate worth a crap within that company. After I informed him that it was a troubleshooting effort, he called the local Telephone switching center - who quickly informed him that the problems were on my end...there was nothing wrong with their stuff. He called me back and told me they'd send a DSL tech out on Monday, but no more than 5 minutes after he hung up - the line came back on. Coincidence? I think not. Sounds like the bonehead in the switching center got off his Redneck fat-ass and reset my circuit. Tech Controllers suck - I went through the same crap in the Air Force with those turds.
27 January, 2001 - After all of this B.S. from Verizon, the DSL tech from West Central Net was finally able to make it out here to troubleshoot the DSL modem and lines. As we suspected, there was no problem with my gear, as he had brought a brand-new DSL Modem and his laptop with Win2K loaded on it (which had both worked in the office not 15 minutes ago). There was no connectivity, and he called Verizon Tech Support - who treated him like and idiot as well (surprise!), but he finally got them to put in a work order to have the lines checked. Tomorrow, hopefully...
23 January, 2001 - Finally, one of Verizon's Tech Support people with a clue. The lady told me that since they were not my ISP, that they could not give me more support than over-the-phone troubleshooting. I wish I would've known that before I got frustrated talking to 4 techs and getting treated like an idiot by each one of them...one even called me back with some advice on how to take my network card out and how to put a new one in. I'm so pissed at those boneheads that I'm not even going to dignify them with more than this statement. I'm calling West Central Net back and see what happens.
11 January, 2001 - My ADSL crapped out. It's been down for awhile now with no estimated time back up. This entry is being made offline, of course. My local ISP tried to help me, but my stuff is configured properly. He suggested I call Verizon's Tech Support. So I did, and the tech support at Verizon sucks. They keep telling me that the problem is at my end and that my equipment is defective. The sad thing is - their Technical Support 'Guru' has never heard of any of my equipment - which is not brand-new or anything, and was surprised to hear that I had configured my machine to work like this. Obviously, a newbie who was reading from a script. Oh well - time to call the ISP again.
6 January, 2001 - Finally got around to stuffing all the goodies from Christmas into the machines. The monster hard drive (20.1 GB Maxtor) went into Guard Dawg, and the Voodoo3 3000 went into Big Dawg. All is well, except that the old-school desktop case that Guard Dawg lives in is maxxed out for devices now. Hopefully, we'll keep it real for awhile and not plan on stuffing anything else into it. About the only change in hardware on the horizon for it would be another monster hard drive, but it would have to replace the small one - there is no more room in that sucker.
Big Dawg's loving the Voodoo3 3000. The games seem to run a bit quicker than with the Voodoo2 - Figure the Odds. One of these days, I'll get off my butt and refresh this page - it's gotten stale and kinda lame.
25 December, 2000 - Christmas Day! My wife was so thoughtful this year and grabbed me yet even more computer goodies. She got me a Voodoo 3 3000 and a Logitech Optical Mouseman Wheel mouse for the Big Dawg, and a 20.1 GB Maxtor Hard Drive for the Guard Dawg. Now, I can have better 3D response for the games, a snappier mouse that won't have a bunch of crud gathering in the mouseball cradle, and I'll now be able to pull all of the MP3's off the Big Dawg and put them on Guard Dawg - this will be cool since Guard Dawg is connected to the stereo, and I won't have to go out to the network to play some tunes anymore.
I've been tossing around the idea of building yet even another machine (Gasp!) The whole idea behind this new machine would be to act strictly as a multimedia/file/print server. The reasoning behind this new need is that I've finally given up on getting the CD-R to be happy with a different controller card (it's SCSI and has an ISA controller card...which had proven to be slower than watching grass grow - and turns out more 'coasters' than properly burned CDs). Since the CD-R is still 'working' with the ISA card, I can burn CD's once again, but at the expense of computer time. I have to burn at 2x or else I'll wind up with a 'coaster,' which takes over 30 minutes for a full CD. While I wait for the CD to finish, I have to pretty much find something else to do - which sucks. I'm playing on my computer and want to be able to use it while I'm there after all. So, out comes the idea of the new machine.
The only snag is that I'm sure my wife will kill me for even having the thought.
23 November, 2000 - Dave comes up from San Antonio with a mega-cool present: a Voodoo 3 3500. It's got a nifty T.V. output module, of which we installed and hooked the Guard Dawg to the living room TV. It didn't help the resolution problem too much, because the TV's resolution isn't the greatest. What this really means is that the Windows desktop screen is still barely useable, but the 3D output for the games is awesome! We'll live with it for now - happily, I might add.
10 November, 2000 - I've finally gotten all the pieces and parts together to begin building and installing the new machine for the living room. So far, I've got a TYAN S1590S motherboard (the one that croaked way down the page in the "A Few Months Back" section), 64 MB PC-66 SDRAM, 6.4 Maxtor HDD, 32x A-Open CD-ROM, 30x A-Boss CD-ROM, ATI 3D Expression + PC-to-TV card, Linksys 10/100Mbis PCI NIC, 3-Com 10/100Mbis ISA NIC, and a generic sound card. The TYAN board's Hard Drive Controller was no longer working (which is why I yanked it out of Fred) so I tried some more troubleshooting on it. As a last resort, I flashed the BIOS - ba-da-bing, ba-da-bang...that boy is working! So, with the hardware happily working along, I built the machine and spray painted the case - it looks like a stereo component now - slick.
The machine went together "Like Buttah!" To tie it all together and get the rest of the LAN up on ADSL, I snagged a copy of SyGate NetManager and installed the server on the new Guard Dawg. I then installed the client portion on all of the other machines and we are now happily surfing without the cable modem.
My only grief with the setup is that the resolution of the Windows desktop kind of sucks - even at 640x480. You can barely read the typeset on the screen. All those cool video snippits all my friends have been sending me look great though. Oh well, maybe it's just the ATI video card's characteristics - it's a couple years old after all.
Sometime in October, 2000 - I got tired of the lagging speeds of the cable modem. Everybody and their dog in the neighborhood now has a cable modem. Which is cool...don't get me wrong, but they just aren't offering the speeds and bandwidth around here to support such a load. So, since I'm paying for 768Kbps download/128Kbps upload, and getting something like an average of 160-220 or so, I figured it's time to check into ADSL.
Got the word from Verizon (the guys who took over GTE Southwest) and we're good for the Platinum Access package...which sucks because the bankbook says we can only afford the Bronze package. Oh well - it's all good.
After some major research into the finer and lesser knowns about DSL, I figured out that I'll need some kind of hardware switch/firewall for the always-on connection. Plus, I'm only getting one static IP address, so I'll need the facilities to provide Internet Connection Sharing...and find a way to do it without bogging down one of the 'main' machines. The solution: build another machine and turn it into a NAT box (Network Address
Translation).
The NAT box is basically a Proxy Server, except that there is a lot less overhead on the processor of the machine that a standard proxy server demands. Now, there are some hardware options out there - devices that act as both dedicated hardware switch and firewall. But, as I've read so far, they don't easily allow online gaming from the 'server' option. We like to run multiplayer Unreal Tournament servers when we're online, but the hardware boxes won't allow it. Plus, we can always set the new machine up as a 'dedicated UT server' when we play on it, use the extra drive space as a LAN resource, and hook the new machine up through the stereo in the living room to crank up the MP3's I've been collecting from Napster. So, building this new machine would seem to be the best solution for our needs. Wish me luck pitching my idea to the wife.
18 August, 2000 - Today I snagged a Panansonic KX-P4420 Laser Printer from a guy in the Thrifty Nickel for $40. So I grabbed a 25' printer cable and another Slot fan for the Big Dawg. It's not the greatest laser printer out there (it's only an HP-IIC class), but Hey - for only $40...
During this past week, I've been reading a lot about the Voodoo Banshee and some of its quirks and known problems. The big ones are: Heat, and installation after having a Voodoo2 card. The heat issue will be solved with the slot fan - no biggee. Putting a Banshee in after a Voodoo2 has been there, will involve another Windows reload. Seems that the Banshee Direct 3D drivers are not compatible with the Voodoo2 drivers, so when the system sees D3D drivers, it doesn't notice the difference in the cards, and causes the Banshee to crash with the old Voodoo2 drivers. Bummer... just when I got this thing the way I like it. Guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend. Oh well.
13 August, 2000 - I've had the Big Dawg running like a champ for a couple of weeks now, but I still haven't had much time to use the tablet yet - figures. Oh well, I'm now on a mission to trim the fat on this website and refresh the pages a bit for a new, more efficient look. Plus, I got a taste of how cool writing web pages at work is last week - and I like it. I'm going use the re-vamp as practice and possibly even portfolio material, so maybe I can get in on the whole professional web page developer thing on a more permanent basis sometime in the future. Wish me luck.
31 July, 2000 - I plugged the tablet back into the Big Dawg and still no go. Since I finally got my port add-on card from FOX computers as well as a new 50X CD-ROM for Fred, the wife's machine (which had just crapped out- BTW) I decided at this point to pull the cover and start swappin' equipment. The TekRam SCSI card had caused the system to not work properly all week, so out it came and back in with the Adaptec ISA SCSI card for the CD-R (the only bummer of the whole deal). Since I now had 2 free PCI slots from the installation of the AGP Voodoo Banshee card (in favor of the ATI 2D VGA card and APAC Voodoo2 Accelerator), I could re-install the Linksys PCI NIC and keep the bandwidth flowing. You really won't believe the difference between the ISA and PCI bus until you go from PCI back to ISA - and I won't recommend it.
Anyway, the AGP card is in, the port card is in, the PCI NIC is back in, and the ISA SCSI card is back in as well - Oh, and my system felt jealous of Fred's new CD-ROM, so the A-Boss 40X crapped out in mine - so I snagged a new 50X as well for the Big Dawg...time to fire it up and reload appropriate drivers - Keep 'em crossed
Well, either I am getting good at this stuff, or lucky...my machine is WAY happier now. The comm ports are working fine through the new card, the AGP video is awesome, and the system seems to run a bit faster as well. And most importantly, the tablet is finally working on the Big Dawg. With some updated drivers, and some minor reinstallation of some of the 'orphans' I just created by blowing out Windows, I should have the machine back to 'normal' soon.
29 July, 2000 - I got the tablet running on the laptop finally...it rocks! But, it's not the way I wanted it to work - not on the laptop anyway - so I'll keep working on the Big
Dawg.
22 - 27 July, 2000 - I received the tablet sometime last week, but took my time getting around to setting it up. The bummer was that my serial ports on the Big Dawg weren't working - which is where the tablet plugs in (figures). Well, if you read about some of the problems I encountered below with the old EDO RAM sticks, you'll know that it was just a matter of time before I slick the hard drive and reload Windows anyway...so I did.
The good news is that the system ran a bit faster. The bad news is that now, not only do the serial ports still not work, but the IDE controllers are showing up with yellow exclamation points through the Device Manager. The weird thing is that the Hard Drives have no hassle being accessed or anything, but the IDE CD-ROM is toast. SO! I tweaked and adjusted, and nada. Then I went and got all of the latest drivers for the FIC VA-503+ motherboard and latest VIA chipset patches and drivers - and nope - nothing. Hmmm...time to back up and think.
While I was thinking, my friend Al at work (who has forgotten more about computers than I'll EVER know) suggested I get a serial add-on card, since his serial ports crapped on him on a similar board. Good idea. Meanwhile, another friend sold me the Voodoo Banshee AGP card, which I promptly installed when I got home that day - went in like butter and is running like a champ - thanks Jerry. I had maxxed out my slots and when I swapped in the TekRam PCI SCSI card in place of my ISA SCSI card, I had to juggle some stuff around - which meant the PCI NIC came out and an ISA NIC went in. Yuck. Just the thought of 'dumbing down' my system like that (PCI to ISA NIC), makes me want to smack myself - but I won't. The AGP freed up 2 PCI slots, since I had both a VGA and 3D accelerator add-on card taking up 2 PCI slots. Now I have a free PCI and ISA slot for that add-on port card, so I don't care if it's ISA or PCI.
During the rest of the week, Ken at Hard Drive Cafe (whatta shit-head) promised me that he had a serial add-on card and it would be there when I returned to the store - 3 times. The third time I went there, one of the other technicians told me that they had been out of stock for quite awhile and didn't even have any used ones. Like I said, Ken's a shit-head. So I went to FOX Computers - who fixed me up with an awesome multi-port controller card for $15 - plus a 50X CD-ROM for Fred. That's FOX Computers on Sherwood Way in San Angelo, Texas. Look for a link to them when I find out if they have one.
So I'm not wanting to pick up the tower and install another card just yet, so I'm going to hook this sucker up to the laptop and see what happens.
July 5th or 6th - I was online browsing through the sites checking out the prices on Wacom digital tablets. They're still too high at over $420. So, I decided to check out these other tablets called Summasketch III (what the Hell is a 'Summasketch,' anyway?) Well, I found out that on paper, the Summasketch III is the equivalent of the Wacom, just not nearly as pricey...something like $240 cheaper. I told my wife about it when she asked why I was so surprised at what I saw. She told me that as long as I draw her a picture, then I could just go ahead and get one. Hey! You don't have to tell me twice. I ordered it from ProVantage in Ohio - for $209 plus 9 bucks for shipping...whata bummer...<< evil grin >>
A week before 4th of July Weekend - We've gotten into the online Unreal Tournament pretty heavily, in fact, Dave hooks up with us more than just occasionally - which Rocks! Any rate, the significance here is that the cable modem took a dump on us for the whole weekend, and the people that are running Cox Communications Tech Support in Tyler, Texas are a bunch of morons. Well, at least the guy I talked to on Saturday was. He was telling me that the problem had to do with my modem and/or computer - which was crap, since all I did was go to sleep, wake up and it was dead. So it was down all weekend, and miraculously, Monday morning it came back up when the person who recognized the outage when he got to the office, reset the DSLAM and cleared the line. Oh well, most Tech Support goons are given a script of canned responses to throw at you until they run out - then the local technicians are called out to come tell you what idiots the telephone Tech Support guys are.
Anyway, the only machine around here with a telephone modem in it is the laptop. Well, we already determined that the laptop can't hang with the 3DFX requirements of Unreal Tournament, but we needed our deathmatching fix. So I got this wild idea to fire it up as a dedicated server, using the Dial-Up Adapter and ISP though West Central Net. We then got on it locally across the LAN, and Dave dialed up on his end and connected across the 'Net. It worked - for the most part. There were some issues regarding connectivity, local processing power, and memory, but we were pretty much able to pull it off.
Once the cable modem was re-established, we tried again. It seemed to not have as many problems this time, so I'm guessing the weenie 56.6K modem and who-knows-how-fast-you-really-get connection just couldn't support us.
A week or so into June - Dave comes to town, and we want to play some Unreal Tournament - but not enough machines. I get this wild idea to fire up the laptop, but the refresh on the LCD just can't hang. So, off to the local computer rip-off outlet (Hard Drive Cafe) for some parts. I've got a whole bunch of leftovers (again) and we klooged another position together for some 3-way deathmatching. It worked for a sort, but that crappy old leftover monitor I had went dark, so Dave was playing like it was night-ops. But, He got to take home most of the leftovers and upgrade his machine - a small price to pay.
Memorial Day Weekend - Guess what was waiting on me when I got home? 2 AMD K6/2-500 processors, 2 64 MB DIMMS, a TekRam PCI SCSI Adapter, and the 8.4 GB HDD. This stuff got tossed into the respective machines (see above) and promptly tested out with some Unreal Tournament. Everything went in as it was supposed to - I guess I'm starting to get a grip on this stuff I do. After some discussion, we decided to hang the new hard drive in my machine, since it's kind of the network's quasi-file & print server.
21 April 2000 - ordered 2 AMD K6-2/500 processors and an 8.5 GB hard drive from TCWO (see the link). This should boost performance drastically on both machines.
A few months back - Got that Laptop finally. Glad to have it, as it already made itself useful when I took a website that I had made to the customer earlier this week. I also got to use it while in the shop to help the guy build some flyers to advertise his business at the local rodeo (Yee-Haa, Y'all).
Another really bad thing happened a few weeks back, when my wife's machine checked out on me. I kept trying to reboot it and it kept hanging up at the BIOS screen where it calls out the hard drives, and sometimes just flat-out wouldn't even boot to the BIOS screen at all.
So, as I was building a machine for a friend, I decided to pop her hard drives into the new machine and rule them out as the problem. The drives worked fine, so I was stumped some more. I had just put some PC-100 RAM into it, so it wasn't those old EDO sticks that were causing any problems, like I originally thought. I took the motherboard to work and reflowed the solder on both of the IDE controller sockets - maybe it was just a bad connection. Nope. After a week or so, I finally convinced myself to order a new motherboard, and that the hard drive controllers must've taken a dump on me. I was going to try a new board altogether, so I searched and found an EPoX board that had everything I needed, so I ordered it from Viking Computers.
My wife also thought the computer I built for my friend was 'cute' - the case that is. It was a mini-tower box and took up almost no space at all. So I ordered her a new case as well - maybe the power supply on my old mid-tower box had finally reached the end of its road and that was the problem. Oh well, there shouldn't be any reason why it won't fire up and run once I got the board and the rest of the stuff installed into the new case.
And there was nothing to report about the whole equipment swap. Everything went in like butter. The board fit (barely) in the case, but I had no problems hooking everything up and getting everything situated in there. Amazing. My jobs aren't supposed to go that easy. Oh well - it's back up, so she's killing aliens and helping Indiana Jones through his game once again.
I did have a problem rebooting it earlier this week after I had shut it down for a thunder storm (it wasn't anything to speak of, as usual these days in this freakin' dust bowl). Turns out that some of the motherboard chips got a little warm and wanted to cool down before rebooting. After I let it cool down for about 15 minutes, it fired right back up. I guess a chassis fan is in order - since the little case probably doesn't have that much room for extra airflow, eh?
Not much happened in the way of upgrades from last summer (1999) to around February or so when had a major time putting the Voodoo 3 in the wife's machine...which actually caused a motherboard swap, since the FIC Va-503+ didn't care for Voodoo 3s when they first came out.
And this page started somewhere right before the next rush of upgrades began.
In summer 1999, I decided to upgrade the mobos, processors, RAM, and NICs in
both machines - mine got a TYAN S1590S Super Socket 7 board, with an AMD K62-350
processor and 64MB of SDRAM. Fred received a FIC VA-503+ SS7 mobo with an
AMD K62-350 and 64MB as well. Both machines got stuffed with Linksys
10/100 NICs and plugged into a Terayon Cable Modem from TCA Cable - we're signed
up as Beta testers, so the service is free at this point. Gotta love that.
Shortly before Christmas 1998, my friend Lewis decided to upgrade his machine
from a Cyrix 200+, to an Intel Pentium 233 system... a complete case and mobo
swap. I asked him if he would be willing to sell his old junk and he
hooked me up. Shortly afterwards, I snagged some more gear and networked
the two machines so we could play some Quake Deathmatch, which was too much
fun. After that, we had some other games we went head-to-head with as
well. Pretty cool stuff.
Before any of that all happened, in September 1996, I had gotten into the PC
world with my first - a Cyrix 166+ on an M-Tech R534 mobo w32 MB EDO RAM, an ATI
3D Rage + video card, a 2.1GB HDD, an 8X CD-ROM, a CTX 17" monitor, some
Altec Lansing ACS-500 speakers w/sub, and a USRobotics 33.6K dial-up Modem...
for only $2999.
